We arrived at the sales lot. There were a few RV's there, and we were not completely sure which one was ours. There were actually 2 "Holiday Ramblers", but the gentleman pointed out our new ride. It was massive, much longer than the first RV we had. We stepped out of the mini bus into a rainy Houston day, and began inspecting the purchase.

Upon our arrival, the posse appeared. The posse included about 4-5 other good old boys that were in league with the seller. Some of them assisted us as we inspected the vehicle, others stood around leering at the “northerners”. We immediately began finding issues with the RV: missing headlights, taillights and running lights, broken refrigerator, intermittent microwave, bad tires, etc. JC and T-Mo departed with the seller to the office to finalize the terms, and obtain the vehicles title and other paperwork. They also hoped that they could get the man to knock off some money for the problems; little did they realize that he was not going to budge on price.

Don and I sat in the RV and attempted to finish off the Coors Light pounders. We talked about prior evening happenings, and discussed the road ahead. After killing all of the beer, we realized that 2 things happened. First, Scooter had been trying to contact us via cell phone, and we missed his calls. He was at the airport now, and was ready to be picked up. Second, JC and T-Mo were in the office with the seller for hours, and we were still in Houston. Our plan to be in New Orleans by 8:00 was diminishing quickly.

As T-Mo and JC walked toward the small cinderblock building that was used as the office of the car lot, the excitement of the new RV was already starting to wear off. After seeing the condition of the vehicle in person, the pictures and descriptions given by the seller had proved to be less then accurate. As JC sat down in the 8’ by 8’ “sales office”, he began to tally a dollar amount in his head that he thought should be refunded. I use the word refunded because the seller had demanded full payment at the auctions end to hold the RV and that had been almost three weeks prior to the trip.

The salesman had his buddies furiously repairing the RV with parts from another similar RV that they had in their lot. Light bulbs were changed and turn signal lenses were swapped all in an effort to make the RV as street legal as possible. JC proposed a refund amount to the seller, but he merely chuckled and said “no”. He already had my friends’ money and they were not getting it back. T-Mo and JC reminded themselves that the price they paid was significantly below book value for the RV. Hopefully, even with the extra money that they would have to invest in it, they would still come out ahead. They signed the paperwork and walked back to the new purchase, ready to head out on the open road to New Orleans, and hopefully a night of fun.

We traveled back to the airport we had left a few hours ago to retrieve Scooter. It was 4:00 at this point, and Don and I were toasty. We picked up our friend at the airport, and began our long expedition back to Pennsylvania.