Getting Closer
July 6.
We took the truck to World Wide RV to get the 5th wheel hitch and braking system installed. The only thing we don’t understand is why everyone who looks at it thinks that it’s a “really nice one”. After getting a short lesson on how to hook up, we drove away proudly, certain that we were ready to go. We decided that we would leave early morning on July 25th, a Sunday when there is very little traffic.
July 16.
Time for the next big hurdle: practicing hitching up a 5th wheel. We thought it might be a good idea to practice hitching up. After all, it is kind of important. Everything went smoothly, although both of us wish we could have seen what the cats did when the “earth shook”. One of our neighbors watched us practice and when we finished he told us about something called a “slick disc”. It’s a round piece of silicon about an eighth of an inch thick. It has a hole in the middle that is just big enough to fit over the kingpin on the trailer end of the hitch. It allows the base of the 5th wheel to move freely without grease. That’s good, because I know for sure that if there was grease on that thing, I would certainly bump into it every time I walked there. $10.00 well spent!
July 23.
The last step before heading to our first new location is to drop off the van, our bicycles and the grill at my mother’s house. She lives on the north side of town, and since we are heading north to a small town called Cottonwood, her house will be the closest when we come back to pick up the bikes and grill. On the trip back from her house, we started to worry that the electric cord that runs from the trailer to the truck wouldn’t be long enough, so we hitched up again and studied it. I think that we were both thinking of trailers. They have a very different pivot point for turns than a 5th wheel. It looks like the cord will be plenty long enough, but we are going to watch it very carefully when head out on Sunday. We still didn’t get to see the cats’ reaction to the big “kathunk”.
