Finished in Red Bay

This will be the only post for our three days in Red Bay.  When we arrived, our thought was that we would spend some time driving around the area looking at the fall colors, since they really seem to be turning.  However, we rarely left the campground except to run into town for supplies.

On Saturday, I replace the bulb in the porch light, but it took a while since all of the auto parts closed at noon in Red Bay.  I finally found the bulbs at Piggly Wiggly.  I also dismantled the TV control box and put in an A/B switch so that we could use the new omni-dimensional antenna or switch back to the old batwing by using the switch. 

The rest of the day, we visited old friends that we have made either on our visits here, or on the road.  Sonny and Barb, who we met at a Texas SC rally in Murchison, TX a couple of years ago, were parked across the street from us.  Cindy and her husband, who we met when we were here watching the Bus being built are also here.  My new buddy Robert, followed us here from Tellico Plains, and we spent some time together.  Pat and Jodi are new friends that we met here, and I got to meet Hollis (2XR), who I have communicated with over the TRVN many times.

Sunday was a really nice sunny and warm day.  After waking up late and having a late breakfast as ‘brunch’, Patsy decided that we needed to wax the front of the Bus.  That took most of the afternoon, and we spent the remainder sitting around the campground visiting.  Patsy walked out to the entrance of the campground and took this picture:

On Monday, we got a lot accomplished.  I went to the Tiffin office and met with Jerry Williamson, the National Sales Manager, whom I had worked through issues before.   We talked about an issue that came up with the Aqua-Hot heater system at Tellico Plains on some coaches.  He was very interested, and started looking into it.  Fortunately, I don’t have the system on my Bus!!

I then talked to him about my roof leak in a slide, and he agreed that it should be covered under warranty, and helped me get that message to the service center.

Lastly, we discussed an email that I had sent to him last week about the leveling jack system on the Bus.  We eventually included Danny Innman into this discussion and they convinced me that I should let them install new 15,000lb jacks on the rear of the Bus in place of the 10,000lb jacks.  Jerry had already got approval from Bob Tiffin for Tiffin to absorb the cost of this upgrade.

I then went to the Service Center the work scheduled, and all I could get was a slot in the Express Bay… a concept here for people who show up without an appointment, and have less than six hours of work to get done.   We got in at 3:00PM and out by 4:30PM with two techs working on it.  They found a couple of screw holes in the roof of the slide (from the manufacturing process), and sealed them. 

Since we already had an appointment for November 30, 2009, we agreed that we would return then to have the ceiling in the slide replaced and the new jacks installed, and since the jacks are in short supply, they put my name on two of them and set them aside.  That will give me time to make sure that the leak is really fixed.  Here are a couple of photos of the techs working on the leak:

We also got a chance to mail my buddy, Mark, a new shipment of lights for his upgrade to the ceiling lighting in his Phaeton.  Check out his neat work on his Blog.

We plan to leave for home tomorrow morning.  It is about an 850 mile trip, and we expect to arrive on Wednesday afternoon.