AND SO THE TROUBLES BEGIN

Yay! Finally on the road. It was a short trip from my former home over to the Cocoa Beach area where my two sisters live. I had made a reservation at the nearby Space Force base (in case you don't know the Air Force has renamed those divisions that support our country's space program, the "Space Force". Also almost all of the military bases around the country have camping areas where active duty, reserved and retirees can make reservations to camp or park RV's. I have stayed at several so far. The nightly rates are considerably cheaper than private RV parks.

So I spent about a week visiting and doing things with my sisters. It was a Saturday when I finally hit the road again heading north to Jacksonville to spend a few a few days doing touristy stuff in that part of Florida. Well...I only made it about five miles up the highway before all of a sudden I couldn't manage more than about 35 mph, yep older preowned, low mileage RV. Let me give you an important piece of advice here, make sure you purchase roadside assistance! I had and was I ever glad of that. Towing a class A RV is not cheap.

So after SIX HOURS sitting on the side of the highway the tow truck finally arrived, AFTER DARK. The roadside assistance company had located a shop that could look at my problem, ON MONDAY. I wasn't about to leave my home full of everything I owned sitting on yet another roadside so the tow truck dropped me off on a narrow, dark road outside the gate of the repair shop and I stayed right there Saturday night. On Sunday morning when I could see where I was I was able to slowly move my RV into the actual drive of the shop outside their closed gate.

So long story short, when they opened on Monday I unloaded my car from my trailer and left my rig there. It took them two days to get around to looking at my problem, which of course required parts that had to be ordered. Fortunately the problem turned out to be only a $500 fix. Yes I had purchased an extended warranty but it has a $1000 deductible. So, my one week stay with my sisters turned into two weeks. What the heck, I'm retired!

"On the Road Again" I had been on the road for two weeks and hadn't left Florida, WOW, Florida is one big state! Next stop NAS Jax; Naval Air Station, Jacksonville where I spent a few days visiting that part of Florida I had not seen in many years.

So Northward I once again headed, my ultimate destination was New England. I had not seen fall foliage since I left home in the early seventies. So places to stay with your RV are of course numerous but almost all require a reservation. However if you're only going to stay for a one night rest you can stay at truck stops remembering that truck stop parking is primarily for truckers so please be considerate, don't take that last spot, when you do park do so in an out of the way spot way in the back and also don't extend your slides all the way. My RV has two slides, one for the bedroom area and one for the living area. I can extend my living area slides only about two feet and have ample room for a night even in the bedroom area. One thing to think about; you don't want some tired trucker trying to back into that last spot right next to you in the dark and crunching your slide-out.

Also did you know that you can park your RV for one or two nights at places like Walmart, Target, Lowe's, Home Depot, Costco. If using one of these places I always call ahead and get permission from the store manager. Most of them will welcome you gladly, after all you may need to do some shopping. In only one instance was I turned down but the manager recommended the store next door. When I arrived I found out why, the Walmart had limited parking while the Lowe's next door had a massive parking lot. Also always park in the areas way out away from the store entrance which most of the time is rarely used anyway.

As I made my way Northward I overnighted at truck stops but stayed three nights in Hampton Virginia. The Hampton Roads area is home to several military bases so I was again able to stay at one of them while I once again did touristy things. A side note; Langley

AFB in Hampton was my first assignment in the Air Force.

So far I had avoided any breakdowns, for that I was thankful. My first stop in New England was at my brother Mike's house in southern NH. Remember that no breakdown thing I said? Well it wasn't really a breakdown but my check engine light came on sometime while heading north and since there was a Freightliner dealer not too far away I decided to have that engine light diagnosed. One thing I was committed to was taking care of my new home, It's no different than that home you own in a neighborhood anywhere. You always need to fix those little things before they become big things.

Since I wasn't in any particular hurry I went ahead and dropped my rig off at the dealer. They called me a few days later withe the diagnosis of a defective EGR valve. Since I had breakdown insurance I told them to contact my insurance company and go ahead with the repairs. Well...I know everybody has had their horror stories about insurance companies.

Turns out my extended warranty doesn't cover "emissions related items". Having no choice I authorized the repairs and waited for the parts to arrive. A week later the parts arrived and were installed but of course they also found another issue that really should be taken care of so I once again authorized those repairs.

Again since I wasn't in any hurry, while staying at my brother's house I ordered numerous minor items that I wanted/needed for my RV (from my favorite store, no names mentioned). UPS made so many deliveries for me that I became quite chummy with the UPS driver. I finally got my RV back from the shop, to the tune of $6,000. I did eventually recover about $1000 from the insurance company.

RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME

After we installed those other minor items I had purchased I said goodbye to my brother and sister-in-law, loaded up my car, hooked up my trailer and headed to my next destination which was to another brother in upstate NY. A short few hour trip. Let me mention that this particular brother shy's away from anything to do with the 21st century. Even though I had left a message on his home answering machine (mid 20th century) notifying him of my impending arrival I received no confirmation. Since I knew he lived in the boondocks on a dark narrow road I didn't want to attempt backing my 65 feet of RV and trailer into his property in the dark so I found a local Lowe's and spent the night in their parking lot.

The next day I once again tried to get hold of my brother, mind you he does have a cell phone, mid 20th century prepaid flip phone but has no clue how to receive or send messages even if it's capable of doing so. Well I decided that come hell or high water I was going to head to his house. Arriving at his house (naturally he wasn't there) I just went ahead and started the parking process, block half the narrow country road, unload my car from the trailer, drop the trailer from the RV, pull the RV forward quite a bit thereby blocking even more of the road, hook the trailer to the car and move it to a side location and finally back the RV into the driveway. Of course this aroused the curiosity of the neighbor who was wondering just what in the hell I was doing. George turned out to be alright though.

So, during this process my brother still didn't come home, turns out he spends a lot of time at his girlfriend's home, a friend of my brother pulls in, also wondering what in the hell I was doing, and says " I'll call Jim for you". When my brother Jim finally arrived I discovered to my utter amazement that he actually had a smartphone, operative word here being "phone" , still prepaid, (since he didn't have a clue how to use any "smart" feature). I decided right then and there that I was going to drag my big brother kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

I don't know if you subscribe to the theory that everything happens for a reason and in its

own time. Weather its by divine design or just happenstance you end up in the right place at the right time. So I of course have no set schedule, gotta love being retired. Anyway after spending about a week with my brother and also getting to meet his girlfriend; I need to stop here for a second to talk about that divine design thing again. My brother is a lifelong bachelor who at 74 years old finally found love. All of us in the family thought that he would never find anyone who could put up with him but of course there is someone for everyone out there and you never know when you will meet but you will. So, Diana is absolutely wonderful and they are madly in love.

My story sorta took a left turn there for a second I was talking about myself when I first said right place, right time. My first project when I arrived was to install a 50 amp connection to plug in my RV to Jim's power. I was washing my RV with my electric pressure washer when suddenly I had no power. Jim said "I think I know what caused that" so he goes over to his power meter and removes the cover, by the way folks a homeowner has absolutely no business removing the meter can cover, which is sealed by the power company anyway, so what we did next should NEVER be done unless you are a qualified electrician. We removed the meter and he pointed out that one of the four connecting lugs was corroded. Jim thought we could just clean the lug and reinstall the meter, mind you those lugs are hot with 240 volts. Being a couple of idiots anyway we carefully cleaned the lug and reinstalled the meter to no avail, we still had only half of our 240 volts.

Now the Guinness brothers are known for being able to do anything, Jim can tell you the working theory of anything electrical and can rebuild, repurpose, rewire any motor. I am a self-taught electrician with several years experience so we decided to replace the meter can. To do so required having the power company disconnect the power. When the power company linemen came out they looked at what we wanted to do and said they would disconnect the power but there was no way they would reconnect it. Turns out there was just way too much wrong with the 40 year old installation and would probably require a whole new electrical service installed. They were very helpful and since I had never installed a new service but knew I could with some help and advice from people who knew the local NY codes I proceeded to ed-u-ma-cate myself once more.

After several days and numerous telephone calls I knew what to do and we received permission to proceed with the work. Keep in mind here that we had no power, in September, in upstate NY and of course since he is on well water we also had no water. So being the innovative geniuses we are we connected a water hose to the neighbor's outside tap, connected that to a wye, fed one line to my RV and another line to Jim's outside tap to back-feed his house so we both at least had water I could heat my water with propane but Jim had to put up with cold water. For power I could run my generator so we ran a long extension cord into Jim's house to which he plugged in a hair dryer which he placed under the bedcovers to warm the bed up. I would then shut us down for the night and we managed nicely.

So fast forward five more days, after running 150 feet of conduit, 100 feet of that two feet deep in extremely rocky soil, we had a brand new 200 amp service mounted on the front of the garage feeding the garage and house. I guess I sorta knew what I was doing because everything passed inspection first time and the power company connected us back up. So, right place, right time. While Jim could quote electrical theory there was no way he could have properly applied that for this job. The Guinness brothers strike again.

That's it for this post. More Life on the RV Road in my next post.

DAGU