A Rocky Start

Written Monday, June 1, 2009

 

So here I sit in my camper with finally a few minutes to sit and write a blog post to publish when I go home at some point. It’s been a busy but fun last few days here at the resort but things started off a little let’s say “rocky”.

About a week ago, I came out to the camper that was parked in “storage row” to pull off the battery and make sure it was still charged. Yes, I should have taken it off last fall when I put the camper in storage but that could be a post in itself and I don’t want to backtrack that far. So anyway, I pull the battery off and took it home and hooked it up to my battery charger. Much to my surprise, my battery charger showed that the battery was fully charged and ready for use. With this being the news I of course wanted to hear, I didn’t question my battery charger at all and simply unhooked the battery happy as a lark that I didn’t have to go buy a new one. I marched in the house from the garage and told my wife Paula the good news and my day was now made.

The next day which was Wednesday, I spent most of the day getting items ready to take out to the camper for our first camping trip of the season that was set to begin on Friday. My oldest son Nick and I loaded up the battery and headed out to the resort to put the battery back onto the camper after he came home from school and we had a bite to eat and to unload all the other “stuff” I had packed up earlier in the day. We arrived at the camper, unloaded the “stuff” and hooked the battery back up onto the camper. I tried all the lights in the camper and not a one would come on. “DAMN IT” I said loudly. “My battery charger tested this battery as good”! “I hope we don’t have an electrical problem of some kind” I nervously said. I took the battery back off the camper, loaded it back into the car and we were off to Batteries Plus to have the battery tested. We arrived only to find them closed. OH YAY, so off to Farm and Fleet we went just a mile or two down the road and took the battery inside. The acne faced, teenager working in the battery department that evening tested the battery and his tester found the battery to be bad. “YES”, I said rather loudly and the kid looked at me like I was crazy. I told him that I would rather have it be a bad battery than an electrical problem of some sorts in the camper. He laughed and agreed. So after about an hour or so of running around and $80 later, we were once again on our way back to the camper.

We arrived back at the camper just after dark. I hooked the battery back up as well as I could in the dark. I flipped on the outside light and badda-bing, the light came on. I went inside the camper and tried all the lights and they ALL worked! We patted ourselves on the back for a job well done and headed home.

Thursday morning was spent washing bedding and packing more “stuff” for the camper and loading it all into the car. I met my friend Terry out at the resort so that we could pick out a good spot right next to each other so our families can all camp together on the weekends when he is there. We picked out our spots and moved our campers into their new homes for the next two weeks. We were so excited, we could hardly stand it. After the campers were moved into their campsites and leveled, we spent a while hooking up power to them, hooking up the water, testing our faucets and looking for any leaks from our holding tanks. I didn’t turn my refrigerator on because I wanted to give it a good cleaning before we put food into it but when I turned my hot water heater on, nothing would happen. My assumption was that the electronic igniter went bad and needed to be replaced. “No big deal” I thought, “I will pick one up tomorrow morning before we come out and get it installed” I said. Everything else appeared to be good to go so Terry went home and so did Nick and I. Nick and I talked about all the fun we were going to have this summer and how we couldn’t wait to get out to the camper tomorrow all the way home.

We arrived home and Paula could see how excited we both were. She suggested that maybe we shouldn’t wait until tomorrow to start camping but to start camping tonight instead. “Sure, why not” I said. Nick was all for it as well especially since he would have to “play hooky” from school the next day. All we needed was some groceries so off to Wal-Mart we went. We grabbed all the items from the list I had made earlier that day and headed back out to the camper. On the way to the resort, Nick and I made a little deal. I would unload ALL the groceries and ALL the other “stuff” from the car and put it ALL away while he cleaned the refrigerator. Both of us thought we got the better deal so it was all cool.

I brought ALL the “stuff” in from the car and ALL the groceries and put it ALL away why Nick cleaned the refrigerator. Since the refrigerator wasn’t turned on yet, I put all of the food that needed to stay cold into a cooler to keep it cool. We both finished our jobs at about the same time and it was time to turn on the refrigerator. I flipped the “on” button and nothing happened. No power…no nothing. “SHIT” I said rather nervously. “What the freak is wrong with the refrigerator” I asked myself out loud. I scratched my head and said “this is a big problem” to Nick. He just looked at me and didn’t say a word as he could see that I was pissed and worried at the same time. Then I looked over and noticed that the microwave didn’t have any power either. Nick and I both sat down and started thinking about what the problem could be. Nick spoke up and said “Maybe it’s a fuse”. YES OF COURSE, A FUSE! Good thinking Nick. I opened up the door to the converter and there were all of the camper’s fuses in one convenient location, none of which has ever been changed in the three years we have owned the camper. Only a few of them were labeled and of course the refrigerator was not any of them. Since I didn’t have any fuses, it didn’t matter at this point anyway. Our focus now turned to the food sitting in the cooler getting warmer and warmer by the minute. We had to get some ice to keep it all cool so off to the gas station we went at midnight.

After returning back to the camper and getting our food on ice, we both decided it was time for bed. We knew we needed to get up early to go buy some fuses and probably more ice so our food wouldn’t spoil. I went over to the sink to get a glass of water. I filled up my cup and noticed when I poured the water I didn’t drink down the drain, I heard a strange noise. “What the hell was that” I asked out loud. I opened up the cabinet door and looked under the sink to see water dripping from the goose neck. Dripping is actually an under statement, it was more of a steady flow of water running out of the goose neck. I stayed as calm as I could, looked at my son, smiled and said “we need to get some pipe while we are out getting fuses tomorrow and don’t use this sink, use the bathroom sink instead”. Knowing I was on the verge of a meltdown my son looked at me and said “good night dad”. “Good night son”, I responded.

Friday morning we woke up nice and early, had some coffee and called Paula to tell her about the fun we had the night before. She decided she would come along with us while we got the items we needed and drove out to the resort. After she arrived, we all went to the camper supply store and purchased some fuses. They had only one of the two pipes we needed so we headed off to another camper supply store about 15 miles away and they didn’t have it either. The gentleman we talked to was however nice enough to let us know that the hardware store right down the street would have the pipe we were looking for so off to the hardware store we went. They did indeed have the pipes and we drove back to the camper to do our repairs.

When we arrived, Paula went inside the camper with the fuses and said she was going to swap them out. I stayed outside to have a smoke. Suddenly I hear a loud POP and Paula scream something like Ah$%^#$! I walked over to the door to see what happened. Paula said that when she plugged in the fuse, sparks flew across the camper and scared the bageebers out of her.

“What in the world is going on” I asked. Paula smiled and said, “you hooked that battery up in the dark right”? “Yes” I responded. “Are you sure it’s not on backwards or something” she asked. “No, it’s not on backwards” I said. “Will you check it out anyway” Paula asked. “Ok, yeah…I will look but it’s not on backwards” I muttered.

I walked to the front of the camper to where the battery sits, removed the cover and investigated the battery situation. Much to my surprise, I found the battery to be indeed connected backwards. Feeling like a complete DUMBASS, I reversed the battery connections and very nicely said to Paula, “Try it now dear”. Paula slid the two fuses in with no problems and said “let me guess, the battery was connected up wrong”. She flipped on the refrigerator and it had power. I turned on the hot water heater and it had power and fired right up as well. Except for feeling like a certain gentleman named Eric Richardville, all was good and I was a happy camper.

Paula had somewhere she needed to be and needed to leave the resort. She asked if I was going to be able to handle installing the pipes without her. I just smiled and didn’t give a smartass comment back as I did deserve her comment. I installed the pipes trouble free and the camper was back to proper working order.

PLEASE NOTE: Reversing the polarity of a battery will cause sparks to fly and make you feel like a DUMBASS.