By Russ and Tiña De Maris
When high winds cut a path through Wyoming, at least one RVer learned the hard way that RVs can sometimes do tricks — call it, “Roll over and play dead.” Not funny if it happens to you, so how do you prevent a freak wind from ruining your day?
First rule: Minimize exposure. The less “profile” you present to the wind, the better your rig will be able to handle the oncoming blast. We use our research travel trailer as an example. Our travel trailer is 7 feet high and 23 feet long, giving it 161 square feet of surface area when parked sideways to an oncoming wind. A few wind load calculations are eye-openers (see charts below).
An 80-mile-per-hour wind will probably give my little rig a bit of a pause to think about — far more than a rock-a-bye-baby situation. But simply parking with my 7-foot x 8-foot nose to the wind, check out the wind load difference.
With my nose to the wind, I can certainly sleep better.
Of course, we can’t always predict how strong or from which direction the winds will come. To that end, when parking your rig for a spell put out the stabilizers, giving you a more solid footprint against rocking. If you’re in an area prone to high winds, then think about putting down a few “mobile home anchors” and link them to your RV frame with an appropriate system that will allow you to quickly disconnect when it’s time to hit the road.
In our years of being on the road, we’ve been in some hairy situations where the rig has rocked plenty hard. We’ve personally never capsized, nor known anyone who has, and taking simple precautions can give you peace of mind.
Sky King was a TV series that ran off and on from 1951 to 1962, about a modern day cowboy who didn’t ride a horse, but chased bad guys with an airplane. Kirby Grant played an Arizona rancher who fought bad guys and rescued people in trouble with his twin-engine Cessna.
Kirby Grant, I learned yesterday, was really Kirby Grant Hoon. The show Sky King was his claim to fame, although he appeared in a few dozen B movies. Early in his life he played violin and even led a dance band. After Sky King, he bought and traveled with a circus. Sadly, he died in 1985 at age 74 in a car accident while on the way to a Space Shuttle launch where he was to be honored by astronauts for his contributions to aviation and space flight.
Why is it we love views of the water, whether a lake or ocean? I know that to me it’s pleasing, relaxing. At home near Seattle, my home overlooks Puget Sound. It’s somehow calming to look out over the water. It’s not exciting, but it always makes me feel good. I bet my blood pressure drops a few points.
After some brief Interneting, I found an online provider of standard and unique metal products and I purchased a small sheet of what is called “expanded metal” — in stainless steel!
One time, long ago, I gathered up some forest-floor wood, an eclectic lot of sticks and branches. I put a too-long branch across a rock and stomped on it to break it in half. Ouch!!! That hurt, and I suffered a slight sprain for a few days. After that, I used the proper tools.
What this means to us wandering nomads is that we have regular difficulty in getting email, browsing the Internet, or even just calling friends and family to keep in touch..jpg)
1. Be sure your ad is complete. That means you need to include the year, the manufacturer, the model, the length, the number of slides, and some statement regarding overall condition that accurately reflects what you are selling. Often buyers use filters to narrow the number of ads they have to review and failing to put in essential information can leave your RV off the list.
Can’t find those things on the back of the deep shelves in your RV kitchen? Here’s our solution, right off the shelves at Lowe’s. At the big-box hardware store we ran across slide out containers.