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Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Empty air bags & the Green Bay Packers

It was a memorable travel day yesterday but it started out innocent enough: We got up about 7:00ish and had breakfast. Next as I was reeling in the power cord a fellow camper came over and we chatted for a few minutes.

He was on his maiden trip in a beautiful new Winnebago Itasca. Turns out his wife is an author and he helps her (LL Foster). He retired from Kroger's a little while ago.

After that he headed toward the showers and we pulled up in front of the KOA office to hitch up the Honda. Man - it seemed like a bouncy ride around the loop through the campground!
Then when we got on Highway 2 West, it took us about 150 yards before we realized--something is wrong!

The air bags had not inflated. Now what do we do?

My first thoughts were, how much is this going to cost, I am glad we have CoachNet. The Roadrunner was hanging pretty low to the ground so we kept going slow and pulled over. We were in a narrow place to pull over but we had to stop.

I called Brent Bullard (sp?) at Tiffin Motor Homes/Service Dept and he said it sounded like the air bags had not inflated. (Confirmed our suspicion). We checked the air pressure gauges (at 105 -115) and that seemed to be ok. Next we looked at the HWH buttons and pressed the 'STORE' button again and they seemed to check out fine. Apparently the air bags did not inflate all the way in the campground when we raised the jacks.

He said we may have to pull out the generator and crawl under the Roadrunner to press the Passenger Side (PS) rectangle release button on the crossmember bar behind the generator. (We learn something new every time we call those guys.) He said to be careful I didn't press the other one because it deflates the air bags.

We inched up the highway another 100 yards and found a place where I could crawl under the front end of the motorhome. But as we went through the big parking lot we noticed the ride was back to normal--the airbags had re-inflated. Yeah!

When I pressed the 'STORE' button again it must have been like rebooting a computer when it locks up. We drove a few miles and kept an eye on the air pressure and all was fine. Problem one solved!

As we were traveling down scenic Highway 2 West I noticed the DS front bay door was raised up. Yikes! Not good at 58 mph! I immediately was able to pull over and shut that bad boy and lock it.

Wow -- that was close. Problem two solved.

Now back to our scenic drive along the Upper Peninsula and Lake Huron. Beautiful country and this side of the Lake has sandy beaches. The highway was a very good one for only being a two laner most of the way.

We headed around the top of Lake Huron and travled down the western shoreline Lake Michigan. Beautiful country (did I just say that). Our mission was to stop in Green Bay and see Lambeaux Field.

That is what we did and we arrived about 2:30. It was pretty exciting. We saw some statutes and pictures of the great personnalities in the Green Bay history.

They have a first class, new looking stadium with great facilities.The Packers were practicing on the field near Don Hudson Stadium so we got to seem them for a while. That was cool.After Green Bay we decided to head on down the road since it was a nice afternoon and the weather was good. We made it as far as Sparta, WI and parked in WalMart where we spent the night.
While en route to Sparta, Pam fixed a delicious dinner of chicken cordon bleu and tater tots. We had to run the generator and microwave but it was the first time we had dinner while rolling down the road!

That's it this time for the Roadrunner Chronicles. We'd love to hear from you.

3 comments:

  1. Randy, that was good luck with both the air bags and the door! It's sure nice when a few things go haywire and it turns out o.k. - it makes up for all those other times when things to go astray. Thanks for the pics of the Packer's facility - one of my all-time favorite teams!

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  2. Sounds like you took in stride a pretty hairy start to your trip! We keep wondering how much more we have to learn after 6 months of the travelling life. So glad that all turned out O.K. and SAFE!

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  3. Well it is always a good ending when you don't have to go into a shop for repair... We loved the tour at Lambeau Field. It was a great day of fun for us. We are full timers too and so glad that I found you BLOG. I am adding you to my favorites list and hope that you'll come on over and visit... Have Fun!

    Travel Safe
    Donna

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