Archive for May, 2008

The Aeronautic Cowboy

Sky King - one of my favorite Saturday morning shows as a kid. It premiered on September 16, 1951 and last aired on March 8, 1959 and was about a former military pilot who, in this western adventure series, used his airplane ( a Cessna 310B called the Songbird)  to patrol the skies over his Flying Crown Ranch and wherever he was needed to rescue those in distress. Out of the clear blue of the western sky comes -  Sky King! He and his niece Penny had many adventures chasing the bad guys in the Songbird and I often wondered as I got older - how many of us boomers became pilots as a result of watching this show?

But did you know?

A lot of boomers remember seeing this show in the 60's (I was one of them) because while the show ended in 1959 it was shown in reruns for years later. Sadly, Kirby Grant, the actor that played Sky King, died in a 1985 automobile accident while on his way to Cape Canaveral to be honored by the shuttle astronauts for his achievements in encouraging aviation and space flight. He was also coming to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Isn't life cruel sometimes? Here is a man that inspired millions of kids to become interested in aviation - who dies in a stupid car wreck - and a year later the Challenger blows up. Thank God the poor man didn't live to see that!

A surefire indicator of a luxury trend in RV's

I don't know much about trends and would never consider myself a trend-setter but I do consider myself an optimistic person and don't tend to run off screaming about falling skies, even when the newsies tell me I should. The way they go on about gas prices, housing woes, a laggard economy, you would think there was something wrong with this country. But hey, it's all about being an election year - because if the Clinton's, Obama's and the McCain's didn't have all these issues that needed fixing, just what the heck kind of platform would they be running on? With all this bad news a lot of us have hunkered down, waiting for the inevitable uptick in the cycle, when all we are really doing is plunging the economy into a worse mess. If people don't spend, people can't work and if people can't work they get subsidized. Well, us boomers are not going to fall for that nonsense. Let's tell all of those people who are hanging on to their nickels that we are glad for them to stay home, yes, glad! That means our RV parks are less crowded, the roads have less traffic, gas prices will drop due to lower demand and most of all - we won't have to listen to the whiners.

Choosing an RV where money doesn't matter

Anyone or anything that conspires to keep me from my beloved woods, including gas prices, is in for a big surprise. I would sacrifice much when it comes to the smell of clean fresh air. But get to the point you say? OK, I have a friend that owns a substantial RV storage lot. It's clean, secure, has covered stalls, lots of space in the aisles for turning those big rigs and a large and affluent boomer clientèle. This gentleman is also an RVer and is dialed in to the needs of his customers. Now, you may not find this as much of a sign as I do about trend indicators but get this - two of his customers have upgraded three times in less than a year. And not from pop-up to 5th wheel to class A motorhome - oh, no - they already had motorhomes and upgraded three times to get to the size they wanted - some 40-plus feet of raging diesel class A Motorcoach! 

How much more RV luxury is possible?

Now, all this takes money and I would be willing to bet they didn't really care about losing a few bucks with each upgrade. The point is they spent until they were happy. I don't particularly advocate that kind of lifestyle, that of keeping up with the mobile Joneses, I prefer a more compact way of travel with a vehicle I can still shop with or drive down the street in Old Town USA without taking out the parking meters. However, I do think that boomers are leading the way toward a more luxurious mobile lifestyle, whether it's for full time RVing or just an occasional romp in style. I believe this trend toward luxury motorcoach purchases will outsell most other RV markets, 5th wheels, travel trailers, pop-ups, etc, for the next five to ten years.