{"id":3101,"date":"2015-07-20T23:27:29","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T03:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=3101"},"modified":"2015-07-20T23:27:29","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T03:27:29","slug":"girl-meets-west-2-rv-german-friends-refuse-shop-lcb-bless-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=3101","title":{"rendered":"Girl Meets West #2: The RV, Our German Friends, and Why I Refuse To Shop with LCB Again (Bless His Heart)"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you missed my last post, you may want to click here to read part one<\/a> of our Southwest trip.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0011\"<\/a>We arrived in Phoenix late that night, checked into a hotel near the airport, and crashed. We awoke the next morning and looked out the window; while the palm trees felt like home, the mountains reminded us that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d definitely left Kansas.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0015\"<\/a>As soon as LCB made a breakfast run to the Circle K next door (high-class and health-forward all the way, baby), we headed to Cruise America<\/a> to pick up our RV. The formerly small people sat outside and feigned patience while LCB checked us in. They jumped up when he returned, ready to enter our RV, only to find that more feigned patience was now required. Since we hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t rented from Cruise America before, they asked us to watch a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153short video.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d For informative purposes, they define \u00e2\u20ac\u0153short\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153thirty very long minutes.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0012\"<\/a>Do you know what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like to make three kids, with their RV in plain sight, sit for thirty minutes to watch an informative, I-sure-hope-it-was-made-in-the-eighties video when they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been anticipating renting this RV for approximately three hundred and fifty days?<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not good, folks.<\/p>\n

It also didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help that the male parental figure in their lives sat rolling his eyes for the duration.<\/p>\n

Anyway, we survived the video and were finally able to board our RV. Midway through moving our suitcases inside the RV, a man approached our door and asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Excuse me, anyone speak German?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

LCB said something that sounded like a mix of German and English and laughed, presumably at his own rusty German. Then the man continued, in English that was quite good, mind you, to ask if we wanted to buy a coffee maker, a toaster, and an assortment of other supplies off of him for twenty dollars.<\/p>\n

Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, when things like this happen, my mind automatically goes in three directions simultaneously.<\/p>\n

Direction One: This is so cool! We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to buy a bunch of miscellaneous stuff off some Germans we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never met in a large parking lot off the side of the highway in Phoenix. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like Breaking Bad<\/em> minus any drugs, crime,\u00c2\u00a0or subterfuge.<\/p>\n

Direction Two: (Eyeing the merchants) I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know these people at all, so I have no knowledge of their standards of cleanliness. There are no females in the group, and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just been camping who knows where for an undetermined amount of time. Therefore, I will have to scour any and all purchases like there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no tomorrow before I will be able to use them. This is a point to consider.<\/p>\n

Direction Three: LCB loves this stuff. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a potential deal and an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153experience\u00e2\u20ac\u009d all rolled into one. The man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in his element here.<\/p>\n

So, we bought the stuff, and while we were finishing unpacking, the Germans walked by several more times and threw additional items (thankfully paper products, not toasters) in our RV door.<\/p>\n

Each time I saw something come through the door, I had a half-second of fear until I realized it was just one of the Germans whipping more paper products at us. Then, it became funny, because how often are you in a situation where strangers are throwing things at you and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all good?<\/p>\n

Once we were loaded up, we drove to the store to pick up food and supplies. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to tell you about this experience but, gee, where do I start?<\/p>\n

Let me just put it this way: When you (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m using the impersonal you when I refer to LCB here) A). stop to weigh the merits of the brands, sizes, and sources of every product you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re purchasing as well as their percentages of riboflavin and overall durability because you are committing to all of them for at least one meal and to some of them for a whopping six days, and B). then when you return to the RV with your carefully chosen items and decide you need to develop a detailed organizational plan for every square inch of the twenty-seven foot vehicle you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve rented for six whole days because who could possibly survive for six whole days without a detailed organizational plan for their RV, and C). then when you decide that since you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re parked anyway why not make yourself a hot and cold lunch buffet that rivals the one at Old Country Buffet, and D). when during this whole process you decide to run back to the store three times for things you decide you might need that were not on your list, at the end, YOU MIGHT GLANCE AT YOUR WATCH AND BE STUNNED TO DISCOVER THAT YOU\u00e2\u20ac\u2122VE BEEN ON THE GROUNDS OF THE SAME STORE FOR FIVE HOURS.<\/em><\/p>\n

You read my itali-caps correctly.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0020\"<\/a>LCB drove north from Phoenix for the first hour like a man stunned by his own self. Seriously, the man was rendered semi-mute for a good twelve minutes.<\/p>\n

I had no earthly idea what to do. So, I did what I often do in these incomprehensible situations.<\/p>\n

I read a book.<\/p>\n

That poor, poor man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you missed my last post, you may want to click here to read part one of our Southwest trip. We arrived in Phoenix late that night, checked into a hotel near the airport, and crashed. We awoke the next morning and looked out the window; while the palm trees felt like home, the mountains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[365],"tags":[1960,1959,1958,1763,1957,1952,1816],"class_list":["post-3101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-off-island-stories","tag-cruise-america","tag-funny-family-vacations","tag-girl-meets-west","tag-going-off-island","tag-road-trips-with-kids","tag-rving-in-the-southwest","tag-rving-out-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}