Expensive Air

Silly Jay.  He thought that air was one of the last things that was still free.

We packed up the RV.  We battened down the hatches.  Jay tried to start Big Blue.

No joy.

This is never a good sign.

Jay applied his cursory skills at fixing large diesel engines.

No joy.  

Time to call a friend.  (Jay has a friend in Nashville that is a crack expert at such things).  Here's how that went:

JW -  "Check the starter connections".

Jay - "Already did that".

JW - "Tap the starter with a hammer".

Jay - "Already did that".

JW - "Call a mechanic".

Ok, Jay did that.

Ok, this is NEVER a good sign.

The FIRST mobile guy tried to jump it.  No help; the batteries were fine.  With that experiment exhausting the scope of his skills, we called another mobile guy, who specializes in big trucks.

The SECOND mobile guy by-passed the starter solenoid and confirmed that the starter works.  In fact, when he got it to turn, the truck lurched.  What?  It's not in neutral?  

Turn out that this fancy-schmancy automatic transmission (Sissy Transmission, say the truckers) needs compressed air to move it into gear, and into neutral.  And when Jay moved it "just a few feet" the day before, he shut the truck off before it could build up enough air pressure to put itself back into neutral when he turned if off.

So now it sat, stuck in gear, and it won't start in gear.  And it can't build up air pressure until it is started.  But it can't start, cuz it's in gear.   But it can't get out of gear, cuz it needs air.  You see the dilemma.

So Mr. Repairman number two calls Mr. Repairman number three to come with the BIG truck that has an air compressor.  And they filled the truck full of Expensive Air.  And then the transmission was happy.  Then the starter was happy.  Then the repairman was happy.

Jay had mixed emotions on the whole deal.  Learning how to be a Super Trucker sure is expensive.

We hit the road, about 6 hours later than intended and drove until the wee hours.  It is at times like this that we have slight pangs of affection for Walmart, who allow vagrant RV'ers to park overnight in their vast parking lots.  We reached the northern edges of Baltimore, found a Walmart and grabbed some sleep.  Off to New York State we went in the morning.

We found an interesting campground about an hour south of the Canadian border, and had a nice evening here.  Upstate New York is really quite beautiful.  Very rustic, beautiful vistas of farms, and huge tree-lined gorges.  Our campground did require finesse to squeeze into our site, and will require equal finesse to extract ourselves when we leave.  We pray for no bumps into things when we leave.

We will soon find out what it is like to go through customs with a big rig.  We weren't thinking when we stocked the wine cabinet earlier this week.... we will certainly have to pay some duty on our stash.  We'll let you know how that goes.

So we are now off to see Peggy and David!  Jay's cousin Kathy MacGillivray and her son Jack (a student at Cornell) are visiting Dave and Peggy this weekend too, so it will be quite festive!

And may your air be free.