Tuesday was a day spent in fear and anticipation, but all’s well that ends well…

As if our power situation were not enough to worry and annoy us, whilst traveling to the Airstream Dealer, we were hit with several gusts of wind. While control of the RV was never an issue, once things settled down we saw in our mirrors that our front driver-side rock guard was gone – blown away somewhere on the east-bound I-40. We stopped to survey the damage, and also saw that the vent cover on one of out fans was also gone. The missing rock guard “only” exposed vulnerable aluminum skin to the potential of damage from rocks being thrown up on the highway, the missing vent cover meant that we were exposing the interior to rain, which was sure to come.  Now we had more issues to report to the Airstream dealer…

We arrived at Leisure RV, the Airstream dealer in Oklahoma City, at 12:30pm for our 2:00pm appointment, chronically early, as usual. This is a large, multi-brand RV dealer with very impressive facilities. We spent our waiting time browsing the store full of gadgets and supplies, and we wandered through the sales lot admiring the brand new RVs of many makes and models.  Finally we met with our service adviser, we unhitched, and they pulled the Villa into one of their 16 service bays. Then we waited some more.

Our suspicions were confirmed that we had, indeed, blown the power converter. (This device takes the shore power and distributes it to the trailer as 110v and 12v power, also charging the batteries along the way…)  Fortunately, they had a new converter in stock, and repairs were underway. They did not have rock guards in stock, but they were able to replace the missing vent cover. So, at about 5:30, with one swipe of a credit card, we were once again on our way. We had called a nearby campground (KOA Oklahoma City East), who had a very nice camping site ready for us when we arrived a little before 6:00pm.

As soon as we arrived, we plugged into power to see that everything was once again working – no damage to any other electronics on-board; the one exception: The refrigerator did not switch over to 110v power when available, but it runs just fine on propane.

We took a quick dip in the pool to gain some relief from the stress (and heat – did I mention the heat?) we were able to have a restful night. Tomorrow we set out for Bartlesville…!

What the rock guard looks like and what it looks like when it’s gone:

 

Finally relaxing after settling in at the KOA…

 

 

 

 

 

 

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