We are currently embroiled in a search for a used caravan to
become our new home on our travels around Australia. This is a time, energy and motivation sapping
endeavour which seems to involve great amounts of either sitting at the computer
searching out caravans for sale, or driving all over the country side to view
any such caravans. Both activities are
injurious to one’s health as both involve way too much time spent sitting and
too little time moving.
Yesterday, we
drove all the way to Port McQuarrie – I don’t even want to talk about how far
that is – to look at a caravan that we thought was going to be “the one.” We had looked at all the available, checked
all the specifications, asked the owner dozens and dozens of questions, thought
and thought about the caravan, and, decided in the end, that, although the van
was a bit heavier than we would like, it had everything we needed at a good
price.
After five hours on the road, we finally drove
down the street to view the caravan and I felt incredibly nervous as I had an –
I presumed - irrational fear that something we hadn’t thought of would be wrong
with the caravan and we would have driven all this way for nothing. My nervousness evaporated as we looked at the
caravan. It was in very good shape, as
described, and had everything we were looking for. As part of our checking process, we pulled
out the tape measure and measured the caravan – advertised as 14 feet long – at
over 15 feet! Both Doug and I felt as if
we had been hit by a brick.
In some
degree of shock, we went down to the local beach, went for a swim and then
tried to think rationally about buying the caravan. We had driven over 400 km to view this
caravan which made us feel some degree of commitment towards buying the
caravan. On the other hand, we had
previously decided that 14 feet was the absolute maximum length caravan we
wanted. Had we known this caravan was
actually over 15 feet, we would never even have considered it. Yet here we were, considering it simply
because we had put so much effort into researching and viewing it.
The decision making process reminded me of my
mountain days. When you ski or hike a
long way to get to the top of a slope or the bottom of a climb and when you get
there, find that conditions are such that descent or ascent is overly
dangerous. At those times, it is hard to
turn back as you already feel committed to the ascent or descent. You have travelled a long way, convinced
friends to come with you, passed by other objectives, scored good weather all
to get to this one spot and achieve this one goal. Yet all those things are irrelevant to the
decision at hand, which should be made on whether or not the descent or ascent
is safe under the conditions you have and not on extraneous factors.
In the end, we decided against the caravan,
realizing that all the extraneous factors influencing us – such as the many
extras that came with the van, the price, the distance we’d driven and the time
we had invested – while persuasive, were actually irrelevant.
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