Category: Guest blog

Doing more: We went to the roller derby!

Surely it’s no secret by now that full-time RV living allows us to live by our name: Own Less, Do More. And one really cool thing we got to do recently, while staying at a campground near our former hometown of Norfolk, VA, was attend a friend’s roller derby game — a first for us.

Now before I get too far into this, you need to know right from the first whistle that I am not a sports fan. I rarely know which -ball season it is, I don’t understand team loyalty because the team changes every year, and I really really don’t care about your fantasy league.

But ya know what? Watching roller derby was a blast, y’all!


My friend, Heather, who goes by Sugar Rush when skating as #711 with Mid Atlantic Roller Derby, is a woman of many talents. In no particular order: hair stylist, mermaid, craft business owner, pinup girl, step mom, and former U.S. Marine.

She is Fun with a capital F, and a beautiful person through and through.
See?
(Note to self: Stop posing for photos with Heather.)
So when I showed up to have her give my hair a quick trim, and she asked if I wanted a couple of tickets to her game the following week, I could not say yes fast enough.

Heather had dressed up as a derby girl for Halloween one year, and her fancy became an obsession, which then turned into a passion, after a player named Tenacious V invited her to a team practice. Heather became a real live derby girl in November of 2015.

When Tim and I arrived at the arena for the game, I expected to see lots of torn fishnet stockings, booty shorts, tattoos, and wild hair styles. And I was right. Lots. Those women did not disappoint.

What I did not expect was the family friendly atmosphere, the pre-game national anthem, the camaraderie and support — not just amongst teammates but even between the two teams — and the philanthropic aspect of the game. A portion of that night’s proceeds benefitted the Alzheimer’s Association.
What I saw was a commitment to sport, safety, and community, while also getting to take in a really good show. The players even signed autographs for some of the youngest fans after the game!
That’s Heather signing a fan’s arm.
How cute is that?

A simplified description of play, summarized from my program (for the real deal, go here):
  • Each team sends a pack of 5 players to the track: 4 blockers and 1 jammer. 
  • Each jammer is identified by the star on her helmet, and jammers are the only players who can score points.
  • Jammers score points by passing opposing skaters by the hips, and the first jammer to break through the pack legally is called the lead jammer. 
  • Only the lead jammer can call off the jam before the 2-minute duration is up, which she does by tapping her hips repeatedly, making the moves nice and big so the referees will notice. 
  • By calling the jam off early, the lead jammer prevents the opposing team from scoring. (There’s a brief video explanation here, and you can see a real live jammer “call it off” at about the 1:17 mark.)

Could I follow all the action? No. It confused the heck out of my poor sports-challenged brain. But “Call it off” is my new favorite gesture, and I wish I’d had it in my parenting arsenal when our boys were young.

I guess I could now use it in the RV when Tim is making me crazy. Right?

Heather admitted to a rookie mistake involving this very gesture. “I have called off the jam not realizing I was not the lead. Oops!”

My favorite part was reading the roster of skaters’ team names, which are really terribly creative. A few that made me LOL: Brooklyn DeckHer, Slayboy Bunny, Larraine of Terror, Matilda the Hun, and Zombie ApocaLyzz.

Would I go to see roller derby again? Absolutely! And I encourage you to Google “roller derby near me” to find out where and when you can take in a game too. You might just find a new obsession.

As for why Heather stays with it, “The biggest reason is that I don’t just want to say ‘I did roller derby,’ I want to remember that I gave it my all. We support wonderful charitable organizations, and I have met so many amazing people, I cannot even describe the support and friendships that have developed with this sport.”

Author’s note: A version of this post appears at Heartland RVs. It is printed here with permission.

An epic fail, advice from a stoner, and how we ended up with a new truck

A funny thing happened in March, on our way from San Antonio, TX, to Elkhart, IN, for a service appointment to take care of some welding issues on The Toad: the BFT is the one that failed us.

Irony: the dependably cooperative BFT dies on the way to having the notoriously lemony RV repaired.
WHO THOUGHT IT WOULD BE THE TRUCK???

Not what we were expecting.

Our incredibly reliable, tough-as-nails, much adored 2012 Chevy Silverado 3500 dually sputtered and quickly died while we were driving on I-35 just south of Dallas — a mere 225 miles into our 1300-mile trip.

We are very thankful that despite the scariness of the incident, the travel gods were indeed watching over us.

We were on flat ground instead of a hill.

There were no vehicles riding too closely behind us.

We were not in a construction zone.

We had a wide shoulder to pull onto.

And I was smart enough to start veering toward that shoulder at the same time I was saying, “That didn’t sound right.”

Why did that turn out to be a smart move? Because we had mere seconds before the truck shut down. All power: gone. On an interstate.

The tow truck driver took Tim and the Silverado to a service shop, leaving me on the roadside with the RV until they returned.
Why?
Because Tim can talk truck to the garage gurus, and I shouldn’t ever do that.
We both know I’d say, “You know what? Just burn it. We’ll walk.”
From my personal Facebook account that day: So I sat all alone in the grass next to I-35 for more than 2 hours, waiting for the tow truck to come back for the RV, and this is the only person who stopped to make sure I was OK: stoner on a fucking bicycle.
Said his name is Mondo.
He was riding to Austin for his birthday.
I don’t know where or when he started (and I rather suspect he didn’t either), but he had about 145 miles to go.
Mondo offered me use of his cell phone to make an emergency call, in the event I didn’t have one.
Clearly he’d never met me.
And then, in the way only the perpetually stoned can properly pull off, he told me I should just relax, and not stress out about it.
He then literally rode off into the sunset.

To make a very long story a lot shorter, the problem turned out to be what is rather evocatively known as “grenading” of the fuel pump. Upon its death, it sent shards of metal through the entire fuel system, leaving us dead in the proverbial water.

As Tim described it “The critical part seemed to be the Bosch-built CP4.2 HPFP, the exact same pump used in the Ford F-series Light Duty diesel trucks. If you google ‘F350 CP4 failure,’ you’ll find plenty of discussion on the issue. Same if you google ‘Duramax LML CP4 failure.’”

Tim, who is not an industry expert by any means, but merely a consumer who’s always trying hard to get smarter, further surmised, “A major culprit appears to be the quality of diesel fuel in the U.S. (i.e., the mandated ultra-low sulfur blend plus other things), combined with what might be less than acceptable engineering by Ford and GM. Reportedly, Bosch has been saying for some time that the lubricity of the fuel needs to be higher for these pumps to last, and U.S. diesel fuel doesn’t meet these standards.”

Within ten minutes of meeting our new BFT, Tim was underneath it, checking all the things.

What that meant for us was a $10,000 fuel system replacement (GM paid for part of it) that left us stranded for two weeks outside a really small Texas town. Middle of Nowhere was still a good 10 miles away. We were there so long we painted our RV’s interior!

And then, after the truck repair was complete, and we were finally sitting in Elkhart waiting for the work to be finished on The Toad, we realized that we needed to make a big decision: test our luck by keeping the BFT and its fresh new fuel system with the exact same type of pump that had gone spectacularly belly up, or upgrade to a truck that wouldn’t have that issue.

To make the second part of the story shorter as well, we knew we couldn’t live with the uncertainty of driving a truck that might croak again, any more than we could change the U.S. diesel fuel composition standards that were probably part of the cause.

The Silverado was our only vehicle, and it pulls the Bighorn, which is our only home. We couldn’t stomach the idea of going through a second catastrophic failure, or having it happen under far more hazardous circumstances than the first one.

We opted to upgrade.

Y’all say hello to our 2017 Dodge RAM 3500 dually, which we picked up at the end of May, just shy of 3 months after the Great Fuel Pump Grenading Incident of 2017.

For those who are wondering why we didn’t go with the 2017 Chevy Silverado, which does not have that same iffy fuel pump as the 2011-2016 diesel models, there were three factors that put the RAM on top.

  1. Shorter turning radius for easier maneuvering
  2. Larger payload and axle weight ratings for higher towing capacity
  3. More competitive pricing for better value

We look forward to thousands and thousands of miles together.

My birth announcement.
I figured our sons should know.
12 miles on the odometer, and it definitely does not make my butt look big.
What a great purchase!
Also, we had a terrific experience working with Jeff Taylor, Commercial/Fleet Manager, at Glenn’s Freedom Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram in Lexington, KY. Holler if you’d like a personal referral!

Author’s note: A version of this post appears at Heartland RVs. It is printed here with permission.