It's All Falling Apart!

My wife and I are back a day early from our 4 day camping trip. We decided to leave with the rest of our church group yesterday instead of staying for an extra day (as we had originally planned). The reason for our early departure was that a lot of stuff was breaking down and I wanted to come home and fix it.

When we arrived at the campground (state park) on Friday, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the electric was back on, after being out for nearly a week due to Hurricane Ike. However, within two hours of our arrival, the electric went out and never came back. NO PROBLEM! Our motorhome is self-contained and has just about every possible amenity, even without an external power source. It has a separate "coach" battery that will power just about everything except the air conditioners. It has propane which will power the water heater, stove, and refrigerator. It even has a 6.5 kw generator which will power just about everything, including enough outside outlets to provide power to other campers in our group. We were fully prepared!

Friday was cool outside and we used the coach battery and propane to power everything. This was the very first time that we had ever used propane to power the refrigerator or the coach battery to provide electrical power and I was very pleased that everything worked!

Saturday morning, we went mountain biking. As we were nearing the end of the course, my friend's back tire went flat. No problem - I was prepared with a miniture can of Fix-A-Flat. We inflated the tire with fix-a-flat and got started again. This is the point at which things started to go wrong. After only a short period of time, the tire went flat again. This wasn't a big problem as we were within a mile of the campground and we just walked back. Saturday evening, the women went to town and they picked up a self-sealing tube for my friend. After our evening cookout, he installed the new tube but as he was re-installing the wheel, he discovered that he lost the axle nut. This could have been a big problem as he certainly could not ride without an axle nut. However, another member of our group had a fancy baby stroller with the same nut and he was more than willing to loan it to my friend. Problem solved.

Saturday was a warm day and we decided to start the generator on the motorhome so that we would have air conditioning and be able to run our outside lights and outside AC outlets. As it got dark, our group was sitting around the campfire, which was near our motorhome. I noticed the interior lights had gone out and I went to investigate. The generator was working fine. The AC outlets were working fine. It quickly became obvious that everything that ran on DC power was dead. I checked the battery, which was nearly new, and it was reading 13.5 volts - PERFECT. I checked all the circuit breakers and fuses - ALL OK. With it being dark, I decided to give up until the next day. We didn't really need DC electric (or any electric for that matter), so it wasn't really any big deal.

The next morning, we got up early to go mountain biking again. The weather was beautiful and we were riding the course at a pace that would have surely been our best to date! As I went around a sharp corner, the back end of my bike slid wildly to the side. I thought that I might have just hit some loose dirt. My riding partner who was just behind me yelled "your tire is going flat". Since we were within a few hundred yards of the half-way point (a state park lodge), I decided to keep going. I leaned over the handlebars to keep the weight off the flattening back tire and asked my friend let me know when it got completely flat. I was sure that we could make it to the half-way point (still in record time). About that time, I heard my partner yell "OH NO"! I thought he might have crashed. I couldn't see him in my rear view mirror and I yelled "are you OK"? He responded, "I've got a major malfunction". I started walking back to him. It was obvious that he did indeed have a major malfunction and that our riding was over for the weekend. The rear derailler was broken and hanging by the chain. In less than half the length of the course, we had broken both bikes.

We walked the rest of the way to the lodge (half way point) and called our friends at the campground. Within a short period of time, a friend arrived with a pickup truck and we were on our way back to the campground with our broken bikes.

Since our bikes were out of commission, I decided to work on the motorhome. I got out the electrical schematic for the motorhome and my voltmeter and started troubleshooting the electrical system. It didn't take long before I found the problem - a damaged DC electrical buss. The bottom part of the electrical buss showed signs of overheating, with melted plastic around it. It was certainly an odd failure, but one which shouldn't be that difficult to fix. As a temporary fix, I jumped the power input to the buss and got all our DC components back in operation, other than the radio and a couple of other non-essential things. The only question left to be answered is what caused the overheating at this point.

Anyway, with two broken bikes, a temporarily fixed motorhome, and no electrical service at the campground, we decided to leave with the rest of the group on Sunday afternoon and start to get things fixed. I've already gotten my flat tire fixed and will take my friend's bike to the shop tomorrow for him.

I know none of this has anything to do with real estate. I will be doing some rental property stuff this week, before riding my motorcycle with another church friend down to Tenessee for another 3-day weekend, starting Friday or Saturday. We'll be riding "The Dragon", which is an 11 mile stretch of road that has 318 curves. If you're interested, you can read about "The Dragon" at http://www.tailofthedragon.com/.