What Was She Thinking ?....

We left the Keys on Sunday and started to make our way north. We had an appointment at a Ford dealer, in Orlando, to get some routine work done (15,000 mile check, oil change, rotate front tires,etc.). We spent the last two nights at a Passport America park on Lake Toho (there's more to the name but this is the abbreviation). Nice little park for $15 per night. It's called Lake Toho RV Resort and it's close to Kissimmee and about an hour from Orlando.

Yesterday we went to visit an RV Women member who we had contacted. Linda will send out an e-mail to RVW members, when she knows we'll be in their area so we can get together and meet more of the members. Usually very few of them respond to our calls or e-mails but we're so happy that Rene did. As we found out in meeting her, she is a gifted photographer and does some amazing things. One of the really cool things she does is use a 1972 Polaroid camera...the kind where the picture shoots out the end of the camera and develops as you watch it. She told us the history of the man who created the Polaroid camera and how those "developing on the spot" pictures came about but that's another whole story. OK, so she has some tools and as soon as the picture comes out of the camera she starts working on the image (before you can even see it). She embellishes the image with what appears to be brush strokes that kind of softens the image. The results are pretty remarkable. She also does glass fusing, works with latex, takes amazing large images and does unique stuff with those large prints and I could go on and on. Really neat stuff from a really neat lady ! Go to www.renegriffith.com to see her website and some of her images. You might recognize some of her stuff because it's on postcards, housewares, calendars, stationary, prints, etc. Since we're on this Whole 30 challenge, we packed a picnic lunch of the stuff we can eat and had a little picnic lunch on her back patio. Fun times ! It's so neat to meet people on the road and make connections with people you might never cross paths with.

So, like I mentioned at the top of the post, we had this appointment today at Greenway Ford, in Orlando. An 8:00 appt for which a woman called last night with her friendly reminder. Our GPS said it was an hour's drive from the campground to here, so we got up at 6 to have time for our breakfast (an important start to our day on the Whole 30 challenge) and break camp to get here in time. Traffic was worse than I had imagined it would be and we were 15 minutes late but had called when we knew we wouldn't be here at 8. I think when I pulled out of the campground this morning, I must have attached a giant sign to the front of the rig that said, "Please pull out in front of me any chance you get" cause there were several of these close calls. The biggest, "What was she thinking?" came when we were approaching an intersection and a woman decides she wants to be in my lane and then stop in the road. How I got the rig stopped in time is beyond me. I think I must have stood on the brake pedal cause I could hear stuff sliding in the rig (that normally stays put). The dog dishes slid from half way back in the rig up the rig to just behind our seats where the vinyl ends. Holy Cow ! We arrived at the garage and I was still shaking from the experience.

We get the rig checked in with the service guy and go to the lounge to do some work. About 9:45 we drive the car up to Wal-mart and down to Sams's Club to get some things. We get back to the dealership and around 1:30 I go in to check on the status of things. Kevin said he would check and find me with an update. He comes back in a few minutes and tells us that they can now begin to start work on the rig. Linda and I were shocked that they had not even begun work on the rig after having it for 5.5 hours. He explained that they only had two bays....blah blah blah. We said why didn't you tell us last night to come in at noon if work was backed up and you wouldn't start it when we arrived ? We had made our appointment several weeks ago due to our travel schedule of knowing we'd be coming through here so this lassez-faire attitude really irked us. No explanation...just we're starting it now but we can't look at the AC problem (a new item on the list was the dash AC didn't blow cold air) for another several hours. Long story short: we have a leak in the ac system (probably been there from day 1) and they have injected dye to find it. We are sitting in their parking lot. Hopefully tomorrow they will find the leak and fix it. Hoping they don't have to take out the unit and ship it away to get it fixed, instead of something simple like an "o" ring. On the bright side, if there is a better time to have this happen, it's now before we get back to work and our work schedule is really tight. Sadly, there are very few service calls where I can remember that things go smoothly, on time and you're on your way. Seems to be lots of hiccups in the repair business. Probably why I hate coming to a garage to get work done.....I was going to say that it's like going to the dentist but I don't mind the dentist at all. I would much rather go to the dentist and I will be doing just that in the near future (lost a filling the other day). Man, it's always something!