‘Loud & clear’

Ubi Libertas

2 years ago

I had to chuckle this morning when I swung my legs over the side of the bed and got dressed to take Miss Smudge out — damn, it was cold in the RV. My clothes were cold. The air outside was cold. Damp, too.

The coffee was hot.

I found it amusing because it’s about expectations. Within the walls of the fifth-wheel, it’s meant to be warm when it’s cold outdoors and cool when it’s hot. This is glamping, after all, and comfort is understood.

Unless the furnace is broken on a 39°F morning, of course, and right now ours is. Repairs have been penciled-in for sometime this week.

Had I awakened in a tent today, I would’ve found such conditions quite tolerable. Deb and I tent-camped until a few years ago, and I myself have peeked out of a sleeping bag on mornings a whole lot colder than this one. I’ve shoveled snow before I could build a fire, make a pot of coffee and warm up.

But then, I expected that. Today I expected something else.

And that’s why I chuckled.

The sun began warming the camper as soon as it cleared the treetops. After feeding the dogs, I loaded up bags of trash we weren’t able to dispose of on Friday, added another, and headed to the transfer station. Post office on the way back Home.

Deb and I used the time apart — me out and about, she on The Mountain — to test our comms. Each of us had a handheld GMRS radio turned on and tuned to the channel we’ve chosen for routine use as well as emergencies.

As I drove to and from, whenever I passed a spot familiar to both of us I’d key the mic and report my location. If she heard me, she’d acknowledge the transmission.

The back-and-forth went well until I reached the bottoms on the county road — my calls went unanswered. That didn’t surprise me, since GMRS is fundamentally a line-of-sight proposition. I stuck to our plan, though, and kept reporting.

I turned west on US 62, grabbed the radio and made another call.

“Loud and clear!” Deb responded.

Once I escaped shadows cast by terrain, our little handhelds woke up. Transmission and reception remained strong as I rolled on to the transfer station, which is situated on high ground — over five miles from The Mountain.

The return trip validated what we’d learned earlier. It was an incredibly useful exercise.

Later, Deb let me know that she’d run out of vape juice, so it was off to Mountain Home. To avoid making the trip for just that one thing, we detoured back through Flippin for gas at Murphy USA ($3.149) and Casey’s for my fix of Black Rifle Coffee ready-to-drink cans. (I’ve become addicted to the stuff, especially the Espresso 300 Triple Shot.)

It was a brilliant fall afternoon. The passage through pasture land between Crooked Creek and Home was as picturesque as I’ve ever seen it.