I Have Just Been Informed....

Jenny says my last post is incorrect and that I don't understand physics. Well, duh. I got a courtesy C in Physics in college because the instructor was from Pakistan and I was the only person in class who could understand his accent. He spoke, I translated, he owed me. End Physics.

Anyway, I may or may not have messed up in describing something but I don't feel like doing any sort of physical science at this point in my day. If she still insists its wrong tomorrow, I'll see what I can do.

Maybe.

The Saga of the Tow Truck Guy

Yesterday we finally decided to once again brave backing the fiver into the narrow tree-lined driveway.   Obstacles to this include a creek, a field that trapped us in mud a few weeks ago, those trees, and not really getting how it works. However, Jenny is fearless and after several attempts, it sailed right into the driveway. Well, there was the part where the rear fender of the truck kissed that alder and it de-barked, but that was minor. We put the stabilizers down and allowed the cats to wander around inside. It's part of our RV desensitization program for cats. Three of them. This may not work.

We plugged into the house, aka shore power, and wandered off to have dinner. The next day, when we were ready to venture off to do something really important like pick up some money someone owed us, we still had to unmate the two vehicles.

Now, we remember that we have to put the front stabilizers down first. Check.

Then we have to pull the pin. Check.

Then we have to raise the front stabilizers. No check.

Apparently, the house power (15 or 20 amps) and the RV (stepped down from 50 to 30 amps) are not exactly compatible. Apparently, compatible means "the same" in this case. Jenny crawled around in the RV, then in the house, all the while stopping to push the buttons that electrically raise and lower the stabilizers every few minutes, all to no avail.  She eventually found that the "incompatibility" had tripped a breaker in the house. Go figure. And, overnight, for some reason, this drained the batteries. No battery power, no electronic leveling. I, of course, did nothing much because a) I had a job to do for a client and b) MY FREAKING LEG IS IN A CAST.

She calls the dealership and they say "did you buy the extended warranty?" and we can't remember. I sit there wondering why we need to use the extended warranty on a rig that is brand new and under original warranty. Jenny does the more practical thing (ain't it always that way?) and checks to see if we have the extended warranty. We do.

Our insurance policy also has emergency road service. While the extended warranty will bring an RV tech to the house, it might not do it anytime soon. So we opt for the emergency road service. She calls, explains the problem (which, in case you forgot, is that the stabilizers won't go up so we can get the RV off the hitch), and a guy is dispatched. We assume this is a guy knowledgable in the ways of fifth wheels.

The guy comes, tells Jenny to get in the cab, and then tells her to drive forward. Or maybe it was backward. Just a little, which she does, The RV comes off the hitch easy peasy.  But the guy didn't drop the tailgate. At the same time, or so we're told since neither of us actually saw it happen, the stabilizers decided to come up. Not electronically. On their own. Is our RV haunted?

By now, Jenny has called me and I come out to supervise. Remember, I'm in a cast. I can't do much of anything useful, but I'm really good at limping and saying "Ouch." I also bring my cell phone. And here's what I find:

Notice the complete lack of clearance between the front of the RV and tailgate. It's not supposed to be that way. My guess is the stabilizers, which were down by the time I got there, didn't raise up due to some weird electrical oddity, but because the pin on the hitch was now resting in the bed of the truck, canting the whole thing at a weird angle. Which leads to this picture.

I'm calling this photo coitus interruptus. See the two prong-like things on top of the left part? Now see the little round thing on the bottom of the part to the right? They are supposed to be together. As in the little round thing is supposed to go into the prong-like things. Not gonna happen this way. Clearly these inanimate objects do not understand the way it's supposed to work. 

Obviously, it's dark so we can't see the damage to the tailgate. Neither can we.

So, I'm sitting there supervising, and I start talking to the tow truck guy who I think is knowledgable about such things and he tells me he knows NOTHING about fifth wheels. Well, duh. 

Even I know that you have to drop the tailgate before telling the driver to do anything. Which begs the question, why did the insurance company send someone who knows nothing about fifth wheels when Jenny clearly told them the RV was stuck on the hitch and the stabilizers weren't working. The tow truck guy says they just told him we were stuck. Like in the mud. That is so last month. We make mistakes but we seldom make the same mistake twice. For example, many years ago, we realized that you can't drive a tent trailer through one of those post office boxes that sticks out so you can reach to put mail in without getting out of the car. Can you say BONDO? And we've never done that again. No, siree. Our next error was letting me and my friend Mar drive the trailer somewhere and my attempt to back up. But that's another story, an old story, and one I'm not proud of.  Let's just say the folks at Apache Trailer are relieved that we are no longer coming in with our annual crisis. Although I'm sure they had some good laughs along the way.

So now we have a hitch in our gitalong or at least a big dent and tear in our tailgate. We'll be calling the insurance company to make good on this one. 'Cause we're pretty sure the electronic leveling system works just fine, thank you very much. At least as long as the batteries are full. (We will get it checked out though, when we take it in to find out why the backup camera and lights no longer work.)

But it doesn't make sense to me that the stabilizers would suddenly retract at that very moment. Tow truck guy, you've got some 'splainin' to do.

Blogger Problems...Please help if you can

I'm new to Blogger, having used Wordpress for years. And I'm having some issues with it's so-called intuitive interface. If you know how to fix any of these problems, please let me share your braininess by posting a comment.

1) I've got that dang Captcha thing on my comments and I don't want it. I'd rather use moderate and release than make my readers go blind trying to figure out what words in odd formations they need to enter.

2) My pages don't work. I wrote them, I promise. But you can't see them. Neither can I, unless I go into edit mode. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

Things are Moving Right Along...at a hectic pace

For various reasons, that I will not bore you with, we have decided to move by May 31. We're not moving far, just to an RV park near PDX until December when I can start getting social security and Jenny can retire.

Yes, May 31. As in a month from now. My business partner and her other business partner, not to be confused with any of our life partners, offered to handle the move, the packing, the estate sale, and everything else. Remember, I'm in a cast. I'm using a cane. I'm not supposed to walk on it although it is, in theory, a walking cast. They would prefer I get a knee scooter, but I'm not spending $300 for a little single purpose scooter. Besides, every time I take a step, it pinches my pinky toe. I'll probably get a new cast next week.

The first step was to deal with my library. Here are the after shots:

 The books on the shelves on the low case are my complete Madeleine L'Engle collection. I was fortunate to be able to study with her, and these books are going to my grandkids in Seattle.
all the stuff on the other shelves is related to my graduate programs....unimportant things like my thesis....

On the left are some shelves we didn't get to yet. And there are several more shelves in parts of the house that have yet to be done. Our estate sale folks took 20 boxes of books to Powell's to sell, I took about that many last year, and there are probably another 20 or so to go. Fortunately, radical feminist commie pinko fairy theology sells well. Your standard run-of-the-mill Christian stuff does not. Glad my taste runs to weird.

More later.....

Be Afraid, Be VERY Afraid.....At least my business partner thinks you should

I admit, it's been a rocky learning curve. To date, we have one MVA involving another vehicle, and four hit trees. To be fair,  our sticks and bricks driveway is narrow and tree-lined and definitely not designed for backing a 36" fifth wheel into. However, the last time, all we did was scrape some bark off an alder and put a tiny dent in the back fender of the truck.

Not quite the same damage done by the tow truck guy. Oh, yeah, the tow truck guy. But I digress.

We brought the as-yet unnamed RV home on Monday and discovered the back-camera and lights were not working (I think they disconnected something at the dealership when they were putting a new non-leaking roof on the thing.) Since backing up into the driveway was not in the cards at that point, we parked it crosswise to the driveway, left it hooked up to the truck, and went about our usual routine.

Part of my usual routine is this:

Yes, that is a cast. And it is on my right leg, my driving leg. Also my walking and balance leg. 

Why didn't they put a real cast on my leg to begin with some eleven weeks ago? Who knows. But they did put one on last week. Oh, the fourth metatarsal is all well. But the soft tissue damage is not. So I had a choice between a cortisone shot and a cast, or being off my feet entirely. How long? Who knows. Apparently people have had casts for soft tissue damage for six months or more. I, however, will not. I WILL NOT.

So, the truck and fiver are in the driveway, crosswise, and still mated. Around 2 am, I decide to go to bed. Since the cast is annoying as hell, and my foot is permanently at right angles to the rest of me, I'm finding sleep difficult. As a prophylactic, I pop a sleeping pill. I climb in bed, start to nod off, when Jenny wakes up and says, "The trailer."

Seems that she has to be court at 8 am the next morning, in the next county over. This is an hour's drive and she can't be late. So at 2 am we are outside, trying to unhook the fiver. My job is to hold the flashlight, which is actually my cell phone, and shiver for effect. Also to weave and bob and try to stay upright. Remember the sleeping pill? Her job is to climb the ladder to pull the pin and then climb into the truck to disconnect the trailer. (Yes, we are both short.) Sounds easy. But the pin won't budge. Finally, we give up and she decides to call someone to give her a ride to court.

The next day, she calls the guys at the RV dealership and they tell her she needs to put the truck in reverse, slowly let off the brake, and the pin will line up to come out. Why didn't they tell us that before? Like when they showed us how to put the RV on the hitch?

So, another crisis averted, minimal meltdown, and at last the truck is free. The trailer, of course, is still not IN the driveway unless you count crosswise across the entrance as in. We don't and I'm pretty sure the neighbors don't either.