When living in a 1985 motor home there are many interesting things that happen. For example, when we went camping in the Ocotillo Wells desert there were extreme winds all day and all night. At night I would wake up startled and afraid thinking the RV was going to tip over. The whole place was bouncing! It almost felt like you were sailing on the ocean in the middle of a storm. Another thing about living in an RV is every time you move you have to make sure EVERYTHING is tied down and secure. Sometimes my husband forgets and somehow I end up almost getting into accidents following him with our baby in our Jetta sportwagen. One time a surfboard flew off the top of the RV. I swerved out of the way, did a U turn and stuffed it in the wagon. In the process, I lost my husband because he was oblivious to the whole thing. Another time our BBQ flew off the top and I had to swerve again to not hit it! I couldn't save the BBQ that time because we were on the freeway. It was a cheap one anyhow.
Before my husband put in solar panels we had to conserve our electricity when we were dry camping, which has been a lot lately. Sometimes at night we would just sit in the dark with a candle on and play music from our phones. Talk about getting rid of distractions. When you are dry camping you have to use your generator to use things like the microwave and Keurig. Well, I went out to turn it on to make some coffee and the damn thing backfired on me! Scared the shit out of me! My husband knew exactly what happened and was cracking up hysterically. I was so upset for him laughing because I had been scared shitless.
Another thing about living in an RV is that it's basically one big room. I can hear what everyone is doing and feel when they move, so can Leia. When Leia finally falls asleep we creep around the RV hoping to not wake her. That means I don't do anything that requires loud noises or opening squeaky doors. I don't even throw things away because she always gets startled when I open the trash compactor. We are left with empty water bottles on the counter. When me or my husband accidentally knocks them over its like dominoes. If my husband makes loud noises I'll give him the evil eye. Putting Leia to sleep is no small task. We also share a bedroom with her, which is fine for us. We don't mind. She has her own bed, but lately she's been waking up so often she sleeps with me after she's done feeding. All her clothes and items are also organized in the room. I stuff all of my clothes in a hallway closet. When I go to it I usually dig for my next outfit. My husband's clothes are actually stored in a pantry. Some people might think that's crazy and not enough space, but we are used to it and it really works for us. It was definitely something that took time to adjust to, but we like how much money we save in an RV, so we make anything work.
You might be wondering how my husband and I are able to keep an intimate relationship in such tight quarters with our baby. When she is sleeping in the room we just hang out in the living room where our pull out couch is. Sounds comfortable, not so much. It basically jabs your back with metal bars, but we make that work too.
Old RVs are special. They are cheap, but something is always breaking. My husband has spent hours replacing many items like our heater, hot water heater, refrigerator, replacing the toilet, trash compactor and removing the microwave multiple times because another fuse blew. At one time we didn't have hot water for months. Ever try washing oily dishes with cold water? It's not easy and usually still leaves the dishes dirty. But all those things don't bother us. We get through and fix the next broken item.
There is one negative thing about having an old RV. The cops hate you. When we entered Julian a cop pulled me over and asked why I am bringing a big Behemoth up to his town and "ruining" his roads. There have been worse times though, the scariest of all. We parked our RV on a street where other RVs were in Oceanside. Our park we were supposed to go back to had no reservations available so we needed to find a place to stay that night. This was our only option. We thought we would be fine because it was just one night. We kept all the lights off at night and hoped no one would bother us. Around 12 am that night I awoke to one officer pounding on the window next to our bed. I thought it was going to break. Another officer was pulled in front of our RV shining his bright lights through all the way back to our bedroom and another was pounding on our door.The lights were so bright, my husband thought it was daytime! Leia awoke crying hysterically. I tried to tell my husband what was going on but he was kind of out of it because he was sleepy. I grabbed Leia and went to the door. The officer asked me why we were there, blah, blah, blah. He also wondered why we parked there next to the "No Camping" sign. Oops. To make the story short he let us off the hook. Let's just say we are never doing that again. All in all it's fun and we always have an adventure! Stay tuned for more scary and funny things that happen in an old RV.
No comments:
Post a Comment