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Saturday, October 8, 2011
STATS
Departure: 12:00 noon
Breakfast: Littleton Diner in Littleton, NH, with Laurel and Bob
Lunch: in the RV
Dinner: Portland Lobster Company, Portland, ME, with Linda, Steve, and Diane
Arrival: 5:00 pm EDT, Freeport KOA, Freeport, ME
Distance: 244 miles
Comments:
After a very good pancake breakfast, we left Laurel and Bob to their own devices and headed back to Maine. Yep, right back to the same KOA. (It’s nice there. And convenient.)
So why did we leave Maine, go to New Hampshire, then return to Maine? Good question. I asked myself the very same question as I was driving all those miles on the Maine and New Hampshire back roads. Well, there were two reasons: first, we wanted to see more of my cousins, and second, I had to pick up a package.
(For those of you who don’t like doing a lot of reading, the next three paragraphs have nothing to do with today’s entry, except to give some background. You can skip them without losing your train of thought. But I’ll bet you’ll wonder what the heck was in those paragraphs and go back and read them later. Out of order. You’ll really be confused.)
What package? Well, in July I bought a tire monitoring system, which tells you when/if your tires are losing air pressure so you can do something about it before you get a blowout. (Sound familiar?) Each tire has a transmitter screwed on to the valve. The transmitters continually send messages with the pressure status to a monitor in the cab. A rapid loss of air (like a blowout) will cause the monitor to go bananas. (In a demonstration, I actually saw the monitor jump down off the center console, run wildly to the back of the RV, and start bouncing up and down on the bed, all the time screaming, “Blowout! Blowout! Blowout!”)
Well, when I had the blowout in Iowa, I kinda wondered why the monitor didn’t tell me anything. (Remember, we heard the tire blow, but there was no other indication that we had lost a tire. The RV didn’t even wiggle.) Turns out, you really need to recharge the battery in the monitor. Who knew? So I looked for the charger, which was nowhere to be found in the RV. I called Brian, our son, and told him of our plight. At my request, he went over to our house and turned it upside down looking for anything to do with the tire monitoring system. He sent everything he found. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find the charger, either. (My guess is that when we’re unloading the RV at home, I’ll find it in one of the compartments, staring at me and sniggering. And, yes, “sniggering” is a word.)
Anyway, I had Brian send the package to my cousin Linda. (No, this is not the package to which I referred, above. This story is much longer than that.) After receiving the package from Linda and verifying that the charger was indeed not there, I called the manufacturer and bought a charger and two new transmitters (I had lost the transmitter, along with the valve, in the blowout): one for the tire and one as a spare. I had the manufacturer send the package to cousin Steve. The package would take two or three days to get there. We decided to continue searching for color while the package was in route.
(Okay, back to today.)
We went to Steve’s house in Cape Elizabeth and then went out to dinner with Steve, Diane, and Linda. We ate at a lobster place and sat outside on a wharf. The night was warm and beautiful. Middle of October, Maine, looking at the Atlantic. Whodathunkit?
The new transmitters and charger had arrived, so I’m set. But, I can’t set it up tonight. No time. I’ll do it tomorrow….
Back to Freeport KOA. Tomorrow, Vermont.
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