Bad and Good Today

This is what the cabinet, where our living room TV belongs, looks like tonight.


Here is John carrying our TV out to the truck. See the awful look on his face?

Here is our cat, PC, exploring the empty TV cabinet.

Here is what the TV cabinet should look like. When will it look that way again?

For more than two weeks, we have not had any TV in our living room. On Sunday, May 17, John turned on the TV in the afternoon and the screen lit up, then immediately turned off. The same thing happened several times. In the following days he made calls to Sylvania customer support, a Sylvania authorized repair service in Pueblo, about 50 miles north of here, and finally the nearest authorized dealer for Keystone/Montana RVs, only to learn they were still on "winter hours" and therefore closed on Mondays.

On Tuesday, May 19, John talked to the "parts guy" at the Montana dealer in Colorado Springs. He took the serial number of our TV and said he should have a new one in a couple of weeks.

Yesterday, after two weeks of having no Satellite TV (the installer could never make it work on the bedroom TV), and only limited antenna reception in the bedroom, John again called the parts guy. He asked for our trailer VIN number, then checked (on line, we guess) and found no action. He promised to call Keystone and get back to us. No call.

Today, John reached him again. He reported Keystone was closed when he called yesterday and he would get back to us in a few minutes. After 3 more calls to him, John finally asked to talk to the owner. It took 2 phone calls with him, but we finally have approval to take it to a Sylvania repair facility to see if it can be fixed. If not, they will pay most of the cost of a new set.

Why didn't all this happen two weeks ago? We wish we knew.

However, today had its rewards, as well. This is our new wireless internet router, which came via Fed Ex today.

We have changed from Sprint broadband wireless to Verizon. While we waited for the end of the billing cycle to cancel the Sprint card, we discovered how nice it was to be able to go online with both computers at the same time.

That led to a call to the 3G Store, a business we have read about in RV blogs and saw at the RV Rally in Albuquerque we attended in April. We order the router, which will allow up to 16 people at a time to go online with our broadband card—at least until we upgrade the security and keep others out.

Who says it tough to live on the road in an RV?