Madness

We’ve been watching a lot of basketball around here these days. It’s our favorite time of year! With our beloved Jayhawks drawing the overall #1 seed in the tournament, we’re hopeful our team is the one to cut down the nets this year. We shall see.

We took a break from basketball this morning to wash the moose. Paul’s done it before, but this was my first effort. It’s all part of the experience of bonding with our new rolling home. With the South Texas winds blowing, Paul climbed up and tackled the roof while I stood on the ground with my fingers crossed. A couple walked by and gave us a look, to which I explained that this was the most nervous part for me.

“I know,” said the woman. “I’m always prayerful anytime he’s on the roof. It’s the wife’s lament.”

So true.

With both of us on solid ground, we went about washing, rinsing and drying the vertical surfaces. Just as we were getting started, we watched a Class A roll by. Like most RVers, we are in the habit of looking over rigs that are on their way out. With a friendly wave we take a gander to make sure nothing is sticking out or up where it shouldn’t be. Most of the time, of course, everything is fine. But, we have saved an antenna once or twice. So, we always look. Everything looked fine as this motorhome passed by, then I spotted something on the back bumper: A set of keys.

Without thinking, I started running after the rolling home. (Now, those of you who know me know I don’t run.) With a bright orange Sham-Wow in one hand I started waving my arms and shouting “Stop!” (Yes, I’m sure it was a sight!) Yelling “Stop!” in an RV park is akin to yelling “Fire!” anywhere. It attracts some attention. I heard others join in the shouting and within seconds I saw brake lights. I grabbed the keys and handed them over. The captain was grateful. Fellow campers waved and cheered. A couple in a car drove by and told me I “run good”. I said thanks and thought to myself “I’m not sure I’d be able to do that if I was really 55!”

The big moose bath took longer than we had planned. Turns out washing a rig is a real conversation starter in this not-so-friendly park. Had we known that we would have washed the moose on day one! Several people stopped to say hi, admire our rig, complement us on our work and visit for a bit. It was nice.

With three sides down and one to go, we decided to break for lunch, a bit of basketball and a lesson on RV electrical systems. The lesson, of course, was unplanned but valuable.

I pulled lunch out of the freezer, put it in the microwave and pushed the button. It sounded bad. Really bad. So, I immediately shut it off. Something was wrong. The voltmeter confirmed our concerns. Voltage was low, which happens in this park. But, this was unusually so. Something was definitely up with the power. In the process of elimination, we checked the inverter. It was on. Yep. We had lost power and the inverter automatically took over. It’s a seamless switch. But, the inverter isn’t enough to handle our power-hungry microwave. And when a microwave isn’t getting enough power it makes that really bad sound.

Our first moose didn’t have an inverter, so this is all new territory to us. We’ve had it set to turn on automatically when power is disconnected. That works great when we break camp and hit the road with nothing but the refrigerator running. But, when you’re just coming in for lunch and everything seems normal but it’s not, you could burn up a microwave or an inverter or worse before you knew what hit you.

So, the lesson for the day is to turn the inverter off when you set up and turn it on when you pack up. We’ll definitely add those two tasks to our checklists.

We figured we had just knocked the power cord out while we were washing, but it wasn’t us. No, the entire park was out. And, the office was closed for lunch. So, nobody had a clue what was going on. But, with a rapidly thawing lunch on the kitchen counter, we knew what to do. We fired up our trusty generator! As soon as it was on-line I popped lunch back in the microwave and it hummed away happily.

Since we’ve been sitting for over a month the generator was due for some exercise anyway. So, we kept it running, turned on the AC and enjoyed a hot lunch in a cool moose. Of course, somewhere in this park’s rules and regulations it states that use of generators is prohibited. But, if the park can’t supply us with power we won’t hesitate to make our own.

We noticed that some of our neighbors with pets were away, and their rigs were closed up tight on this warm, powerless afternoon. That got us thinking about one of the moose’s features we’ve yet to set up. The generator has a nifty gizmo that will fire it up whenever you program it to do so. For example, you can set it to start if the inside temp gets to 82 degrees and run for an hour with the AC on. On a day like today, with no park power and rising temps, that’d be just what we need to make sure our cats were OK while we were away. The gizmo requires some setting up before you can program it. That task has moved to the top of our to-do list!

An hour or so later we gave the generator a rest and Paul plugged us back in. We were pleased to see the park had power once again. With that, we checked in on a couple of basketball games and then headed back outside to finish bathing the moose.

After all that madness we are ready to kick back, relax and enjoy the rest of March Madness. Rock chalk!