What we learned about you last week (June 8-14)

By Emily Woodbury

Happy Father’s Day to you, Dad and Daddy and Pa and Pop and Papa and Grandpa and whatever the little ones are calling you these days.

As you know, I’m Chuck’s daughter. When I first started working for RVtravel.com, just about two years ago to the day (!!), we were worried that working together might have an impact on our father/daughter relationship. I mean, do I want to talk about RVs and the industry over every family dinner? Not particularly. Do I mind it? Not particularly. Do I love when I call him in the afternoon with an important work-related question only to find out he’s on his third nap of the day? Not particularly (but it does make me chuckle…no pun intended). The man does work…a lot…but the man does nap a lot too. It’s a pretty unique experience when you can call up your boss, who is also your father, and leave a voicemail that says something like: “HEY, LAZYBONES. WAKE UP! TIME TO GET BACK TO WORK!” Ya know? You can’t do that with just any ol’ boss. Needless to say, things are going well between us. Whew.

Anyways, Happy Father’s Day to you dads out there (and you sons and you grandparents and you stepparents). Make sure you look for the little blurb I put in the newsletter about the history of Father’s Day (with a hilarious photo of Chuck/Dad and me). It’s pretty interesting (and hey! You’ll learn something new!).

OK, now onto business! In last Saturday’s newsletter poll, we were curious to know if you carry a generator with you when you travel in your RV. Turns out that most of you, 53 percent, have a built-in generator in your RV and 27 percent of you carry a portable one with you on your travels. A good chunk of you, 20 percent, do not travel with a generator.

Monday’s poll question asked: How old are the tires on your RV? I’ll go in order here so it’s easier to follow. Nearly a quarter of you, 21 percent, answered that your RV’s tires are less than a year old. The majority of you, 40 percent, said your tires are somewhere between one and three years old, and a quarter of you said somewhere between three and five years. A smaller 11 percent of you answered that your tires are between five and seven years and only 3 percent of you said your tires are more than seven years old. (I think that was perhaps the most boring paragraph I’ve written to date on this weekly feature. Ha. Sorry.)

Okidokie, well, Tuesday’s poll question is a bit overwhelming. I’ll attach it here to the left (click it to make it bigger) so you can read it for yourself. We asked you how much you paid for your RV and, well, here I’ll summarize: Most of you, a combined 64 percent, spent less than $75,000 on your RV, while a combined 37 percent of you spent more than $75,000. We got six votes saying that you spent more than $500,000 on your RV! You may want to remain anonymous, but I want to see photos!

Well, for those of you who were asking for more RV-related poll questions, you got ’em this week! On Wednesday we were curious to know if you run your RV’s refrigerator using mostly electricity or propane. More than half of you, 52 percent, say you always run it using electricity and only 6 percent of you always run it using propane. A large 29 percent of you use mostly electricity, but sometimes propane, and 6 percent of you use mostly propane, but sometimes electricity. Only 7 percent of you say you use both about equally. (OK, no, maybe that was the most boring paragraph I’ve ever written. Do you know how much it propanes me to write boring paragraphs?)

Do you ever wonder why airplanes always get sent to their rooms? It’s because they have such bad altitudes. Speaking of planes, I recently read an article about a giraffe at a zoo who swallowed a toy airplane. Poor guy! What a plane in his neck! On Thursday we asked you how at ease you are when flying in an airplane and a lucky 57 percent of you answered that you have no fear at all, you’re totally at ease. Nearly a third of you, 31 percent, responded that you’re slightly anxious when flying, but it’s not too bad, and 8 percent of you are very anxious throughout the whole flight. A small 3 percent of you (80 votes) are so scared of flying that you won’t travel by plane at all.

Jeesh, if only I was a writer getting paid by the word, right? Ha. That was a long one! I’ll hop out of here now so you can get on with reading all the other important things in the newsletter. Take care!