Our Buddy, Lance

 A Branch Just Misses Slide-out

Lance doesn’t do well going down trucker lanes at 55mph. Torn up pavement, bumps, and retreads shake him up too much. And so, as is true for most RV’s, trailers, or hitched up boats, screws loosen, door jambs go askew, and slide-outs stop sliding. Even propane gets choked, tweaked, and leaks.

Lance wasn’t as bad off as his neighbor with the propane problem, but on our latest trip he let us know he would like regular maintenance.  The Memorial Day weekend started with a heavy downpour. Little Lance couldn’t take it. One corner of his slider started to drip water. What went wrong?

I looked under his belly and saw that one track of the slide-out had torn up the rubber gasket that kept him dry. No problem since rain comes down from the sky, not up from the road. Meanwhile, one of the kids inside the Lance trailer piped up, “The curtain is loose.” Ah, I thought; we’ve lost another screw.” I came up from down under, took a look at the culprit curtain stabilizer and noticed the whole window seemed askew.  The slide out was off kilter.

“Lance, how could you?!” I complained, noticing daylight shining through the gap created by the downward shift of the slide-out. No wonder it had rained inside. Tomorrow, it will be off to the Lance factory to schedule service.

Most minor mishaps, like the faulty strike plate on the doorjamb, are easy fixes. It only required a trip to the local hardware store for the right kind of screw puller—a square one, to pull off the plate. The store didn’t carry a new strike plate {we'll have to take  a trip to the RV store), but at least now we could get in and out of Lance again.

We’d like a better stove too. Not that Lance's, with its three burners and full sized oven isn’t superb; but one of the burners keeps igniting in places it shouldn’t. Lance has been playing this game since day one, but we’ve waited too long by trying to fix it with new gaskets.

Yes, it’s been a year since we bought our little guy, so he’s out of warranty already. Oh well, the vagaries of using a camper trailer only three times a year to discover problems. Nevertheless, we love Lance and will address his needs, pronto, so we can go on our next fabulous outing. Maybe we can learn to dry camp, since so many wonderful campsites, both state and federal, make such a splendid show of nature not found at full hook up RV sites.

(Dry Camp: v. to bring along a generator for creating one’s own electricity

to use public campsite bathrooms to conserve RV holding tanks

to camp close to a water source and bring bottled water for basic water

needs)