I only drove one mile today, but what a day it was

Since I only had about 100 miles to drive today to Nevada City County Fairgrounds, I dawdled a bit in the morning.  Fixed a filling breakfast and headed out about 10:30.  First stop was a Sinclair station to fill the gas tank a half mile down the road.  It turned out that that’s as far as I got.

Put about 60 gallons in the tank, hopped back in the rig and started up the engine.  When I put it into drive, a warning light appeared on the dash, the rig wouldn’t move, and I couldn’t turn the steering wheel at all.  Oh oh.  The last time this happened, I spent three weeks in a repair shop parking lot in Indiana.  That was four years ago, and the computer motherboard had to be replaced.  I shut the engine off, then tried a couple of more times, but it was a no go. 

The warning light said to have the engine serviced soon.  I just did that two weeks ago!  No choice but to call my roadside assistance.  They said a tow truck would be there in an hour.  Yeah, right.  To make a long story a bit shorter, the tow truck showed up about 2:30, and could only tow rigs under 30’.  Yes, I had stressed that the rig is 38’, a gas pusher, and weighs 26,000 lbs.  So another call was put in for the proper tow truck.  It was supposed to arrive in a half an hour.  Yeah, right.

In the meantime, they’re having a heat wave in the valley here, and the temps inside the rig rose to 94*.  I didn’t feel comfortable turning on the generator since I was still right next to the gas pumps.  You know all that stuff about sparks and such.  Didn’t want to blow the place up.

Okay, so it’s 4:00 on a Friday afternoon, there’s no tow truck in sight, and the towing company won’t answer their phone.  For the fourth time today, I call my roadside assistance.  While I’m waiting for a call back from them, one of the tire repair guys from this truck stop comes over to say he’s wondering why I’ve been sitting at the gas pumps for five hours.  I give him the story, and he asks to look at my engine.  All you can see is the radiator unless your crawl under the rig.  He doesn’t do that, but checks the oil instead.  Then he asks me to start it up so he can listen to how it sounds.  It sounded fine to him.  Then he says, put it into drive.  Hesitantly, I push the D button.  Guess what?  No warning light, the rig moves, and I have steering.  What the heck?  He suggests I make a big circle around the parking area to see how it handles.  Everything is back to normal.

The roadside assistance lady calls back to report she also cannot get a response out of the towing company.  So I tell her to cancel the call because who wants to sit in a Ford dealer parking lot with no hookups for the weekend?  That’s where they were going to tow me if they ever showed up.  I have a Workhorse chassis with a Chevy engine.  Don’t know how productive it would have been to get towed there anyway.

The tire repair guy’s analysis was with these newer rigs with computer boards and push buttons and such, maybe I pushed the wrong buttons and perplexed the computer for a while.  

So, with the rig running, I returned to Flag City RV Resort to see if I could stay once again.  I figure it’s better to head out on a Monday morning when repair places aren’t closed down for the weekend should problems arise again.  I’ve lost my paid reservation at Nevada City, and won’t be able to visit with Nickie and Jim, but that’s life some times.

I was so relieved to plug into electricity, turn on the AC, and try to cool down from the heat even if I had only driven one mile today.  I’d appreciate any input on whether or not the confused computer sounds feasible as an explanation.

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy