Hi folks-
I'm Mike Conner, a ten year vintage Airstream owner but until recently
haven't really been tuned in to the "Airstream family." Several months
ago my wife and I had to sell our first Airstream, a 59 Globetrotter,
and upgrade to make room for our newest family additions, a boy and a
girl, twins!
The process of selling the Globetrotter was when I found out how
attached to it I was. My wife and I met eight years ago windsurfing and
she came with the trailer. It was parked in the Delta here in Northern
California where she windsurfed out of it on the weekends. To make a
long story shorter we got married, windsurfed out of the trailer on
weekends, pulled it to Moab, Utah; all over Colorado and Oregon. We
drove much faster at times than we should have (75+ mph) with this old
unit and I was always surprised that it never wiggled and pulled like a
dream. I was also impressed that it did not leak even though it was 41
years old. Plenty of my other trailer owning, windsurfing friends had
leaks in their relatively new trailers (obviously not Airstreams).
Anyway I had always been impressed with the trailer but had really never
looked under the hood so to speak. Well when I went to clean up the
trailer I discovered all this neat and well thought out stuff typical of
an Airstream. I found the long handled match holder, the electric
element for the hot water heater that I thought was only propane (we had
never used the water heater)...and lots of little things like that.
Aside from all the memories these features made me increasingly fond of
the ol' beauty. Unfortunately at that point I had lined up a sale and
had put money down on a hardwall pop-up. I opted for a pop-up because I
saw the weights of the new Airstreams and my truck couldn't handle the
weight. A general rule is that newer trailers are lighter than the old
ones because of all the new light weight materials. As I found out
later this was not the case w/ Airstreams- the older ones are lighter.
So I sell the one trailer and buy the pop-up. I brought it up from
SoCal and when my wife and I sat in it something wasn't right. There
was nothing wrong w/the trailer it was in mint condition...it just
wasn't home like the Airstream was. It had no charm or ambiance- it had
no real wood closets or a little classic gas light. It wasn't an
Airstream, damn! Upset that we had just gone from the coolest trailer
in the world to the nerdiest one I began to look more into the trailer
weights of the older Airstreams. Needless to say I discovered that they
were lighter. I immediately put the pop-up for sale (sold it w/in a
week and actually got $1,700 more than what I paid for it, what luck)
and began my search for another vintage Airstream.
I went to Reno and Idaho to buy that perfect Airstream that seemed to
check out on-line only to find problems w/both. I also checked out
several locally but nothing panned out. After two months of intensive
searching I was beginning to get a bit frustrated but continued
unyielding and uncompromising. Finally after three months I found our
new Airstream, a 69 Trade Wind double. Two single beds up front for the
twins a center double for us- a wider body and a much more open floor
plan than our 59. It is in great shape, all original and everything
works. The exterior is in great shape too with over 85% of its clear
coat and a couple of tiny scratches. The last owner was very meticulous
and took very good care it. I feel we got lucky.
My wife and I are now giving the unit a facelift. We have sanded all
the wood and refinished it, put new linoleum tile on the floor,
everything is getting re-upholstered and we've ordered curtains from
James Ambrose. Besides that I've got a million other little fix-its to
do but I love it. Every night after we tuck in the twins my wife and
grab the baby monitor and work on the TradeWind for two hours. In my
search for this Airstream I discovered all the resources for trailer
owners and all the info proved invaluable to me in finding the sound
unit. I really love that there is an Airstream community and that
everyone shares the enthusiasm that I have become infected with. Noel
and I could see the WBCCI numbers that had been removed from the unit
and I am proud to say we joined and were able to restore the original #s
back to the TradeWind . Thank you all for wealth of info out there and
I look forward to meeting at least some of you down the road...
Mike Conner
69 TradeWind
WBCCI #5600
Mike Conner
Wildlife Resource Specialist
City of Davis
(530)757-5686
