Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Almost Ready for Willie Nelson


May 28, 2014





After leaving Florida in February, we made a brief stop back at our home base in Huntsville,  for a visit with our son. We also did a little wrap up on address changes, re-registered our vehicles, then headed to Texas. We were "On the Road Again".







We spent a month in the Dallas area visiting Jo's sister's family, then an extra week there trying to get our satellite dish to work properly. The best we could do was get the dish down manually, but it was still not properly stowed. Deciding to move on to Oklahoma City, we thought we could get some help with the dish there. Upon arriving in OKC, we immediately began calling Winegard certified shops, only to find that all the RV repair facilities were in the middle of spring maintenance, and were booked up for 3 weeks, longer than we had planned to stay.

After a great visit with Jo's family, we drove on to Searcy Arkansas for window defogging. RV shops there had the same story; "We can get to the satellite dish next month." All during these times we tried everything we could think of to get the dish going again.
 
 
 
The nice folks at RVFogDoctor tried to get it going, even though it was outside of their area of expertise. They too were unsuccessful. We decided to start learning to do without satellite TV (not so bad an experience. It's much more fun to sit outside by a campfire or visit with other RVers.)

We had another delay in Searcy due to the extent to which our windows had become etched, waiting for tempering of new glass.
 
 
 
 
We were pleased with the window results, so we put the satellite dish on hold again and headed back toward Alabama for Mother's Day. On the way our generator started acting up. It would only run a short while before stopping. The blinking codes seemed to indicate a thermal type of shutdown and indeed we seemed to have a small radiator leak. Fortunately the weather was not too hot, so we stayed cool enough with the in-dash AC, and could leave the genset off.



Upon arrival at the Rocket City, we called our favorite RV repair facility only to learn that another 2 week delay would be necessary. "We are booked solid!"



Delays – Blessings in Disguise

Two days before our scheduled time to hit the road again, and 3 days before our scheduled appointment for service to the genset and satellite dish, we had some horrible news of a death in the family of two of our best friend's.

The news almost crushed us, but the thoughts of being far away, as we no doubt would have been without our our delays, would have made it so much worse. We couldn't even imagine not being able to get back in time to be with our friends during their unimaginable loss. So for the first time since our delays began, we were able to thank God for all those delays. (Now why didn't I just do that all along, insted of whining about the delays??) Insted of being thousands of miles away, we were able to simply drop off our motorhome and head for our friend's home in our Jeep.

We are so thankful that we were able to be with them during this time.


When we arrived back at Huntsville to pick up the motorhome, the small leak in the genset radiator had been repaired (covered under warranty) and the satellite dish "just started working normally" while the technician was checking it out. It goes up and down as if nothing had ever happened and the generator purrs like a kitten.


Almost Ready for Willie Nelson

So with lessons learned, and everything working again, and after a great extended visit with our son, (another blessing)  we hope to be "On the Road Again" soon. Maybe we will have something new to blog about also.






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