Yesterday morning Terry’s parents, Pete and Bess Weber, stopped by to visit on their way home from church. Pete had only seen our Winnebago once, a few evenings earlier, but it was after dark, and he couldn’t see much of the outside. So he spent some time walking around checking it out before coming inside, and I think he was impressed.

A few minutes after Pete and Bess arrived, Terry’s sister Lisa also stopped in to say hello. I really like Lisa and always enjoy visiting with her. She’s a lot of fun, has a good sense of humor, and is drop dead gorgeous too! What a combination!

As I wrote in Sunday’s blog, we got an engine bay fire suppression unit and refrigerator compartment fire extinguisher from Mac McCoy at Fire and Life Safety a while back, but we have not had the time and good weather to install them. Yesterday both came together, and we decided to get the job done, so once our visitors left, we got busy.

The refrigerator compartment fire extinguisher can be mounted either vertically or horizontally. The compartment is accessed from a cover on the outside of the motorhome, and it took a couple of attempts at placing it before Terry decided to mount the extinguisher standing upright at the rear of the compartment. Not sure about drilling holes into the side of the compartment, because we didn’t know what was on the other side of the wall, Terry instead took Mac’s advice and mounted the extinguisher with industrial strength Velcro.

The engine bay fire suppression unit mounted to the bulkhead on the top of the engine bay. This bulkhead is accessed from the floor of our bedroom closet, and once the removable floor panel is out, was held in place by four bolts. We drilled four holes for the mounting brackets, bolted the unit in place, and put everything back together. Again, we had to call Mac to be sure we were mounting the unit in the correct location.

Overall, just figuring out exactly how to mount the extinguishers, and unloading the closet to get to the floor and the bulkhead below, took longer than actually installing them. Both of the units are automatic, and are activated when the temperature inside the compartments reaches a certain level, so there was no wiring to connect.

We have seen a lot of pictures of RVs burning, and they really go up fast. We’ll travel and sleep a little easier now that we have these new safety devices installed.

With nasty weather predicted for this week, we will probably just take it easy, do a lot of reading and cruising the internet, and I’ll get some writing done. For the last month or so, we have had very spotty service on our Verizon air card, and the last few days it has really been frustrating.

From reading a couple of internet forums, it seems like a lot of RVers are experiencing slow service and dropped signals in different areas of the country. There have been several suggestions on how to remedy this, and I have tried them all, from updating the air card firmware to setting it to Broadband only so it won’t automatically switch to the slower National Access when both signals are available. Nothing has really worked. I suspect that as more and more people are getting cell phones and air cards, the situation will only get worse. Hopefully the techno geeks will come up with something to help get service back up to the reliability levels where it used to be.

While we were busy installing the fire extinguishers, Bad Nick was busy posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled My Mother, The Pedophile. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Being ‘over the hill’ is much better than being under it!

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I’ve gotten a lot of e-mail asking where we are with the insurance company, following our burglary to our motorhome. As regular blog readers know, at first we were having a real hassle with our insurance company, National Interstate, and when we called our agent, PoliSeek, they told me they didn’t get involved in problems like that and referred me back to the same claims adjuster at National Interstate who was giving us all the problems.

After I wrote about the problem in the blog and it became a topic of discussion on several RV internet forums, most notably the Escapees, people started calling their agents and National Interstate asking if they could expect the same lack of service if they had a claim.

Cheryl Howarth from Miller Insurance in Lake Oswego, Oregon, and another agent from South Dakota, both of whom have a lot of RV owners as customers, took it upon themselves to contact National Interstate on our behalf. The response from the company was immediate, and within an hour or so the same claims adjuster who had been giving us grief was on the telephone bending over backwards to accommodate our every need.

We now have been reimbursed for all of the items that were stolen or vandalized, except for one small check that we should receive this week, and as I understand it, the shop in Indiana that did our repairs has also been paid, except for two sets of day/night shades that we are still waiting on the factory to send to us.

Fourteen days after our burglary, a representative from PoliSeek called in response to the internet uproar that had resulted, and the next day her supervisor called. They wanted to know what they could do to help, and I told them that they were too late, other agents had handled the problem for us. The supervisor told me that it really wasn’t their job to deal with the insurance company for us. In other words, they’ll take our money, but they don’t want to get involved if we have a problem. So why have an agent in the first place?

As soon as life gets back to normal after the holidays, we will be talking to Cheryl at Miller Insurance about placing all of our business with her. From all of the good feedback I have gotten from customers of Progressive, I think that’s who we’ll end up with, if Cheryl represents them. She has earned our business, and I’d much rather she makes a commission on our insurance policies. PoliSeek has seen the last penny they’ll ever get from me. If you are looking for RV insurance, or are thinking about moving your business, I’d readily recommend Cheryl. I’d recommend the agent in South Dakota as well, but I never did get her full name or the name of the agency she works for.

While Miss Terry was busy stuffing envelopes yesterday, Bad Nick wrote a new Bad Nick Blog post titled The GPS Made Me Do It. Check it out and leave a comment. 

Thought For The Day – A friend is someone who reaches for your hand, but touches your heart.

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