In high school one of my favorite English teachers had us read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (a Nigerian Novelist). It was a short but powerful book that I would still recommend. Although google tells the adult version of me that the novel dealt with how the prospect and reality of change affect various characters, the most vivid memory I have of this book was the delight the high school version of me had at discovering the publisher stamped “Things Fall Apart” on the inside binding of the cover.
Our adventure has a lot of parallels to the book. Each member of our family has dealt with change differently along our journey. We have each had ups and downs as we have adapted to our 400 square foot space and completely different, changing landscape. There have been arguments, tears and plenty of pouting and that was just me. In the end though, the good have greatly outweighed the bad and our laughter carries us through the tough days.
One thing that remains consistent is the amount of things that actually fall apart on a travel trailer as you bounce your home along the road at 60 mph. Going into this experience, I knew things broke easily on a traveling home. We had seen it in enough videos, but I was not prepared for just how quickly things actually broke.
June 4th: Buy RV and get it home. Modified the bunkroom and resealed the storage door. The caulking wasn’t great and we could see gaps. We checked the caulking on the outside and touched up a few spots. Boys slept in their beds and broke the aluminum mini blinds the first time sleeping in them. Sarah later upgraded these from Aluminum mini blinds to custom fit black out curtains that velcro in place.
June 9th: Move RV to Waynesville. After several water dripping, shampoo barely our of our hair showers, we replaced the shower head with an Oxygenics*. This was more of a mandatory upgrade rather than a repair.
July 1st: The kitchen faucet got stuck on the shower/spray setting. This was the second time, but now we can’t get it to go back to the steady stream. Sometimes more features just mean more problems.
July 5: The left hand small drawers in the kitchen came loose and were hanging crooked. When we took the drawers out to see why, it looks like they were only held up by the drawer tracks and two screws at the top. There was no bottom support at all. I got it reattached at the top and also put in a bottom support. We discovered some more storage space when we removed the access panel to reach the back of the drawers. Repurposed the panel to protect the water lines, but it is now moved back and attached to the new bottom drawer support. We have our bread in a storage bin under there now. (The cupboard was too warm and the bread was growing mold quickly.)
July 9th: After traveling to our first stop (boondocking), the trim around the main door was popping loose. Reattached it with the staple gun. We also learned that normal highway driving knocks the half moon shower doors out of their track. We close and lock them, but the left side keeps popping loose.
Not really broken, but maybe forgotten? All the blinds in the RV have some sort of hold back (cords attached to the wall, or hooks to attach the bottom of the blinds). The master bedroom blinds by the bed do not. We have gotten pretty level, but the RV still makes small movements when someone walks/turns in bed. Sarah attached sticky velcro to the wall and to the bottom of the blinds to keep them in place. It is now so much quieter when we are sleeping!
July 18th. One of the small kitchen cabinet doors ripped out. I reinstalled it, but it ripped out again. Problems of having short people (aka kids) putting away dishes. They are hard to open cabinets and I think he was just pulling downward too much instead of outward.
August 11th: Upgraded to a fancy new bike rack over the trailer hitch jack, the Jack-It*.
August 12th: Realized we damaged the passenger side rear stabilizer strut while installing the new bike rack. Still not fixed for lack of the right materials. Need to source materials not found in normal hardware stores.
August 12th: New bike rack also reduced the truck to trailer turning radius resulting in damage to one bikes tire rim and dents to the truck while backing into a tight RV space. Touch up paint and a new bike to the rescue (benefit of a cheap Walmart bike).
September 12th: Trim around main door popped off towards bottom again but on both sides this time. Closet door in master bedroom, left door fell off/screws came out. Learned from the kitchen cabinet doors and was ready with the upgrade and better installation. Based on the design, I bought enough bolts, washers and nuts to replace every cabinet door hinge in the travel trailer.
October: We didn’t move and coincidentally nothing broke. Easy living in California! We did finally upgrade the CO2 alarm to a less sensitive model. The model that came with the travel trailer would alarm daily (normally at 3:00AM, 4:00AM, or 5:00AM). The sensor sits immediately outside the boys bunkroom and the alarming frequency increased based on Mom’s dinner menu (strong correlation between beans and alarming). Once we upgraded to the Kidde Carbon Monoxide & Explosive Gas Detector Alarm* our late night wake up calls went away.
November 7th: Barely clipped gas station bollard while turning out of a tight Diesel refueling area pulling the travel trailer. Luckily just cracked the electrical cover plate. This could have been much worse. Until we get a new cover, we have resorted to a makeshift plastic bag and have been blessed with very little rain.
General:
The finish on the bathroom door is peeling off by the doorknob.
The floor grates are not designed for everyday traffic even though they are in high traffic areas. Sarah sourced and replaced the most offensive grates in the bathroom and master bedroom with a heavier grade.
Command strips are strong enough to pull off the wallpaper. We have had to do some cosmetic repairs when the Command strips won the battle.
Although things continue to inevitably fall apart, we are grateful it hasn’t been anything significant. On the positive side, we have had many opportunities to practice our engineering, visit hardware stores and my apprentices have started to learn how to repair things on their own. Things change, we can either go with it or let it break us. Maybe I have spent too much time with my surfing buddies in California, but we are just going with the flow dude.
~ Ben
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