If You're Gonna Be A Bear...

 That's right boys and girls, another bus story.  You have to admit, it's a treasure trove of  hilarious, zany close calls with death. Just look at it. Here, look again. Folks, that's not normal.  You don't see those anymore.  When you do, you think something's up.  Maybe it's a traveling troop of Elvis impersonators!  Maybe it's full of Muppets on some kind of hair-brained world tour!  Maybe it's a mobile meth lab!  HUH?  Who would think that?  Oh, the West Virginia Drug Interdiction squad may think that.  In fact, when they saw me puttering up a steep mountain pass, chuffing black smoke as truckers flew by me, they were certain they'd found themselves the Pablo Escobar of mobile meth. I was just going home.  Sheesh.  I had only recently purchased it and got it out of the shop in Missouri.  The shop owner did his darndest to get me not to drive that bus.  But he was wrong.  I made it! On this trip...

 My wife says I have bacon in my pocket. It’s why all the animals everywhere we go just love me. I literally attract them. Every cat and dog of every neighbor just wants to sit on top of me and roost. I don’t have bacon in my pocket or anywhere else for that matter. I give off some kind of animalistic “this guy is cool” vibe.  It's mystical or may as well be.  I can't explain it. It’s almost as if I was kind to some mythical magical beast long ago who has since vouched for me to every animal everywhere. But that’s so not true. I was never cruel to animals growing up. I loved all our dogs and all the neighborhood cats (my family has always been allergic). But I tormented my dogs as a kid is want to do from time-to-time. I’d blow in their faces to get them to snap at me. Pull tails. Startle them to see them jump. Tease them with table food (I may or may not still do that one). So I can’t imagine having earned any clout in the animal kingdom when I was growing up.  I'll...

 Maybe you guys will find this one funny.  I'm sure it was fun to watch. One of our favorite camp sites is Circle-M in Lancaster PA.  It has a river that surrounds the whole place.  People tube it and fish it and swim in it all summer long.  Anyway, the camp ground is kind of a peninsula because of the way the river (or creek as the locals call it) goes around it.  The middle of the peninsula is raised up high.  The camp sites up there have full hookups (water, sewer, and electric) and some really good shade.  The camp sites at the edges of the peninsula are right on the water.  I guess the ground is just too soft for sewer pipes.  They only have water and electric. So, there's a big loop around the top part that loops down around the river camp sites.  The east side of the loop is a gentle slope and the west side of the loop is an unforgiving monster of a grade.  It's so bad, in fact, sometimes rigs get stuck trying to get up ...

 You guys got a kick out of my last vehicle disaster story so I thought I'd share one of the more comical ones from our past: We own a 1973 Silver Eagle RV bus-conversion.  It was originally built for Trailways, a commuter coach company.  It's a real bus.  It's also a 4-speed manual transmission.  You have to double clutch to shift gears (clutch in and out to remove from gear, clutch in and out to put in new gear).  I didn't know that for a while.  Turns out you can just clutch once for both if you time it right or just no clutch and slam that bad boy if you're feeling squirrelly.  If you can't find it, grind it, amiright? Anyway, it also doesn't have a working alternator.  Well, it has a working alternator but no working voltage controller.  Basically, the controller allows power generated to flow from the generator to the rest of the vehicle.  That means the generator (alternator) effectively provides wattage in the range of 0 to ...

We left one camp ground for a trip that was supposed to be 3 hours to get to our next camp ground. It was 12:34pm. 198 mile trip. Mostly highway. Piece of cake.  It’s now 10:30pm and we still have 30 miles to go. I hear you asking, “But Bryan, where did all that time go?”  I’m glad you asked.  You see, alternators die. Usually when you don’t want them to.  But Autozone sells new ones!  And if you’re like me, your wife and the Autozone guy may tell you, “Hey, it’s an easy install in this Autozone parking lot in some town you've never been to before. Just YouTube it! Between all of us we managed to get it installed. In a parking lot. In the dark.   I wouldn’t say this kind of thing happens a lot when full-timing, but it does happen. If you plan to RV full-time, get a good socket set and get familiar with doing stuff you saw on YouTube.