Resistence is Futile

Slowly we are all being assimilated into a collective that is everywhere, knows and sees everything… your distinctiveness will be mixed with those already in the collective of which you will always be connected to….

Wow, pretty fatalistic for such a positive guy right?  It’s just the more connected we get the more dependent we get on each thing that makes up the big ball of wax and you can’t do anything without it’s help…. It’s Saturday.. my day and I got up early so I could get down here and shuffle a few papers on James coach and all the work we did to it.. he’s looking to pull out on Sunday.  So I go in, blindly fall forward like I do most every day.. the 3.5 miles to the shop, the key that opens the front door where the rest of the keys are…. shut up that infernal alarm that has had me in the past blow up here like Speed Racer on a false alarm because a Racoon was trying to eat a hole in the roof of the building… stagger in my left eye at least staying open, flip on the lights that if the humidity is above 90% the ballasts in the lights arc so I have 2 LED lights Julie & Tyrone gave me so I could wait until the lights decide to grace me with it’s peresence…. I go in to review the invoices… that weren’t printed out before everyone left… Hey, no problem, I’ll just go in there fire up the new computer we had to get because the hole in the EPDM roof made by the Racoon caused a water leak during Tropical Storm Erika that leaked into the office and fried the old computer… I’ll just go in there and get the day finally going.. both eyes are open now.  I push the on button on the computer and it abruptly asks me for the password…. what password… it never did THAT before!!!!!  What the &^$$….  New computer, MS10 loaded… it doesn’t know me, I don;t know it so that gave me time to tell you all of this… I need a beer!

I tried my usual reaction to this.. screamiung and hollering… did nothing, it’s like a temp clerk and the grocery store… sorry bout your troubles… password please….

So I’m going for a ride on my pit bike , as long as it has 2 wheels it works… I need a little wind in my face and I’ll start over as soon as someone gets up.    “I don’t want a pickle… I’d rather ride on my motorcycle…”

See you a little later…

As I walked out into the garage where all the bikes were there, I decided I had some big stress to blow out so I decided to take Stevie out for a rip.    I discovered something interesting, the close the temp got to 180 where the thermostat would kick in and fire up the electric fan on that 1000cc water cooled motor the lower my blood pressure seemed to go and this was me being there… took @ 20 miles vacuum good, tach at 1200 means it’s happy and just like the rest of the computer world the LCD watch is off doing something goofy but I don;t care… Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me .

That’s all good but still no one is up and I can’t get into the company computer.. good thing I KNOW the password to MY stuff!

So let me take … more time while I wait for someone to spoon feed me my password… and say this about this…   the reason I’m here today and what this business is all about is what’s happening right now in the vintage RV world and really beyond… the next generator.. I need to figure out a better description than that.. it makes me feel old because as far as I’m concerned I’m still a contender…. but I guess I mean you young guys are rediscovering some of the neat things that made up out upbringing. 

I remember when 70mph was a “recommended speed” and when you had a 2 door car… that crack between the front seat backs was to hold the beer when you were driving without a copilot.. beer holder.  I remember telling my scouts to pity someone out in the woods with a trailer… if you can’t carry it you don’t need it….  All of that has changed for the better but the other fun things are carrying on and one of them was seeing the country, living close to the earth while not in it and while having an insurance payment you don’t also have a property tax assessment… all of those things were at the top of our list back then and I think they are proving out to be still valid today.

I can appreciate anyone who is looking for where they want to be and find it in travel and even living in an RV is and can be an awesome experience.  This is the future I want to help get going through Cooperative Motor Works.  Yeah, I could guess you may call this a form of gratuitous advertising but I’m serious…. look at the ridiculous name I came up with when I started this… found out at that time most computers didnt;t have enough letters in their title block so for a long time I had cryptic company names at my suppliers… Cooperative Motor Works”  .  I nicknamed it “The Co-op” to make it fit in the title block and really to pull out a little of the formality which if you’ve read here much you know I really hate.

So I said all that to explain I’m in here this morning to collate James bill from all of the work his coach needed to make it road worthy.  There was a pile of work actually will probably about double his investment but the funny thing is and what’s important to understand… the initial investment you guys make into a 30 something your old mechanism like a motorhome built in that era is only an investment in what can be…. it has to be worked to get that investment out.  A $10,000 initial investment in one of these things could take that amount again to attend to everything it needs to be reliable as it needs to be.  You can’t put yourself in harms way and taking a 12,000 pound projectile out onto the open road not knowing if all the critical systems are in reliable condition IS putting yourself in harms way!

James and Catalina are leaving here Sunday for some event up north… they and we both want them to get there.  Remember though, taking out for a maiden voyage is just that…. a shakedown cruise and it would have been better for them to cruise around Florida first to do the shakedown and that WAS the plan.  Life, wind, rain and heat held us back along with 2 new workers come and go oh yea and the computer and internet both did their worse on us all thrown onto a property… man, it’s an Unreal reality show playing out every day!

I am NOT going to start making duck calls and I’ve had facial hair since 1981 so there’s no copycats here!    Actually that was part of a brochure first did in 1991 by CLASCO Manufacturing… proof I had brown hair once! And proof once in this industry I was a young whippersnapper like most of you are now!  Somehow in some room in the cloud there are other pics of the rest of the CLASCO lit and there you can read how the idea of reintroducing vintage RV’s… GMC motorhomes only at that time….  I tell ya what, since I am talking you you newly infected folks here is this brochure.. It was called “The Dream’s Alive”:

Guys, if you can blow those up and read them please do, it’s the idea that made me leave a very secure job… what’s secure it was Circuit City…. and jump out onto a new thin limb of ripping out lime green upholstery.. no offense, we’re putting some of it back in today… looking to make something out of this awesome raw material.. the GMC motorhome.  That’s where it started for me, as it always happens things change and it was folded because well, Tony the owner was into some things he shouldn’t;t have been doing so in 1997 it shut down, I had left long before the %^&& hit the fan and 4 months later I started Cooperative Motor Works.  It was my wife answering the phone, my son Ray sweeping the floor and holding the ladder and me to stubborn to quit.  I will ride the ship til the stacks go under the water then call it a submarine and see how for down we can ride…. 

I just wanted you to know where we are coming from here in the middle of all that’s going on, this and that I will tell you I am a long time enthusiast of the GMC motorhome and now of the vintage RV community in general.  Folks that already think I’m too noisy will say I’m trying to grandstand… that’s so far from the reality of this.  This I feel is where a great portion of the reintroducing of the GMC into new technologies started to bloom.  Wait, don’t get me wrong there was a strong GMC community long before CLASCO was thought about and man they were really loving their machines, that’s the momentum we had to work with when the company opened.  Jim K. was already on board, Ken F., Zeb F., Cliff G., Clarence B., Ken TT. and so many others I am proud to have known and grown with over the years.  Today there is something new taking over and I see this as a natural next step and a good thing for everyone involved.  And it’s here off the backs of many awesome people which is where we are today.  GMC’s and other worthy vintage RV’s are being gobbled up and these folks buying them understand they see something they like.  Just like back when they were new, they were purchased because folks liked them.  They were the most expensive set of consumer wheels you could buy for the road.  The RV world at that time in general was an collective blend of unique people… just like today…

OK, someone woke up and I have my password… I can get to work now but it was good I had a little time… you next owners are really importand to the community and me.  We’ve been waiting, good to meet you.  Strap in for a good ride…

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