Beauty and the Beast

It was an intense day of orientation, well, half a day. We got to the dealership shortly after 9am and were told that our beautiful Airstream was being cleaned. So we settled down in the customer waiting area to drink hot chocolate (Frederick) and figure out how to add pictures to this blog. Another customer, Dave Topley, was waiting for his 5th wheel to be readied. He and his wife are going full time and continuing to work out of their RV. He has a software company that provides personnel scheduling programs. They emigrated from England in 2007.  He gave us lots of camping/RVing tips.

Phil #2 (Phil #1 was our car mechanic in yesterday's pictures) began our in-depth orientation shortly before noon.  We got most of the way through the syllabus when we had to stop to fill out paperwork for exporting the trailer. Tomorrow, Kirk Thomson, brother of Andy, will tow our Airstream to a campground in North Tonawanda, just next door to Amherst, NY, where Kathryn lives. They have experience in exporting trailers across the border into the U.S. We will meet him at the campground.

About 5pm, Andy took us out for our first tow. And yes, it was raining. (Hey, it wasn't snow!)

Andy preparing to take us on our first tow.

First a little towing around the neighborhood streets of a suburb outside of London, then onto the freeway where I had to catch myself and back down from accelerating to 70 miles per hour.  We want to travel 55 - 60 mph when we are towing. Finally, gasp, we returned to the dealership where I backed up the trailer. The first time went remarkably well, not so much the second try. So tomorrow before we leave for the U.S. we will both practice some more.