Monday, December 29, 2008
MONDAY EVENING 6:00PM PST
Well folks,
Today has become eventful here in the Pacific Northwest.
We have had another storm that dropped another foot plus of
powdery snow on top of all the previous snow we have received.
My neighbor, a long distance trucker out on a delivery, called and asked me to clean off the awning on his fifth wheel trailer, which he had not bothered to
roll up, or tilt to allow the snow to be easy to sweep off.
About noon today, after a much needed mid morning nap, I put on my
Carharts, Elmer Fudd hat, snow boots and gloves and stepped out the
door to go clean his awning.
There was at least a foot of powder that had filled everything I had
just cleared the day before.
His awning couldn't be lowered enough to clean but the front part of
it, which I did, and then, because the snow was high enough to be a pain
to walk through, I got my snow blower out and cleared his driveway and
in front of his awning, and then went to clear all around my area.
This took at least and hour or more.
I then started cleaning my entire area, which is extensive, which took
lots of time and energy.
When I went back to finish his awning, his girlfriend (a middle-aged woman
who knows everything), who had come home, had attempted to push the awning from below, or some maneuver that managed to rip the awning completely from side to side along the roll up tube.
To be fair, the awning was already ripping, but anyone with a brain should
have know it took a different plan to clean the snow off of it.
She didn't even come out of the trailer to say anything, even though I was making
lots of noise.
Nevertheless, I cleaned off the snow that had fallen off the awning to the
porch, which I had previously cleaned, and I put the awning back in the proper
position to keep it from being an obstruction.
But the residual part of the awning was now hangin from the top of the trailer
over the front door.
It can be trimmed and repaired, but first you have to remove the hardware
of the awning to be able to remove the remaining awning from the groove that
secures it to the side of the trailer.
After all that snow clearing and shoveling, I was pooped and thoroughly wet with sweat, so I decided it was time to quit and get dry.
I went into my RV and stripped off my Carharts (now like getting out of a sweaty
straight jacket) and put all my wet clothes into the dryer, but still had on my
'tighty whities' and my snow boots.
I went into my bedroom in the front of the RV and was trying to pull off my
first boot when the whole front of my RV fifth wheel front support jacks
collapsed and the trailer dropped over a foot in the front and my cats went
vertical. Apparently the weight of the snow and ice on the roof was too much
for the pins that secure the extendable part of the jacks beyond the stable
part that is gear driven.
I had been just a few minutes away from jumping into my hot tub, which
is along side the RV by the front door, above which had been hanging
about two feet of snow and ice cornice completely around the RV.
It was all now on top of the hot tub where my head would have been.
Big chunks of ice the size of cinder blocks that were too heavy to lift
off the tub with my snow shovel and had to be picked up by hand.
I am now typing this to you as I sit in my business chair which is trying
very hard to roll across the living room because of the angle of the trailer.
I have to wait until tomorrow to get a local to bring a front end loader to
lift the RV by the hitch and to jack it up and put in more substantial
pins in the front jacks.
I will never go under this RV again without it being securely jacked up with
blocks. I have been under it to put heat strips on my sewage lines so they
don't freeze up.
There is no extra room under that part of the trailer and I would be squashed
and die a painful freezing death if the trailer ever fell on me.
Oh, every time I go outside to do something the damn gold market takes off
and I lose the opportunity to make more than enough to fix all these problems
and take a trip to Fiji.
So, sometime tomorrow I will be on top of the RV clearing off the snow and ice
and hoisting this monster back up to the proper position, hopefully before my
back goes out from sitting at an angle trying to trade the market tomorrow morning.
I don't think I will roll out of bed, but the cats are beginning to look at me
strangely.
Live and learn.
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