Ups and Downs

Denny and I arrived in Elkhart, Indiana on Tuesday to look over our new fifth wheel. I'll just say that when I walked around inside it after arriving Tuesday afternoon I cried. Unfortunately, they weren't happy tears. There had been many unannounced changes made between the 2010 model Denny and I looked at and the 2011 model that we ordered sight unseen. And they weren't changes for the better. It's a long and ugly story and I'm not up to telling it right now. I was so upset that I didn't even get pictures of what was wrong with the trailer to show you, all I'll have eventually is the rig finished more the way I wanted it. But right now, we're in transit to Texas and what with all the fixes the service techs had to do Denny and I were still transferring our stuff out of the old trailer and putting it in the new one at 11 o'clock at night on Friday night so we could get out of Elkhart early Saturday morning. That meant that we just piled and crammed stuff in any cabinet and nook and cranny we could find and I'll have to rearrange once we settle in Texas for a few days. So no pictures while this place looks like a hurricane just hit it.

There was an inch of snow on the ground and more coming when we pulled out of the service building Saturday morning and the truck slipped and slid pulling out onto the street. Fortunately all the main roads were just wet and none of the bridges were icy so we made it to Terre Haute for the first night where we hooked up to the campground's wi-fi to make contact with the world for the first time in 4 days. We had been so busy dealing with service guys, our RV dealer, insurance people, bank people, et al that for once we didn't miss not having access to TV or wi-fi (we were parked inside the RV dealer's service building while the guys took care of all the changes that I insisted upon) The service techs had to finish getting the rig ready for us (prepped) since the trailer had come off the assembly line two days later than planned and we almost beat the trailer to the RV dealer. We were all working on top of each other as the workers fixed and installed things while Denny and I were trying to carry our belongings in, so the guys never even had the opportunity to clean up the rig as is standard procedure; that's something I'll be doing once we're settled for a couple of days. I didn't ask them to finish their prep work because that would have meant hanging around in the cold and snow for three more days and we just weren't prepared to do that and us making the service techs make the unexpected changes threw off their scheduled work on other people's RVs. Everyone involved was pretty short-tempered at any given time over the four days we were there.

Emotionally, it's not been a good week. I have had to tell Denny (and myself) to take a deep breath several times to keep from blowing. In the season of brotherly love, I've wanted to tear the heads off several people and smile as I'm doing it. But tonight I'm sitting here with a cup of hot tea while the tiny table top Christmas tree twinkles merrily beside me and I'm finally beginning to relax and appreciate the features of the new trailer. I know it will be a while before the trailer becomes "ours" as Denny and I have several small modifications and additions to make/install to make the rig more livable and user friendly. It's what we've done with the four other RVs we've owned and so we'll do it with this, our final RV. In a few days, I'll post pictures, starting with one of Black Beauty and the Beast.

And we'll be fine.