The keys to a long and happy sunset in your life? Activity, adventure, challenge.That’s what it says in all the self help books anyway. Being a trusting soul, I took that advice and made a recent trip to Key West. Making the trip required me to rely on two of my most recently developed skills; RV driving and boating. The problem was I had to combine both skills to make the adventure work. Attaching the twenty one foot boat to the forty three foot RV created a seventy foot train rolling down the highway. It was reasonably simple to drive as long as you didn’t have to turn. Unfortunately there are a few turns along the way from Charleston, South Carolina to Key West, Florida.

Turning is problematic when your seventy feet long, particularly if it’s a right hand turn. To turn right you first have to go left, a counter intuitive move. Since the drivers behind you think you are turning right, silly people, the cars on the left usually honk violently as you encroach on their space. With any luck they miss you. Now the guys on the other side of the road begin to become visibly anxious as they see the boat begin to come their way. If you go slowly enough, they have enough time to reverse so that you can complete the turn without contact. Looking down at them from the driver’s seat on the RV you see faces contorted in rage, but happy to be alive.

Parking the seventy foot behemoth is not without its challenges. One needs space and a lot of it. That usually means a large parking lot. If spending the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot disturbs or embarrasses you, then this adventure should be avoided. We stopped the first night just south of Jacksonville, put out the slides on the RV, got out our lawn chairs and took out the grill to cook dinner. It was a little “fumie” as the Wal-Mart customers drove by, but what the heck, it was all part of the adventure and our key to staying young. At 2:00 AM the security guard knocked on the door, but we were able to talk him out of making us move as long as we were out of the lot at six am.

Out of the parking lot we rolled and headed down I 95 to A1A and Key West. Victory was in sight. We were going to make it to Key West. I began to think about why we wanted to make the trip; clear water, cruising in our boat, flipping over the side to snorkel and ooh and ah at the denizens of the deep. Jimmy Buffet would be singing in the background. Perfect. We rolled into our camp site. I executed the perfect back down the launch ramp move with the boat trailer still attached to the RV. I was about to launch the boat when a woman came running out yelling; “How much water does that boat draw? Eighteen inches” I responded.“Won’t work” she said. “There is only 10 inches of water in the bay.” Eight hundred fifty miles of a near death experience and there is no water in my island bay. Oh darn!!! Forever young.

Harry McHugh… first a corporate blue suiter then an entrepreneur. Writes to relive the adventure. Big believer in jump before you look. The results are usually hysterical. Catch Harry’s stories at: funnierthanwethink.blogspot.com/