Three's a Charm

I hope three times really is the charm. Because that would mean we are done with problems for a while. At the first of the month one of our two air conditioners died. With a 36-foot RV you need two and that week in Richmond, VA, was very hot. Last week our Dish Network DVR died. Tuesday John’s computer looked like it was on its death bed.

After getting a new adapter cord for the computer, when we returned to the RV, Windows wouldn’t open. So first thing Tuesday morning we took it back to Staples in Glen Falls. The tech, Keith, thought it just needed to go back to a previous restore point. That didn’t work, so we left it with him to do diagnostics. He called later and said the hard drive was kaput and we needed a new one. Go ahead, we told him. To make a long story less long, about 7:30 pm we told him we would run down to the store at 9 am the next day to pick up the computer before we drove out of town at 10. He said he would come in early the next morning to finish the job. When we arrived at 9, he had been working since 6:30 am and, finally, it was working.

Then we drove to Syracuse to Camping World, where our air conditioner was waiting. After the new one hadn’t arrived in Richmond after 11 days, we had moved on. Dometic first said they had to get the first one they sent returned before they would ship one to another location. I finally talked to a supervisor and they agreed to send a new one to a Keystone dealer, Camping World RV Sales, in Syracuse, NY. We camped out in their parking lot over night Wednesday and they installed it Thursday morning. When I say camped out, I mean it.






They offer electric hookups, but the electricity voltage was so low we didn’t dare use it. So we got out our two Honda generators to provide electricity to run the air conditioner.



The water hookup didn’t produce water, so we drove to Walmart to buy jugs of water. But it is a free overnight spot! And I didn’t have to cook dinner—we stopped at KFC and picked up a meal.

Thursday morning we planned to spend the time sitting in our truck with the cats. However, they didn’t want to unhitch our truck and trailer, so we sat in the waiting room with the two cats for three hours. Thank heavens the cats are old enough to sleep all that time.

The new Dish DVR was delivered to the RV park in Waterloo, where we are spending two days, and we installed it this evening. Tomorrow we will set up the satellite dish and hope everything works.

Now we are whole again—if it works. We certainly hope we stay that way for a while.