Well, I bet you are all frustrated with me for not posting last night. I have a really, REALLY good reason why I didn't get this post out last night. We had another ADVENTURE in traveling yesterday and by the time we had a place to stop for the evening, it was past midnight and I was past coherent. Traveling around the country is very enjoyable, but there is always some kind of adventure involved in traveling.
Yesterday's adventure started very early on and really threw a monkey-wrench into the day...and evening. To start with, our first and on-going adventure in traveling is the fact that I am still using an outdated computerized road map to navigate with. Usually this is not a huge issue, but we have discovered several places in the East coast that the roads on my 8 year old map have been added to. Some of the main highways have been re-routed or have had a bypass created. That makes things very interesting when you are bouncing down the road at 55 or 60 looking for an exit that no longer exists...
Because we lost faith in my map, I started surfing the Internet and pulling different maps out in order to cross-reference directions. Can you imagine how difficult that can be when you are looking for an exit a mile ahead and Internet service is spotty at best? Well, after much frustration and tension, we were able to get ourselves into Milledgeville, GA the other day. That was fine and dandy, but then we had a business appointment in Fayetteville, GA (90 miles away) yesterday at noon. Well, 90 miles in a motor home usually means about a 2 hour drive. No big deal. We left the RV park around 10 am with the expectation that we would have minimal problems getting to our next appointment. HA!!!
First off, I was running two maps, one on-line and the other was my old off-line map. I had been given specific instructions to be more careful about which roads to take because some of the roads on the on-line map were great for cars and motorcycles, but not RV's. As I am struggling to cross reference directions with wide roads, all of a sudden, bells, whistles, and lights start going off in the front of the RV. We hadn't gone more than 6 miles from the RV park when it looks like Armageddon had arrived... Next thing we see is the temperature gage for the engine go from normal to red-line in the blink of an eye. With the fail-safe systems in this RV, when that happens, we have all of one minute to find a safe place to pull over before the engine is automatically shut off.
So, here we are on a highway that we just turned onto, going up a hill and around a curve. We quickly navigate to a relatively wide section of the highway, hoping the shoulder is not too soft so we don't sink into it, and then the engine shuts down. After we check that everything else is fine, there are no other issues occurring, we go to the back of the RV, lift the bed (the best access to the engine...don't ask me, I think it is dumb having mechanics in your 'bedroom' fixing the engine) and hear the radiator bubbling away. We really do have a seriously overheated diesel engine. Not good news by any one's standard. The next thing we notice is that there is no belt (fan belt) in sight. Great... After about 10 minutes, we start the engine again as I watch to see if the radiator fan even twitches, which it doesn't. Well, now we know what happened, we threw the serpentine belt that runs everything that turns on the motor, the crank shaft to the valve train that runs the water pump, that runs the alternator, that runs the radiator fan, all the external moving components of the engine. Fun. We can't drive the motor home more than 2 feet before more problems occur.
We go on-line looking for a mobile diesel mechanic, to no avail in Milledgeville so our next step is to find a tow truck. Towing is an exciting task because we also have a trailer that is pulled behind the motor home. Finally we locate a company that will tow both the motor home and the trailer. They come out from Macon, GA, about an hour away, so in about 2 1/2 hours our tow trucks arrive to drag us to a certified diesel mechanic in Macon. After about 45 minutes of disconnecting the drive shaft on the motor home (you have to do that prior to a tow) and hooking up the front wheels so they can be lifted off the ground, we are ready to slowly head toward Macon. An hour drive there gets us safely into the diesel shop, where they spend about 2 hours putting the drive shaft back on the motor home and installing the serpentine belt. After paying the bill, we are now finally able to get back on the road toward Fayetteville for our very late business appointment.
I must say that everyone we met during our escapade yesterday was wonderful and very helpful. Even some of the mechanics in the shop came over to see what our problem was and to ask where we were headed off to. We were provided directions to get us going and we finally hit the road at rush-hour, which is always gobs of fun in an RV. Once we arrived at our destination we had our late meeting and by then, I was verging on comatose so couldn't post the blog.. See how much fun traveling can be. There are always adventures to be had while on the road...
That's my story and I'm sticking to it...
Until tomorrow... actually until later this evening...this was supposed to be yesterday's post...
No comments:
Post a Comment