I'm not a mechanic, you want me to what?
To be clear, I cannot saw a straight board, hang a picture that doesn't wind up crooked, assemble a grill so that it looks anything like the "picture", and at 49 years old I still don't know what a mitre saw does. I am pretty handy with a cordless screwdriver as long as I don't have to actually use it and I own a pretty awesome looking array of tools. But I really couldn't tell you what half of them do. I am excited to use a couple of them but also afraid that I might have to.
Don Hill thinks I am mechanically inclined. If you read my last blog, Don is the guy we bought America from. I have no clue what I might have said or done a long the way to give Don this horribly mistaken and grandiose perception of my abilities, but I will not be too quick to set him straight about it. I do worry that one day I might have to actually demonstrate those skills in front of him and in the process totally kill our otherwise blossoming "bro-mance," At this point, I would be shattered if Don thought less of me.
At 86 years old, Don has spent the last 75 years of his wonderful down-east life as a wood-worker. He is a very highly regarded craftsman, and still spends the better part of his days not puttering around in his shop, but rather churning out the most incredible handmade everything that you can imagine.......The stories he tells when I am fortunate enough to spend any time with him keep me smiling and often outright laughing. Michelle and I were fortunate to have met him and his wife Joanne, and I have the ongoing fortune that although we have only owned his coach since the end of July, he hasn't disconnected his phone, or at least blocked my number. I call Don, it's what I do. I have called him at 7 am and at 7 at night and he always takes my call. I am not sure that I would be so patient if the tables were reversed.
In the moment he told me I was "mechanically inclined", I felt like I had just been endorsed by the electorate in a bid for the Presidency. I say it that way because I imagine that like me, most candidates are faking it and really don't know what they are doing but extremely grateful to have created the personae they want folks to think they are rather than having been seen for who they really are......enough of politics...I was a little light headed at the time and wished the moment might have lasted longer than it did. I even forget what he was referencing at the time, not that I would have actually been knowledgeable about it. Then he told me that this was a good thing as I would NEED to be this way to be a successful bus owner. I wonder if the coach will give me the same respect.
I decided in that moment that I was going to ask Don to let me video tape him giving me tutorials on all the bus systems, how to turn it on, off, all the myriad of electrical buttons and wind-dings, the furnace, the poop system, refrigeration, heating and cooling and the overall basics of operation. i didn't even have a video camera at the time but immediately made a pretty good trade on Craig's List for a 35mm digital camera with video capability. I traded it for a one year old snow blower that we had. the guy I swapped with told me that the camera was too difficult to operate. This should have been my first clue that I was headed down the wrong road. I have since managed to master the art of turning it on and off, taking a basic snapshot in the automatic setting and making a video, albeit one that bounces all over the place because I can't seem to hold the camera steady. I get a little dizzy when I play them back but it's worth it. I did spend a few hours with Don video taping these segments but I cant seem to get them off the camera and on to my laptop. I just have to be sure I don't delete anything on the camera for the time being.
I have called Don when I really shouldn't have. The other day I brought the bus home from being serviced. The very next morning I could not get anything to work that was electrical. America would start and run and drive and it was all systems go but every single accessory on the coach was dead. I found this out when I hit the switch to roll out my electrical cord to plug the bus in. Dead. Nothing. There is a fuse panel hidden behind most anywhere you look on the bus so I knew I couldn't go there. I called Don. He asked me if the motor for the cord roller was plugged in. It was. I told him I would look around. So I blindly headed to the main power board above the passenger seat and started pounding on rocker switches. There is one labeled Battery: use/store. That did the trick. I don't understand still what happened but when I hit that one the bus lit up like Times Square on New Years Eve. Thinking I could overload the bus and kill the whole thing in the next few seconds, I frantically started jumping around the coach, turning off anything that looked like it was on. In that moment, I could see through the living room window the electrical cord slowly pushing itself out in to the main road, just begging to be hit by one of my neighbors. It looked like a black cobra, gently making its way. I flew off the bus and killed the electrical to the motor, kind of the opposite of what I had intended all along.
I even called Don once to ask him what all the keys on the key ring in the key caddy fit. He told me "locks". I love that man.
All of this brings me to my current mechanical situation. One that John, the owner of Mountain Road RV has not quite yet convinced me that I am going to solve. I noticed a pretty severe power loss on the 180 mile trek home from Bar Harbor. the coach was bucking quite a bit and a little yellow light on the dashboard kept intermittently flirting with me. I hadn't a clue what was wrong, knew something was definitely not right,and silently cursed myself for recent life altering decisions that we had made, all the while gently reassuring Michelle that "it was nothing". I actually thought our Allison 6-speed transmission had developed some ten thousand dollar problem and the Bus Anxiety grew.
A few days later I was comforted after reading that it was probably just a clogged fuel filter. This was verified by John and his marvelous crew. they took great care of me and I received a fresh State inspection sticker, diagnosis of the codes, and confirmation that the fuel filter was indeed clogged. All for 90 bucks. But John is very thorough and wanted to explain to me what could and likely would happen next. My fuel filter, he said, was not just clogged, but clogged by some rapidly reproducing alien life force whose earth name was "Black Algae". The Scourge of the South. The Fuel contaminant that is rapidly spreading around our country in much the same manner as any proud epidemic might. The Bubonic Bus plague. And it would likely come back. John warned me in a style reminiscent of the same narrative employed by Alfred Hitchcock. Smooth, reserved and very menacing all at the same time. "You see, the black algae gets in to your tank in the south, we don't really know where it comes from we just know that it doesn't go away. It is very likely that you will be changing your fuel filters on the side of the road several times over the next four or five thousand miles." I registered no concern in my facial expression but did ask, "Can I do that?". He replied
"Sure, you just need the right oil filter wrench and some patience." Oil filter wrench? Now I was totally confused. Had I been listening all along? Was this an oil problem?
After some explanation, John enlightened me that I would need to put fuel in the coach at about ten gallons a time, always treating it with a Biocide called Killem. The rapidly reproducing monsters in my fuel tank would not be able to replicate as quickly and this "killem" stuff would be more effective. I might still have to change my filter every thousand miles or so for 4 or five times but if I can teach my elbow to bend the other way I should have no problem reaching behind my Cummins 350 turbo diesel to remove the bad one in favor of a good one. I have not yet attempted this but do know that I will eventually have to. Probably somewhere on the side of the road.
I love this life!
I vow to live up to Don's perception of me.........
Follow Michelle and I as we journey around the country on www.facebook.com/everywhereamerica
Have a Great day!
Jaime
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