The Hill

 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 the hill.  And you really can't back up easily since it's bordered by soft ground and trees.  Oh, and a river.  If you fail big enough you get wet.  Best not to go out that way.

Unless you're me.  With a friggin city bus that was converted to an RV.  Let's take a moment to appreciate the finer points of transit vehicles.  Your average transit bus transmission is not tooled to provide the up-hill torque that most passenger vehicles have.  I mean, buses have enormous engines with insane power.  But not at the low end.  They are literally designed by sadistic engineers to ONLY travel on flat ground.  Highways, actually.  If your bus is not on a highway, it will attempt to murder you.

Where was I?  Oh yes, attempted murder.  So we were originally camped at the river until we realized our waste water tanks don't hold what we thought they did.  I was in the shower when the water stopped going down.  That's a bad sign in a house.  It's an even worse sign in an RV.  Luckily some sites had opened up on the top side where we could hook up to sewer.  So we decided to move sites.  And the bus was pointed toward the murder-death hill on the west side.  My choices were try the hill or do a 3-point turn on a river bank.  I opted for the former.

I chose this auspicious occasion to let my 5-year-old and 20-year-old ride with me.  The bus doesn't have passenger seats, so they had never actually ridden in it.  Boy would they this day!  Now, there's a very steep left curve just at the base of the exit hill.  My plan was simple:  SPEED!!!  All my physics schooling (youtube and Top Gear) had taught me that inertia is king when it comes to keeping something moving.  I needed to move that metal hunk of calamity-generating hate as fast as I dare before hitting that turn.  And BOY DID I.  I never reached second gear before the turn but I was going fast enough to scare my children and that's what counts.  

I think we got like 1/3 of the way up the hill when I realized we weren't going to make it.  The boys were anxious and wondering what I was going to do next.  So was I.  Luckily the road splits off after that turn and just at the base of the impossible-why-did-they-build-this hill.  I had to back up between the trees on that little road (which had a sign, btw, that read "no RVs greater than 10 feet").  Right next to the road at the bottom of the hill was like the remains of a concrete dock and ...well... river.  I won't say we COULDN'T end up in the river or stuck on the bank.  I just didn't even see it as a possibility.

Oh, quick aside, the door on the bus didn't latch or lock.  I used to hold it closed with a bungee cord.  Half-way through my reversing maneuver the door opened.  It's the little things, amiright?

So, I didn't even bother putting her in reverse.  I had more than enough hill to handle that backward motion.  I was careful, didn't spare the air compressor or the old breaks they squeezed.  I watched the mirrors like a Navy fighter pilot watches his instruments for a carrier landing.  I was focused.  

As we slipped off the side of the road onto soft ground things in the rig started to shift.  We were rocking side-to-side and dishes were brawling with each other in the cabinets.  The bus door was clanging open and closed as if the bus were cussing me out in American Sign Language.  And we ran right off the end of the road.  At first I wondered if this was it.  Had I finally scuttled this miserable condominium of sorrows?  No such luck.  It was just one tire.  But it got our attention. 

"Dad, I'm scared", said my 5-year-old.  "So am I, son", I replied as I shifted triumphantly into first and hit the gas.  "Hold on!" I told the boys.  I knew getting that one tire back on the road may be a bit of a kinetic experience.  And it was.  Big rocking, big noising, big black smoke out the exhaust, but we did it.  We had turned around.

My wife has a special affection for it but God do I hate that bus.

ADDENDUM:

Now almost 5 years later I'd like to note that this is one of the only things my now ten-year-old son remembers about our time in the bus.  And my wife has described to me on more than one occasion what my "maneuver" looked like from her perspective 500 yards away.  She used words like "horrified" and "what were you thinking".  Whatever.  Got the job done.