Wild Bill's favorite activity in the whole wide world is lawnmower racing. He belongs to the Michigan chapter of the US Lawn Mower Racing Association, and races all over the lower half of the lower peninsula as well as in nearby states such as Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Minnesota, Wisconsin and even Georgia once. I like to go with him when I can, but being a large, gimpy lady presents an odd, amusing, but nonetheless serious problem for me. Let's call it Potty Access.
Most races are held either in large fields with temporary tracks or else in fairgrounds with many fences. This limits my Potty Access to either porta-johns that are nearly impossible for me to use or to indoor flushies that are a quarter-mile away or more the way the crow flies--not including the zig-zagging one must do to get out of the pit area and past the spectator areas via the small, hard-to-spot gates and going against the flow of body traffic. Difficult for anyone who has trouble walking any distance, not to mention that the ground is usually very uneven at a fairgrounds or event center. Porta-johns? Forget it. They are rarely placed on level ground and usually any handicapped accessible units are placed only on the spectator side of the fence, not on the pit side. So it's not unusual for me to have to "hold it" for 9-12 hours on an event day. In my case, I not only have trouble walking--I had a kidney transplant 14 years ago, and I need to keep my kidney "flushed," for lack of a better term. I also need to be able to maintain a certain level of cleanliness. Not "bubble-boy" level but definitely higher than porta-john level!
I had hopes when we bought a used, enclosed trailer two years ago that we might get a camping toilet and stash it somewhere in the nose of the trailer, so I could quickly duck behind something, anything, and relieve myself 2-3 times per race day, but although it sounds easy in theory, it's harder to accomplish than one would think. Then we started looking at toy-haulers. Camping trailer in the front, cargo area in the back. Perfect, right?
Until we started looking at them up close and realized that many of them have you stash your "cargo" right in the sleeping area of the camper. Fold up the bed and voila! Room for your dirt bikes! We don't need to actually SLEEP in the trailer--unless Bill wants to save $$ by camping at the track instead of paying to sleep on a bedbug-ridden mattress in a sponsoring motel. To get one large enough to hold two racing mowers, however, would cost more than we can afford to spend and then would require a bigger truck to tow it!
But an RV now...we've looked at a few. We would like a smallish, used Class C that I can climb into fairly easily, and we think we've found one in the Fleetwood Tioga. Although we would have to construct our own step for me to go in and out of the camper portion, I can easily jump in and out of the passenger door of the cab and swing my legs around to stand up between the seats. The toilet is on a raised platform and is easy for me to use without having to add safety rails. It's a very small size. Behind the driver's seat is a dinette/sleeper, the fridge, some storage and the bathroom (sink, toilet, tub/shower). Behind the passenger seat is a swivel chair, the door, a rannge, kitchen sink, and the main bed. There is also sleeping space above the cab but I've no idea how a person could use it, ha ha!
So, a way to bring the dogs along, a place for me to rest, a way for us to bring food to the track instead of having to buy questionable fair food, and maybe I could rustle up some supper before we hit the road afterward? Shade (I think they all have awnings), and a potty! Plus we can use it at times we are not going to a race, if we care to take off for a weekend! Now all we have to do is educate ourselves on how to buy a used RV.
Fortunately THIS gimp can do a tiny bit of climbing with enough safety rails to pull myself up and in with!
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