I often wonder if I can keep the daily posting interesting for a year. What we are doing is foreign to most of the people we know at home, but very unordinary to the community of full-timers we meet along the way. Today is one for the books as they say. All the factors that people wonder if they could tolerate are being tested today. Let’s just say it isn’t always roses and unicorns in this world either.
Remember when I talked the other day about looking up mobile RV repair services when you land somewhere? It came up today for us. The lightning strike near the RV yesterday may or may not have anything to do with the fact that the refrigerator quit during the night. The insurance company will be more trouble than the $500 deductible and claim process is worth to try to prove or disprove it. After some trouble shooting around 7AM this morning Champ narrowed the problem down to the control board or the HTS board. Not something that he has access to parts for and in the gray area where we decide to call someone. I went to work today, he stayed back to address the eminent food spoilage. He left a voicemail to each of the numbers provided to us by a local dealer who told us they were mobile repair guys. I went to work thinking there would be some sort of solution or at least a plan, by the time he picked me up at 4:00.
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The Interim[/caption]Enter the Venus / Mars living in very small quarters scenario. If you are reading this and know us, you know we generally get along well despite our very different temperaments. I am a doer, usually at warp speed. He is painfully laid back (for me to watch anyway). At 4:00 when he picked me up I had arranged to borrow a small dorm fridge to help supplement the ice chest. (The freezer stuff is in one of our neighbors' freezer). All he had done all day is wait for the repair services to return his call which they had not and make a template for some corner shelves I want to build for the bedroom. He thought the shelf progress should make me happy, he was wrong.
As I fumed that he did no research on how to proceed, I called the Service help desk number on the front of the Norcold Manual and told them the situation and inquired about the price and availability of both boards, should we get someone to give a repair price, so I know if we’re getting screwed. At 4:30 we learned from that call that our 12-year-old fridge isn’t worth fixing. So much for waiting on the repair guy to call back! More fuming on my part as I watched Champ keep a little more distance from me.
With the growing trend of putting residential refrigerators in RV’s the next step was to go to Lowes and pick out a new one that will fit in the space occupied by the Norcold. Why you ask? It’s simple math. A Norcold like the one in our RV is now $4,600.00 to replace. Not unlike the $675.00 kitchen table that we turned up our nose to last week. At 5:30 I was swiping a credit card for an 18 CFT stainless steel fridge with an ice maker from Lowes for $625.00. Remember, I said warp speed. The only hitch was they were a week out on delivery, not going to happen. We’ll borrow my daughters truck tomorrow and round up some help for cash or beer, depending on the help. With any luck we’ll have a new fridge tomorrow evening. Sometime before the end of summer Champ will wire it to the inverter to it will run while we roll on down the highway in November. I had the problem solved in 2 hours. He was more than willing to take all weekend to decide what to do. Can you feel the tension in our little home on wheels? I'll forgive him because I love him and also because he has the ability to take out the RV fridge, bypass the duel fuel components that we wont need anymore and get the space ready for a non standard refrigerator. Like I said, we are very different but seem to be able to tolerate each others vastly different personalities. He's just happy I got logistics arranged and made the decision. Something he really hates doing.
Venus/Mars - Oil / Water. Whatever we are it works, even in 300 square feet. And now for the best part, on the way home from Lowe’s after a failed attempt to watch a grandkids little league game that was called when the lightning started, we finally got a call back from one of the repair guys, some 12 hours after Champ left a message this morning. His reply? I can’t get parts for that model anymore . My thought was, 'Who cares, I went and bought I new one while we waited on you to call back!"
Some days really suck. This was one of them. Sometimes planning doesn’t save you. A good friend we worked with last winter is here at Saylorville. Getting her text this afternoon letting us know she was here, was the bright spot in my day.
Until tomorrow…
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