Well it’s been about a month and HOLY $%^& it’s been about a month.

Since last we spoke, I lived in the camper in my parents’ backyard for a little under three weeks. Got a chance to press all the buttons and turn all the knobs, and there’s already a whole bunch of stuff that falls under the category of “WHOA, LET’S NOT DO THAT AGAIN.” So today I present:

TIPS THAT NONE OF YOU WILL EVER USE EVER BECAUSE NONE OF YOU WILL EVER BE RIDICULOUS AND LIVE IN AN RV FOR ANY EXTENDED AMOUNT OF TIME BECAUSE WTF OF COURSE NOT YOU LIKE HAVING THINGS AND SPACE AND FORGET THIS SEE THE WORLD BS OMG AMIRITE?!?

by Chris & Jenny

(Got it? Cool, I’ll start…)

#1 – Don’t smash the back window of your truck.

So when you have a short bed pickup truck and a fifth wheel hitch you have to get one that slides. (Think DJ Casper. I’ll wait while you Google it…)

In short, if you have to make a sharp turn to back into a spot or whatever you have to stop, unlock the hitch, hold the brake of the trailer (there’s a controller in the truck), and pull the truck forward until the hitch locks into “maneuver mode.” This gives you an extra foot between the front of the trailer and the cab of the truck. Then when you’re all done, you straighten out and roll the truck back to get it back into “tow mode” so the pin of the trailer is back over the rear axle. 

So me in my ultimate genius (and being the modern pinnacle of laziness) I eyeballed it and decided I could clear the back of my truck’s cab with the front of the trailer without that extra clearance, even if I went to 90 degrees. Like this:

So I start backing out of my parents’ backyard when the neighbor next door (who had been hanging out watching me struggle with this thing) starts yelling at me to stop. Not only was I about to rip the cord that supplies the power to the trailer for running lights and stuff clean off the trailer ($$$), but the corner was about a couple of millimeters away from smashing through the back window of my truck ($$$$$$$$$$$).

LESSON: Maneuver mode is your friend. So are old men from Central Florida who save you thousands of dollars in repairs. Florida Man does some good every now and again.

#2 – Don’t kill yourself.

Apparently, electricity can make you dead. Uh huh, seriously.

And also apparently, if you touch a piece of metal that is also touching electricity, said electricity can come touch you and make you dead.

EVEN MOST APPARENTLY, if said electricity is a 50 amp service, you are even deader than you would normally be dead. The deadest. Imagine dead, and then add some dead.

LESSON: Don’t wrap up your trailer’s power cord when it’s still plugged in. Oops.

#3 – Forwards good. Backwards bad.

I was twice surprised when I started hooking up the trailer to the truck and moving it around the world.

Driving forward is weirdly easy. Though I guess I shouldn’t say easy, but waaaaay easier than I had imagined. Especially when you only go 60-65mph on the highway because a) you’ve watched too many trailer highway accident videos, and b) you like pissing people off. Once you get the dynamics of the size of the trailer and where it is in relation to things it can destroy / things that can destroy it, you can almost forget it’s even there. Almost.

Driving backwards, though? One of the worst learning experiences I’ve ever had. I’m not exaggerating. And I’ve studied for a test that is 8 hours long and you have to fly to California to take. (Twice)

Remember how to back up a vehicle? Yeah? Well forget it, it’s completely opposite from everything you’ve been doing since 16 years old. If you want to go right, you have to turn the wheel of the truck left. And vice versa. Because why not.

Backup camera on the trailer you say? Absolutely no help.

My biggest problem is that it’s still almost impossible for me to know when the truck is actually straight with the trailer. I can eyeball it (see above for how good I am at that) but if I’m just a tad off I’ll find the rear end of the trailer is headed into a tree within a few seconds. And unless you have a good amount of width to turn the truck back and get around to the opposite angle to get it back to straight, you’re toast. (Did that make any sense at all?!? It’s so annoying I can’t even explain it properly. Let’s try this…)

Normal human being backing up a fifth wheel in a straight line:

Chris backing up a fifth wheel in a straight line:

LESSON: No lesson here. It’s going to be the bane of my existence for the next six months and I just have to do it. Or I end up having to back it out of somewhere and I just give up and walk away. Free trailer!

#4 – Don’t trust your locks.

If you bought a car and someone told you “by the way, the key that opens your trunk is held by everyone” you’d probably, I don’t know, not buy that car probably. And not “everyone who own that specific type of car” or even “everyone who owns A CAR,” literally everyone can walk into a store and buy the key to your trunk for like $1.03 plus tax.

There are keys out there labeled “CH751” that are exactly this situation. AND GUESS WHAT! Close to all RV storage areas use that type of lock. RV dealers don’t want to have a million keys for each individual trailer, so manufacturers use this generic lock and key for pretty much everything. So I could literally take this key, walk over to my neighbor (regardless of what type of trailer they have) and unlock their RV compartments. And if I was a bad guy without a trailer, I could just go to my local hardware store and have the key also.

The actual door into the RV apparently isn’t this lock, but from what I’ve read the number of different keys for a generic RV door lock is not nearly as high as one would probably would like.

LESSON: Replace the locks on your RV with something, I don’t know, LITERALLY EVERYONE CAN OPEN. Just sayin.

There’s more, but I’m just gonna stick to the property damage / loss of life near-misses for now. Stay tuned…