Thursdays Have Been Berry Berry Bad To Us!

  Ok, if you remember, Thursday the 8th was not a good day for us. We spent most of it and until 4am Friday emptying the house and packing the house. Fast forward to Thursday the 15th. We packed and left Mineral Wells State Park and headed for Camping World on S. 35W to exchange a defective washer/dryer all, we thought, was well. While there I saw a man come into the store with a busted RV tv antenna. I knew all too well what happened. I thought "that guy pulled out of camp and forgot to put his antenna down and it got knock off by some low branch or underpass". Then I thought "OH SHIT I just did the same thing". I ran out to the camper and sure enough, there was our tv antenna in a twisted heap on top of the camper. Strike one.

 We get the new washer/dryer installed and off we head to Livingston Tx. 30 miles down the road Penny says she sees something flapping under the camper. About the same time someone pulls along side us and points to the ground. I take the next exit and pull into a rest stop to find this.

  What you're looking at is the bottom of our camper.  Two very large sheets of plastic that hold all those wires along with insulation for the holding tanks. The Friday before, you know the one when we stayed up until 4am packing and didn't get to the state park until 5am, we found that ALL of the holding tanks were at least 3/4 full. The gray water (sinks and shower), the black water ( toilet) and fresh water. Aside from us hauling about 1000lbs of extra weight it's also just nasty cause we didn't know how long they had been full. Let your mind cogitate a little on a full black water tank that's been that way for who knows how long. Anyway we decide to turn on the pump on to use what was in the fresh water tank to take showers. Unbeknownst to us the previous owner left the faucets to the outside shower head turned on. This shower head is in a little  compartment on the back of the camper. We didn't realize this was the case until we saw the water draining from the bottom of the camper. What we didn't realize at the time was that all that insulation in that was now soaked. It stayed that way until we left the park on the 15th to head to Camping World so I could see the man with the broken antenna. Well all that wet insulation and movement of the camper going down the road was just too much for the bottom to take, so, at about 3:00pm Thursday afternoon it collapsed (see above photo). Now, being forward thinking people we had already signed up for roadside assistance. So we called them and they promptly arrived at about 4:30pm. Upon my initial survey of the damage, I surmised I was f^@ked, however after further review, I could see that all the wet insulation had to go if I was to get the bottom off the ground, so out it went. Oh and before I forget it was right about then that my cell phone came out of my pocket and hit the concrete shattering the screen. Strike two.

  By the time the help showed up I knew that all I needed was an extra set of hands or two to get the bottom back into it's original position, as nothing was ripped or no bolts were gone, the plastic sheets just needed to be "popped" back into their grooves. So the helped arrived (two luckily) and the three of were able to get it back into place. It still was iffy if it would stay there, but we thought it would stay long enough to get it back to their shop where a more permanent fix could be made. We made it to the shop by about 5:30pm and by 7:00pm they had place two metal straps across the bottom of the camper to insure that the bottom remained there....forever. $175 and handshakes all around later we were off on our way to Livingston. A little tired, a lot dirty and a lot grateful it wasn't as bad as it first appeared. Strike three.