Problems Along the Way

It’s not that we are camping virgins. It’s not even that we’ve never owned a camper. But it was long ago when we hit the road, bringing our bed and toilet with us—and at that time, it was a trailer, not our turtle-style truck camper that rests on the bed of our truck and extends over the hood.

Let me be clear right off, when I leave a task—requiring more than three sequential steps—for 24 hours or more, I need to be retrained. It’s just that way for me; though not for my wife, she retains things. However, she’s worn down from having three major surgeries and a biopsy in the space of six months, and still suffers from anesthesia brain—yes there’s such a thing. She has a good excuse for any missteps that have been suffered along the way to Green Bay.

Therefore, lapses could have been predicted. Like when we tooled on down the road with the back door flapping. I can only imagine how distracting it must have been for the driver in the vehicle behind us. Not to speak of stuff that flew out; you know, the things stashed in at the last minute. We were far too proud (embarrassed) to turn around and retrieve that shit. No, when something like that happens, it’s our inclination to save our dignity. So we quickly turned a corner, out of sight, and secured the door, and then took off, cutting o
ur losses. As we continued on, we debriefed, grasping to recover shreds of our self-respect by acknowledging (rationalizing) that the idiosyncrasy of our new-used camper door apparently requires it not just be closed, but locked…

And we didn’t lose life, just material objects.

All’s good.

Who knew that sleeping in the camper in a wind would have the effect of being at sea. The guy that sold us the camper didn’t say anything about that, nor did the instruction manual—I know because my wife reads directions. The unexpected advantage was, it feels like being rocked to sleep. Though, not everyone else in the camper felt that way. Not my wife, not my dogs.

Then there was the slide-out issue. Our camper is equipped with an extension to our living space called a slide-out, which we pull in when we’re ready to leave; otherwise, we’d exceed the width of the highway, not to speak of the fact that the weight of it would cause the vehicle to list to the passenger’s side when moving—more importantly, at any moment it could send us rolling into a ditch. (Pic shows slide-out.)

Now, the great thing about traveling along down the road in our camper is that in the case of having to pee—I won’t even go there regarding the stops we make for that activity, we have only to pull over and climb in the back. The good thing, the bathroom is conveniently located by the back door; the bad thing, it’s necessary to open the slide-out half way to be able to open the door to the bathroom enough to curl around and in, albeit still a tight squeeze that scrapes the flesh from our bones—and not in a good way.

We followed our stop-and-pee procedure, at first, but then a lack of vigilance set in—developing new habits is challenging for us.

A few miles down a country road—when I was at the wheel, eyes on the road avoiding potholes—my wife said, “I think we’re tilting.”

“Uh-huh,” I smile, thinking how in the last two years, our lives have felt on tilt. (Writer’s think in words like that.) “You are so right, honey,” I went on, “I’ve felt like our lives landed in a ditch, somewhere. It’s been so stressful. I keep wondering when the cloud over our heads will…”

“No, no!” she says irritated that I’d just made a metaphor out of what she sees as our present dilemma.

That’s when I noticed her frowning into her side view mirror. Our slide-out was still extended. Not only that, we’d been mowing down the road where the high weeds lined our path…gratefully, only snagging a few small branches.

I hit the brakes.

Now here’s the embarrassing part, we made that mistake, again and again. We can’t seem to remember to close the effing slide-out after relieving our bladders.

To compensate for our declining memories, my wife devised a sure-fired plan, a new protocol as it were: It had to do with yanking down the shade that covered the windowed back door when we came in to pee. Then, when we were about to exit the camper, we’d wonder why the shade was down, and this would be our cue to pull in the slide-out.

Foolproof!

How could we forget with a cue like that, right?

Apparently, one of us was annoyed with the shade down, and flipped it back when she left from doing her business—(I’m not mentioning who the last one out was.)

Not to continue our two-stooges style ineptness, my wife made a checklist…

I’m sure it’s around here somewhere.

(For more of our camping adventures, scroll down to previous post: “Second Day to Green Bay.”)