Who are Wilbur and Charlotte, anyway? Part 1

Wilbur and Charlotte All Hitched Up and Ready to Go. May 21,  2013

Well....Wilbur is a 32.08 feet long, 10' 5" high, 94.5"wide, 14,050 pound 2008 Forest River Lexington 300 GTS, Class B+ motorhome. (That's a mouthful!) She was built by marginally skilled workers in the Forest River plant in Elkhart, Indiana. (Useless fact:  Warren Buffett owns Forest River).  Fortunately,  most of her important components like the fans, air conditioner, appliances, etc...were designed and built by other, more skilled and conscientious workers elsewhere. One of those important components is the chassis upon which Wilbur sits. That is a Ford E-Series Super Duty Class C Motorhome Chassis with a 305 horsepower Triton V-10, 10 cylinder gasoline engine developing 420 lb.-ft of torque at 4200 RPM through a Torque-shift 5 speed Automatic Overdrive transmission. (Another mouthful!)  Torque is what takes the cap off your beer bottle. Got all that? Now go scrape the grease from under your finger nails.

On a good day, at sea level, on a flat road and with very judicious application of the accelerator, Wilbur will get 10 miles to the gallon. Wilbur has a 55 gallon gas tank. You do the math.

Charlotte, on the other hand, is a 14'4" long, 53.5" high, 66.3" wide, 2315 pound 1994 Toyota Corolla built in Canada. She has a 105 horsepower gasoline engine and develops 100 lb.-ft. of torque at 4800 RPM through a 5 speed manual transmission.  Charlotte has a 13.2 gallon gas tank which I have never emptied because after 320 miles I get scared and stop for gas. Usually I end up needing 10 gallons to top off.  Again with the math.

Charlotte is approaching 200,000 miles and has been paid for for most of the second 100,000. Wilbur has just 10,000 miles and a mortgage.

Wilbur and Charlotte are also the main characters in E.B. White's children's novel, Charlotte's Web.  Wilbur is a prize-quality pig who has learned what the fate of all pigs ultimately is, prized or not.

Wilbur

Wilbur relates his pending problem to Charlotte, a barn spider.

Charlotte

Charlotte devises and executes, with the help of the other barn yard animals, an ingenious plan to save Wilbur.  For those of you surviving a deprived childhood, I won't spoil the story.

It is very fitting that the Corolla should be named Charlotte after White's heroine. Charlotte makes our adventure possible. Up in Prince Edward Island we drove Wilbur, perhaps, a total of 200 miles.  At $5.90 per gallon of gas (US equivalent) (More math!).... well, touring in Wilbur is not a practical alternative. For three weeks we based Wilbur  at Summerside in the west of PEI and then drove the 100 miles to Brudenell in the east.  Charlotte, on the other hand, logged more than 1200 miles helping us explore the length and breadth of the island.

Charlotte almost didn't get to come along. Her driver's side door handle was broken. You had to reach through the window to let yourself out. She was missing hub caps. Her clear coat was gone in places. (Still is.) She made a racket whenever you turned her wheel too far right or left. Her seats were frayed or torn. Cosmetically, she was a mess.

When I suggested using the Corolla as a Toad or Dinghy, Fran thought, understandably,  I was now crazy to go along with my foolhardy and cheap. Fran suggested that we leave the assessment of  the Corolla's suitability to our mechanic of long tenure, Andy Peters. I also promised not to say a word to Andy. She could do all the talking and explaining re: what we had in mind. She did and we left the car with Andy.

Later that day Andy called back. The Corolla was basically sound. She needed new motor mounts. The tie-rod ends were dry rotted and needed replaced. She could use a new radiator. Ironically, the most expensive repair would be the door handle. Since we had recently replaced the spark plugs and wires, had the brakes redone and the timing belt replaced, $1250 would, in Andy's opinion, make the Toyota road-ready.  Fran, who has lived through, sometimes just barely, most of my cockamamie schemes, found $1250 a compelling counter-argument to the 10 grand she was budgeting for a late-model Honda CRV. I bought and installed hubcaps (Pep Boys, $29.95) and seat covers (Walmart, 29.95) as a part of my agreement with Fran and the 1994 Toyota Corolla was re-christened Charlotte.

Charlotte Relaxing In the Shade in Vermont

I certainly mean no disparagement in calling Wilbur, Wilbur, after a pig.

Wilbur in our former driveway

Wilbur at of first stop, Corderus State Park, Hanover PA

Wilbur at Corderus awning out

Though he is gluttonous regarding gas at a current $3.789 a gallon up here in Vermont he is also:

He is the father/mother ship.

Floor plan of Wilbur

He is the life-support system.........

Chill out, dude.

Some of us cats are napping

And don't even think about publishing this picture....

Whatever.... He is home. In an all-too-real sense Wilbur chose us as much, if not more, than we chose him. He was the first and only motorhome we seriously looked at. An hour after meeting Wilbur, we gave the salesman a deposit contingent on financing. We left the RV dealer thinking, "Not a chance." Soon, we figured, we would have no home, no address, no jobs....so, no way.

Next time: How Wilbur came to be Wilbur and a photo spread of our home, assuming we can get him cleaned up. See you then.