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how to get from the Twilight zone to Arizona. This is Eric Stark 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. So if you've been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you'd know that it typically has been done under the name radio Arizona RV.
And if you haven't seen the announcements in your email or heard it on your podcast, a channel, well, this is a new show. We've rebranded it to the smart RV or podcast with Eric Stark. And the website now is the smart RV year.com. So you want to go to the website, check it out is new. We're going to be adding to it.
So. Jam packed with stuff yet, but it will be soon enough. So today's first segment is living the RV life, you know, and this, this will be about the RV lifestyle in the future, just so you know, and what I want to do is kind of get this off the table. Now, what is the RV lifestyle? Cause people kind of wonder, because there's an opinion out there that you can only live the RV lifestyle.
If you're a full-time artist. And that's not really the case. If you've sold your home and now you live in your RV, typically that's living the RV lifestyle. That's what is set out there? How can someone live the RV lifestyle who still works? How can they enjoy the RV lifestyle? Well, by simply using your RV and making the RV lifestyle your own, now it might just be a couple of weekends.
A month. It might be a month at a time, might be a week at a time, two weeks here, three weeks there, a week care ever, how you use your RV, you're enjoying the RV lifestyle. And no doubt when you get in your RV, your mindset changes, your mood changes. Your you're glad to be on the road heading to that camping destination.
So don't let it be said that because you're not doing this full time that you're not living the RV lifestyle. You own an RV. You go out and buy equipment for your RV. You might even have different clothes you wear on your RV because you're in a more relaxed, casual setting. Maybe, you know, Monday through Friday, you have to wear a uniform to work.
Well, you're not wearing that uniform when you're out using your RV, you're enjoying the RV lifestyle and everybody looks at it differently. They do it differently. You know, if you were to look at a hunter, you know, a hunter. Doesn't typically hunt full time. Quite often, they have a job. They go hunting out here, there when it's season, or if they can go someplace where hunting season's going, they look forward to that.
And you can tell they're a hunter because they generally were closing that would identify them, maybe a jacket, a hat, and they wear that out in public. You know, there's nothing wrong with that. A camouflage jacket. Heck you blend right in anymore. Everybody else, especially in certain areas like Montana, but you wouldn't say the person's not a hunter, even though they are, they enjoy the hunting lifestyle.
It's just, they don't do it full time. It's the same with RV just because you're not doing it full time. Doesn't mean you can't enjoy that lifestyle. In fact, I encourage you. If you own an RV and you're using it well, if you're not using it, start using it, but if you're using it to just enjoy the lifestyle, it's an awesome way to travel some off awesome way to have vacations and get away.
So make it your own. Whether it's one day, a month, two days a month, 10 days, a year, a hundred days a year, whatever. Make it your own. The RV lifestyle is for everybody who wants to enjoy it, go to the smart RV or.com and you can check out more information about our, about the RV lifestyle. There's actually a link right there on the front page, the RV lifestyle.
Now staying on the road is our next segment. And this is the part of the show that we really get into the nuts and bolts of repairs, how to maintain your RV, the things that go on that you need to stay up on the maintenance. So this is the actual part getting from the Twilight zone to Arizona. So we're going to start here to Twilight zone.
We're going to get to Arizona. After we talked about the Twilight zone, that's going to come up on our next section called next stop. That's about destination. Is it the RV repair shop or an episode of the Twilight zone. And you're probably wondering, what am I talking about? Well, first off, do you recall the TV series called the Twilight zone?
Do you remember rod Serling kind of a handsome guy, always wore a black suit, white shirt, black tie then tie. He was the whole. Any every episode, he started off the, you know, he would be there to give this little monologue of the show or, you know, break it down and very meaty format. You know, all these tongue twisters, he had explained this really cool way.
Just grab your attention. I got to watch us well. There's one episode of the Twilight zone called what you need. You know, you can check out the Twilight zone on YouTube. It's still out there. Some, a Hulu has a plane still. Maybe Netflix, not a hundred percent shirt there, but it's still available out there.
But anyway, so what you need this episode reminds me of some of the stories I hear about are re repairs that seem like they came right out of the Twilight zone. You're probably thinking, oh, Eric, what are you talking about now? Bear with me for a couple of minutes here. First, let me explain this episode.
So you understand where I'm coming from. So there's this little old man. He's a sales man and he's out peddling his goods and he stops off in this bar for lack of better term. We'll just call it a bar. And he goes in there and he has his goods with him. And this woman comes up to him and says, you know, she could tell he's selling stuff and you remember back.
You know, earlier times people would do that for a living they'd travel with a suitcase or several suitcases and sell things, elixirs, potions, you know, sometimes out of a car, a wagon, whatever it might be. So she sees him can tell he's selling things. So, Hey, Mr. What do you have for me? And so he pulls this bottle of clean fluid out of his case and says this.
Is what you need and he hands it to her and she's kind of perplexed. What do I need with this? It's just cleaning fluid. He goes, this is what you need. Of course he doesn't charge her for it. This is, she takes it and kind of wanders off confused. Why do I need that? You know, she's wondering so next, an athlete comes up to him and says, what do I need?
And he digs through his bag and he finally pulls out two train tickets to Scranton, Pennsylvania, and he hands them to you to them. And here you go. So the athlete takes and he goes, what are these heels? Well, this is what you need. That's what he tells him. This is what you need. So a moment later, the phone rings in his bar and of course it's for the athlete.
He gets on the phone. Finds out. He just got a coaching job in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a big college there. So he's get this coaching job. And so the tickets now, Hey, look at this, these tickets are going to get you there. He's like, wow. You know, and, and then he comes out of the phone booth and he bumps into the woman with the cleaning fluid, something spills on his shirt or his coat.
She cleans it off in there. So the clean fluid worked. He got tickets to Scranton PA and they look at each other with that look that they're in love. That eye contact. So obviously that was something they needed as well. That was the outcome of the two things that each one needed. It's what they needed at that moment.
So you take your RV into an RV store and let's say your furnace isn't working. So the service rider, you know, you explained to him exactly what's going on. He doesn't really respond one way or another what you need. He just says, we'll take. You know, a day goes by and he calls you up and tells you that your furnace needs a new circuit board, and it's going to be X amount of dollars.
It will be ready today. At five, you can pick it up today at five or pick it up tomorrow. You decide you're going to pick it up that day. So you go down there at five o'clock and you have the dollar amount in your mind. In fact, you wrote it down on a piece of paper, so you want to forget it. And you wrote down circuit board and you wrote down.
So you show up and he gives you the bill and it's not what he told you. It's more than that. And so you look at it and you see that they also put in, um, you know, a couple other parts, like a limit switch, a sale switch, and a thermostat, a wall thermostat. The guys told you what you needed was the circuit board.
So now you ask them, well, what are these other things? Well, the technician, why he was in there, thought it'd be good to put these in. He thought it's what you needed in the future. And you're thinking, but you told me this is what would fix it. And this is what I okayed. Well, yeah. But once we got into the furnace a little bit more, we found out these other things weren't functioning properly.
And the other real thing that glares at you is the thermostat because it's over a hundred dollars. And you think in the wall thermostat should have been diagnosed as a problem in the beginning, not afterwards. And now you're questioning the repair. What did it really need? A circuit board or a wall thermostat?
The service writer told you this is what you need, so you're not really sure. Now you ask for the parts and he's very reluctant to return them. Thinking you might test them and see that the parts aren't bad now, I'm not saying every service shop repair center is trying to sell you what you supposedly need, but it does happen.
You know, when you're quoted a price for a repair, that's going to fix the problem. That's what you should pay. Not anything else. Now if they call you up and say, oh, by the way, I forgot to mention this earlier, while the technicians technicians in your furnace, it's already out. He always likes to put in a new sales switch because they're relatively inexpensive and they can be intermittent with problems.
That's not the problem here, but just down the road and you go, okay, that's fine. What's another $20. And that's. You can deal with that. So that's fine. They call you during the repair. You don't show up to the surprise. And I think everybody's experienced this at some level, some way. I know myself, I've experienced things like these.
I've had experiences where I'm told this is what you need and it's not really what I needed. The problem still persists. Maybe I, maybe it's a car. I pick it up. And the problem still there. I'm sure everybody listening to this episode has had this problem and it might not always be a repair. It might not circle around a repair.
It might be just going to the store and RV parts store. And you're doing it yourself. Cause that's kind of the thrust of this show is for the do-it-yourselfer right. You go in and you know, you talk to the parts guy and say, you know, this is what my furnace is doing. And he starts saying, this is what you need and he's not even close or he doesn't listen to what you say.
He just not, this is what you need. You need a wall thermostat. When I turned the thermostat on the furnace comes on it just as a blow hot air out. You need a thermostat. That's what you need. So he's telling you that he's not listening to what you're saying his mind is made up. See, at that point, you probably need to bail out or say, okay, if I buy this thermostat and it doesn't fix the problem, can I return it?
And more than likely, he's going to say no, that's an electrical part. And once we sell. You can't return them because you know, people might buy it just to diagnose their problem, then it's not it. And they return it to us or they burn it out or ruin it. And we don't know that and we sell it again. So he's probably going to answer something like that.
And at that point saying, okay, if I can't buy it and it doesn't end in your mind, you're thinking it doesn't sound like the thermostat, not from you. Then don't buy it. It's not always what you need is what my point is. Quite often, it's not even close to what you need and it's not just with an RV repair.
Like I said, it can happen in the store. It happens to us all the time. It can happen if we're buying an appliance for our home, having an appliance for our home FIC. You know, sometimes it's, this is what you need and it's not really what you need. And you remember the Twilight zone. There was always a twist to it.
Twists here, twist there. You think you got the plot figured out and all of a sudden it changes direction. Seeing you had to keep up with it because otherwise, you know, you're getting kind of lost. And I think that's where that saying comes. It feels like I'm in the Twilight zone. So if you're in a store buying an RV park, We're having your RV fixed and now it feels like you're in the Twilight zone.
That's probably the time to bail out of that situation. Maybe you need to regroup, go to another store, maybe do a little more research online and also keep in mind. You might be wrong in your thinking and maybe you've, you've looked at it wrong. Maybe you got dead set on something. This is what I need.
And it happens. I've done. I get so focused on something. This is what I need them is not really what I needed. So regrouping sometimes will help us get our mind straight. Maybe just clear everything out of our head, start from Strat. And it, like I said, it's not that everybody is out trying to sell you the wrong thing.
You know, that they don't listen. There are some great stores out there. There's some great service. There's great customer service and a few parts of the world that people can help you as being a little sarcastic. There are few parts of the world cause customer service really is going by the wayside.
You know, another example, not to belabor this point is what I hear a lot too in my store is people come in. I saw this online and it's a YouTube video and they're being told, this is what you need. You know, I talked to the person for a little bit because I don't want to sell anything just to have it returned.
Especially someone who buys a circuit board or a part that can't be returned. I want them to make sure they buy that product. That part, knowing that it's going to be the problem or 99%. Sure. And so I start asking questions and I'll almost every time it changes it, it changes direction and turns into a different.
And it's not that I'm a genius is sistered. I like to listen and help people get the parts that they do need. So when I say this is what you need. You might still have to question me, but I'm pretty sure it is what you need because I've listened to what you've said. And I understand what you're trying to do.
I've asked you questions and I've listened to the answers and that's what you want. Somebody out there in the real world, that's going to ask questions and listen to the answers, but be cautious because I hear it all the time in my store when I say all the time. Yes. Not every day, but a. Probably three to four days out of the week, two or three customers each day, coming in explaining these problems that they have.
They've they've been misguided on. And quite often they've paid a lot of money for repairs that didn't even come close to fixing their problem. You know, they, they spend, you know, five, $600 on a furnace and it still has the same price. At this point, they're feeling like I should've just bought a new furnace.
So you see what I mean when they say this is what you need. It's like an episode of the Twilight zone. So be cautious, make sure it is what you need. So you don't find yourself in the Twilight zone, but if you know any other smart RV years who have find them found or have found themselves in that same situation or something.
Please let them know or share with him episode number 89, how to get from the Twilight zone to Arizona. So now we're going to go to our next section, which is called next stop. So this is about destination you'll eventually I want to explain these things. We're just going to move into the next category, but because we've revamped the show, I want to make sure following along where I'm at what's happening.
So the destination of choice, this for this episode is going to be Yuma Arizona. Now, if you've been listening to the episode for a while, quite many of you know, or the show for quite some time, even if you know that I'm from Yuma, Arizona moved from Arizona to Montana. I lived in Welton, which was outside of Yuma, but we all call it Uma.
So Yuma, Arizona has a tremendous amount of stuff to do for an RV, or, you know, you're going to want to go in the winter time, you know, September, October through March, April, maybe, may, depending on the weather and you know, of course what you have happening, but those are the better months. Anything outside of that, it's generally just hot and really hot, you know, unbearably hot, ugly.
Uma has a tremendous amount of Mexican Indian culture that combines with this great feel of the old west. And it's right on the Colorado river. It's really a cool place to go. And not just because there's so much to do there, it's just a beautiful area is surrounded by. The desert and the mountains in the desert.
And there's so much to do, not just in the deserts, but also in human. You know, the outline areas, you have Mexico right across the border. You have San Luis, Mexico. Then you have, um, alga donuts, which alga donuts is just known for, you know, going there to get your, uh, dental work done because it's so inexpensive.
And of course, whenever you cross the border, wherever you go in Mexico, man, the food, it's just always there. It's out on the streets. Some of the best food you'll ever have, but you know, speaking of food in you, mothers, all sorts of places to eat, you can dine inside. You can dine outside there's taco trucks.
You can get anything you want in Yuma. It's just the flavor of food. It's expensive. There's so much and is so good. So if you like eating, Yuma's a great place to go, but there's also ATV four wheeling there's fishing. There's exploring the desert, you know, there's for example, just in the foothills, outside of Yuma, there's the Fortuna de Oro mine.
It's just awesome to see. You know, there's things we see, like at the Fortuna de Oro mine, you know, that these things were built, you know, a hundred years ago or approximately a hundred years ago, it's or 120. It's amazing what they able to do back then in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, they didn't have all the modern equipment we have today.
So it was much harder to. But they were able to do it. And it's pretty impressive when we see the things that were accomplished back then. So Arizona, or excuse me, Yuma, Arizona has a tremendous amount of things for our veers there. It's not just a tourist destination. It's really an RV Mecca, you know, there's, I don't know how many RV parks.
I want to say hundreds, but it's probably a hundred, maybe a little less, but it's a lot. So, and there's RV parks that are all over the board and in comfort levels, um, age and where they're located. So you can go to old RV parks that are really cool brand new RV parks, you know, there's. All over the price ranges, of course, fluctuated as well.
The one thing you do want to know is we call this approach tip. You definitely want to make your reservations in advance. You know, you want to call, if you can call a year ahead, you know, um, the parks get booked up because it's such an awesome place to go. And most of the parks are 55 and older. So if you're under 55, You definitely want to call an advanced and try to find a park I've heard, it's hard to do.
There's not a lot of parks that are under 55. Um, and if there are some times they're kind of off the beaten path, so a little more harder to get to maybe not as convenient for some things, but it's still a great place to go. And, and, you know, young and old, it doesn't matter. The age doesn't matter. Cause there's so much to do like ATV and or four wheeling out in the desert in depending on where you stay, you can actually leave from your RV park and you're right in the desert.
In some cases you might have to cart your ATV someplace or your UTV or whatever it is you have. It's still super easy to do. And there's tons of stuff out in the desert. There's mines, or it's just a beauty of the desert old buildings, you know, there's some ghost towns. There's tons of stuff to do. And you know, I'm kind of giving you the short version here, so you definitely want to do a little more research, then you can really dial it into what you want to do when you get there.
But if you just want a place to go, a name of a place to go, and that's your starting point, Yuma Arizona. If you go on the summertime, just bring a boat in a bathing suit. Cause that's all you're gonna want to do is stay in the water. Cause it's hot there, but in the winter, It's cooler. Great temperatures.
Oh, by the way, if you love golfing, there's plenty of golf courses, others, plenty of everything there for. The RV ear. I mean, it's just, you cannot sit around and do nothing unless you force yourself to do it. There's so much to do there. Even some of the RV parks are just jam packed with activities. So check it out, go to the smart RV or.com and check out the next stop section for more information about Yuma Arizona.
So now we're coming into RV NB. So this is about upgrades modifications. Little stuff for your RV. It's going to make your friends fellow RV years, possibly envious of what you have. That's why it's called RV MV. This is a cool section. This, you know, besides, uh, staying on the road road, we're talking about parts and repair repairs and maintenance.
This is probably my next favorite section because we're talking about parts and things like that. Cool stuff that make your RV stand out, make that RV lifestyle easy. I'm sure most, everybody has been in this situation where you take your RV out, whether it's an, a camp ground, an RV park, wherever it is at the beach.
And it doesn't even have to be summertime. You know, it can be winter time when it just an area where it's warmer, like Florida, Texas, Arizona, Southern California, but you park your RV. In such a way that it just has sun on the awning all day long in the morning, the afternoon, the evening, or maybe two thirds of the day.
It might even be that one time a day where you just like going out there at noon and just chilling out under the awning, maybe watching something on TV or your tablet or your phone, you know, with entertainment and technology and the internet, you know, we can watch whatever we want, where we want anymore.
So it's not like we you're carting around this big old TV. The point is you get out there. You'll love being outside. You're under your awnings, the awnings out and give you some shade, but it's just hot. And it seems like wherever you go, the sun kind of follows you. And it's always beaming in underneath that fabric and it makes it hotter, more uncomfortable creates glare.
So you can't watch what you want to watch, set something out on a table, your nice, cool drink, and the sun's beating down on it. Next thing you know, that's just a nice warm drink, you know? Yeah, who wants that? And this is what can happen when you're out RV. Cause sometimes you don't really have a choice and where you park your RV, you know, you go to a campground, this is where you have to.
You know, you park at the beach, maybe all the RVs are facing a certain way. So maybe it's not even just, you it's every person on the road is having the same problem and let's face it. You know, when you're out and you want to relax, you know, maybe, you know, you get busy in the morning. You go out fishing in the morning and do some things in the morning.
Go golfing. You want to come back, chill out, have lunch underneath the awning, take a break for an hour or two, you know, maybe doze off was just hot. Maybe there's a little bit of a breeze. But the sun is just there and the sun just makes it hot. So that can be a problem that all our veers face. So is there a solution, an easy solution?
Of course, Sarah is now sun pro manufacturing is one of my brands. It's a company I own, but sun pro manufacturing makes sunshades for RVs. They hang off of your awning roller tube. They can go on the front of the awning as well. And they solve that heat problem. They're going to reduce the heat coming in from the sun by 20 to 30%.
There's some variables there. It depends on the color. You know how well you have it. Shaded makes a huge difference. We make these same types of shades for windows on RVs, windshield covers, side windows. They're very effective. In fact, if you happen to go to Yuma, Arizona, you'll see this type of material, these types of shades.
The majority of the RVs there, you're going to see my windows of homes, patios of homes. The fabric works so well. And we've been making these for years. We have the experience and we know how to solve those problems. You face with the sun. Find yourself looking for some shade, check out sun pro mfg.com.
Also you can go to. This episode number eighty9@thesmartrvor.com. And in that episode, you'll see a link for sun pro manufacturing. It'll take you right to the website, right where the sunshades are. You can look at the sunshades and explore the rest of the website. So that's our RV NV tip, basically how to keep yourself nice and cool.
When it's warm out or hot out to enjoy the rest of that day case. So that is going to bring us to the end of this show. It's episode number 89 on the smart RV or.com the smart RV or podcast with Eric Stark. So continue to listen to the show and share it with others. So I want to thank you for listening to the show today.
Keep being a smart RV. And if I don't see on the road, you can connect with a smart RV or a .
