The Importance of Milliseconds as We Say Goodbye to Trailer Life
Close calls with corn fungus, excrement, and a very large animal. The true account of our last day living in our Airstream. Miss this one at your own risk.
Our final 24 hours in La Tortuga were absolutely bonkers, mostly due to a series of mistakes made by me (Jaron). Quick life lesson: Don’t eat corn that has been in storage for weeks and has a reddish coloring underneath the kernels. And then please don’t boil that corn with the potatoes you’re going to feed your kids.
The backstory of the maize mishap is as follows: We were staying in an RV park outside of Grand Prairie, Alberta, and I needed something to do with the kids one afternoon while Dana was cooking dinner. So, I took the three kids to a maze carved into a cornfield near the RV park. Yes, it was a maze of maize. We had a great time, playing hide and seek and making fake moustaches with the corn silk. After we finally found each other, recognized each other, and made our way out of the labyrinth (minor miracle), we grabbed a bunch of corn ears as souvenirs. I threw them in a bag in the back of the truck and totally forgot about them.
.
A couple of weeks later, on our very last evening in La Tortuga for at least a couple of years, I began cleaning out the bed of the truck, and found these ears of corn. I foolishly assumed they were ok to eat, since they were protected in a brown bag in the truck bed, and the weather was already chilly. They smelled fine, and since it was already dark, I failed to notice the reddish hues underneath the kernels. I walked into the Airstream proudly announcing that we would have mashed potatoes and corn on the cob for dinner that evening. I filled our largest pot with water and added a few corn ears, along with some fresh potatoes, for what would be a less-than-glamorous last supper.
Thankfully, Dana had the foresight to peel the potatoes before mashing them, adding some butter and cream, and serving them with a side dish of cold carrots. The potatoes were, in fact, delicious. The kids were pretty full after snacking all day, but I was still hungry, so I decided to experiment with the corn. I took a bite, chewed a couple of times, and spit most of it out because it tasted nothing like any corn I’ve ever eaten. It tasted like a dried-out, bitter porcini mushroom combined with the texture and flavor of a worn-out baseball mitt.
Unfortunately, I did swallow a couple of very minuscule pieces of rotten corn. Fortunately, the consequences of this poor decision only affected me. After an hour or so, I began to feel some tummy troubles, weakness, and faintness. My brain also started feeling strange effects. I examined the corn in the light for the first time, noticing the clear red marks, and my heart sank.
This led to a ChatGPT rabbit hole where I learned that this is a classic example of ear-rot fungus known as Fusarium, which produces mycotoxins that can be harmful to humans. Upon reading this, I panicked, and my physical symptoms worsened. My first thought was the kids. Could the mycotoxins travel from the corn through the boiling water, into the potatoes? Yes, said ChatGPT. But, since we peeled the potatoes, the membrane on the potato skin likely protected our children from any potential fungal invaders that might have seeped into the communal boiling water.
Thank God.
And the kids seemed fine, which is to say they were acting like their normal, rowdy selves. I, on the other hand, was feeling like I was going to faint. The more I read about Fusarium, the worse I felt, which made me even more anxious. I was speaking like a protagonist in a Woody Allen film, saying things like this aloud to Dana, “I can’t believe on the last night of this epic RV trip across two countries, that I would get food poisoning and die from a piece of rotten corn. What Murphy’s Law that would be!”
Next thing I knew, out of an abundance of caution, I called 911.
It went something like this….
Dispatcher: “blah blah blah What’s your emergency?”
Me: “Hi…um…I think I ate a corn fungus. I didn’t realize it was reddish and discolored and looked like the images of Fusarium I saw on ChatGPT.”
“Sir, where should we send the ambulance?”
“Where are we again?” I mumbled to Dana, gathering some composure as I got back to the dispatcher.
“We’re in a campground near Bass Lake. I don’t think I need an ambulance yet. I want to know that an ambulance can make it to this campground should I get worse.”
“We can get you help, sir.”
“Do you need help?”
“I don’t think so?” I stated more as a question.
“So just confirming you don’t need any assistance, Sir?”
“No. I mean, yes, I think I will be ok.”
Instead of going to the hospital, I took a long, hot shower and begged God to forgive me for my devout atheism of the past decade, to protect my kids from this fungus, and to make me only mildly affected. I emerged as a new man from my wet confession in an Airstream shower. The chills and weakness subsided. I felt close to normal again. My kids were fine and getting ready for bed. I vowed never to hoard corn again.
I woke up on our last morning in La Tortuga with a similar feeling I had on many mornings during my college days, pretending that nothing strange had happened the night before. We had a lot of work to do to leave the campsite that day. But first, we had our final breakfast squeezed together around our little table, with Dana and I both determined to make a delicious last breakfast that would help us forget about last night’s meal, so we whipped up my signature Airstream waffles, soft-boiled eggs (known in our family as dippy dippy), and a side of turkey bacon. We packed up our personal items, and then, just as we were about to leave, unbeknownst to us at the time, another potentially even grosser disaster was in the works
At this moment, the Airstream was unrecognizable, devoid of kids and their accoutrements, and sparkling like new. We had worked so hard for so many days to get it there. The kids were in the playground, Dana was doing the last dishes, and I was performing the very final act: flushing the black tank (yes, that one) to prevent build-up and ensure a good experience for whoever would stay in there next. I did what I always do. I closed the valve, connected the designated hose, turned it on, and went to put the laundry in the dryer while waiting a few minutes for the tank to flush out. While in the laundromat, I got a phone call, got distracted, and about 15 minutes later realized that I had left the hose on.
Big mistake.
Dana came running to tell me that water was coming out of the top of the trailer, as if it was raining, only the skies were blue. I immediately realized my error and sprinted at top speed from the laundry facility into La Tortuga, flushing the toilet, but it did not send the water down. Quite the opposite, actually. It sent the water way up to the rim. It was like a bubbling science-fair volcano gone wrong, but instead of fake red lava, we had 18 gallons of real brown excrement on the verge of erupting all over our impeccably clean trailer floors. I immediately darted outside, turned off the hose by pulling the black tank handle, which opened the valve, releasing the sludge into the sewer where it belongs, saving the day at literally the last second. Phew.
We then waved goodbye to our Airstream and drove off. Saying goodbye to La Tortuga felt bittersweet, but we were all ready. We needed more space, fewer chores, fewer movements. We craved a sabbatical from the silver, 180-square-foot monastery-on-wheels. But then, around 30 minutes later, we had to turn around when we realized we had left a whole load of laundry, including the kids’ blankies and lovies, in the dryer. This was likely because of the aforementioned poopsplosion. So we turned around, got back to the campground, grabbed our stuff from the dryer, said goodbye to La Tortuga (again), and got back on the road, singing “On The Road Again” (again).
Minutes after leaving La Tortuga in the Outdoorsy campground near Bass Lake for the 2nd time, driving with just the truck, while driving about 60 mph, the largest bull deer I’ve ever seen, with a massive set of antlers, suddenly dashed across the road. The big buck came at us quickly out of the forest from our three o’clock. He froze in front of us, giving us that blank deer in the headlights look. By the time he realized his error and tried to stop himself, it was too late; he was going so fast his momentum forced him to skid across the road. In what must have been a split second, with the giant antlers just a couple of feet from our front bumper, I managed to do a very controlled swerve to the right, missing him by inches. We could hear the scratching of his hooves across the highway, which sounded like the most aggressive scratching of a chalkboard I’ve ever heard. We continued driving, shaken up, as the deer scurried off back into the bush. What a stroke of luck that we didn’t hit that buck with our truck. Fuck.
The thing that I kept thinking about that day, and for several weeks after, was how fortunate we were that we weren’t hitched up to La Tortuga anymore. It’s so crazy that after 12,000 miles of towing, on our very first drive in which we were not, we had our closest brush with a serious accident. Had we still been hitched to our Airstream, due to the extra weight, we would not have been able to brake in time. We would have certainly collided with the poor animal. But then again, had I not forgotten the laundry, caused the poopslosion, or eaten the corn fungus, maybe we wouldn’t have had this encounter at all? It was a reminder that every decision, every little thing we do, changes our destiny forever. And that life can turn on an unexpected moment, in milliseconds. Savor as many as you can.
Just so brilliant to read your family adventures - your writing captures the moments really exquisitely and whilst reading I find spontaneous laughs and other expressions arising. What great life experience you're creating - day by day. True education esp for the kids - but seriously I'm sure for all. thank you and love you guys even more