I know that some of my readers take comfort in our various misadventures and repair projects along the way.  It seems I have not recounted these in any organized way in some time.  This thought occurs as we recover from the case of the lost keys, redux.  I don’t remember if I told the story of the lost keys as we were preparing to leave Rainbow Plantations in Summerdale AL.  The short version is that as we prepared to leave I could not find my key to the Jeep.  The search encompassed the car the coach and eventually with the help of a passing Escapee who happened to have a metal detector, a search of the ground surrounding the coach.  All of this was of no avail.  As I made a final walk though to be sure the coach was ready for departure the key miraculously appeared lying on the floor by the back closet where I had put them down for a moment while doing something else.  Needless to say I should not have had the key in my hand, it should have been placed on the key rack by the front door as I entered the coach.

Today, as we prepared to leave Rainbow’s End in Livingston TX (is there a pattern here?) I went to the key rack and there were 3 sets of keys, Carol’s keys for the coach and Jeep and my keys for the coach, the Jeep key had gone missing again!  We searched the coach, we searched the car and we searched the ground, this time the gentleman with the metal detector was nowhere to be found.  No key!  We did the whole thing again.  With cost and inconvenience in our minds we eventually set off down the road without the second Jeep key.  Two hours down the road there was a lovely Texas Roadside Picnic area that beckoned for lunch and a driver change.  I searched the dashboard of the coach just in case the key might be there, no such luck.  After lunch as I took the navigator seat I picked up the burn envelope (this is where we put papers that have been scanned that have material that ought to be shredded – it will eventually feed a campfire) and reached in.  There was the missing key.  It had fallen off the key rack where it belonged, directly into the envelope.

Getting satellite tv working was a bit of a trial.  As reported earlier Dish Tech was well meaning, even helpful, but essentially incompetent when it came to getting the system working on this RV.  After the tech left, I tinkered some more and got everything working with one exception, the big TV in front had no Red input.  People were green, and CNN was grey.  I opened the back of the compartment that the tech at Colton RV had opened to fix something else to do with TV and sure enough there is a nightmare of wiring packed in there.  I pushed, I pulled and turned on the TV and the Red was back.  I closed up the hidden compartment – why do they use square drive screws, star drive screws and phillips heads seemingly indiscriminately?   The Red stayed on . . . until it didn’t.  A night later there was no Red.  In frustration I thumped on the back wall of the front compartment and the Red came back until it went away again an hour later.  I have learned that a tap on the outer door of the compartment is sufficient to reset the Red.  This will have to do until I am feeling energetic again, or get to a Tiffin Service Center, it is under warranty.

If the sum total of my trials and tribulations do not get any worse, I will be content.  I have scrapes and gashes on wrists, elbows and knees, but haven’t hit my head on anything in a couple of weeks.  Who ever said RVing isn’t an extreme sport?  It is amazing how many things find ways to get in my way when my attention is distracted.