Winter tests RVers’ patience

Published 9:00 pm Monday, February 26, 2007

The word from our silver-thatched snowbird friends nesting in Arizona is that December and January were generally miserable and cold.

So cold, in fact, that Chuck Gose, a retired truck driver, put on long pants. We’ve known him for a decade. We did not know he even owned a pair of long pants.

It is my understanding they are actually green sweat pants, but long nonetheless. He wore them one day. Folks gave him such a bad time, he went back to shorts. “I’m famous around here,” he said. “They call me the polar bear.”

Fortunately for Chuck, the weather warmed up early in February. Happy hours are far more pleasant at 80 degrees instead of 40, not counting the wind chill factor.

Still unanswered, however, is the sauerkraut question.

Usually the desert winters are warm enough to have windows and a door open in your RV so fresh air flows through during the day. Most people sleep with a window open.

In the bitter cold of January, however, most RVs were buttoned up tight, day and night, so that lack of fresh air flow may have contributed to the propane alarm problem in Bill and Judy Gardner’s trailer.

Propane alarms in an RV are very sensitive to certain smells. For example, if I use my aerosol hair spray inside, it sets off our alarm. It takes a couple of minutes between the first spray and the first alarm. Ditto if I use Pam to grease a baking pan.

One night as the Gardners were just drifting off to sleep, the shrill sound of the propane alarm was a call to get up immediately and check for problems. They went through all the safety checks. Everything seemed to be operating normally. They reset the alarm and returned to bed.

In a short time, the alarm went off again. Setting aside panic, they reviewed possible offending odors. Bill had eaten a lot of sauerkraut for dinner and as he relaxed, his intestines had produced a series of fragrant emissions, which continued after he went to bed.

They opened windows. Turned on the fan. Returned to bed an hour later. Bill’s digestive system was at peace. They slept through the night. The next day, a check of the propane alarm and all sources of propane found no explanation for the previous night’s incident.

Could it have been the sauerkraut? A lengthy discussion at happy hour drew no scientific conclusions, but lots of laughter.

Happy hours often generate animated discussions among the male participants, causing wives to wander home a little early while husbands promise they’ll be along in just a minute.

That occurred one evening outside our rig. As wives headed home and I went inside to start dinner, four men remained behind engrossed in deep conversation. One of them, a retired FBI communications expert, is compulsive about security. He never steps outside his fifth wheel without locking the door and lowering the blinds, even if he’s just going next door.

As his wife walked away, she reminded him that he had the keys and better be right behind her on his bicycle so she could get in their RV. He nodded, but never stopped talking.

Twenty minutes later, he was still talking when she stormed back in a full-tilt tizzy. Everyone within 150 yards heard her displeasure: “And then, after I crawled under the truck to get the extra key out of that thingy you put there, it was empty, too.”

Now this was a husband who should have apologized and hustled home. Instead, he chose to open mouth, insert foot.

“Oh, that’s not really where I hide the key. That box is there to fool thieves,” he said, in a tone suggesting he was explaining the obvious.

Since he had previously neglected to share that security measure with her, the tenor of her voice accelerated three decibels. If she’d had a weapon, he would have been maimed. In fact, that’s pretty much what she said before snatching the keys from his hands and storming home.

The next night at happy hour, someone mentioned that little tiff to Lydia, and she was back in the moment, but by then, we were all laughing so hard, she just threw up her hands and laughed with us.

That led to her, once again, recounting their recent adventure on their four-wheeler in the desert. It was supposed to be a short cruise, an hour or so, that lasted well into the evening.

“First, he got us lost. Always trying to get to that road he was sure was on the map he forgot to bring. Then, we have a flat tire. He has three cans of that instant tire stuff. Two were empty and the third barely had enough to pump it up.

“To get to that road, we had to cross this deep, rocky gully. Didn’t look safe to me. So he rode and I walked. He beats me to the top on the other side and tells me to ‘hurry up, it’s getting late.’ And you wonder why I get so darn mad at him.”

We loved it when Lydia recounted her misadventures with Bill, because we all know that laughter carries away stress as easily as a desert wind tumbles weeds across the valley floor.

When you live for weeks or months at a time in the limited confines of an RV, you quickly learn that you better love – and like – the one you’re with, plus have a good sense of humor, or it really will be a long, cold winter. With or without long pants.

Linda Bryant Smith writes about life as a senior citizen and the issues that concern, annoy and often irritate the heck out of her now that she lives in a world where nothing is ever truly fixed but her income. E-mail her at ljbryantsmith@yahoo.com.