ONE OF THE JOYS OF RVING IS THAT NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE, YOU ARE HOME.BY MARGARET HANNA

One of the joys of RVing is that, no matter where you are, you are home. Same bed, same dishes, same stuff. Only the scenery and the neighbours (and neighbourhood) change.

BUT . . .

The TV and magazine commercials that extol the joy and euphoria of RVing don’t tell you about what can go wrong. To wit: our two misadventures this winter.

(Mis)Adventure #1: We decided to go to San Carlos on the upper end of the Sea of Cortez (a.k.a. the Gulf of California) in Sonora, Mexico, this winter. Driving south from Nogales to San Carlos requires transiting the city of Hermosillo, a metropolis of some 700,000+ inhabitants. The highway through town is narrow and congested. Traffic goes hell-bent-for-leather fast; like there is no tomorrow; like accidents don’t happen and if they do, well, so be it. Did I mention that the semi-trailers think they own the road? The route is not well-signed, either. We had successfully, but not without some panic and rapid last-minute changes of lanes, negotiated the oh-my-gosh-is-this-where-we-turn-it-must-be-because-all-the-semi-trailers-are-turning-too section of Hermosillo, when WHAM!

First, some information:

A Mexican speed bump is called a tope (pronounced toe-pee). They come in all shapes and sizes. They’re everywhere – the entrances to towns or school zones, at important intersections, or “just because.”

You quickly learn to fear topes. You have to crawl over them. Carefully. S-l-o-w-l-y.

Most are marked. Some are not. It’s the unmarked ones that get you.

Back to the story.

We were out of the worst part of Hermosillo. Our heart rate was beginning to slow down. We were going maybe 40 km/hr (25 mph), tops, when WHAM! We hit an unmarked tope. The truck went KA-WHUMP! The trailer went KA-WHUMP!

We said, “Oh, @#$%^%$#@! That’s not good!”

We couldn’t stop. There was nowhere to stop. An hour later, we pulled into a Pemex station.

We opened the trailer. We took a deep breath. We went in.

We saw devastation.

A cupboard door had flown open, spewing glasses, glass bowls, plates everywhere. Do I need to point out that the glassware had shattered? Into a million pieces? Everywhere?

The wooden knife block had leapt three feet from its spot and had landed on top of our beautiful, hand-made ceramic garlic keeper that was now in pieces. Spices had flown out of the rack and broken, and spices were strewn everywhere, mixed in with the glass splinters. Milk – Milk? – was running all over the floor. We opened the fridge door – the plastic milk jug had cracked.

No point in trying to clean up the mess now; there was still an hour to go before getting to San Carlos and we had to get there before dark. We closed up the trailer and carried on.

It took us many hours to clean up the mess once we had set up the trailer. Fortunately, we had cold beer in the fridge.

Two-and-a-half months later, we still find the odd piece of glass.

(Mis)Adventure #2: We were en route from Las Cruces, NM, to Ajo, AZ. We stopped at the Texas Canyon rest stop, just east of Benson AZ, to stretch our legs and take advantage of the facilities. When I came back, I did the usual walk-around the trailer just to make sure everything was fine. I walked down the passenger (door) side of the trailer. Yep, everything’s still locked, shut, etc. I walked around the back and up the driver (street) side.

Hmmm, what’s that on the window? No, wait! That’s, that’s . . .

My brain could not process what my eyes were seeing. There was no window. It was gone! All that was left were the hinge at the top, with glass fragments adhering, and the opening mechanism at the bottom, also with glass fragments adhering. I stuck my finger through where the window was supposed to be and touched . . . the window screen!

WTF!

I saw DH (short for “Dear Hubby”) exiting the men’s room. I walked towards him. “Our window’s broken,” I said. “What?” he said.

Well, to make a long story short, we called an RV repair shop in Tucson. The man there was very sympathetic but said he couldn’t guarantee when, if ever, he’d get a replacement window. We went to Ace Hardware, bought a piece of plexiglass and taped it over the gaping hole (using the really tough tape made by a manufacturer I will not name but that goes by the name of one of the great apes).

We did such a good job of taping on the plexiglass that we’re not sure if we will ever order a new (and probably really expensive) window. Oh, maybe we should.

The moral of the story is this: Boring trips yield no stories worthy of retelling. So go RV-ing. Who knows what adventures you will encounter.

P.S. My grandparents, Abe and Addie Hanna, had a few (mis)adventures of their own when they traveled to the homestead in 1910. Here’s a teaser:

We had a dreadful fright that first afternoon. We were travelling through a very hilly region and going down a hill when there was a snapping sound from under the wagon and suddenly the wagon pitched forward and pushed the horses ahead faster than they wanted to go. I can’t remember if I screamed. I almost fell off but managed to hang onto the wagon for dear life. Abe was shouting “Whoa! “and pulling at the wagon brake which seemed to do no good at all. Fortunately, it wasn’t a big hill, and Abe managed to guide the horses down the slope and stop safely. My heart was pounding. I got off the wagon, but my legs were shaking so much I could barely walk.

“What happened?” I asked.

Read what did happen in Chapter Four: “Along the Pole Trail,” in Our Bull’s Loose in Town!” Tales from the Homestead.