THE HIPPO THAT DOESN’T DO WINTER

THE HIPPO THAT DOESN’T DO WINTER

By Phil Chapman. August 2012

I NODDED TOWARDS THE twenty seven foot Itasca C class motor home and bit him with my eyes. “Do you realize that I am having to walk further with my groceries because of you taking up two parking spaces with that thing? How can you drive a hippo like that in this day and age? You have to be totally clueless about what’s going on in the world!”

He was occupying two nose-to-tail spaces in the grocery store lot. Perhaps he had been somewhat aware upon arrival earlier since he had parked two thirds of the way towards the back, but things had filled in during his grocery shopping with his wife. She was rattling up now with a second full trolly load. I put the stink eye on her too. It had been a rough day and my sense of humor was stretched a little thin.

The object of my ire smiled at me in a sweet way. He was in his fifties, graying, and had a playful twinkle in his eye which I mistook for disrespect. It was not. In retrospect, I realize that it was a greeting to a fellow traveller on the road of life. An invitation to discourse and understanding. I had asked him a question not really expecting an answer, but still smiling, he tossed me a line with a great big hook on the end of it, and I bit…hard.

“Actually, this is the most energy efficient vehicle I have ever owned.” he said.
Now I was spluttering. “Oh, how can you say that? I bet that thing only gets about ten miles to the gallon!”

His eyes twinkled again. Fish on! “Actually, it gets nine miles per gallon in raw numbers.” I puffed up for a renewed bellow of self-righteous indignation…”but wait!” he headed me off, “there’s a lot more to it than that. Will you give me a moment to explain?” I stalled, his pleasant manner gobbling the wind from my sails, and he took the opportunity to go on.

“Well now, lets see” he said, eyeing me carefully, and then turning his attention to my SUV with the baby seat in the back. “You look more soccer mom than grandma to me, so I am guessing that the baby seat is for a late comer, and the car says you probably have teenagers. So, probably three cars parked at your suburban home. Am I close?”

“Well at least he didn’t settle on grandma!” I thought, “but am I that obvious? Soccer mom!” He had nailed me right down to the number of cars! I half nodded, shuffled my feet and huffed softly to myself, flustered. He was speaking again.

“Let’s compare your lifestyle to mine energy-wise and see who really gets the best gas mileage” he said. Bags of groceries were disappearing into the motor home door now, and a small white poodle had appeared, wagging wildly and thrusting it’s nose into each incoming bag. “Is this the one?” the woman coed as each was inspected.

“This is Annie, my wife” he said. “She car pools with me one hundred percent of the time. Has to. This is our home. We are full-timers. I am betting that three cars leave your home each day, often with one person inside…to school, to work, to the store. That’s your three to our one. So to compensate for the two cars that we are NOT driving we need to boost our 9 mpg to 27. Fair? Now. Our life is a series of one-way trips. Right now we are at the store. We will live here, actually at the very back of the lot (I do apologies for inconveniencing you), till we need to go somewhere else, then we will live there. This is a 24 hour store and I have checked in with the manager. We spent a lot of money here and will watch a movie from his Red Box tonight. We are valued customers.

Your life, on the other hand, is a series of two-way trips. You drive to work and you drive home, to school…and home, to the health club…and home. We eliminate half of those miles that you drive…the going home part, because we are always home! So I guess we need to double our gas mileage again to account for that. So now the hippo is at 54 mpg!

Tomorrow we will leave this town to drive south. That’s why all the groceries. There was frost this morning, and we don’t do Winter. As we drive, still carpooling and driving one way, we will be generating most of our domestic electricity as we go, at no extra cost. The engine charges our deep cycle batteries and when we stop we will be able, with the aid of an inverter, to watch a couple of movies, run our water pump for toilet and sink, and use our lighting…with no electric bill. Can you imagine taking your electric bill at home and deducting it from your gasoline expenses? Does great things for the gas mileage!”

The poodle let out a yip of delight and did a special dance to indicate that it had been successful in determining which grocery bag the expected roast chicken was in.

 “Winter is coming” the man said. Pretty soon you will be running the heating in your house all the time. And I’ll wager that just a couple of months ago you were paying through the nose to run your air conditioning. Imagine taking your heating and cooling bills off your gasoline tab! We do. We plan our travels in such a way that we are always in nice weather. Seldom do we need heating or air conditioning. Up goes that old gas mileage again!

We used to make payments on this old hippo of ours, but then you probably have payments on those three cars…so that’s a wash. But how about your mortgage? How much gasoline would that buy you each month? We don’t have a house other than this, so no mortgage payments…I’ve lost track of our gas mileage now, but you get the idea.”

“By now the last of the groceries had been swallowed up by the motor home and the poodle was happily eating chunks of the chicken. The man climbed aboard. “It’s been a pleasure talking to you” he said. “Thank you for giving me a chance to explain. Why, as you can see, this old hippo practically floats down the road! Don’t know where we will be at this time tomorrow, but farther south enough to be warmer, you can bet on that…we don’t do Winter.” The door closed but I still saw the twinkle in his eye. Was it perhaps freedom that I saw in there…that beckoned me so?

I did a lot of thinking on my way home, and more still as I parked my car with the others, took the bills from the mail box, went in, and turned on the furnace. When the kids are grown…….just maybe……….