Mud Yachts - spinnakers and zaps!

Today is our first down-time day so here's two stories for you re the Florida adventure between St. Augustine and Cocoa Beach: 

Not long after we left St. Augustine, the mechanism that holds the largest awning in place for travel broke loose and the awning itself commenced to flail in the wind like a spinnaker in full sail.  This is not an event that happens when you are nicely docked in your spot in an RV park - oh no! This is only an event that could happen when you're traveling 63 mph on I-95 in a construction zone. Johnnie immediately manoevered onto the right shoulder between the Dr. Seuss construction (highway) cones and we somehow arrived at a stop.

Luckily, the awning 'in play' was on the passenger side instead of the drivers side where everyone (except us) was doing 75 mph. We looked at each other and realized we had packed the ladder into the compartment on the drivers side.  Alas, from the passenger (safe) side, we pulled out the golf clubs and a # of other items, yanked and retrieved the ladder. With traffic whizzing by us non-stop, Johnnie shinnied up the ladder, made an adjustment, re-set the awning in place and started the bus only to wonder out loud, "how the hell are we going to get out of here?" - from a dead stop into racing traffic. 

Well, you'd be surprised (I was) how light those Dr. Seuss cones are! I rolled one completely away into the ditch and, when a wee opening in the traffic arrived, off we zoomed.  I must say though that for the next 50 miles, we looked, checked, listened, re-checked and wondered if that adjustment would hold! it did! and now, at RV Space Coast Resort, it is proudly in it proper place displaying Christmas 2007 LED lights!

But this was not all that happened yesterday morn... not so long after the awning incident, we unknowningly drove over some debris from a transport tire and it punctured a good-sized hole in the electrical junction box for the tail lights. Also unknown to us was the next phase - when an electrical short occured within that junction box. All of this led to a 'smokin' arrival at our campground! As I casually returned from checking in at the park office, I saw John with the fire extinguisher in hand and hurrying to the back of the bus! Several buckets of water later produced a reasonable amount of steam to attract even more of a crowd. Sorry, no time for pictures! There is no question though that we were noted as the 'attraction for the day'!

Today, John discussed the matter with the local RV parts and service guy who said, 'oh yeah, these kind of electrical shorts are pretty common." He added. "the the worst one was when the tow vehicle caught on fire!" All to say, it sounds like we were lucky on two fronts - to have it happen with just the tail lights plus amongst our 'new' friends... more stories later.