Pit Stop...

2010-03-15, 16, 17
The last three days have been a roller coaster. We are based in Bay Landing near Bridgeport TX. The reasons for this featureless location were:

• Get our snail-mail forwarded here
• Repair the water inlets that got damaged in out last campground
• Refill the LP gas tanks

Our mail got sent to the wrong address, the physical address of the campground, instead of its PO Box. We went to the local US Postal office to plead and beg for them to retain the package there and not to return it to the sender. With no promises, they said that they would attempt to locate the package and retain it for us. On the 16th, they called us to tell us that they had our mail ready to pick-up. My faith on humanity was partially restored.

The repair of the water inlets has been bogged down by the fact that the parts need to be ordered. And I need to find out if one of the inlets needs to have a “flow-check-valve” or not, because the local RV shops do not know anything about Airstreams. I tried the four or five Airstream dealers in the Dallas area, but three no longer sell or repair Airstreams, one was too busy, and the remaining one was 70 miles away. So I decided to deal with a local RV shop, “Smith RV”. One of the owners, Josh was kind enough to listen to our situation and worked with us to get us going. He waited for me to find out the right parts information, ordered the parts “rush”, then let me hold one part to paint it to match the original, and finally, installed all in just one hour.

Humanity-Faith-O-Meter at 75%

Now, while attempting to refill the LP gas tanks. Actually one was empty, and the second one was almost full. So, since the area is full of LP distributors, we decided to take the opportunity and refill the empty tank. Well....we found the hard way that is not kosher to operate the LP auto flow valve with just one tank. The auto valve lets the LP gas of the remaining tank out. So in one night we lost all the LP gas of our second tank. Now we needed to refill both. Just great.

Just to make things more interesting, the nearest LP dealer got his fill valve broken and was out of business, and the next near one had his licensed LP technician out for the day. So, we waited one more day to get this chore done.

But as one expedition guide that we met at Big Bend said:

Even one bad day in the field is better than one good day at the office!

Amen!