Things That Go Bump in the Night

Blocks under the tires and
leveling jacks fully extended

RV living is definitely a unique experience. Basically, we live in a tin can that's sitting on stilts - posts that extend to level the rig. At times the leveling jacks are extended quite a ways if you're on uneven ground. The RV park that we're at is set into a wooded hillside. They did their best when making the campsites, but there was still a lot of leveling to be done. One thing you don't want to hear in the middle of the night is a crash, or even 2 crashes.

I was awakened out of a deep, sound sleep last night by one such crash. I initially thought maybe the dishes in the drainer had shifted. I listened for a while but heard nothing further. Thinking that maybe I had dreamed the noise, I turned over and soon drifted off into dreamland again. A short while later I was jolted awake by a second, louder crash. Sitting bolt upright in bed, struggling to get untangled from my CPAP hose, I noticed that even Dora had jumped awake. Sammy's deaf anyway and continued to snore. Jim was still sound asleep, but that didn't mean there wasn't something amiss. Sometimes I think he'd sleep through a bomb going off.

I quickly got out of bed, put on my robe and slippers and went outside for a look around. My thought was that maybe one of the leveling jacks was about to let go. Let me go on record here by saying that it's not a common thing to be outside in the dark at 3:00 in the morning, in your night clothes, shining a flashlight around your RV. I was hoping none of the neighbors would awaken and wonder if I'd gone off my own leveling jack. It never occurred to me at the time that if there'd been anything that let go with the jacks we'd also be way off level inside, or rolling down the hill.

My exterior search showed nothing amiss. Blocks were still under the tires, jacks were still where they should be, no tree limbs had fallen on the RV, and our bikes were still chained to the front of the trailer. (If you don't remember about Jim's bike being stolen in a church parking lot on a Sunday morning, you can refresh your memory of that humorous event here. At least it's humorous now, it wasn't then.)

I came inside and searched all around the main living area but didn't find anything that could have caused a crash. Not that searching that area took me very long. It's not that big. Let's just say that if you decided to hold an Easter egg hunt, you'd only need one egg!

I decided to go back to bed and try to get a few more hours sleep. I don't know about you, but that time of night is usually my bathroom time anyway, so I went into the bathroom to pee. It was there that I discovered the source of the commotion. I had installed a shelf on the side of the shower enclosure for Jim's shaver and a hair dryer holder above that. Apparently, the sticky strips I used to secure them didn't hold and they came crashing down. My guess is the hair dryer fell first, then a while later the combined weight of that and the shaver brought the whole thing down with that louder crash.

Way to give a gal a heart attack in the middle of the night! It sounds anticlimactic now, but at the time I was really concerned, and determined to find the source of the trouble. Glad it wasn't anything serious and that we didn't roll down the hill.