Learning Through Frustration

The Unintended Rest-Stop

We had been anticipating our annual May Long Weekend trip down to Deception Pass for months. Bruce reserved the sites for us in November, and we had six couples commit.

Last year, we had a problem with one of the brake shoes on the Airstream, and ended up having it replaced. So all the brakes were essentially of the same vintage, I had the other three replaced this year.

Driving down the highway, only a few miles south of the trailer service business, we had to pull over at a rest-stop and call the repair place. Our wheels (well, 3/4 of them) were red hot, and smelled terribly of burning rubber. Fortunately, we weren't too far down the road, and a mechanic and the service manager came to meet us at the rest-stop (bringing half the garage with them - they had no idea what to expect). They re-adjusted the three affected wheels, and after a short test drive, sent us on our way to Deception. When we pulled into the campground, the wheels were hot again. So we spent most of the weekend wondering what was up. We called the service folks again, and said we'd go slow, and bring the trailer back to them on Tuesday for a closer look.

Half of Us

We drove about half way home on Monday, and spent the night at a KOA in Burlington. This is where we discovered that our converter system (converts 120VAC into 12VDC for the trailer) wasn't working properly. It wouldn't recharge the batteries or supply 12VDC to the coach, so the lights in the trailer started to dim. Now we have a converter problem and a brake problem.

And we could smell propane too.

And it's raining.

And the trailer is filthy from having a dog track in the outdoors.

All this was getting to be a bit much for me. I do find I get more easily overwhelmed now, but still acknowledge that getting upset about all this solves nothing.

Fortunately, with Laura and I it seems that if one is down, the other is up. So on the whole we're pretty steady, and one of us can see that the "glass is half full". It's just that I wish these lessons came one at a time, and not in groups of five or six.