| From RVbookstore.com Using Your RV "I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting" -- Mark Twain. Ah sleep, that wonderful world that lets us peacefully escape one days labor from the next. And what an important thing! For if your sleep is poor so is your waking time. I sometimes wonder how much of this is taken into consideration by RV manufacturers when they furnish the bedrooms of our rolling homes. Perhaps you've bought a new RV and just can't stand the bed. Or maybe your old RV bed is ready to retire. Time for a new mattress, eh? If you thinking feeling good is "walking on air," then why not try "sleeping on air"? No, we're not suggesting you return to the days before your RV, when you pitched a tent, then exhausted yourself by huffing and puffing to blow up that little air mattress. We're talking about the new generation of sleeping comfort, an air bed, that can adjust to your sleeping need. Infinitely Adjustable When we bought our latest RV, we bought preowned. This left us with a "used" mattress, which wasn't an appealing thought. Further, we both have back problems, which made sleeping difficult on the best of "normal" mattresses. Many were the mornings when husband would find himself alone in bed, while wife had arose hours earlier, after groaning in bed in the night. Why not try air? The advantages of air beds for back comfort are many. Air beds are infinitely adjustable from soft to firm. We'd tried a "firm" mattress at the suggestion of a chiropractor. It just didn't cut it. We shopped around on the Internet looking for bed suppliers. Some of the "major brand" manufacturers made good pitches, but the prices were way out of our range. One major manufacturer started out at $900 and soared up to $2,500 in a hurry. However, one air bed retailer advertised in an RV magazine -- Bear Beds. The prices were more in line with our view of reality, with a list price of less than $500 for a full-sized bed with dual controls. Those dual controls make a real difference. The bed is basically two air chambers in one mattress, which allows each of us to adjust to the degree of firmness we need. She likes to sink her hips and shoulders in, he likes his a tad bit firmer. As far as appearance, you couldn't tell just by looking. The air chambers reside in a typical looking cover, and are topped with a comfortable "pillow topping" that gives us a height of 10". A special vapor barrier lies between the cover and the air chambers. We weren't sure how soon we'd learn whether the idea would work. The Bear Bed arrived in two rather large boxes via UPS shipping. We had the new mattress put together in a little less than an hour. That night we fiddled with controls and finally dropped off to sleep. The next morning when the sun rose, there were two people in our bed -- she'd slept through the night. Was it a fluke? The next several nights proved it wasn't -- sleeping on air worked the bugs out of finding a bed we could sleep on. Several months after buying our bed, we had occasion to sleep on a motel mattress. This was a relatively new motel open for only a few months, so the bed was new. We could hardly wait to get back to the RV and the air bed -- we both suffered a horrific night! RV Advantages Beyond the comfort arena, air beds also offer RVers some excellent side benefits. Predominant among them is weight. Most of us are looking for ways to lighten the loads we carry -- a quick trip to the scale often shows we're "close to the edge" on weight limits, or worse, we're already over the top. Our Bear Bed mattress is much, much lighter than the typical factory mattress. And in limited headspace environments, it's nice to know you don't have to "flip" your mattress. Once in place, it stays there without further attention. Combining a comfortable bed with an RV sometimes causes problems in other ways. Some rigs are designed so "tightly" that you can't get more than a mattress onto the sleeping platform. Try and add a box spring and you'll reduce your headroom to a coffin-like few inches, particularly in campers and overhead sleeping areas in some motorhomes. The beauty of the Bear Bed is that it requires no box spring to be comfortable--you can lay it out flat directly on the plywood sleeping platform so common in RVs. If you have an "oddball" size or dimensioned bed, some air bed manufacturers can oblige you with a custom size or shaped bed. There are a few factors to consider when thinking about an air bed. Some people find an air bed sleeps "hotter," than a standard mattress. That's true because an inner spring mattress allows the free flow of room air underneath. The air bed we have doesn't allow for that flow. For us this isn't a problem, we both like sleeping warm. Some manufacturers may offer a control device which provides a method to determine what "level" the mattress is adjusted to. If you firm up the mattress, say to make it easier to "make the bed," you can quickly reset the firmness level to where you like it. It's a convenience you pay for. Our controls simply allow for "firmer" or "softer," and our bodies tell us when to stop pumping. Traveling as we do, we find that different altitudes affect the bed. We may need to readjust our bed's firmness/softness, depending on whether we've gained or lost altitude since the last night of sleeping. When shopping for a bed, you may find checking out a retailer where you can "test lie" a bed would be helpful. Lie on the bed for at least 20 minutes to make sure it's comfortable. Some air bed sellers allow you to "sleep on it" for a given period of time; if the bed doesn't work out, you ship it back and get your purchase price refunded. You'll probably end up paying for shipping, possibly both ways -- keep that in mind. The worst problem we've encountered lies in the future. Eventually
we'll be "moving back" into a land locked house for a few months. Do we
take the air bed out of the RV and put it in the house? Or buy another
bed? Such a tough decision -- I think I'll have to sleep on it!
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