What’s the “4 X 40”?

Naming a web site can be a venture into frustration.  All of the “good” names you can think of seem to be taken.  Some are taken and not even used.  If you try to look at them, you get some sort of server not found error message, so they are “reserved” but not used.  I’ve even found a couple I would like that were for sale, so the owner isn’t even interested in developing it, but the prices can be outrageous.  So we searched around for something descriptive about the site, and maybe us a bit.  We came up with the RV4X40.com URL.

Here’s how it breaks down:  RV since this site is about RVs and information about their care and feeding.  That part was easy.  The “4” is because there are 4 of us in the motorhome.  (You have to be pet owner to really understand this).  Two of us (Jim and Chris) are human, or at least humanoid in form.  Our real children, the human ones, are out on their own with lives, careers, and families of their own.  We dearly love them and visit with them as often as we can in our new lifestyle, but they don’t live in the RV.

So the other two are our furry children, Pepper and Sasha by name.  They are both rescue dogs and will be 4 years old in July.  We started out to get a single new dog before we had either, looking for something with border collie and whatever else.  We were contacting various rescue organizations at the time, and had one process started when the contacts just kind of stopped, and another puppy (Pepper) came along who was a little cute fur ball of a pup, so he got into our hearts right away.  Then the other organization came back and we went to meet the one who would become Sasha.  Obviously, turning down cute little puppies is not our strong suit, so we ended up with both.  They with us are the “4” in the web address.

As we started considering going full time in an RV, it seemed logical that a 40 foot motorhome was going to be needed to be reasonably comfortable, after living for years in a much larger sticks and bricks home.  The one we have is a 2007 Monaco Knight PDQ unit, bought in 2015.  It has a floor plan with everything we had on our list and the price was right.  It is a 40 foot long Diesel pusher with a Cummins ISC 330 engine and Allison transmission.

Starting to use a Diesel on a large chassis with air brakes did require at least one of us to upgrade to a Class B (non-commericial) license in Texas to be legal driving it.  That was a whole other experience best described later, but I do have the license.  Chris has said she will only drive in an extreme emergency, so I do all the driving of the coach.  It’s really not as hard as she thinks, but it does take some care and attention, especially when you hit those narrow places with concrete barricades right at the edge of the road.