Port Angeles, WA - Furnace with a Hissy Fit

Remember yestereday’s broken furnace?

Remember that we got it fixed?

Remember that repair bill?

Whoo-eee. Guess what? And, I’m sure you’re way ahead of me here. Yep, Gary got up first as usual, turned on the furnace and heard - nothing. Nada, nil, nothing. Oh shucks. We had gotten up at 6:00 so we could go to the Sol Duc Falls and hike around there. We ate breakfast but finally, at 8:00 we called Dan the RV doctor. He came over, took the furnace out of the RV and to his home where he works. (An RV furnace is not too big nor too heavy.)

Well, it’s a long way to Sol Duc and we wanted to stay around in case the furnace came back. ‘Free day’ and I chose to work on financial updates, bill paying and blog writing. Boy, aren’t I exciting? Gary was happily working at his desk, drinking his coffee, happy with an opportunity to sit still for a bit when I mentioned that it was too bad that we didn’t have any TV reception here because I might like to watch an NBA game for thrills and chills. Since that’s been a problem in several of the last campgrounds we’ve been in, we decided that our TV must not work. Maybe the TV, maybe the antenna, maybe the wires, whatever, it wasn’t working. Our neighbors were watching TV so I knew there were some channels in the area. Gary decided to look into it. He took the TV off the wall and checked all the hook-ups. He looked at all the wiring in our ‘media box.’ He got up on top of the RV and checked the antenna. Of course, this all takes time and the day is now shot. Time for dinner.

Meanwhile he called Don and asked what he had found out. Nothing, absolutely nothing. Every time he turned the furnace on, it worked perfectly and he had tried it about 8 times. Ain’t that the way it always is? You get your car to the mechanic and it just purrs. You take your computer in, it works like a charm. It always happens. He said he could bring it back tomorrow and we thought that all right. Sounds like our furnace just had a bit of a hissy fit.

Gary was still working the TV problem and was online looking at Winegard and other antenna info and, while I was taking my shower, he tried the TV again, turning the antenna. Guess what? I’m sure you’re way ahead of me here, too. It worked. Not well, mind you, very fuzzy picture that broke up a lot. You wouldn’t want to watch it for more than a few seconds.

But we learned two things: Port Angeles is in a Black Hole with very little over-the-air reception. Dan told us that he liked one program so much that he put his TV into the car and drove out to a spit of land far enough away from the main body of land so it could catch Seattle TV signals and watch his program out there. No wonder we couldn’t get anything. We also learned that with a digital signal, you’ve got to aim the antenna towards the signal or you won’t receive it. If you aim the antenna just 5 degrees off, you might not get that signal. I hadn’t aimed the antenna just exactly right while Gary had turned it a bit and it was aimed just exactly right. He’s such a guy.

Of course,they sell gadgets to help you aim the antenna correctly but we’ve never needed them. We might just try one.

Now those of you who have direct TV or cable or whatever, you don’t need to read this blog. (Funny thing - we actually have a dish on top of our RV with all the connections. We just watch TV so seldom that we never even set it up)

Nothing wrong with the TV. Nothing wrong with the furnace. They’ve just eaten up two days of our time.

Well, that might be OK since it’s rained for two days. Even though Port Angeles says it is in a Blue Hole where they get more sunshine than any other part of the Olympic Peninsula, they still get rain. The average is 1 day of rain out of 5. We’ve been here 4 days and have had rain each day. We’re on the wrong side of those odds. Shucks.

Black hole for TV reception and Black Hole for weather. Isn’t that just part of the adventure?

On Monday, Memorial Day, Don brought back our furnace, installed, tested it multiple times and it worked perfectly. No charge for the Sunday and Memorial Day service. I would recommend Don of Anywhere RV in Port Angeles. Great service, knowledgeable, reliable, mobile, and we thought his charges very reasonable for all the time he spent.

WHAT WAS HE THINKING?

Under the What Was he Thinking category: I was sitting in the RV at the table writing my blog when I heard a loud, ‘Stop Now.’ I looked out, our neighbors were rushing out of their RV and circling around to the RV next to them. Seems that the guy next to them was backing up at an angle with his awning completely out and it tore a hole in our neighbor’s canvas top on their fold-out camper. But, the worst part is - he still had his slide out, too. What in the world was he thinking? The only thing that stopped him was hearing our neighbor’s shout.