Of my own sanity there is no question (except perhaps in regard to staying married). My husband's sanity, however, (let's call him John) seems to be diminishing in inverse proportion to the number of gray hairs on his head.
John has decided that when he retires we will travel. In order to make our travels economical and convenient, we must have the ideal combination of RV and toys for each sort of trip that we might undertake. In preparation for this, he has been buying campers, trucks and trailers for a number of years and is now looking at scooters.
When we met fifteen years ago, John owned a small tow trailer as well as a camper van with a comfortable fold-out couch and an overhead bunk. I have three children and his youngest holidayed with us, so the combination was sufficient for our needs, but John didn't like the fact that we both had to drive to our camping destinations. So he went shopping for a bigger trailer and decided to buy a fifth-wheel, for ease of hook-up. This served us well in combination with a good-sized tent, but John soon decided that he could do better, so we started shopping for a different trailer and agreed on the features that would be necessary to improve on our current holiday accommodation.
One spring day John had a meeting in a neighboring city and arrived home with a new trailer in tow. He was as eager as a child with a new toy, so I obligingly went out for a tour of the new acquisition. John was quite upset when I pointed out that the new trailer had none of the features we were looking for, and was, in fact, significantly inferior in amenities to the one he had sold.
We didn't camp much for the next few years, so John decided to start looking for a better trailer. He bought a new RV Trader magazine every week, and we drove far and wide to examine trailers, 5th wheels, and camper vans, both new and used. We found a camper van, somewhat larger than the one he'd owned when we first met, and he had to have it, so we brought it home. Several years later we sold it, having never spent a night in it.
Shortly thereafter, John located a used truck camper that he was sure was exactly what we needed. He bought it and we made a couple of trips in it, discovering that the mattress was definitely not up to snuff. If we lay very still we could count the number of springs poking through the scanty padding at various points on our bodies. In addition, an awkward storage compartment encroached on the sleeping area, making the bed too short for us. We removed the cabinet and ordered a new foam mattress long enough to fill the whole space. Unfortunately, the new mattress was almost twice as thick as the one we'd removed, and it made the sleeping space uncomfortably cramped. John, of course, had to sleep on the outside, and I found the inside spot extremely claustrophobic, so on our next trip, I decided to sleep on the other bed - the one created by taking the table support out and lowering the table top to bench level and then making a puzzle of cushions from the back of the bench and the bench seat to create an almost full-length bed. I was hopeful that the fitted sheet would hold the cushions in place so that I could sleep comfortably. Delusional thinking is obviously contagious. Each time I woke up in the night the cushions were spread apart and there was only a thin sheet between my hip and the table top. I informed my husband that I would never be sleeping there again. He then set about having the truck camper painted and started looking for just the right collapsible stairs to provide safe access to the wretched thing.
Other trailers have been bought and traded and tried and found wanting. The one we now have is quite comfortable, but once again the mattress was a poor excuse for same, so has been replaced, again by a slab of foam. Storage space is somewhat awkward and inadequate, so we now know that what we need is a trailer with double slides - one for the bedroom and one for the living area. Nonetheless, we towed the trailer through the mountains last summer and were quite comfortable all the way. There were only two problems. The outfit was too big to pull off the road along the way, and once we arrived at our destination, we learned that city parking spaces aren't made for vehicles as big as our truck. We parked the trailer and drove around, but we couldn't stop anywhere except back at the RV park.
We want to make the same trip again, but this time my husband has decreed that we must do it differently. We'll take the truck camper and tow a small car. The lack of maneuverability through the mountains will be very similar to towing the spacious trailer, but this time we'll have the added benefit of not having a comfortable bed at the end of a day of mountain driving. When we get up in the morning we can shower in a space about twenty inches square and then stay out of the washroom for the rest of the day while it dries because the washroom is the shower. The toilet and sink are in the shower. This instead of the diminutive but serviceable corner tub/shower in the tow trailer. Instead of the convenience of appliances that light with the flick of a switch, we will have the pleasure of manually lighting the water heater and stove each time we stop for the night. Instead of going to the little closet for clothes, we will rummage through the car we're towing, because in the place of awkward and inadequate storage space we will have none! I've been assured that with (you guessed it!) a slab of foam on top of the cushion puzzle I'll sleep like a baby.
All this has been achieved through months of "discussion" and "compromise". I've convinced my husband that we needn't tow a trailer that's big enough to carry both a car and the motorcycle that he rides twice every summer for about a half hour. He thought that all we'd need in order to comfortably ride a motorcycle in an unfamiliar city is speaker helmets. I told him that I can't read a map while riding a motorcycle. He suggested that we get a GPS and I advised him that all I can see when I'm a passenger on the back of his motorcycle is the back of his helmet. I think he finally believes that I can't navigate unfamiliar freeways from the back of a motorcycle.
I've booked a hotel for the three nights that we're going to be in the city, and I think I'll make an appointment with a divorce lawyer in the event that I lose the argument over who's sleeping on the table during the drive.