We're F*ckin' Doin' It!?

Adrienne Langmo
7 hours ago
4 min read

Updated: 3 minutes ago

(Wait, are we?)

Here's what I wrote on September 1st:

"We're f*ckin' doin' it!" That’s what Michael said about 10 days ago, while we were driving windy back roads in central California, meandering through the valleys between golden rolling hills on the way to Pinnacles National Park from camping outside of Sequoia & King's Canyon National Parks.

And I thought,

Yep, we are f*cking doing it.

Then I wrote:

We officially hit the road on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, first heading to Sequoia National Forest simply to get out of the way of the team that ran our moving estate sale. Then we decided, because surely our estate sale would be so fantastically successful, that Michael would drive back in the pickup, leaving me in the Sequoia RV park with the pets, and close out the Murrieta house himself.

And in my original draft post, I described the capers of our move out. Which I do still feel like self-high-fiving for how we navigated those hiccups and the serendipitous mutually-beneficial relationships built in the process:

The moving sale was a bit of a flop and he returned to a house that was still well furnished- 2 couches, 2 beds, 1 bedroom set, a garage brimming with garage-y stuff, and approximately 873978 potted plants in the yard…. I got a little crazy with the plants. BUT THEY’RE SO COOL. And, admittedly, by springtime, I had started propagating everything I could, motivated by my now-debunked conviction that the plants would be our moving sale “cash cow” selling out ASAP .....

But alas, I rallied the plant ladies of Facebook to rescue my (not exaggerating) remaining 200 or so potted plants from the yard and garden area and I serendipitously found a non-profit Recovery Home looking for donations of all the large items we were looking to get rid of, lest we pay a junk hauler even more $ to take our things away for the pleasure of re-selling them himself.

Then I wrote about how I'm also a hero at lawyering:

And in the meantime, I conducted two—TWO—hearings from Sequoia National Forest, consumed by anxiety about all our technology working. Turns out our little Verizon hot spot is not very hot. But, I did win the first hearing, tbd on the second, so I’d call that a successful trial run of lawyering at all latitudes.

And in that original post, I concluded with the clever, circle back to the title, stating:

So, yah, we’re fucking doing it.

And my next post was going to be a comedy about how I hit my head in the RV on something new everyday, comparing how there's seemingly as many different Yiddish words for getting a whack as there are words for snow and ice in native sub/artic cultures, and pondering what that says about the Jewish culture. I also wanted to describe our first unpacking of the RV in Sequoia, when it was 94 degrees inside the RV, we had piles of belongings everywhere to find a place for, and I had booked the wrong type of site that didn't have the right electric hookup (30 amp instead of 50 amp) so we could run both AC units, and how all the clothes hanging in the closet fell off the rod jamming the door shut and I almost fell apart wondering what the heck are we f*ckin' doing this for?

But now, we're not so sure if we are, indeed,

"f*ckin' doin' it"

Or rather, if it has thus been done. Completed. Finished. Past tense.

Most literally, shit hit the fan on Friday, September 4, 2026, while we were on our way from Pinnacles to the campground aboard Travis Air Force Base an hour or so outside of Sacramento, CA. We ran over some sort of road goblin heading northbound on I-680 outside of the Bay Area, just 45 minutes shy of our destination.

That's about when we heard, then saw, our drive shaft leave us. It klopped* an axle as it traveled under the RV, zetzed* the transmission across the face, shmaised* a bolt off the skid plates of the Ford Ranger pickup we were towing, and zhmired* the Ranger's tow bar attach point, before launching itself 8 or 9 feet in the air as it headed to the interstate shoulder. Some piece came off of the driveshaft during this tour de force against our vehicle undercarriages, causing the car behind us to get a flat.

(*All Yiddish words for getting hit, smacked, slapped, bonked, boinked, punched, poked, throttled, etc.)

And that is all.

And we are very, very thankful that that is all, mindful that a steel rod traveling at highway speeds certainly has the potential to cause much more chaos. Nobody was hurt. Just our Brunhilda the fun bus.

So, we are spending our Labor Day weekend camping in the RV at a tow yard in Antioch, CA, lulled by the sounds of air compressors and truck back-up alarms. Jealous?

We had a heck of a time with Progressive insurance finding us a tow, presumably because they are morons. I eventually found us a ride, the tow guys were all high fiving because apparently this was quite the job that several newb employees got some useful experience on, what with our literal lack of a drive shaft, no parking brakes, a seized axle, and a big honkin' bus to move.

So glad we could help. Can we get a discount on our $1,800 tow bill for that?