EPISODE 002: GOING CAMPING!

DRINK INFORMATION

Tom’s Drink – Aberlour A’bunadh

Link to Aberlour A’bunadh

 Ian’s Drink – Empress gin

Link to Empress gin

TRANSCRIPT:

Ian Robertson
Hey, Tom, good to see you again.

Tom Kubiak
Hey, Ian, good to see you, too.

Ian Robertson
You sound way too excited to see me though.

Tom Kubiak
I don’t see you enough. That’s the problem.

Ian Robertson
Nobody’s like that excited to see me man.

Tom Kubiak
Well, I think as I see you more I probably will be less excited to see you. But at for this point, I’m excited to see you.

Ian Robertson
Okay. Yeah, I think I’ve heard many people in my life tell me that. Magic magical moment here on Drinking With Tom. So, what you drinking tonight, Tom?

Tom Kubiak
So, Ian, I’m drinking an Aberlour A’bunadh, which is a really easy to drink golden scotch, caramely, the kind of Scotch that I like.

Ian Robertson
Okay, say that name again, though.

Tom Kubiak
Aberlour A’bunadh.

Ian Robertson
Okay, cuz at first, I was worried you were like having a stroke. But okay, you’re okay.

Tom Kubiak
Not forming my words properly.

Ian Robertson
As long as you’re okay, man, we’ll work on that.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, this actually was one of the scothes that won a bunch of awards really got some nice publicity. And has a good following. How about you? What are you drinking?

Ian Robertson
Well, actually, before I tell you, I want to know more about that. What where’s it? Where’s it from? Does that have like a little story behind it or anything?

Tom Kubiak
You know, not? I don’t know, actually, I should pay some attention to that to find out where where it is from. So we can talk about it when when we’re drinking. I know, I found it. Just by happenstance. I think I was looking in a liquor store. Maybe this is a while ago, probably 10 years ago. And you know, I follow up, I read the ratings that the liquor store posts. And this one had a really good rating, like above 90 In, in the whiskey rating category, which is which is decent, not exceptional, but decent. So I said I’d try it. And sure enough, it. It’s it’s good. So at the time, it was a little easier to get now it’s a little harder to get because I think people have caught on it’s a good scotch at a reasonable price.

Ian Robertson
So is that like a 90 out of 100 kind of score.

Tom Kubiak
It would be 90 out of 100. Yeah. So I think it may even rate a little higher than that now.

Ian Robertson
So why is a 90 decent. I mean, if I got a 90 in school, I was thrilled.

Tom Kubiak
There aren’t very many scotches that go much above 94, 95. Like that’s the, that’s the extent of it. Like you can get this. I don’t know a lot about wines. But I know you can get 99 or 100 Point wines, but they’re very expensive. And the type of wines that are like, desirable and collector edition type of things. scotches don’t get that high. So people commonly drink scotches in the 80s in the 80s, you know, and but and that’s, you know, that should be said, that’s, you know, like, a Scotch rating, and everybody should drink what they like, regardless of the rating.

Ian Robertson
So I’ve never really believed in ratings because it’s, it’s like you said, like, we talked on our last episode, you’d like Irish whiskey, or you’d like less peaty. And I like a lot of peat. So I’d give it 100 and you give it maybe 50.

Tom Kubiak
Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, don’t you know, maybe maybe try something because it’s highly rated but drink what you like that’s that’s what I said.

Ian Robertson
Okay, well, you like what you’re drinking then.

Tom Kubiak
I like what I’m drinking.

Ian Robertson
So do you put ice in your Scotch? Or do you drink it like a man?

Tom Kubiak
No, I just drink straight up no water even which I think is you know, is even sacrilegious. I think to true Scotch drinkers. They want you they want you to add or most Scotch drinkers who drink it need to add a little bit of water just to open it up a little bit.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, they take their finger..

Tom Kubiak
And that does change the flavor.

Ian Robertson
It does. Yeah, I will say that does change the flavor. They take their they take their fingers, dip it in some water and kind of like splash it in. And it just breaks the surface tension. And all the aromas come out and stuff like that. Yeah. But I’m like you I’m I’m a purist. You know, I like yeah, right out, right, how it comes out of the bottle. You know, if I could drink it out of the barrel, only problem is barrel strength is kind of me holding a barrel. That comes out too strong. They actually people don’t realize this, but they actually watered down Scotch after it comes out because it’s aged at about 120 Proofish, depending on who you’re talking to, and which, which alcohol it is. And then they water it down to 80. Typically, somewhere between 80 and 90.

Tom Kubiak
Because they’re shooting for a consistent result. And they lose. Every year through evaporation. They lose that they call it the angel share. And that’s why the alcohol percentage goes up each each year.

Ian Robertson
Well there’s also a molecular reason why when they distill, the molecules get like almost spiky.

Tom Kubiak
Aww, really I didn’t know that.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, that’s what so that’s like some a lot of the bad taste that quote unquote goes away over time. Basically, the molecules just kind of mellowing out. They get all.. Yeah. They get all frazzled and messed up. And when you age it with too much alcohol in it, it takes longer or will never mellow out. If you do too little, it, it does something else to it. It makes almost watery tasting. So that’s why they shoot for what they call barrel strength. And then they water it down afterwards. There’s a lot of reasons but okay.

Tom Kubiak
Interesting. Oh, okay, interesting.

Ian Robertson
There you go. Thank you everybody for listening to Talking With Tom, Drinking With Tom.

Tom Kubiak
You gotta tell me what you’re drinking.

Ian Robertson
So I went I’m very pedestrian compared to you. Your your collection is amazing. But I’m drinking Empress gin. Which I like gin.

Tom Kubiak
Empress gin. Ah, straight up. No, no ice or anything?

Ian Robertson
Oh yeah. No. Why do you put ice in gin?

Tom Kubiak
No, but some people do.

Ian Robertson
Really? I’ve never heard of that.

Tom Kubiak
And some people also put tonic water in gin, which I think is the preferred way to drink gin.

Ian Robertson
Okay, so I do. I will say I will say I do make fun of anybody who puts ice or anything in alcohol and ruins it. But I do love a good gin and tonic. And the Empress gin, because this is obviously an audio platform, Empress is purple.

Tom Kubiak
Ah. Interesting.

Ian Robertson
So if you if you want to have something fun for your guests, first of all, it’s a delightful gin. It’s very, juniper berry ish, like juniper berries are the main component of gin. But it..

Tom Kubiak
So it’s Juniper forward.

Ian Robertson
Juniper forward. Exactly. That’s the term. But at the same time, it’s just, it’s kind of pretty, you know, so you make like..

Tom Kubiak
What? What gives it the blue color or the purple color?

Ian Robertson
Some sort of pea, actually, they say on the side of the bottle. Not well, you know, P E, A.

Tom Kubiak
Okay, I was worried about that.

Ian Robertson
Some guy just ate a whole bunch of blueberries.

Tom Kubiak
He might need to get a doctor’s appointment on the schedule.

Ian Robertson
But no it’s some sort of PEA you know, a pea is a legume, isn’t it? Or is it okay? Yep. No, yeah.

Tom Kubiak
So I think you’re right.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. I don’t know. We’ll figure that part out later. But it’s just nice. You know, you only make like a sidecar for it out of it for somebody or you do like gin and tonic and it comes out pink? You know, ladies like it. My wife loves it.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, that’s cool. I don’t think I’ve ever I don’t think I’ve ever had it.

Ian Robertson
You should get it. It’s, it’s something that they kind of keep on the shelf, so to speak. So it’s not like, it’s like, if you were it’s like the Jameson of gins like it’s there. It’s not like a beefeater, which is another type of gin. That’s more like, yeah, mixer gin. But yeah, no..

Tom Kubiak
Thanks, I’ll have to look for it, add it to the collection.

Ian Robertson
So listen, tonight, we had the we we want to talk about something that we had talked about before, and I’m really interested to know. So you recently bought a camper?

Tom Kubiak
I did.

Ian Robertson
Yes, you did. And that has probably become one of the fastest growing pastimes since the pandemic in the US and Canada. It is nuts, like I remember you telling me it took like a year or so to get your camper ordered.

Tom Kubiak
Crazy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we went through, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, you know, you know, just like everybody else, you want to be able to find some way to vacation a little bit and you’re feeling a little nervous about traveling with a lot of other people around you. So my wife and I talked about and we said why don’t we Why don’t we try and try to find an RV or workout something like that and my dad has one and my brother and sister and their families have RVs so we thought we could find an RV and be able to facilitate some family camping trips or things and so we you know, we did some research and we can talk about you know, what prompted us to make the decision that we did, but it’s very true. Once we finally narrowed it down and found a dealer and placed the order for it. We we literally waited 12 months to get it and even though we were promised it would be in about five so it ended up blowing past the whole camping season, unfortunately.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, but you still got some good camp time out of it once you first got it, you’ve been gone like past couple of weekends probably right.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, twice we’ve gone we’ve done two trips so far the so that we had intended to take it on on a trip we drove down to the Alabama coast and back up the the eastern seaboard. And our goal was to take it on that trip that would have been the first major trip with it but it hadn’t come in yet. So then when we got back it was at the end of camping season in in New York if you’re going to camp after October 1 you’re either crazy or you know you’re you’re hardcore. So we but we didn’t get it until the second week of October and then we Immediately, the next weekend, took it down and camped down in Maryland. And it was a great trip. We were on the Maryland coast. I had met up with my my family there and my sister and her husband and my brother and his wife and our niece. And it was it was a fun trip. And then so then after that, we parked it for the winter. And then we just got back yesterday actually from a weekend trip, long weekend up to Vermont.

Ian Robertson
Wow, that’s awesome.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, it was awesome.

Ian Robertson
And you went to King Arthur’s right, that flour place?

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, we went to so we have been King Arthur fans for 15 years. So we’ve taken a whole mess of their baking classes. And this time we did. We did Pizza Palooza, which is a two day intensive pizza making course, really fun.

Ian Robertson
I’ve never heard of a pizza course or a pizza course that was described as intensive.

Tom Kubiak
It’s intensive.

Ian Robertson
For our listeners if you ever want to up in Vermont, I’ve been there. My wife and I have been it’s awesome King Arthur’s flour. And they put on these courses teach you how to make stuff. They have a beautiful building. And it’s just a great, great time. So yeah, but I guess..

Tom Kubiak
Vermont is awesome anyway. Breweries, Ben and Ben and Jerry’s. How can you, you can’t knock Vermont.

Ian Robertson
Beards and man buns and.

Tom Kubiak
Subarus, lots of Subarus.

Ian Robertson
That could be another podcast because I’m actually getting a Subaru. But I think what I really wanted to learn about is, you know, I’m very stationary. When it comes to my camping. I have a little cabin in the woods, we go to the same spot. I don’t have to park my cabin, it’s already there. And I will go camping all the way up me and my family all the way up until we’ve all the way up to Christmas at times around that end of December time period rather. So how is it being a first time owner of a camper because here’s all the things that go through my mind. Like figuring out how to hook it up. And I’m no long haul truck driver, driving it down the highway. Getting through like a McDonald’s drive thru. How do you how do you park it where you’re going? Do you sit in the back while you drive? Like can somebody there’s all sorts of questions I have. So educate me, Tom Be Tom. And tell me what are the what are the good things and bad things of it? What are some things that a first time owner should know? And maybe avoid a mistake that you’ve had?

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, yeah, you know, Ian, everything that you said is went through my mind after we bought it. But you know me like I think we’re kind of both the same way like we’re not scared of challenges. So even if it’s something we haven’t done neither of us really are, you know, going to let it stop us we’re willing to try it and so in my particular case, I owned you know, kind of a truck I owned a Honda Ridgeline.

Ian Robertson
Was that out loud?

Tom Kubiak
That’s what my dad said, you don’t have a truck.

Ian Robertson
You have like a large car.

Tom Kubiak
I have a large car. I have a car with a big trunk so and I love my Honda Ridgeline, it was it’s a great, very practical vehicle. Like it drives like a car, fits five people perfectly, but it has the bed in it. So you know, you can pick up stuff at Home Depot if you need to, for the weekend for the house or whatnot. And it really worked good, but it can’t tow anything. So when we made the decision to to buy an RV to buy a travel trailer, we said okay, either we’re gonna have to go really small, you know, like something very, very small, or we’re gonna have to get a different truck. And so we decided small wasn’t really gonna work for us. It’s, you know, we want to be comfortable and not constrained, you know too much when we’re camping. So, so we decided to trade the RV, trade the Ridgeline and get a bigger truck. And once we made that decision, then it allowed us to be able to find the RV. So and we had to I had to spend a lot of time thinking about towing capacity and you know, what’s involved in that’s for someone who’s never I’d never done any towing. None zero, not even one hour. So it was a little bit of a challenge. But you have some experience towing.

Ian Robertson
Just just like a like a work trailer, nothing like basically a flatbed, you know, single axle, you know, something that you put a lawnmower on. I’ve not towed anything bigger than that.

Tom Kubiak
But you still have to hook it up and you know how to maybe have you know, maybe not great at it, but you know how to back up and to be able to maneuver a little bit. I have zero experience with that. So it was a tough, total learning experience.

Ian Robertson
So, here’s, here’s my thing that I was thinking about. So I was looking into a camper too. And I want to try to find try to find the smallest camper possible that still has a bathroom. Because I’d love one of those little..

Tom Kubiak
Yeah that’s part of the..

Ian Robertson
Yeah, right. So you want you you want that because sleeper camper sounds cool, in theory, but now it’s two o’clock in the morning. It’s cold. You’re in a place you don’t know. And you got to do number one or two. And, you know, depending on the situation, it could not be fun. So I there was a one that I found that was the smallest camper they say that still has a bathroom. It’s called the scamp. It’s a 13 foot.

Tom Kubiak
Oh yeah. Fiberglass, solid fiberglass. Yeah.

Ian Robertson
And they’re expensive, though for for 30 footer.

Tom Kubiak
But those actually get really good reviews. They’re highly rated. They’re very durable. But they are small. They don’t they don’t have any, you know, slide outs or anything like that. They’re small.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, well, and that’s the thing. They advertise we’re a 13 footer. That’s their whole thing is like, but I think I would probably opt for that. Even though it’s more expensive. So per square foot, you know, the average campers going to run probably I would guess maybe correct me if I’m wrong around 30 grand? Or more, maybe 40 or 50. Just and when we say camper, we’re not talking about full on, you know, fifth wheel or right, you know, we’re talking about average human beings camper that you can put on a hitch, you know, no fifth wheels exactly like that. Yeah. But so I’m the ones that I’ve looked at new, you know, 30 $40,000. The scamp is like 28. And I’m like, so cut off nine feet and then pay a little extra. So yeah, but and that bathroom does not look big. And from what I can tell..

Tom Kubiak
Or more. No it’s not.

Ian Robertson
No, so Okay, So correct me if I’m wrong. So not to be crude, but the toilet and the shower are the same thing from what it looks like.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah so that’s what they call a wet bathroom. Which means that you, you know, you there’s no difference. You know, you shower, basically sitting on the toilet. Yeah. And, you know, it’s it’s one contained thing, they also have what’s called a cassette toilet, which is where, you know, the, there’s no actual holding tank, there’s basically a drawer that slides out. And, you know, you take that and you dump it, there’s lots of things to consider. And you have to, you know, when when you’re buying an RV, you have to consider your, your tolerance for those things. And so when, when my wife and I were looking, we said, we don’t want a wet bathroom, we want a dry bathroom. We want something that has a slide out which even though it adds a little bit of complexity, and some another thing to break, it totally changes the size on the interior of the camper.

Ian Robertson
So a slide out is like when you push the button, and your living room gets bigger and it slides.

Tom Kubiak
Correct. Okay. Yeah. And that makes your so like ours, the dinette set slides out. And so now you have a kitchen seating area that, you know multiple people could be in at the same time without feeling constrained.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, so So a friend of mine named Mario, he, he bought a camper. And it’s a little smaller than yours. How big is yours?

Tom Kubiak
Ours is a 24 foot.

Ian Robertson
Okay, I think it might be the same size or a little bit smaller. But he got this special stabilizer for his hitch. So it actually hooks up underneath the hitch and on the sides. So it has three points of contact. That’s something that I never thought about before because what always bothered me is watching people pull these big campers down the road on this one little ball on the hitch. And I’m like you take one wrong turn, man. And that things twisting right off.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, yeah. And actually, we did the same thing. We got the, I can’t remember what they’re called but it’s basically an extra set of stabilizing arms that connect ours are chains actually that you tighten, tighten down to be firm. And the argument is when you’re when you’re towing it reduces the vibration I guess at least and it says I don’t have a ton of experience towing I’m not sure the difference and everything that I have towed. This trailer being 100% of it has always had those stabilizing arms. So I don’t have anything to compare it to. But it honestly I felt comfortable towing it, like I didn’t feel nervous other than the first few hours. Once I think I was few hours into our first trip. I started to feel more comfortable, and this last trip we, it was pretty easy.

Ian Robertson
And that’s the kind of stuff that I want to hear. Because if we’re listening to this podcast, we’re probably you know, maybe we have towed a trailer or something like that. Oh man bunch, a bunch of guys don’t know what they’re doing. Yeah, but at the same time, that’s the stuff that helps a guy like me who’s never owned a camper. So Mario, my friend. He’s a long haul trucker. Four or five times a week he drives from upstate New York, down in the Albany area, all the way up to Montreal in the back. It’s an 11 hour trip. Yeah. And he does two trailers on his truck. So he knows hauling stuff. And he got the stabilizer. So if you’re listening, and you’re wondering, should I get that? I’m pretty sure, yeah.

Tom Kubiak
Definitely agree.

Ian Robertson
That’s gonna be a yes.

Tom Kubiak
And learn the learn the process of, of if you’ve never done it before, you know, spend time that the dealer who sells you the equipment or there’s a ton of YouTube videos, just learn the different pieces of the of the hitch, how they connect, how they latch together, what warning signs to watch for and, and I think what helped me is you just come up with a routine that you do. And that way when you when you pull off, you’ve checked every box to make sure you’re you know, you’re as stable as you’re going to be.

Ian Robertson
Kind of like a like a pilot no matter how long a pilot is flying, he always has his checklist that he goes through every single time. So what what was it like backing up it?

Tom Kubiak
Well that’s the thing, I still don’t have backing up. I’m really not good at it. I I did this year I put on. So my truck that I have I have a GMC Sierra, the I put on, when I bought it, it just had the regular mirrors, it didn’t have towing mirrors. So I bought a set of towing mirrors. And then this year, just a couple of weeks ago, I put the towing mirrors on myself. And that makes it 100 times easier to see. So they, in addition to them being bigger and having multiple sections, then they also pop out an additional maybe about five inches, four or five inches. So it really gives you a good view behind you. And so that made backing up easier. But I still choose the pull through campsite. If it’s at all possible.

Ian Robertson
Have you thought about getting one of the backup cameras for your camper?

Tom Kubiak
No, I have looked at that as an option. Yeah, and that’s last year when I got the camper and I was trying to back it up for the first time. Or the first couple times like I just I could not see the back of trailer. So it was really, really frustrating. Now with the bigger mirrors, I can see the back of the trailer. So I feel a little bit better about doing it. But I’ll tell you what I did to make it easier. I got this thing called a Parkit360.

Ian Robertson
Okay, yeah.

Tom Kubiak
Have you ever seen this thing?

Ian Robertson
I’ve seen those I was gonna ask you if you had one.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah. And that is so good. Like that. I strongly recommend if if our listeners want to be able to get a trailer moved around on their property, this thing can put that trailer anywhere like with, I could put a trailer with inches to spare on either side of it with this thing. It’s so easy to move around. So definitely. So what what I do when I get back from camping is I get the trailer positioned basically where I want it. And then I disconnect my truck and I use the Parkit360 to put it in the spot.

Ian Robertson
So describe to us what the Parkit360 is, what does it look like? What does it do? What are we talking about?

Tom Kubiak
So basically, it’s two, two big wheels with a high torque electric motor, and a handle and a hitch on on it. So you basically you put it under the the hitch ball, and it’s got a ball that that will basically locks into place. And then you lower the camper down onto the Parkit360 into a slot as the hitch goes into a slot. And once it’s in there, then the hitch acts as the as the truck basically, or the Parkit360 acts as the truck. And it’s strong enough to move, move a 6000 pound trailer even up a small incline. Like it’s very good. And it’s got an electronic brake attachment. So when you stop even on a little bit of an incline, it engages the trailer brake to keep the trailer in position. Really good. I strongly recommend it.

Ian Robertson
So I’d probably find myself cheating with that one a lot. Yeah.

Tom Kubiak
And the sad thing about that though, is that it’s going to affect my ability to get better at parking at backing up because I’m going to opt to do that instead of learning how to backup so I really probably should force myself to backup but just don’t want to.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I mean backing up is overrated.

Tom Kubiak
Everybody tells me I’ve been asking you know friends of mine who have trailers or who are truck drivers, good friend of mine as a truck driver in local area and he can put up you know, a 40 foot tractor trailer thing with, you know, no room to spare and line it up right with a loading dock just without even thinking about it. And so anyway, they said, The best way to do it is to put your hand at the bottom of the wheel. And then know that if you want to move the trailer rear end to the left, you turn left, if you want to move the trailer to the right, you turn right. And if your hands at the bottom, it removes that equation you have to do in your head to convert the opposite, turning the opposite way. Okay, so I have been doing that. And that does help but the Parkit360 just makes it so easy.

Ian Robertson
So that’s a really good trick. I like that one. You know what’s funny, too, is I’ve heard from people that backing up a trailer that is bigger is easier than backing up some trailer that smaller.

Tom Kubiak
I’ve heard people say the same thing. Yeah.

Ian Robertson
And I learned that on a little lawnmower.

Tom Kubiak
Oh, really?

Ian Robertson
I was on his little lawnmower. I could not back the thing. I’m trying to back it up to pick up some brush. And this buddy of mine over there laughing his head off at me. And I’m like, Dude, I’ve done this since I was 18. And I cannot back up a lawn mower with the trailer. He’s like, No, here’s the thing. He used to work at Walmart warehouse. And he’s like, we used to have these little trailers behind these little dollies that we’d have. And he’s just like, everybody did the same thing. It took us forever to figure out how to do it. Because the smaller the trailer, the harder harder it is to navigate it.

Tom Kubiak
I’ve heard lots of people say the same thing. Yeah. But But I mean, I think as long as I actually this Parkit360 thing is is light enough you can pick it up. So I might even if I’m going to a campsite where I know I don’t have a pull through spot. I might even just throw it in my truck and bring it with me.

Ian Robertson
Are pull through camper spots like common? No, I imagine a lot of people would like those.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, it depends on where you’re going. So like the place that we went to this past weekend was a just a privately owned, small campsite up in in, in Vermont, really nice place called the Rest and Nest campsite and super friendly people, but I called them to make the reservation. I asked for the pull through site and they only have about five or six pull through sites. And so he said, I’ll try to give it to you. But if if I don’t have it, then I’ll help you park the trailer. He was super nice about it. So um, he said I can back anything up and I’ll I’ll put your trailer in the right spot. But when we got there, there was only us and another person in the pull through spots. So it was worked out perfect.

Ian Robertson
Oh, nice. Okay, so let’s say today I’m buying a camper. What are the things that you did that you’d be like Ian, stop. Don’t do that. Or you really have to do this. But so besides the little parker thing there, what you call it the 360 thingamebobber, thingamebobber is the technical term.

Tom Kubiak
Exactly. Yeah, that’s exactly what it’s, it’s what it’s called.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I’ll slow down. So okay. What, like, what things would you want, would I avoid? Because again, I’m a stationary camper.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, so when when we started looking with it, there were a couple things that we were looking for. The first one was, you know, we want we didn’t, we wanted it to be comfortable. So we’re, not being regular campers, you know, we wanted to take some of the comforts from home with us. Otherwise, we just stay in hotels. So there’s a big range between, you know, campers that are designed for hardcore camping, and campers that are designed with some comfort. And I think more recently, that comfort side of camping has opened up and there’s a pretty good range of that. So we looked for first thing, obviously dry bathroom. That’s one thing we definitely wanted, we wanted the slide out. We wanted the ability to be have have solar power, because solar panels and lithium batteries allow you to be able to be basically off grid, you don’t have to be connected. That’s not a problem for most campsites like most bigger campsites or most privately owned campsites, but it is a problem that you’re going to encounter when you’re at state campsites state parks, because or some national parks they they don’t all have facilities. So you know if you want to be able to use your TV or use your you know your lights or even possibly your water pump, you have to be able to have a battery that’s going to last long enough. And so we will we bought ours we added it came with one solar panel we added another solar panel we also upgraded to lithium batteries which are a little bit higher charge and they don’t require as detailed maintenance.

Ian Robertson
So I think that’s important to remember because power needs are extremely important. So if you’re gonna want to go some places and some campgrounds, they have power and you can plug in then you can dump your waste. And that’s, uh, maybe that’ll be the next thing I’ll ask actually. But you want to have good batteries. You want to maintain those batteries. Yep. Do you take yours out in the wintertime? Or do you leave them in?

Tom Kubiak
No, the lithium batteries and the solar you don’t have to. So they as long as you know they’ll stay the solar panels will keep them fully charged, and that that actually happened over the winter when we open the camper up in the spring, everything was fully charged.

Ian Robertson
Good. One thing I’ll say is, there was an experience to you told me and my buddy Mario told me, when you get your camper, never assume that it’s going to be just right. No matter how good it is, there’s going to be something he said. There was two things they had a round shower faucet. And they caulked around it when I say they caulked around it not like sealed to the edge. Like they just drew a caulk line, like three or four inches around where they should so he yanked it off and recaulked. He’s like, that was stupid. And then he was showing it to another friend. And he said he had a puddle of water on the floor. Brand new, never been used giant puddle of water. Turns out the little Wi Fi thing at the roof. That it just, it was just wide open. So he went up there and caulked that. And he said, you know, here I am fixing the thing. And their solution was..

Tom Kubiak
Very true.

Ian Robertson
Well, their solution was, here’s a free tube of caulk we got your back.

Tom Kubiak
That is that is our experience too, like we we opted for one of the better class travel trailers, we we bought a Lance travel trailer which have they have a very good reputation. So that you know, there’s all kinds of different varieties that there’s Jayco and Coleman which they make, okay, campers, but they’re definitely the low end. And then there’s the higher end, you know, and then you get up to like Airstream or other ones that are really, you know, even even higher end. Ours is probably mid grade, I think because what what you would call but pretty good reputation. But I will say that campers are crap, they’re, they’re basically, they’re basically crap built. So thankfully, you know, and I think you’re the same way like we’re relatively handy, we can fix things and you in being you know, when you buy an RV, you need to be able to do it otherwise, you’re just gonna get eaten alive so we bought our we had searched quite a bit for a dealer. And a lot of the dealers were just marking stuff up crazy, crazy prices. We ended up buying from a very small dealer who only sells a few every year. But we got it for just the regular price. He didn’t mark it up at all. And it saved probably about, I’d say $12,000 on a purchase. But He’s way up in the Adirondacks. So anything that’s broken on it, we would have to drive it all the way back up to him to work on it, and it’s not worth it. So when we, in our case, we got it home and filled up the freshwater tank and water is pouring out of it. Like the first thing that happens. And sure enough, I pull off the skirting and and the camper manufacturer had broken the freshwater tank and just put like caulk on it to try to fix it.

Ian Robertson
What’s the problem with that? Caulk fixes everything.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah. Especially if you’re not going to use it. Yeah, exactly. So you know, so that required, you know, me, getting them to ship me the part and you know, reinstalling it and so I was able to get it patched enough to use, but I still have to install the part that they sent.

Ian Robertson
So I will say, I don’t have any experience with campers, but everybody I know that has ever had a camper has had an issue. Like it’s not like like a car like oh, I have a lemon they have to fix this. But 90% of the time you drive the car off the lot and it’s a brand new car. It’s gonna work you know? Yeah, you’re not gonna have a hole in the gas tank or something. Campers, every single person I’ve ever talked to, drove it off the lot and you know there’s a hole in the wall, I drove it off the lot, I was missing half a wheel you know? I think a lot of people buy the campers with an expectation that it’s like a car and that it’s just going to work.

Tom Kubiak
Definitely not, it’s definitely not now you will find something wrong. And it’s going to be something that’s relatively major. You know, like even this weekend camping we found a broken water line that we didn’t even know we had. So when we turn the water on to this particular line, it filled the wall with water and ended up shorting out, not shorting it out but causing a feedback loop on one of the electrical one of the sound systems the audio speaker. So in order to get that to stop, you know going through its feedback loop we had to pull the the fuse for the whole audio system. And now I have to pull out the plumbing on that fixture and replace a you know a piece in the wall In order to fix it.

Ian Robertson
And that’s after, well, yeah, and that’s after going through all the trouble of trying to find a better deal or trying to find a better product, paying extra for whatever, and you still have problems. So if you’re thinking about buying a camper, expect that, expect it. And the problem is, the same thing that you mentioned is, you know, it’s a pain in the butt kind of towing them around, if you’re going camping or going somewhere, it’s like, okay, this is worth it, it’s not fun having to hook that up and drive it to the dealer 40 minutes away, you know, try to find somebody a little bit closer, just.

Tom Kubiak
And the other thing is that the dealers and the repair places, they really don’t get good reviews. Like that, it’s commonly said that people have problems with the, with the RV repair shops. So these RV companies, they’re, they’re pretty good at selling the RV, but they’re really not good at fixing it. So it pays to, to learn how to do it yourself. There’s a couple organizations out there that will actually give you a, like a class, a multi disc class, and my dad actually had taken this class. So he shared the DVDs with me, and I watched the whole 10 hour program, and learned a lot about how camping systems work, and how you can do things yourself and you can do it. It’s all possible. You just have to be willing to put the effort into it.

Ian Robertson
How is your system grounded? How’s your camper grounded?

Tom Kubiak
I don’t think it oh, you know what, it’s grounded when you plug into the power at the campsite. So it’s got a three prong 30 outlet 30 amp outlet that you plug into. And that’s, you know, obviously got a ground on it. But if you’re not plugged in, I don’t know that it has it doesn’t have a ground other than internally within the system itself.

Ian Robertson
Yeah which makes sense. Yeah, I was just kind of curious if like, every time you park it, you have to throw a ground rod in or something?

Tom Kubiak
No, but you do want to, you know, like part of the hookup process is you, you know, you connect to the water, you connect to the to the power and you connect to the sewer, if you have sewer available. I’m not sure if you’re going you wanted to talk about that. But..

Ian Robertson
Yeah, actually, so let’s, let’s talk poo for just a minute.

Tom Kubiak
You always love talking about poo.

Ian Robertson
The number two thing to talk about. Just real quick, what’s the poo situation? So like it, you flush the potty in your house and you know it, it goes away into this magical land and nobody ever thinks about it ever again. You have to think about it when you have a camper, right?

Tom Kubiak
You do have to think about it. Yeah, not only you have to think about that, but you have to think about shower and sink usage too so you know, typically campers will have storage tanks, they have what’s called a grey water storage tank and a black water storage tank. And grey water is the is the sinks and the shower. And the black water is the toilet. And usually they run, you know, depending upon how big the camper is 20 to 40 gallons. And that can you know, depending on how you you use.. Go ahead.

Ian Robertson
That’s it?

Tom Kubiak
Yep.

Ian Robertson
Dude, that’s not a whole lot of flushes.

Tom Kubiak
It’s not a whole lot. So but you don’t have a flush the way you do like at home toilet, you don’t have a gallon of water sitting there ready to be flushed every time you use it. So the way the the RV toilets work is they they have a small prefill which you add maybe a couple of cups of water basically to the toilet. And then after you use it, it sprays a little extra water in there. So you’re really only adding every time you use it may be a half a gallon at the most. Still not not a whole lot.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, you’re not having Taco Tuesdays when your camping.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah, you’re, if you’re going to camp for a long time, you’re going to run into some issues. Yeah.

Ian Robertson
So you need to hook up to be able to get rid of that, you can’t just like go to the side of the road and say let’s..

Tom Kubiak
No, not for the black water especially. Yeah, you don’t want to dump that.

Ian Robertson
Can you do that with grey water?

Tom Kubiak
I mean, I’m sure you’re not supposed to. But there are people who do that, you know, I wouldn’t choose to do that because it’s got a lot of soap in it and stuff like that shampoo. But there’s ways to, like most campgrounds will have a dump station, they just may not have the dump station at your spot. So in our case, the campground that we went to in last weekend, they had a sewer connection at the spot we were at so we connected our sewer hose. And you don’t leave it open all the time, but we could dump it anytime we wanted to. We didn’t need to until the end when we were leaving.

Ian Robertson
So that’s something that you kind of need to plan for. So that’s good to know.

Tom Kubiak
Yeah you have to plan for it. And there’s additives you can put in the in the septic tank in the gray water and the black water tanks that stop odor and that allow, they like preload it with bacteria that helps to dissolve the solid waste. So, okay, there’s lots of stuff you can get.

Ian Robertson
So there’s a lot to think about, it really is a little bit of a mobile house and yeah, it’s not really self contained you have to fill up the freshwater you have to dump out the black and gray water and you have to park the thing but that’s interesting.

Tom Kubiak
And you got to consider sanitizing your freshwater tank and you got to consider filtering the water that comes in so if you’re going to if you’re going to be drinking the water at the at the from your tap, where are you getting that water from? Well you’re getting it from a campground that you don’t know the source of it really so you have to filter it and you also don’t know the pressure that that water comes in on so the city water pressure is a certain amount of pounds per square inch you don’t know what it is at the campground so you want to put a regulator on to limit the pressure and you want to when you connect your electric you want to have a basically a big fuse protector to to filter the electric the electric when it comes down to into your, so you don’t blow out your circuits or anything, because campgrounds they, it’s not like your you know your house.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. Well, I’ve so I’m a home inspector by trade originally. Yeah I’ve inspected campgrounds. And you know, well right by the septic system. All sorts of crazy stuff. And it’s like, they’re like, Hey, man, it’s camping. I’m like, Yeah, I don’t think people came here to drink that. So. So yeah, good information. Thanks a lot, Tom. That’s awesome. So anybody. And if anybody is considering buying a camper, or is just a newbie, you know, listen to Tom’s advice here and take some of the information home. But Hey, Tom, I’m out of my Empress gin here. How much do you have left of yours?

Tom Kubiak
I still got a couple inches left. Okay.

Ian Robertson
So maybe we could take us out with a segment called “Bad Dad Jokes” to kind of end our time here. So do you have a bad dad joke first, Tom?

Tom Kubiak
I don’t have a bad dad joke.

Ian Robertson
I got one.

Tom Kubiak
Okay, give it to me. So I can moan. All right.

Ian Robertson
How do you, how do you know that the ocean is friendly? Because it’s always waving.

Tom Kubiak
Okay, I gotta I gotta come up with some bad dad jokes.

Ian Robertson
So listen in next time to Drinking With Tom. We’ll have some more great information and maybe a couple of bad dad jokes. But thanks a lot, Tom. We’ll talk soon.

Tom Kubiak
Thanks, Ian. Good to see you, man.

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