Stranded no more.

 

If you have managed to slog through my saga of acquiring a new truck then you know that we have been semi-stranded since the pandemic began.  The relationship to the pandemic is coincidental, it was pure happenstance that the final straw dropped on the old truck at the same time that the pandemic reared its ugly head.  Regardless, 20+ months later we had a truck capable of doing a heavy tow without needing repair at the end of each day.  Just one problem, the new truck had a recall issued on it.  It seems that the trailer brake controller turns off without warning!  Yikes!  Nothing like approaching a highway traffic signal at 50 mph, it turns red and when you step on the brake 21,000 lbs of trailer just pushes you right on through the light.

This is exactly what happens when the trailer brakes don't work.
Poor guy pulling this boat in Arizona hit other vehicles which ultimately caught on fire.

Okay, there is a recall for that, just take it in for the fix, right?  Not so fast.  After calling five different Ford Service Centers in north Georgia, the earliest appointment I could get was nine weeks away!  There are no parts involved, no wrenches or screwdrivers to be used, just plug in and update the software, nine weeks, really?!

Those nine weeks have come and gone and now, we think, we are ready to roll.  The driving force for this end of the year journey is a trip to the New Horizons factory (where our rig was built) service center.  We have a whole list of things that need attention, some major.  When we get to Junction City, KS for our November appointment we expect to be in that shop at least until Christmas.

But first we will meander across the gulf states, Georgia to Texas, for a one month layover at home in Livingston where we will be doing jury duty, voting, getting vehicle inspections and getting caught up on other necessities from our extended absence.

For now we are doing prep work for departure from Allatoona Lake.  There are facets to this.  There is the physical aspect like arranging all the "stuff" for traveling.  We have been in a stationary mode for so long that our day to day living arrangement is geared for being in the same place tomorrow as today.  That is quite different from how things are arranged for picking up and moving the next day.  We are also easing into unplugging ourselves from all the jobs we do as volunteers at this location.  We have been privileged to have been asked to do a lot of jobs that volunteers don't normally do in regards to back-office work and IT support.  We're having to hand off some of this work to full-time employees that have not done these things before or at least for a long time.  Sure they are aware and in many cases are users of the data that we generate but they are not fully up to speed on how the spreadsheets and file structures work.  We'll get it worked out.

This trip will mark our first as a caravan of vehicles.  Since coming to a stop in Georgia not only did we replace the truck but also acquired a mini SUV and an equally mini cargo trailer.  We are learning a whole new way to configure our packing and noodle out what, for us, will be the best way to go down the road, each of us driving alone.  For the last ten years Cyndee has been a supreme navigator, making adjustments to our route on the fly.  I suspect we are going to have to learn as we go as to what is the best strategy for getting to the next stop.  So if you read two posts back, I guess this will be the mental challenges I was talking about that keeps an old person's brain pliable.