Dateline: Sunday, May 7, 2022
Location: Rochester, Minnesota

In this issue:

1. Bragging Rights
2. 2022 Coastal Writer’s Conference
3. Walkabout Preparation
4. Heavenly Retaliation

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Back again, y’all. And the hits just keep on coming!

Family first. Then, the coastal writer’s conference I’m co-hosting in September is shaping up nicely. Beyond that, we’re off to a rocky start on our eighteen-month walkabout. And I believe you will find the big fun we’ve already had unusual and interesting. More on all of these topics in a moment.

First, just let me say that Kay and I are blessed with our ability to travel, to see old friends, to make new ones, and to explore this great nation of ours. We are amazed daily, and remain grateful, despite bumps in the road under our rolling sanctuary.

1. Bragging Rights

I’d be remiss if I didn’t begin this post by bragging about my beautiful seventeen-year-old granddaughter. Not only is she a skilled hockey player and a competitive high school wrestler, she looks awesome in her junior prom dress, doesn’t she?

2. Coastal Writer’s Conference

My friend Judy Howard and I are excited to offer this intimate and informative conference in the picturesque town of Brookings, Oregon within spitting distance of the Pacific Ocean (that is, if you’re the spittin’ kind).

We’ve aimed this two-day conference at both novice and experienced writers. Attendance will be limited, so if you’re interested, be sure to sign up early. Check it out here.

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3. Walkabout Preparation

Last month I shared with you some body and paint work to our motorhome, along with a good deal of preventative maintenance (we take that very seriously as we do NOT want to be broken down on the side of the road, ever).

And now, for something completely different….

Have you ever heard of sinking a motorhome?

That’s exactly what we did.

We were just minding our own business parked in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. We set up as usual on a gravel site at a park where we’d stayed before. Gravel is usually good for drainage so the jacks and tires aren’t sitting in puddles. Jacks down, leveled the bus, brought out the slides, and settled in for a peaceful couple of weeks visiting friends in Fairfield, a half hour away.

Or so we thought.

The weather turned nasty and stayed that way. Torrential downpours most every day, driven by 20-30 MPH winds with gusts to over 45 MPH. All this rain flooded our site most of the time.

So this is where it got interesting.

One morning, a few days into this fascinating weather pattern hovering over us, we noticed that the bathroom door was hitting us in the butt. It would not stay open. Our heavy coach was no longer level. Overnight, our front jacks had sunk over a foot into the soft and saturated Iowa clay that was hidden beneath a thin veneer of gravel toward the front of our RV site. So what’s the problem? Just move the coach and re-level, right?

Well, it turned out to be more complicated than that. First, the soggy walls of the two holes into which our front jacks sunk had caved in on top of the foot-square baseplate of each jack. This deposited about twenty pounds of clay on top of each base. Plus, have you ever tried to pull your foot out of a knee-deep mud hole? Not easy, right? These jacks are raised by springs. We now expected them to raise a lot more than just the jacks. Not only that, but these smooth silver rods (also called rams) fit tightly into hydraulic sleeves. They were now coated with good old Iowa clay. Quite the mess. But that was not even the biggest problem.

Since the entire front end of our bus had sunk into muck, we apparently exposed some important underside equipment to unnatural forces (don’t ask, I’m not an expert). Suffice it to say, we had trouble “airing up” our (air) suspension system after this adventure. We needed to raise the jacks (which wouldn’t come all the way up), move the coach back about fifteen feet to higher ground (with the front right tire nearly rubbing on the underside of the wheel well) because now, the front right corner of the bus would not air up. So when it came time to roll down the road (we’d go to the jack company next to ensure they were all ok), it took about four times as long to air up as normal, but thankfully, it did air up. That meant we could move the rig down the road until we could seek proper repairs.

Next stop: HWH factory service center, the manufacturer of our jacks (aka stabilizers). Even though they worked on our jacks for well over an hour (they cleaned up all four of them and pronounced them healthy), they charged us nothing!

Now, for the next unplanned stop–we sought someone in the area who could diagnose and fix our air suspension system. We were referred to Truck Country in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. We would learn the hard way that they knew trucks, but not RVs. They determined within a couple of hours that we had a leaky leveler valve, part of our front-end air suspension system not unlike those found on some trucks, I’m told. But it would take another twenty-six hours to get it installed and to solve another problem we didn’t have when we arrived at Truck Country.

We had called ahead to find out if they had fifty-amp plug-ins. As you RVers know, that’s very important when you live in a rig, and have hundreds of dollars of food in an electricity-hungry fridge and freezer. They said they had such hookups. While it’s true we have an inverter/charger in the bus that will power our AC fridge/freezer from our house batteries, we normally don’t do that for more than ten hours or so without recharging the batteries. That’s done either by rolling down the road (the engine’s alternator charges both house and chassis (aka starting) batteries, or we plug into “shorepower,” such as a thirty- or fifty-amp electrical service at an RV park or a service facility, or by running our bus’s generator.

A comedy of errors!

First, Truck Country did NOT have any RV electrical hook-ups as promised.

Second, they said they were not busy, so first-come-first-served would not be a problem. Yet, it took them many hours to acquire the right air suspension part from another local truck repair facility, after taking 3 hours to diagnose what part was needed.

Third, they worked well into the night to finish the job (their hours are 7am to midnight), so we had checked into a hotel.

Fourth, when they took the bus for a test ride, they slammed a lot of stuff around, no doubt driving it like a truck, not like an RV. This jarred open our fridge doors, so the inverter was working extra hard to cool the food/drink as well as the entire interior of our bus.

When we finally returned from the hotel to start the generator later that same night so we could charge the house batteries before going to bed, they were essentially already dead, and allegedly suffered from several bad cells. Curious, since just two weeks earlier, Spartan tested them and said they were fine.

Truck Country put a portable charger on our batteries overnight, but they were already too far gone. They would no longer take a charge.

Soooo, the next morning, we told them to replace our four house batteries (Interstate deep cycle). This would be the second time in a year.

When I walked down into the shop (I wasn’t supposed to, for “insurance purposes”), they were in the process of replacing my house (deep cycle) batteries with starting batteries! I confronted the tech. He said, “Starting or deep cycle? What’s the difference?” Alrighty, then.

So it took a few more hours for them to acquire the correct batteries (those I had originally requested). We got out of there after a total of twenty-nine hours. We were not happy. But, “he said, she said….” At least we were on our way.

Now, we’re parked in our home town of Rochester, Minnesota, where we look forward to spending the next six weeks not moving, hopefully, not repairing stuff and not buying fuel.

Unfortunately, we slammed over another bump in the road, even though we’re not moving. Both Kay and I have just come down with brutal colds, maybe flu (we hope that’s all it is). We’re hoping it’s just our bodies de-stressing from seven weeks of rough foreplay.

Now, big picture, we hope to start enjoying the happy ending, that is, the rest of a trouble-free trip (knock wood).

But there’s always a silver lining, even after all this roughage (sorry). Insurance or warranty covered much of our repair expenses except for the batteries and preventative maintenance items.

We’ve already enjoyed visiting wonderful friends and family. Plus, we’ve made many new friends.

I sold several books at a delightful signing event in Fairfield, Iowa, and made some more friends.

One repair facility, HWH in Moscow, Iowa, worked on our jacks for almost 2 hours and charged us NOTHING.

And no more mouse-sign in the bus! We figure they vacated either out of our fearsome trapping efforts, or from hunger as we locked up all of our non-canned food in places they can’t penetrate (like the fridge).

I’ve also pounded out what I believe to be a compelling conclusion to my latest mystery, “Murder in Purgatory,” although the middle requires more effort. And then I’ll spend a lot of quality time editing and seeking reader feedback. But, progress!

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4. Heavenly Retaliation

We spend time in Fairfield, Iowa every year or two for two reasons. First, we love visiting our long-time friends, Tom and Nancy (like 1969 long!). And secondly, we love spending time around Maharishi International University, including the delightful people within that entire community, including Nancy and Tom.

Besides, there is just no cooler place we know of to have celebrated Earth Day.

We also enjoyed being present for the 50th anniversary celebration of the university’s founding.

Plus, we met another old friend from the community (David, you crack me up!) and made some new ones (Rolf and Renee, you were a delight).

In Fairfield, you have the “townies” and the “roos” (nickname for “gurus”). There was a time when that was an uneasy liaison. Over the years, that seems to have reached homeostasis.

You can imagine how small town Iowa might clash with a university that celebrates students and staff from as many as seventy countries at any point in time, and from all over America.

Additionally, imagine the potential divide between attitudes and lifestyles of traditional midwestern farmers worrying about the upcoming growing season and transcendental meditators seeking universal consciousness.

There are other interesting dimensions to this town too. TM (Transcendental Meditation) draws all types of eclectic students, educators and administrators from around the world. That means there are those who are “poverty conscious” (like monks of old) as well as those with substantial means who just love the community’s vibe and invest here, and all sorts of fascinating characters in between these two extremes.

For example, Fairfield has the highest per capita ownership of Teslas (13). And, oh, the bookstores, ethnic, vegan and vegetarian restaurants, organic produce providers, health food markets and co-ops. Plus, Fairfield exudes all the charm of a typical small Iowa town. Of course, like every town, it is not without its problems too.

I held a book signing event in Fairfield at a charming book store and cafe, which provided the opportunity to chat with several locals. Felt like a combination of a sophisticated metro area and small town America. I find it difficult to explain that… feeling.

This all makes for a most fascinating community, though not everyone’s cup of tea.

A few parting thoughts (ten objectives, really):

With pen in hand… wherever… and until…

Gene (and Kay)