Camping--MY kind of camping......

I haven't been writing much lately, I've been too busy in this semi-retired state I find myself in today. I used to work every day. I was counting down the number of days before I could say I was, "semi-retired". I had it all planned, I would have all kinds of time to do the things I've wanted to do in the past, but was too tired to do when I came home from work. I knew when I finally said, "So long..." to the 9 to 5 routine I'd be golden. I don't know what happened, but damn! I'm busier now than I was when I was working full time.

I know the first paragraph has nothing to do with the title but I wanted to ease into the camping stuff slowly. I have a "thing" about camping and all it entails, and it takes me a few minutes to really start the brain blood flowing to make things coherent (chalk that up to my advanced age...the age that advanced another year the other day ...Yeesh...you'd think when you had so many birthdays society would give you a pass on one or two...not so....)


Anyway... I was in a parking lot today and I nearly drove into one of those stupid cement poles the lights are attached to, as I tried to read the banners, signs and bumper stickers on one of the largest RV's I've ever seen. The banners, etc. were professing the owners love for Jesus, the bible and all the other stuff that many Christians feel the need blare out for everyone else to see how pious they are. Now, before you get all hot and bothered about my possible "dissing" (see I'm not THAT old I know what that means...although that's probably not the term used today for disrespect...but you know what I mean) someones beliefs. I think you don't need to BLAST your beliefs from the highest mountain, or in this case the largest RV, in the world...or the Walmart parking lot. But, whatever floats your boat...go for it...(I wonder how the guy would feel if some other RVer had the Koran slogans all over his RV???I don't think that would go over as well...ya think?)

The RV reminded me of the time we had an RV, albeit not one of those giant things. Ours was more like a pregnant large van. It sort of looked as though someone took a van, put a giant straw into the front window and puffed out the sides and the rear end. It slept four, although you had to be pretty small, unfortunately we aren't small. It had all the amenities for little people, not dwarf type little people, more like leprechaun little people. There was a tiny ...imagine a coffin standing upright....area for the bathroom. It was kind of cool. You had to press a couple of buttons on both sides of the coffin, pull out, and the coffin became like a double sized coffin. The carpeted floor came up and lo, and behold the floor became a waterproof area with a drain in the middle:a shower area. The toilet was directly in front of the door, above the toilet you pressed another magic button and a sink dropped down, faucet and all. Yep, the coffin became a full fledged bathing/toilet facility. You couldn't turn around in it, but it had all the amenities needed to do your duty. I must admit though, there were many times when you could see a rear end popping out of the shower curtain. But it could be used as the needed bathroom.

It was OK when two people were using the RV, but if you had more than that, well let's just say it wasn't pretty. Between making sure no one was in the way of the "magic moving coffin" and the door to the outside, we were always struggling to climb out of the way, over the top of things and in general trying hard to have fun, fun, fun. Bahh....It was a pain in the neck.

My idea of camping is going to a motel that doesn't have a sauna, so when this RV thing came into our lives I was less than thrilled. I know, you're wondering why did we buy it? We didn't. I inherited it from my Dad.

My Dad always wanted a big boat (yes, I said "boat"). Mom didn't want anything to do with a boat, so they compromised and bought this, pretty high tech (for the times) RV. He researched it for months and found exactly what he thought was the greatest thing since sliced bread. It really was quite an engineering miracle (for leprechauns). It was state of the art. He convinced my Mom that they could save money on the trips from Florida up to New York to see the grand kids....Why, he even tried to convince her they could come up more often since they would be saving so much money on motels and food on the way up. It worked. The thought of seeing the grand kids more often won her over.

They bought the thing. It was really spiffy the first time we saw it. Although, it did have a pretty good dent in the rear end... My Dad hit a pole in a gas station...the pole was connected to a display of antifreeze...the antifreeze displayed was knocked over...someone trying to avoid the multitude of rolling antifreeze bottles hit a police car...the cop was standing outside the car and fell into the garbage can...My Dad got a ticket........ He was really upset about the whole thing as my Mom was trying hard not to laugh herself into wet pants as she was telling the story...That was the first trip they had taken in the "thing". It didn't bode well for the future.

My Dad parked "thing" along side of our house and plugged it in. He and my husband would sit out there, watch TV and drink some beer. It was the first "Man Cave" I think. He loved it. My Mom, on the other hand, thought it was a pain in the neck. She tried to keep it clean and nearly killed herself trying to contort her body in anything but human shapes to wash, dust, disinfect, shine, polish and all the other things women of her generation do to keep everything looking like no one has ever eaten, slept, walked, or used the bathroom. It was nuts... The result of this was my Dad wanted a place to relax, Mom wanted to make sure that anyone looking at the "thing" would know it was clean, neat and tidy. (for who? the freakin leprechauns?) As I said...nuts....

They did have a few good times with it and I'm glad my Dad got to go in it a few times. My Dad became ill the following year and before he died he gave the "thing" to me........(remember, my idea of camping is going to a Motel without a sauna..).

The kids were older, and the thought of going anywhere with their parents was a fate worse than death to them. Consequently, it was Larry and I who used the "thing" for camping. To give the "thing" its due, it had all the options that make camping easier. It had a furnace,central air conditioning, a generator, gas stove, electric lights, alternate source of power, a control panel, cable connections, portable microwave, sink,built in cabinets and a whole lot of other things that make camping easier for those of us that don't do "dirt, tents, and the like".

We used the "thing" for all kinds of purposes. It moved kids into dorms, out of dorms, into apartments, out of apartments, brought engines home from Canada for cars that didn't run( nor would they ever run...but that's for another blog entry). All in all we did some fun things with it other than camping. It was great to take a bunch of people to football games, (talk about the perfect tailgate party vehicle...it was that). But like everything and everyone, it gets old.

Some of the trips we took in the "thing" were legend though. One in particular...now listen carefully, I can't say this more than once because I'm convinced we're (Larry and I) still on the lam from the Canadian Mounties, or at least the police of Kingston Ontario.... I think we're ok in Nova Scotia, but I KNOW we can never go on the Catamaran from Bar Harbor to Halifax...unless we wear disguises.

We decided to take a trip up to the St. Lawrence River in Canada. Our plan was to cross the river on a tiny bridge in New York over to Kingston Ontario. The weather was gorgeous. Everything was going fine. We went through customs with no problem. We made our way toward the beautiful city of Kingston. Larry was tired so I was the driver. Kingston is a pretty good sized city and we didn't know our way around the city. We had maps, but this was before the days of Mapquest or GPS devices. While I was driving through the city the traffic was building and I was lost (note here...this is not unusual for me..I'm navigationally challenged, unless it's for shopping). I noticed there was a street fair going on and decided we had to stop to check it out. Larry was resting his eyes. At the point where I decided to drive into a parking lot, a car pulled directly in front of me making me pull the wheel of the "thing" sharply to the left, Larry fell off the seat in back, the "thing" lurched, as we drove over a kind of curb....Now, you would think that it was OK, and it would be if this was a car. However, the "thing" had its grey water (not so bad used water) and its black water (the worst stuff you can imagine that comes out of you, mixed with toilet paper, chemicals and water) under the unit near the tires... When I ran over the curb thing, I ripped off the ...BLACK water reservoir, so our toilet was spilling out onto the paved parking lot. I looked in the rear view mirror in horror as I saw little globs of stuff mixed with fluorescent blue water leaving a trail behind me.

Now I ask you, what do you do in a situation like that? Well, I'll tell you what I did. I stopped the thing, grabbed a towel from the coffin bathroom, jumped out and stuffed the towel into the open raw sewage pipe that was attached to the "thing" spewing out its guts. By this time Larry was wide awake and running around the parking lot trying to find our missing toilet receptacle and cap, paper towels in hand, trying desperately to clean up what he could...It was awful...there was no way we could clean it up ourselves and I don't think the city of Kingston had enough water to neutralize the blue chemicals that were spewed all over that parking lot, not to mention the unmentionables.

After a short time we realized we couldn't clean it all up. We did a damned good job. Luckily we had a huge supply of paper toweling and old towels. When we thought we had camouflaged the place enough, we moved the RV to another parking lot so no one could track us....

I looked up to the sky. The sky that was blue and cloudless, and prayed to all that is holy as I said, "Look this was an accident. We didn't mean to deface this foreign land. If you could just give us some rain about now, it would be really kind of you". We honestly didn't know what to do except clean ourselves up (no easy task) and go to the fair.... We were worried, thinking about all the fines we would face if anyone knew we were the culprits of "the toilet that took over Kingston".

I have to tell you I was a wreck. Larry took it in stride figuring if the worse came to worst he'd probably be OK in a jail in Canada, at least he'd get a break from his work. He thought the whole thing was hilarious....He didn't do it...I did...

While we were at the fair, Larry eating all the things I wanted but couldn't think about eating, I was watching to see if the Mounties or the police were coming after us. I looked around and I watched the sky as I witnessed, what I am sure was the hands of the Gods, pushing aside the blue sky and pushing in the storm clouds. It started pouring rain like I've never witnessed in my life. I stood in the middle of the fair, looked up at the sky and thought to myself, "I will never again deny the power of prayer......" And I'm not all that religious, honest.......I'm convinced it was my Dad's hand at work with the help of some higher power, knowing we needed ALOT of water to neutralize the situation a couple of blocks away...

We managed to jury rig the toilet and left the city of Kingston quickly, in the rain. We haven't been back...The story about the Catamaran will be for another day....