Time Zone: Eastern
Today's Weather: in the high 60sºs, cloudy mix
Length of Trip: 4 days/3 nights
Next stop: Tampa, FL
“Don’t worry, we teach you everything you need to know, free of charge!”
“These things are made with eighty-year-old ladies in mind! You’ll pick it up in a heartbeat!”
For months before buying an RV I tried to imagine all the possible questions I might ask during my RV 101 session, wanting to cover every last scenario we might encounter, from the mundane to the outlandish. I thought of RV 101 as the most crucial moment of our RV life, the dim light of knowledge that would guide us through a morass of mechanical failure.
As we walked around the rig with our mechanic I took copious notes, trying to catch his phrasing verbatim in my notebook. This was the gospel and I had only one shot at setting it down for future generations. Unfortunately I was so far out of my element that I comprehended only a fraction of what I wrote.
“Excuse me, sir, did you say, ‘Turn the handle’ or ‘Burn the handle’?” I had no barometer for plausibility, much less relevance.
The more I wrote, the more I panicked, and the less I retained. As our circuit of the unit came to a close the fatal moment arrived. Ask all ye questions now or forever pay ye hundreds of dollars in repairs because ye held yer peace.
Glancing at the control panel, Jonathan saw a switch we had not covered. It was labeled with only one enigmatic word: BEDROOM.
“What’s this switch do?” he asked.
Our mechanic wrinkled his nose and then exhaled heavily.
“Yeah, so, we couldn’t figure that out,” he said. “But you’ll get it when you need to. If something goes wrong and you can’t figure out why, flip that switch and see if it’s fixed. So yeah, that’s that. Any other questions?”
Class dismissed.
Tomorrow is our three-month anniversary of continuous life in the RV. Here’s a round-up of a few topics I’d cover in my own RV 101 course, as instructed by the events of the last ninety days.
1. Before you pull in, make a plan for how you’ll pull out. This is the first rule we learned and was the result of our closest scrape with catastrophe. Read more about it in this post.
2. Read the owner’s manual. Then read it again. And then when you encounter a problem don’t do anything before consulting it. RV manufacturers understand that travel and use result in break-down. There are manual overrides for almost everything and more importantly there are warnings for other things that can break if you attempt to fix a problem in an inappropriate way. The owner’s manual can’t stop bad things from happening but it can help keep you from making them worse.
4. Water has weight. One of an RV’s restrictions is how much weight it can hold. This is not dictated only by the strength of the frame but also by the capacity of the motors that must lift it up and down when parking and leveling. The owner’s manual (read it) will tell you the “dry weight capacity” of these motors and they mean this literally. If you’re at your dry weight capacity and you fill your fresh water tank, in our case 66 gallons, then in that case you have added 500 pounds of weight to your load. Ask your leveling jacks to lift that and they’ll not-so-kindly refuse.
5. All water freezes at 32ºF unless you do something to make it reconsider. If you have your furnace on, which chances are you will when the temperature has dipped that low, you shouldn’t have to worry about the water that’s actually in your rig. To take care of the hose that gets the water into your tanks you can buy a nifty heated water hose that automatically warms itself when the temperature goes below freezing. As for the water source, you’re at the mercy of your campsite. If they haven’t winterized their spigots you’re going to be out of luck for water until the temperature comes above freezing again. The best you can do is fill up with fresh water, disconnect from the soon-to-freeze ground source, and kindly ask your deity of choice to warm the crust of the earth upon which you sit before the fresh water runs out. It’s also important to note that if you’ve left some valves or tanks open that the owner’s manual (READ IT) instructs should habitually be closed, your furnace may not be able to keep the water inside the rig from freezing. In Indianapolis it took us three days to discover that this was why our kitchen sink was frozen even though the rest of our unit was piping hot.
7. When in doubt, don’t freak out. Or as Jonathan put it, wait before calling a mechanic. Read your owner’s manual(!!!), talk to your neighbors, and use your head. Your RV is like your body, nobody knows it like you do. Is this sniffle a cold or allergies? Is the gas line pinched or is the electrical system failing to power the ignition? Don’t think of a mechanic like a doctor, think of him like a surgeon. Wait until the time calls for drastic measures because he’s gonna cut up your time, not to mention your rig, and charge you handsomely for the pleasure.
8. Respect the laws of physics and accept that you might not completely understand them. Your rig is an object in motion and so is every single little thing you put in it. Your instincts can help you make rules for what you put where. Any cabinet door that opens in the direction of travel is going to be encouraged to open every time you step on the brake. Reconsider storing heavy things in those cabinets and instead put them behind doors that open perpendicularly to the rig’s motion. Operate by the rule that if something can fall farther down, it will. But also remember that physics is extremely complicated and unless you spend a lot of time analyzing predictive models of motion for every last thing you put in every last cabinet and drawer, every once in awhile you’re going to get some unpredicted results. A picture frame that had ridden safely for hundreds of miles in a desk drawer somehow found its way not just out of the drawer and onto the floor but underneath the giant metal foot of the recliner, a piece of furniture so heavy I can’t pick it up on my own. Sweeping up the remains of the picture frame, which had been about two inches thick, I had the unsettling realization that the only explanation for this event is that our huge, unwieldy recliner jumps at least two inches off the floor while we are in transit. I was suddenly eyeing it suspiciously as I vacuumed up the glass. What other hidden talents might it possess?
One thing I’m hoping our RV 101 class will address as the semester continues is the still-unrevealed purpose of the switch labeled BEDROOM. I can’t quite believe that it’s meant to do nothing. But so far I’ve been able to make my bedroom work without it and so it’s not a topic over which I’m losing any sleep.
Miles Driven with RV: 5426.3 miles
Days Lived in RV: 76 days
Camps Overnighted in RV: 12 RV parks, 1 Walmart, 1 Casino Parking Lot
States Camped in RV: 10 (TX, AL, TN, IN, KY, IL, NC, WV, MD, SC)