Tuesday, July 13, 2010

A Safe Trip, I guess.

Well, I made the trip from Thorp to Gig Harbor without incident - mostly. Boy, the wind was blowing. It felt like I was flying a brick. As I was heading on to I-90, I realized that I had left my wifi antenna sticking out the window. "No problem" I thought, I'll just pull it in when I get to the rest area. I wanted to dump my tanks anyway. The antenna broke loose about half a mile before the rest area. Oh, well.

I stopped in the rest area and hooked up my hose and pulled the valve open - the hose blew apart! I stepped in my own mess and closed the valve, got the water hose and cleaned it up. Threw the hose in the trash and got another (I was carrying three of them). As I twisted the second on to the connection, one of the hooks broke off. Another one in the trash. One last chance. I got the tanks dumped, but the last hose leaked a bit (from age I guess), so it went in the trash, too. I moved the motorhome forward a bit and washed every bit of evidence down the drain, washed my boots (glad I wasn't wearing sandals) and headed for Camping World in Tacoma to get a new hose - and my new mattress. Except for idiots that tried to merge in to the coach (do they really think that I am going to stop on the hiway to let them in?) and the fools that I see texting as they travel down the road (I refuse to call it driving), the rest of the trip was uneventful.

I pulled in to Thom's place, gave him a hug and got my home as level as I could. He proudly showed me the 30 amp connection that he'd had installed by his high school friend Kyle. Kyle works as an electrician in Ferndale. I don't know if he has completed his apprenticeship yet. I plugged in and we threw the breaker and it immediately tripped. Strange. We checked everything, then I finally checked the power at the outlet - 240 volts! For some reason he thought a 30 amp outlet needed 240 volts. I am lucky the motorhome isn't burnt to the ground. As it is, I had to replace my microwave and the controller for my electric blanket is trash. All of the other electrical safety devices did their job. I normally check the polarity and power output before I plug the coach in to service panels at RV parks, but I gave Kyle the benefit of the doubt (he is an electrician) and almost paid dearly for it. Lesson learned.

We headed for Home Depot and found a microwave, struggled putting my mattress together and had lunch at the Chinese Panda place. Later we spent a hour or so pulling weeds and trimming bushes. We barely made a dent. We need gloves, rakes, weedeaters, tractor and a truck. I'll go back to Home Depot while Thom's at work today and get a few things.

It's a little misty and gray, but I can see blue skies up through the trees.

5 comments:

Jane and John Weichert said...

At least it wasn't boring.

Unknown said...

Sounds like my electrical experience when I wired in our shop. My contractor (yes that was Otis) roughed in the wiring and I merrily wired in the RV outlet to the 240V wiring. We both knew better. Blew the microwave and the power converter. As it turns out, both were fuse protected and turned out okay. Sounds to me like you've made a little progress on your recovery.

Scott said...

I pay for it when I overexcert myself. I take a lot of breaks. Made four stops on the drive over. Hopefully my recovery is progressing.

Anonymous said...

Rob said.....
Confucsous say,"Man who carry old dump hoses should wear t-shirt that says "shit happens"". Too bad about your electrical hookup. They say bad things come in three's so you've reset the counter. I'm betting by next week your going to feel great and be heading up to PA Friday.

Anonymous said...

Memorable trip, photos of the rest area experience not required. No hope for the bored travelers spending all their time doing everything but driving.