Embracing Uncertainty

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Jesus

If you live the way I did for the last 6 years or so…the future is uncertain. Completely uncertain. What I remember feeling the most about the future on the road was how quickly it could change. If I had plans to be in Colorado, but something else presented itself, I might end up in California.

Moving thousands of miles is not a big deal when you’re a full-time RVer. Anything under 600 miles in a weekend was chump change. For us, that was true especially in the last few years. The thing to remember is that traveling with an RV (even a trailer) is not the same as traveling in a car. It would be like traveling in a car if when you traveled with a car you always had your home within 20 feet, and all you had to do to access it was pull over.

Full-time RVers don’t stress about where they’ll spend the night, because they know at any moment they can pull over in a parking lot, or find an RV park (almost everywhere has a place within 50 miles).

So breaking down is not really a fear either, because you can often limp to where you need to go for the night.

We broke down hard in Texas. Hard.

There is a part that breaks on F250s made between the years 2012 and 2016. It predictably breaks at around 140,000 miles (tk). I didn’t know this when I purchased the truck. I didn’t know this until it broke on me. We were doing a long-haul drive, and it was at night. It was going to be a 1200 mile weekend, and It quickly became a 750 mile weekend.

There was a bang. There’s always a bang when something breaks. It’s, “Bang, a belt broke.” or “Bang, we hit something”, or “Bang a tire blew!”.

Anyway, in this case, the bang was from the casing of a gasket. The gasket’s job was to hold suction so the turbo can spin. But like I said…it went bang.

The truck was wailing like crazy. It sounded like it does when you put your car in neutral and give it gas. We had no compression. And if you’re unfamiliar with how diesel engines work, NO COMPRESSION = NO POWER.

We had to pull over…and it was unfixable. In a dusty gas station parking lot, I was inspecting the issue. Feeling immediately like it was impossible…out of my depth.

“I don’t know how to fix this Meagan! I can’t fix this. We’re screwed.”

I stood over the engine looking for something that was broken. I was certain we’d need to call a tow truck. I was so certain that I wasn’t even trying to find anything. I was just looking over it to prove that I didn’t know how to fix it.

But Meagan was googling. It made me irritated.

To think we can fix this is foolishness, and a waste of time.

It says here that when the engine revs like that it could be a vacuum leak of some type.


…ok let’s google, ‘vacuum leak on F250’

Within a few minutes she was on a Ford Powerstroke forum finding people who had the same problem.

There should be a plastic housing on the exhaust manifold.

Me: looking astonished. 😳

“I don’t know what that is…I’m just reading what someone wrote.”

Good enough for me. I look for a broken housing…and sure enough. There it was.

I can fix this.

I was ready to give up…but she wasn’t. And suddenly things don’t seem so dark. So let’s just take the next step.

I found an RV park a mile a half away. Can we make it that far?

We could. And we did.

We limped along at about 15 miles an hour until we got to the RV park. As we were driving into the parking lot, a young guy in a truck drove past us and said, “Well you’re lucky. I was about to go home”.

“I need a spot for the night. I’ll take anything you got.” I hoped my desperation didn’t come across too much.

“Hmm, I have a guy coming into one tonight, but I have another that’s open until Sunday – would that work?”

“I just need a night. I hope to get back on the road tomorrow.”

“Follow me.”

The young man drives his truck to the site and says it’s $40 and cash would be convenient since he wasn’t in the office. We happily paid him. He gave us a hand-written receipt with his info on it.

Finally we could get the rig parked and go to bed.

At 10:30 the kids were finally in their beds. They fell asleep immediately.

Then at 11:00, there’s a knock on the door.

Sidebar: Most of the time the only people that are bothersome or disruptive at RV parks are weekend campers who are partying too hard. People who live their lives in RV Parks also have things to do and a life to live.

I open the tiny RV door to 3 hispanic men aged roughly 25, 30 and 50. One of which (the youngest) speaks english.

“You’re in my site.”

“I’m sorry WHAT?”

“You’re in my site. I paid for the month already.”

“ok, I JUST paid for this site…I came in because my truck is having problems. um…hold on ok?”. I pause for a moment considering the situation.

“I understand what you’re saying…and we’ll get this settled. Give me a minute ok?” I close the door.

“We are not moving.” Meagan was adamant that we needed to stay. That the kids are in bed already and it’s too late.

“They already paid though, and they’ve had a long day too.” She looks out the window and sees what I see. There’s another vehicle behind them, a suburban in a follow vehicle with the wife and kids…waiting to get settled and go to sleep after a long day of following their dad’s pick-up truck towing the rig.

I open the door and communicate that I’m going to move…but I need to call the owner to see where he wants me to go.

They nod understanding and go back to their vehicles.

They’re just eeking out a living and the men have to go to work tomorrow. They came here for this job, and after hours of being on the road they’re tired and exhausted and find me in their spot.

A regular goldilocks story!

After frantic calls and texts, I get up with the owner and he moves me to the right spot. I had already hitched and moved out of the way for the hispanic family to move in and was idling in the road. Moving was easy…the kids were already in their beds, we had eaten, we just moved our site, and at 11:30, we were laying back down in our bed.

Fun fact, the owner say he would give me $10 tomorrow for the trouble. hahaha. It was an olive branch, so I appreciate it.

I think about that family a lot. I think about if I had had a gun and felt threatened, or if I had fought it…or if I had fought them. It could’ve been bad. I think about how they feel being immigrants in a country that is not hospitable toward them. It makes me want to protect them, and to help them. I’m just glad that this situation worked out to both our advantage and we were able to get them settled, and get us to a place where we were comfortable.

Sidebar: I’m making an assumption that they were immigrants, but it was a fair assumption. We were in the oil field territories of Texas, only one spoke english, they were traveling with a travel trailer to a work-site. It seems mostly logical they were. Either that, or they were from a community that spoke only spanish – which is also possible in Texas.

The next day I got up and called the local Ford dealership. The parts department had the gasket I needed, so I got an Uber (I’ve spent a lot of money on Ubers), spent $121 for an exhaust pipe, came home and fixed it.

It took less than 5 minutes. I filmed the entire process to show off my 360 cam for a friend. Watch it below if you want.

Fixing it was easy, and fairly cheap. $121 for a part, beats $200 for a hotel!

The uncertainty was scary. “What if this costs a ton of money?”, “What if we’re stuck here in … wherever we are?!”

The uncertainty of the knock from strangers and not knowing what to do was scary.

The people we met that night are a part of me. They live in my consiousness forever. The concern, the worry they had for what they thought was certain…”We’ll go to the RV park we reserved and paid for, we’ll have our spot for the amount of time we reserved it, and we won’t have any problems.”

But they found me. In a really tricky situation, and it’s now a memory both of us have. I wonder if they say to themselves, “Remember that gringo that was in our spot when we went to that RV park in Texas?” I wonder if their kids remember. Mine were fast asleep. Were theirs? This was something that peaked in those moments when things aren’t clear. When things aren’t as we planned.

Isn’t that always how it is though? Isn’t there always something to be uncertain about? And how do we handle the micro-uncertainties? How can we leverage those responses to handle the bigger ones?

But that’s not how we live. We don’t think our lives are uncertain, we think they’re quite certain, and we remove uncertainty from our lives and banish it to the outside, where it belongs.

In the suburbs, my neighbors live lives that seem certain. So they don’t seize the day. New relationships mean new commitments. Each new friend means a new person to “work in” to their schedule, so maybe making connections isn’t something they want to do.

Or maybe it’s something they don’t even see. It’s difficult to see the “background actors” in movies. It’s easy not to notice things sometimes. I get that. I’m not mad about that. I’m just observing from a new perspective.

Side Note: This is one of my core values. Being open to outsiders. I believe in acceptance. I believe if someone looks strange, they either like looking strange to others…or that’s the way they feel most at home. In either case, you do you. I’ll support you.

So I think this daily uncertainty is why we were so open to meet new people. I think this is one reason why the RV community is such a wonderful place, and its what I miss most.

As we continue to transition into suburban life again, our comfort with uncertainty is something I hope I never lose.

The unknown is scary at times, but immediately beyond it is a new experience, sometimes a new adventure, and it is always an opportunity to learn about yourself.

Uncertainty is like a veil you can’t see through. You might have some idea what’s on the other side, but it’s only by moving through that you find out. You find out about yourself, and about others. And most of the time, the answer isn’t as bad as you had feared.