Epilogue

With each trip I take in Gertie, I learn more about pacing. The slower I go, the better I like it. My friend Rick Farmer, an avid SCUBA diver, says "I'm a very slow diver. I've learned to take my time, just drift along and really look at what I'm passing over. I see a lot more that way." Yep!

On my first big trip I had to cover 3,000 miles in a fixed number of days, so I did a lot of driving and passed up a lot of places I'd have liked to see. Second time out, I had a destination eight hundred miles away (Maine) and didn't make many stops between here and there. This time, I did far less driving and spent far more time sitting still, enjoying the places I was visiting. I averaged 78 miles a day over the whole trip, though of course some days I drove more than that. That's more like it!

Even so, there were places where I'd have liked to spend more time—and I will, on future trips. The Elmira/Corning area has a lot of interesting things, like the National Soaring Museum (which I meant to see, but missed) and the Glenn Curtiss Museum, dedicated to the pioneering aviator and bitter rival of the Wrights. I missed the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania, too—gotta go back and see that!

For the first time on this trip I stayed out of commercial campgrounds almost entirely. I discovered that the state parks have amazingly good facilities and are far more pleasant places—at least off-season—than the commercial campgrounds. I'll do more of this kind of camping in the future—that was always my plan, but it took me a few trips to get into the swing of it.

I was fascinated by the Escapees' easy camaraderie and the whole fulltiming culture. I feel a kinship with these people. At the same time, I can see that in many ways I don't fit the fulltimer profile: I'm not very outgoing, I don't make friends quickly...I don't watch TV, don't drink and don't have any interest in sports, so I can't exactly invite the neighbors over for a beer and shoot the breeze about the latest sitcoms or how the teams are doing this year. I don't care for cards, dominos, horseshoes or "Mexican train." These are the activities that get RVers acquainted with each other, so by that standard I'm kind of socially crippled.

Oh, I can quickly connect with people when there's a need for technical knowledge or mechanical assistance. Ask me a question about digital cameras or Macintosh computers or the technical aspects of RVing or lots of other things, and I'll gladly share what I know. This website's "Improving Gertie" section is an example. I like to pick other people's brains, I like to solve practical problems, and I like to teach. I just don't do small talk very well...and that's a skill one wants to have when making connections with folks who may be your neighbors for only a day or two before moving on.

So in many ways I don't fit in with serious RVers like the SKPs. Heck, I quit the Boy Scouts because I got bored with camping out! Yet I've tremendously enjoyed the RVing I've done. I guess there's room for all kinds in the RVing culture, and I'm out on the fringe somewhere...but still part of it.

Enough philosophizing. Here's a safety tip—something simple that you can do to increase your chances of survival. All RVs have three detectors: a smoke detector, a propane detector and a carbon monoxide (CO) detector. (If you're missing one of these life-saving items, go get it NOW!) OK, let's suppose you have all three detectors. You have them mounted properly: propane near the floor; CO and smoke near or on the bedroom ceiling. You keep them clean and you change their batteries once a year. You're doing everything right.

Then one night you're awakened at 2:00 a.m. by a high-pitched beeping. You know you have trouble. But what kind of trouble? Which detector is it? Would you know whether it was carbon monoxide (in which case you'd better get up and out) or smoke (in which case you want to stay low to the floor and get out) or propane (in which case you want to get out, period)? Knowing the difference could save your life.

Well, I sure couldn't have told you...until Mac McCoy brought this up at his seminar. But when I went back to my rig, I tested those alarms and memorized their sound patterns. And then, not trusting my memory to work in the middle of the night, when I got back to New Jersey I printed up a little chart to remind myself. I laminated it and stuck a copy on the bedroom ceiling where I can see it when I wake up...and another in the lounge (in case anybody's sleeping back there). You might want to do the same. If your detectors happen to match the sound patterns shown here, you could even print out my chart—just click on the little one to get to a printable copy.

On to more pleasant matters. Well, slightly. I'd promised myself as soon as I got home to deal with the roof vent. First I had to clean the area around it. That roof was filthy! I'd been parking under some trees for the past year and a half, partly because they were close to my apartment and partly because I thought it'd be a good thing to keep the sun off Gertie in the summer. Well, it was a bad idea—they dumped a thick layer of tough grime on the roof, and it's going to take much scrubbing to get it off. (Remember, even the high-pressure nozzle at that car wash in Ohio was barely able to budge the stuff at point blank range!)

So I moved Gertie down the street into a clear space with no trees, and set about sealing up all the seams around that vent. It's at the bottom of the picture above left, covered (like all Gertie's vents) by a Maxxair hood. I scrubbed all around it with rubbing alcohol, then carefully laid 4"-wide Eternabond tape all the way around. I covered the roof seam that runs through that opening as well. And next spring when the weather warms up, I'll cover all the roof seams with Eternabond—I found it on sale at Camping World last month, and bought enough to do the job.

Eternabond is great stuff. It's a good-looking UV-resistant flexible (vinyl?) tape that is wide enough to completely cover my old Parlastic-sealed seams and leave a goodly margin on each side. Unlike resealing with Parlastic, it doesn't require you to clean off all the old sealant down to the paint (or better still, the bare metal). Eternabond will stick to anything except silicone rubber; its super-sticky butyl rubber adhesive will "never ever" harden or lose its tack, according to the package. People who've used the stuff for years say it lives up to those claims.

As for the vent leak...well, the more I think about it, the more I think it was not the vent but the air conditioner. That vent had never leaked before, and it hasn't leaked a drop since. But I so seldom use that air conditioner (since I'm mainly dry camping and have no generator) that it seems altogether too much of a coincidence that the first time I used it on this trip, I got a major influx of water. Trouble is, it was raining that night, so I can't be certain...until the next time I try the air conditioner!

I also ran Eternabond (cut down to 2" wide) down the rear window seams in hopes of stopping the leak there. No such luck! I'm not sure where it's coming in, but it's still coming in. Now I suspect the ladder's attachment points, which are right in that area and don't look too good—it's obvious that ladder was damaged in the original owners' rear-end collision and the mounts may not have been properly resealed. I'll have to check them out; I may remove and remount the whole ladder when the weather gets warm again. Until then, that story is unfinished.