Travels with The Rayman

We hadn’t been gone from house for 20 minutes when I stepped on the break of The Dog House (RV), and a large crash ensued.  ”What the hell was that?”, the Rayman bellowed.  In my shy and meek voice I answered, “I don’t know.”  As this was being discussed, we both looked toward the noise.  It was our pantry.  The door flew open, all my spices on the sliding shelf hit the deck.  Recognizing the chaos, Rayman leaped from his seat and sprinted toward the back of the coach.  For the uninitiated, the word coach is a euphemism for RV.  Coach is a good word.  It evokes “home away from home”.  RV on the other hand sounds cold and unappealing.

But I digress.

As the Rayman is huffing and puffing as he pulls up items off the floor, I turn right because I asked him if he wanted me to stop and he didn’t answer me and since there was nowhere to park, I turned right.   Right into a neighborhood that had more twists and turns in the street than a murder mystery.  “Why did you turn?  What are you doing?  We’re towing the car?  How are we going to get out of here?”.  OMG.  It was in a word, a disaster.  So as I’m driving what seemed like the entirety of the Amalfi coast to get back to the main road, the Rayman discovered that the flying spices damaged the floor.  OMG.  This part of the diary is expletive deleted.  In the meantime, I weaving back on to the main road heading toward the freeway.  At this point I managed to say something like, “Well, we forgot to secure the door to the pantry.  I was going to do it and forgot.”  He said, “expletive deleted”.  That’s when I suggested a check list like airline pilots have before they take off.  “Oh, great.  Another list”, he snarled.

Oh, well.  Sometimes the beginning of the trip is the worst of it.  When you drive a coach, contents move about like in an overhead compartment of an airplane.  Quite possibly the only thing more crowded than a passenger in Economy, is said passenger’s carry-on that is crammed in that overhead.  Really, people.  Flying is disgusting and to think we have to give the airlines our hard earned cash for the privilege of eating our own knees.  This is what it has come to, isn’t it?

Let me continue.  I got a bit sidetracked.

So.  By the time we arrived in Los Alamos at the Well Bread bakery to buy our chocolat des cruissants, the calamity had cleared.  Temporary explosions are forgotten as there are new and exciting things ahead.  And the food was fabulous as we sat in the coach and ate our breakfasts.

The plan was that we would ride as far as Oxnard, disengage the toad (car we tow), and I would proceed onto the Camarillo where I was going to a baby shower for my cousin’s daughter.  And this is what happened.  Rayman took TDH (the dog house) which is the name of our coach which is our RV… to a campground near Santa Paula.  I went to the baby shower and this is where I was reminded how difficult it is to shop.  The pregnant mom has a boy in her womb.  And that little boy is going to have about 70 pair of socks, 30 swaddling blankets, 40 receiving blankets, and a herd of stuff elephants.  The clothes he received  referenced the navy, sports, animals, and farming.  No miniature kitchens.  No dolls.  No frilly dresses that are so much fun to buy .  It was a fabulous party.  I also learned that things have changed in the baby department.  No more strollers.  Transportations systems now.  Trees for hanging bottles on top of fake green grass.  Not sure about that but the crowd seemed to approve.  Clearly I don’t get out enough.  This may be the first shower I’ve been to since 1974.   Who’s shower?  Who knows?  I forget.  Not even sure the year is right.

Anyway.

I left the shower by following my cousin’s wife to their house so I could say hello to my cousin.  My cousin Chris is a hoot.  Great sense of humor.  He and I are polar opposites in some ways and absolutely on the same wave length.  So after a wonderful visit, armed with my iPhone, I left the hills of Camarillo and headed down the backside of their hill toward Santa Paula.  Only I got a bit lost and my phone informed me that it was low on juice so I called the Rayman, told him the cross streets and implored him to help me get to where he was.  “Call me back.”  Click.  So, I just kept driving and heading north east.  Well.  He calls back.  “What city are you in?”  I said, “If I knew that I’d know where I am.  Now I’m at Rose and Los Angeles.  Call me back.”  By the time he called me back I was almost where I was suppose to be thanks to blind luck. Finding the Dog House and my little family was fabulous.  I was tired.  I had been lost and yet found again.  And Rayman had set the whole coach up by himself.  What a guy.  Then he told me this story about seeing a gas station and thinking he should fill up and as he was pulling in people started yelling “STOP!”.  He was about to tear the roof off The Dog House.  The ceiling of the gas station pumping stations was about 11 feet tall.  The coach is over 12 feet tall.   Disaster avoided.  Wine was consumed.  Everything mellowed out.

It could have been so much worse.  So after a day of craziness, we have a couple of scratches in the floor which is fake wood anyway.  Think we can find a paint or stain pen to cover up the owwie.  At least me have our roof.  The baby is set.  And Rayman is relaxed and resting comfortably.

Key learnings.  1.  devise a list of procedures to check before putting the coach in drive.  2.  Start every trip with a charged phone battery.  3.  Relax and enjoy.

More later.  After all.  This was the first day of a month on the lam.  More to come!!