CAR - VAN - RV

Well we made it last Thursday to the RV dealer in PA – left at 8:30 am, arrived at noon – should have been 2 ½ hours was 3 ½.  We were able to keep in sight of each other almost the entire trip – which kept husband happy.  He was worried about traveling alone and we could not find anyone to go with him – the night before I had an idea (after he went to bed).  I took 2 of the smaller stuffed teddy bears I have (under 6 inches tall), put them in a small box and sat the box on the passenger seat of our van which he was driving to the dealer (so we could come home after we left the RV) and seat belted the box in place – if he felt alone he could just glance down at them – don't laugh, it worked.  We did have walkie talkies with us – which worked except for one spot that had static – so we could talk enroute.  I was in front in our RV so he could see me ahead of him and I could also let him know what was happening on the road ahead.  When we did this before (we had to drive the car and the RV both home from buying the RV)  we would meet up at each rest area on the 2 turnpikes we drove on.  This time there was only one of them available to us due to construction and closing of a rest area.  As we approached it – he was maybe 2 -3 cars behind me – I told him that while we did not meet up, I did need to make a stop.  No problem finding the RV dealer for either of us, which was good as they just got a new location for their service center.  We left the RV and left in the van. 

The RV dealer sales office was on one side of a road and the service center on the other.  There is a shopping center a block from the dealer where we have spent many a day while having work done on the RV and were worried that with the new location we would not be able to do so.  (Normally we just go in the RV and walk around the stores while they work on it, get the RV back and drive home or to Lancaster for a trip.)  As we drove to the shopping center, we looked – it is less than half a mile further away and there is a safe place to walk the entire distance – sigh of relief.  We went to the stores for lunch before starting home.  Since it was only around 12:30 it was a bit early for us – who normally eat lunch at 2 pm, so we went to a small dollar store located in the shopping center.  For some reason this dollar store always seems to have different things than other ones – found a small toy bear for the village.  Lunch at Wendys.  We then decided to visit a supermarket that was “sort of” on the way back to the turnpike.  Then we started home.  Boy, the rush hour traffic near Philadelphia is worse than that at home.  We got home around 6:30 pm – ordered a pizza for dinner – something we rarely do as it is too high in carbs for our Diabetes.  Husband went to bed right after dinner.

We had the weekend to recover.

Over the weekend we drove our van as we were concerned about the car and NEEDED IT to take mom to the doctor – she has trouble in getting into the car – the van would be impossible.  Saturday night husband noticed the van was leaking “something”.  Sunday we figured it was antifreeze. 

Uh oh!! We needed the van to drop the car at the transmission shop Tuesday morning.  We could not cancel taking mom to the doctor – her battery is running out – what could we do.  Luckily our mechanic is 4 blocks from us and he – and his guys – are very nice and understanding.  Husband was up first thing Monday morning, called him and we left the van with him right away, luckily mom was a 4 pm doctor's appointment.  While at the doctor's office I called and the van was fixed, needed a new water pump, well $500 isn't $1,000 at least - we picked it up after we went home from mom's appointment and stopped in Tuesday to pay for it.

Monday we took mom to the doctor – this one is to change out her pacemaker for a new one – the battery had less than 2 months left on it when it was tested a week ago – and unlike cell phones and many other devices, there is no way to plug it in and recharge it.  This doctor is from the hospital system with an office at the hospital itself, and we anticipated the same mess and confusion.  We were happily surprised that it was not so.  Mom was in the exam room just about the time of her appointment.  They scanned into their computer the papers my mom and sister had filled in, which had been mailed to her in advance and handed the originals back to me.  Doctor came in promptly – had a good, gentle personality.  He agreed that she needed a new pacemaker (they do not change out the batteries).  He also knew the doctor who had done the original procedure on mom 10 years ago.  We were called the next morning as we had been told we would be to set up the appointments for the procedure (exam and surgery).  We will take her for the exam – between driving out there in rush hour and needing about an hour and a half to get mom out and to a place 20 minutes from her we cannot get up early enough to get there for the surgery and my sister who lives near her will take her and we will meet her.  Drove mom back – I had arranged for her to sandwich in room as she missed dinner (does anyone eat dinner at 4:45pm?) and we settled her back into room after going to the wellness office to let them what we did and what they should expect to be asked for from the doctor's office.

Dropped the car at the transmission place Tuesday morning.  They could not find anything wrong – it is a little off, but not such that it can be fixed as it does not have “a code” yet.  So we have it back, but are concerned about driving it. 

So now it is Wednesday again.  I did manage to scan some magazine articles I pulled out years to keep.  I have not left anything undone that should have been done this past week.  Laundry is in washing – the timer is about to go off for me to switch loads… there it goes, be right back.

Back again.  I back up my computer each time I have a work session on same and then once a week I back it up onto another flash drive – monthly and quarterly on or about 15th of the following month I back up the computer again. I went to back it yesterday on the regular daily drive backup (alternate between two drives).  It would not do so.  I ended up copying my data drive over again new.  I tried to delete the old backup which would not update – but could not.  So I ended up copying everything else off that drive (flash/stick drive) to an external hard drive, then formatting the stick drive and then copying the data back to the stick drive – and we had terrible storms here that ended up with us losing our electricity mid copying back to the stick drive!  I had managed to back up the computer, data, calendar, and client data for last month and last quarter before I went back to getting the daily (B) drive back for use.  2 posts about how, why and when I back up my computer - http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2016/05/organizing-your-computer-data-to.html
http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2016/06/organizing-computer-files.html

I think I also posted that husband is not as regular in backing up and this has led to problems – most recently when his hard drive died and then the new one did also.  (He has had a lot of problems with his computer lately – all involved with electricity, so we just bought and installed a new surge protector for his computer – hope that resolves it all. 

Oh, we were called by the nice lady in our RV service department – the new batteries we bought (elsewhere, our mistake, trying to travel not as far) for the RV are no good.  Having read about the scam artists that the place we had them installed in is – we are not sure if there was a problem with the batteries or we were given bad batteries on purpose so that we would come back and give them more money.   Our RV service department is seeing what they can do with the warranty on the batteries before we lay out another $1000 for new batteries again.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

As crazy as we both get – luckily generally not at the same time – everything works out somehow.  One or the other of us will keep our head and get the other one/both of us through the problem.  Husband figured out to drive mom to the doctor and take the car to have the transmission looked at the day after same instead of trying to squeeze it into last week and having the transmission place not getting it back to us in time.  I figured out to put the little bears in the car to keep him company. 

Let those around you help you when they can.  Don't go crazy – look for alternative ways to solve a problem that seems too big to deal with.

Back up your computer – soon!

LIFE LAUGHS AT US

Good thing we did a craft event last week and husband sold weaving. I was short $220 (rounded up a few dollars and sense) to pay the last of our bills for September. Between $80 in cash we had sitting around to take on trips or use if cash needed beyond what we have in our wallets, $40 of the cash I had in my wallet, $60 from cash sales, and $40 from our change box for when we do events I managed to find the $220 and cover the bills. And that was after my Social Security for the month, $400 from a client for her taxes, and money still in the accounts from husband's Social Security for the month. Next week hewill get his Social Security payments and be solvent again. Ouch. But as Mama would say in “Mama's Bank Account” (movie – “I Remember Mama”) we did not have go to the bank, well we did have to go and deposit the cash, but did not have to take additional money out of savings.

I was to be short on time this past week – the Jewish New Year started and it is an evening plus 2 day holiday. (Remember from past years - feel free to use this New Year to start anew in your organizing if you need a reason to start now.) We were to drive our RV back to the place that installed our new RV batteries at the end of July as they still do not work properly to have them look at it. We were told that we had to leave it for 2 weeks – makes sense as the problem is that they are not holding the charge – worse the old batteries we got rid of. Husband was in a panic - we would have to bring our car and the RV to the battery place. I would be driving the RV and he the car, but we have only been there once before and got lost at the end. He was so upset that I was very worried about him. We could not figure out who to bring with us that could ride with him and help him the find the way. Basically no one. I was awake at night even after he fell asleep trying to figure out what to do and I was starting to have panic attacks worrying about him.

Then I had an idea, one I was sure he would refuse as waste of money. If he was upset because he did not know where to turn etc. (even with GPS he was upset), why not take a trip down to the place in advance? He would be able to see the route, see where turns would be, we could figure out where to meet up before we left the Garden State Parkway, and in general reassure him. It costs us around $40 in tolls per vehicle to make the trip plus gas and I figured he would argue with me about spending same. When to go? This was Friday overnight. Well, the holiday was to start Sunday night and end Tuesday night, my embroidery meeting was Wednesday and we had made arrangements to go the next day – Thursday to the RV place. Only day to go was Sunday. Our holidays basically are suppose to be days of prayer and I try to keep away from things like trips, TVs, computer, cell phone and such. But I also know that health is more important than anything else. If husband was ill or injured and needed something there would be no question that I would take care of him – holiday or not. And basically he was ill, just not physically. I proposed the plan to him – drive down leisurely later in the day, see the route, and then have holiday dinner at Golden Corral (normally one does not eat out on our holidays). I was ready to point out that money was minor compared to how he was and that if he had to go somewhere locally and was this upset we would go in advance just like this.

He thought about the plan and did object and thought it a good idea. We started out after lunch on Sunday. I let him do the driving guided only by the GPS and kept my mouth closed other than to point out landmarks when he was already making turns. We were riding on a main (limited access 3 or 4 lane) road in NJ and had to get off of it to get onto the Garden State Parkway. As he was about to exit we saw that the exit was blocked off and closed. I had to get involved as he started to panic- what do we do? I told him to keep going and get off at the next exit. The GPS kicked in and sent off at same and had him turn around and head back to the road we had been on – in the opposite direction of course. Why I hate and don't trust GPS – the road it told him to turn onto to reverse direction back to the main road was one way – the opposite way – panic again – I told him take the next road – we did and were turned around and back to the main road – the exit to the Garden State Parkway was open in this direction. (The GPS also had no record that the exit between these two major roads was closed and it had been closed for over a week and will remain so until November!)

We drove on. The Garden State Parkway has rest areas and there were two of them before we would get off of it. I had figured we that we would meet up at the second one which was about 10-15 minutes from where we were going. We got off there (and having been on the road for 4 hours for a trip that should take 2 hours) used the rest room. We realized that this rest area was too close to where we would get off the road – the rest area is to the left of the multi-lane road and the exit to the right, traffic might well stop us from being able to get across the exit – so we figured we would meet at the first rest area when we actually go. We found the RV place easily and then rerouted the GPS to take us to the restaurant for dinner, even though it was two hours too early to eat, so we went to a Costco (where we bought gasoline) and a Walmart we know in the area to spend the time. Coming home after one of the GPS devices refused to route us the way we wanted to go as a major bridge was closed – it was not and we ignored the GPS.

Husband was calmer as he was more comfortable driving there on his own. Then a problem popped up so that we had to push the trip off to Friday and he sent an email letting them know. Monday I prayed, I read, I kept the holiday as well as I could. I also made and served the dinner I had planned to serve Sunday night and which had been partially cooked before the idea for the trip came up. The second day of the holiday (Tuesday) I am normally a bit looser in what I will do.

Monday night husband was on the computer and suddenly found post after post about the place we were going – almost everyone calling them a scammer – things they put in don't work, they break things and say they need to be fixed, they over charge by thousands of dollars, etc. Husband went back into panic mode. Tuesday I called the woman at our RV dealer and left a message (okay two messages) asking her to call us back. Overnight since we had not heard back, I called again and left a message explaining the situation in the short version. We missed picking up her call – her message was to call the new general appointment number and they would make an appointment. I had to go to my embroidery meeting – did not go out for other errands - and then I called her and left a message again. Husband went out and bought our usual lunch at Wendys and brought it home. I eventually called the appointment number and the very nice fellow said that he had been told I would call and that we needed to make a 4 hour appointment – I explained that 4 hours would not be enough and needed to speak with her. When time passed and we still did not hear from her, we decided that appointment could always be changed – I called and made the appointment for next week. We decided that husband would send her an email with all of the details. She called back later in the afternoon and husband was calm enough to talk to her. We are bringing the RV next week – with the car also – and we leave with them to find out if the batteries are good and if so why they are not holding a charge and if they are no good to see about the warranty or if that falls through – put in new batteries. Another thousand dollars plus is not easy for us to deal with, but it is that or never be able to use the RV again.

Now, at the same time I still had to make an appointments for mom at doctors. I managed to call and make one at the cardiologist's office that is to take an image of her leg to make sure her blood clot has not moved – and it will be done by a nurse practitioner as he needs to be booked over a month in advance (strange he could see her the first time in less than a week and when the appointment was wrong – there was an open appointment with him later the same day). I was also suppose to get the name of one of the other type of cardiologist who can test her pacemaker and asked for same – we have to come in to get that info? This is a big deal practice that is in a center from a local hospital chain - suppose to be the newest and best thing. Husband in his former job used to sometimes go with children in the program to Medicaid clinics – they did not treat their patients this poorly.

I am doing the laundry. I sent out info promised today to the members of my embroidery group as to how to sign into our National group's website to download embroidery designs/instructions that we are going to use at meetings. I have written this post. I did not make dinner – we took in Chinese food. So much has been left undone again - Oh, I forgot to mention that I had to call one of our credit card companies as we suddenly got – unrequested by us and with no prior info from them – a new type of credit card from them. I had to call them – first to make sure it was legitimate and not a scam, and then to change it back to what we had (miles card? We don't fly or even take a train or bus and don't stay in hotels) but they cannot change it back yet – husband's card is being mailed tomorrow so I have to call again in two days or later to get it changed back!!!!! There was much yelling by me. Another time waster.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

The world lately seems to be trying to waste time and have everything go awry. I can get myself sick dealing with it or try to take it as comes and try to keep husband from getting sick from it. One has to try to go with the flow even when it is driving one crazy and keeping one from doing anything that they need to do.

RVs, Cars, Mom, and Work

I have not made it back to the family house since 2 weeks ago to finish up, heck, I haven’t even had a chance to try calling mom to just talk to her.  I have been busy taking care of my husband. 

No, he isn’t sick, but he has been going crazy over our RV and its batteries.  Back towards the end of July I mentioned that we had ordered new RV batteries and then had to drive down to New Jersey and spend part of the day getting them installed (by the company which ordered them for us).  We thought that would be the end of dealing with the batteries. It was not.   

To explain the problem with this - our RV (a Chevy Express Van converted to a very small RV) has the regular battery under the front hood which does all the “car” type things - like starting the engine.  We also have in a cabinet which opens to the outside two more batteries - similar to those in golf cart.  These run all the electrical RV things, when turned on, if the RV is not plugged in and the engine is not running - like while the RV sits in a parking lot all day while we are somewhere.  (Well most of them - we cannot run the RV air conditioner unless plugged in or the engine running.)  There is a small electrical panel on a wall in the RV which lets us check how much water in the clean water tanks, how much is in the dirty water tanks, how much propane we have in it’s tank, and how well the electricity is doing.  (It also has the switches on it to turn on the RV batteries to allow them to be used and to turn on the water pump so water works out of the sink, toilet, etc.)  The top light for the batteries on this panel lights up and is green when the RV batteries are charging while the RV is plugged in or the engine is running.

In addition to the green charging light showing that the RV batteries are charging, husband has a small device to plug into the cigarette lighter to check the voltage of the engine battery or into a similar receptacle he had put in so he could check the voltage of the RV batteries.  This had been low for the RV batteries, which is why we replaced them - especially since they were 2 years passed their expected life. 

However, after the RV batteries were replaced, the green light still was not lighting up.  That meant the RV batteries were not charging.  We do not have an RV dealer near us to go to about any of this (hence the trips to Pennsylvania and New Jersey to get work done).  Husband was going crazy about this.  Over the past month and a half we paid out something like $4-5000 that we do not have to fix the three vehicles.  He needs to get a tooth added to his denture as one fell out - probably another thousand dollars.  Between being upset that the RV batteries are not charging, not knowing where to go about it, and not being able to pay to find out what is going on, he was rather despondent and depressed. 

We have a really good mechanic and he tries to help us as much as possible even though he does not know about RVs.  The fellow who used to work for him (retired) was even better at figuring all this out.  Just in time for us - the fellow who had retired decided that he needed to work part time as he was going crazy retired.  We called them and explained.  I was suppose to go to work this past Tuesday, but husband was soooo, upset about all this - and Tuesday was when they could take the RV - I made the work appointment for Thursday (tomorrow) instead. 

The engine battery was also low and was replaced (had another year and a half to go on it).  But it the voltage was still low.  There is a device, called a separator, which lets the engine battery or the RV batteries charge alone when needed.  It is apparently a simple electrical switch, but not generally available.  We had talked about ordering one to have it if needed and with all this going on, last week we did.  It came in this past Monday. 

Tuesday we were ready to go out for lunch and had not heard about the RV, so I asked if he wanted to stop by on the way to lunch and then suggested we put the separator in the car. 

The fellow who worked on it was on the verge of replacing the alternator as he still could not get the system to the correct voltage.  He was looking online for which of their suppliers had one for our RV that was good and not crazy expensive.  We all went out to play with the RV.  The fellow had not known about the light panel to show the RV batteries were charging.  We showed it to him.  They used this voltage meter and that in this place and that.  Then I asked - can the voltage going through the separator be checked?  Ah ha!  Voltage going into the separator - right - voltage coming out - low!  We brought him the separator and the voltage on each side was the same.  Solved!  Husband was so relieved to see the green light on the panel light up!

So, if I had not stayed home with him to comfort him, we would have paid out more big money for an alternator and still not resolved it.  (Makes me wonder if we needed any of the batteries, but that is water under the bridge.) 

In the process of all this - we have driven out to almost the end of Long Island to charge all the batteries.  Since we do this after dinner we can go and return in about 2 hours.  I have lived my entire life on this (long) Island and have been out as far this (or further) maybe 10 times, 12 at the most on the north shore.  Five of these times - including these two times - have been to charge the RV batteries.

So I lost 2 nights of being able to do things in the house. I am going to my client 3 days later than I planned - and there is a possibility of thunderstorms.  Plus the day lost while he was too upset to be home alone and all the time we were outside in the RV playing with the batteries.

In addition, my sister had sent me a text Monday evening asking me to go to mom on Tuesday as she was meeting with the physical therapist and would have to sign papers.  Unfortunately it must have come in while I was out of the kitchen - after leaving my phone on the table while cooking.  I did not see the text - due to all of the above mess - until half an hour after the end of the of the time range of when I was needed there!  So poor mom was there alone because of all this mess. I sent a text to my sister explaining and apologizing, but have not had a chance to call mom.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Our time is limited.  If we need (or want) to do one thing, we cannot do something else at the same time.  Our loved ones are the most important reason for choice to be made.  I am not sure if I had the text in time if I would have picked going to my mom or staying with my husband to make sure he did not go over the edge.  When I apologized to my sister, I also told her that next time something must be done on such short notice, to call to make sure I knew about it and did not miss another important text. 



                       

A CHORE LEADS TO A TIME FOR SOME REST

Well we now both have working computers - yay! 

The fridge seems to be working - bigger yay!  Husband found out that the drawers at the bottom of fridge keep a more even temperature than the rest of the fridge.  After testing the temperature in same, we decided that the best place for his insulin in one of the drawers as the temperature in same seems to always be 36F or higher so that problem is resolved too.

Missed working with my sisters and their husbands at mom’s house again last weekend.  We had terribly hot weather here and I was “under” it.  My sister told me that they have gone through all but 3 rooms and 6 closets - not sure if that includes the room I have to go through as I left a lot of “stuff” in my old room.  I found out that the other day that “we” will having a tag sale.  Hmmm, I guess if I found stuff to donate it might be worth leaving it for the tag sale and  maybe I will add some of the stuff we need to get rid of in our house and the money from same when (if?) it sells can go towards mom’s living expenses while not costing us anything that we don’t have to give her.

I has been HOT here - over 100F one day and almost the same the day before.  Monday night there were major rain storms around the area - over several states. Husband was again demonstrating to me how wonderful having Roku is and that we can see every episode of “Midsummer Murders” from the start (we- mostly I - have only seen about 3 seasons as that is when I found the show) and we don’t have to watch it 3-5 am when it is on PBS we can see it any time.  Last week when he ran the second episode (had run the first one previously) it kept going out of sync and needing to be restarted. Monday the hottest of the days and at night was the huge thunderstorm.  We were watching episode 3 when it froze.  He kept trying to get it going.  Then something dawned on me - I turned on my cell phone and turned on the house wifi - nothing.  I switched the TV to the cable - nothing.  We had lost our Internet service - no cable, no computer Internet.  (We still have copper wire telephone service from old telephone company so same still worked.)  Husband was having a fit over no TV and no Internet.  I knew that at least we had electricity.  The TV came back gradually over several hours.  At first the broadcast channels were back.  Then the non-premium channels.  The cable company’s local news channel was not there - but husband found it on their local weather channel - how the heck can one channel from their studio work and not the other?  And shouldn’t their news channel at some point have mentioned - hey, we are on this other channel do an outage of our service - sorry - here is what is going on and which problems are where?  They did not even do so after the service was restored.  When the first channels were back, I went on my cell phone to see what had happened - just lots of people complaining that they had called to report the outage and find out what they could and got the message I did - “We are experiencing a large call volume.  Please contact us through our website.”  No website working of course!!

Today we went on a little trip.  (Oh, no, another of her nightmare trips.)  Our RV has two batteries (the type that are used in golf carts) which charge from the RV being driven, running the RV generator and/or plugging in the RV to electricity at home or at campground.  As I am pretty sure I mentioned our two had reached beyond the end of their lives.  We found a company in New Jersey that could order the batteries that husband had been told were the best to get for our RV and could install them.  We ordered the batteries last week - paying for the batteries themselves at that time by charge card over the phone.  They came in and we made an appointment to go to have them put in  - for this past Monday - the day of the storm.  On last Friday husband looked at the weather and saw the huge storms expected and told me to call and change the appointment to today (Wednesday).  Blew out my week - I had planned to go to my client this week either Tuesday or Thursday and could not wake up that early two days in a row.  I did so.  Good thing we did.  The area where the company is located was hit hard by the storm.  Parts of the area were still out today and the company was running on two generators. 

We (I) cleared out stuff where they might need to work - both halves of the bed were stacked on the base for husband’s side of the bed on each other.  (His side is longer than my side and they might have needed to access the cabinet under my bed.)  We figured out what we needed to bring.  Not having been to this place before and having looked at online maps and there was no place for lunch near by, we bought sliced deli turkey and made sandwiches last night and bagged them in a cold bag made for lunch with two cans of diet soda and plastic ice.  I emptied out my travel backpack.  (I use it when we go somewhere where we will not have easy access back to the RV or car if we use same instead during the day.  I put in what we might need based on where we go and what we do.)  I put the cold bag with our lunch in it.  I also added a package of saltine crackers as they work well for husband if he has a blood sugar low.  In our other cold bag I put some bottles of a sugar drink he uses if his blood sugar goes too low and I put that bag in the RV fridge - which we did not put on.  We had no idea if there was a place for us to wait while the work was done inside the building or if we would be sitting outside (in lesser, but still heat) on a curb waiting for it.  We were also not sure how long it would take for the work to be done as we knew that there was no way we would be there by 8:30 am as we just cannot get up early enough to get ready and drive at least 2 hours and be there by then. 

We got out this morning just ahead of our planned leaving time (okay - it was the same 8:30 am that it had been suggested we be there) and when husband went to back the RV out into the busy main street we live on it was actually empty on our side of the street long enough to pull out without waiting.  (I stand in the street with a walkie talkie and tell him when he can pull out - he pulls up next to the curb and I jump in and we go.)  As mentioned in past posts, what used to be a 45 minute drive to the bridge off the huge island we live on, can take 2 hours now.  We have found that leaving the house at 8:30 am seems to be the best time for us to leave - we are driving at the rear end of rush hour and by the time we reach the construction areas - they are just short of starting work. 

Drive was going pretty well and then the news announced that there had been a car fire on the bridge we had to take off the Island and traffic was bad.  OH (expletive deleted)!!  We figured we were in a mess for sure.   Husband asked me about alternatives.  I started thinking.  We are on the south end of the Island and therefore also the south end of Manhattan Island.  To get to “the main land” - mostly New Jersey we can take a bridge to Staten Island and then another bridge from there to New Jersey.  We can drive through one of several bridges or two tunnels into Manhattan and then go across same and go out through one of two tunnels to New Jersey - this would involve driving the large van that is our RV in crowded Manhattan streets and we cannot take a tunnel due to having propane in a tank in the RV.  So, we could get into Manhattan from where we were, but we would have to drive most of the length (south to north) of it to get to the George Washington Bridge.  We could go north on our Island on one road that we can go on (we are too tall for many limited access roads here) just at the start of the next (Queens) county/NYC line drive north to the Bronx - over a bridge - and then across the Bronx on a road that I have never seen or heard of not being stopped by traffic - and then into Manhattan (on a bridge) and then over the same George Washington Bridge to New Jersey.  An additional problem was the road we needed to use in New Jersey was only open to vehicles like ours for part of the way - no problem if we go by State Island, but if we go by the George Washington Bridge we have to figure an alternate way to drive south until we are near where we would get on the road if we went through Staten Island.  We decided to keep on the way we normally go as it was so much simpler and it would probably take more time to go north and then come back south again than deal with the delay. The car that had been on fire was in the opposite direction from the one we were going.  And the GPS traffic was not showing any drastic problems.

We figured that we would monitor the reports on the radio news channel we listen to as we went along and that, along with the traffic we hit would make our decision. But - today was the day that Robert Mueller was testifying at Congress and the radio station decided to run same instead of news and weather. The road was not as bad as usual.  The bridge barely had a slow down.  At 9:30 am I called the company and told them that we were on way and would be there in about an hour. 

When we got there we were very pleasantly surprised.  The building was large.  The employees very friendly and nice.  Robert had some info that the guys putting in the batteries needed to know and he gave it to the nice woman who wrote up the work order.  I took my back pack - with lunch and some paperwork (about the ordering of the batteries) I had in case we needed it out of the RV.  She wrote up the work order and then showed us what she called their “living room”.  There were sofas, a huge TV showing - of course - Robert Mueller testifying.  There was a man already there waiting for them to work on his car.  I sat down - backpack on an end table - and husband walked around their small shop area of stuff for RV s.  The man was very nice and we talked thorough out the time we were waiting.  (Found out that there was a TV remote and he had chosen the show - fine with us.)  I played solitaire on my cell phone.  I had also brought my old Palm Centro as it had different games I like to play in case I got bored with the solitaire I play.  The poor fellow was going to be there most of the day and have a huge bill when he was done.  (Not that our bill between the parts paid for and the work to be done was small.)  At one point the employee came out and asked him if he wanted to see local food place menus to order lunch as he would be there so long.  (Very nice of her to think of this.)  He offered it to us also, but I pointed at the backpack and we explained that we had brought lunch when we saw there was nothing near by.  Of course I needed a trip to the ladies room.  Very nice compared to most and especially to what I thought it might be based on other RV places. 

Our work was done by 1:30 pm and we paid for it and were off - with our lunch still uneaten.  We found out that the place still had not had their electricity restored and were running on 2 generators.  We had not even noticed a problem with same.  We were glad that they had been able to do the work under these conditions.

We have been in the general area before and had planned to hang around, have dinner in the area and then drive home - both because there is a chain buffet restaurant husband likes near there and to avoid being stuck in rush hour - which we would hit by the time we got back to Long Island.  We decided to go to a shopping mall and walk around - and we figured to eat lunch in their food court area.  As we were driving there we noticed soooo many stores that were dark and no cars in their parking lots as well as utility crews working.  I suggested to husband that since we would pass it, we should check that the buffet was open after the storm instead of spending time and then finding ourselves with a dinner problem.  Few cars outside it, but the lights were on and we saw people at tables.

Went to the mall and had lunch and walked around for over an hour.  Then we went to Barnes and Nobles and walked around.  Then we drove to a Walmart we knew about  - closer to the restaurant then the other two - and went there for a while.  Then dinner and home.    Coming home the upper level of the bridge was closed - we presume based on what we saw that they were still clearing the bridge from the accident or making repairs due to same.  It was the most traffic we had the entire trip. 

Although much of the day was wasted time as we did not want to come home and got stuck in traffic (and he REALLY likes that buffet) I don’t feel like we had a wasted day.  We had a lot of down time and actually I feel as if I had a chance for an enforced rest period today.  (He, on the other hand, was in a constant state of concern.)  Now that the batteries are replaced and new - he is worrying that the alternator is going bad or the “separator” is going bad.  (The same alternator charges both the car battery under the hood that most if not all cars have and the RV batteries.  The separator - surprise - keeps the RV and car batteries separated when same is going on - one is charged than when it is finished, the other is.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Sometimes things work out better than one thinks they will - but always make sure to plan for the problems that may arise.  Sometimes a chore that wastes a lot of time can bring some needed rest to you.