We left Florida later than we intended. The camper needed to be customized for Team DeCorso – new sofa, new table, 5 bunks with an optional 6th bunk, bunk lights and chargers, a new oven/stove, upgrades to the running lights, a new stereo and speakers, new countertop in the kitchen, 14 hooks for coats and an overall upgrading of the camper (like scraping off the pink & blue gnocchi-like wallpaper border that was added to the bathroom and kitchen). During this time, we had a great stay in Florida! Swimming, bike riding, Snapple-drinking good time with grandpa & grandma!.

We left Florida on October 10, so very late as we needed to be in Halifax to catch our flight to Glasgow on October 20th.

The USA & Canada

We raced up the eastern seaboard.  In Asheville, we visited Aunt Alice and cousin Mary. In Cleveland, we visited Grandma Dorothy and Aunt Pat & Uncle Smitty. Jack visited Carnegie Mellon and spent an evening with their pipe band.  In New York, Mark realized he did not have the title to the camper and we had to send power of attorney to Ryan at a FedEx. In New Hampshire, someone hit our mirror while we were parked and broke it off. In Maine, we went out for lobster with the legendary Joni McNutt. In Calais, we fetched the camper title from FedEx. We drove around the Bay of Fundy, watched the tidal bore and arrived in Halifax on 10/18. We woke up early on 10/19 to discover that the transmission had completely failed. A panicked call to Mr Transmission, and $3000 (thankfully Canadian) later our camper was on the road again. Mr Transmission lent us a pick up truck so we could run our final errands and do our final paperwork for shipping the camper over. On the morning of October 20th, the camper had to be at the quay before 11am but our flight did not leave until 10pm. We spent the day sightseeing in Halifax , learning about the great Halifax Explosion and the Titanic Exhibit. Two things we learned: the explosion released the equivalent energy of 2.9 kilotons of TNT and Halifax was the staging ground for rescuing people from the sinking Titanic, although all they recovered were dead people and a sad collection of items like dolls and baby shoes.

Edinburgh

Our plane landed in Glasgow and we caught a Citylink bus to Edinburgh and were at our lovely home by 11am. Ourhouse was literally 41 steps off the Royal Mile, on Bell’s Wynd. Later, in a bookstore in Leith, we would read in Haunted Edinburgh that our house was haunted. The house was perfect for us, the location was fabulous.

The camper departed Halifax on 10/24 and was supposed to take 7 days to get to Liverpool but a storm in the north Atlantic delayed the ship and we were happy to extend our stay in our little house on the Royal Mile to 3 weeks. We had a really great, super fun, amazing time in Edinburgh. We went to Tesco and bought a ton of weird British food (vegetarian haggis, clotted cream, crumpets, bangors, swedes, neeps, bramble jelly, turkish delight and several chutneys). We went to the Scottish National Gallery. We went to the Royal Botanical Gardens. We visited the castle. We went to almost every pub, or so it seemed. One night, Mark and Jack and I went to a small pub

with traditional music and had a great night of drinking, singing and dancing. We went on the Harry Potter Tour, in the poring rain, and saw where JK Rowling wrote the books, the inspiration (and grave) of Tom Riddle, Diagon Alley and much more.

We spent Halloween here. Sylvia and Annabelle went trick or treating in neighborhood of old gothic mansions. They had to do a trick at every house to get candy. Max supplied one excellent joke that no one had yet heard here: Why does Peter Pan fly? Because he can Never Land. We found the neighborhood from someone we met at the Unitarian Church in Edinburgh. We also went to the Royal Botanical Gardens on Halloween and did the Witch Hunt Trail, where you had to collect information on magical plants for a surprise. That night, was the Samhain Festival at the Grassmarket, a torch procession and very well attended.

Liverpool

Finally the camper arrived in Liverpool. Team DeCorso got up way too early and took a train to Liverpool. While Mark fetched the camper, Jack & Jennah went on a quest to find the house where John Lennon was born and Annabelle, Sylvia, Max and I went to the Albert Docks, World Herit age Site (not exciting at all).

Mark appeared with the camper and we piled inside and began the long task of preparing it for travel. We had screwed all the doors shut and put paneling over all compartments and screwed that shut, a basic RORO safety measure. Turns out, someone did steal stuff from our camper, it seems they always do. They took our Tide-scented Febreeze, a string of solar LED lights and, sadly, Mark’s drill so unscrewing became much more work. Next we had to find water, gas and propane (which required a fitting which had to be shipped from Oxford). While we unscrewed cabinets and waited for the fitting for the propane, we camped north of Liverpool at Crosby Beach, site of the 99 Iron Men statues. We also rode out the first storm

with a name in UK history, which battered the camper with 75mph winds. We had to move in the middle of the night to find more shelter. We also went to a store called Go Outdoors! and bought all of Team DeCorso suitable rain gear, jackets, boots, umbrellas and hats.

Then, with fuel and water and propane, we started on our left-driving journey.

I went down to Tampa in late July. Goal one was to help Ryan get a new  vehicle to drive around the Lower 48 with. I spent three days with Ryan finding cars online, looking at them, buying one and getting it registered.  We got him a pretty cool Toyata Camry and is was really great spending time with Ryan. We had a lot of fun.

Goal two was to check out the new expedition vehicle, a 1992 29 foot Class C motorhome we purchased off of Craigslist a few months earlier. So far, only my Dad had seen it. We had photos, but that was it.

The motorhome had been placed in a storage lot near my parents house in Dundedin. Ryan and I found a car for him so he dropped me off at the yard and I drove the motorhome to my parents house to look it over. There reportedly was a small leak in the rook from the air conditioner,  but otherwise, everything was supposed to be good. Shortly after I got the vehicle to my parents house, Ryan left on his big adventure.

While I was at my folks house and right after Ryan left,  the Tampa area received record rainfall, 10 inches in 24 hours. Roads were flooding, snakes and kids swimming in the streets, pools were popping out of the ground from over saturation beneath them, catfish were turning up on decks and lawns. It was crazy. I would say it was raining buckets, except it was more than that. Really. So this made it really hard to get any work done. It also showed that there were more leaks than previously advertised.

The inside of the motorhome took a beating. The roof leaked in several places. The inside smelled awful. Musty, wet, awful. I was becoming very concerned that the thing was a total loss. The kitchen counter top was formica covered particle board and much of it had swollen from ¾” to 2”. The dining room table had suffered the same fate.

The jackknife couch/bed was soaked, smelly and molding. The back bedroom was leaking as well and much of the cabinetry was some compressed paper product that took water worse than the particle board. The camper was a wreck, it was pouring rain and there was nothing I could do. Well, there was one thing I could do.

I knew I was going to have to find leaks on the roof, and to do that the roof was going to have to be cleaned. It was covered with black moldy stuff, and I knew the roof underneath was supposed to be white. I decided to use the endless buckets of rain to my advantage.  I found a deck brush my Dad had laying around for his sailboat, grabbed some dish soap and climbed up on the roof. I spent a good three hours in the never ending rain scrubbing the roof on my hands and knees. This allowed me to thoroughly inspect the roof while scrubbing all the junk off. I found a couple of suspect areas that looked like they needed a ttention.

After three days of ridiculous rain, the sun started to show. I had my parents car available to me so I started trying to deal with the leaking roof. There is a motorhome supply store nearby my folks house, Harberson’s RV, so I headed over there to see what I could find. I found a rubber roofing product that applied like paint for $90 a gallon. One gallon gave me one and a half coats of the roof. I took all the stuff off the roof, vent covers, the air conditioner, other various covers. It was 90 degrees, the sun was shining and it was about 90 percent humidity. I slapped the coating down as fast as I could. It took about four hours, including a short window of drying in between coats. It was brutal.

The next day I put all the vent covers back on. It turned out whoever had installed them had done so incorrectly by fastening them directly to the roof. This put four holes in the roof for each of the four covers. I was pretty sure every one of these things was leaking. In addition to the holes in the roof, they way the vents had been mounted had them elevated slightly off the roof. This allowed water to go under the covers and get right to the screws in the roof. When I picked up the roof paint I also got some tubes of rubberized RV roof caulk. When I put the covers on I liberally applied caulk to the screws in the roof. Then I sealed the covers to the roof as well. Hopefully we would be leak free from here on out.

Another issue with the camper was the cooking situation. It came with a three burner propane stove top and a combination microwave/convection oven, which was quite small. This cooking situation was not going to be effective for Team DeCorso, so I needed to find an alternative.  I found an RV stovetop/oven on Craigslist that was about 20 miles away and gave them a call. It seemed the dimensions of the oven would allow it to fit where the current stovetop was if I removed the drawer underneath it. So off I went to fetch the stove. I got back late and put it in the next day. With just a little trimming of the space, the oven slid right in. Thankfully the camper came with a full tank of propane so I was able to be sure it worked properly.

By now I had been gone from Fairbanks for too long. It was time to head home. The fair was coming up,  and I had a lot of work I needed to get done to the house and cars before I could head back to Florida and off to Europe.