00;00;00;00 - 00;00;22;13

Unknown

Why do you power cords, ends and adapters melt or burn up on RV's? Well, that's the question is going to get answered today. And staying on the road. And then in the RV life, we're going to talk about recovering after an accident in an RV. Then in the next stop, we're going to visit Whitehall, Montana and talk to an old man named Ron Hunt and the Jefferson Valley Museum and then an RV environment.

00;00;22;13 - 00;00;44;00

Unknown

Talk about tough times, how to buy smart, and a new format and part of our show. This is Eric Starck with the smart RV or podcast delivering the smarts you need to enjoy the freedom of the RV lifestyle without the fear of breaking down. This talk everything RV. Today is episode 160. Let's get into it. Alexis is here, ready to go.

00;00;44;00 - 00;01;09;15

Unknown

Right. Well. I'm ready. She's ready. She's shaking her head. Ready? Yep, yep. Got a cup full of coffee? I do. Yeah, it's a coffee day today. Or some sort of adult beverage day to do it. Okay, now we have a great show that's been planned today. So before we get into it, I just want to remind everybody, since we're kind of late in the game now we're at the end of September and we haven't talked about Winterizing your RV.

00;01;09;17 - 00;01;29;03

Unknown

It was on our schedule, but somehow it just never got into the mix. Oh no. But we have other episodes on Winterizing your RV, so the description today you'll be able to find, links to the previous episodes. But just a reminder. Winterize your RV. Yes, get it done while you can, if you need to. Right now. Yeah.

00;01;29;04 - 00;01;46;05

Unknown

If you live in Southern Cal, sunny Southern California, you don't have to write live in North Dakota. You might want to consider it today. Now, another thing before we dive into this is I'm reading my notes. I realize I don't have my notes, but really dig into it. So zip D makes it on in a power awning for Airstream trailers.

00;01;46;07 - 00;02;09;13

Unknown

It might be on another RV, but this one's specifically for airstreams and it's called the Relax Awning. This awning is kind of a complex little beast, And it's an interesting things. You know, we have a customer who had a problem with a dealership. They did some work on his RV, and they disconnected the panel to it. And for whatever reason, they're in there buy it and probably accidentally.

00;02;09;15 - 00;02;37;14

Unknown

And this awning, you know, they hooked it up wrong in the awning at work and blah, blah, blah. So go back and forth and so it turns out, is wired wrong. But one of the things about this awning, because, you know, he's asking me out, I kind of dug into the research on it. Whenever you have one of these zip DNA's a power awning, and you have this relaxed control panel before you ever deploy the awning, you always want to hit the close button to make sure always resets the sensors.

00;02;37;16 - 00;03;04;29

Unknown

It's a sensor driven awning. Okay. And I thought that was very interesting. Yeah. And leave it to Airstream to come up with something. I mean, zippy awnings are really nice, but I think this is kind of not so nice. You was like, I wish I had a manual awning, not a power on him. And so it's a little more complex for the typical person to dig into unless you get the manual or talk to a zip D and learn a little bit about it, then it's not so complex.

00;03;05;02 - 00;03;27;09

Unknown

But one thing that really stood out to me besides having the hit clothes. And I guess that's a big thing with zip dealers hit clothes before you open it. Hit close, close, close, close is that if the awning gets stuck in the out position and you need to bring it back in manually, it's quite a chore. He has read the instructions like, wow, that's some work and you got to take things apart.

00;03;27;09 - 00;03;45;22

Unknown

Like take the gas struts off and do this, do that. The other thing is like more than 2 or 3 steps. Oh, boy. And so I was thinking that, you know, if you have an Airstream with one of these powers, if the awnings on it, you might want to get out the manual and understand how to do that and make sure you have at least those tools with you.

00;03;45;25 - 00;04;06;11

Unknown

So if you ever find yourself with that awning stuck out, and I know you will, because another thing it says in the instructions, do not ever lose power to the awning when it's in that extended position, so badly goes, dad, something goes wrong here. Fuze blows. I don't know, anything could happen. And all of a sudden. What? The awning just bonks out.

00;04;06;14 - 00;04;26;24

Unknown

Wow. So you probably really need to understand how your awning works and make sure you have the right tools to bring it back in if you have to. Okay? You know, properly, not desperation. Cut the fabric and tear the thing off and throw it away. We don't want to do that, right? So just keep that in mind. That's just a little, pointer here from Eric to make your day better or worse.

00;04;26;26 - 00;04;48;27

Unknown

All right. Now that's going to take us to enjoying the RV life we're going to have. Oh, boy. This is going downhill, Alexis. This isn't so positive either. Not very positive. And now we're going to talk about recovering after an RV accident. Yeah. You know, Alexis is going to take this in a different direction. But it just dawned on me, like after you buy your RV, you got to recover from that.

00;04;49;04 - 00;05;08;20

Unknown

That's true financially. Yeah, that sounds pretty negative. Sorry, people. All right, so, Aleks, we're talking about an accident on the highway. You know, you crashed into someone and someone crashed into you. We're talking not a little fender bender thing either. Whereas, you know, it's a big accident, right? Right where things really go wrong. All right, Alexis, take it away.

00;05;08;26 - 00;05;37;05

Unknown

All right, well, those are not talking about your finances. I mean, this probably does involve. Especially if you don't have insurance, which this is a call to action to get insurance. Okay. We've talked about this before, so I won't go into that. But the first thing you want to do when you do, because it's a scary thing when this happens, whatever the case may be, you want to check yourself first, because if you're on the side of the road, make sure you're not jumping out of the truck or out of the RV, depending on what you have.

00;05;37;13 - 00;05;57;08

Unknown

And, you know, getting hit by another car. We don't want that to happen. So prioritize your safety above all else. And if you have passengers there, safety as well. Check for injuries. And if medical attention is needed, be sure to do that first and then check your assess your damage on your RV or trailer. What? That's what you're going to want to do.

00;05;57;09 - 00;06;19;22

Unknown

Secondly, you know, make sure you're safe, your family safe, and then check what happened to your to your RV. I don't know, notify your insurance providers. Probably next. That's an emergency. You have to do that. Yeah. Yeah, I take pictures, take lots of pictures. Make sure there's proof because they always want pictures and more. So yeah, having insurance using it is okay.

00;06;19;29 - 00;06;49;17

Unknown

Make sure you stay connected and seek support is on here. And make sure that you're okay that other people have gone through this. So asking, you know, if you're on a forum asking what they did can sometimes make you feel better, not so alone, and then you might be a little shaken up for the next trip. You know, once you get all the repairs done, once it's all dealt with, you might be a little, you know, want to really go out and get back on the horse after you've been worked off is not always an easy thing to do.

00;06;49;17 - 00;07;13;16

Unknown

But you know, it happens. You can all recover, and if you want to keep being, you should. But I think you know that's right. You know, accidents happen, you know. Do. I mean, we're on a major highway here in the Bitterroot Valley in Montana. And, you know, we see a lot of accidents. Yeah. You know, it's common. And with an RV, it's easy to hit someone somewhere to hit you, even though you got this big RV.

00;07;13;16 - 00;07;32;05

Unknown

People don't see you. Yeah, right. You know, someone just does something stupid or you get a blow out, you lose control. You see countless trailers, turn it over on the internet. Yeah. You know, you can get images of that within seconds. Your trailer turn it over on know Google. That trailer turned over, RV turned over, and millions of them RV on fire.

00;07;32;05 - 00;07;53;08

Unknown

Millions of them, you know, so things happen. And this is a great article. So Alexis houses on on the websites of smarter every year.com under enjoying the RV life and the title of it is recovering after an RV accident. And you know might not be something we I I'm not really worried about that today and kind of got the teenager attitude towards it, you know.

00;07;53;08 - 00;08;08;12

Unknown

Right. But having it in mind just you know you read it once and you know, that's all you need to do. Just have it there and it might not even be yourself. That has the problem with the accident. Maybe you just go through it and you roll through the motions. Not a big deal. You know, you fight with your insurance kind of vibe, all the normal stuff.

00;08;08;13 - 00;08;29;18

Unknown

Yeah, maybe your spouse is suffering from it, you know, having a difficult time. Like she don't trust you now or you don't trust you now or your kids, like, man, dad is horrible and animals killed us, you know? Yeah. Could be a little bit more to it, you know? So you want to think of it too lightly, but you don't want to change your life how you RV, you know exactly.

00;08;29;18 - 00;08;48;26

Unknown

If you want to drive like a maniac, continue to do it. Just remember, this article is here for you. When it all falls apart. There you go. Just kidding. Oh my. Okay. So anyways all right so it's a great article again. It's on the smart RV or.com under the heading enjoying the RV life. Now we're going to move on to stay in on the road.

00;08;48;28 - 00;09;03;08

Unknown

And you know, with that being said though about the RV life, you know, the season's coming to the end here. So make sure you get any last minute trips in now while you still can. And I'm talking about the people, the states where you got to winter eyes and start snowing and all that. Some people that even bother.

00;09;03;08 - 00;09;28;18

Unknown

I'm, you know, you're living in New Mexico, Arizona. No birds. Yeah, I this one. But anyways, staying on the road, why do power cords, ins and adapters melt or burn up? So what we're talking about is your RV, the 30 amp and 50 amp cord and adapters and ends that you use that you plug in to shore power or a generator or whatever that external power source is.

00;09;28;20 - 00;09;47;13

Unknown

Could be your home, your neighbor's house. You know, you could be stealing power from a line somewhere. How you're getting it. You know, we don't care. These cords and ends burn up and we see it quite a bit. It's not an uncommon thing. And some people are really baffled by this because they don't understand. Because it's a safety issue.

00;09;47;14 - 00;10;04;11

Unknown

You know, the the short answer is it's just bad connection. But how do those connections become bad? Put in perspective, I might be jumping the gun here a little bit, but think one of a refrigerator in your house. You know, when you plug it in for the first time, you got to like, push it into the wall with your hand.

00;10;04;13 - 00;10;24;21

Unknown

When you go to unplug it ten years later, you got to pull it out. You know, it's kind of a hassle. That's because that cord and that outlet are never used other than being plugged into once and it's left alone. TV outlets are the same thing. You know, if you put your TV in the wall and you never move it or anything, ten years go by.

00;10;24;22 - 00;10;43;11

Unknown

If I decide to dust all the spiders and stuff out of the back. Yeah, cobwebs and dead mice and things, they can play. Eric, where do you live now? Yeah. Of course. Is is pulls out tight. That's because it's just sitting in there. It's not getting used all the time now. Like a vacuum cord. Over time, they get loose and sloppy.

00;10;43;11 - 00;11;06;04

Unknown

You got to bend little prongs out or in to make them stay in tight. Right. Think of that now. Your RV. Yeah. It all also depends on you too. There are some things we do that caused the problems. First off, and I and I've said this more than once, you need to know what you have in your RV as a 50 amp third service or a 30 amp 50 amp is for prong, 30 is three prong.

00;11;06;07 - 00;11;28;19

Unknown

An RV 30 amp is RV 30. AMP is doesn't it doesn't work on anything else. In fact, any other three prong outlets for the most part are always 220V. An RV 30 amp is 110 volt, so it's important to know that because people try to make these things work and they cause problems. Now the 50 amp is just a four prong 50 amp.

00;11;28;19 - 00;11;47;10

Unknown

It's very similar to like a welding, a welding cord of 50 amp welding cord or a compressor that 50 amps an air compressor. So it's more commercial, more industrial, if you will nonetheless determine what you have and know what you have. It should be. I know my tires are black and I know I have a 50 amp service.

00;11;47;12 - 00;12;11;19

Unknown

I know my tires are black and I have a 30 amp service. If you know those two things, I mean, you're right up there. You're a smart rear end. Yeah, no more than that. You're an expert rear right. All right. What happens are generally when you take your 50 amp outlet or 50 amp cord and plug it into, you know, 50 amp outlet at an RV park or maybe your house.

00;12;11;21 - 00;12;33;22

Unknown

It goes in real tight. You have four prongs that hold it in place. It goes directly in and it sits there. Doesn't do anything, and it just fits nice and tight. And it would be the same with a 30 amp. But there's a difference. RV parks have more 30 amp RVs at them than they do 50 amp RVs.

00;12;33;24 - 00;12;51;21

Unknown

So 30 amp outlets at RV parks typically are going to wear out much quicker than their 50 AB outlets, right? And so when you plug in like recently, in fact, our last episode, I think I talked about it, we are in Cardwell, Montana at the RV park there, and you plug into a 30 amp outlet and start sparking an arc.

00;12;51;21 - 00;13;13;08

Unknown

And as it's going in, you know, which is not a good sign, you know, a little something is one thing, but continuous because the outlet was so loose and my, surge protector actually was discolored and hot when we left two days later. No, boy, I knew it was going to be like that. I was kind of testing the market there, if you will, or testing the waters to see what would happen.

00;13;13;10 - 00;13;29;19

Unknown

So, boy, you know, take it to the extreme. But and you know, with that being said to, you know, if you have a surge protector and you're plugged into an outlet like that, let's say it does melt. The end of the surge protector kind of sucks to have to cut off that factory and and put on an aftermarket end.

00;13;29;20 - 00;13;51;20

Unknown

Yeah, you can do it. But it kind of sucks. Anyway, back to the melting. So it's always bad connections or your taking a 50 amp and reducing it down to 30 amps, and where you're plugging it in the the outlets not tight or even your 30 amp cord can be worn out or the adapter. And that creates a loose connection.

00;13;51;22 - 00;14;08;11

Unknown

You know, you shouldn't see sparks, and you might see a spark when you plug in, but you know you shouldn't be able to move it around. If you take the cord out, it shouldn't be hot. The the prongs on it shouldn't be discolored. It's very important that they're not as real as. I'm hardly even looking at the camera as I'm doing this.

00;14;08;14 - 00;14;34;23

Unknown

Oh, I like you guys are listed. It doesn't matter. But we do put this on YouTube. Eventually. Whether in La La Land, it's a podcast. I only have to look at the camera. Right. All right. Anyway, Pearl sidebar there to distract me, though, it's the connection. So in your adapters are starting to wear out. Replace them. And when you buy adapters to go to, let's say, your house 110V, their typical house outlet, you know, you'd plug an owl lamp in too.

00;14;34;23 - 00;14;54;24

Unknown

So you get adapters for those who take maybe you're 30 amp to the 15 amp is what it's called. Those adapters. Some of them are like 4 or $5, three bucks on one of those ghetto websites. On the internet. They burn up very quickly. You want to buy a cord typically. Now Camco makes an adapter that's yellow. It's nice and heavy duty.

00;14;55;01 - 00;15;15;23

Unknown

It's about ten bucks and it works really well. So not going to melt like the cheaper ones. The black ones especially. They're the ones that just melt right up. If you buy a pigtail like a 12 or 18 inch pigtail, they work a lot better to their heavier duty. They last, they're going to last as long as you own the RV, unless you lose it, probably, but it's not really that complex.

00;15;15;23 - 00;15;39;10

Unknown

We go on forever, but you know, we're not. I'm not going to spend forever talking about this. So having those connections and also when you're going to shore power, you know, the more extension cord you have, the warmer the wire can get, the more critical that your connections when you plug into one another are tight. So if you plug into your extension, you know your power cord with an extension cord, make sure it plugs in tight.

00;15;39;12 - 00;16;06;28

Unknown

Because those loose connections, especially over a long run, they'll get hotter, hotter, hotter, and start to melt. If you're using an extension cord like a regular household extension cord, you know that you'd plug something into, like a drill or a lamp to give you a little more length, make sure you use a heavy duty one, preferably a 20 amp one that has heavier wires in it because they are a weak link to in the ends of those, things get really worn out if you've had it for a long time.

00;16;06;28 - 00;16;22;20

Unknown

I mean, I have an extension cord guy I've had since I have 20 years old. I Miller Payne, a house in Cerritos, California. With it now wound a paint sprayer. So I was a pain on it makes us out in our warehouse here. I've seen it. You know it. It's worn out, you know, but it works, you know, for what I'm doing.

00;16;22;20 - 00;16;46;04

Unknown

But for an RV to plug it into shore power. No way. Man, what it. So make sure you're using good cords, because when you have bad connections, you start burning things up. And the downside to this can be you might have a $6 adapter that starts to melt, but it can ruin your power cord, the nice factory cord, and then you got to cut the end off of it.

00;16;46;05 - 00;17;05;06

Unknown

Put an aftermarket end on which they work, but it's not the same. And then, you know, you're kind of ruining it. Yeah. And you don't want to have to do that. And it could cause a fire and you know, cause well, you might have to call your insurance company a recovery effort. RV accident we just talked about that is your RV burns up your house.

00;17;05;06 - 00;17;28;05

Unknown

Yeah. The other thing is so your extension cords, that's what I'm calling them. Just your 15 amp extension cords. Buy good ones or buy like heavy gauge ones, like 20 amp and use. Those are much better. They're better period. You know this heavier wire. But you don't have to do that for everything. Just this one application. And try to avoid that too.

00;17;28;08 - 00;17;50;29

Unknown

If you are using this regular 15 amp extension cord, sometimes your air conditioner might run on those, but it's not advisable because that creates more heat and burns up connectors. And the other thing too is when you if, let's say you do have to add a new into your cord. A lot of our RVs today have the cord that plugs into the side of what's called a twist lock, and a little ring that tightens up.

00;17;51;01 - 00;18;16;24

Unknown

Sometimes those ends burn up and they get expensive and a lot of people, the what I see is the both pieces need to replace the inlet and the cord in the recept or the, the cord in. And people only want to do one and they try that with one, and then they're back two weeks later by and both pieces by and both pieces now and replace the one they already bought for 50 bucks or something.

00;18;16;26 - 00;18;35;02

Unknown

Right. Do it right. If there's signs that both sides are melted a little bit, you know, replace them both. Don't try to cut corners because you'll probably just be back to the store. Replace them both pieces, sooner than you think. And spending your money again. You want to try to save your money here, but not be ridiculous to start a fire or something like that.

00;18;35;06 - 00;18;55;23

Unknown

And then when you're putting a cord end on if you're doing it yourself. Yeah. Even if you have someone do it, man, you got to make sure they tighten those wires up tight. It's imperative that when they put the wires in that they tighten them tight. Loose wires caused the problem too. And that you can't see it starts internally, so there's melting inside them.

00;18;55;23 - 00;19;13;24

Unknown

Gradually it works its way out and then bam, everything's you know, melted or on fire. So if you replace a cord end make sure it is tight. And that would be for your home whatever. And also the all the cord ends have a clamp that clamps it to the cable. So you want to make sure that you clamp it to the cable super tight.

00;19;13;24 - 00;19;31;11

Unknown

So when you're pulling on the cable or the weight of the cable hanging out of the pedestals, not pulling the wires out of the connector internally. Yeah. That being said. So those are nice reminders. Now I know why I'm staring at this. There's a green thing on this monitor that just has my attention that this drove me crazy.

00;19;31;11 - 00;19;59;06

Unknown

So now we've covered power cords, adapters and ends and why they burn up. Now, you guys are experts here, so now you can go around to RV park, be fire marshals. Just kidding. Yeah. Maybe not. Yeah. Let the stuff burn. Oh, oh. Now we're back on the 10,000 subscribers on YouTube before the end of the year. So I did check today to see how many millions more we got, but I know it's increased.

00;19;59;09 - 00;20;22;01

Unknown

So everybody share our this podcast. Share our YouTube channel with everybody. You know become a pest. Yeah. You get like you like you, buy something online in that company. Now since you like 65 emails a day, you need to be that for the end of the year. Send all your friends and family 65 emails a day using the smart RV, your podcast, and the our YouTube channel.

00;20;22;03 - 00;20;40;18

Unknown

So if you go to YouTube, type in the smart RV, your podcast, bam! There we are. And then there's videos. They're great videos. In fact, I think we're going to hopefully have one out this weekend. Yeah, we got a little lax. We've had we've been so busy with stuff and it seems like we just had all the ordinary things coming up lately.

00;20;40;18 - 00;21;01;04

Unknown

So I've fallen behind on some of our production and getting videos, dot and even those podcasts. I always do the last minute now kind of Russian. Sorry guys. Yeah, we're losers sometimes. We're coming to the end of our season. So now we able to get ahead of this and get back on track. So again 10,000 listeners right. Not that hard.

00;21;01;07 - 00;21;29;22

Unknown

All right. Now let's go to the next stop. And we're going to talk about Ron Hood, the old man in Whitehall. He might not appreciate that but he is an old man. He's like 85 years old. Yeah. Gets around pretty good though for an old timer. Yeah. So he is a volunteer at the Jefferson Valley Museum. Now. Whitehall is in Montana, oh, 30 to 50 miles west of, Bozeman on Highway 90.

00;21;29;24 - 00;21;49;28

Unknown

Whitehall is a small little town. Not much there. So we went to Cardwell. Cardwell? There's nothing there other than RV park and a general store to schoolhouse. But we just stay at the RV park and Whitehall is nearby. We wanted to go check out Whitehall because we like all these small towns and mining towns. The history, and we end up at this Jefferson Valley Museum.

00;21;49;28 - 00;22;14;06

Unknown

Now. This is what makes these small towns cool. Ron Hunt made Whitehall stand out to me and my wife. Like more than any other small town we've ever been to, no matter how cool the town was. So the Jefferson Valley Museum, it's just filled with history about Whitehall and what took place there, the people, all of the faces and the events over the years.

00;22;14;08 - 00;22;31;23

Unknown

And we didn't know that. Ron, when he came out and greeted us, you know, because he wanted to give us a tour. And, you know, we were really keen on a tour, to be honest with you. But, you know, it worked out really good. I don't have the patience for that. I just do my own pace, you know, boom, boom, boom or the old Boswell move on.

00;22;31;26 - 00;22;58;26

Unknown

But he took us through it and he showed us this museum and he, you know, he went the detail, but he says, you know, the best thing to do is come back now and just take your own time and start reading all the stuff in there, because there's a lot of articles, newspaper articles, excerpts from books. In fact, there's some people that it written books about Whitehall, and some of the families there, you know, all the gory details from behind the scenes.

00;22;58;26 - 00;23;18;10

Unknown

I guess. Oh, wow. And my wife says she's read one of the books. She's read another one. She said, they're very interesting. They're good reads. He's he grew up there. He was born there. And what was interesting is, you know, he was telling us stuff and he like points to this picture and it's a gas station. And he goes, well, this is my dad's or my Paris gas station.

00;23;18;12 - 00;23;36;01

Unknown

And they were they bought this. And, you know, at that time it was just one room. And, you know, we didn't leave no bathroom or anything. And they lived there. You're like, wow. Yeah, it was pretty rough, you know. And then eventually they were to add on a room here, a room there for, you know, a little more, comfort creature comforts.

00;23;36;04 - 00;23;58;28

Unknown

But he says, that's my dad there. And over here at the gas pumps, this gas truck or this tanker that's owned by so-and-so and those little legs right there. That's me. I was just a kid back then thinking, wow, you know, that's kind of cool. Then he starts talking about people in the town, like, one guy who owned a business, and he opened up a gas station.

00;23;58;28 - 00;24;17;02

Unknown

When he found out one of the highways was coming through, his name was sad and something or other, you know, Arabic or something like that back then. That's when, you know, you get people from all over the world, the United States, they are accepted. You know, they didn't live in all their own little private communities. They assimilated. So he bought or he built his gas station.

00;24;17;02 - 00;24;38;11

Unknown

I guess it's just like the premier gas station, you know, out on the pumps that had a canopy lining the inside the canopy were all these works of art. Just unprecedented stuff. But, you know, he's pointing here now, this building used to be there. This is where doctor So-and-so was. This is where he started. Then he moved from there over to this building, and then such and such moved into his old building.

00;24;38;11 - 00;25;03;16

Unknown

And then it burned down five years later. Seemed like they had a lot of fires back then, you know, probably probably bad electrical connections. You know, they didn't even have arv's. So that's a warning for you. You know, you're not going to find this in every town you go to. But if you like only small towns and there's a museum, you know, from now on, we're going to ask, do you have somebody here that grew up here, that lived here their whole life for the history of it?

00;25;03;18 - 00;25;24;06

Unknown

Or maybe if you see some people that look like they lived there forever, if you talk to them a little bit, the history is phenomenal. It brought Whitehall, Montana from this town. It just didn't even matter to us, to this cool little town. Now that has some meaning. You know, we're not going to move there or anything like that, but it's just okay, that's a cooler place than what we thought it was.

00;25;24;08 - 00;25;47;08

Unknown

So the whole point is sometimes getting that history from somebody, that personal history from somebody who can bring it to life, can make that trip that much better. So just just a little reminder there. There's more to these towns. And sometimes what meets the eye. Okay. Now we're going to cruise on to RV envy. We're done with Whitehall.

00;25;47;08 - 00;26;07;00

Unknown

So Ron audios FYI. Yeah, we should probably send this to Ron Ike here. I should, we should. Yeah, that'd be nice. Thank. You know, he said that he, he was asked to give a speech about the town at one of their museum meetings or something, and it was so long, it turned into a book and CDs. Oh, wow.

00;26;07;02 - 00;26;28;15

Unknown

And he says, I really wasn't prepared for it, but I guess it turned out really well, you know, because he knows all the history. Yeah. He does. That's rare for an older guy to read. His memory was sharp. Yeah. You know, it's his life. Yeah. But even the museum itself, even if you went on a self-guided tour, it'd be really cool to see a lot of old stuff there, that's for sure.

00;26;28;18 - 00;26;53;02

Unknown

All right, back to RV envy. We are living in very unique times in this world. United States is going through an election cycle. This like no other election cycle. The economy is getting tough. People are losing jobs first. It's just like a downer of a show today. It really is. What's wrong with us that you have an RV and that's the escape route.

00;26;53;04 - 00;27;08;15

Unknown

You know, sometimes you just get in that RV, man. It's like a little capsule. You can just get away from everybody. Yeah, yeah, you can go to an RV park. You can choose to associate with people or you can choose not to. You can go someplace and camp, or there's no one out and just get away from people.

00;27;08;15 - 00;27;27;16

Unknown

You know, I can think of all sorts of places like that. You know, maybe that's just what you need sometimes to decompress, because things are getting very bad in this world. And until this election passes, you know, where things are always negative in an election year to begin with. But this one seems to be a little bit worse and a lot a bit worse.

00;27;27;20 - 00;27;50;05

Unknown

Don't let all of that just wear you down. You have to look at life as we move on. We we just keep moving forward. These things are always going to be in front of us. There's always going to be some obstacle. Your RV is that outlet. So use your RV. Don't let everything in this world keep you from that.

00;27;50;07 - 00;28;12;13

Unknown

Now, it might be harder to afford things, maybe to go on that trip or whatever, but just be smarter with your money. And sometimes being smart with money means you pay a little more upfront rather than doing it twice. Like I mentioned early in the course, you know, going cheap and only replacing one part of the problem, not both part.

00;28;12;15 - 00;28;32;19

Unknown

And, you know, shopping online today, there's a lot of cheap stuff out there. It's going to save you so much money until you have to buy it again and you buy the same one again. And okay, now this one will be better than you buy it again. And you know, there's websites selling stuff that is brought in from other countries.

00;28;32;19 - 00;28;54;18

Unknown

And it's just low quality garbage. And the RV market is getting flooded with it. It's amazing how much junk there is out there. Every company in China that can make anything and has our, contact here, they're shipping it over and they're selling it. And a lot of these companies don't really even exist. And that's the other problem.

00;28;54;20 - 00;29;15;12

Unknown

You know, what kind of customer service are you going to get? What kind of quality are you going to get to? These companies really even care about the quality if they get constant flood of returns, does it bother them because there's so much profit? And what does sell doesn't get returned? You have to think about that. And that might sound ridiculous, but you look at some of the big companies in the world today who get fined, you know, $1 billion.

00;29;15;12 - 00;29;35;12

Unknown

They don't even care because they made 10 million, 10 billion on the product they sold. It was illegal, right? You know, so you have to really look out there when it's all relative. These are much smaller dollars we're talking about here. But don't buy stuff just to buy it again. Buy better quality items. Now maybe you're not going to buy the top end, but don't go to the bottom end.

00;29;35;13 - 00;29;56;20

Unknown

Yeah, see our cords and electrical items and things like that. Yeah. Stay away from that cheap stuff. Buy the good brands. Now, with that being said that we've now talked you out of doing anything because the world's collapsing before your eyes. Yeah. Just kidding. We're going to change up the show a little bit in enjoying the RV life.

00;29;56;20 - 00;30;15;10

Unknown

From now on, we're going to have content about saving money as an RV. So we want to help you save some money. And sometimes things are obvious and sometimes are not. Some of the things we talk about will probably be obvious. Oh yeah, we know that other things might not be, but we're going to start doing more research on that.

00;30;15;13 - 00;30;38;10

Unknown

You know, it might be insurance, it might be your aftermarket warranties, which we already have a company that a next episode, we're going to talk about wholesale warranties and the service they provide. They're lower priced and better quality service, if you will, or product that they're selling. We're going to work on this, and we're going to try to help everybody to save some money because it's important right now, and then we'll just keep that going.

00;30;38;10 - 00;30;59;12

Unknown

So we're going to adjust and hopefully that is beneficial to everybody. All right. So now speaking of buying quality, saving some money, if you go to Sun Pro Mfg comm, you need to slide out on fabric. We have 14 out slide out awning fabrics that are better quality than the factory. But they're not the most expensive ones compared to.

00;30;59;12 - 00;31;20;13

Unknown

Well, yeah, they're not 18 ounce or they're the least expensive on our website, but they're a good quality product and they're at a good price. So if you need to slide down any fabric, at least check it out. You never know. Yes. And you got our great customer service behind it and our great warranty. Yeah. So that's where something right there we're Dunder Mifflin.

00;31;20;16 - 00;31;44;21

Unknown

There you go, Dunder Mifflin. Oh, boy. So who's Mike and who's Dwight and who's Pam? And all the others. Yeah, yeah. Figure that out later. Yeah. Let's, chubby guy's name, Kevin. Kevin. Yeah, I'm probably Kevin. Honestly. Yeah. This is making me think of that episode where he's carrying that big pot of chili into the office, I think.

00;31;44;21 - 00;32;05;26

Unknown

Don't sit on them. So I'm sat on the floor. So scooping it back. It's a Rose Kelly thing. Oh. Yeah. I mean, you were not the office after all. All right, so one final call out to go check out the smart rv.com or the smart RV, or on YouTube. Boost up those subscribers. And, of course, share the podcast with everybody.

00;32;05;26 - 00;32;26;16

Unknown

And all this information is always on the website at the smart RV intercom, so check that out as well. So our next episode is going to be episode 161, and we are floating around between a couple of different ideas. So we don't have a heading yet or a title that episode, but we will, certainly be back with it in two weeks.

00;32;26;16 - 00;32;45;25

Unknown

Episode 161. So we've had a great show today, and hopefully everybody's going to be listening to get into weeks. And in the meantime going to YouTube and looking at our channel there. So this is Eric Starck with the smart RV podcast. It's been great hanging out with you today, and I want to thank you for listening to the show.

00;32;45;25 - 00;32;51;21

Unknown

So if I don't see you on the road less connect at the Smart avia.com.