Not so Happy Ending, June 11

We stopped to fill up at Flying J and have lunch in Waterloo IA.  Someone came into the restaurant and asked if we owned a motorhome.  We thought they were going to tell us how nice it was.  Not so.  They said it rolled into a truck and we ran out before our order arrived.

Well, this is what happens when you go to lunch and forget to set the parking brake.  The grade was slight, but just enough for the motorhome to take off on its own after we left.  As you can see, it came to a stop on the rear corner of a trailer and I am sure it made a slow crunching noise when it hit.

Babe was no help, whatsoever.  In fact, she probably watched the entire episode from her seat on the dashboard.  That is, until it rammed the trailer and glass flew everywhere.  She was in the bedroom when we got back, as far away as possible.

The police were called and the officer did an official exchange of information.  No ticket or points because it was on private property. There was no damage to the trailer, but you can see the mess we had to deal with.

The question was, what to do next?  Coincidently, we were on our way to Napponee IN, home of Newmar, to have a few items fixed, but this changed everything.  We were still 470 miles away!

We did what my dad would do.  Duct tape the hell out of it and hit the road.  As you can see, visibility was limited on Steve's side.  In fact the glass was bowed in and not very stable.  Every so often when we hit a bump, a few more shards would fall on the dash board.  At times, it sounded like pebbles hitting the glass, but it was more fractures and we watched as they became larger.  There was only one solution, more duct tape.

Of course, this was also the second time it rained on the entire trip.  Steve's wiper was smashed and the right mirror was broken and dangling from the wires.  So, we headed out with one wiper and one mirror.  Each time I ran the wiper, it would knock off a few more pieces of glass.  We were very impressed with the safety glass in that the film between the two layers of glass has amazing tensile strength.  At the end of each day we had to vacuum up the glass on the dash and floor and in the meantime, keep Babe from going up there.

We spent 2 days driving 470 miles on county roads at 40-45 miles per hour from Iowa to Indiana all the while praying for no headwind.  By the way, Illinos has the worst road signing.  Junctions of roads aren't marked and the road numbers don't match the ones on the maps.  Needless to say, we were lost more than once.  It was difficult to use GPS because we didn't know exactly where we were going.  No news there, huh?

The plan is to rent a van in Nappanee and transfer everything out of the motorhome.  We will drive the two vehicles to Jones Pond and then drive the car back to Indiana when the coach is finished to pick it up.

At least this happend at the end of our trip and we still had a great time.  It just added another dimension to the adventure.  Fortunately, no one was hurt and there was no damage, except to our property and Doug's pride.

No damage to the trailer whatsoever.

The duct tape starting out.

The duct tape finishing the trip.

We didn't open the generator compartment for fear
that it would not close again.
Besides, we didn't have that much duct tape.  :-)

 

We both felt like kissing the ground when we got here.

We will be here for a few more days.  We went on a tour of the factory today.  Very cool. 

Tomorrow morning we will meet with the service advisor and start the paper work for the insurance company.  UGH!

But, while we are in the area, we will go to the RV museum in Elkhart.  It's only 20 minutes away.

The next time we blog, it will be when we pick up Julie (Newmar) and hopefully, she will be better than new.