#MajorsCorner #RVs # CanuckHumour Sunday Oct 12 2014

This past summer my wife and I did something we have never attempted before. Not that, you filthy grandchildren. We drove to Calgary to see my brother, Richard. In doing so we were lucky enough to worship the magnificent Rockies in all their glory. 
Normally these splendid peaks are just something that one glances at from an airplane if the weather permits, but to gaze at them from ground level is to play about with the grey matter in a good way.
One is staggered at the thought of how those hardy souls discovered the routes we casually take through the behemoth mountains under what must have been hair-raising conditions.
Surveyors in saddles wandered for years around dead-end canyons and endless swamps with swarms of insects as their only companions. Some went mad, and others became famous, while more than a few were never heard from again. They were all heroes to a new country trying to keep the far-flung territories together with a railroad.
It is a trip I think should be mandatory for every Canadian.
However into everything good must fall a little rain, and in our case it was the dreaded recreational vehicles.
First let me say I understand the need to drive a “home” from place to place at a pleasant speed in declining health while riding on one’s sewage. However do it in the prairies, not on the steep grades found between British Columbia and Alberta. Nothing is more teeth-grinding than to follow an under-powered RV and/or dim-witted driver along a winding two-lane highway up and down steep mountain passes hour after hour.
Those who have done this before know we live for that little sign that says “Passing lane 2 kilometres.” That is the signal of hope that we can nip in front of “the Mulrooney Family from Port Moody” (so a proud bumper sticker announced) after a low-speed chase of what seemed like years.
Now the moment we enter the glorious passing lane, “the Mulrooney Family from Port Moody” pulls out in front of us to make a charge past a logging truck. All well and good, you say, but the frightful Mulrooneys are either not going to make the takeover or will block our attempt because they do not have the power to perform the simple manoeuvre. Therefore nail-biting frustration ensues as dozens and dozens of muttering motorists become involved in the Mulrooney vacation as we are led at worm-like speed by a grinning father, his large dimpled wife and an appalling brood.
I have great sympathy for the truckers who soldier over these roads, delivering needed goods in all seasons. However, the gawking couples and families staring from their mobile homes appear to have little sympathy for those of us who have dates with distant martinis. We are made to become an involuntary part of the mile long conga line.
We all know what happens next. After showing the patience of canal mules, we gradually turn into F1 drivers with chips on our shoulders shouting our motto: “You asked for it.”
Suddenly our dreary little middle-class vehicles become striped racing cars with numbers on their sides, while our once-nervous wives begin to bellow, “We have them now. Go, go, go!”
I am not sure what the specs are on my five-year-old Jaguar, but I am sure we exceeded every one, and not in a good way, to pass the frightful Mulrooneys on a long curve with a bug-eyed driver of a moving van coming towards us.
There is a special place in hell for those people who travel in convoys, chatting amongst themselves on walkie-talkies in lines of twos and threes. They do such an efficient job of blocking any “passing” that one might become an axe murderer by the third set of mountains. They move as one long animal and all pull out together, plugging any chance of getting around this crawling wagon train. My wife threw fresh fruit at their column when they pulled off at Banff. She was breathing very hard, I can tell you.
Next time the train, I think.
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