We’ve been pushing to leave earlier than ever and finally set the date for Thursday, November 18.  We hoped that the roofers would have finished all the major work on our roof and Carol had one more medical appointment that morning.  Carol took the Tow’d to the appointment and I was to meet her there with the coach and hook up for travel there.  That part worked out great, the medical facility was on the way out of town and the timing was fine.  The roofers were held up by delayed delivery of skylights and lousy weather.  As I pulled out of the driveway, they were setting shingles under a gray sky that threatened rain.

I had changed our mailing address to Livingston, TX as Escapees is reputed to do an excellent job of mail handling for RVers.  I had my doubts about our local post office and they did not prove unfounded.  I sealed the mail slot so no mail could be delivered, also no inserts, chinese restaurant menus, or HOA communications.  Our neighbor called two days after we left to report that the post person could not figure out why the mail would not go through the slot!  Called the USPS LOCAL office and were told, “oh we will start it today” They never checked the system to see that it was supposed to have started two days previous.  AAaargh

So we are away and crusin’ south on US 15 headed for I 81 through bands of rain and chill.  As I come to the turn from 147 to 15 at Tedd’s Landing (if you have never driven the route, you are blessed) there are two lanes for the left turn and I see that all the trucks are lined up in the rightmost of the two lanes.  Silly me, I forget the simplest lesson from my safe driving course, which is always take the widest turn, and try to slip down the far left lane.  I have a stripe on my rearmost awning upright from the edge of the trucker’s mirror which I repositioned for him.  Fortunately that is the sum total of the damage, another service stripe.

The next day saw me attempting to die the rug red with some very nice red wine.  I was exiting a lay by on 250 in VA and the exit was partially blocked by a car for reasons I cannot imagine.  I went behind the car and and this put the left rear wheels on a small rise which rocked the back of the coach severely.  This is not the first time this has happened in 10 years, but it is the first time that a wine bottle hit the inside of the cabinet door just right to release the Velcro strap placed there to prevent just this occurrence. It dove onto the floor and knocked off the top.  Naturally stopping and then parking on a steep downgrade did nothing to keep the spill localized.  Somehow we got it cleaned up and through Carol’s diligent efforts there is no more than a slight blush where the wine concentrated.

Enough! 

For now we are happily ensconced in Dan and Malena’s driveway and here we will stay until well past Thanksgiving.  Then we will begin our move to the Southwest.

Bill, David, Alan and Bunny, we hope to see you all sometime in the next two weeks.