Woody Cavenaugh

9/3/06

From Courè d'Alene to the Kingston Ferry and beyond to Poulsbo we rode hard across Washington State to the end of the world. Washington has big ferries. We not only were able to take the RV to the island, we got to park it on the first floor and not have to unhook it. We parked it next to a classic Masariti. It was good.

We found the house and found the driveway that seemed to be purposed built for Serenity. Eventually. It had been a while since Sally had been there, and there were a few missed turns and searching around. But we found it, disconnected the shuttle and I pulled Serenity through its last 100 feet. 3000+ miles of flawless piloting, and no damage at all.

The plan was I was to simply back the RV up the driveway. With the camera system you can back it through the eye of a needle and still leave room for the thread. What the camera doesn't show is the distance between the towing rig and the rear tires. Normally this isn't a thing, however, in this case the driveway has two little combersom details. First, it has a gentle slope from the street to the top. The second problem is that there is a short and sudden slope from the sidewalk to the driveway. The effect is that when I attempted to back up the driveway the towing rig bottoms out on the driveway.

Ok, plan B. I am to drive it up the driveway. Ready set, bam. Bam? WTF is BAM? Time to back the heck up. Odd...I'm giving it gas, but I'm not doing that movement thing I am accustomed to. Time to investigate. Huh? Didn't expect that. The towing rig is dug into the pavement of the street. No backing back, no going forward, 1/4 of the street is blocked by RV. So what I need to do is find a way to remove the towing rig. You know, the one wedged in the street. Have I ever told you I was a clever monkey? I use the leveling system to raise back enough to remove the towing rig. Well that was the plan anyway. It would have worked, but I would have also needed a system to right it again after I rolled the RV on its side. So that didn't work.

Up the street walks the solution in humble clothing. One of the neighbors just happened to work for a towing service. She took one look at our situation and said, "Oh easy. This is like how they get those lowered cars up on flatbeds. You put boards under the rear tires and you drive up.

Smart lady.

Damage assessment. The towing rig was 100%,...fine. No damage whatsoever. The pavement was groved severly though. The only actual damage was the breakaway power plug for the towing rig. It had broken away as it should with no other damage, except my pride that is.

At this point Sally is in the process of getting moved in while Sara and I are unloading. The owner of the house had done a great job of being as helpful as she could for a person in an entirely other country. Everything was labeled. I'm not kidding. I didn't know there were so many different sizes of post it notes. Even the garbage was labeled. AMAZING.

After a quite moment alone prepping Serenity for adventures without me, my last act was the relenquish the keys. It wasn't easy for me. At this point its about 9:30pm and we are hungry. The waterfront is just down the street and we head that way for dinner. On a Sunday night. We didn't go where we had planned, but we ended up having the best Mexican food I had ever had. I think they were about close but had forgotton to turn off their neon open sign. So the owner served us. We drove 3000 miles to eat Mexican food and it was worth it.

Mission Accomplished. Now all we have to do is drive home again.