Lucky accident?

If everything had gone as originally planned, we'd be somewhere in Wisconsin now. The Plan called for us finishing up loading Magee yesterday and heading toward Portage. We were going to indulge ourselves with a high class hotel room for the night (Days Inn located close to the intersection of I-39 and I-90/94), enjoy a gourmet dinner at the truck stop restaurant next door, and then get  on the road toward Iowa first thing this morning. It did not happen.

 The S.O. had some trouble getting the 5th wheel hitch lined up right. When he parked Magee in early October neither of us was thinking at all about what a pain in the ass snow on the ground might turn out to be when the time came to leave. We should have been. Turned out the ever-so-slight slope and the not totally straight back in meant more maneuvering was required than anticipated two months ago. It did not help that the high 20s-low 30s temperatures made the snow especially slick. Things did not go smoothly. Language got colorful. The S.O. wound up having to put the truck in 4-wheel drive to get the traction needed. And at some point the brake pedal got stomped on particularly hard. 

In short, a brake line blew. So today instead of enjoying being far enough south that it's raining instead of snowing, the S.O. will be slithering under the truck figuring out exactly where the break occurred and just what has to be replaced. He is not a happy camper. Neither am I. 

On the positive side, the maybe it really is apple juice in the glass and not piss interpretation, if a brake line was going to blow, parked up by the barn and close to all the S.O.'s tools was a much better location for it to happen than careening down a hill on U.S. 65 in Arkansas.  

The Guppy has landed

We finally arrived in Arizona Friday afternoon, a mere 4 days later than originally planned. To say the trip out here was "interesting" would be a bit of an understatement.

Remember me closing a post by wondering what was going to fall off the Guppy next? As it turned out, nothing did. The tow dolly, however, managed to lose a wheel, and not just a wheel as in steel rim with a tire on it but the hub assembly, too. It was one of those rare occasions when both the S.O. and I were at a complete loss for words. After staring at the place where the hub used to be, I muttered, "there's no identifying information on the dolly is there?" The answer being No, we quietly unloaded the car, pivoted the dead tow dolly around to get it farther off the shoulder, and continued on our way. Somewhere in western rural Kansas there is now some good ol' boy praising the Lord for gifting him with two usable wheels (the one that didn't come off and the spare) and a possibly repairable tow dolly.

Was the tow dolly actually repairable? Maybe. It had been dragged along for at least a couple miles but other than the entire wheel assembly (bearing, hub, you name it) being gone, there didn't seem to be too much damage. Did we feel like trying to find out ourselves in the middle of nowhere? Nope. We didn't pay much for the dolly to begin with and had put probably 10,000 miles on it. We'd gotten our money's worth out of it. Time to accept that fate doesn't want me knitting in a vehicle, which is what I do when I'm a passenger. We'll convoy, reluctant though I am to do so. On the other hand, now the S.O. and I will be able to swap off on what we're driving. As long as we had that anchor tow dolly behind us, I was too nervous to drive the Guppy. Without the car in tow, though, it'll be just like driving a large U-Haul truck, and that's something I know I can do.

Will we invest in another tow dolly? Probably not. We compared mileage for the Guppy before and after losing the anchor. When we stopped dragging my car along behind us, mileage improved by almost 40%. That is a gigantic savings. It more than offsets the cost of us driving the Focus instead of towing it. It also more than offsets the cost of a good tow dolly. A brand new one would cost us more than the Guppy did, and used ones can be hard to find. So we'll convoy. We have walkie talkies; we'll survive.

As for Arizona, . . . we're in a 55+ RV/Mobile Home park. Most of the park is taken up with a couple hundred mobile homes, some of which are occuppied year round and some are winter residents. The section set aside for RVs (motorhomes and travel trailers) is actually fairly small. It's nice. Well maintained, clean, decent amount of space for each site (unless you have a Class A Leviathan with multiple slide outs or a 5th wheel on steroids, then it might seem a little tight). The sites are set up with the parking for the RV on one side of a concrete patio and space for parking a car on the other. The park has been around for enough years that the landscaping is well established; it's not nearly as sterile as some desert RV parks. The monthly rate is quite reasonable and includes city utilities and cable tv.

I had been kind of looking forward to having cable, but changed my mind pretty fast after the first few political commercials. Holy wah, they fight dirty here in the desert. And it's not even possible to avoid the horrible ads by watching "House Hunters" or "American Pickers." Oh well. One more day and it should be safe to watch the boob tube again. After all, we all know there's going to be speculation about 2020 as soon as the polls close, but actual advertising for or against various possible contenders shouldn't start up for at least another week or two.

Being in a "senior" park feels a bit odd. It's way different from being in a campground, of course, because no one (legally) does extended stays at campgrounds other than the hosts. Here there are long-time residents as well as winter regulars who come back every year. There are scheduled activities (potluck dinners, crafts one morning a week, etc.) in the clubhouse. It's kind of like being a temporary resident in a small town. How deep we'll dive into community happenings is an open question. The S.O. and I are both fairly introverted so aren't sure about the potlucks (I tend to get nervous if there are more than 6 people in a group), but I may go check out the crafts on Wednesday mornings. If it's a case of people bringing in whatever they happen to be working on and just kind of schmoozing as they knit/sew/embroider, I could see participating. Low key, unstructured socializing is fine with me. If, however, it's directed activities (e.g., "This morning we're going to make wreaths out of bread bags") I'll pass.

I've had a number of friends and acquaintances say they have no interest in being in a "senior" community. I'm not sure why, other than it's the usual anti-aging bias we all have. We all think we're going to be young forever, but if we move into 55+ or "senior citizen" housing, we've just admitted we're old. I have a hunch that just about everyone living in a seniors complex felt that way before they actually bit the bullet and conceded that, yes, I'm old enough that the idea of living someplace where I don't have to listen to college-age neighbors party until dawn is looking good. 

So will we become regulars here? Who knows? We're here this year because the Kid is duty-stationed here in Safford; next winter may find us being a bit more nomadic (a few weeks here, a few weeks there) or doing a 90-day or longer VIP stints at a National Park or Wildlife Refugre. I still fantasize about doing several months at LBJ in Texas; maybe 2017 will be the year we get lucky.

Intimations of mortality

Over the years, I've occasionally thought about various possibilities that could lead to my demise: car accident, insane co-worker, being shot full of penicillin by someone who ignored my "but I'm allergic" protests, . . . it's a lengthy list, and one that tends to grow even longer as one ages. After all, one rarely contemplates the possibility of a myocardial infarction or a cerebral hemorrhage in one's teens, but when you hit your golden years and old school chums start dropping from "cardiac events," your outlook changes.

One thing, however, never crossed my mind. Death by asphyxiation from breathing in the fumes of burning piss. What's that you say? Urine doesn't burn? Well, it does if an exhaust pipe shifts position and melts the bottom of the black water holding tank on a motorhome. To say it's a rather acrid aroma would be putting it mildly.

We were bouncing along merrily in the Guppy, a mere 5 or 6 miles from the truck stop where we planned to stop and refuel both the vehicle and ourselves. This was supposed to be the Last Night on the Road; we were going to live adventurously and boondock (aka dry camp). Our goal, more or less, was a Walmart parking lot near Plover, Wisconsin.

I could almost taste the country-fried steak at the Iron Skillet in the Petro truck stop when two things happened, more or less simultaneously. I thought I smelled something burning and the smoke alarm in the Guppy went off. We pulled on to the shoulder, I turned off the smoke alarm, and we started trying to figure out what was burning. By the time, we rolled to a stop and the engine was off, the Guppy was thoroughly full of smoke with fumes so thick I worried about the cat getting asphyxiated.

It is, incidentally, a rather strange experience to be cruising down the highway and have a smoke alarm start shrieking in your ear.

Anyway, we stopped, opened a bunch of windows, and started trying to figure out where the smoke was coming from. No clue. The S.O. popped the hood -- everything looked perfectly normal in the engine compartment, at least the part he could see. Didn't seem to be a wiring problem on the RV side -- we had a DC-powered cooler plugged in; it was okay. All the lights functioned, too, and the RV battery wasn't hot. So we decided to see if we could make it to the truck stop. We start off, everything is fine. . . for maybe half a mile. The S.O. keeps driving; I go back and turn off the smoke detector and sit on the floor for the remaining mile or so to the parking lot. That's when I see smoke seeping out from under the engine cowling.

We decide to pull into the Day's Inn parking lot rather than the gas station. At this point I'm thinking we're going to be sleeping in a motel room instead of the Guppy. It was after 7, there wasn't much daylight left in which to solve the problem, and we were tired and hungry. After we're parked, the S.O. decided to pull the cowling off to see if we can figure out just what's going on. There is absolutely no sign of any problem with the engine itself, but we discover various snacks mice and squirrels have stashed on it: pine cones, spruce cones, chokecherry pits. So maybe the problem was that the engine got hot enough that some of that crap started smoldering? It's hard to see, the light is getting dim enough that we're not sure if anything looks scorched or not. I get us checked into the motel; the S.O. clears as much rodent food off the engine as he can find. We convince ourselves that was the problem: rodent leftovers trying to catch fire on the engine. After all, it doesn't take much material to create a lot of smoke, especially in an enclosed space.

Morning comes, we resume our travels. We're maybe five miles down the road when the smoke alarm goes off again. This time I move fast enough that I see a thick plume of smoke coming out from under the refrigerator. Brief moment of total panic -- that's where the furnace lives. No problem visible in the furnace compartment so obviously the problem is under the Guppy.

Mystery solved: approximately 3,000 miles of travel that included bouncing over some truly rough pavement led to the exhaust system loosening up and twisting. Instead of being directed away from the Guppy, hot exhaust was aimed right at the bottom of the black water tank. There's no way of knowing just when the twisting first happened, but by Monday evening after a full day of travel there was plastic dripping on to a hot exhaust pipe, followed by leakage from the tank. End result? Burning piss and some truly nasty fumes.

The good news, such as it was, is that there was nothing mechanically wrong with the Guppy. The S.O. was able to do a temporary repair with safety wire and sometime this summer will rehang the exhaust system, making sure all the hangers are solid and the tailpipe is aimed in the right direction. We were lucky in that there wasn't much in the holding tank -- we'd avoided using the Guppy's toilet after using the dump station at Fort Richardson. The bad news, of course, is that we have to replace that tank. I guess when we're complaining about the cost (approximately $300, depending on the size and dealer) we'll have to remind ourselves it could have been a lot worse.

Now to invest in massive amounts of Febreze and see if it's possible to get that odor out of the Guppy before the next time we go camping.