Motorhome Madness!

We had planned to spend just a few days doing some basic maintenance, but the list seemed to grow daily. The missing button on the sofa meant a trip to Villa in Elkhart. A call from Spartan (the chassis manufacturer) required a trip to Charlotte, Michigan for a “recall on the recall from last year”. (Although, they never call them “recalls” anymore- they simply request that you come in at your earliest convenience – suggesting that- ‘for your safety’- sooner rather than later is better.) A visit to Monroeville to get our steering wheel aligned. And then, to pacify my “grout fetish” (as John calls it), we drove to Decatur to get our grout cleaned, re-stained and sealed. With a full day out of the motorhome again- we scoped out all the changes in Decatur (new Super WalMart, new restaurant downtown), had lunch at Arnold’s (a real 50’s drive-in complete with cute little waitresses on roller skates serving you at your car—ala the old A&W’s) and still had time on our hands.

Hanging around Habegger’s Abbey Floors while they finished the grout work, we decided to look at carpeting. With the grout now looking SO good, the carpet was looking SO bad. When we found out that the carpeting that we loved was actually in stock, we were signing on for 3 more days – this time really out of our motorhome. Replacing carpet in a motorhome is not an easy task. All of the sofas/cabinetry needs to be unbolted from the floor and removed. Needless to say, this was not going to be an inexpensive upgrade. With labor costs of $1200 and 3 days out of the motorhome, you want to make sure that you get a good quality carpet – so on top of the horrendous labor charges, you’ve got a whopping bill for the mere 366 SF of space we occupy.

With our 3 day carpet install scheduled, we had an insane day on Thursday starting in Monroeville at 7:30 A.M. for our steering wheel alignment. From there, we beat feet back to Nappanee to get the dash A/C repaired. We got there at 10:30 and weren’t out until 2:30 – holding our breath that they’d get the work done that day- since they’re on a 4 day work week and any delay would have meant a Friday-Sunday stay in Nappanee. Chloe did have a great time playing with her two new Maltese friends. Amazingly, two other Newmar owners were there with their Maltese puppies, Odie and Bijou. The 3 hour play date made for a quiet dog on the ride to Charlotte, Michigan that afternoon. We got into Charlotte about 6:30 and were in bed by 9. We were absolutely exhausted – and facing another day out of the motorhome on Friday.

8-8-08 – an “auspicious day” according to the Chinese, who were kicking off the Summer Olympics today. We, on the other hand, were driving around Charlotte at 7 A.M. realizing that by 7:30, we had seen it all. The motorhome crowd at the Spartan factory was fairly sparse, but the military business was going great guns (no pun intended). They make the military armored personnel carriers here in Charlotte. As we parked our VW Jetta in the parking lot, we realized that we were the only non-American car in the lot. There was nothing but Fords and Chevrolet’s for miles.