What Are The 4 Things RV’ers Fear Most?

1.       A Blowout. Significant damage to the RV as the large tire comes up through the floorboards and takes out plumbing, flooring and often people.

2.      Brake failure.  A large bus screaming down a hillside has dire consequences.

3.      Awning opening while driving.  The awning begins to unfurl, flops over the RV, breaks, tears, mechanisms bend while the driver is trying to find a wide spot in the road to stop.

4.      No cold beer.

We did not have a blowout. Our brakes work fine. We ALWAYS have cold beer.  That leaves #3…the awning.

Let me begin by saying that we take extreme precautions with our awning.  We have the normal locking mechanism and then Bill has a secondary fail safe as well as straps and line that hold the arms in place over and above the locks that are also on the arms.

While on our way to Flagstaff we were just driving along doing our thing when out of NOWHERE came a violent gust of wind.  The motorhome jerked over into the next lane scaring us half to death and we heard the dreaded noise.  Flapping.  I looked at Bill and asked “Are we ok?”.  He calmly said. “No”.  He tried to slow down and look for a wide spot in the road.  About ¼ mile down the road he found one.  The wind was now blowing steadily at about a 20mph clip but nothing like the horrible gust that had hit us broadside.  After assessing the obvious damage we both knew that it had to be opened before we could try to get it closed. The straps, secondary locks, etc were GONE. A piece of one of the broken straps was hanging lose and the big mechanism had been torn open by the force of the wind catching it.  With winds blowing we carefully opened the awning, rolled it back on the pole by hand and with the help of Duct Tape, more line, strapping and back-up closures we decided we had done all we could do until we could get to our next destination. The blessing? The arms were not bent which meant that the frame would go back into place.

When we got into Flagstaff we were afraid to open it again. But, we did and were pleased to know that no major damage had occurred and only new safety closures were needed. We dodged a very costly bullet.

And we had Cold Beer.