Newbie-itis
Wanderlust in an RV is a bittersweet thing. Our second glorious day out ended with loud clanking noises coming from the back of our motor coach as I, the female driver who had never before driven anything as large as a semi-truck, especially at night and especially, ESPECIALLY not in road construction, was trying to get us a few hours south of Memphis. I had driven for a couple of hours and was trying to force my hands to relax and to not grip the steering wheel with a white-knuckle death-grip.
Michael and I both heard the ominous loud noises coming from the back each time we went over a bump. The road was more like a 4 x 4 trail than an interstate. Road construction stinks! I slowed down to mitigate the abuse to MARIS, our RV.
We were approaching West Memphis, AR, and I told Michael that the air pressure gauges were not in the normal range. We were losing air pressure in the rear air-ride suspension. We decided to stop and I limped it into a parking lot where we called Good Sam and got hooked up with a mechanic who would be out in the morning. It looked like the coach was sitting right on the tires. There could only have been a couple inches between the rear wheel wells and the tires!
Directly in front of us was a sign that stated, "No overnight parking." Great. We had to move one way or another. I thought it best to let Michael drive our injured MARIS. He limped the rig, as I held my breath, a half-mile to a Flying J truck stop. As we traversed a small bump, the leveling jacks scraped the concrete. My heart sank as I prayed we weren't doing permanent damage to the coach. We parked in the only open area, an area not marked as a parking space and which was clearly in the way of trucks coming and going. On looking at the back of MARIS, we knew we weren’t moving again until the repairs were made. We had lost a large part of the air ride suspension cover and the airbag was at an odd angle.
The security guard came by to tell us to move, as expected. Well, when you are broken down, you are broken down. What could he do? We didn’t sleep well that night. I was convinced that a truck would hit us but somehow by the grace of the good Lord, we were untouched the next day.
The rest of the story is boring. We spent the next day and night there and in the diesel repair yard a few miles away in Memphis and finally got the repairs done. Sleeping in places like that in the murder capital of the U.S. was uncomfortable but we came through without being hit by a truck and without being accosted. For that, I am grateful.
After those repairs were complete (there were others yet to be done) it left a bitter taste in our mouths. We assumed that the coach would be like a new car. We assumed that everything should be new and perfectly functional. Our brand-new coach had not had the bolts holding the air suspension tightened down. It saddens me to think that it was not built with attention to detail and loads of quality control.
Lesson One; New rigs have bugs to work out. The first year, according to other RVers, is frustrating until all the bugs have been worked out. Only then can you truly enjoy everything your coach has to offer.
Lession Two; How many redneck RVers does it take to tie a dog out? Two. One to hit his head on the slider while tying the dogs out and talking on the phone while facing the setting sun, and the other to drive him to the doctor to get stitches. OUCH!
Not 3 days prior to that, I had hit my own head on a slider and a perfect “L” sore on my forehead. The joke was that the “L” was for Loser (if only in the contest between the slider and me.) When I showed my war wound to Michael, I told him that it was a matter of WHEN, not IF he was going to do it too. Jinx!
The lesson here is simply to buy foam swimming pool noodles and affix them to the edges of the sliders. No matter how careful you are, it’s going to happen to you if you have sliders on your RV.