The Challenges of Being On The Road

Traveling on the road brings a whole list of challenges….what do we want to see?  Where do we stay?  Is our equipment working properly?  Yesterday was one of those challenges.

We have had issues with our refrigerator.  The temperatures have been rather warm (in the 80s and 90s) since we moved south.  Our RV refrigerator has had problems keeping up with the warm weather…..so much so that we’ve noticed the temperature reach 45 degrees.  The coach is fairly new and is under warranty, so we called a number of repair facilities to try and get an appointment to look at the refrigerator as well as some other minor cosmetic issues that need repair under warranty.  It’s now May and we called four different service facilities only to be told that they were 40 to 60 days out on appointments.  Needless to say we will be home by that time, but we were able to speak to a tech that walked us through troubleshooting on the fridge and it seems that it fixed the issue.

We installed a Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) on both the truck and 5h wheel.  The sensor on the truck’s right front tire wasn’t working so we removed the sensor and discovered the internal battery was dead.  Okay, we’ll swing by Walmart and get a new battery tomorrow when we get back on the road.  As we were getting things ready to travel we noticed the right front tire on the truck was flat!  Apparently when the sensor was removed it unscrewed the valve stem release and allowed air to escape from the tire.  Normally we would have been able to inflate the tire with our portable air compressor, but we had to send it to the manufacturer to have it repaired.  Our backup is an air hose that we carry with the truck and use the truck’s on-board air compressor.  Oops, the fitting that we purchased before we left on our trip wasn’t in the truck.  Must still be sitting on the work bench at home.  Okay….call road side assistance and get someone to come out and inflate the tire.  We should have known something was amiss when the lady on the other end of the phone started asking questions about “how much does your truck weigh – between 3 and 4 thousand pounds?”  No, the truck weighs around 13,000 pounds….”oh my – that is a big truck!”  Two hours later her supervisor called back and said they were working on it.  Fortunately our next door neighbor came home and he has a Class A fifth wheel with an air hose that would connect to our compressor.  We filled the tire, put the cap back on the valve stem and called Roadside Assistance to cancel.

It’s amazing to see the challenges while traveling and easy to throw blame at this or that….but if we stay calm and let God handle the issues everything turns out just fine.  We’re back in business again this morning and getting ready for another travel day – and I’m sure more challenges!