When I was in High School I was exposed to a poet named Gary Snyder. My favorite poem of all time is a short one of his:
“After weeks of watching the roof leak, I fixed it tonight by moving a single board.”
This regularly comes into my head when I am being complacent or too lazy to fix something.
Our campground at Yellowstone was the first one that we had to back into. I have referred to the travel trailer as a reverse Tardis. It is bigger on the outside. After about 40 minutes of fighting it, we got the travel trailer kind of in in its spot. We had already made a bit of a raucous and our neighbors were out to gawk at the newbie goofballs. One even commented, “I bet you need a drink after that.”
Since we were in, and a little embarrassed, we decided to leave it how it was, even though the rig was not optimally where we wanted it on the site.
After getting the travel trailer disconnected from the truck, hooking up the sewer, electric and water, we pulled the slides out…and realized they wouldn’t extend all the way because we were too close to the fence in the back and the fresh water spigot on the side. We were exhausted and decided we would try it as is and see how it went.
You guessed it. It went poorly. After a week of fighting it, bumping into wall edges, windows half covered, and worried about leaks, we decided we had to take the time to fix it. With that mindset and a good nights sleep, we were able to fix it pretty quickly on a Saturday morning. Once positioned right, everything worked great.
NOTE: A month later a helpful YouTube channel pointed out that you should know the depth of your slides to make sure you won’t hit anything when you pull in. A tape measure to ensure this is a helpful device to have. This would have been handy information.
~Ben