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diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt index e0f31bf..fc78462 100644 --- a/scratch.txt +++ b/scratch.txt @@ -2,6 +2,23 @@ The energy of chaos is required to change the existing order. # Scratch +It began the way all Travco adventures should. After the last things were stowed securely away, I fired up the engines, which roared the life. I sat down, grabbed the shift handle, put my foot on the brake... and it went straight to the floor. No brakes at all. Perfect. Travco brakes. You either hate them, or you don't have a Travco. + +Actually they aren't that bad, but they do require regular attention. I knew what was wrong. Whenever I park with the wheels angled too sharply to the right, the driver's side wheel leaks brake fluid[^1]. We'd been sitting like that for five days. I opened the master cylinder reservoir and sure enough, it was basically dry. I refilled it and started pumping the pedal. Still nothing. + +I had to run the last of the trash to the dump (where we lived there was no trash service), so I did that and used the time to think about the brakes. Probably just need to pump them some more. I got back and did that. Still no brakes. And it was past departure time. Well. Shit. It was raining by now. The yard was getting muddy, especially right around the bus. + +I pulled out the service manual just to make sure there was nothing unusual about bleeding the brakes in this thing. There didn't seem to be. So I grabbed a strip of sockets and a socket wrench and got down in the mud. Corrinne pressed the pedal, the kids fetched my tools when I forgot them back at the previous wheel, and together we bled the lines all the way around. I got back in and fired it up again. Nice strong pedal. Perfect. We hit the road. + +I've had people ask if I am really as calm and collected in these situations as I write them and the answer in the past, was, not always. I do have a natural tendency to remain calm in stressful situations, and in fact I get calmer as tension increases, which even I don't understand. Whenever something goes wrong, the stress for me isn't that something went wrong, it all comes down to -- what is the problem? I used to get very frustrated because I wouldn't know what was wrong with the bus. + +When we left on this trip originally I knew very little about how an engine works and even less about the nearly infinite number of things that can go wrong. I still don't know everything, but after three years of keepin' on keepin' on, I've figured out a few things. Thanks to my uncle Ron, a mechanic in New Orleans, some YouTube channels, and the powerful motivating factor of, I HAVE TO FIGURE THIS OUT, I know more about what might be wrong. Whether or not I can fix it is a different story. Not only are my skills limited, the tools I can carry and the places I have to work are also limited. I'm probably not going to be replacing a cam shaft at the side of the road. Things I can't fix will probably still go wrong, but at least now I'll know when those situations come up. In hindsight, of the four major mechanical repairs I've hired out in the first three years we traveled this way, today I would only hire out one of them. Even though one, I'm not sure I'd hire out. I might at least try to convince a Walmart to let me spend a few days in their parking lot redoing a head gasket. + + + + +[^1]: This is something that needs to be properly addressed at some point, but it's been doing this for over three years now, so I don't worry about it too much. In a campground site the wheels usually end up straight, it's only boondocking that sometimes the wheels end up cockeyed and I forget to spin them straight. + # Stories to Tell - Packing up chaos, pairing down, getting rid of - Drive down, perfect beginning, solving problems |