Murphy Rides Again

Ransom sacked out in the co-pilot's chair


We are in Tampa at the Gasparilla Charity Horse Show and it is really cold! Temperatures are near freezing at night and only into the 60's during the day. If you live in the north I hear you saying "Oh, cry me a river..." but for Florida it is really chilly. Really.



We arrived on Monday as scheduled and met up with our friends the Whitley's who also have a coach. They found the best spot to park and saved it for us. When we arrived their coach was looking all shiny and beautiful, clean tires and wheels, sparkling paint and glass. It turned out that a nice guy named Eddie has a car and RV detailing business and he offers his services to RV owners who stay at the fairgrounds. John looked at Whitley's coach, gave the work his approval and priced the service. It was half what they wanted to charge us in Vero Beach and he said that they would wash and wax the Camry too. Done deal.



Yesterday morning we got up and rolling and John headed over to the arena to watch horses work. I showered and got things tidied up, bed made, dishes done. At 9:00 Eddie showed up with his crew to wash and wax Mary and the Camry. They did the car first (it looks like new) and next they tackled Mary. Literally.



I was in the bathroom trimming my bangs when I heard Breezy growl and Ransom streaked the length of the coach, from the cockpit to the bedroom and back in three seconds. Next I heard the footsteps on the roof. They started at the top (normal). There is a lot of expensive stuff on the top of a motor coach. I was thinking to myself, as I was cutting bangs with a sharp instrument and listening to them march around the roof like a small herd of buffalo, that I hoped they didn't do anything to disturb the satellite dish or the air conditioners, or the automatic vented fans, or the...."CRACK, SNAP!!". I jumped straight up and dropped my scissors. Breezy barked and my eyes shot up at the skylight over the shower about a foot from where I was standing. It was inverted and suddenly there was more light coming through to the shower. A lot more light.


I heard a voice say, "OH NO. OH MAN...OH NO!" I won't write what I was saying.


I ran to my cell phone and called John. "You need to get back here NOW. Someone just broke the skylight." He groaned and hung up. Within two minutes I saw him pedalling his bicycle at about 50 miles per hour and I heard his voice. "What happened?"


The rest of the day was a three ring circus. Eddie, who was completely mortified, tried to reassure John that he could find a replacement part for the broken sun shade dome. There was a flurry of activity, people up on the roof and down on the ground, John in and out of the coach trying to reassure me that we would get it fixed before the sun set. I know better than that. You can't buy anything for this coach at Camping World. But I had my hands full with a real estate deal that we have been working on. Offers, counter offers and conference calls with a real estate group. At one point the negotiations were delayed because the agent was bitten by his dog and had to go to the hospital for stitches. That's when I started cleaning.


When I feel like things are totally running out of control my way of feeling like I have some effect on life is to clean. I clean like a Merry Maid gone mad. I vacuumed everything, cleaned all of the woodwork (that is a LOT of woodwork) cleaned the sinks, counters, toilet, windows and all of the leather (that is a LOT of leather) all the while John is madly trying to find a part to replace the broken skylight. When Robert (the big guy with the big feet) stepped on the dome it cracked in half and the actual clear skylight (on the inside) inverted. It looked a little like my bumper did when the woman backed into the Camry in the grocery store parking lot. John popped it back and it didn't crack. That was the happiest thing that happened before the sun set.

Eddie spent the day going to every RV supply and dealer in Tampa and the surrounding area. In the mean time John got on the phone to call Monaco (the coach maker) to see if they knew where we could get a part. I must explain here that if we leave it like it is at the moment and it rains we are going to end up with some serious damage to the roof due to leakage. So this must be fixed somehow before we can leave. Or before it rains. We are scheduled to pull out tomorrow morning.















Shiny clean Mary
















Spotless wheels and tires!


Okay, so John calls Monaco out in Oregon because our guy Dennis in Wakarusa, Indiana got laid off last year when they closed the Wakarusa plant. We miss Dennis and hope he is doing well. Between the fuel prices going through the roof and the downturn in the economy (hysterical understatement) the RV business has taken a bloody beating. Back to the story. John dials Monaco and gets a recording telling him that they are no longer doing anything but warranty work and that if our coach is on warranty (not) to go to a web address and email them.



John hung up and looked at me with a seriously stressed expression. "They aren't answering the phone," he says. I thought about all of the contacts that we had at Monaco a year ago, we are talking a ton of people, and my heart sank. Then I remembered that we have the cell number of the top customer service guy, the first person that we spoke to when we started thinking about buying a Monaco coach. John praised my memory (a rarity these days!) and got his business card out. He got him on the phone and got the low down. The top customer service guy had been laid off a month ago and on Monday (yes, day before yesterday) Monaco laid off 2,500 employees at the Oregon plant. They are nearly shut down except for warranty work. No parts. He said he would do what he could. John called him a good man and hung up with a seriously stressed look on his face. "They are effectively out of business," he says.



The rest of the day I spent between real estate people (not fun) and searching the Internet for Monaco parts or parts that would fit a Monaco. John called several places that I found and got some serious attitude about Monaco and their parts. A few people said that they would try and call us back but as of this morning we haven't heard from anyone.




Last night I saw John and Whitley with their heads together just before the horse show started. They concocted a plan that may work. It involves finding some heavy plastic and using the frame of the broken skylight to bolt it down. It could work. In the mean time our dear friend Tim out in Oregon is going to go to Monaco (he lives within 20 miles of the plant) to see if he can get the part that we need and bring it to Scottsdale, which is where we are headed if John can figure out how to temporarily fix the skylight.



So last night we had dinner here in our shiny clean Mary (Eddie made the service complimentary) and walked over to the horse show. We stayed until just before American Idol started and then came back to further our addiction to the program. We slept and got up and stared all over again today. John is on the phone, pacing up and down outside with his phone in his ear still working on finding the part. If that fails in the next few minutes he will head off to Home Depot for heavy plastic and miscellaneous tools to secure it.

















Sparkling Camry!



Breezy and Ransom were unhinged by all of the intense activity and upset around here so I took them for a well deserved long walk in the sun. It has warmed up outside so we trooped around the grounds and now they are taking their naps. Ransom looks like his skeleton dissolved in the co-pilot's seat with his head draped off of the edge of the seat. He has turned into a regular comedian keeping us in stitches continuously. Dogs are great for stress relief...a prescription that we need at the moment! I got back to Mary and discovered that I had stepped into some kind of sticky calking so I spent 20 minutes picking it out of the treads of my tennis shoe. I read on the Internet that you can remove chewing gum with mayonaise so I smeared it on my shoe and it is sitting on the counter hopefully loosening the sticky crap. Fun.



The good news is that Eddie and his crew did a beautiful job on cleaning the coach and the car, we are healthy and happy and John is on the roof installing some kind of black rubber material over the skylight so that we can leave in the morning. Life is good!