The Aluminum Asylum

The Aluminum Asylum
Our home on wheels

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Warning, Warning,Warning!!!

OK, if you are a fan of the Polish Prince, think he’s just so wonderful and kind…funny, endearing and enchanting (like I do much, well most of the time….) Do not read any farther…I am warning you…this is a venting post and it’s gonna get real ugly.

We slept in a bit this morning, planning on breaking camp and heading to Cahokia Mounds and Museum(which I have wanted to do for years, btw), and we needed to stop at Zack’s apartment to pick up the protein I had drop shipped there. We start latching down the Asylum and all of a sudden the prince comes in the rig and says don’t do much more, one of the levelers won’t go up. Oh. Great. We play around with the controls for the leveling system. “We” meaning me inside on the phone with the prince in the 110 degree sunshine under the rig, playing around for or about an hour or so. I get the book out. We dick around for another 2 hours, calling HTH, making arrangements to have the part shipped to Midway Motorhome in Grand Rapids. $162 for a rebuilt hydraulic left passenger side leveler. *Sigh*. I call Midway, make the arrangements for them to get the part, make the appointment for service which won’t be until August 24th they are so jammed up. Hmmmm. Mean time, the Prince gets on the phone again with HWH which is in Moscow Iowa. HE decides we shall journey to Moscow Iowa today, and have the manufacturer do the job. He says it will be cheaper. OK, I have no way to disprove this theory, which at this point is merely theory. I ask the Prince how this could have happened. Without batting an eye, he tells me that he knew there was a problem when be backed into the camping spot and put the rear levelers ON THE CONCRETE STOPPER at the edge of the space. He then MOVED THE RIG FORWARD ON THE LEVELERS….get the picture. Polish Prince had his blond head up ass is my guess. So, because HE did this idiotic and stupid ass thing, hey, it’s no biggie. Say What? I don’t park exactly between the lines with the car yesterday and he criticized me for 20 minutes…no shit. OK. I am not angry. I am just trying to keep my mouth shut without starting a real war. OK…we get the leveler up with the help of the customer service gal at HWH. We finish the packing up. We need to dump, get water and get the car attached. Plus the dirty sweaty and stinky Prince needs to shower at the shower house. OK. He pulls into the dump station, and during dumping of the black water tank (remember, that’s the one with all the poopoo in it) the sewer hose breaks. There is a great scene in the movie RV where Robin Williams does this same thing. The Prince was very, very lucky…the poopy stuff went on the ground. Ugh. I am just sitting there watching this disaster unfold. Hmmm. The Prince is now 2 for 2 and getting hotter. After he cleans up this disgusting mess, we hook up the car, pull the rig over and he goes to take a shower. It is now 1 pm. We can’t go to Cahokia but we have to go to Zack’s to get my protein. We get on the road and are at Zack’s by 2. By this time I have a raging headache because I MUST NOT utter anything nasty at this point so I have to keep my mouth shut. Do you know how hard this is to do?

I lay down on the couch and off we went on I55, north to catch I74 thru Peoria and up to Davenport. Moscow is about 30 miles west on I80. After my nap, I join the Prince in the cockpit. We are traveling along just fine…I am over my headache, and have decided to keep my mouth shut over anything. But I do have these incidents to fall back on next time he accuses me of doing something “stupid”. All of our problems seem to be those of our (or I should say someone’s) ignorance or carelessness. We are getting close to Davenport when the low fuel light comes on. Ooopsy…the Prince has been putting off fueling ‘cause he is looking for the cheapest diesel price. Once a pollock, always a pollock I guess.

We cannot find a gas station to save our lives…they must all be outside Davenport…there are a few Casey’s along the way, but they don’t carry diesel. We are running on FUMES. We turn off the generator…the air, everything we can…Finally we see a BP. Heck it’s $3.00 a gallon this close to the highway. I tell him I don’t care if its ten bucks a gallon, he’s getting fuel. After we fuel up, I make some warmed up meatballs with mozzarella cheese for dinner. After eating about half, we get back on the road to Moscow. We are just now pulling into the HWH mfg plant. They have electric for us to hook up to so we can spend the night. Just so you all know…I am really ticked off. Or couldn't’t you tell.

Well, we are here, so I will upload this on the net if I get a signal here.

Later

dee