Covid 2020 RV Edition - Ch. 1 On the Driveway

Cher and Rob - Discovering
that camping and 
Covid 19 go hand in hand

2020 will be a year to be remembered.  For our parent’s generation, World War 2 was the defining event of their lives. Fortunately, our generation has enjoyed a mainly charmed three quarters of a century of more or less of peace since that time. Our defining moments to date have been measured more by one off events such as “I remember when John Kennedy was assassinated” or “I remember what I was doing when 9/11 happened”. However, I do think that Covid19 does have the potential to be the long term, life changing, world shaking, protracted process, which we will remember as our defining event. The jury is still out on that, but time will tell.

Towards the end of 2019 Cheryl and I had been gaily globetrotting around Israel, Jordan and Turkey. We returned from that for six weeks before setting out to join with the worldwide Cornish Clan in a reunion at Saint Francis Bay in South Africa and do a bit of touring. We were enjoying a life of ease, moving and travelling at will, when bang, down came the guillotine blade ending it all and before we knew it, we were battening down the hatches at home getting ready for the Covid storm that threatened to engulf us.

In a rather bizarre twist of fate, since then, much of our lives has revolved around our RV. Strange? Yes, but True! Here is how it has unfolded, with all its twists and turns, no puns intended.

Whilst we were in South Africa, Julia, Chris and their three kids, John, James and Peter, joined me in visiting some family members for a couple of weeks, leaving Cher looking after her Mom in East London. During that time, we learned that eighteen-year-old Mariah Tibbit, Rose (my sister) and Roy’s granddaughter, would be returning to Canada and needed a home. Julia and Chris had always been Mariah’s legal guardians. They offered her a spot with their family in Oshawa. That one decision unleashed a chain of events which has changed all of their lives dramatically. Let me explain.

Julia and Chris had lived in their starter home in North Oshawa for about twelve years. Chris is a great fixer and doer of impressive deeds around the house. Over the years he had completed several projects, which had made optimal use of their living space. Their property was humming along like a finely tuned piano. I had been bugging them for years to buy a bigger house as, with their three boys, the place was threatening to burst. They had resisted my best persuasive efforts. “Why try and improve on perfection?” was their response. In one fell swoop, the decision to offer Mariah a home, changed all of that. Where would Mariah and her baby sleep? Lego Room? Impossible. With the three boys in their room? Unthinkable? Yikes. Suddenly it dawned on them, they needed a new house. Little did they know how things would turn out.

To cut a long story short their real estate agent presented them with a list of To Dos before selling. Covid19 was upon us. Mariah was arriving shortly. Time was of the essence. Their house was too small to do jobs and live in one space. They needed somewhere to live for a few weeks. “Could they come and stay with us?” “Sure”, we said. Then we started counting beds and rooms and realized we would have eight of us sleeping in a two bedroomed house. This is when it dawned on us that we had a house on wheels, our RV, parked down the road and we could overflow into that by parking it in our driveway. Cher and I could have our own personalised en suite on driveway.

Mariah quickly became 
a favorite with Julia's boys

Lots of Grandad time

Online Church - our only option under quarantine and lockdown

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Next thing Mariah arrived from South Africa, the Trotter family, Julia, Chris the three boys and Mariah,  arrived and Cher and I found ourselves sleeping on our driveway in our RV. Added to that recipe, was added a smidge of Lockdown with a dash of Quarantine as Mariah had just arrived by plane from South Africa and we were therefore all potentially Covid recipients or carriers. At a quick count we had eight bodies trapped in a confined space for at least two weeks. If we count our two tenant’s downstairs, we had ten souls, to survive the vagaries of the unknown invisible enemy potentially all around us and possibly in our midst. At that time Canada had about two hundred known cases of Covid and one or two deaths. Four months later, we are at over 100, 000 cases and over 8000 deaths. A viable and available vaccine is at least twelve months away. Sheesh.

As it all turned out it was a stretching, but nevertheless, lovely three weeks. I did notice our tenants furtively peering around doors and quietly slipping on ear protectors when they entered their apartment downstairs. Our grandsons did not really grasp the practical implications of running and jumping up and down on wooden floors upstairs, with people living below. Nevertheless, our tenant Chriss and daughter Deanna, bravely endured. After all the slogan being pumped out across the media waves was “We’re all in this Together”. This was true, but some were more in it than others. One day, we discovered it was our tenant Chriss’s birthday. The entire Gang of Eight (Cornish’s and Trotters) gathered outside her door and sang her a lusty “Happy Birthday” song. Chriss was delighted and all was forgiven, albeit probably not forgotten.

Grandad - freshly inspired
to learn piano.

The days began to develop a pattern. John, James and Peter are homeschooled. Each day, Cher would work on teaching the kids some math and reading. I would oversee a daily online piano lesson. I got so inspired in doing this, that I am now following in their footsteps and frantically trying to catch up with five-year-old Peter with a daily piano lesson for myself. Fortunately, the boys are crazy about Lego and they spent many unsupervised hours laboring away at some incredible creations. I am sure somewhere down the line, Lego will be recognized for its services to the greater good of humanity.

Cher and I each night had to face the music and head out to the RV. It was March, so one would have expected the weather to be warming. Not so much. At night it was more than freezing. We did have a furnace which bravely did it’s best but with limited success. RVs are not best known for their superlative insulation. Cold air would pour down on our heads from the window above us.  I rediscovered an old trick from my boarding school days and began wearing a toque and sleeping with my head under the covers, coming up every so often for a breath of fresh air. Bottom line, we survived. In fact, we thrived. We loved having our family so close to us.

Chris and Julia were slaving away working on getting their house ready for sale. Their three weeks were amazingly productive. Despite my best advice, they bought a house before they had sold theirs. We were in the midst of Pandemic Panic. The housing market had previously been booming, but how their own house’s value would hold up under Covid19 was an unknown. This put them on the hook to potentially buy high and sell low. They were unfazed. “God would provide, as needed”.

Julia and Chris had bought a lovely five-bedroom, five-bathroom house, with the plan to build a sixth bedroom for Mariah in the basement. They had room for a separate home school classroom, separate office for Chris and still have a spare bedroom for guests. As things have turned out, this was a prescient move to have all those bedrooms and bathrooms. More on this later.

We all held our breath when the time came to put their house on the market for sale. Businesses were dropping like flies; Canada had its highest unemployment ever. Would buyers be buying? Would banks be lending? Yikes. As it turns out, within a week they had a good offer and the deal was done. Thank you, Lord for the internet and your gracious provision of a buyer.

All of that had been achieved within three weeks. God is good. Sadly, it was now time for them to go back to their house and wait for the respective property sales to close. Cher and I waved them farewell sadly. It had been busy, stretching and challenging to have so many people crammed into a small space, but we had loved it and now our house felt a bit too quiet and empty.

Mariah, Julia and Cher
taking a break from the work

Family nap and story time. 
Furniture moved? Check

Top to Bottom: John, Peter and James
celebrate their new back yard. 

We moved back into our own bedroom and returned the RV to storage. Having said, that I was starting to build up a long list of jobs that needed doing on the RV to keep it in tip top shape. It is sixteen years old (2004 model), and we had owned it for eight of those years. If any year was going to be a good one, to bite the bullet and do some upgrades, this would be the year, as we clearly weren’t going to be travelling anywhere anytime soon. RVs are a bit like boats. There is nothing cheap about owning, maintaining, or operating them. The only question outstanding was, “Who is going to do the work and how much is it going to cost?”.