Traverse City and St. Ignace

Lakeshore RV Park Campground, St. Ignace, Michigan...

We leave behind nearly a week in Traverse City in idyllic weather so cool and pleasant and so different from summer in our beloved Texas. We really enjoyed our stay at Holiday Park Campground, one of the best-kept RV parks we've ever seen. Here are a couple of photos; I could have included many more:

I hadn't included this park on my "Best of the Best" page because its sites are not hard surfaced. However, the graveled sites are so well maintained and the grounds so beautifully kept, I'm going to go ahead and include it. We would happily stay here again.

We spent one day driving on Michigan 22, a scenic 'circle tour' of the peninsula as recommended by Eddie and Jan, and we lost count of the scenic views. Here are a few photos taken on West Grand Traverse Bay on Lake Michigan. I loved the calmness of the bay and the reflection of the sailboat's mast in the water which, by the way, was crystal clear:

 Here's a view of Traverse City from across the bay:

Traverse City is quite a picturesque town, nestled as it is on the bay, with lots of pleasure boats and parks with art displays, such as this one:

It would be very appealing to spend the summer here if you're looking to get away from the heat.

Of course, being foodies, we couldn't resist a stop at Cherry Republic in Glenbrook as we drove around the area; we snagged some delicious cherry goodies to take home:

And then, who could pass up Moomer's Homemade Ice cream in Interlochen?  (There is always a line out the door, no matter what time of day.):

For the day's whimsical shot, I just couldn't resist taking a photo of these gulls that seemed to have posed for me:

I have a thing for gulls. I really like how these birds always seem to be lined up in the same direction. Probably has something to do with the wind. (Or they may just have a little OCD; who knows?)

Saying goodbye to Traverse City, we decided to take the 130-mile drive up Highway 31, where we saw still more delightful towns and scenic views on our way to St. Ignace. As is customary, we usually stop for lunch after an hour or so, and we found a nifty roadside park where we had some hot dogs in a very cool breeze. In fact, Sandy had to go back to the bus and get a jacket, but it didn't detract from our enjoyment of this beautiful little park right there on the lake:

Our first and most impressive view approaching our new destination, St. Ignace, was the Mackinaw Bridge:

At five miles long, it is the longest suspension bridge in the U. S.  It is not clear why the bridge is named Mackinaw while the nearby  island of tourist fame is spelled Mackinac but pronounced Mackinaw. That probably falls into the category of things I will never understand nor spend much time contemplating.

We parked at Lakeshore RV Park, a functional but friendly place not far from the bridge view you see above.  However, our view here from Phannie was a little less impressive, but still, a view of Lake Michigan, nonetheless:

The orange thing you see above is a light underneath Phannie's right mirror that flashes when the turn signal is activated. I presume its purpose is for the benefit of drivers in a blind spot who would not wish to tangle with 16 tons of motorhome turning toward them. I, of course, don't want to do that, either; such a thing can get very expensive, to say nothing of dangerous.

We have several missions while we're here in St. Ignace, but those will appear in forthcoming posts. We were also intent to finding a Petoskey stone for grandson Pryce, who is a rock collector of sorts. This, of course, required a bit of backtracking--35 miles back to Petoskey. This stone is both a rock and a fossil, composed of fossilized rugose coral, supposedly 350 million years old, laid down only in the lower Michigan peninsula area during glaciation. When dry, it looks like an ordinary piece of limestone but, when wet, it displays the six-sided mottled fossilization of the piece. You can see the difference in the photos below:

Using skilled lapidary techniques, the stones can be made into some distinctive and unique jewelry which of course, Sandy would come to own as a result of our quest of that day. This was fine with me, as her birthday had just passed by and, as usual, we waited until she found just the right thing to be gifted for the occasion. A plus was that it is a unique souvenir that she will always remember from this trip, especially as it can be found nowhere else. By the way, it is also the Michigan state stone.

Well, that will do for now. It's off to Mackinac Island, from which our next post will be composed.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I fail to appreciate it each day as I should.

We don't stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing. 

 ---George Bernard Shaw

"I get up every morning, and I just don't let the old man in." ---Clint Eastwood

Phannie Gets New Jacks; I Avoid the Funny Farm (For Now)

At Trailway Campground, Montague, Michigan...

The new jacks are done! I'll give you the details below, but first, a little background info:

I have put up with the infernal Atwood electric jacks that Tiffin--in perhaps one of its two worst engineering debacles--installed on some of its coaches in the mid-2000s; Phannie, unfortunately, was one of those. The other engineering catastrophe was when they installed plywood flooring under the wet bay during the same years; Phannie was one of those, too. I can't imagine who at Tiffin thought that was a good idea; the words "wet" and "plywood" should not even be used in the same sentence. To his credit, Bob Tiffin replaced every one of the plywood floors with waterproof material at no cost to the owners. That episode with Phannie is documented in this post.

I wasn't so lucky with the Atwood jacks. I suppose some owners had pretty good service with them, but I know plenty of others like me who had nothing but trouble. I suppose that, because of the difficulties, Atwood offered an upgrade kit a few years ago that consisted of replacing all the jacks and the brain with what was, supposedly, a more reliable and robust system. Due to my exasperation, I bought the kit and had it installed by Tiffin. For a year or two after that, things went fine. But then I started having trouble with them again and, by this time, Atwood announced that they were no longer going to manufacture the jacks nor were they going to make any parts for them either. I can't say I blame them, failed as they were, but the name Atwood will forever be a dirty word in my vocabulary from now on. So, there went $3,500 that I would much rather have given to family or any worthy cause.

As time went by and the troubles continued, these jacks ultimately became the bane of my existence. Fortunately, I was saved from the funny farm when both HWH and Bigfoot came out with a hydraulic jack retrofit system to replace the junky Atwoods. This was great news! If I get one of these, it can't possibly cost as much as psychiatric therapy, I thought. So, I carefully researched both systems and decided that Bigfoot offered what appeared to be the better designed and more robust product at a lesser cost than the HWH kit. And, fortunately, I had two friends who had the Bigfoot retrofit systems installed recently, and they are very happy with them. Thus, the decision was made and the appointment made with Bigfoot. As you may recall, the previous post left off with our arrival at the Bigfoot factory and parking for the evening.

The next morning, we had gotten up very early to make sure we were dressed and Phannie was all buttoned up and ready to go. Promptly at 0800, there was a knock on Phannie's door, and Jeff said we could go eat breakfast, as they would take it from here. So, we drove into downtown White Pigeon and stopped at Rachael's, a small cafe that appeared to be very popular with the natives. We had a very nice and leisurely breakfast, knowing there would be no need to hurry, as the installation would take 6-7 hours to complete.

After that, we drove back to the main office waiting area, where we relaxed and napped a while. Then we went to get some gas in the car and stopped by the local grocery store before returning to the Bigfoot office.  Soon after that, one of the guys came in and said, "We're all done; come on down to your rig, and we'll show you how to operate it."

I couldn't help but walk around Phannie and admire the shiny new jacks, upon which I had them install SnapPads, at an extra cost of about $200. Then we stepped into Phannie's cockpit to take a look at the new control pad:

Everything seemed pretty straightforward, and I was pleased to have a separate air dump capability, which I didn't have with the Atwood system.  

The Bigfoot system uses an individual extend/retract self-contained hydraulic system for each jack, controlled by a central brain. It will not operate and will alarm if the jacks are down with the engine running, so as to ensure no attempted driveoffs with the jacks extended. It can be operated with automatic or manual leveling, as desired, but the automatic worked perfectly.

Although photos are not allowed by customers during the installation, I told them the installation would be featured in a fairly widely-read RV blog, and they quickly offered to take photos for me, which I appreciated.  Here is a photo of Phannie backed up onto ramps to give the workers more room underneath:

Here is the last look at one of the Atwood jacks that would soon be extracted:

Here is the last Atwood jack, lying pitifully on the floor, as if ready to be picked up by a hearse. Good riddance!

Here is a worker, welding the new jack support in place:

The new Bigfoot jack housing is now in place:

Next, the jack's pump/valve control module and hydraulic reservoir are installed:

Two more pump/valve control modules and reservoirs are waiting to be installed:

After about seven hours, voila! The installation is done and we are hooked up and ready to go; we will make our next stop, Montague, Michigan by 1730.

Here is a photo of one of the jacks extended at our next stop. I love the SnapPads. I should never have a need for extra pads with a footprint like this:

Reaching Montague, we activated the system for the first time and oh, what a difference! After dumping the air, I pushed the auto button and the system activated almost silently and, after a few bumps, the leveling was done. Never before has that task been so quick and easy, and never before has the coach been so level and secure-feeling. To say we're happy would be a huge understatement. Looks like they will not take me away in a strait jacket after all.  Stay tuned as we travel up the UP in the next few weeks.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I fail to appreciate it each day as I should.

We don't stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing. 

 ---George Bernard Shaw

"I get up every morning, and I just don't let the old man in." ---Clint Eastwood

Unexpected Incidents Reveal Why We Come to Red Bay for Service

At Downtown Red Bay RV Park, Red Bay, Alabama...

With Phannie's emergence from Bay Diesel's annual checkup and service with no issues noted on their comprehensive checklist (an option we always choose wherein the experienced mechanics look at every possible wear point and replace or lubricate as needed), we had concluded our service agenda for this visit to Red Bay. Because we have had our annual service done here for several years, Bay Diesel has a record of when required items were accomplished--whether they be annual, biennial or triennial, so I really don't have to keep up with it too closely (although I keep a complete file of everything done to Phannie in case there's a question).

Phannie, all finished at Bay Diesel with a good report.

The next day, we headed out for Searcy, Arkansas and an overnight stop to visit friends Larry and Carolyn, whom we recently met in Branson. Having bumped our way through Memphis (they really need to do something about their deteriorating roadways), we turned onto highway 64, a very busy two-lane road with lots of construction and non-stop eighteen-wheelers going both directions. 

A cold front was approaching the area, preceded by thunderstorms and a tornado watch, and we were hoping to get to Searcy before having to contend with that. As often happens ahead of a strong cold front, a very gusty south wind was blowing where we were on highway 64, blasting against Phannie's huge left side and causing her to lurch to the right with each heavy gust. To make driving even more difficult, the big trucks heading toward us in the opposite direction amplified the wind gusts with their passing a few feet away on the two-lane road. At a closing speed of perhaps more than 120 mph, each truck we met was like a concussion blast of sorts.

It was during one of the heaviest wind gusts that a speeding 18-wheeler met us with the heaviest concussion we had felt. At the same time, we heard a loud snap followed by a fluttering sound on Phannie's left side. I found a place to pull off the road and walked around to the driver's side, where it was obvious that the forward slide topper roller was loose, causing the new slide topper material to loosen around the roller, which was the source of the flapping noise.

Since we had just had the slide toppers replaced at MS RV Solutions in Red Bay, I leaped to the conclusion that their installation had somehow been faulty. With this in mind, I turned Phannie around and headed back to Red Bay, giving Carl, one of the owners of MS RV Solutions, a call to tell him what had happened. This was on a Friday afternoon, and he asked me to come directly to the shop, and he would take a look at it. I told him it would be around six o'clock, and he said it didn't matter what time I got there; he and his partner, Daniel, would meet us.  

Since we were now traveling the opposite direction back toward Memphis, the south wind was now on our right side, and there were no trucks on that shoulder side of the road, so the loose topper seemed stable enough to continue back to Red Bay, and off we went. Sure enough, Carl and Daniel were standing in the shop's driveway, looking down the road, awaiting Phannie's appearance. They motioned us directly into one of the bays and began to survey the topper.

MS RV Solutions in Golden, Mississippi

What was immediately evident was that a part of the roller support mechanism had broken and the roller brake had torn away and was missing. This means that the massive gust of wind, exacerbated by the simultaneous blast of the passing truck, had blown the rolled-up topper upward at a force beyond the support's design strength, causing it to fail. It was most certainly not due to any error by Carl or Daniel, but a coincidence that the failure occurred immediately after their installation of the topper.

New roller support and brake that replaced the one that failed in wind gust

After this discovery, the guys immediately began to repair the topper support bracket. They didn't have a new brake mechanism in stock but, after a short absence by Daniel, he appeared back at the shop with one in hand, shaking his head as to how hard it was to locate one at this hour. I didn't ask where he got it; I didn't want to know. 

After about an hour, all was good as new, and I pulled out my wallet to pay for the work. Carl shook his head and waved away my gesture, saying that there would be no charge, even though the failure of the topper support was clearly not due to any error on his part. When I began to insist, he said, 

     "I can't accept your money because we touched this topper just before this happened to you. I'm sure we had nothing to do with the bracket failure, as we handled only the topper material; but I cannot afford for our reputation to be even slightly questioned." 

I don't think I've ever been more impressed.

Unfortunately, our bad luck was not quite over. As we were preparing for departure from Red Bay the next day, I hooked up Mae behind Phannie and tested the operation of the car's brake and turn signals. The left signal was not working! Thinking the problem may be the power cord that runs between the coach and the car, I switched to a new one that I keep on hand. Same problem! I knew  the bulbs were okay, as they are LEDs, two bulbs on each side, and they worked okay when illuminated with the taillights.

Well, this would not do, as it would not only be illegal to drive this way, but I always want my signals evident to anyone following our little wagon train. Not knowing what to do, I drove Phannie out to Bay Diesel, followed by Sandy in Mae, and talked to Chris, the owner to get some ideas. Now bear in mind that Bay Diesel is a very busy shop that doesn't usually perform work on automobiles and never without an appointment. I suppose Chris could sense my exasperation, so he said, "Why don't you hang around, Mike, and I'll see if we can work you in." I thanked him profusely, of course, and Sandy and I went to the customer lounge. 

After a wait of a couple of hours, a mechanic began working on Mae, dismantling the taillight fixture and inspecting the wiring all the way to the front of the car. Finding no problems with the fixture or wiring, he took apart the receptacle into which the power cord is plugged when towing. As soon as he removed it, a splash of rust-colored water poured out on the ground. The receptacle housing had filled with water that had blown back from Phannie when we had driven on a rainy highway. Well, I knew that water and electricity don't mix, and it was clear that one of the contacts had shorted out. The receptacle anterior and the wires it contained were wet, rusted and corroded, so it had to be replaced and, to my astonishment, Chris had one in stock! He added silicone sealer to ensure it would stay dry in the future.

New receptacle is ready to go!

I had to marvel at the attention given to me, even though I showed up out of the blue, with no appointment, asking for help with a problem that Bay Diesel doesn't normally deal with. I don't know how Chris was able to pull a mechanic off the line to help me with my penny-ante broken light, but he obviously knew that I was a repeat customer, and I suppose my business must be important to him. I would say it was a very good way to ensure my doing business with him for life.

Perhaps this gives you an illustration of why we find ourselves returning year after year to the backwater little town of Red Bay to get service for Phannie. It is a place that time has forgotten--where its citizens all seem somehow to have kept intact the values of honesty, integrity, fairness, helpfulness and hard work that were exemplified to us by our parents back in the fifties when we were growing up. I've never seen anything like it.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I don't appreciate it as I should each day.

You don't stop playing when you get old; you get old when you stop playing.

Goodbye to South Padre

At Hatch RV Park, Corpus Christi, Texas...

After seeing the kids off at the Harlingen Airport for their one-hour flight back to Houston, we spent our last evening watching the sun set on the beautiful thunderheads just offshore at Padre Island. I have always enjoyed watching these majestic clouds in their billowing form that changes from brilliant white to gold to orange as the sun sets. As a pilot, however, I can appreciate their treachery, in that the outward beauty of their form belies the violence that awaits within for the hapless aviator who would enter these cells. I'm glad I always had weather radar on the aircraft I flew during my career. It must have been pretty exciting for pilots before that invention came along. 

Earlier in the day, we enjoyed a lunch of fresh seafood at Pier 19, a local island restaurant built on a pier jutting out into the causeway and providing a nice view of the water and boat traffic nearby. The food here was good, by the way. I wouldn't say it served the best seafood we had, but it is definitely worth a visit.

The next morning, we pointed Phannie northward toward Fort Worth, with en route stops at Corpus Christi and Spring (Houston) over the next few days. As luck would have it, tropical storm Bill had made landfall near Houston, and we wondered if we would have bad weather to deal with driving from Padre to Corpus. We kept an eye on the weather radar, using my favorite (but pricey) iPad app, RadarScope--which I highly recommend, by the way. Fortunately, tropical storm Bill's rain bands were concentrated north and east of the eye of the storm, leaving the drive from Padre to Corpus dry but increasingly windy as we got closer to the center of the rotation north of Corpus.

Corpus Christi Bay View of Downtown

While we were intending to spend only one night in Corpus, it turned into two. Heavy rains that had been lurking just offshore in Corpus Christi Bay finally moved onshore on departure morning, and the radar showed our route up U. S. 59 covered up with yellow and orange returns. Phannie would not be getting her feet wet this day, and Sandy decided to use the layover for the most productive thing she could think of--shopping! She offered some justification for this outing by announcing her assessment that the grandsons may not have more clothes than they can wear, so that would need to be corrected immediately!

Now in the 39 years we have been together, I have learned a few things. One of them is to avoid questioning Sandy's logic when it comes to any mission on behalf of the grandkids. To reap at least some appreciation reward for what was likely to be an expensive adventure, I smiled sweetly, found the car keys and offered to drive her to the mall. What do guys know about kids' clothes anyway? Why, if it were left up to Tyler and me, the boys would probably be naked before we figured out some clothes were needed.

Fortunately, I still had enough money left at the end of the day to buy dinner, this time at this place:

Now Chinese buffet restaurants can be a mixed bag, as you probably know. We haven't found very many that are worthy of note, but this one is. It had one of the largest selections of food we have ever seen, and they all appeared to be fresh--a problem in many other places we've tried. Worth a visit, in my view.

We're hoping for relatively dry travel toward Houston, as we wind up our weather delay here in Corpus Christi.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I do not appreciate it enough each day.

Weather Hold in Chattanooga

At Best Trav-L-Park in Chattanooga, Tennessee...

We had been keeping an eye on the weather forecast for our next leg to Red Bay and, sure enough, the skies opened up right on schedule at about three o'clock on the morning of departure. The forecast called for two more days of rain, so we simply turned over and went back to sleep, electing to wait it out. I don't like driving Phannie in the rain for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that other drivers become crazier on wet roads. It's sort of like pouring water on cats--you never can tell what they're going to do!  At 32,000 pounds, Phannie is a pretty heavy old girl, and she doesn't react very quickly when you want her to do something like stop hurriedly to avoid hitting some lamebrain who cuts you off. For some reason, a rain shower is like a cloaking device, and other drivers are even less likely to see large objects like a motorhome. Besides, we don't mind hanging back a little longer, as we have no  requirement--like a job (shudder)--forcing us to return home by a certain date. (This is another blessing of retirement that still causes me to pinch myself from time to time.)

We used the extra downtime to visit Wally World to restock a number of household items that were running short. I also updated yesterday's blog post with some more restaurant reviews. We also boxed up some things we had accumulated for the kids and sent them off via FedEx.

It was good to have this little respite, and we slept and napped fitfully listening to the rain on Phannie's roof.

Projects Completed and New Friends

In Red Bay, Alabama...

Yesterday was the final day for work on Phannie on this trip to Red Bay.  Goodness knows, this has been a marathon event but very productive in fixing Phannie's issues and adding some goodies that we wanted.  

Chris Wright

We drove Phannie out to Chris Wright's body shop behind his nice home in Red Bay so he could dress up and paint the exhaust fan housing that Brannon at Custom RV installed last week.  Chris, like all the service providers we've encountered, was very personable and obviously skilled in his craft.  We couldn't be more pleased.

Finished!

Just as Chris finished his paint job, Chris Berry showed up with a modified cockpit tray table and a new shelf for the cabinet under the stovetop.  Chris is a master woodworker with a shop at his rural home where we left the tray table a few days ago to have longer extensions added to the drawer slides.  As originally configured, the table could be pulled out for the copilot to use, but not far enough to access it without bending forward uncomfortably.  We added this to our list of factory design missteps that should have been obvious (remember the wood floor under the wet bay?) in an otherwise fine motor home.  We had to wonder if the designer had even occupied the seat and attempted to use the table before production commenced.   

This was the original table extension:

This is the table with extended slides:

Although I didn't include a photo of it, Chris Berry also installed a middle shelf in the cavernous storage cabinet under the stove top.  Without the shelf, the upper portion of this cabinet was just wasted space.  This was another simple, low-cost addition that, in our opinion, should have been installed during production.

Chris Berry; he installed the shelf in the cabinet with the open doors.

 We had an extra treat in the afternoon when we dropped by Richard and Patsy King's Allegro Bus, parked at the Tiffin campground and waiting for service to some minor issues with their coach.  We are mutual blog readers (find theirs here), and we enjoyed a lively and laughter-filled chat after meeting them. 

Patsy and Richard King

Today will be our last full day in Red Bay. If the rain stays away, we will likely get a wash job for Phannie before the trip home.

Finished at Tiffin, but not with Red Bay

In Red Bay, Alabama...

Surprisingly, we were called to bay 44 the next day after the windows and the other punch list items were completed.  Tiffin has dedicated bays 44, 45 and 46 to the recall fix of the wet bay floor. Two techs  went right to work removing all the tanks and the wooden flooring. Like most Tiffin motor homes built roughly between 2005 and 2010, Phannie's floor was a rotten mess. Replaced with a plastic-fiberglass composite floor, there will be no more problems with her wet bay floor. 

There was an added bonus--the workers found the leak! When they removed the tanks, it was obvious that the shower drain plumbing had been leaking. The water from the shower had been leaking down around the tanks and onto the wet bay floor, accelerating its deterioration and absorbing an unmistakable 'aroma' in the process. The techs quickly dispatched the leak, replaced the floor and reinstalled the tanks.  Good as new!

Here's a photo of the remnants of the old wooden floor.  How could the designers possibly have thought wooden flooring in a wet bay was a good idea?

Here's the new floor being installed:

After paying our bill, we drove Phannie back to her parking spot at the Tiffin campground for her last night there.  The next day, we will be moving to the overflow campground down the street while the remainder of Phannie's non-Tiffin upgrades are completed.  After more than two weeks, we were glad to be moving on from here.

Our Turn at Last!

In Red Bay, Alabama...

Finally, the call we’ve been waiting for!  We had just begun to eat breakfast when my cell phone rang. It was the Tiffin service center manager, instructing us to drive Phannie into bay 9 as soon as possible. 

Well, ‘as soon as possible’ is a relative term when it comes to launching a motor home, especially when you have to clean up from cooking, prepare the interior by securing the loose items, move the furniture to make way for retracting the slideouts, retract the satellite dish, disconnect the water, sewer and electrics, etc.  It’s sort of like launching a cruise ship--it can't be done quickly.  Amazingly, however, we found ourselves ready and starting the engine in 20 minutes.  That is some kind of record, I think!

I drove into the express bay and two techs came aboard to talk about the punch list, which had about eight items.  They worked through the list in about three hours, fixing everything we wanted, but oddly, they could not duplicate the leaking black tank.  They filled all tanks with water and found no leak anywhere. I was at a loss to figure this out, and so were they.  We decided to watch it while we were in the campground and then have Tiffin inspect the tanks thoroughly when they are removed in the next few days. 

Phannie and her sister ships in Tiffin Service Center

Removing all the tanks is required to enable the wooden wet bay floor to be removed and replaced with a fiberglass composite version. Tiffin used the wooden floor in its wet bay floors for several years and found they didn’t hold up for this purpose. Bob Tiffin decided to replace them all at no cost to the owners. He did the same thing with the cap rails on some models. For several years, these rails--forming the longitudinal roof edges--were built with a seam that proved to be a source of water leakage during rainstorms. Phannie did not have this problem, thankfully.  I thought this was a pretty impressive gesture on the part of the manufacturer because these recalls had to be costly.

Tech Checks Phannie's Black Tank

Among the items repaired today were the replacement of two windows that had become foggy when the seal failed between the two panes. It was nice to have the nice clear views again all around the coach.

After we were turned loose, we drove to Russellville and had a pulled pork sandwich for dinner at the Speedy Pig Restaurant, then stopped at Wal-Mart. During dinner, Sandy, forgetting that pork was the barbecue meat of record in the South, was expecting a beef sandwich, but thought the pork was pretty good.  Unfortunately, the Speedy Pig really doesn’t qualify for a recommendation.

We will be standing by for another call in the next day or two. We’re beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel! 

Retired!!!

At home in Fort Worth...

It was not a particularly poignant moment when I shut off my FAA computer for the last time and handed in my ID badge and door access card.  There were few co-workers left in the office late on this Friday before Labor Day (it WAS a government office, after all), so the parting gestures were finished quickly, and I strode out the door into the scorching August heat.  Still it had not struck me as particularly momentous that I was officially retired, not only from a great job with the FAA but from my entire aviation career of 45 years. As I turned the car onto Freeport Parkway and headed home, I thought how great it is that I will no longer have to dodge the buckled pavement of that street, whose repairs had been ignored by the city of Irving for years.  That was it…no dramatic chords from Beethoven’s Fifth in my head, no sense of regret, no sense of loss...just a sneer at the rough spots in the roadway that I would not encounter again. 

My thoughts immediately turned happily to Phannie (Phaeton), the big gray motorhome I would be retrieving shortly from the Cummins/Onan service center in Fort Worth.  They had finished the yearly service on the genny, during which they had also replaced the fuel pump. The diesel engine that runs the generator had developed a problem of suddenly shutting down for no apparent reason and needing priming to restart.  After checking everything else, it was decided that a new fuel pump would be the answer, and they proved to be right. The genny ran perfectly all the way home.

My long countdown to retirement was made easier by planning for a long RV trip immediately afterward. For years I had pored over hundreds of posts by RV bloggers describing their idyllic lives on the road and the wonderful places they’ve been, and I was more than ready to join them. It was with that anticipation that I had planned a month-long tour of the mountain west that would include a stop in Colorado Springs to visit Ed and Marilyn and ending up in Yellowstone. It was not to be, however. Ed wrote me a nice note apologizing for needing to leave their mountain retreat earlier than planned, but that turned out not to be the issue in canceling that outing.  On a recent trip to Houston to visit our “kids” (as we call our daughter Mindy, her husband Tyler and our grandson Mason), we noticed a leak in Phannie’s black tank. The leak was apparently not located at the bottom of the tank, for it would not appear until after a couple of days’ use. Now if you are an RVer, you know that any kind of leak from a black tank is not something that you can ignore. We dealt with it by dumping the tank daily, but that is not the desirable method of managing a black tank.

I decided that the best thing to do would be to take Phannie back where she was born, at the Tiffin factory in Red Bay, Alabama.  Bob Tiffin has built a huge repair facility there, and we also wanted to see if Phannie was subject to a recent wet bay floor recall by the factory. Since we had a number of other small issues to be looked after at the same time, we decided this would be a good time to head to Red Bay and experience this legendary gathering of Tiffin motorhome owners taking advantage of the highly respected factory repair shop.  We knew, of course, that a wait is usually involved in Camp Red Bay, as the factory RV campground is known, but we thought we could make some side trips in the interim or afterward.  We’ll get underway in a few days and see how it goes.

As it turns out, I don’t really care where we go on our first trip in retirement. It will be so nice not to have to be so time-conscious as we were while I was working. For the first time, we will have the luxury of moving around when and where we choose, spending extra time at some places if we wish. That will be something to be savored, for sure.