Happy Thanksgiving to all!

The trip from Rochester to Covesvilles was not quite as planned.  Dan got sick and could not fly in to drive the Prius.  We decided to go back to Plan A which was to take turns driving the coach and the car with Josh riding  along and maybe driving the Prius with me as copilot.  We made a remarkably on time departure and got to Main Tire Exchange in Dansville, NY early only to find that the only tech capable of doing an alignment had been sent out on an emergency road service call.  While we waited another tech pulled the coach into the service bay and determined we had a loose bearing on the wheel that had had the worse tire wear..  Apparently that was the source of the wear.  By the time he had that tightened and put back together the alignment guy had returned.  He set up the equipment and determined within minutes that nothing had changed since the last time he had seen the coach and we were on the road again by noon.

We continued on to the Yogi Bear Shangri-la on the Creek in Milton PA with me driving the coach and Carol pushing the Prius.  We are not partial to this type of campground, but with three on board we needed to be able to pull out the slides for comfort and having hookups really made sense.  In the morning we rolled out in the same configuration.  After stopping for propane at the Carlyle Flying J we had an “incident.”  Neither Carol nor I are quite sure what happened, but the driver’s side mirror was removed from its rightful place and left dangling from it’s electrical connections.  Carol saw me swerve away from the passing truck and we conjecture he must have drifted into my lane.  My first indication of the contact was the sound of the mirror breaking away.   A brief stop on the shoulder allowed me to tape the mirror to the side of the coach so I wouldn’t lose it.  Then came the fun of driving with no mirror.  Fortunately we had radios with us and when I wanted to move left I could ask Carol to block for me and let me know when it was safe.  Fifty miles of that was enough and we pulled into the first available rest area so I could make further repairs.  By a miracle the glass had survived the impact and the primary damage was to the head of the mirror.  I was able to remount the mirror arm and with a liberal use of grey tape I was able to secure the mirror in a usable position and we continued on to Covesville with no further incidents.

Unfortunately Carol did not want to drive the coach with the taped up mirror and she was not comfortable with Josh practicing his driving under the conditions so he didn’t get the on road experience we had hoped to give him. Upon arrival I went online and found that the manufacturer of the mirror was still making the exact model and had them in stock.  I ordered one for second day delivery and planned to install it myself.  After crawling under the dash I determined that the entire installation amounted to driving four screws to mount the mirror and two plugs under the dash to power the adjusters, heaters and turn indicator.  This seemed to be quite an easy task.  Yesterday, Wednesday, when the mirror was due I crawled back under the dash to actually prepare by unplugging the two plugs, a seemingly trivial task albeit performed while lying on the floor contorted around the driver’s seat reaching over my head.

I tried three different tools to cut the one tie wrap used to secure the harness.  This was made difficult because I could not get leverage to slice it with a knife nor could I get the scissors under the wrap because of the angle.  I finally got it loose only to discover I had dislodged two other cables from places I had not noted.  One came from the control switch for the leveling system and after two tries and several uncomfortable minutes I was able to reset it on the circuit board so the levels worked as always.  The other was a red wire with a half circle on the end.  I traced that to the controller for the supplemental brakes in the car.  Since the black wire from the controller went to a screw on the frame it seemed clear that the red wire needed to be connected to a power supply and there was an open slot on a fuse block just in reach of the wire.  I will know tomorrow when I connect the car to take Alexander with us to Williamsburg whether I made that connection right.  If not it will be a simple matter to stick it in the other side of the slot.

I need to wrap this up and go help prepare for Thanksgiving Dinner.  A highlight will be a Skype video call with Malena’s sister Tafiline in South Africa.  Also her father, David, will be with us.  He was supposed to be going to Iran this week, but the security situation and visa problems are keeping him safely state side.  I look forward to the chance to spend some time with him face to face as we have have had many interesting conversations via email over the past year.