For Beginners

Every new endeavour has its challenges, and trailering is no exception. When we acquired our 21ft Tango Twist, we had a walkthrough conducted by a wily, exuberant, slightly crass, trailer-tech. He took us through all the things we needed to know: shut-off valves, pilot lights, propane, and of course, the sewer outlet (which I will from here on in lovingly refer to as the 'poop chute'). As he explained with a pirate-like grizzle "this pull is for the poopy; you wanna be ready for this one". He loved taking about the poop chute and spent a relatively long time on it, complete with jokes, nudge-nudge, and other low-brow but amusing antics.

Since bringing the camper home, I've dumped twice, once on a trial run to Whitefish with success, and once by accident on our home cement pad. Thing is, despite a thorough pirate-orientation I can never seem to remember which chute is for gray and which one is for black. In fairness to me, the pulls are marked, but confusingly so. One reads 'sewer water connection' and one 'waste water outlet'. Both vaguely sounding like 'poopy', which one would you choose?

Yesterday, our first day on the road began with an early morning getaway just after the crack of dawn. When we hit Swift Current, Saskatchewan we began to contemplate how we would lighten-up the load as we noticed the truck working harder than usual up the rolling hills past Maple Creek. We decided that we could ditch a 2X4 and dump the gray water. We figured that we could probably reduce the weight significantly, but in an unfamiliar locale, we couldn't find a dumping station.

I decided to pull over onto a gravel parking area beside some bushes near a gas station. Surely, no one would mind if I released some gray water onto the ground to evaporate during the afternoon heat. For you fellow newbies, gray water is waste water used after washing dishes, hands, and for showers. I know that this practice is probably frowned upon, but seeing little option, I parked on the lot and walked around to the back of the trailer. Crouching down I was confronted with a familiar dilemma. "Now, which one was the gray water, sewer or waste water? Both vague..." Rather than simply rolling the dice and mistakingly vacating the family bowels all over the gravel, I decided that the term 'waste water' sounded better than 'sewer connection'. Taking a deep breath, I grasped the pull and yanked.

A woosh of brown liquid gushed from the tube. I had guessed wrong and now had created a medium-sized cess-slough. With a sigh, I pulled the other one to dilute the growing puddle with the murky-clear gray water and sheepishly pulled the vehicles ahead to distance myself from the shameful mistake. Once I had put a bit of distance between us, I got out and reevaluated the scene.  Noticing a tiny water trail from the newly established cesspool to the back of our camper, I felt the sting of embarrassment that goes along with breaking the cardinal rule of trailering on the first day. To add to my shame, we waited for about 15 minutes in the lot while Marek nursed. As we sat there, a motor home pulled up several metres behind us. A lady who really resembled her pets ampled out of the door and carried her two poodles to the bush for a 'walk'. As she did, the husband stepped out the door and lit a cigarette and stood looking into the morning air. He was standing directly beside the poo slough but didn't seem to notice. I slinked into my seat wanting to die.

I couldn't look up at motorhome guy as we pulled-out across the 'drive of shame' and onto the highway. From here, we head to the Qu'appelle Valley on our way North-East across country to the summer stomping grounds of my youth, Wasagaming, Clear Lake, and Riding Mountain National Park in Friendly Manitoba.

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