The PDD Driving Club

Yes, I am guilty.  Guilty of sitting herein Missouri with too much time on my hands waiting for the birth of our granddaughter.  She is due any day (second) now so we’ve been briefed on how to hold down the fort with Taylor, Kierra and Bekah when their mom and dad head off to the hospital.

For a while now, the term “PDD” has been going around the RV blogland, it was created by my good friend Sherry.  For those of you that don’t understand, let me ‘splain.

Back in our working days, we had very little time to enjoy our love of RVing and seeing the country.  We’d try and steal weekends away from our busy lives and look forward to a brief vacation to see some of the wonderful places in this country.  We became destination drivers, putting in long days driving huge distances to get to a location where we could spend as much time as possible before scurrying home and back to work.

Our first long trip was back in the summer of 2002 when we did a cross country jaunt in our RV from our then home in Northern Virginia to the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and Carlsbad Caverns in 12 days.  One of the driving days set my all time record of 758 miles.

As we look back at that trip, which really whetted our appetites to travel full time, most all of our pictures were through the windshield of our Class C RV.  It was lots of driving, but we had a ball.

Fast forward to 5 December 2011.  The Virginia house was sold, I had retired and it was Marti’s last day of work before she retired.  I was waiting outside her office in the Journey, with the engine running.

Our plan was to make a cross country trip to our son’s home in Astoria, Oregon, with a stop in Sioux Falls, SD (to get our residency set up) in time for Christmas.  Being that is was winter, we knew we’d have to make some tracks.

Of course Murphy intervened, screwed up our alternator and gave us three days in Harrisburg, PA getting it replaced.  That put us behind schedule already, and we were watching the weather closely.  So we blew off Sioux Falls for a later trip and boogied straight out to Astoria, doing long driving days.  Yep, we made it for Christmas, actually, we arrived on 15 December.

That’s when the “PDD” became famous.  It stands for “Paul Dahl Disorder” (thanks Sherry!) because I still tend to put in longer driving days compared to the average RV traveler (maybe I am a little crazy).

Being the pioneer of this driving style, I thought I’d lay out the rules for becoming a member of the PDD Driving Club.

First, all driving has to be done in an RV, the type doesn’t matter.  As an eye to safety, the driving can be split up between multiple drivers as long as they all are traveling together in the RV.

Next, this type of driving is strictly voluntary.  Nobody is going to twist your arm to do it.  We all have our own driving styles.

Finally, there are three levels, Bronze, Silver and Gold.

Bronze Level:  Complete 300 miles in one 24 hour driving day.

Silver Level:   Complete 400 miles in one 24 hour driving day.

Gold Level:     Complete 500+ miles in one 24 hour driving day.

Your reward for attaining the Gold Level?  Personal satisfaction that you are among the very few that have traveled that far that fast (Never say never).

As an added bonus, you now have a legitimate reason to seek psychiatric treatment.  :cD

(Disclaimer:  I hope you understand this is all said in jest!)

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