We got in the ring with the wrong boxer BUT we had creations best "cut man" in our corner!

It's been a tough month for the Trekker and her crew.  On June 27th we were driving through Tennessee (lots of hills) on our way to our next Sojourn.  We were holding a Vacation Bible School (VBS) for the church in Spencer, WV.  As we were driving along when we heard a clang, the kind of sound when dishes are dropped.  When we arrived at the lot we own in Derossett, TN we didn't see anything, so we chalked it up to the dishes we store in the dishwasher shifting going over the hills. So, we started to put out our slides.  Putting out the front driver's slide about 6" from totally extended we heard a crunch. STOP!!!!! Went back to look and... What is THAT? It looks like a tile! Sure enough it was.

Actually it was 2 tiles off the outside bathroom wall that had fallen right down into the 3" area between the wall and the end of the kitchen) and along the edge of the slide out. 

The Offending Tiles.  You can pretty clearly see the part that got caught in 

the slide itself.  It is in tiny pieces

In falling, the tile went right down the side of the kitchen cabinet pushing the rubber "shielding" aside and then got caught when the wall was sliding out, SOMEHOW this caused our wall to be unable to retract more than about 4 inches.  (Night mare time! 😱)

This is where the tile had fallen into.  It pushed the dark brown rubberized plastic protective

piece to the side as it went right down the kitchen cabinet on the right.  This is about a 2" gap.

So, I worked with Corey Davis from the Tiffin Motorhomes Service Department for two days to try to get the slide back in.  It just was NOT going to happen.  On June 30th we drove 260 miles with the slide OUT 😱😱😱😱 to Red Bay, Alabama.  We had to put a heavy duty nylon strap around the rig and have a pilot car driver ahead of the rig; a wide load sign on the back of the RV and Irene as a trail car behind the rig with her 4-way hazard lights blinking all the way there.

Driving to Red Bay, AL from DeRossett, TN.  That's 260 miles with this slide stuck OUT.

If you look closely at the slide you can see the yellow nylon strap we put all the way around the 

RV to try to assure the slide would not go OUT any further.  The only thing worse than having a slide stuck out is to have a slide FALL out on the road as you are driving to get it fixed.

Unfortunately, the Tiffin Service department worked with a skeleton crew the week of July 4th and the slideout repair bay was one of the bays that was off for the week.  So, we had to end up cancelling the Spencer, WV sojourn.  Also, unfortunately, there was an RV with some MAJOR slide issues that was ahead of us in getting into the slide repair bay.  So, all we could do was wait.  You just can't continue to drive with your slide out.  They started working on the other RV on the 10th of July.  (It ended up taking 8 days to get everything on it fixed).  

Since it was taking so long, I decided to send Irene up to Lafayette, Indiana (Were she used to practice medicine).  There just wasn't any point in having both of us sitting there twiddling our thumbs.  Besides, she was having some pain in her chest that concerned her.  Since just one year ago she had a clean angiogram, she figured it must be her gastric reflux acting up.  She knew since it was her old group she'd probably  be able to get into see a gastroenterologist quickly.  Besides, one of our granddaughters was up there, so it would give Irene some time with her.  She had a consult on Monday, July 17th and had an upper end endoscopy on Tuesday.  The doctor assured her the pain wasn't gastric related.  Therefore, he had his staff take her to the hospital ER to get a heart work up.   In the ER she had an abnormal EKG, heart enzymes in her blood, and a blood test that showed possible clotting issues.  So, they admitted her for observation.   The next day she had a nuclear medicine chemical/treadmill stress test and an echo cardiogram (an ultrasound of the hetart). These indicated that she had insufficient blood flow to the entire front part of her heart.  Therefore, a cardiologist took control over her case.  He scheduled a heart angiogram (aka cardiac cath) for Thursday morning.  He told her he wanted me there if at all possible.

In the mean time, back in Red Bay, on Tuesday afternoon they got OUR RV into the slideout repair bay.  Two hours of diagnostics gave them a direction to attack the problem on Wednesday, July 19th.

On the 19th, they got the Trekker in and had it repaired in 3 hours.  The problem was the screws they used to attach the "J Section" of our sofa to the floor.  They were too long and had gone all the way through the plywood and had made grooves in the tile floor.  When the slide was brought in the torque on the screws as the slide started to come in crooked, twisted them, bent them and broke them off.  So, now they where getting the whole slide bound up as it tried to come in.  They took out the old screws and put in shorter ones of the same dimension.  BOOM, ready to go! 😎

I called Irene and she told me that she told they were going to be doing an angiogram to find the blockage, it's severity and if necessary to stent it.  That would be done Thursday morning.  NO PROBLEM! I can leave Red Bay now (11:10 AM) and be in Lafayette, Indiana by 10 or so tonight.  Piece of Cake! 😎😎😎

Into the Trekker I bound and toward Lafatyette I head.  78 miles down the road, suddenly the engine of the RV begins to de-rate (as in it goes from 70 mph to 25 mph in 300 yards.  I get off to the side of US Hwy 72 Alt/AL 20 just before I am about to get on I-65 North toward Nashville.  I turned the engine off and tried to restart the RV.  On the Odometer information panel it just cycled through ECM COMM ERROR; TCM COMM ERROR; ABS COMM ERROR again and again. (ECM = Electronics Control Module; TCM = Transmission Control Module; ABS = Anti-Lock Braking System Control Module).  In other words, I am 79 miles into a 554 mile trip to be with my wife while she is having heart procedure and suddenly our just repaired RV has become an undrivable wind break.  I call Tiffin Service and work with Ricky Brown to try to get the Trekker up and moving again.  NO LUCK! 😭😭😭😭

To make matters worse, when I call Coach-Net and AAA (our roadside assistance coverages) they can't find any Tow Truck in the Huntsville area that has a tow truck with the proper kind of lift on it to haul our Independant Front Suspension RV back to Red Bay until the next morning at 9 AM. 😠😠😠

Our Trekker is built on a proprietary chassis built by Tiffin itself.  The PowerGlide chassis.  It's a great chassis, until it breaks down.  Then, since it IS proprietary, you can't have just ANYONE work on to.  They have to be trained on it.  So, I email Gary Harris, the head of the Tiffin Motorhomes chassis division, to explain to him the problem.  I'm still stuck on the road and WILL BE all night.  I will NOT be able to get to Lafayette to be with Irene during her procedure and this thing is B-R-O-K-E-N.  GARY HILP ME PLEASE!! 🙏🙏🙏

I get a call from Gary at 6:51 AM the next morning.  He is going to send Jason, the best electronics guy in the chassis department to diagnose what is wrong.  It takes Jason about 1/2 hour.  One of the 2 signal multiplexers in the passenger side rear (the engine control multiplexer) had a total failure.  He switches the plug from the bad one to the other multiplexer (the rear end cap control multiplexer). (Internally all 4 multiplexers on the RV are identical) and BOOM, the rig starts right up!! HOO-RAY!!!!  But now it is back to Red Bay to get a new multiplexer installed.  That's an 1 1/2 trip.  
Within 20 minutes Jason had the new multiplexer installed and Gary Harris said the Chassis Division would "eat" the cost of it.  He said that the multiplexers are extremely reliable.  They only average 2-3 failures of the components per year.  So, I'm back on the road to Lafayette, Indiana again. 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉  

I arrived in Lafayette at 11:30 PM.  Irene had already had her procedure, which involved putting a stent in the proximal end of her Left Anterior Descending (LAD) artery.  It had a 90% blockage.  This artery brings blood to over 1/2 of your heart and most importantly, the Left Ventricle (which sends it out to the rest of your body), a 100% blockage of the proximal end (near end) of this artery causes the most profound type of heart attack.  It is commonly known as the "widow maker."   So, the Lord saved Irene's life by having her go to Lafayette to chase down the cause for her chest pains.  At 90% blocked, I would think there is virtually NO WAY that the angiogram she had 1 year ago was actually a "clean" angiogram.😕😮😞

We left for our Middletown, NY sojourn on Friday Morning.  We were already 1 week late for it.  We had to drive to Spencer, WV on the way to Middletown, NY because we had packages and our mail sent there thinking we would be there for the VBS in early July. OOPS! 😮

We arrived in Middletown Saturday afternoon at about 3 PM.  It felt great to see our sojourner friends again.  Two of our closest friends in Sojourners, Brenda and David Blair were here also.  Her brother, Rick and his family attend the church here.  That's how Sojourners got involved in helping them renovate the building they purchased.  It's been 4 years of renovation and it is finally been given a Certificate of Occupancy by the county inspectors.  We were privileged to attend the dedication ceremony yesterday afternoon and I was honored to both teach class and preach yesterday morning.