Today, on the eleventh day of our one-year RV adventure, March 20th, I found myself fantasizing about being at the St. George’s Hotel in Paris, surrounded by luxury and space, sitting outside at a café and eating the most buttery, flaky croissants with a cup of coffee, listening to Francoise Hardy. Of course, I’m conveniently omitting from the fantasy the sounds and nuisances of the city: car horns and alarms, motorcycles, ambulances, dogs barking, poop on the sidewalk, hawkers, and the general hustle and bustle of city life. I don’t miss that. Not one bit.
What I do miss is convenience. Flicking a switch, pressing a button or lifting a lever, and knowing with absolute certainty (or at least 99% of the time) that a particular result will happen – a light will turn on or off, hot water will flow, the air conditioner or the heater will work as it should, whatever is in the toilet will go down and not come back up. In theory, a modern RV is supposed to have these same conveniences. In practice, a lot of things can (and do) go wrong.
In that sense, it is much like golf. Something good is supposed to happen when you swing the club – the arc of the ball landing somewhere you expect, hope for. But in practice, a lot of things can (and do) go wrong in the space between taking the club back and swinging it down again to hit the ball. That space – let’s call it the Unknown Unknown – is where your hopes and dreams for that swing go to die. For those of you smart enough not to play golf – that most frustrating and rewarding of sports – take it from me that there is a similar space in RV life. The space between the time you flick a switch, press a button, lift a lever, and what is supposed to happen does not happen.
Ten days into our one-year adventure, we have had the following mishaps:
1- Electrical problems that required calling out a mobile RV technician. (Cost: $330, which we will hopefully be reimbursed as part of warranty).
2- Repeated error codes on the thermostat that controls the AC and heat (which we realized eventually was due to the electrical problem above).
3- Struggling to get the Jeep transfer case into and out of gear for towing mode a continuing problem leaving us having to rock the Jeep back and forth manually in neutral to get the gears to connect.
4- Dumping the black holding tank at a gas station then losing another 30 minutes to find somewhere else to fill up the water tank, then arriving at the overnight campsite only to realize it had water and power and there was therefore no need to fill up the water tank.
5- The toilet backing up (which we fixed temporarily with a $10 snake from the local Ace hardware), a problem that recurred three times in the first two weeks.
6- Waking up to a broken water pump due to leaving it on all night. (Warranty service has been called, and we are awaiting diagnostics).
Much of our daily life camping is spent solving problems, setting up and breaking down camp, planning the next stop (routes, reservations, etc.), figuring out why things in the RV aren’t working the way they are supposed to, taking the dog for a walk, up at night because of the restless cat who has become completely nocturnal due to fear of all the strange sights and noises during the day, standing around watching Marina connect and reconnect all sorts of hoses and cables and tinker with tools much of the day, researching how to do things that we have never done before.
That’s how it’s been for the first ten days. As I write this, we have just finished three weeks, and as the days go by and the learning curve becomes less steep, the joyful moments of living do eventually outnumber the problem-solving because we have also experienced the following:
- The satisfaction that comes from solving a seemingly overwhelming and intractable problem
- For me, a childlike glee in doing things for their own sake and without expectation of result: canoeing, sitting still in the middle of the day, in the middle of a forest, listening to birdsong, staring into the flames of the campfire.
- The peace that fills one’s soul, gazing out onto a lake at sunset, far from the noise of civilization
- The comfort of huddling close to the fire on a chilly night.
- Confidence in our skills, knowing that there is no situation that can get the better of us.
Eventually, the blog posts are going to be about the places we visit and the things we see rather (and with a lot of pictures!) than the problems we’re solving. One can only hope.
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