The Motor Home Chronicles

It's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry, folks, but it has been a time full of little fires to put out. And a time of a BIG decision. Oh, and a little bit of fun, and a continued appreciation of this dramatically beautiful place. Let's see, where to start?

A couple of observations: First, this area is gorgeous! These days, I get out of work sometimes right after sunset, when there's a pale green glow behind the mountains. And the silhouette of those mountains is just dramatic, all toothed and craggy. And then, by the time I get up to the 215 for the drive down the west side of the city, it's dark and I can see the whole valley (the "meadows," I assume, for which the city was long ago named), and it stretches from the range of mountains to the west to the range of mountains to the east, and all down the valley as far as the eye can see, and it's lit with millions (literally) of twinkling lights, and it looks exactly like a magic carpet of lights. It takes my breath away. I want to pull off and stop and just soak it all in. Instead, I get to see it every night on my way home. At least now I do: when the days get longer, the nightly carpet will elude me.

Oh, and have I told you that, shooting out of the middle of all those twinkling lights is this intense beam of light aiming up into the heavens? It comes out of the top of the Luxor pyramid and I guess it's on all the time--or at least all the dark part of the day. You can always tell where you are relative to the Strip--at least, at night--if you can see that beam.

On the other hand, I spent more than 45 minutes tonight, driving around the streets near where I live, trying to find--a grocery store! And I couldn't find one. Anywhere! There was a Target--but not one with a grocery store. And there was something called Food4Less, but it was sort of like a run-down Sam's, with everything in bulk, or at least in quantities of more than one. I wanted a bag of salad greens--Nope! I wanted nonfat milk (1/2 gallon)--One left, and I almost missed that. I'm really amazed. There's just nothing within miles of where I live! I guess, if I want groceries, I'm going to have to shop up near where I work, where there are several really nice shopping centers with Albertson's, Vonn's, and Smith's grocery stores.

Speaking of where I work, it's time to talk about little fires, which have been the story of my life for the past 3-4 days. If it's not one thing, it has been three others. Let's see, I don't think I mentioned that I've had sewer problems. Last Tuesday morning (still wet from the shower), I responded to a knock on the door (it was 7:20 a.m.!), and let John from Master Mobile in. He was carrying a 3-foot length of plastic pipe, and he went straight to work. Within 5 minutes, he had poked a hole through the pile that had built up in my toilet, and once again things were flowing. Hurray, I thought, as I handed him a check for $120 (by my calculations, he's making somewhere around $700/hour at that rate! Mother should have told me to forget about college and marry a plumber who makes house calls!)

But that was not the end of it. Things "flowed" for a while--John had instructed me to always fill the toilet bowl twice--FULL--whenever I used it, so as to flush stuff down thoroughly. Well, that worked for the first day or two (though there were always air bubbles making geysers every time I flushed. But by Friday, I COULDN'T fill the bowl twice: If I did, it wouldn't go down, because the pipe was full. After a few hours, I could put more water down, but again, that would need several hours to drain. By Saturday evening, I couldn't put even one full bowl of water down there! I was NOT a happy camper. It was just one (but the biggest one) of the fires, but this was one that I had already paid someone to fix--and it hadn't happened!

So today, I called John and did my version of reaming him out! I think it worked: he's coming tomorrow or Wednesday (I'm going to leave my door unlocked, since I can't be here), I hope he'll do a REAL job of clearing things out of the pipe and the tank, and so far, he has not mentioned that I need to leave him a check for any amount.

Next little fire: ON Thursday, I felt a crack in my denture. Panic in the streets: I had had my denture break during my 2-1/2-month stay in South Carolina, and I tried to patch it myself with no luck. But finally I took it to a dentist that a local recommended to me, and she patched it with acrylic, and it's been perfect ever since. In fact, I think the patch is the strongest part of the denture. So, figuring that someone here could do the same thing, I got a recommendation from a local for a good dentist here. However, this dentist was out of the office until Monday, so I crossed my fingers and tried not to bite down, hoping the denture would last till then.

Nope! Friday night, in the middle of a great Quizno's sandwich, I heard the crunch, and I knew it was all over. I could still wear the denture, but the broken edge was sharp and it was very uncomfortable. So, as much as I could, I traveled without it. To give you "the rest of this story," I went to the dentist this morning. I liked her (she's British, tall, thin, blonde, and probably 35. I will probably stay with her (I also like her staff; it's a small office, so I already know everyone there, and I like that).

However, there's more to tell: the denture came back an hour early--yes, you heard me, "came back." This was not just applying some acrylic to put the two pieces together. This was getting the pieces picked up by a lab, worked on, and sent back, for a total of $632, of which I paid $366. THAT was a surprise, let me tell you! I asked about it (DUH!), and was told that they put NEW teeth on the denture. But we looked, and the teeth were NOT new--in fact, all they'd done was exactly what I had asked in the first place. Anyway, the dentist agreed that the lab had overcharged, and I got $91 back. I'm happy with the dentist, but I hope I don't have anything more to do with that lab. Anyway, bottom line, I can smile again!

That was fire #2. Next fire: I've had a light on my dashboard (spelling "BRAKE" that's been intermittently on and off, and has lately been on all the time. I needed an oil change (Kurtis, if you're reading this, it was 90,978, just 22 miles short of the 91,000 miles at which I was due. I'm a good girl!). Try and find a Jiffy Lube! Just try!!! Finally I found a Terrible's Lube. Yep, that's right: Terrible's. They're all over the place here, gas stations, car washes, convenience stores (with full banks of video poker and slot machines in every store), and, yes, lube joints. They changed my oil ($35--Kurtis, you sure have spoiled me!) and, when I asked them to check out the fluids, they said everything was full (including the brake fluid). Their guess was it was malfunctioning gauge in the fluid container. I'll have to go get my 90,000-mile check up soon, and I'll have Toyota look at it. But that took most of Saturday afternoon.

Sunday, I was nervous (toilet and denture problems hovering over my head), but I figured I could make it until Monday. And then, it started. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Omigod! What now? It seemed to be coming from the LP gas alarm, which is near the floor of the hallway, next to the bathroom door. But the only light (of three) that was lit was the "Operating" light (green, a good sign). The "Alarm" light wasn't lit, and the "Fault" light (amber) wasn't lit. But a couple of hours earlier, when I'd been sitting with the doors open, eating my lunch, I thought I'd smelled gas. So I did what I was told in the Operator's Manual, and turned off the LP gas, and got down at the level of the alarm to see if I could smell it--and no, I couldn't smell anything. But the alarm was still beeping.

So what did I do? What would YOU have done? Right. I left! I went to the movies. Yep, I spent 2-1/2 hours enjoying Helen Mirren's outstanding performance in "The Queen." I figured, if the motor home was going to blow up, it'd be better if I wasn't here. Don't you agree? I went to a theater about 5 miles away, so that, if it blew up, it wouldn't spoil the movie for me. And when I got back home, everything was still as I left it, with the alarm beeping away. So this time I walked further into the bedroom--and that's when I realized that it wasn't the LP gas alarm at all. It was the carbon monoxide alarm--beeping because the battery was running down, I assume. So I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I COULD NOT unscrew the gadget so that I could check out the battery. I could push the button to turn it off, but after a few minutes it would come back on. This time, though, the beep came about every 20 seconds. I can live with that--once I could stop worrying about an explosion, I could get some sleep. But it does get annoying. And I don't have any idea whom I can get to come in and manhandle that cover off. I just flat can't do it.

Well, my brother's coming in 5 weeks. Maybe by then there won't be enough juice in the battery to even operate the beeps. I can hope, can't I?

One more small fire: I got up this morning to take my shower (after a bad night of beeping), and there was no hot water. It was the last straw! Of course, it was my fault: I'd forgotten to turn the water heater pilot light back on after turning off the LP gas. Pushed that button this morning, and had plenty of hot water in about 10 minutes--but no longer enough time for my shower, unfortunately.

Okay, now to the Big Decision. Can you guess what it was, after all this? I've decided I've had enough Adventure for one year. I've decided that a motor home is a great place for a man or maybe for a younger single woman. But for me, at 65, with a full-time job, a book to try to edit in the moonlight, and nobody to call on for help when things go wrong (unless I can hire them--but things always seem to go wrong on the weekends, when no one's around), it's just too much stress and not enough fun.

So here's my decision. I'm going to spend the next month (until Charlie comes around March 9th) finding and renting an apartment, hopefully near my work. In fact, there's a nice complex right across the street from my office that has fairly reasonable rent. And I'll rent enough furniture to take care of basic needs until I can replace it with non-rented stuff--and Charlie has agreed to drive the motor home back to Maine, where we'll store it until I can use it again the way I did this summer. That was really, really fun, living there and enjoying all the Bonney-Hogg family, but having my own front door. And meanwhile, Scott and family can use it on occasion, and I may even be able to rent it out now and then.

So. How's that for a turn-around? Oh, yes, I have decided that, even though that big newer motor home would have been great, and beautiful, and much easier to deal with on many of the issues that have been a problem with this one, it's still a motor home, and the problems I've had with this one could occur with that one. Unless it comes with a "handy man" as a built-in, I'd still be stressed out trying to take care of stuff. So I'm giving up on that idea, though I'm sad. It'd be great to have such a nice place to live in and travel around in later on. But I don't think I want to spend that much money for a part-time home.

Enough for tonight. I'm DEFINITELY going to have pictures for y'all soon. It is SUCH a gorgeous area. I can't wait to show it off to you!

Not sure where this blog will go next--but hopefully it'll be soon. Tune in for the next chapter. . . .