Tag: RV

Whoosh!

Flutter…

Flitter…

Rumble… rumble… bump..

“What the?”

I had hit the RV brakes hard and everything not battened down came flying toward the cab.

The thing is – on the road nothing should be free to take flight. Still, glossy flyers fluttered like leaves as slick pamphlets skidded across the carpet.

This was my wife’s fault. She is the one with a mania for tourist brochures. Every time we pull into an RV park or a tourist information center, she succumbs to the magnetism of the pamphlet rack and starts plucking.

Sometime I call her on it.

“A zipline? Really?”

She shrugs off my skepticism with, “You never know.”

This from a woman who avoids stairs.

“A gocart track?”

“I got that for you.”

“Then put it back.”

“Why?”

“Because there are people there.”

It is the essential difference between us. I travel to get away from crowds. It is why I convinced her to come to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The UP is the nearest place to us that is far enough away, so no one goes there.

She is more sociable than I. Perhaps it is why she collects flyers. They remind her of places where people linger.

But that aside, all the material she had been gathering during our travels was now wedged between the brake pedal and the floor.

I almost blew my top.

I had warned her many times about leaving that stuff about and now my worst fears had been realized. The stuff was a hazard, and I was tempted to throw it all out on the highway.

But then I remembered my wife’s favorite film: The Long Long Trailer.

It is an old Lucy and Desi comedy about a couple who cross the country in their new travel trailer. The show is both fun and funny, the way only old films used to be – but this one was hitting a little too close to home. Luci’s character collects rocks as mementos of her travels.

In time, Desi fears the rocks are becoming too much and at the foot of a steep mountain pass, he tells her to lighten the load. Instead she hides them, and naturally her rocks do the same thing as my wife’s pamphlets. Desi blows his top, and it almost ends their marriage.

So I know not to do that – but wait!

I could account for the whoosh, flutter and flitter, but what about the rumble, rumble and bump?

Oh no!

Could it be?