Motorhome Humour

Motorhomer's Humour

Old folks are worth a fortune - silver in their hair, gold in their teeth, stones in their kidneys, lead in their feet, and gas in their stomachs.
I have become a little older since I saw you last, and a few changes have come into my life. Frankly, I have become a frivolous old girl; I'm seeing five gentlemen everyday.
As soon as I wake, will power helps me out of bed, then I go to my Lou. Next it's time for Uncle Toby to come along, followed by Billy Tea. They leave and Arthur Ritis shows up and stays with me the rest of the day. He doesn't like to stay in one place very long, so he takes me from joint to joint.
After such a busy day, I'm really tired and glad to go to bed with Johnny Walker. What a life. Oh yes, I'm also flirting with Al Zymer.
PS. The preacher came to call the other day. He said, "At my age I should be thinking about the here after". I told him, "Oh, I do all the time, no matter where I am, if I'm in the kitchen or down in the basement, I ask myself, 'Now, what am I here after?'"
If you don't think this is amusing - wait till you get old!!
Peter & Elly V3435


The D.I.Y. Expert & the Oil Change

Reproduced with kind permission from The Automotive Engineer

Most of us have come into contact with this bloke. You must know one, he’s that bloke that bores you to tears at the BBQ, the one that won’t have a qualified Mechanic or Serviceman look after his car. No way! He knows how to service his own car. After all, what’s there to know and besides, these Automotive Repairers out there just rip people off!

So next time you run into one of these morons, hand him a copy of the following account of a D.I.Y. expert having a go at changing the engine oil in his car. But before we look at him in action, let’s see how the average woman looks after the oil change in her car.

THE WOMAN

Drives down to the mechanic’s repair shop when the odometer reaches 5,000km since the last oil change.

Has a cuppa in the waiting room, while flicking through “Home and Garden” magazines.

Writes a cheque for $40.00 fifteen minutes later and drives off with a properly maintained and warranted vehicle.

TOTAL MONEY SPENT $40.00

THE D.I.Y. EXPERT

1. Goes to auto parts store and writes a cheque for $50.00 for oil, filter, hand cleaner and a scented tree.

2. Discovers that the used oil container is full. Instead of taking it to the servo to recycle, dumps it in a hole in the back yard.

3. Opens a can of beer and drinks it.

4. Jacks up car. Spends 30 minutes looking for safety support stands.

5. Finds stands under kid’s billy cart.

6. In frustration, opens another beer and drinks it.

7. Places drain tin under engine.

8. Looks for 9/16” socket and power bar.

9. Gives up and uses shifting spanner.

10. Unscrews drain plug, ensuring to round off drain plug as much as possible.

11. Drops drain plug in pan of hot oil, gets hot oil on face in the process..

12. Swears profusely and cleans up mess.

13. Has another beer whilst watching oil drain.

14. Looks for oil filter removal tool.

15. Gives up, drives screwdriver through oil filter and twists off. More oil on face.

16. Has another beer.

17. Mate shows up, finishes slab with him. Will finish oil change tomorrow.

18. Next day, drags pan full of old oil out from underneath car.

19. Throws cardboard and newspapers on oil spilled during step 11.

20. Pours pan of oil down the hole in back yard and covers.

21. Has another beer. Oh no, he drank it all yesterday.

22. Walks to store, buys another slab.

23. Installs new oil filter making sure to over tighten.

24. Adds first litre of fresh oil to engine.

25. Remembers drain plug from step 11.

26. Hurries to find drain plug in drain pan.

27. Discovers that the drain plug is buried in a hole in the back yard, along with the old oil.

28. Has another beer.

29. Uncovers hole and sifts for drain plug.

30. Discovers that the first litre of fresh oil is now on the floor.

31. Has another beer.

32. Slips with shifting spanner tightening drain plug and bangs knuckles on frame.

33. Bangs head on floor in reaction to 32.

34. Begins swearing.

35. Throws shifting spanner.

36. Swears for additional 10 minutes because the shifting spanner hit Miss December (1998).

37. Has another beer.

38. Cleans hands and forehead and applies bandages as required to stop blood flow.

39. Has another beer.

40. Has another beer.

41. Dumps in four and a half litres of fresh oil.

42. Has another beer.

43. Lowers car with jack.

44. Accidentally crushes one of the safety stands, and damages sill.

45. Moves car back to apply more cardboard and newspapers to fresh oil spilled during step 24.

46. Has another beer.

47. Test drives car.

48. Gets pulled over, arrested for driving under the influence.

49. Car gets impounded.

50. Catches a cab home.

51. Has major argument with wife.

52. Wife refuses to drive him, takes cab to impound yard next day.

53. Gets car from impound yard. Paid fine.

54. Buys flowers for wife.

55. Goes to court. Gets fined. Has licence suspended.

56. Takes bus/train/taxi for next three months.

57. Quote on sill panel damage.

MONEY SPENT

$50.00 Parts

$50.00 Replacement set of safety stands

$2500.00 Fine

$200.00 Impound & Towing Fee

$450.00 Panel shop

TOTAL MONEY SPENT $3,250.00

Why I must have power at a Rally

The following 29 reasons were given at Reception at the 14th National Rally in Forbes in 1999. (There were others too rude to mention)

1. I need power because I always have power at a Rally.

2. I need power for the air conditioner.

3. I paid for power and I want it!

4. I have a medical condition but I left my card at home.

5. I need power to work the overhead light on the dressing table, so I can put my make up on.

6. My generator is not working.

7. I have a sick dog and he must have the air conditioner going.

8. My friends have power and I want to be near them.

9. My gas is on the blink and I can’t use my stove.

10. I am a high (??) vehicle and I have to have power.

11. I can’t go without power because my fridge won’t work.

12. I left my generator at home.

13. I must have power as I don’t sleep too well at night.

14. My vehicle only works on 240 volt.

15. I need to get up a few times during the night and I need power. (For what??)

16. I booked a powered site and I should have it.

17. I won’t be able to stay at this rally if I can’t have power.

18. I’m impotent and I need power!!

19. If you don’t give me power, I’ll have you up for discrimination.

20. You should have got 'them' to put more power in.

21. It’s not fair that some can get power and others can’t.

22. I suppose you’ve all got power because you’re working with 'them'.

23. It’s so hot and I have to have the air conditioner on.

24. I have to leave my dogs in the van all day and they need to have the fan going.

25. My fridge is only 240 volt and I need power to operate it.

26. I need to use my hair dryer.

27. I have to have power because I am only staying four days. (??)

28. I booked and paid for a powered site and it’s not fair that I miss out.

29. It’s a National Rally and I have to have a powered site. (??)

(Compiled by Carolyn Flack, Golden West Wanderers’ Secretary 1999.)

Motorhomer's Humour : The Primus Lightweight Portable Toilet Seat

My wife is a native New Yorker, and I have therefore never really expected her to be comfortable with all of the exigencies of the Australian Bush, even though she has constantly surprised me with her resiliency to change and her adaptability to the unexpected.

On her first Bush trip with me, shortly after our marriage in 1985, she was showing some discomfort as the city of Brisbane slipped behind. Being the stereotypical, culturally insensitive Australian male, I did not enquire as to the reason. So she was eventually forced, on a dirt road somewhere West of Cunnumulla, to comment that it seemed a long way between rest stations. As a native New Yorker she was used to seeing them, complete with MacDonald's and other franchises, every few miles along those grand American freeways that allow you to travel from one part of the country to another without having to change gear and to average the same speed as that to which you have set the cruise control.

No. There are no rest stations. You have to do it in the bushes, I said.

But there are no bushes she said, surveying the gibber plain before us that bore a striking similarity to the barren surface of Mars.

Then you have to go just behind the Landcruiser, I said, Where the rear vision mirrors can't see.

But someone might come, she retorted,

Look for Dust, I instructed, explaining that we hadn't seen a car on this track all day and that, as she could see the dust of approaching cars for several kilometers, her privacy wasn't in jeopardy.

It then emerged that she had only ever pointed her privates at porcelain and then, always, with a proper toilet seat protecting her pants from any wayward spray. Consequently, she couldn't envisage how she could do this on a road covered in red bulldust.

I hadn't really paid attention when my mother gave my younger sisters their training in how to go to the toilet in the bush when there isn't any toilet, a competency every bush girl needs to acquire at a fairly young age. So I had to use my imagination somewhat when I described how I thought a female should do it.

She emerged sometime later without any splashes on the boots or jeans, so my instructions must have been adequate. But she confessed that she found it a little disturbing to see the kangaroos watching her, since they looked more like humans than the four-legged creatures she was familiar with in her country of origin.

Though the competency was developed with little drama, I felt a little sorry for her that she had to do something she was not brought up to do. I secretly planned that when I finally built my dream 4 wheel drive motorhome, I would equip it with a shower and toilet so that she could enjoy the beauties of the Australian bush without having to squat uncomfortably and ignobly in the bulldust.

Mike

F, I heard second hand, had arrived at a similar conclusion when he also tried to entice his English-born wife into camping in the Australian bush.

It's almost 20 years now since our first bush sojourn, and though the motorhome has begun, it still isn't completed, so we had to resort to tent camping in the Landcruiser for our most recent trip to the Western Australian desert country.

I was doing some last minute acquisitions at our local Gold Coast camping store when I spied what to my mind was a gesture of affection and consideration for my long-suffering wife: The Primus Lightweight Portable Toilet Seat.

It was a simple, yet elegant looking design, consisting of a hygienic plastic toilet seat, redolent of those that cover the porcelain in most domestic toilets. A simple brass-plated, scissor-legs attachment unfolded and clipped on the bottom. A clever clipping mechanism allowed the fitment of plastic bags if you were using it in environmentally sensitive areas where it was necessary to retain the contents for later disposal. And the whole device folded very neatly in the manner of a collapsible chair so it would fit snugly in a special place I had available in the Landcruiser.

The first opportunity to use the Primus Lightweight Portable Toilet Seat presented itself on a lonely stretch of the Sandy Blight Junction Track, in the remote Eastern section of the Gibson Desert.

I decided that I would give the seat its first use in case some special instructions were needed for its intended owner. So I withdrew it from its plastic container and headed for a lovely patch of scenic Desert Oaks. I did not need the plastic bag retainers, since this was desert sandhill country. But as things were getting urgent, I did not dig a hole under the seat as I had planned to do to make final disposal a little easier.

Due to the constant pounding of my body by the corrugated track, it had been two days since my last ablutions, so my alimentary system had a major offering. But I was in no hurry, so it didn't matter. I surveyed the scene of the beautiful Desert Oaks, the symmetrical, green Spinifex clumps contrasting with the virginal beauty of the red sandhills, and sat smugly satisfied that this was the best view I had probably ever enjoyed from the comfort of a modern toilet seat. I pondered how it was probably only surpassed in my life by the view from our outside dunny in our house near the

Koala Park in the wilds of Flinders Chase National Park, Kangaroo Island, where I was fortunate enough to live in the Fifties.

Many years ago I read an account by an English Scientist, Harrison Chomley, who went to Africa to study the consistency of the poo of African natives. I envisaged this scientist surreptitiously watching for natives to disappear in the bush, and then going over to where they had been, digging it all up again, and recording the consistency.

Chomley's finding was that the poo of African natives was much wetter and sloppier than the hard, sausage style of the typical Englishman. I don't recall him describing how he conducted the control experiment with English men and women, but as he had the reputation of being a good scientist, I am sure that he managed the controls in some acceptable way that are beyond my ability to envisage.

Chomley came up with three conclusions: firstly that sloppy poos were caused by the high amount of plant fibre in the diets of African natives, that Englishmen could achieve the same result if they ate a more rabbit-like diet, and that such a diet was desirable because the African natives suffered lower incidences of colon cancer than Englishmen.

I must confess I was heavily influenced in my life by these findings, and I set about finding easy ways of introducing more fibre in my stereotypical Australian male diet, which was heavily biased towards meat. I experimented with many ways of doing this without resorting to the boring diet enjoyed by rabbits and many Western females. I finally settled on the discovery that a couple of tablespoons of psyllium husks, taken in water each morning, which was so disgusting that it almost caused me to gag, achieved the ideal result.

For 4 Wheel drive camping excursions I have discovered that a homemade muesli made from raw rolled oats, oat bran, dried fruit, including prunes, and nuts, together with psyllium husks does a good job of satisfying hunger and countering the effects of long hours at the wheel of a four wheel drive on rough corrugated roads that tend to compact things in the alimentary track.

On this fine, brisk July desert morning, as I sat on the Primus Lightweight Portable Toilet Seat, I surveyed the rather large pile under the seat representing two days of proceeds, and was pleased. I had managed to get the consistency close to Chomley's ideal of soft-serve ice cream. I congratulated myself mildly, as I imagined the English Scientist would have, had he been a witness, for coming up with a result guaranteed to give me maximum protection from the risks of bowel cancer.

In the midst of the feelings of bliss created by the peaceful, beautiful desert scenery and the self-satisfaction I felt from balancing my diet so well, the Primus Lightweight Portable Toilet Seat suddenly broke. Due to a little arthritis and the slow reactions that seem to accompany advanced age, my feet stayed glued to their original position. My gluteus maximus, as bare as at its day of birth, but now considerably wider and heavier, fell directly on the pile of perfect consistency, spreading it broadly in all directions until it was approximately two centimeters thick across the entire region. I will spare you the lurid details.

By some miracle, my clothes had escaped this catastrophe. But the full roll of toilet paper did not look as if it were capable of meeting the challenge of cleanup. There was no option but to sacrifice my favourite grey shirt that I was then wearing. It was buried afterwards, not so solemnly, with the chair.

At this stage I was not in the mood for seeing the funny side of this incident and starting muttering threats of murderous litigation against the Primus Corporation. When I returned to the camp, accompanied by an unusually large entourage of curious bushflies, I boiled a large quantity of water and washed and disinfected myself thoroughly. When I had finished, fortunately before anyone else from the camp had yet risen, I sought out the manufacturer's name and address on the packaging for my proposed litigation. I calculated that the $29.00 product had lasted a mere three minutes of use. It was then that I realized I had no legal leg to stand on. The package clearly said, Limited to 95Kg. I weigh 97Kg.

I nevertheless muttered some potentially defamatory statements about the engineers who designed the device with such a small safety margin. My wife, who was originally trained as an engineer, told me that engineers always worked out the likely stresses very carefully, and at the end of the calculation doubled the required strength as a safety margin.

By the time the rest of the camp had risen, I saw enough of the humorous side of the disaster to confess to everyone in the camp. My wife is nowadays a Professor of Communication. She had once, while working as a technical writer for IBM suffered the indignity of seeing her instructions stumble in testing because the male user had not read her instructions carefully. These days she has the full armament of a prodigious body of cognitive research that shows that most men do not read instructions. Just like a man. Didn't read the instructions before you used the product. As a former Professor of Communication who strongly supports the modern cognitive research base, I had no defence.

I attempted to secure an agreement from friend of 46 years, Peter W, to not use my name in his inevitable retelling of the story. But as I should have realised with Peter, this should have been agreed to before I told the tale. So this is the reason I have decided to publish this, lest, in the retelling, the story painted me in even worse light than my first-person account.

Napier M., July 2003