Kevin Means
Site Team
Did you ever have one of those brain farts that caused you to question your own sanity? This incident happened to us last weekend and I thought I'd share it with you. Let me set the stage...
When I hook up our toad (Cyndi's Acura MDX), I double-check everything. I then give Cyndi a walkie-talkie and she walks alongside the coach looking at the hookups as I drive slowly for about 100 feet - just to make sure everything looks right and the MDX is tracking properly. You see, unless I make a turn, I can't see the toad in my rear-view mirrors when we're driving. I can only see it in the rear-view monitor so I want to make sure everything is set up properly. Well, we did all that and everything was fine so off we went - time to dissengage brain and escape.
When we leave our house, we've got a couple of miles of downhill narrow, twisty roads to navigate before we get to a freeway. At the bottom of the hill the road widens out and there's a double left turn lane at an intersection that's controlled by a traffic light. So I pull up to the intersection (in the outer left turn lane), and while waiting for the light to turn green, Cyndi alarmingly says,"Where's my car?!!" She points to the monitor and sure enough, there's no MDX!
Now, can you imagine the instantaneous panic that would set in when you've realized that your toad has come loose! I looked in my mirrors expecting to see people trying to flag me down, the car in the ditch or worse yet, plowed into another car or sticking out the side of a house. Heck, with my luck, it probably tumbled down the side of the hill and crashed into a wedding ceremony with 100 video cameras rolling. Whatever happened, it couldn't be good. I just couldn't believe that I never felt or heard anything!
So there I sat, staring at the monitor in total disbelief. Then it hit me - we weren't viewing the rear-view camera, we were viewing the left side-view camera, which is activated when you turn on your left turn signal. I quickly switched to the rear-view camera and there it was - Cyndi's MDX - still happily connected to the RV (Maybe it was I that was so happy). The whole scenario took about 30 seconds from beginning to end.
Now, before you say, "Yeah but the side-view looks completely different than the rear-view ya big dummy. How'd ya miss that?" Well, you're right. It does look different. All I can say is, your brain will try to make sense of something if you tell it to hard enough. We just looked at each other, shook our heads and laughed. The rest of the trip was uneventful (in a good way). Thought you might enjoy that.
Kev
When I hook up our toad (Cyndi's Acura MDX), I double-check everything. I then give Cyndi a walkie-talkie and she walks alongside the coach looking at the hookups as I drive slowly for about 100 feet - just to make sure everything looks right and the MDX is tracking properly. You see, unless I make a turn, I can't see the toad in my rear-view mirrors when we're driving. I can only see it in the rear-view monitor so I want to make sure everything is set up properly. Well, we did all that and everything was fine so off we went - time to dissengage brain and escape.
When we leave our house, we've got a couple of miles of downhill narrow, twisty roads to navigate before we get to a freeway. At the bottom of the hill the road widens out and there's a double left turn lane at an intersection that's controlled by a traffic light. So I pull up to the intersection (in the outer left turn lane), and while waiting for the light to turn green, Cyndi alarmingly says,"Where's my car?!!" She points to the monitor and sure enough, there's no MDX!
Now, can you imagine the instantaneous panic that would set in when you've realized that your toad has come loose! I looked in my mirrors expecting to see people trying to flag me down, the car in the ditch or worse yet, plowed into another car or sticking out the side of a house. Heck, with my luck, it probably tumbled down the side of the hill and crashed into a wedding ceremony with 100 video cameras rolling. Whatever happened, it couldn't be good. I just couldn't believe that I never felt or heard anything!
So there I sat, staring at the monitor in total disbelief. Then it hit me - we weren't viewing the rear-view camera, we were viewing the left side-view camera, which is activated when you turn on your left turn signal. I quickly switched to the rear-view camera and there it was - Cyndi's MDX - still happily connected to the RV (Maybe it was I that was so happy). The whole scenario took about 30 seconds from beginning to end.
Now, before you say, "Yeah but the side-view looks completely different than the rear-view ya big dummy. How'd ya miss that?" Well, you're right. It does look different. All I can say is, your brain will try to make sense of something if you tell it to hard enough. We just looked at each other, shook our heads and laughed. The rest of the trip was uneventful (in a good way). Thought you might enjoy that.
Kev
