Day 21
Day 21: October 19, 2021 (Updated: Fredericksburg TX to Austin TX)
Day 21 represents the first day of the second half of my journey. The first half was a journey with hail, thunderstorms, headwinds, six flat tires, and two damaged bikes (from my RV driving, not from crashes). I wanted to quit at three times. Almost daily, I questioned whether it was worth it, and rode a lot of miles on my bike.
On the way to Austin, we pulled over for a bio-break. As the RV was exiting the road, the transition from the road to the gravel shoulder was steeper than anticipated and we ripped off the gray water – black water tanks drainage system. This is the second time that’s happened.
If you’re not familiar with RV lingo (which I wasn’t until a few months ago when I bought the RV), gray water is drainage from the sink and shower and black water is from the toilet.
The design for the drainage system of the black and gray water tanks is stupid. It hangs below the frame; it doesn’t have to be. We think it’s designed this way for RV shops to have constant repair work to do.
With the drainage system ripped off, the tanks emptied. Not pleasant. Fortunately, I emptied the tanks a few days ago, we’ve been staying in hotels and have not used the RV toilet very often.
That was enough for me, we packed up the bikes and headed to Austin.
We dropped Darin off at his home. It was good to get to know him. Then we went to the bike shop. I’m sending two bikes home: my extra road bike and the electric mountain bike (it has a damaged rear tire from my second RV incident). Without these two bikes, we can lose the extra bike rack on the RV; it stuck out about 8 feet from the back. Now we only have the custom recumbent rack, which only sticks out about 2 feet.
Beth called the bike shop yesterday to confirm that they could ship my two bikes home and tune up one of my recumbent bikes. When we get to the bike shop, it was closed with a sign in the window saying they are out for training and will be back tomorrow.
We stood at the front door for several minutes, Bruce was making calls. I was checking messages to confirm we were at the right place; we were. The door opened and a guy said that the shop was closed; he operated the food truck that was fixture in the parking lot of the bike shop. Not sure how he has keys to the shop, but he did.
The guy’s name was Ray. Ray called someone from the bike shop and they allowed us put the bikes in the shop and asked us to come back the next morning to take care of the bikes. Phew!! We unloaded the bikes, put them in the shop, locked them up, and then threw out the extra bike rack; it was damaged. It felt good to get rid of it.
Bruce drove the RV to his condo in downtown Austin. Bruce did a nice job of navigated the narrow roads. We dropped off his bags and headed to my hotel. When we got to the hotel, a bellman named Robby helped me unload the RV and Bruce made some calls to find an RV repair shop to fix the broken drainage system.
No luck on an RV repair shop, so Bruce bought the parts and we fixed it ourselves. It wasn’t too bad, a bit smelly, a bit messy, but it only took us about 30 minutes to fix. We did it in the hotel parking lot.
With that fixed, Bruce drove the RV to a Ford truck dealer to get the check engine resolved. I followed in Bruce’s car; it was so nice to drive a regular car. Nate at the Ford dealer was pleasant and was confident they could take care of the issue by Thursday. We need the RV back on Friday to continue the journey.
Bruce dropped me off at the hotel at around 4 PM. I took a long shower; it took a double cleaning to get the smell off of me.
On the home front: Amy was checked into the hospital last night. It was a fiasco; the hospital didn’t have a record of her admission. She had to go through the ER to get admitted. It took 5 hours before she got a room at 1:30 AM.
Amy had a few tests today to confirm that it is her gallbladder. It took most of the day to get the tests done and she was not allowed food or drink until the tests were done. So, she was tired, hungry and thirsty most of the day. The tests did confirm that it is her gallbladder. The doctor scheduled surgery for Wednesday October 20th.
Patty, my younger daughter, was driving up to see Amy in the hospital and got into an accident. Fortunately, no one was hurt and there is minimal damage to her car, but she was pretty shaken up.
Ah, life. It just keeps coming whether we want it to or not.
I’m so looking forward to a coupled days off and sleeping in the same bed for a few nights. As I write this at 5 AM on Wednesday 10/20, it feels so good to know that I don’t’ have to pack up the RV and start riding in a few hours.