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.
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