Tingle Pants

I feel a little tingle.


More like an old familiar nudge (again) of a project that I want to do: a thing to make. It’s been on my mind for some time to get a camper. I’ve gone back and forth on the options- like tow-behind or maybe one that slides into the bed of my obnoxiously huge pickup. For a time, I scoured the listings at ebay for used airport shuttle buses. I figure with one of those, I can finish it as much or as little as I want.

I have a timeshare that, besides the week stay over at the ski resort in Harrisonburg, gets me hugely reduced rates at campgrounds/trailer parks all over. Like, say, Myrtle Beach on the ocean for $45 per night. Anyway, that rate gets cut to $10 per night if I bring my own camper, or at least my own place to sleep. Blah blah blah-

My recent camp out with my coworkers, though, I decided maybe less is more. I really only used the tent for sleeping, but I didn’t like the whole- sleeping on the ground thing then deal with wrapping and folding a tent when I was done… thing. So I got to thinking how much better it would be if I had a cot and if that cot was in the bed of the truck and then if maybe I at least had a cap on the bed then that would be even more better still. Right?

So slide-in truck campers are decent. They’re not too big or too small, the only real downside is that they can’t be transported or moved around much without the truck. I could also get a cart thing to wheel the camper into my garage when it’s not in use but I have a gravel driveway and those things weight almost a ton. If I scale way back from that, though, I could have a utility shell for the back of the truck that would replace the tailgate with a single large panel with a door in the back. I could then insulate it and wire it for whatever: that is, tap into the trailer power jack (one of 3 on my truck) and either charge a battery for luxuries or even use an inverter for AC powered luxuries. But the problem with this is that the whole setup would have to be broken down and dismantled every time I take the thing off the truck so that’s a bummer.

One thing that I found during my camper scavenger hunt was the prospect of building my own. Now, most of the truck camper plans I found would yield a 70’s looking corrugated sheet metal siding affair, hunky, junky retro garbage that, frankly, is beneath even me. Also, these were all real truck campers, so see problem A (as in Above). But I did find a place to buy the plans for that little wonder.

http://www.butlerprojects.com/other/truckcamper/index.htm

What’s really nice about this, aside from that it’s a balanced compromise of everything I’m looking for, it’s a great woodworking project. More importantly, it’ll exercise the boat building woodworking skills I had way back when I lived in Norfolk working part time with a –ta-da- wood boat builder.

So… what to do, what to do… I’m thinking that by threatening to do it here, I’ll actually do it.

I mean, it worked for the motor bike, right?