This is the End!

OK, this blog is officially on hold now that we’ve returned home.  I don’t know if I’ll pick it back up or not on the next trip.

 

I’m writing this Monday the 5th and we’ve been home since last Thursday, Oct 1.  I hope you’ve all enjoyed following our little trip.  Several of you have mentioned you enjoyed my writing (apparently those remedial English classes in College helped out?), even Tina said she enjoyed reading my blog posts because it was like reliving a vacation that she doesn’t remember happening (at least not the way I told it :-/  ).

We spent almost 4 months living in the RV as sort of a test for ourselves.  It is definitely doable.  We had a lot of fun. Tina was ready to come home sooner than I was, but we were both tired at the end of 3 months.

One of the biggest challenges we found is constantly making plans for where you are going next, where you’ll stay, making reservations, etc.  Several things were planned before we left, but we purposely left several chunks of time open for random fun.  That was great, but also a challenge.

This can be mitigated by making plans to stay in one area for a longer period of time.  We moved around too much, but that’s what we wanted to do.  Next time we’ll plan differently.

I haven’t tallied all the costs yet, but it was definitely more expensive than I had expected.  The majority of that extra expense was fuel cost.  At just under 6 miles to the gallon I was filling that beast up every day or two.  Again, this would be mitigated by staying in one place for a longer period of time which is something we’ll definitely plan on if we do this again.  So it was more expensive than planned, but not unmanageable with just a little better planning.

Now we’re home and will spend time doing a “Post-Mortem” on costs, pros and cons of RV living and so on.

The “Enterprise” goes into space dock tomorrow for a 4 to 6 week repair visit to have the right side deflector shield replaced and several other issues addressed.

The shuttle craft has already been to the detail shop to have all the dog hair and odor removed from the carpet (Yuk!).  The shop did a better job than I expected.  Getting that dog hair out of the carpet was a challenge and we may need a followup visit in a month.

(My biggest piece of advice for you if you are contemplating such an adventure:  Don’t bring an animal!)

But when we arrived home Thursday the first thing I wanted to do was get my truck out of the garage before I parked the RV in the driveway.  However, the battery in my truck had died.  I knew this because I received a text message from my truck back in July that the battery was dying (Yeah, it can do that).  I decided to ignore it and figured I would just charge the battery when I got home.  Here’s what I learned from letting my battery die:

1. If your battery dies, your keyfob won’t open your electric locks.
2. If you’ve removed all your manual locks for security purposes, you can’t manually unlock your doors (go figure).
3. If you can’t open your doors you can’t open your hood.
4. If you can’t open your hood you can’t recharge your battery.
5. If you fiddle around enough you can disengage your hood mechanism and get the hood open.
6. However, this triggers your alarm which still has enough battery power left to start blasting your horn and alarm speaker. You still can’t get into your vehicle to insert your keys to reset the alarm.
7. Due to battery discharge the keyfobs are no longer programmed properly and will not stop the alarm.
8. Cutting the wires to the alarm speaker only stops the speaker, not the horn.
9. The horn on an F250 is securely mounted behind the front right quarter panel over the wheel well and almost impossible to reach without disassembling the truck.
10. When you finally yank the battery cable off the horn stops (yes!) but you still can’t get into the cab.
11. After much googling and considering and trying wires through the doors, you decide the only option is to carefully remove the back window and crawl into the cab to manually unlock the doors ( and you do it without breaking the window… must be living a charmed life).
12. Since your alarm was triggered your ignition system has been disabled so you can’t start  your truck and drive to a technician with the horn honking even if you wanted to.
13. Finally with help from the alarm systems tech phone support you hook up the battery, start the horn blaring while you perform the sequence of key turns and valet button pushes to disable the alarm just as the neighbor from across the street rambles into your garage begging you to stop honking your car horn because she has a horrible migraine headache.  Frankly, at this point I have a splitting headache too.  Believe me I wasn’t doing it for fun!
14. Now just sit back and wait for the auto glass man to show up and replace the back window that you pulled out (still waiting – but at least the red duct tape holding it in place matches the red paint job).
15. BAM! That’s all there is to it.

 

Well, with that little episode resolved, I get up Saturday morning and it’s time to take a nice hot shower in a big roomy shower. No banging elbows into the RV walls of the tiny shower for the first time in 4 months…. nice…. except there is no hot water… wait, what?  And the RV is already at Ford for the weekend getting the oil changed and inspected so I can’t even take a shower in the RV.   I check the water heater.  Pilot light is out.  I try to restart it multiple times, no luck.   Long story short, the water heater is under warranty, the manufacturer says it’s a known problem, they’ll get someone out first thing… Monday morning….ugh…

 

My hair just doesn’t look right washed in cold water. I’ll just stay in all weekend because I have some financial work to get caught up on anyway.  Which is when I discover some suspicious charges on our credit card that we’ve been using this whole trip.  I let Tina call the credit card company, after much time and questioning, they determine that someone used our card number and a fake email to open a new account in our name.  So now our cards have been cancelled, new ones are on the way, we’re living in cash only society until the new cards arrive.

 

And on top of all that… my big toe hurts!

 

Ahh.. It’s nice to be home…  😉