“Well, let’s see. First the earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into oil.” — Airplane II

One of the things we always wanted to do was buy an RV. My folks have been RVers since I was in Jr. High and their love of the lifestyle seemed to rub off on me. A lot. They’d even share stories of the Airstream that my grandpa towed with the family sedan — a 1960-something Bonneville.

For all the years Daisy and I have been together, I’d dragged her to the local RV shows and we’d gazed at the assortment of tent trailers and travel trailers and motorhomes and accessories.

“Just wait until we buy a house,” we’d always say.

Our mentality was that once we do the responsible thing and buy a house, then we could justify the luxury.

So, we set about the path and bought a fixer-upper in suburbia whose fixer-upper costs started to climb. The RV was postponed again and again.

February, 2012, my dad called to tell us that mother was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. It was hard news to hear, especially because of who was afflicted, but additionally so because I understood the prognosis.

We packed the kids into the car, or rented minivan, or I on my motorcycle, and made as many trips back up to Washington to see her as we could.

After the inevitable, a year after her diagnosis, while on the road home from the final farewell, I had an uncomfortably long time alone with my thoughts and wound up rationalizing just buying an RV.

Well, a travel trailer.

We had no savings, not much in the way of disposable income, and not a very large parking area for when it wouldn’t be used. But we did have reasonable credit and my mental justification that if I don’t just go do it, then it’ll never happen.

A week later, we found ourselves on a dealer’s lot examining travel trailers — and I considering carefully all of the advice that my parents shared about such things over the years.

I signed the paperwork on our wee little Jayco UltraLite that evening.

We didn’t get a chance to use it for about a month when the weather warmed a bit.

Oh, and the first thing I added to it: a picture frame for mother’s picture.