In June, I embarked on an RV trip to Alaska with my wife, my sister, my brother-in-law and my two nieces. It was a lot of fun and was one of those life experiences I will never forget. We spent three weeks together in a 29ft RV traveling through Alberta, B.C., the Yukon and Alaska. There were lots of animals, beautiful scenery and we all made lots of memories.
Considering I hadn’t spent three weeks straight away from software development since I started working 8 years ago it was inevitable that I would think about RVing and software development and what they have in common.
So I present to you, my list of 10 ways that RVing is like software development.
- Enthusiasm is highest at the beginning of the trip. The longer the trip, the more effort needs to be spent on keeping the hope of completion alive.
- Fill your fresh water at every opportunity.
- Every now and then you have to rinse out the black water tank and get rid of the crap.
- Small holes in screens can let in lots of mosquitoes.
- Sometimes your travel mates are sleepy, cranky, hyper, silly, grumpy or pregnant. But in all likelihood, they aren’t going to get off the RV in the middle of nowhere, so you’d better figure out how to deal.
- The driving schedule is often more complicated then just splitting the duties evenly among the drivers every day.
- Stop along the way to take pictures of the bison and the sheep.
- Always have someone guiding you when doing tricky maneuvers like parking.
- Just showing up at a campsite doesn’t guarantee a spot. Call ahead if you think your next stop will be busy.
- Have fun, because the trip in its current form will never be repeated. You can try to recreate the trip, but the people, place and time will be different. You can never do it again in exactly the same way.