Bonding

What's the best way to bond? Go camping. Today we planned to drop our camper off to get it inspected. We didn't use it last year and figured that we'd have some problems when we tried to hook it up to the truck, but it went great. I said to John, "Wow, there must be something wrong, because things never go this easy." I spoke too soon.

We park our camper at my folks house because we don't have room at our house. Getting the camper out of its spot takes a little bit of manuvering, first forward and then backward onto the road. Everything was going fine until suddenly the truck decided that it wasn't going to go in reverse. I could go forward all I wanted, but reverse wasn't an option. Unfortunately, to get out of the tight spot our camper lives in, you have to back out. I was freaking out thinking that there was something wrong with the transmission. I could see the dollars going out the window.

After trying going forward, then attempting back for about fifteen minutes, we decided to unhook the camper. I didn't know what was wrong, but I thought if we got the weight off of the truck, then maybe we could back it up.

Because of the hill that the camper was on, we couldn't get the camper off the hitch easily. We had to scrounge around my parents garage for scrap wood that was just the right thickness to raise up the tongue of the camper. We were fortunate that my dad has lots of that kind of stuff laying around. Thank you Larry!

When we got the camper unhooked from the truck, I tried reverse again, but no luck. I was thinking that I was going to have to pull my truck as far out of the way as possible and use my parent's truck to put the camper back in its spot. They weren't home, so I called to find out if there were keys somewhere that we could use. They didn't answer. It was getting complicated.

I don't know why, but all of a sudden, I reached down and jiggled the emergency brake. Ureka! Reverse was restored. We hooked up the camper for a second time and backed that sucker out before something else could stop us.

So, we were on our way to the camper dealership to drop our camper off to get it inspected. The only problem was, when we arrived at the dealership, it wasn't there anymore. There was a sign saying that they moved. Of course I didn't have the number with me, but John had his blackberry and we looked it up. We did finally find the camper place and chalked this experience up to our first camping adventure of the season.