Remember yesterday, when I said that the trip was going well, and 2020 was not throwing any crap at me? Yeah, well. You’ve heard of Karma, right? She’s a bitch.
The day started off so well. Swimmingly really. There were bridges and tunnels and deer. NASA and the NSA and Pennsylvania Ave. So many perfectly lovely and just-a-bit boring things that I was going to tell you about. That lasted right up until about 2:00. Here's Cricket and I during our lunch break. See how carefree we look?? <<sigh>>
Around 2, I stopped for diesel. As many of you know, it was one of my biggest concerns for this trip. Sometimes you get into a tiny gas station, and there’s not much room to maneuver. My fear is that sooner or later, I’ll get into a tight corner and I won’t be able to get both the RV and the car through. There’s no option to back up when the car is attached, so that means I’d have to disconnect the car, move the car, move the RV, and reconnect the car. In other words, it’s a big to-do, and I’m dreading the day when it happens. But that day wasn’t today.
I was feeling pretty good as I pulled out of that gas station, which I navigated so deftly. And that’s when Karma looked down on me and said, “So, you thought you could get away with bashing my friend, 2020, yesterday? Well, I'll show you!”
And suddenly I had alarms going off in the RV.
Now, before you get worried, let me assure you that I was never in any danger. These particular alarms simply meant: your journey is going to be a bigger pain-in-the-ass from now on. But before I can tell you my tale of woe, I have to school you on how some things work when you’re towing a car behind an RV.
First, some basic physics. My RV weighs about 12,000 pounds, fully loaded. My car weighs about 4,000. Think about what happens when I’m going down a hill. My heavy RV, which already takes longer to brake than your typical car, basically has a 4,000-pound weight pushing it down the hill. That means I REALLY need good brakes.
Which is fine. The RV brakes can handle that. But it wears on the brakes, and I can’t stop quite as fast if some idiot cuts in front of me, or a deer runs in front of me, because let's face it, although they are lovely animals and I love them, they are also assholes when it comes to running in traffic. So, we invested in a little device called a Brake Assist. Very cool device. You put it in the car, and it wirelessly communicates with the RV. When I step on the brake in the RV, the device steps on the brake in the car. Cool. The car can do its fair share of the braking.
The downside is that the device uses power to communicate with the RV, and it draws that power from the car’s battery. I’m sure you see where this is going – after a few hours of that, the car’s battery is going to die. So to offset that issue, we invested in another little device: a battery charger that will charge the car’s battery from the RV.
And yesterday, all went according to plan. Today, however, was another story.
After my stop at the gas station, I was pulling back onto the highway, and had to stop for a red light. When I hit the brake in the RV, that’s when the alarm went off. The tablet in the RV that monitors all these little add-ons told me that the Brake Assistant had failed.
Dang. I sat at that stop light, pondering my next step. Losing that brake is not ideal, but it’s not catastrophic either. I just have to drive a little more cautiously, giving myself extra braking time. And hope the deer play nicely. So I decided to stop at the next rest area to check it.
And Karma laughed.
As soon as I pulled onto the highway, another alarm went off. This time, the tablet let me know that it had detected low voltage on the car. Well shoot, with 2 systems failing, now I felt like I had to stop to check things out. I took the next exit and found a quiet road with a wide shoulder that I could pull over on.
In the car, everything looked perfectly normal. No issue that I could see. So I thought I’d just reset the brake, ignore the low voltage warning, and continue on my way. What, you don’t think that’s the best plan? Fix what you can, and hope for the best on the rest?? Be honest. We both know you’ve done it.
I unplugged the brake and went through its set-up procedure. I got to the last step and thought I was home free, but then the damn thing started alarming, complaining about not having enough power. Shoot. So much for that plan.
Plan B: I get on the phone with my favorite car guy (George), fill him in on the problem, and then ask if he thinks I can just start the car and run it for a few minutes.
“Um, yeah…”, he says slowly, thinking it over. “IF it’ll start.”
Now, I can, at times, be a very patient person. But when I’m troubleshooting, I tend to be a “just try it” type. Like last week, for example, when a co-worker asked me how to adjust a computer monitor so that she could see a message that was pushed off to the side. I had no idea how to fix it (monitors aren’t my thing), but I just started pushing buttons on the monitor until something worked. Problem solved.
So, before I had a chance to think through what my wise husband had just said, I put the car in park (it had been in neutral for towing), shut it off (it had been in ACC, also for towing), and then tried to start it.
And for just a split-second, I thought everything was OK.
But Karma was still laughing.
The car tried. I know it did. But after what sounded like a promising chug, it went silent on me. And that was the moment I realized that I had just screwed myself.
Another little lesson here on towing your car behind your RV. Some cars, Jeeps mostly, can be towed with the car totally shut off. But I’m not a fan of Jeeps (sorry Tim, if you’re reading this), so instead, I got a Honda CRV, I car that I am totally in love with. The downside of the Honda is that you have to go through a procedure to get the transmission ready for towing, and that procedure requires that the car be running. If the car won’t start, there is no way to get it into towing mode. And, therefore, no way to tow it without destroying the transmission.
Poor George. I know what a horrible feeling it must have been to be 600 miles away, and have absolutely no way to help. But hey, I’m a big girl. I got myself into this mess, now I had to get myself out of it.
Ask me what the best thing was that I purchased in 2020. Go ahead. Ask.
It was a Good Sam Roadside Assistance plan. Best $120 I ever spent!
The very patient guy on the phone took the time to understand the situation, walk me through a procedure to find my location (since I had no idea where I was), and dispatch a tow company. 25 minutes later, the tow guy showed up and had the car started in 5 minutes.
Few!
I let the car idol for 20 minutes, and I was on my way. 90 minutes later, I finally pulled into my campsite, just before 5 pm. And breathed a sigh of relief.
That relief lasted about five minutes, until I realized that the car’s battery was dead again. Doh!
I got a jumpstart from a kind stranger here at the campground, but my problem is not resolved. On my last phone call with Geo (probably the 8th or 9th of the day), he brought up the possibility that if my car battery drains out while I’m driving tomorrow, there might be some sort of transmission pump that will stop working, which would ruin the transmission if it happened. Fun right?
I don’t have a resolution to this problem yet. I had planned to leave here at 7 am tomorrow. But now the plan is to wait around until a local RV repair shop opens, give them a call, and hope they can squeeze me in.
You know what day tomorrow is, right? New Year’s Eve. What do you think the chances are that I’ll find someone who is open, and has some spare time for me? And if not tomorrow, ... Saturday? Monday??
I may be stuck here for a while. One the upside, it was 50 degrees when I pulled in. So there’s that.
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