Altoona, IA - Huh

Tom, our brother-in-law, who, with Cathy, his wife, has just bought a new RV, a Winnebago View. There are a lot of decisions they must make now and one of them is what car to tow behind the View. He’s got a Honda Element which he really likes because it has so much usable space in it, The two rear seats are removable and can also be moved aside so you can carry lots in the back. However, he’s terribly confused by all the conflicting opinions about whether the car is towable 4 wheels down.

Now, there are 3 ways to tow: with the car on a small trailer, with the front two wheels on a trailer and the rear two wheels on the road or with all 4 wheels down on the road. The preferable way is with all 4 wheels down since this way, you don’t have to worry about a trailer. Hitching up to go or unhitching to stay are just much easier and you don’t have to worry about storing a trailer when you get to an RV resort. Tom prefers to tow with all 4 wheels down but is getting mixed messages from both Honda and another company which deals with these issues, Remco. An example of this mixed messaging is this passage from a manual from Remco. Note that:

You can tow:

        it is ‘towable as is with speed and/or distance restrictions’

        ‘it is not recommended to tow this vehicle over 65 MPH’ (but below 65 must be ok)

        ‘we have a large number of customers who are flat towing’ the Honda and ‘are not having any issues’

        if you want to do this ‘follow the Emergency Towing procedures in the owner’s manual to a T’

        ‘when towing for an extended period of time…’

You can’t tow:

        BUT if you choose to tow your Honda and damage the transmission, ‘you will have to pay for the expense out of pocket’

        ‘Officially from both Honda and Remco the vehicle is not towable’

The message here is we don’t recommend it but here’s how to do it.

Come on, make up your mind. It’s like a mother saying: no, you can’t have any snacks before dinner but if you want to, please eat them at least an hour before dinner.’ My mother never said that. When she said ‘no’, she meant ‘no’. She didn’t mince words, she wasn’t a weasel.

Poor Tom, this is a large monetary decision. Sell the Honda and buy a new car? Or, take a chance and tow the Honda and risk possible transmission damage? No good decisions here. Only expensive ones.

Our decisions are much easier today: use the old blue rag or the old white rag to wash the car. I love those easy decisions. But don’t ask me my feelings about washing the RV.

Today we:

        WASHED THE CAR

        WAXED THE CAR

        WASHED THE RV - here’s Gary on top of the RV scrubbing the top.

We have all our supplies out ready to go.

We had a great day to do all this since it was cloudy and we didn’t have to worry about the sun beating down on the RV.

Tomorrow we wax the RV. Does the fun ever end around here? I kept looking for Manny and his crew who used to circle a Palm Springs campground we have camped in. Where is Manny when we need him?

AND THAT WAS OUR DAY. FINI. DONE. OVER.

Time for bed. We thought that was the end of the day. Silly us. Sure enough we heard rain on the roof of the RV. It must have rained about 5 minutes: not enough to water the lawns, not enough to help the corn and soybean crops. Just enough to spot the RV.