We Begin ... January 2009

January 6, 2009 .... Tales from the Road

Pull out of the driveway on January 6. The weather is not great. Some rain/sleet/snow ahead. We are headed for Greencastle, PA .... just on the Mason-Dixon line and the location of Unnamed RV Place. They did some work on our motor home and it isn't working out, so we need to pay them a visit. They are still no help, so we pull out again in a dreary drizzle that is threatening to turn to ice. After another hour we find a very nice Walmart parking lot and wait out the storm with 2 other motor homes who wanted to get off the road. Now .. here is the saga of the satellite.....

In the never-ending quest for more and better gadgets, Jeff bought a satellite system from a friend ... (who never used it on his boat, it was still in the box and it was Direct TV compatible). After RV Place installed (or attempted to install) the system on the roof of our RV and we were never able to connect with any satellite we contacted the distributor in California. Turns out that the system is juuuuuust old enough that Direct TV has reconfigured their system enough that it is now totally obsolete. A boat anchor ... a door stop. Useless. More than useless ... we had PAID some goofball to put it on our roof!! AND he disconnected my TV antennae, so I was now without TV of any kind! Quel horreur!! He did such a great job that somewhere on I-81 in Virginia we heard a great "BANG!!" as the dome blew off and bounced down the highway behind us. We heard from some UPS guys that we did not kill anyone and it rolled harmlessly into the median. Fortunately I have brought a number of good books and I don't miss the TV.

We make it to North Carolina and after a nice couple of days with grand kids in Hickory and then we head out for Texas. Can't wait to get back there!