General RV, Dover, Florida (near Tampa)
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another . . . Hebrews 10:24-25
At 8am this morning, a half dozen large vehicles invaded. They were setting up to do some tree trimming/removal- right outside our front door! Hey. When you’re living in a parking lot, you’ll take all the excitement you can find! And the boss brought his dog to work – a black lab, who ran all around the men at work and greeted the new arrivals. But only those people he already knew. Nice of God to provide a little distraction for us!
Oh my! Can you believe they hoisted that guy up like that?
Once he was up there, he wrapped what looked like a deflated fire hose around the branch and then belayed down to the lift basket, where they then pulled his belay line out of the crane . . .
They lowered the basket to the ground and he got out. Then the basket with the other guy went back up, and cranked up the chain saw.
We took a walk to calm our nerves after so much excitement! : )
At 9:20 Nick called and said the part was in transit. At 10am, while we were walking, we saw a FedEx van and got excited, but it drove fast past us. ☹
At 10:05, a FedEx semi turned into GRV. Yay!
And that was all the excitement we were going to experience today. As we headed to the building to use the restroom and get water, a Fed Ex van also showed up. We thought it would be a pretty darn good bet that our part was on one of those vehicles. We hung around until about 11, putting my health at risk by eating fresh-popped popcorn, but we didn’t get a text or call.
So we went home and talked some more with our neighbor, Art from New Hampshire. Art’s planning on leaving today and at least go part way home. He’ll have to wait for winter storm Petra to get out of his way before he can continue. We gave him a few lemons to take home with him. A bit of Florida in New Hampshire. 😊
Being pro-active became necessary today. We waited until about 12:30pm for word about our part, but none came. So we walked back to the service building and up to the service counter to inquire about the tracking number. Here’s the thing. Earlier in the week, we were told that as soon as the shipments leave the truck, they’re scanned and a text goes out immediately to the person the part is for. It also supposedly goes to the “Service Advisor”; in our case, Nick. We were pretty sure the trucks had plenty of time to be unloaded. A very friendly, helpful girl named Christina came to the counter to help us, we told her what we wanted and she said, “I’ve never done that before, but I’ll look at it.” So while she’s looking, another girl comes up whom we had noticed behind the counter before. They both started making these odd faces, and we got concerned. But when asked, Christina said, “It might be a good thing!” And off her chipper little self went, returning about 5-10 minutes later to say that she actually saw the part! Hip-hip-horray! And a huge “THANK YOU” to Christina!
Then we played another waiting game. We went and got the coach, dropped it off in the bay at 1:15pm, and went to the lounge area to wait. And wait. And wait. We saw them drive it to the service area at 1:28pm.
We didn’t want to go anywhere in the Jeep because, 1. We didn’t want to go too far in case they needed us for something. And most importantly, 2. The Jeep was holding our spot in case we had to spend the night again.
And we did. Ugh! Ugh! UGH!
According to Blaine, it should only have taken a few minutes to install that part.
You notice a lot of little things when you’re sitting around all day . . .
At 5:30pm, after sitting around the lounge and taking turns walking around (we had the laptop and phones and my Kindle paperwhite with us), Nick says it’s done! Finally!!
Except it wasn’t. UUGGHH!!!!
Blaine tried it before we left . . . nothing. We were NOT happy. Nick was NOT happy. He told his boss, who made a call to the service department. Guess what? You’re not gonna to believe this. Seriously, you’re not gonna believe this.
“The slide part is fixed, but we have to order another part. One of the travel locks is broken.” Are you kidding me?!?!?!? And we’re just now figuring this out??? I was on the verge of tears, and I don’t cry very often. Apparently, they couldn’t tell the lock was broken until they fixed the slide. But still. Were they just gonna let us drive away with it?? What if we didn’t stop again for 5-6 hours??? They had no idea where or when we were going.
Blaine asked if they could bypass the lock. That took another 30-45 minutes. At 6:50, we were still waiting. Frustrated, tired and hungry. I really did feel sorry for Nick, who’s really just the middle man between us and the service department. I know what that’s like. I made a career out of being the middle man.
The final outcome?
We made it back to the parking lot around 7:30, Blaine pushed the button, and the slide went out! There’s so much room in here, we feel like we just moved into a mansion!
Hopefully it will close when we’re ready to leave tomorrow! I threw tuna salad together and we had sandwiches, baby carrots and a couple of cherry tomatoes.
By then, it was about bedtime. We were thankful to have a bed. And especially thankful that we discovered there was still a problem before we left.
Tomorrow will be a better day!