It was the night before the trip. One of the dogs had already had an “accident” on the camping gear. Due to unforeseen circumstances, everything I’d packed into the larger, better-equipped camper had been unpacked and then repacked into my tiny teardrop, the overflow stacked in the cab of the pickup.
In a few hours, I’d leave on a road trip I’d been looking forward to for months. I was exhausted but excited. Once I finally got on the road, I was confident things would improve.
The first show was considerably more harried than I would have liked because I forgot traveling with a trailer (even a small one) is slower AND parking a pickup and camper in a city is not a seamless affair.
After spending time I didn’t have circling the block, I found a spot half a mile away from the venue — a perfectly reasonable distance to walk if you aren’t also trying to lug a guitar, a music stand, and a box of books to sell after the show. I arrived sweating and winded.
The next day, I was driving deep into the mountains to play a festival celebrating ranching, food, music and community, my four favorite things to celebrate. The weather forecast wasn’t great for an outdoor festival — cold and rainy — but I was still undaunted. I live on a ranch after all. We are used to working in all kinds of weather. Plus, I’d packed lots of layers and extra boots and blankets.
The first set of boots was soaked all the way through within minutes of arriving. I’d parked in the designated camping area and started walking toward the festival grounds under gray skies when the clouds suddenly began pouring down literal buckets of water. This sounds like hyperbole, but I promise it’s not.
I was instantly wetter than I’ve ever been, and that included the aforementioned boots which, I soon discovered, could hold approximately a cup of water each — proving they were waterproof … from the inside anyway.
The torrential rain continued into the night. There was no point in changing into dry clothes, and I was terrified to put on my second pair of boots and have the same fate befall them as had befallen the first. Meanwhile, the rain provided me the opportunity to discover that the teardrop had a fairly sizable leak in the roof. I set up the canopy meant to cover the outdoor galley kitchen at the rear of the camper, over the top of the canopy instead. This stopped the leak, but meant I was left cooking in the rain.
The rain slowed briefly as night fell, but I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of water sloshing over my head. The rain was no longer running off the canopy, but pooling along the frame and thumping against the roof. As the wind began to pick up, all I could think about was the whole thing collapsing. I stumbled out in my jammies, hastily donned raincoat, the second pair of boots (The wet pair was in the cab of the pickup), and managed to empty the canopy. I also poured a few pitchers of water on myself and into my second pair of boots. I rightly assumed that meant I was going to spend the next two days with wet feet, which also meant no matter how many layers I piled on, I was cold.
By the next afternoon, I’d lost my voice. Then, about halfway home — and I promise again I am not making this up — one side of the hitch to the camper cracked in half. The mobile car repair guy who came to weld it back together (on a Sunday afternoon no less) told me I was lucky it hadn’t completely fallen apart. As he lay on the ground in the damp gravel on a random Montana roadside, the clouds parted and the sun appeared for the first time in days.
“That hitch is stronger now than when you bought it,” he said when he was done. And I had to chuckle, because I definitely am too.
