Monthly Archives: April 2017

GIDGET GLAMPING – Retro Camper

Posted on by
1

(original post)

Hello friends, since we are feeling poor at the moment (new location, building client base) we don’t have any holidays planned. Which is very, boo hoo, for us! 🙂

But, we do have on order a custom-made Gidget Retro Camper. The idea is that now we are in the eastern states of Australia, there’s plenty of opportunity for us to travel around and explore, because we are veteran West Australians and haven’t seen much of the east coast. And when you come over from WA to visit, it is a week or two around Sydney, Melbourne or visiting parents in Tassie.

So, buying the Gidget is the money outlay and exploring with it should be the money saving part – campsites, caravan parks – all a hell of a lot cheaper than hotel accommodation and flying to places.

Bondi Gidget

But the dream of the Glamper is taking a seriously long time. We finally got around to placing our order and putting down a deposit in September 2016. All communication until then (and reading between lines on their website) indicated that 6 months was the expected wait. And days before we placed the order, we had a message through Facebook that with their new and improved, expanded factory and new processes it could even be within 4 months.

Funny story that! Because now it is early April 2017 and we don’t even have a scheduled delivery date.

We have spent some time angsting about this order. Is it a scam, whatever? But they have continued to communicate and if they were running away with all our money, we’d never hear from them, I guess.

Their Gidget Glamper Facebook page is very active. There are so many of us with the ‘glamping dream – and people who ordered a couple of years ago.

Gidget’s story is that they’d only made 3 Gidgets when the video they created describing all the beauty of the camper went (essentially) viral. That’s when I saw the camper for the first time, and fell in love! That was about 2014/2015, I can’t remember. So there was a couple of years while I had it in my mind that I’d like to buy one. And all along I had the idea in my head that it was about 6 months for manufacturing.

But they were caught seriously by surprise! They were effectively a start-up company at that point – as I said, they’d only made 3 Gidgets. But that video made them famous and the orders began to pour in.

I think it was at a Brisbane Camping Show in late 2015 or during 2016 that they became even more famous – as far away as the USA. And the orders continued to come in, but they weren’t prepared to handle it. (They now have a US-based franchisee selling Gidget).

About October / November 2016 they offered a crowd funding program – if you paid for your camper up-front you’d get to the top of the queue. They needed the funding to expand and improve processing and many (I believe) have taken them up on this. We didn’t. We felt it was enough of a commitment to put down the best part of $11,000 for something we hadn’t even seen yet.

It is getting closer – I can feel it in my water! 😀 We’ve chosen a cream-coloured body, with viper red wheel guards, and Tasmanian oak woodwork.

At the moment, their Brumby version is full steam ahead in its own factory. This is their 4WD off-road version. The Noosa campers are being manufactured quickly in their own factory. But the Bondi version is waiting for the new ‘Grand Tourer’ suspension system – and they are just waiting for the parts to come from Vehicle Components, which won’t commit to providing the parts until they have a certain amount in stock.

This suspension system replaces the leaf springs suspension previous utilised by the Gidget company. Supposed to be an amazingly good thing!

A few weeks ago (in March) Gidget informed us that they were on the brink of setting the schedule, at which point we’d know our expected delivery date. They’re just waiting on confirmation of parts from the supplier.

So, perhaps by September 2017? Before it gets too hot – because our Gidget Retro Camper won’t be used by us in the summer – I can’t handle the heat. Spring, Autumn – yep. Winter – possibly. Summer – nuh uh!

Bring it on. And enjoy the pictures above and enjoy visiting their website. 😀

Sorry Mark, it means Spain isn’t on our agenda any time soon. However, when I win Lotto or Millionaire Hot Seat – and I plonk myself down in Ireland for 6 months to a year – I’ll come visit you guys in Alora! 😀

https://www.thegidget.com.au/#welcome-section

Millionaire Hot Seat – Dreaming

Posted on by
2

When I wrote this item, I’d recently applied for ‘Millionaire Hot Seat, Australia’.

Clearly, the audition was on my mind and I had a crazy dream about it.

The main crux of the dream is that I sat down (at a long meeting table) with the other wannabe contestants. We were presented with a written test AND I COULDN’T DO IT!

There were random and wild reasons why I couldn’t …. and from there came this story 😁

An assistant to the show gathered us up, led us to a meeting room and placed a sheet of questions in front of each participant. Then left the room.

I looked down at the first page – and it was blank. A grey page, not white – and empty. I looked around at the others. They’re all heads down, working away. I made a disgruntled noise, translated as ‘I don’t get it!”

Funnily enough, even though it was an exam situation, they all engaged with me. And they’re asking ‘what’s wrong?’.

“There’s nothing on any of my pages!” I said. I look over at the pages of the people closest to me, and their pages are also blank – but these guys are answering questions. The assistant comes in and asks what’s going on. And I show her my page!

“There are questions on there, Trish” she said.

“No there aren’t!” I’ve become quite cranky and flustered by now. “Um, maybe you could turn on the lights?” I asked.

“The lights? It’s bright enough in here,” huffed the assistant.

“Well, I have terrible eyesight, so maybe that’s it,” I answered. One of the contestants gets up and finds the light switch. Voila! I can see. Thank God!

And then, WTF. The questions don’t make ANY SENSE. First of all this should be a multiple choice exam, like the show format. What I see are columns of letters and blanks. On a further page, numbers and blanks. Further along still, there are random questions but no multiple choice.

I stare (blindly) at the letters and blanks. It’s like on the show Pointless, where they offer a category say ‘Famous Musicians named Eric’ and then give letters and blanks and you have to work out the names of their bands, or songs or their surnames – yeah? But these are letters and blanks – without context.

I tell you, I’m pulling my hair out now – and there’s a lot of hair to pull out! I’m freaking out and EFFing and carrying on. I grab my exam paper and dash out of that meeting room. As an aside, by now we aren’t the only ones at the table. There are people gathered at the other end – famous people like Mark ‘The Beast’ and Anne Hagerty ‘The Governess’ from The Chase. They’re talking loudly and laughing and creating a HUGE distraction.

I rushed out to another room close by and I plonk down on a table. Directly in front of where I’m sitting, there are curtains or sheets or something dumped there, like they’ve come in from the clothesline. And within seconds, OMG, I’ve got my paperwork tangled up in them. For fuck sake! I’m standing there shaking out these EFFing sheets and the assistant comes up “What are you doing, Trish?”.

“I’ve got my EFFing exam lost in these EFFing sheets,” I’ve yelled, tears pouring down
my face. I’m almost bald by now. Then, a most amazingly transcendent thing happens …

David Duchovny appeared at my side! He is the host of my Millionaire Hot Seat dream and he asked ‘What is wrong here?” After that first lustful, breath of air, I reverted to the screaming harridan and got stuck into Mr Duchovny about the absurdity of this audition process.

“It doesn’t even make sense!” I cried, waving the (now recovered) papers about. “What the fuck are all these As and Bs about – random letters with no context? What have they got to do with your show format? It’s a lot of bulldust and I’m over it. Leaving now!”

David spoke calmly to me, in his lovely Duchovny voice and I’m momentarily distracted by that …. then I turn and leave.

I find myself outside with a long bridge to cross and I began to run across it. I’m running, forever running. David has chased me with long, loping, sexy action movie type running – and I stop. Suddenly. Shit! I drove the other contestants here. We car pooled. (I know it doesn’t make sense. It’s a dream! I don’t know any of the other contestants!) 😀

I can’t run out on them; that’s not fair. So I turn and start back, head down, fists clenched and breathing hard. David talked to me as we walked. He began by telling me I’m lazy. “You’re giving up. What a loser!” Ha! My inner demons haunting me in my dream.

Then it comes up that perhaps someone could read the questions to me aloud, because clearly my problem is bad eyesight. If the questions are read out, I’ll be able to complete the test! You beauty! For a few seconds … and then it hit me. I still have to deal with all those EFFing letters and blanks, which don’t make any sense at all.

The dream ended. Sorry folks. Clearly, I had entered panic mode! I thought I was only worried about my appearance and how to sound interesting when speaking into a camera for a minute (part of the audition, if I made it past the test). But no, no, no.

Well, bring it on is about all I can say. Fingers crossed. I could use $1M, or $250,000, $100,000 – I’d settle for $10,000.

Ciao, Trish

[Post note: I made it through the audition, camera test and onto the shortlist – but I never heard back! Was it my personality? That wouldn’t surprise me. I’m not articulate in-person. They said “don’t call us, we’ll call you”. And so I continue to wait. But won’t hold my breath too long!