Maiden Voyage in Lil’ Lazy
It was our first trip out with Lil Lazy, we had just driven to a town outside of Abeline, TX to pick it up. As we were pretty new at it and hadn’t stocked it at all other than the few things we brought with us, our plan was to only stay 2 nights in it as we made our way back home. First night, everything went great, we explored all the little nooks and crannies and wrote down what we thought we would need for getting everything set up. It wasn’t until the second day that things started to go awry.
We were staying at Abeline State Park in the Wagon Circle campsite. This campsite is basically a bunch of sites centered around a large park type area in the middle. In the middle of the park area there is a giant tree that all the kids were climbing and chasing each other so of course, it is my daughter that trips and falls out of the tree, landing square on her back. She ended up being fine, but it had knocked the breath out of her. Because of that, the kids and I decided to go for a walk around the park to expel some energy without climbing trees. It was on this short hike that Oliver completely wiped out and skinned up his knee pretty good, and then we got lost. It is a beautiful area with lots of trails, so it wasn’t the end of the world, but we were definitely gone a lot longer than intended.
When we finally got back to the campsite, we set up the grill and had a wonderful cookout and watched a movie outside. The kids and I soon got ready for bed while Myles stayed outside enjoying the weather. At some point after the kids and I had gone to bed, it started raining. Myles pulled out the awning, as it was just a light shower, and sat outside. When he was finally ready to go to bed he went to put up the awning for the night. Now we weren’t familiar with any of the equipment, so he didn’t realize that the water had been pooling on top rather than running off the front like he thought, when he began to pull it in, one of the braces buckled. He began going back and forth between the two sides trying to straighten it out and get it put away. At some point during all the back and forth and banging, I woke up and was listening to him. He was getting pretty irritated and I was as well thinking he was going to wake up the kids. All of the sudden I hear a loud bang and then Myles screaming at the top of his lungs.
He starts yelling, “Misty!!! It’s cutting off my finger! Misty!!!!”
I immediately jump out of bed and start running. You wouldn’t think you could get lost in a tiny RV but I managed. I ran past the door and couldn’t figure out how to get out at first. When I finally did make my way to the door, I couldn’t get it to open. I am desperately pushing down on the handle and shoving against the door while he is screaming the whole time.
He is obviously in a great deal of pain, over and over screaming, “It’s cutting off my finger!! Misty help, It’s cutting off my finger!!!!
I’m screaming back through the door, “I’m coming! I’m coming!!”
Finally, I realize that the reason the door won’t open is because I am pushing down instead of pulling up. I don’t know if it is some kind of safety thing in campers or what reasoning behind that design is, but I was not used to it. I finally pulled up on the handle and the door opens. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I got ready for bed and part of that was taking out my contacts and I was now wearing only a sports bra and panties. This is a very well-lit campsite, and we have LED lighting under our awning, lighting up the whole area, so if anyone was looking outside, they are getting a show.
I run outside, looking left and right, squinting because I can’t see a dang thing. Finally, I look to my right and up and Myles is hanging about 4 ft off the ground from the awning.
He had pushed up on one of the bars and when he did, the two C-shaped channels smashed together catching his finger in between the channels. It lifted him straight up off the ground like he didn’t weigh a thing. He couldn’t grab anything to pull himself up with his other hand because when he did, it would only further pinch his finger.
I run over to him as he screams and points everywhere telling me what to do without saying anything discernable. I reach over to one of the bars and pull on it, which causes him to scream even louder. I don’t know how to fix this, so I run over to him and grab his legs and lift him up onto my shoulders. He is too high to fully sit on me, so
I am grabbing his calves and shoving him up.
He is still screaming so now I start yelling “What do I do? Stop!! Hush!! Tell me what I need to do!!!! Myles! Stop, tell me what to do!!”
He is able to calm down enough to point to the bar between him and the camper and tells me I have to push up on it. As I stand there holding him, looking from the bar to where I am standing, I finally say, “I can’t reach it, I’m gonna have to drop you.”
He begins screaming again, “No!!!! NO!!!!!”
He starts trying to run away but there is nowhere he can go. He is able to get his feet to the side of the camper and is running up the side but as it is wet and muddy outside, he is just slipping.
I begin to count. “One. Two, Three!!!”
In one motion I drop him and leap to the bar and shove it up as hard as I can. It worked! I pivot back to Myles as he falls and he said I caught him, but I don’t remember.
He immediately begins walking back and forth, shaking his hand in front of him, making kind of a painful moaning sound. “Ahhhh, ahhhhh, ahhhh!”
I tell him, “Let me go put some pants on and I’ll take a look.”
I rush back inside and throw on some sweats and make my way back out. He is still pacing and shaking his hand. He shows me his finger and it is seriously about a quarter as thick as it used to be. The channel had gotten a hold of only the last segment of his finger and picked him up only by that.
He keeps pacing as Emma, our daughter, sticks her sleepy little head out of her bunk bed and in the most redneck little southern drawl I have ever heard from her before or since, says “Momma? Is Daddy ok?”
I said, “Yes baby, Daddy is fine.”
She says, “Because I heard him keep saying, it’s cutting off my faanger!”
I tell her, “He’s ok baby, Daddy still has all his digits, go back to sleep.” With that, she retreats back inside her bunk and quickly falls back asleep.
Myles, who has not stopped pacing since making his way back to the ground, stops and turns to me while looking at his finger, “It’s airin’ back up!!” It had begun to swell and swell fast.
After a bit more pacing, and the shock and adrenaline of it all tapering off, Myles looks to me and says, “I tried to figure out how to get down on my own and probably waited about 5 min before I started yelling for you.”
At this I laugh and say, “it might have felt like forever, but it was immediate. There was no delay in you yelling.”
He paces a bit more and finally says, “You know, I can handle a lot of pain. But that was horrible. I don’t wish that on anyone. That was so bad I almost feel like I want to cry.”
I laugh again and look at him as tears are streaming down his face and say, “Baby, you are crying.”
I loosely wrap up his finger as there is a small cut on the underside and the fingernail is bleeding from around it, and we try to go to sleep. Myles barely gets any sleep since his finger just pulsated, Flintstone style, all night. It eventually swelled to the point that it had made the loose bandage tight, so he got up and rewrapped it again.
The next morning, we are both trying to figure out how to either detach the ruined awning or bend the bars to the point that we can get it safely attached to the side and drive it home. We eventually are able to bend it back in place to the point we feel good about the drive, and we pack up and go home. Myles still has his finger wrapped and every time he would go to turn the wheel, his finger would hit the turn signal and shoot pain up his arm.
This, was our very first trip in our RV. Luckily, we haven’t had anything quite this dramatic since, but we have had plenty more mishaps!
