The drive home took four hours. rswfire pulled into his driveway and did not go inside immediately — he sat there with his phone and texted the salesperson first, setting terms while the day was still fresh in him. Only after that did he open the door to his house.
Oliver was right at the door. The other cat was somewhere further in, unhurried, offering the kind of greeting that reads as indifference until you remember what happened the week he went to Arizona. His mother had stayed at the house then, and the cats had ignored her entirely and camped out in his bedroom for the duration — a thing they never do. He tells that story now not as sentiment but as data: he cannot be gone from them for long. It is a constraint on the architecture, the same as tank capacity or propane draw.
The correction had come during the day. The generator does not run on diesel — it runs on propane. The salesperson had said so himself, walking it back. rswfire turns the fact over on camera: it is the fixed kind, not the pull-out kind, so it has to be taken somewhere to service. What he needs to know now is tank size, and what he can power off it, and for how long. The question underneath the question is boondocking — whether the unit can hold him somewhere for a couple of weeks without tether. He does not know yet. He says so plainly. We'll see how that goes.
Then the decision, stated without ceremony in the middle of everything else: he is buying it. He wants this one. The remaining trip is not deliberation, it is inspection. He had already told the salesperson what tomorrow would look like — two hours, no rushing, open every window, open every vent, turn on every fan, look in all the compartments. Let me know what I'm buying. The terms of the walkthrough are his to set, and he set them from the driveway before he had even taken off his shoes.
There is another unit. A 2019, one year newer, at a dealership several hours the other direction that he declines to name. More slides — one in the back where the bed is, the bed positioned differently. He liked it. He says so, then closes the door on it in the same breath: it doesn't matter, because he's not getting it. The reason is the place, not the rig. The vendor failed a criterion that sits alongside the specifications rather than beneath them.
He credits the comments on the last video — that people thought it was a good unit, that they explained the diesel question and why it costs more. He agrees with them. It was encouraging. The feedback loop is part of how the evaluation ran.
And then the transmission runs out before he does. There was something else he meant to say, and he can't retrieve it — I'm tired now. He tells the audience goodnight, says he has to drive back in the morning, and the camera turns toward Oliver one more time before it stops.