Day 251 - More West Texas

We decided that since we had good internet, and needed to wait for the tyre people to come and fix the flat, we would stay at Hilltop another day, get work done, and get the flat fixed.

As you can see below, it was quite flat. Managed not to damage the outer tyre much. Whew.  I have ordered a mount and a cover for a spare. Given that we are two tyres down already, I think we should have one....

I had a great conversation with a family from Virginia who were on a similar trip, and talked to them by the pool about work/travel/school balance on the road.  At sunset I talked to three cousins (two retired air traffic controllers - one worked in Atlanta the other at the Memphis FexEx hub) and an Air Force widow) who were in the Class A next to us. They were on a three month post retirement trip. One of them had moved into the RV as "home", the others were along for the ride as long as they could stand each other.

Day 250 West Texas

 We left the RV park and headed into serious west Texas. It got drier, we started seeing more oil wells and a set of mountains that I didn't realize were there. In the later afternoon we stopped at Dairy Queen, my first time since high school.

Classic west Texas town

It had rained, there were a lot of wildflowers.

Dusty sunset

 After we had settled in to Hilltop RV park, and went out to look at the sheep and the sunset we discovered that we had blown the inner passenger rear tyre. We had heard a bang about 50 miles earlier, but after pulling over and inspecting the RV, we could not see anything wrong. oops. Calling Good Sam...  

Day 249 - Austin, horses

Maggie had some more quality time with the horses. We had fun conversations, and at last packed up the RV and crossed our fingers that the slide would come back in.

It is really raining. 

The slide came back in. We said goodbye, and headed off.

Not much further excitement. It was raining. We headed out of town. 

But first as stop at Ikea's as we needed to replace a chair that we left on a beach, and get a few storage unit supplies. Oh and we needed dinner. And some Swedish meatballs. 

Then we needed gas, and a quick trip to HEB for groceries.

Then our short one and a half hours to Brooks Hills RV park. Mostly to get a bit of distance in and make sure we actually got out of Austin. The rain let up as we drove around looking for our spot. It returned with a vengeance when we got out to hook up the water and electricity, At least the electricity got hooked up before the air turned liquid.

Day 248 Still in Austin

 It has been raining on Stephanie and Maggie most of the time since they left Florida and today was not different.  Everyone was busy at work which the rain encouraged. There some stress in the morning as we tried to sort out the warranty before the repair people showed up.

After lunch, we got a call and the Saturday repair guy said that he couldn't come Saturday (what was dispatch thinking) but would come in the evening. Dispatch noted that they couldn't promise they would have parts etc. but would do what they could.

At 3.00 the "late next week" place called to day they had a cancelation and could be by at 3.30, (and they had promised parts in stock). So we said sure!!

Three and a half hours later, the persistent, stalwart, problem solving, heroic repair men had replaced the burned out motor, discovered that the whole slide out had been racked and out of alignment probably for a year and we suspect made the warranty company very unhappy with their report (there were a lot of pictures spent and quite some time on the phone).

This is not making us feel warm and fuzzy about the dealer who sold us the RV with the arbitrarily large number of inspection points. No doubt more on that later. We will be scheduling what will probably be a multi-month repair in June...

Had a lovely dinner with our hosts, who continue to be awesomely generous and nice given that we managed to break down on their lawn and invited ourselves to a more extended stay than planned.

It continues to rain buckets.

Day 247 - Austin

 We spent rather a lot of the morning troubleshooting and hunting up mobile repair units (overnight, morning, and poking at it did not solve the problem.  After many, many phone calls we got a vague, see you "late next week", a firm "see you Saturday", and a number of if you can drive it it, we can get to it around May 22nd (or 25th).

So feeling that we were not going to be stuck there forever, and with very gracious hosts, we got some work done and Maggie helped groom the horses.

I scheduled a Lyft way ahead of time for our next dinner appointment in Austin with the nephews, but the Lyft driver bailed on us, 10 minutes out. And then there were no more cars. 

Our saintly host offered to drive us in, and we had a great Texas BBQ dinner. Lyft did come through for the ride home.

Earlier in the trip it was easy (and inexpensive) to rent a car when we didn\"t want to drag the RV around. This has changed. Rental cars, if available, are now expensive. It also turns out that "if available" mostly means not available. Try again in a week or two. Apparently during the plague, all the rental companies sold off lots of their fleets to raise cash, and now don\"t have cars, can\"t buy new ones (chip shortage limiting car production) and demand has soared....  

This also applies to Uber and Lyft we have discovered. much harder to find and more expensive as lots of drivers left, and now suddenly there is great demand.

Still stuck in the front yard....

Day 245 Austin

Today we go to visit a friend from second grade whom I found on the interwebs. Since we still remembered each other from all that time ago, and they graciously said we could park in their driveway, we went for a visit. 

We were meeting friends who had moved from Tahoe for dinner, but we stopped in in the afternoon to have a chat and make sure we were not fumbling around in the dark.

We had a great reunion, and had fun getting reacquainted. Then we pushed out the slide out to get at dinner cloths, and then discovered that it would not go back in. oops. "Austin, we've had a problem".

There was just time to get a Lyft into town, so we did that and had a great dinner catching up with our friends. Then we Lyfted back.  

The morning will tell if this is a big problem or a little problem.....  

Day 244 - San Antonio - Medina River Winery

Mostly today was another work day. We moved at noon from Hidden Valley RV Park to our Harvest Host, Medina River Winery. 

Its a very small winery, but it had really awesome (for Harvest Host) parking with electric and water! 

We tasted a selection of wines, bought four bottles and enjoyed the vista of the wheat field behind us.