Ok…the last couple of weeks have been nothing short of insane for Bill and I. Not necessarily in a bad way, just stating the facts.
Here’s some background, we started developing a soft-spot in our RV floor the last time we were in Montana, it seemed to not be getting worse until we got to South Carolina, probably because of the humidity and wet climate here. It finally got bad enough that we pulled up the carpet to see what kind water damage we were looking at. Turns out we need a new floor, easier said than done when you are living in your RV and it’s only 30’x8’, not much room to move. We priced it out and to have it done would have cost between $700-5000.00 depending on if we did a spot repair or had an entire floor replacement. And it could take up to a month that we would have been without our house. Not going to happen. So…the very week we started talking about what our options were we met a couple who were looking to buy and RV for family camping trips but didn’t want to spend $10-15, 000 on a small camper to find out the didn’t like it. We only met them because Bill missed the turn to where we were going (which happened to be next door to an RV dealer) and we decided to pull into the RV lot and check out what they had. Kismet. They came and took a look at the RV, we pulled the carpet back and showed them the damage and told them the estimates we got, we told them about every little thing we could think about to tell them, and they still wanted it. She brought her dad out to take a look at it to tell them if it was something they could fix themselves (since they won’t be living in it) and he said yes. So…they come to pick it up on Sunday.
This entire last week Bill and I have been madly packing and shipping boxes back to my folks and packing the truck to capacity. We’ve decided to head home and rent a house in Oregon for awhile and see what new adventure life has in store for us. So the truck is packed floor to ceiling (can’t see out the back window) and full to it’s weight capacity and we’ve shipped somewhere between 6-10 boxes of crap back to my folks and we are going to drive home starting Sunday. Great, except for one major problem, we went to return some stuff to Wal-Mart yesterday and we didn’t have the receipt. No problem, they just need to see your ID, Bill gave them his driver’s license and she handed back and asked if had one that wasn’t expired. What? Turns out his license expired back on his birthday in October. DAMN IT ALL TO HELL AND CRAP ON IT! So, we spent the next couple of hours (btw, we used my license which doesn’t expire until October 2007) calling the DMV and trying to get them to fax us a renewal or something. No can do, Oregon changed their laws and you now have to physically go to the DMV for your renewal. They could send him a temp tag, but it would take 7-10 business days to arrive…we leave on Sunday, you do the math. The lady at the DMV said that Bill should have received a renewal notice in the mail explaining all of this but guess what day these changes took effect, that’s right, 1 October. Guess what day is Bill’s birthday? So the lady said that his likely never got sent because his birthday happened to land on the exact day the laws changes….awesome!
So this is where we stand, I’m driving home. For those of you who don’t know, Bill sucks as a passenger, so for the last 18-20 months I’ve been the navigator. The only time I’ve been behind the wheel was to go to the store or to do the laundry. I’m not worried about the driving part really, I’ll get used to it. It just sucks. The truck is like an extension of Bill at this point, I’m not as familiar with how it handles as he is. Not a problem, I’ll get used it, especially since I’ll be driving it for over 3500 miles. Oh, by the way, the Gulf Coast has been having thunderstorms with tornado watches blowing through and there are more on the way. Guess where we have to drive through? We have to head south and take I-10 because portions of I-40 are still getting shut down because of all the snow.
So, in closing…please think happy thoughts for us as we make our slow way across the country.
I’ll try to blog as we are moving, but I’m not sure what our internet situation will be, so it may have to wait until we are home.
Take care
;-)K
