Tag Archives: Travel Tribulations

Peeping Toms, Ticks and Trouble

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Image

Like any good Mid-Life Crisis purchase, the 1955 Aljoa camper I bought has been nothing but problems since the day I brought it home.
[Click here and here and here and here to get caught up.]

Image 1Recently, I was required to pay $300 for steel plates to be welded on the undercarriage that will support the special-ordered stabilizing jacks I needed because I’m a princess and can’t sleep in a crooked bed.

Then, on the way home from the the stabilizing jack installation, I failed to remove the grates off the stove and as I careened around turned a corner, they flew off and shattered into a zillion pieces.  Sigh. Do you know how hard it is to find someone who welds odd pieces of an un-nameable type of metal together?

Ignoring the fact that three windows were without screens and I had no spare tire, I decided Memorial Day weekend would be her maiden voyage. I was as excited as a five-year-old with a new toy.  Husband has not been all that thrilled with my mid-life crisis-itis so I planned the trip with my friend, Mary.

Homicidal Maniac

Peeping Tom

I was to arrive at her house by 9:30 so we could fill the water tank and tackle the last project preventing me from camping – installing blinds to keep all the Peeping Toms away. Yes, I’d be parking in the center of 130 acres of remote family farmland, but you never know who might be out there.

I got a bit of a late start because I needed to bring my entire home with me, including the two-year-old cowboy hat that’s never been worn. Everything but the kitchen sink

Then I had to hook up the camper by myself, which is no small feat, let me tell you.

Finally, I arrived on Mary’s doorstep at 10:30 am. I dragged eight roller blinds out of the car and onto the driveway.

“Uh-oh,” she said. “The cordless screwdriver isn’t working.”

“No problem.” I said, too excited to care who’d see me in my wrinkled birthday suit. I tossed the blinds in the back of the car and off we went.

“Uh oh,” Mary said, halfway to our destination.  “We forgot to fill the water tank.”

“No problem.” I laughed and pulled into the Home Depot where my niece, Kim, works.

Gettin' 'er done.She convinced them to let us use their garden hose to fill my little eight gallon tank. A small crowd gathered. We stood around talking and laughing while we waited for the tank to fill.

“Ha, ha,” Kim said. “It sure takes a long time to fill such a little tank.”

“It sure does!” I laughed.

Wait. It doesn’t take that long.

I ran to the other side of the camper where the tank was located. Water cascaded from under the cargo door.

“Uh-oh,” Mary said, handing the hose to Kim.

“No problem.” I hurried back to the side of the camper with the fill cap and snapped it shut. “Let’s just go.”

Mary and I climbed in the car and headed off to the farm. Thirty minutes later, I pulled off the road and onto the grass choked path that leads to a hill overlooking the entire property and miles beyond.

No peeping Toms here.Weirdly, the magic camping fairies had not prepared our camping site, so made an emergency call to brother Rick and nephew Jordan pleading with them to come out and mow a patch of grass for us.

While we waited for them to arrive, I opened the door to the camper. Water ran across the floor and out, onto my shoes.

“Uh-oh,” Mary said.

“No problem?” My confidence wavered.

We examined the source of the water and discovered that there wasn’t a leak. Evidently, back at Home Depot, we’d been overfilling the tank by several gallons and the water shot out a pinhole-sized air vent in the tank – sending water, not just out the cargo door, but all over the floor of the camper.

Grass WhistleFortunately I’m a germaphobe, so had everything packed inside plastic tubs. We dragged the contents of the camper out to the grass, but not before we set up our tick trap. Mary is a bug-aphobe and insisted we lay a white sheet down so we could see the ticks as they marched over to attack us. This would have been easier if the grass weren’t three feet tall, but we managed. We sat around in the sun making grass whistles, flicking creepy black ticks off the white sheet and waiting for the interior to dry.

I closed my eyes, tilted my face toward the bright sunshine and, sighed with contentment, knowing all my problems were behind me.

“Uh-oh,” I could hear Mary say. “This is Crazie Town and problems are never behind you.”

Tune in next week, for the rest of the story.

This Game Called Spoons

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I survived the family vacation, but I’m not sure I can say the same for my nephew’s kids.

When he and his wife arrived with their four, very well behaved, little girls they looked something like this.

Good Girls

They sat quietly, shared their toys without complaint and volunteered to clean up.

However, after the residents of Crazie Town taught them how to have pillow fights, how to rip the winning Slap Jack card from their little sister’s hand and how to shout taunts of “DRAW BABY, DRAW” while playing vicious games of Uno, they looked like this.

Bad Girls

As I was apologizing to my nephew for his daughters latest Slap Jack fight, he said it reminded him of the time he came to visit Crazie Town as a kid and we played some evil game called Spoons.

“Spoons?” his eldest daughter asked.  “What’s Spoons?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said.  “It’s kind of like musical chairs only with cards and spoons.  You probably wouldn’t like it any way.”

Five minutes later she quietly sidled up beside me and laid a stack of spoons on the table.  “Teach me this game…” her eyes searched mine, hungry for knowledge…”this game called Spoons.”

I hesitated, not sure if she was ready for such an evil activity because here are the “rules” as they are known in Crazie Town.

1.  Remove all chairs and pull dining room table into the center of the room.

2.  Place spoons (one less than number of players) in center of table.

3. Players stand around the edge of the table.  Note:  Taller or gullible people are to be assigned the corners.

4.  Shuffle several decks of cards together and deal four to each player.

5.  Dealer draws one card from the deck.  He/She keeps it toward their match or passes it face down to the next person who picks it up and does the same.

6.  When a player manages to get three of a kind they calmly reach for a spoon, as does everyone else.

7.  The spoon-less person earns a letter toward the spelling of the word S-P-O-O-N.  (Or the spelling of LOSER, IDIOT, etc.)

In Crazie Town, rule number six is…shall we say…negotiable.

I remember a game where my older brother chased me through the dining room and kitchen, up the stairs and into the attic where he wrenched the winning spoon from my hand.  For some unknown reason, this was ruled “Fair Play” and thus, the game of Full Contact Spoons was born.

My first Thanksgiving dinner with my husband’s family almost ended in a trip to the emergency room when he thought it would be funny to sweep all the spoons onto the floor.  Husband and his daughter chased a spoon across the living room, bumping into a large bookcase that would have crushed them had someone not grabbed it at the last minute.  (Said person never releasing control of their precious spoon, of course.)

I once taught the game to a dozen, quite civilized, British people who, within ten minutes were standing atop a fifteen foot long antique harvest table wrestling and screaming for spoons.  The tournament came down to two men, my husband being one of them. The other being a proud gay man.  (As an aside…this proud gay man loved to sunbathe nude.  The first day of our trip, he came strolling out of the house naked and plopped himself down next to my husband whose only reaction was to ask “could you point that thing the other direction?)   But I digress.  On this particular evening of the Spoons game that came down to two men, we quickly chose sides and stood behind our Olympians shouting our support.  Year’s later, the results are still disputed and arguments deteriorate into who saved whom in what war.

Is that the kind of activity in which a little seven year old girl should be participating?

My better judgement did prevail and my niece left the family vacation for home without the knowledge of This Game Called Spoons.

At least until next year.