the great escape

Monday morning started out busy but Monday night was a total zoo. I was busy all night long with trucks and equipment running in and out of the gate. It seemed like the bell was going off every couple of minutes. When I check someone in I always look up the road as far as I can to see if another vehicle is coming. This night it seemed like I would no more get the door to the motor home shut and start to sit down when "ding, ding" I would be out the door again. Yep no nap time for me tonight! :-(

Things became a little more "normal" later in the day Tuesday but one of the bosses warned us we would have another busy night so I got ready for another gate guard work out for our last night here. Luckily the rush through our gate never materialized and traffic died off to just a couple of vehicles all evening. I was even able to get about 3 1/2 hours of quality sack time on the couch. :-)

Once the sun came up this morning we finished our packing up and prepared to move off the pad to make room for our replacements to park. Our service guy, Robert, was leading them to our (now their) gate and helping them get hooked up. He called us around 7:45 and said they had just left the yard but the other guards motor home started overheating after only 5 miles. They pulled over and found a broken hose. Robert ran back into town and was able to get supplies and make a temporary repair and they were back on the road in a little over an hour.
We had hoped to be on the road by 9am but ended up leaving an hour later than we thought. Our departure was not without it's own excitement though. Once we knew Robert had fixed the new guards motor home and was back on the road towards us, I started our motor home and raised the leveling jacks up. They came up just fine and got busy rolling up our electric cords. When I walked by the motor home I could hear the low air pressure alarm still beeping. That's seemed odd because I felt like the engine had been running long enough to build up the necessary pressure and the alarm should have turned off. I hopped into the drivers seat and sure enough both my air pressure gauges showed "0". Oh oh.
In a diesel coach if you don't have air pressure in the system then you cannot release the parking brake, which is a good thing because even if you got the parking brake off you would not have any brakes to stop the motor home once you started rolling. :-o
I told Rudee we had a problem and I started looking for a reason. I knew the air tank and air dryer was under the motor home between the front wheels and there are two cables that you can pull to drain the air and moisture out of the system. I had done this several weeks ago after we had parked at the gate. I followed the cables back to the valves they were hooked to and started "fiddling" with them. I had one of our two way radios and Rudee had the other one, She was watching the gauges to see if they moved at all. I "fiddled" the right one a little and then after I "fiddled" with the left one she radioed me that the gauges were climbing! Hooray! I did a quick leak down test on the brakes just to make sure they were operating correctly and we were back in business!

Since we got a later then anticipated start, and I was not wanting to drive a long distance with only a few hours sleep, our trip today was only a little over 100 miles. We stopped at Braunig Lake RV Resort which is a Passport America Park on the south side of San Antonio.  The park is nice but we are packed in like sardines. They have some nice amenities with a pool, hot tub, fishing lake, and a large clean laundry and of course you are just a few miles to downtown San Antonio.
We wont be staying to do any touring though. We have another 250 miles to travel tomorrow to get to the M&G factory. They have an area in their parking lot for us to park and spend the night while we wait for our appointment Friday morning.  We are not going to be in a big rush getting on the road tomorrow and are looking forward to a relaxing travel day. I'll keep you posted.