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06/19/2008: "The End of the Road"

Last weekend we had a little work party down at the farm, and concluded (among other things) the Camper Demolition Project. The photo above shows the 30 cubic yard (!) drop box nearly filled with the remainder of the camper body and the junk from the shop. More photos below the fold.

Some people that I've talked to about this have asked, "Can't you pay someone to take it away?" They are surprised to find out that, no, there are some things that money can't buy... like friends who drive for the better part of five hours to help you demolish a smelly old camper/motor home and stack it in a drop box.

The first thing we did, as a warm-up and an alternative to bashing on the camper, was clean out the shop on Saturday night. This added about 25% to the dumpster, which raised some concern about whether we would get everything into the dumpster we needed to have moved off-site.



Next morning I started out to work on putting up scare tape in the orchard to protect the cherries from the birds, but everything i did broke or fell or turned to shit. I concluded that the universe was telling me something: my talents on this day probably lay in breaking things, not building them up. So, we turned to the camper instead.

The remaining shell of the camper lay over the cab, and in the week since we had worked on it the shell had begun to sag ominously. This was actually good news, as it meant that the shell wasn't attached to the cab too strongly. I made two cuts across the upright walls still remaining, and pried the paneling off a bit.





...and then gave a bit of a heave to see what would happen.



To my surprise, the remaining bit of camper slid off the cab, and plopped itself down on the ground. It turned out that there wasn't really any attachment other than to the walls! All that was needed was a to knock over the back wall of the camper, cut up the panels into manageable sizes that would fit in the drop box, and we were in business.



Here is the completed result:



The drop box has been picked up by the local hauler; the code enforcement officer still has to come by and OK the removal of the truck, but after that the truck chassis, too, will be gone. The end of the road for the 1960 GMC motor home, thank god.