Why I bought my Mountaineer

[radioattic]

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I bought my Mountaineer because I sold my SOB motor home a couple of years ago.

I sold the SOB because it had gotten prohibitively expensive to maintain. Plus it developed leaks and other problems too numerous and costly to fix. The leaks and many of the other problems with the motorhome were a result of having taken it for a short but scary flight (yes, flight) several years ago while driving along the Foley Beach Express in southern Alabama.

Back before retirement, I took my motorhome on a short trip to the Alabama shoreline. My son was nice enough to let me borrow his new Mazda Miata for the trip, which I backed up onto a car dolly. Thought I'd try out the brand-new (then) Foley Beach Express for the trip home. Anyone a little familiar with Baldwin County knows that many of the roads run north-south/east-west there. The Express is a north-south highway that bypasses populated areas.

One would figure that when you build a new highway like that, you would chop up the old crossing roads and build the new road over the old ones with a nice fresh run of asphalt. Well, they did... except in one notable location at which the new road stopped and you drove over the breaks on either side of the old road.

There was a sign just before that which said "BUMP." How bad can a bump be on a brand new highway, I thought, as I proceeded past at 55mph.

Well.. BUMP

The front wheels hit the bump and left the highway. The back wheels did likewise when they hit the bump, and my 33ft motorhome went airborne, both axles leaving the road surface. The unlicensed pilot and his craft porpoised down the road, bouncing very hard at least three times on each axle. God only knows what the Miata was doing...

After that, the old motorhome was never the same again. Problems sprung up all over, and it was eventually sold to a nice man who parked it by a lake and left it there.

And that's why I bought my Mountaineer. The motorhome may have survived an earthquake, but it was no match for the Foley Beach Express.

[sreigle]

Steve, you have a great attitude! I'm sitting here smiling at your wit in posting what actually must have been rather terrifying, not to mention costly. Thanks for a great story. I'm just glad you were able to keep things under control and neither of you were hurt.

[radioattic]

Well, you know, I have some stuff upstairs that hasn't been the same since then either!

[Wayne and Carolyn Mathews]

Great story written with a lot of humor, which is a good thing, because that had to be a terrifying experience.

Carolyn