Thread: Rookie Move
View Single Post
Old 03-28-2019, 06:48 PM   #25
JimSchwenk
Member
 
JimSchwenk's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2017
Location: Breinigsville
Posts: 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by daveinaz View Post
My best remembered "oops" was when we first took our motorhome out for its virgin camping trip. Our 100# white Labradoodle felt that his job was to supervise. He did this by standing on the appropriately named doghouse up front and look out the windshield. Well, as we were leaving we pulled into the circle to the dump station. Everyone was staring at us as we pulled around. I assumed it was because they were looking at the big dog inside. Nope. When it was finally our turn to dump, I got out and walked around the front of the motorhome to get to the dump controls -- it was then that people were staring, not at the dog, but at the TV antenna I had left extended on the roof!!

After that I got one of those red "Remove Before Flight" tags at an airshow and started hanging it from the antenna crank handle!!
Daveinaz - back when my wife and I did more road trips, I made up a "close up list" of sorts. At the time we had a crank up antenna and a few other things like x-chocks and stabilizer jacks that would make a mess if you forgot to take care of them before moving. Just follow the list and you can't go wrong.
Maybe it was my Navy training, or pulling two trailers as a CDL driver...but I learned to have a routine, a process if you want to get all fancy with names. Hooking up two trailers should be done the same way, in the same order, every time. It becomes automatic after a while. What messes up small minds like mine is getting distracted right in the middle of the exercise. Best thing to do is start over and verify your steps.
As someone else posted, we often put a little weight on the tongue jack to take the load distribution bars off or put them on. That's an invitation for just the distraction I was referring to. It's not on my list, but I do it about half the time.
My only camper faux pas so far (let's not bring up the CDL gaffs) was last year, alone, pulling in the slide at my home campground and forgetting that my portable wheeled dukey tank was leaning against the side of the slide. Gee that slide motor is a strong one... I bent out the skirting around the wheel cutout about 5 inches. Impossible to straighten without taking the panel off because I put a kink in the skin, good thing it's on the trailing edge, wind-wise. So off to Ocean City MD I went with a TT a couple inches wider than stock. Oops. Not very noticeable, but I know it's there.
JimSchwenk is offline   Reply With Quote