His name was Gene, a beer-bellied truck driver in a once-white t-shirt and an over-sized mustache that wrapped around the sides of his mouth like a feather boa. He towed our RV eleven miles.

It’s true. Our motor home suffered a coronary in the outback that is No-Where, West Virginia. A long, declivitous climb, up a steep mountain, that’s claimed the health of many a tractor trailer, damaged a valve in our RV’s engine. Gene transported it to ICU a town away.

The good news is that we are safe, that we weren’t stranded on the road itself, and that repairs on the motor home will only cost a SMALL life’s savings.

The images below tell the tale better than I could ever hope to. Please enjoy these photos that document our close encounter with vehicular disaster.

We barely made it up the mountain, but I was too busy writing to notice.

Then we spent the night in a Sunoco parking lot. And in the morning Chad came to diagnose our ailing RV.

Mike helped.

Gene towed it to Quality Engines in Mt. Lookout, West Virginia.

We packed the car with contents from the RV and are holed up in the Super 8 Motel in Summersville with: one cat, one orchid, three herbs, and more white Walmart bags than I can count.

Both my Godmother and I adhere to the we-might-just-need-that philosophy.  Thus, we boast a mountain of surplus in the north-east corner of our personal, if temporary, paradise, far more interesting topography than the great plain of brown that’s carpeting the rest of the room.

And since we’ll be stuck here for a while, Madrina insisted on redecorating the room to our liking.  This has involved an under-the-bed installation to prevent Pepe’s (the cat’s) accessing the cavern that’s inside the platform’s base.  This we constructed from neon pink and lime green poster board, held in place with copious amounts of bright blue duct tape, nearly an entire role.

Fortunately, we had enough left for Madrina to hang a no-sew curtain she created from sheer, dollar-a-yard fabric we found at the 24-hour Super Walmart across the parking lot from our hotel.

She contends that the horizontal stripe of blue tape across the top goes well with the sky we’re now able to enjoy without enduring the intrusive gaze of passersby, who’ve, no doubt, heard about the crazy ladies who’ve moved an entire motor home’s contents into the space beyond the curtain.  Rumor has it that they’re coming from across the county to witness the spectacle.

I promise to keep you posted on our comedy of stares and repairs. So, thanks for  stopping by. Stay tuned, and we’ll talk soon.

To read part 1 of this series, click here. To check out part 2, click here.

Sorry to turn off comments on this post.  I hope to catch up before I turn them back on.

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