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Recommendation:
See the movie
Harriet, the story of Harriet Tubman, a remarkable woman who was much, much more than a conductor on the Underground Railroad.
View trailer.
PS from the previous blog:
In my previous blog,
"Early Appalachian coal mining," I wrote about the hardships of that subterranean occupation decades ago, including financial injustice by the coal mining companies.
Readers responded with related hardships in the early days of the steel industry. And one, in particular, related the practice of "mine the miner, not the mine."
On the road again:
Greetings from southbound I-69 on the way to Louisville, Kentucky
Click here to see some of the photos that Cyndy has taken on our journey.
Today's Story
First, the good news: There was no fire and nobody got hurt.
Last Saturday morning, I plugged the electrical power cord for our trailer into a 30-amp receptacle on an inside wall in the hangar where our the trailer is parked.
The receptacle looked just like any other 30-amp receptacle in any campground where we’ve been, but this one had a secret: It was wired with 240 volts of electricity for industrial tools.
This is a problem for recreational vehicles, which are wired for a maximum of 125 volts. So, from Saturday morning until Monday morning, our trailer was “hot.”
This came to light, a little bit, on Saturday afternoon when I tried to warm some food in the microwave. The appliance ran for about a half a second and stopped abruptly with a “clunk."
I checked the electrical panel and found that the circuit breaker for the microwave was still in the on position. Good. But the circuit breaker for the water heater, which is next to the microwave breaker, was tripped. That’s odd, I thought.
Then I noticed that the refrigerator/freezer had automatically switched from the electrical power source to propane. Also odd.
So I ate cold pizza and made a mental note, on Monday, to call the RV dealer from whom Cyndy and I had bought our home on the road.
On Monday, the dealer’s repair supervisor, Dorian, told me to immediately pull the power cord from the 30-amp circuit and plug into a 20-amp receptacle.
Then he told me the good news along with the bad news: "Your microwave and probably other appliances are 'fried.'”
With ice on the roads, we couldn’t take the trailer to Dorian for his personal assessment. So, on Wednesday, we had a professional electrician come to the hanger for an on-site evaluation.
The prognosis: We had, indeed, fried an electrical converter in the main circuitry, electrical components on the water heater and refrigerator/freezer, and the entire microwave.
Or, as Cyndy summarized, our trailer needs CPR: Critical Parts Replaced.
Additional good news is that the air conditioner, furnace, thermostat, television, radio, range hood fan and light, and the 12-volt circuitry seem to be okay.
Plus, as Dorian explained, nobody came along in bare feet and touched a conductive metal part of the trailer.
That fortunate good person, primarily, would have been me. Cyndy was away at a retreat for the weekend, and I was there alone. Although both of us were there on Sunday night and Monday morning.
And what about a fire? Well, if there had been one, not only would our home and its contents have been damaged but also the hangar and the single-engine Cessna and John Deere tractor, both parked about six feet away from the trailer.
So, on this Thursday early afternoon, Cyndy and I had planned to be pulling our trailer out of snowy Michigan and traveling to the southland. Our first destination being a contra dance weekend in Louisville.
Instead, we are traveling to the dance, sans trailer. Dorian is ordering replacement parts.
By next Thursday, we hope to be on the road again, heading south with a repaired trailer.
At this moment, we are grateful that we are alive and thanking God for this opportunity to keep on learning. Because we still have much more to learn.
Next blog: Whatever the muse inspires me to write about
Thanks for reading my stories.
God blesses everyone ... no exceptions.
Robert (Bob) Weir
