Cigarette stink was a dealbreaker until today

I looked at so many RV ads that i immediately closed at the word “smoke.” If i’m exposed to heavy smoke residue, my throat swells—not like anaphylaxis, but just enough to give me laryngitis. Which is worse in one way: there’s no handy cure you can plunge into your thigh.

The ad for this RV did not give me confidence, not with the ashtrays:

I grudgingly went to look at it because it was less than an hour away, it was close enough that my parents’ RV-nerd neighbor could also drop by and evaluate it for me, and it was in my price range. I was so pessimistic about it that i didn’t even bring cash.

I learned my lesson!

It does smell, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as i was expecting, and my mom assures me it can be destinkified. It has most of what i wanted from the rustbucket:

• short in length
• lots of natural light
• V8 dually that can tow a trailer if it needs to
• extremely common motor so parts will always be easy to come by
• most of how it works is mechanical, not digital (frex, the door locks)

The older couple who owned it were proud that they kept everything working, and they really did! Even though it’s 31 years old, it’s still in good condition at ~50k miles. RV Nerd Neighbor was in favor, and after a test drive, so was my Car Nerd Partner. My dad fronted me the money, and then refused to let me pay him back (thanks, Dad ❥).

While the prior owners were kind to us and i’m grateful to them for putting a very friendly price tag on their motorhome, based on their bumper sticker choices, i am acutely aware that my experience might have been different if i wasn’t white:

Gross. >:| Before i tell you about peeling off those stickers, let me tell you something else really quick:

I’m kind of superstitious about naming things.

I didn’t officially christen the first RV i got because i didn’t know if i was going to keep it.

I have a list of potential RV names, which i began in September 2024, and the first one on the list is from a novel i wrote in 2003. The main character’s pirate ship was named after a joke i’d seen on a bumper sticker as a teenager. I figured The Proverbial Handbasket works as well for a wheeled vehicle as it is for a tall ship.

Anyway, back to the RV: the first sticker resisted my attempts to remove it—i still need to come back with a scraper—but that red one came off in one go:

Yes, there was an older bumper sticker hidden beneath it, bizarrely trimmed to its exact size so that it cut off the edges, but i knew what it said, because it’s the bumper sticker.

“Where are we going and why am i in this handbasket?”

The very one i thought was so funny when i first saw it, that i named my fictional pirate ship after a few years later, and which caused me to write The Proverbial Handbasket into the #1 slot on my secret RV names list.

Even if you’re not superstitious, you must find that extraordinarily fun. But i admit i am a little superstitious. I am very glad for that ghost of a secret bumper sticker.