By tomorrow, either early AM or PM before I hit the shower for work, this post will be up. Right now my brain is fried, my four day weekend is a story out of the twilight zone – or that’s my thought anyway – and my humble apologies to myself for not posting. If I had, I might have cleared the ‘frying’ process and life could be smoothing out. Right now it’s still got a lot of wrinkles in it. Check back.

So…I’m back. It’s a good thing I’m single because my ‘soul mate’ would be asking for a divorce if I was hitched up – and that was the whole problem over the last four days, I was hitched up but it was my truck to the coach and there was no way out. Some of this post is the same as the last post, only a little more in depth. The damn motor on the jacks thing again. I was leaving my space at the RV park, NV power was moving lines, and I was on my way to CA for a few days to visit my son. Apply brakes *screech*. You ain’t going nowhere girl.

I got up very early on Thursday AM, a few hours of sleep found me crawling out of Sand Woman Land and heading for Gaudin Ford, the big oil change and fluid check for the Silver Steed. Off to the car wash to have the pigeon shit removed…those bastards are everywhere. Of course I ran into a poker player while I was ‘waiting at the car wash’. Nice guy! We chatted for a few minutes and then I was outside in the warm air, making last minute phone calls to alert family of my plans to hit the road, and waiting for the attendant to finish the job. A trip across town to the ‘old digs’ and a few stops for mail and other necessary things, I arrived back at the ‘new digs’ around 4 PM. Nap time. I was up and racing, locking up and folding up everything in sight. My plan was to hit the road to CA around 7 PM and when/if I got tired, just pull over to a rest stop and sleep…hell I had my home with me.

Everything went off like a slice of pie…until I hitched up. I couldn’t get the one motor to raise the coach high enough to just back under it. It took a bit of a ‘jerk’ to get the jaws to lock on the hitch. Then the lazy motor retracted that jack but the other motor did nothing. OMG! The Silver Steed was out in the middle of the street, flashers on, and I wasn’t moving. I lost it. My last bit of sanity with this problem slipped off into the primal ‘screaming woman’ thing. I burst into frustrated tears and swore my way into the coach while I dialed Wheeler RV. It wasn’t pretty. I, at least, didn’t swear nor have a fit with the receptionist, but I was nonstop babble mixed with hysterical tears. She rang service for me, it was 6ish by now and service was gone for the night. She graciously came back to talk to me. I even apologized to her but demanded she make a note of my call and give it to the service manager. Then I called my son. What a sweet deal to have a kid that’s strong as an ox and knows how to take care of mechanical problems. I promised him I would be finished crying by the time he got there. I was.

My son arrived about 8 PM, jacked up the coach with a jack he brought – and numerous 2X4’s – and managed to free the stress on the jack…the motor worked now. I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. I had to have this problem fixed. I drove to the NW part of Vegas and parked in front of my son’s place for the night. The general manager wasn’t going to be in on Friday and he was the person I (and my contact) needed to talk to. Nowhere to go and nothing to do, I hung out at my son’s place, played poker on the Internet, drank a lot of wine, and chased that cute boy Riot around the house – in between having to watch Shrek with him because he’s a TV Lunitard now. Somewhere around 4 PM, I had finished the wine hours ago, I headed for the old digs, I hooked up the city water, and the power to the coach. Cranked up the motostat satellite, and ran out of steam. Nap time. Vivienne came over around 10ish and taxied me up to the Sun Coast where we had a meal.

Later on, I tried to sleep, thinking I would be up at 6 AM and head for Wheeler – that’s 25 miles from the old digs. I dozed for about an hour, finally deciding that I couldn’t fade the traffic and the sun blasting my eyes out at 6 AM so I got up. I was on the road by 4ish. I parked outside Wheelers and managed to doze again. At 8:30 AM I called my contact – he was going to go into Wheelers with me. No answer. I was a little stressed; this is something that needed to be resolved today. I called back at 9:30, my contact told me he’d talked to the Service Manager at Wheeler and there was absolutely no way they would get me in until Monday at 7:30 a.m.

No tears this time. I knew Monday wouldn’t work and I was very tired of the umbilical cord connection between the truck and the coach. I left my coach and truck and walked into Wheelers. I asked for the manager, Ben Beck, and soon found myself explaining to him that I was stuck with a coach that I couldn’t release from my truck and I’d been out on the streets of Vegas for the last few days and couldn’t even go back to my space at the RV park if I couldn’t unhitch. Ben had received a fax I’d sent the week before and knew that I’d had an ongoing problem. The service manager, Mark Gilmore, was summoned. Almost immediately, Mark asked for my keys. They had the coach in the hospital for about five hours, checking back with me all the time to let me know what the status of their work was. YIPPPEE!

I was back on the street, heading for the RV park and my newly assigned space by 2:30 PM. Stan and Dorothy were on their way to the park to help me level up, unhitch, hook up, and get my home back to normal. Not to worry, that’s not the end of the story. I was moving to space 203. When I arrived, the guy in space 204 had his car parked in my space. I flagged down a security guard that was driving by. He called the office. ARGHHH!! They had changed my space again and tried to notify me but I was out of the park…NV power needed that space also. Now on my way to space103 where the previous tenants had been kicked out for nonpayment of rent, the space was a mess, all kinds of 2X4’s, hard line sewer pipe and lots of other miscellaneous junk left behind. No porters (yes, they are called porters in RV parks too) were on duty that day so Stan, Dorothy, and me just kicked all of it to the end of the space. I pulled in, got everything settled and my slides out. I was so damn grateful to have my home back to normal and my truck freed from its 41 foot appendage. Little things make me happy. 

But Sunday brought another super glitch. I was on my way to Caesar’s Palace to see Jason Kirk – he’s blogging the heads-up event – and when I entered the parking garage, after making it to the 2nd level, and stopping several times on the way up, putting the Steed into park, opening the door and checking the clearance from the roof to the concrete beams overhead, as I started up the incline to the 3rd level, the second beam got my beautiful new truck. I was driving about 5 MPH all the way up as I didn’t want to pick up any speed and start a bounce or jump with the Steed frame. Thankfully I was creeping when this bastard beam scratched the roof of my beauty or I would have gouges in the top. I backed out to a flat corner of level two and called Security, reporting what had happened and waited for them to appear. I filed a damage report with them, took pictures of the damage, and security took pictures of the damage also. They stopped traffic so I could go back down, the way I came up. That took over an hour. I gave up on heading for Caesar’s Poker Room. Stick a fork in me! What a weekend.

And NO, this is not where I live, but this is definitely where I don’t want to end up when I’m 90 or so. This location is a few miles from me on Boulder Highway…scary!