I believe that I am a pretty good coach pilot. I still believe that even though I hit my mailbox while making a sharp turn into our driveway. Obviously I didn’t pull up the street far enough and turn sharp enough but no long term damage done, except to my pride.
My car driving skills while making service calls (back when I had a business)…that is another thing altogether. I tend to talk on my cell too much while driving. I get distracted by the radio, the voices in my head, and the vehicles in front of me. The last thing really bugs me. I can be behind a dump truck, or a bus carrying seniors, while talking to a customer on the phone, and I will blindly follow the bus down some street and then wonder how I got there.
If you were to ask Diane about it, she would say that I followed it because I couldn’t help myself, that I did it instinctively, like a salmon swimming upstream.
“You think so?” I would say to her.
“Yep” she might reply. “You are an old man and subconsciously you know you should be on that bus.”
“Very funny. So how do you explain my following a dump truck?”
“I can answer that. Because when you have rocks in your head, you are magnetically attracted to trucks hauling large quantities of the same material. “
Well, I don’t make stupid driving decisions when driving the coach. Not many anyway. Our first year as owners of a motor coach was the worst getting into scrapes, which included hitting a fence (actually the fence hit me), a mailbox, a tree, a tree, (no that is not a typo) and a rock or two (they hit my coach windshield) . I think that is about all. Oh, I ran over a low rock wall with our second coach, the one we have now, and I hit a telephone pole (actually the pole hit me).
If I were to list all the mishaps including bangs, bumps, holes, rips, and things that make you say “What the heck was that!”.. along with all the things that break on their own…I might have to ask myself the following question:
“What in the world has kept me in the rving (motorcoaching) world for the last ten years?”
That question is easy to answer.
Family.
It is the people we have met, the friends we have made, that keep me looking forward to hitting the road again even though I might hit something else or it might hit me.
We rvers, we motorcoachers, are a rare breed.
I don’t know how to explain it to people who don’t do what we do, how easy it is for us to make friends.
Some time ago I was at a Sonic Drive In next to a Lowes. At the edge of the Lowes parking lot was a 36 foot Motorcoach. It had its jacks down and its slide outs extended. Sitting in a lawn chair on the grass was a man named Bob and his black lab. Bob was taking it easy, smoking a cigar, and seemed to be without a care in the world.
I walked over and started talking to him. When he found out that I am also a motorcoacher he wanted to talk to me. Bob was visiting his daughter, a Navy officer, who was soon to be deployed to the Middle East. He and his wife had traveled from Arizona to see her. I told him about myself, my family and my coach. We talked for over an hour and parted as friends. Something tells me I will see him again one day.
I think we have the old American pioneering spirit still living in us. We are descendants of the people who loaded up their covered wagons and headed west. They would rally up at some fort on the trail. They shared food, and drink, and stories.
These stories were about their journeys and the friends they made along the way. They would make new friends as they would travel together. If someone’s wagon broke down, or a horse died, they would pitch in and help their fellow traveler in need.
We do the same thing now. I have helped repair a stuck Workhorse chassis or two and other coaches. My wife and I have been to lots of rallies and fed lots of people. People have looked after us. Our coaching friends on the forums, at campouts, and especially at Deer Creek Motorcoach resort helped us though some tough times more than once.
I don’t think that Robert and Barry had any idea how good a community they would be giving birth to, when they conceived the idea of building an RV resort and a motor coach resort. Deer Creek is more than a resort with clubhouse, golf course, and a lot of handsome coaches parked on pretty lots. It is not just a resort…it is a refuge. It is a fort full of good people.
As our friends Gary and Janis reminded me just yesterday; we are far more than friends, we are family. I would not give up this life for anything. I will continue to hit the road and take the risk that something unexpected might happen. Most of the time that unexpected thing is good, like meeting someone like Bob and making a friend, possibly for life.
That is the best thing about being a member of the Motorcoach Family.
Hopefully I won’t have to buy a new mailbox anytime soon.
Derrick
