Travels with The Rayman

RVs are not without their problems.  And ours is no exception.  In fact, being that we bought a 10 year old “rig”, we anticipated that we would have problems and that is why we bought an expensive insurance policy that will cover most problems.  And it is with a great deal of consternation that I am now announcing that we are going to start getting our money’s worth out of said policy.

There is a paradox in life, isn’t there.  On the one hand, you don’t want to have to use an insurance policy.  You certainly hate paying for insurance.  I am speaking for myself but I don’t think I”m without company on this matter.  In fact, if you take the time to add up everything you spend on all your insurances, you might be shocked and dismayed.  Seems like a huge rip-off until you need it.

But I digress.

To continue, our RV is outfitted with hydraulic levelers that you need to use (unless, of course, you like running to the front or back of the RV because gravity takes you there).  Cupboards also swing open with great gusto if you aren’t level.  The possibilities are almost limitless.  We need those levelers to work.  And ours started acting out.  The back ones in particular started sticking and refusing to retract.  And you cannot move with your levelers down, even partially because the control system goes into high alert and starts howling at you…think smoke detector.

I would also like to point out a certain irony.  RV parks are often located in out of the way places like where we are now.  And all RV stores and services are located in big cities.  Hummmmmm.  Problem.  I guess  the idea is that you get your RV fixed in the city before you go to the out of the way place.  But life just doesn’t happen like that.  Stuff goes bad when you’re using it.  Not when it is sitting in the RV storage unit.  And so what to do?

We asked at the front desk of our RV resort and discovered that there lives a man that makes “RV calls”.  He lives in Reno.  Reno is 60 miles away.  $80 for him to come here plus $75/hour for labor.  So, I called him because we were in a pickle.  He couldn’t come for 2 days and we had to move sites.  Discussion ensued with the Rayman.  We finally got the levelers up but then they wouldn’t go down.  That being the case, we decided to take the RV to Reno.  Well, RV places in Reno is an investment worth looking into because, gosh, they sure are busy.  After calling three places and being told it would be anywhere from from 2 days to 2 weeks before they could help us…we found a place that said, “Sure.  Bring her on in and we’ll take a look at it.”  So off we went.

Arriving at the place after only taking a few wrong turns, the man, Henry (I’ve changed him name to protect the innocent), that talked with us was very soft spoken with many tattoos.  And he looked like a cross between ZZ Top and Bergdahl’s dad when considering his facial hair.  But here is the thing.  I have never seen dirtier hands on any set of arms in my life.  Did he get that dirty that day?  or was this dirt a lifetime in the making?  They looked stained by dirt?  And what was really curious to me was that when he filled out a work order, the paper didn’t get dirty.  No smudges anywhere.  How could that be?  I was fascinated.

He diagnosed a faulty contol pad after he flopped down on the cement floor and “felt up the legs” of the leveling jacks and pronounced them dry as a bone.  “Don’t you grease these?”, he asked.   Rayman said, “Well, no.”  Didn’t know I had to.”  We are after all newbies in this RV thing.  Big faux paus.  So, he greased the doomaflachies and then he boarded the RV to operate the lifts.  They worked but a bit haphazardly and that is when he concluded the control pad was the main problem here.  So we headed into the “office” and that is where we saw this short, gold bedecked, salt and pepper headed man standing by the door.   He looked like somebody out of Jersey (he did have that accent so I’m not making stuff up here) that belonged to that a close knit family (read the mob).  He took charge.  He told Henry, the man with the dirty hands, exactly what to do in no uncertain terms.   Then he left.  I asked who he was.  He was the owner.  Rayman figures the RV repair business is a money laundering operation.  A front.  And now that I think about it, the other two mechanics there both had copias amounts of facial hair and tattoos too.  Perhaps they were hired by the owner and directly from a prisoner release program?   Just saying.

Anyway, Henry the mechanic, said he would call the insurance company and get the authorization to repair the RV then he would order the part then he would wait for the part to arrive and then he would tell us when to come back so that the jack’s control panel could be repaired.  When we left, we agreed that 1.  the jacks were working better in the manual mode.  2.  we needed to pray they would continue to work in the manual mode because I have no earthly idea how we will we go about getting this repair made if they don’t work again  3.  your guess is as good as ours as to whether the Reno outfit will come through with everything before we head to Oregon.

And that is why it is a problem that all the repair shops are in the cities.