‘Tis the Season -> For Repairs…..

December 12, 2010 by libertatemamo 5 Comments

“You put your right foot out,
You put your right foot in
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey Pokey
And you turn yourself around,
That’s what it’s all about!”
“The Hokey Pokey” circa 1940

In many ways, the Hokey Pokey is a fine reflection of life in an RV. After all, being on the road is bit like dancing in a mini-earthquake for ~200 days a year.  You take a regular home stocked with plumbing, electricity and appliances, add-in electronics, woodwork and propane…and then rock it all about (for rythm), put a few trees in the way (for fun), a couple of road-bumps (for entertainment) and you end up with the Hokey Pokey of RVing. In other words, something’s bound to come loose, fall down or plain ‘ol break. It’s just the way of life on the road, and with RV techs costing ~$80-100/hour in labor it pays to be handy.

Since we’re on the road most of the time, the RV Hokey Pokey’s pile up until we manage to sit still for a while and that means doing everything exactly opposite to most folks. So, whilst the typical person would do Spring Cleaning, we’re doing Winter Cleaning, and whilst most people in their right mind would do repairs in Summer, we’ve got the tools out in December. Either way being in a “fixed location” for the winter finally gives us the chance to work on all those little issues that have piled over the year of jostling around our home on the road. 

So, here we are tools in hand. In our relationship your could say I’m the visual handyman, having always had a knack for these things, while Paul’s the muscle. Between the two of us we can usually figure most stuff out. This past week we’ve attacked the long list of issues:

• The microwave/convection oven – the controller board managed to fry itself in the middle of a hefty pile of ribs in N.Fl. Thankfully the ribs were able to be saved in our propane oven, but the microwave was not so lucky. It took 3 weeks for this one to get fixed.
• Outlets – one of our outlets stopped working somewhere in NC.  With the help of a rather inaccurate wiring diagram from Holiday Rambler (why, oh why don’t coach’s come with decent wiring diagrams?), a good multimeter and a bit of eye-work we managed to get that one nabbed.
• Slide-out cover – The “tree incident“, still humbling and fresh in our minds from SC was finally taken care of with new parts from Carefree and a bit of elbow grease from “the boys” (Paul and his dad, with yours truly providing invaluable direction…as we girls do).

There’s a bunch more on the list as well as some maintenance stuff, so I’ll be reporting as we go along. In the meantime, we’re doing a little Hokey Pokey victory dance in the RV, basking in the glory of our mechanical genius. The dog, of course, thinks we’re nuts, but then again us RVers are a different kinda bunch.