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Born under a bad sign
I been down since I begin to crawl
If it wasn’t for bad luck
If it wasn’t for real bad luck
I’d have no luck at all
—Albert King
Actually, we seem to be under two diametrically opposed signs warring with each other - one bad and one fortunate. Yesterday, our Thule kayak rack, after one and a half years of flawless operation, decided to take it’s own journey to the driver’s side of the van. That is bad luck. However, when we were stuck way out in the middle of nowhere trying fix it, some guy materializes out of the mist (OK, I’m taking literary license with the mist image) with the know-how and an extra step ladder to tackle the job. That was great fortune.
Then my new email app goes berserk. The app’s techies couldn’t figure it out. More bad luck. However, I fiddled around and stumbled onto a clever go-around. That was fortunate.
I haven’t even mentioned the electrical harness. We have a 7-wire electrical hookup between the van to the camper. Out of the blue, a couple of days ago, I got a “wiring fault” message on my dashboard while driving across Texas. The camper’s lights worked, the camper’s electric brakes worked, however, the camper’s batteries weren’t getting recharged. That meant the camper’s refrigerator, which can run on 12 volt DC while driving, was draining the camper batteries - bad luck. Long story short, I bought a can of electrical contact spray and sprayed the crap out of the connection. That seemed to do it. I did not get a “wiring fault” message on the way down to Study Butte - good fortune.
And today, more of the same. We arrived at the Study Buttte RV camp just outside of Big Bend National Park. By the time we set up it was 1:45 pm - too late to cruise into Big Bend. Instead, we went into the National Park’s little brother, Big Bend State Park, to hike two short but spectacular hikes. More on that later.
When we returned, we saw that the awning was gone; our cleverly Japanese-designed Air Force grade aluminum collapsible table and bench set was missing; and our screens on V-Jer were fluttering in the breeze. Apparently, a hefty wind gust was the culprit.
We found the table and benches, kind of mangled, dug into the gravel about 15’ away. The awning was in a heap, tangled under a half cannibalized bulldozer some 50’ away.
We tackled the awning first. Once untangled, it looked to be intact. Two poles were missing but we found them another 50’ away in a totally different direction - weird, but these are powerful signs that are operating on us. As we put the awning back on V-Jer, we continued to be surprised that it was undamaged. One plastic clip was missing and two of the other clips had their rubber feet missing. The entire park is a large gravel lot. The missing parts looked just like gravel. Well, wouldn’t you know, after walking up and down the lot in a search and rescue grid, we found all three items. With these snapped into place we were good to go.
The table and bench set might have looked mangled, however, they weren’t at all. The removable table top had just slid out of place. Once back in place, viola, perfect.
Now the screens. Drum roll......... There were no rips, that’s a fortunate sign. I tucked the sides back into the slots, refolded the pleats, and more viola, perfect.
The awning was the most perplexing. It had withstood gale winds back at Davis Mountains State Park. The weak point was how I had the awning tied to the stakes. I used wimpy bungees. To remedy this, I devised a far more robust tie down system.
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