Kicked Back in Nashville – if isn’t one thing it will be another

I arrived in Nashville last Tuesday, November 3, 2015 and checked in to the Nashville KOA which is located northeast of downtown on the outer-belt TN-155 and very very close to the Grand Ole Opry and the general Opryland resort area.  I normally try to only use “pull-thru” RV spaces as it prevents me from having to unload the Honda and even if I do unload it is easier.  In this case I’m here for 2 weeks and the back in spaces are more than $ 10 / day less so I took a back-in space.  No problem however this older section is gravel and dirt so with the frequent rains there is some puddles etc.  Murphy’s law, and current weather prediction, says I’ll be departing in the rain Tuesday morning.  Fortunately, I here long enough to get Amazon Prime deliveries and now have a nice rain parka and rain booties.

My fellow Rvers will already know this but … always travel with a water pressure regulator and water filter.  I do hook up to the water supply in the RV space but with an older RV like this I don’t drink the water that comes through the RV plumbing even though it has been sanitized (an entire process unto itself).  So I usually just take some empty water bottles (Yes Ralph, I am still re-using BPA bottles, the non-BPA bottles I purchased recently all leak) outside and fill them up at the water hookup.  Most often there is an unused RV space nearby so I just take my little filler tube over and fill the bottles.  Ahhhhh, I used the water tap at the site next to me since the folks camping there had just left; — what do I get, BROWN water.  Most likely it is technically safe but UCH!  I went back to my camp and disconnected the water hose that feeds my RV (through MY WATER FILTER) and filled my bottles with crystal clear water.  Regarding water pressure, I’d been warned from the start that some RV camps have very high water pressure and with an older RV I have been careful from the start.  You can buy inexpensive regulators that are fixed at 40-50 –psi but I consider that too high for Freedom.  I have an adjustable regulator and I set it at the 20-40 psi range.  I only mention this because I’m talking about water and a few campgrounds ago when I checked in the operator confirmed all I’ve read when they said, “we sell pressure regulators if you need one, our water pressure is 70 psi.”

If it isn’t one thing … it’s all in one piece!

I’d been waiting to get to Nashville so I could buy a new laptop at BestBuy (yea, but I had/have a credit from …).  I hopped in the Honda and started down the access road, to the sound of “SQUEEEEEEEEEL”  I went around the loop and pulled back in front of Freedom and popped the hood.  Rattttttttle ratttttttle – not good.  I figured I’d give it another run around the block and in the process I turned off the air conditioner.  Ohhhhhh, problem went away.  Well, that is good, probably just a mounting bolt broken by bouncing down all the crappy highways (US Interstate system is in serious need of pothole repair).  Since it seems fine with the AC off I dashed off to BestBuy and got my laptop.  With all the stress I forgot to use the BestBuy credit.  Oh well, I’ll need something else later.

Thursday I took the Honda into a local Honda dealer and hung out to find out if they had the necessary parts or when they could get them in (not a lot of Honda Insights every built and not a lot left on the road from 2000 – I had to have them preorder brake pads for my last servicing).  I had already decided that if necessary I’d just have them remove the belt and compressor and run without air conditioning.  NOT – it isn’t a mounting bolt it is the entire AC compressor that is frozen up.  My remove the belt plan promptly went down the tubes – this Honda uses a single serpentine belt to drive everything, AC, alternator, power steering … “it’s all in one piece”.    The bad news — $2800 after they get the parts in.  Just running with the compressor disabled isn’t a great idea as the damage has no doubt affected the other bearings.  I did explore buying a used compressor … also, considered junking the Honda and doing without a tow vehicle.  I’ve been exploring doing that with a new Class B RV in the future.  But this RV is pretty good size and I’m not inclined to driving something this size just to go to the grocery store.

Long story short, well I guess that was the long story, parts are due in tomorrow (Wednesday, November 11) should have the Honda back on Thursday.  Meanwhile I have a relatively cheap rental car.

Saturday evening, I took the river cruise on the General Jackson Showboat.  It has a nice dinner and good stage show — cover band and 6 singers doing a lot of good country music.  I shared a table with some interesting people so conversation was good through dinner and before the show.  Having purchased a “captains” table seat we got a nice tour of the wheel house and conversation with the captain.  He’s been running this boat for 30 years, his “junior” started 2 weeks after him.  Grin

Sunday morning, I took a backstage tour of the Grand Ole Opry.  Since they can have a lot of different entertainers on one show they have 18 dressing rooms but none have a closet so in the hall are lockers that can be assigned to visiting starts.  Also notice the wall of mailboxes.  Members of the Grand Ole Opry have an actual mailbox their and can receive fan mail at that address.  These pictures are from the web as I lost some pictures when I restored my cell phone (see below).

From their I went to a local “Willie Nelson and Friends” museum.  Really a bit of a rip-off but okay for the $6.50 discounted ticket.  Then I headed over to the Gaylord Opryland hotel to check out the Atriums.  This place is enormous, 2881 rooms and per them “It is the largest non-casino hotel in the Continental United States outside of Las Vegas and also ranks as the 28th in the List of the largest hotels in the world”.  What is really neat is there are multiple huge atriums with waterfalls, complete rain forests, and small rivers (maybe a bit exaggerated).  Incredibly beautiful.  Again, pictures from the web not my iPhone.

Pictures, where are the pictures – that’s another thing.  If you follow me on Facebook, you know I’ve been bitching about my iPhone battery life bla bla bla.  Sunday I gave up and called Apple support to schedule an appointment to replace the battery.  This will be my last Apple product.  I only went with it for its iTunes support and I can now get just as good service from Amazon on an Android based phone – one where you can replace your own battery without voiding the warranty and incurring the wrath of Apple.  In the course of that I determined that this phone is only 17 months old.  Just long enough for Apple to stick you with an outrageous battery charge – post 12-month warranty; not to mention this is way too short for such extreme battery death.

The good news is, later I thought “I bought the Verizon Total Mobile Protection plan”.  So I dug through their poorly designed website and call them.  Wow, bing bang, nice and very competent guy pulls down some data from the phone and says that I will have to try a full reset/reload but if that doesn’t work they will overnight me a replacement.  I had a very current backup so I did the reset and restore (oops, “very current didn’t include that morning so I lost Sunday’s photos),.  After restoring all of my apps from the Apple Store I was set to check out the battery life.  Monday morning the battery had lost its usual 20-30% during 6 hours of sleep so I called Verizon back.  Bing, bang, bong … replacement phone arrived in less than 24 hours and I’m about to restore to the new phone just as soon as it finishes a full charge.

If it isn’t one thing, then it’s another

I’ve been kicking back today and making reservations for the next week of my travels.  This morning’s rains had ended and my black water tank was at 75% so I decided to do some RV support activities.  For you “non-RVers”, when you dump the black water tank (technically it is brown, if you catch my drift) you want to follow it with dumping the grey water tank (water from non-toilet sources) to rinse out the dump hose before you store it.  All that said, I don’t generate a lot of grey water when using a RV park as I don’t shower in the RV and washing dishes doesn’t use much water when there is just one of me.  Soooooo, I turned on the water in the bath room sink to get around 10 gallons into the grey water tank.  Turns out the bath sink is connected to the black water tank instead of the grey water tank as all other RVs do.  I found that out when I went back to check and the sink was backed up.  Worse, the toilet was backed up and overflowing onto the carpet.  Shit shit shit, to some extent literally.  QUICK — Turn off water, grab keys (everything outside has a small lock on it) and dash out to get my rubber gloves (I’m not crazy), hose adaptor and hose, hook up the drain hose, … and open the black water drain.   One roll of paper towels and a bath towel later I have the carpet down to just damp … and now my little electric heater is over there trying to dry things out.  I also have a container of calcium chlorite for absorbing moisture from the air and to try and avoid mildew.  Yes, I could use a wet/dry VAC but I had opted to save space … remember this is a very small RV.