Elepent

Oh!  I keep forgetting to mention that we figured out the source of one of our recurring problems with the Incorrigible, though we don’t have a solution yet.  Since September we’ve been periodically getting a nasty, burning-sulfur smell when driving.  It’s like a combination of rotten eggs and sewage, and it seems to happen when we start the coach up to move it.  It subsides after a while, sometimes recurring on the road, but it’s really gross while it lasts.

We visited RV forums and asked questions, getting suggestions ranging from a discharge of gas from the batteries (which are under the entry steps) to something dead caught in one of the vents.  Poking about proved all of these things to be in good order and not the problem, though.  Then the smell went away, and we thought we were in the clear.

No such luck, of course; it came back again.  Nothing seemed to help–not airing the Incorrigible out between drives, not Febreze, not voodoo.

In what appeared to be unrelated news, I kept seeing those cool shield bugs crawling on the outside of the moho. They were frequently stuck between the glass and screen in the bedroom windows, or crawling around the skylights.  Shield bugs are neat-looking, and generally harmless, so I’d help them find their way out, or ignore them.  While driving one day, I pointed one out to Lexie, who got on the Internet to find out what they were called.   She found it; it’s a western conifer seed bug, to be specific.  This blog post from Coldclimategardening.com provided lots and lots of information. <!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:”Cambria Math”; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1107304683 0 0 159 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>

For instance; these little guys have another name.  It turns out that what I call “shield bugs,” and the entymologists call “western conifer seed bugs,” are actually a breed of what the world at large calls stink bugs.  If you think you can see where this is going, you’re absolutely correct.

Stink bugs apparently don’t like the cold, so they’ll try to get into your nice warm house during the winter.  They don’t eat anything or reproduce, they just want refuge.  And so, since we were parked under a big pine tree in Ann Arbor for a while, they no doubt found their way into the nice, warm Incorrigible when the nighttime temperatures began dipping into the 50s.

Imagine their little stink-buggly surprise when the nice warm refuge they had found suddenly began vibrating and shaking.  Well, if you were a stink bug, you’d  probably react predictably–by firing off the biggest, nastiest round of smelly that you could.  And that’s apparently just what’s been happening.  We’ll get a stink bug or two on board, looking for warmth at night, and then they express their displeasure when we start it up and move it around!

Unfortunately there’s not an easy way to get rid of them.  Lexie did some research and found that they’re resistant to bug bombs and can’t be poisoned since they don’t eat anything indoors.  I’d rather not kill them, anyhow.  I’ve never been a fan of chemical warfare on insects or other pests except as a measure of last resort (an aggressive colony of wasps inside a shed that I need to use, for instance).   The cold snaps we went through in Tennessee seem to have gotten rid of the majority of the stink bugs, but on the way from Savannah to Birmingham we smelled the distinctive stench again, so the warmer climes may have put a few more of them on board.  We’ll see.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” the old saying goes.  Well, the converse is true, too.  The Incorrigible was delivered with a set of aftermarket wheel covers that looked nice from fifty feet away, but didn’t fit quite right.  I noticed before we left Michigan that one of the rear wheel covers actually blocked the tires’ valve stems, so I pulled it off.  Both of the front covers were hard up against the valve stems of their respective tires, and I worried that they might damage them, but didn’t bother to take them off, ‘cuz then the Incorrigible’s ugly steel feet would be stickin’ out.

Serves me right, perhaps, that one of those wheel covers managed to break a valve stem while I was topping up the tires at a truck stop.  It crimped it and the thing twisted right off.

With the valve stem broken off, it takes an RV tire a full sixty seconds to deflate completely.  This process is accompanied by an ear-splitting hiss that’s audible all across the parking lot, causing people to turn and stare as they try to figure out what the idiot in the motorhome did.  Lexie stuck her head out the window and asked what was going on, and I explained to her, as calmly as I could.  Actually, I was in the mood to go go totally enraged-chimpanzee right there in the parking lot, flailing my arms, ripping up grass and throwing it around.  But I did not; I maintained my composure and dealt with the problem at hand.

This was not a difficult thing to do, as our AAA RV membership includes roadside assistance.  The investment in the auto club paid for itself in a single day, as they dispatched a truck to come and install the Incorrigible’s spare (remember how happy we were to have an RV with a spare tire?  Our salesman said, “You’ll almost never need ‘em.  Most Class A’s don’t even bother any more.”  But it was one of the Dolphin’s selling points, to me!).  Lesson to be taken from this:  if you’re traveling in an RV, join an auto club.  Opinions vary widely as to which is the best–I chose AAA because I already had a membership for my cars and it was less expensive to upgrade than to switch.

Help (in the form of an efficient, monosyllabic man with a bushy beard and a truck full of wonderful toys like an onboard air compressor) took about an hour and a half to arrive, but this was more of an inconvenience to the Flying J truck stop whose gas pumps we were blocking than to us.  We were at home, after all.  Lexie surfed the Web, while I went outside and removed the rest of the silly hubcaps.

Lesson learned: if it looks like it’ll be a problem, rip it off before it becomes one.  The Incorrigible will just have to have ugly wheels until we can find some that fit properly.

On our way from Nashville to Savannah, we detoured through Knoxville, to visit Temple for a second time and looking for Magpie’s again.  We found the place this time, in the Happy Holler section of town which is just beginning to grow, but unfortunately Magpie’s is closed on Sundays.

Lexie and I spent some time roaming around the city nevertheless.  There was a Christmas craft fair just up the street from Magpie’s, and in the window, a planter made out of a used tire that we just had to have.  The artist was on hand, and gleeful that we purchased some of her work.  The planter wasn’t the only thing that we would have liked to take home, but we’re still limited on space and budget, after all.  We also poked our heads into the Old Town section of Knoxville with its assortment of vintage clothing stores, and visiting the massive McKay’s Used Books, where we traded in some of the stuff we’re done with to replenish our reading lists.  Knoxville is home to some of the friendliest people we’ve met in the South; most strangers are happy to strike up a conversation and get to know you a little.

We left downtown and pointed the Incorrigible temporarily north, following the signs to the Museum of Appalachia.  Located about twenty miles north of Knoxville, this attraction is billed as a “living mountain village,” and celebrates the pioneer days of the region.  It’s a 65-acre display featuring authentic log cabins including Mark Twain’s family cabin, and displays preserving the heritage of the region.

The Museum of Appalachia also ended up being a chance to give our Demco ExcaliBar tow bar a workout.  The attraction’s dirt parking lot clearly wasn’t laid out with motorhomes in mind, and the Incorrigible quickly found itself turned cattywumpus trying to get out of the too-small dirt lane with no turnaround that the parking lot guide sent us down.  Remember, with the Jeep in tow, we cannot back up more than two or three feet without risking major damage to both the towbar and all of the vehicles involved  The system is designed for pulling, not pushing, so going backwards will quickly result in body damage and a wrecked tow bar.  Fortunately, the ExcaliBar’s quick-release feature meant that getting the Liberty unhitched was an operation that took less than two minutes, and we didn’t block the Museum of Appalachia’s parking lot for very long.  The ExcaliBar has a pressure release lever that makes it possible to remove the pins that attach it to the Jeep even when the bar is under tension, as when the towed vehicle is slightly turned.  Once disconnected, the ExcaliBar folds up against the back of the motorhome.  It went so easily that some of the crowds walking to and from the Museum of Appalachia probably didn’t even notice the unfolding drama.

Lexie and I made a brief tour of the museum, then returned to the parking lot, hooked up again and headed out.  But we’d jumped the gun, it turned out.  The split-rail fence that marked the exit to the Museum of Appalachia’s parking lot created another pinch point that the motorhome/Jeep combination couldn’t navigate, despite the efforts of helpful pedestrians.  Even if we could have made the turn, the Incorrigible’s 102-inch wide body wasn’t going through a ninety-inch gate opening without some serious unpleasantness.  So, we jumped out and practiced disconnecting the Demco bar a second time.  Once again, the operation went smoothly and without drama or difficulty.  When I consider the agony that would’ve been involved it we had a tow dolly or a flatbed trailer to haul the Jeep–unstrap the vehicle, back it off the trailer, remove the trailer, wheel it manually out of the way, back up the RV, get clear, reattach the trailer (moving it manually again, and anyone who’s ever had to manually drag a five hundred-pound trailer over uneven ground knows why we invented livestock), reposition the vehicle, strap it down–I’m thankful for the modern bit of engineering wizardry that is our tow bar.