Rookie Rampage

My wife and I purchased a 2007 HiLo. The first day we brought it home we were enjoying checking out all the cool features, making sure we knew how to operate everything before we took it out on our innagural run. Finally ready to take off, I pushed the button to lower the top and it started making this awfull sound, then one end of the top lowers, the other tilts up, then slams down. Seems we put some last minute items in the bathroom cabinet and forgot to shut the cabinet doors, yes, I said doors, both of them ripped off of the hinges. After replacing the doors, and making sure everything was closed up, we were finally ready to leave.

Got to our destination and backed the trailer in, which I was still pretty green at. Finally got her backed in, and unhooked, and pulled the truck away, only to find out I had not unhooked the emergency trailer brake cable, which promptly popped lose from the trailer when I pulled away. Panic set in, because I wasn’t really sure where it came from, or how to put it back in. To make matters worse, I found out I was still about 6 inches to short to plug into the power. Now I was really in a jam. Couldn’t move the trailer because the brakes were locked, and couldn’t even plug into the power. I just sat on the bumper of my truck and figured I’d just be leaving my trailer parked there and would have to go find someone who could ‘fix’ it for me.

At that point I had not realized the ‘family’ that was around me at the campground. Although I’m sure I was providing the best entertainment the folks around had seen in a long time, one of them finally felt sorry for me and came over to see if they could help. He plugged the brake cable back in, helped me hook the truck back up and guided me back to an appropriate spot to plug in. We were able to enjoy the rest of our stay, and even h! ad new friends to enjoy some time with. If I had only rememberd to replace the storage cover from the rear compartment when I was ready to leave, the rest of the trip would have been fine. I remembered to check the inside for open doors, but forgot I had leaned the storage cover up against the back of the trailer. When I lowered the top this time, it promptly pushed the cover into the storage compartment and broke it..not the cover, the whole compartment was cracked open. The cover survived just fine.

I’ve been able to use all the lessons learned in my very first trip to make sure all my other trips have been incident free, however I am still a nervous wreck until I hear that last little noise of the top quietly settling into place.

Submitted by Jay Varley of Kent, WA as a part of the RV Centennial Celebration “Share Your Favorite RV Memory” contest.

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