No, it’s not the introductory line of a joke. Rather it is just my musing about how I can start out looking for one thing and find something entirely different. I suspect that this will happen a lot once we hit the road.
In this case Jett decided that I needed to find an RV driving course so that I wouldn’t run the rig, with us in it, off a cliff. I can’t say that some professional training would be a waste. I have already mentioned, I believe, my penchant for cutting right turns too closely even when driving normal, human-scale vehicles. It is all too likely that I will do something incredibly stupid/dangerous in my first week on the road pulling a 40-foot coach behind our truck. An accident early on (or anytime, for that matter) could destroy our plans. Since the coach will be delivered to our campsite in NH for the summer 2012 season, my first time behind the wheel, coach in tow, would be our exit from the campground. Out that narrow driveway and onto those narrow rural NH roads. I would expect that our first stop would be the nearest large parking lot where I could spend an hour practicing some basic maneuvers, such as turning and backing up, assuming I could get us there safely. But an hour in a parking lot really doesn’t compare, in terms of skills attained, to a full day or two with a seasoned instructor.
So I started to look for RV driving training. What I learned fairly quickly is that there isn’t much available and what is available is in distant locales such as California and Texas – states that are on the other side of the Mississippi, for God’s sake! Might as well be on Mars. Do they even speak English there?
But along with the bad news about the dearth of training opportunities, Google served up an unexpected treasure: betterRVing.com. This is a web site which offers a free quarterly magazine, articles on RV parks and interesting destinations, RV tools, maintenance tips, traffic laws by state, recipes for RV potluck dinners and – the reason it appeared in my search results list – tips on RV driving. I browsed some of the articles and was impressed with how well-written and informative they were. Good photos, too. A real treasure which I highly recommend.
I have already printed four articles:
- “Connecting the Dots with Barney” – an article on how to turn without hitting anything (does that sound like something that is spot-on for me?)
- “The Best Work Camping Resource” – an article, with links, about working while on the road.
- “How to Find a Job While RVing” – similar, but broader, also with lots of links.
- “iRV” – a list of useful smartphone apps of particular interest to RVers.
I also plan on viewing the four-part video course on RV driving.
So I didn’t find that elusive RV driving training, but did find something that is nearly as valuable. Less expensive, too.