Top 10 Mo-Ho Moments

10. Dave and I get into Marseilles a bit late and finally find a pizza/pasta joint that’s still open at 9 p.m. After dinner, we decide to camp overnight in a nearby shopping center parking lot. We place ourselves in the most remote corner, next to a store, but are kept awake part of the night by a bar scene in an area of the shopping mall. We finally fall asleep between 2 and 3 a.m. only to be awakened at 6:30 a.m. by a semi that pulls up right next to us to unload his truck into the store that we’re parked beside. Oh, and the guy was whistling as he took his dolly up and down and up and down the ramp!!

9. Worse, the night we had to drop Freddy off for his bus in Tarbes, we decide to camp out in the bus station parking lot since his bus left at 2:30 a.m. At about midnight, a group of soldiers arrive to also wait for a bus. They were so loud we didn’t really need to worry about falling asleep and not getting Freddy out of the mo-ho in time! Thankfully, they left on the same bus as Fred.

8. Gerry and I rename a town to Rhode-Rage after we try every road to get out of it except the correct one. The GPS saves us when it points us toward this teeny, tiny, out-of-the-way road with a teeny, tiny, out-of-the-way sign pointing us finally in the right direction.

7. In another battle of “where do we go,” Gerry and I take a 20 km error out of our way. Unfortunately, when we each finally got that “I don’t think this is right” feeling, we were on a very narrow one-lane road leading up a mountain with no turnaround in sight. We finally found one and worked our way back to civilization.

6. Gerry and I decide to inadvertently take the "non-scenic" route, which included a very, very long tunnel through the Col du Grand Bernard, which cost us valuable time in meeting Dave at the top (we had to come back the opposite way) and 30 Euros, because they're still paying off the loan on the damn thing!

5. Just in general, we can’t even list – or count – the number of laws that we broke in the mo-ho. In particular, going the wrong way on a one-way street, doing U-turns (the mo-ho turns on a dime!), and pretending that we don’t understand what the road signs say, especially if they indicate that trucks aren’t allowed!

4. Freddy decides to take on a pylon going 80 km/h. Only later did we learn that he left a bit of the mo-ho behind.

3. Dave picks up Gerry in Toulouse, we stop to fill up with gas and a quick lunch and get on our way to Issoudun only to have the mo-ho give us some serious trouble. No acceleration!! We call a contact at the dealership and he says to turn around and get to their post in Toulouse. We discover there that Dave filled the mo-ho with a lunch of gasoline rather than diesel! A second forced rest day ensued. Thankfully they were able to repair quickly and didn’t have to replace the engine! What a way to welcome Gerry.

2. I, in my first and last moments as a Mo-ho driver, take a right when I should have taken a left around a roundabout and winds up with the mo-ho hung up on a curb. Only the help of four French men and the town Gendarmerie could get me out of this snafu. One man graciously takes the wheel, the Gendarmerie directs traffic, which is now at a standstill in this little town, and Dave – thankfully- pulls up on his bike. He takes over the driving on that day. The mo-ho was never the same after that … especially the metal step, which never again went down!

1. Gerry decides to take us out to dinner in a quaint little village near Bedoin that he knows about from a previous visit. The village, and its roads, is tiny!! We finally get parked and Gerry discovers that, since we have no reservation, they’re full. Little did we know how personally he would take it and he tries to drive right through the outdoor seating and down what we now know is a pedestrian path. Lessons in backing up large vehicles paid off for Gerry that evening, but I decided that I needed a lot of alcohol that evening!!