Unplanned Adventures!

It’s only when you’re on a tight timeline that you have unplanned adventures, right?

Today’s plan was to go to Camping World, pick up the RV, drive it back to the apartment, load what little stuff I have left here into the RV, then wait until tomorrow to see if my invoice was paid. If it was, awesome, we can move forward with preparing to go to Florida. If not, we’ll hang out in the RV, work this week, then go to Florida when the invoice is paid next week.

No plan survives first contact with the enemy.

In this case, the enemy was…the power steering pump.

I caught a Lyft to Camping World, and waited for them to get the YarrVee pulled back around front. When they did, and I got in it, I had no power steering, and no brakes. I took the keys back to Lonnie, my service advisor, and told him I couldn’t accept the coach back in the current condition. Nobody had commented on it being difficult to drive until this morning. A little internet research while I waited for them to do some diagnostics turned up one (and only one) reference to the Chevy Vortec 8.1 losing power steering and brakes…and it didn’t look good. The indication was that the shaft on the power steering pump had sheared off inside the pump – because the brakes are hydraulically assisted, when the P/S pump goes out, so do the brakes. It’s apparently not an uncommon failure. Bryan Flanagan, the service manager at Camping World (same guy who refused to reimburse me on the tire that failed and cost me $825) was kind enough to help me line up a shop that could get the YarrVee in on my timeline. Stevenson Chevrolet couldn’t even look at it until late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Fortunately, the other shop that Camping World deals with frequently said they could get it in today. That was good news. More good news – after an hour on the phone, the $6300 Good Sam warranty I have on the coach said that they’ll cover the $2500 repair.

The bad news: They’ve estimated the repair at 20-25 hours. That jeopardizes my on-time departure from the apartment. And to top the day off – back in December I left my Galaxy Tab 4 in the drawer next to the bed, and I forgot to get it when I dropped the coach off at Camping World on Christmas Eve. Guess what was missing when I went to get it today. Apparently, “We are not responsible for customer valuables left in your RV” is code for “We are completely free to steal from you without repercussion”.

Sigh