Well I'm happy to report that the economic downturn has not effected the rail service here in Northern Indiana! I feel like I'm living in a Johnny Cash song. "I hear the train a comin"!!
I was up at 4:00 am, yep you read it right ..... 4:00 am !! AAAAAAAARRRRHHHHH I'm supposed to be on vacation.
Rudee was able to sleep a little longer but not much. When she got up I had already drank a pot of coffee and had my breakfast of toaster waffles. "Hey, let go of my Eggo" :-).
The seminars kicked off at 9:00am and we were in the big tent ready to go. They do have coffee and some other drinks available for us to take advantage of during breaks. The first speaker(s) were from Keystone RV customer service. They talked some on our upcoming factory tour and brought us up to date on just how things were going for their business. They were happy to report that they are building new buildings and are hiring additional people! Good news for this area which has been hit hard with unemployment. They also discussed maintenance that we need to do on our rigs. There were lots of questions and even some complaints and all were handled the best they could in this type of setting.
We took a break and headed for the 5er since there was only 1 porta pot and I had been drinking coffee for 6 hours :-). We decided to skip the next seminar and install our "new" kitchen faucett we bought at the surplus store. The faucet was an exact duplicate of the one we have so how hard could it be? The 20 minute job took me over 2 hours to complete! The faucet is held in place by a big nut on the bottom. I got the faucet apart by unscrewing the base from the body but could not get the nut off the threaded base no matter what I tried. Of course the "new" one we got at the surplus store came with everthing but the nut I needed! I went to Lowes and they did not have a nut to fit it and they even tried removing it as well. That thing just would not budge! I did go ahead and purchase another new faucet since we had to get it working. Back at the 5er I decided to install the "new" new one. I got it all together and when Rudee turned on the water it leaked like Niagara Falls! Rudee then took the "old" old one next door and someone had a saws all and were able to cut the nut off. Thanks, Dave!
I took the "new" new one back off and went back to putting the "new" old one back on. Are you staying up with me on this?
Well this time it all went back together pretty easy. I asked Rudee to go out and turn the water back on to test the connections. She walked around the kitchen counter and stepped on something. She picked it up and gave it to me. It was one of those little "o" rings used in plastic water fittings to keep it from leaking! The thing had fallen out when I was taking it all apart (the first time!). That would explain why the cold side leaked and the hot was fine :-).
Well I took the cold line back off, put the "o" ring in and put it all back together, for the 3rd time! Rudee turned the water on and voila, no leaks. What an ordeal!
By this time we were both tired and hungry. We had a late lunch and then hung out for the rest of the afternoon. We did make a grocery run, returned the faucet to Lowes and checked out our route to the Service Center tomorrow.
The group all gathered around 5pm and car pooled to the Miller's home in rural Shipshewana for dinner. This is the home of an Amish family. Their home/farm was pretty as a picture. They had their garage set up like a banquet hall and they were carrying food from the house to the garage for us. We all (101 of us at last count) sat at long tables and the food was passed down the line. We had cole slaw, ham, chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes and noodles. The food was very good and there was plenty for seconds. Then they brought out the dessert. Large serving bowls full of ice cream and several choices of pie. Rudee and I shared a piece of blueberry but they also had, banana cream, pecan, and strawberry/rhubarb (I think). The Millers took very good care of our large group and we all had a good time.
On our trip back to Goshen the skies opened up and the rains came. We made it back safe and sound and Fred dropped us off at our front door. The rain continued so we decided to just watch some TV. I went to bed pretty early (gonna wear ear plugs tonight!!) and Rudee followed shortly afterwards.
We are looking forward to Wednesday. We plan on doing seminars in the morning and then we are taking the 5th wheel over to Trailair during our lunch break. We are getting a new air ride hitch pin installed and they are going to upgrade our leaf spring shackles to "wet" bolts that I can grease. When they are done we will move over to the Keystone Service Center and camp in their parking lot for the night so we can be ready for our Thursday morning appointment. I'll keep you posted.
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