Stranded!

On the road from Mobile to Louisiana for the Cajun Rally in Rayne, LA. We drove about 1 1/2 hours and were on 1-10 when John said, "Something sounds funny"....I insisted that it was the pavement--and we drove on. But, John, fortunately, wasn't buying the pavement story. So, when we saw the Rest area sign, we pulled off. It was just before the Louisiana border and had a lovely information center, set in a forest of pine trees.

When we got out, it was obvious that we had a problem. The rear end of the motorhome had no air--so the coach was almost sitting on the tires. John immediately knew what the problem was--it had happened once before --three years ago. The bolt on the Ride Height assembly sheered off--so we lost air pressure in the tag axle. But we had hope! In his infinite wisdom, John had gotten a spare bolt after our last failure. So, we pulled out some old clothes--since he had to crawl under the motorhome --and he was able to replace the bolt. We felt so great--until we turned the key and the coach didn't air up! Turns out that when the bolt failed, the coach dropped on the air bags, puncturing them and damaging the valve assembly! We were stuck--with no air pressure on the rear, we couldn't continue to drive. So, we called our Roadside Assistance company. They took our info and told us that they'd have someone come out to tow us. Well--turns out that with no air pressure in the rear-we couldn't get a standard wrecker. By this time, we were working with one of the Roadside Assistance supervisors--who spent hours trying to find a tow company anywhere in Louisiana or Mississippi with the proper equipment (they needed something called a landau or a low-boy) and the willingness to tow us. Well, even though they could find companies with the equipment, not one of them was willing to take on the risk of towing us with no air pressure.

So, there we were--stuck in the rest area with an un-driveable, un-towable house on wheels. John got ahold of the chassis manufacturer and they searched for a local mobile mechanic. At last, they found a local truck repair place and dispatched two mechanics. They came out late in the afternoon, quickly diagnosed the problem and started to make phone calls...hours later, they told us that they hadn't been able to find the parts....but would start again the next day. It was 5PM, the Roadside Assist people had come up with no towing options and we were at the mercy of these two guys that looked like they came out of the movie "Deliverance". We were able to pull over to the back of the rest area where they actually had motorhome pull-offs. No hook-ups, but we had our generator and a quiet place to spend the night. They had picnic tables and the setting was quite lovely. We decided to make the best of it and had happy hour!

The next morning, "Daryl and Daryl" showed up and pulled off the old parts....and went on an all day search for replacements...at $170/hour!!!!! They didn't reappear until about 3PM....we had set our drop-dead departure time as 4:30--with a 3 hour drive ahead of us to get to Rayne, we didn't want to arrive in the dark. Well,,,,the time dragged by...and we kept hearing awful sounds...hammering under the motorhome (the parts didn't fit exactly--something about the connections....so they were hammering on the air bag to get it into place!...not exactly confidence building). They didn't finish until 6PM--and at that point, the only thing we wanted to do was drink copious amounts of wine. The coach appeared to be airing up and we decided that we'd take off the next morning--and try to catch the last day of the rally.