Over the years I’ve had dozens, if not hundreds, of new and wannabe RVers ask me about personal safety on the road, and in spite of our own encounter with a burglar last December, I always tell them that they have a lot more to worry about from the fool hurtling down the highway toward them riding three tons of steel, than they do from a criminal.

Our own experience aside, violent crime falls way, way low on the list of threats we RVers face every day. Pure ignorance, carelessness, and neglect on the part of others present much more danger.

For example, check out the tires on an RV that my friend Dennis Hill has on his blog post for March 21st. Can you imagine what could happen if one of the tires on this RV were to blow while he was passing or coming at you on the highway? Pretty scary, huh? But consider what might happen to any bystander if one of those tires explodes while sitting still. The shrapnel from a tire explosion can be deadly. That’s why you will see tire safety cages in many big truck shops. 

A campground is about the safest place you can be, in terms of crime. But that doesn’t mean you are insulated from danger.  We have seen campers start fires and then walk away from them, or go inside to bed without putting them out, even on breezy or downright windy days. We have watched many big rig owners driving down campground roads at rates of speed that I wouldn’t even drive my van in such close quarters. We have also seen frayed extension cords stretched out on wet ground to reach electrical pedestals.

At an RV rally in California years ago, we met an elderly couple that made me want to stay off the highway until I knew that they were at least a hundred miles away. The husband could barely see and was legally blind, so his wife, who did not know how to drive, sat close beside him in a folding chair and helped him stay in the correct lane while serving as his eyes!

At the same rally, we met another couple who pulled a huge fifth wheel with a 3/4 ton pickup truck. The husband had injured his ankle and was getting around on crutches, so I was helping him get the rig ready to travel after the rally. Once we had his fifth wheel connected and secured, I could not find a place to connect the trailer’s electrical cable to the truck. I asked the gentleman where to plug it in, and he told me he never had used it. I told him that without the cable, his trailer brakes wouldn’t work, and he replied “Oh, it takes a long time to stop this thing!”

This couple had purchased the trailer in the Portland, Oregon area, did not have a truck capable of towing (or stopping) it, had no trailer brakes, and had been driving all over the western United States for five or six months! How they managed not to kill themselves or someone else to that point amazed me!

Now, you can say that it was reprehensible for an RV salesman to sell somebody a trailer that size and tell them that their truck was capable of pulling it, and for not making sure that they knew how to set it up for towing. But the RVing community has to take some responsibility for themselves, too. Anybody who buys an RV and takes off down the highway without educating themselves about their rig and how to safely operate it has no business on the road. But there are a lot of them out there!

People don’t pose the only threats. We have encountered pit bulls running loose in an RV park, and even had a raccoon with distemper wander into our campsite once. And on and on.

So does that mean that RVing is not safe? Well, yeah, but then again, life isn’t safe! None of us are going to get out of it alive. But overall, I’d rather live the RV lifestyle than spend my days any other way. I just try to keep my eyes open to the hazards around me, no matter where I am.

Thought For The Day – Dream big, and dare to fail.

Terry and I both want to thank all of you who posted comments on the blog, e-mailed, or called us after reading about our encounter with an armed burglar in our RV. Your concern and support are very much appreciated.

We are okay, but both of us feel totally wiped out, I think myself more than Miss Terry. I have always been able to function during a crisis or emergency situation, but like this time, a day or so later it all hits me at once, leaving me feeling shaky, wrung out, and feeling like I am teetering on a ledge.

I only slept an hour or so Friday night, and ever since the incident, I have been going over it in my head, second guessing myself, and wondering what I could have/should have done differently. Looking back, I keep thinking that the second I realized that we had been victimized, we should have backed off and avoided the potential confrontation that followed. And I keep thinking what could have happened to Terry if he had shot me and she was left alone with him. I am mentally kicking myself over and over again for putting her into that situation. That is the worst part, the what ifs.

Rationally, I know it all happened too fast for me to have had time to think it all through and consider my options, and that I reacted the way my instincts and training told me to do. And it worked out; nobody got hurt (except maybe the intruder’s arm), and we are here to tell the story. But again, there is that nagging “what if.”

Somebody wrote to say that this could have been avoided if we had been in a campground, instead of dry camping in a parking lot. But there are no campgrounds open where we are this time of year. And while we have dry camped in everything from truck stops to rest areas, to the open desert with no problems, this was an RV repair facility’s RV parking area with hookups. The only other time we had a crime issue was in our first month on the road, when somebody tried to steal our pickup truck while were in a Coast to Coast campground in California. So much for the argument of campgrounds over other locations to spend the night.

I also had several people tell me that they would have shot the burglar and worried about whatever happened later. With all due respect, that sounds a lot better in talk than in real life. Once you pull that trigger, you can’t take that bullet back. The legal and civil ramifications that will follow will cost you much more than whatever they may have stolen, not to mention the psychological aftermath.

Taking another person’s life is about the worst experience one can ever have, no matter what the circumstances. You will relive it for the rest of your life, trust me on this one. I’ve been there and still wake up too many nights in a cold sweat.  Would I have shot the guy if he continued to be a threat to our lives? In a nanosecond. Would I regret it forever after? Yes, I would. I’m just very grateful it didn’t come to that.

On another note, our faithful old MCI bus conversion is on its way to California with its new owner, Rich Perry. Rich and his friend  Bill flew in Friday, spent most of yesterday going over the bus from stem to stern, and left about 4:30 yesterday afternoon.

Here is a picture of myself and Rich shaking hands on the deal, while Bill and Miss Terry stand beside us.

Bill has an MCI 7 of his own, and has converted several buses for friends, so I feel confident that he’ll help Rich get our beloved bus to its new home. It was really sad to see her driving away for the last time, but as the old verse says, “to everything, there is a season…”

Before all of this started with the burglary, we had planned to leave Elkhart as soon as the bus sale was wrapped up. Now I’m not sure what will happen. I have an appointment at the VA hospital in Lexington, Kentucky on Wednesday morning, and trying to cancel and reschedule it would be a real hassle. But we may have no other choice. We obviously need to spend some more time inside a repair shop before we can go anywhere. 

Thought For The Day – It is not what you are called, but what you answer to that matters.

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Regular blog readers may remember a post I wrote on February 27 titled Just Shut Up, in which I said that sometimes silence is, indeed, golden. A Gypsy Journal reader at the Affinity rally said he learned that while in Albuquerque.

He said that when he arrived at the rally grounds it was late in the day, and someone on the parking crew informed him that one of his headlights was burned out.

The next evening he and his wife went to a local restaurant for dinner with some friends, and he had forgotten about the headlight until they were leaving the restaurant and one of their dinner companions spotted it and told him. On the way back to the fairgrounds, he stopped at an auto parts store and bought a replacement headlight.

He said it was dark by then and he was a block from the fairgrounds when a police officer going the opposite direction made a U-turn and pulled him over to tell him his headlight was out. He said he told the officer that he knew it, and in fact had just bought a replacement bulb not 5 minutes earlier.

He told me that the officer then said, “So you are admitting to me that you know you are driving an unsafe vehicle, which is a misdemeanor?”

He again told the officer that he had just bought a replacement headlight, and the officer again said “So you are admitting that you knew the headlight was out, and you are driving the vehicle?”

My friend said “Yeah, if you put it that way, I guess so.”

Then the cop issued him a ticket for violation of Section 66-3-801 of the state motor vehicle code. Once he had signed the ticket, the officer told him “If you had told me you were not aware of the burned out headlight, all you would have gotten was a warning ticket with no fine.”

I’m not sure I would have believed him if he hadn’t shown me the ticket, and his wife confirmed his story.

Now folks, I’m usually a big supporter of law enforcement. Our policemen and women do a job I’d never want to have to do. But this sucks. I know my way around Albuquerque a little bit, and on the area of Central Avenue around the fairgrounds, you can buy a hooker, any kind of drugs you want, or anything else that comes to mind. And yet this officer had time to hassle an old guy and his wife in an out of state pickup, because he told the truth. That just isn’t right.

Thought For The Day – There can be no failure for a man who has not lost his courage.

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