Remember that time we broke the awning? Oh, we are still not talking about that yet?…

Allow me to set the scene….

We’ve been on the road now for a little over a month living in our Super C class RV and man, what a month it has been. When they say things will go wrong and you need to have a sense of humor about it—they weren’t kidding. The hardest thing though, to wrap our heads around, is how did we spend thousands of dollars on something brand spanking new and as soon as we use it for the first time it breaks!!! B-R-O-K-E-N. Now, you’re probably wondering how is that possibly and what could have possibly stopped working? Well, the toilet, the water heater, and bunch of other little minor things that just one morning (or night) decided to just call it quits. Oh and did i mention we broke our awning? But ok, things happen—we get it.

For those of you who know us, you might be thinking how did you did you manage to break the toilet?  Why couldn’t you just read the manual and fix it. After all, you both are highly trained military veterans with loads of experience in maintenance and repairs. Believe us, we tried but the end result was still the same—broken. 

And for those of you who don’t know us, we trust us when we say that if you ever needed to form a team to go war with, launch and recover aircrafts, drive a warship and engage all the right weapons to win… you want us on your team!  

But all that aside, somehow when it comes to RV life, none of that has helped us to fix our toilet issue! Not even a little bit.

We flew to Alvarado, Texas to buy Aquemeni (the name we’ve chosen for our RV) and for those of you familiar with wholesalers, you know its not exactly 100% luxury or about putting the customer first. In fact, the only comforts we enjoyed were the cost savings and warranty coverage. Other than that, Texas was pretty much a high turn over operation to move thier coaches and cash the next check. We are still waiting on our second set of undercarriage keys nearly two months later…. but that’s another story for another time. Nonetheless, flying out to Texas was worth it and the road trip back to California gave us our first taste of RV living. 

There is nothing in Alvarado—absolutely nothing. So we were eager to leave once our final repairs were complete. Shocking right? Even leaving the dealership we had to have things fixed. Luckily, it was nothing major—more like cosmetic repairs to the interior paneling and other small items along those lines that we discovered during our walkthrough. And once all of that was complete and we finally got on the road, Aquemeni rode like a champ. Smooth, comfortable, and hugging the curves on the road like she was meant to be our chariot. 

Ok, so where were we—oh yeah, broken things and things that don’t work. Our first overnight stop was at RV park just outside Las Cruces, New Mexico. Eager to practice setting up and breaking down our new home on wheels we pulled into our spot and immediately got to work. Prior to having Aquemeni we had watched countless YouTube videos on how-to RV so we felt pretty confident in knowing what we were doing. But looking back on it now, we were probably over confident and all that great military training that tells you to read the instructions before doing any major operation went right out the window. 

First up, the sewer hose. Something so simple as connecting two quick connect end components of a hose, one to the RV and the other to the sewer drain, was doing a number on Dave. With a YouTube video playing in the background, I (Nia) must have watched him connect and reconnect the hose and pull the release valve a few times with no success before I yelled from the window, “hey hun, do you need me to help or read the instructions as you preform the steps?” In a typical male response, “nope, I got it.” Well he had it alright.  When he connected the hose for the forth time and operated the release valve, instead of sewage flowing into the drain it spewed all over his hands and splattered around his feet. Suddenly, I heard a loud “SHIT” come from his direction. “What happened, are you ok?” I said. “No, I literally got shit all over me!” The culprit? He forget to remove the end caps from the hose blocking the sewage flow. Shaking his head, he looked at me and said “that SHIT will never happen again!”

Needless to say our first 24 hours were a rough start to a beautiful lifestyle. We arrived to the RV park late (around 6pm), after driving all day (we must have started at 5am with only  2-3 hours of sleep), and we were extremely tired and desperately hot in that good ol’ New Mexico dry heat. It was a newbie recipe for disaster and we literally ran head first right into it—well I did anyway. We learned some valuable lessons from that day. We needed to slow down and check our egos at the door because RV living isn’t as ready made as we thought it would be.  

The following weeks flowed really nicely for us as we got into the groove of RV life and developed our own version of checks and balances. But even with the checklists in place, things still managed to stop working. One day it was the water heater which always seemed to call it quits whenever I wanted to take a hot shower. We read the instructions, watched the videos and even tried cycling power because you know when something breaks the first step customer service asks is “did you try restarting your machine?” I hate that question by the way. Magically though, after a few hours it decided to work again. 

Drawers came loose. The front door trimming came completely off (why it was secured with tiny little staples I still don’t know). The toilet stopped working while it was actively being used! I know, you’re probably asking yourself how did that happen? Toilets are pretty simple. You push the button to flush and empty the black [waste] tank when full. Well apparently if your toilet is connected to a sensor it will sometimes register the tank as full even when the physical tank is not. So imagine my surprise as I’m sitting on the pot after a full bowel movement and I can’t get the toilet to flush. 

“Dave, the toilet won’t flush!” What, why? Let me see. Um, you don’t want to go in there. Damn girl, did something die? Whatever, just make the toilet work so I can flush it.” 

After a few reset attempts and emptying the tank (again), he magically fixed it and I was able to finish my business in peace! 

The rest of the month kind of went like this… we laughed, things broke, we experienced some really cool things, more things stopped working, we danced, met cool people, and navigated our way through the rapidly changing climate of society. Until, that one faithful morning when we accidently hit that parked RV with our awning—yeah, that happened to us too! 

We were up late the night before visiting with a Navy buddy that Dave had served with well over 18 years ago and we had an early morning appointment to get our generator oil changed. That didn’t stop us though. It’s always nice to catch up with old friends and see where their journey has taken them. We told stories, played UNO (side note Dave and I are super competitive when it comes to games and though he might dispute it—I am the UNO Queen), shared big laughs, and relived our youthful days as young foolish adults.  And in case you are wondering neither one of us won that night. His friend did! Beginners luck I think. 

Anyway, that morning we were in a bit of a rush although we woke up early enough to make our 9am appointment. We were going through our routine where Dave handles all things outside while I get things ready inside. In the middle of us packing up a neighbor came by and wanted to have a conversation. Now, for all you experienced RV’ers you already know that it‘s a recipe for disaster and you can probably guess how things played out. 

The neighbor wanted to wish us well, thank us for our service and give us a little gift, a handmade beaded Native American feather.  It was very nice of her and though we appreciated the gesture, it totally threw us off our game. We got distracted and we allowed it to happen. After she left we noticed the time and we had to jet. We were already late for our appointment but if we were going to make it at all within a reasonable timeframe to keep our slot we had to put some major pep in our step. Dave finished locking the undercarriage doors and once he got in the truck I said “ ready when you are.” Neither one of us had doubled checked each other’s work and 30 seconds after we pulled out of our space we heard a very loud crash. 

“WTF” we both said and when we looked out of the window we saw our awning hanging from the side of the RV and the damaged slide out of another RV. We crashed right into a our neighbor’s RV! Another neighbor though, not the same one who gave us the feathers. Ugh, we felt so embarrassed. We simply knew better. For weeks we had established a routine of doing final walkthroughs and double checking each other. We knew we should have ensured the checklist to “get underway” was 100% complete before moving. But even in knowing these things, we allowed ourselves to be distracted and placed our focus on making our appointment. All experiences have a lesson though and we learned ours that morning—do not deviate from our process. They keep us safe and make sure we are winning at RV’ing every time. Otherwise, we will end up buying all of our neighbors new RVs and ain’t nobody got time for that! 

Well friends that pretty much sums up our first month of RV living and  even will all the hard lessons we’ve learned, we wouldn’t change it for anything. 

Until we meet on the road, 

Nia & Dave