We left New Orleans on Saturday, and headed on to Alabama after a stop at a Walmart to pick up some dry ice. Yep, we’ve still got the refrigerator problem but we were waiting until we got some place where we were staying long enough to get it fixed. Yeah, we hoped it could be fixed. If not, we had other decisions to make.
We stopped in a Pilot to gas up and saw this cute little site. Here’s a big burly truck driver and his co-pilot. They got out, ran up and down the parking lot a few times and then it was time for a treat.
The trip was uneventful and we made it to our campground in Alabama about 3:00. We called the certified Norcold refrigerator tech who has a colonoscopy scheduled for Monday and made an appointment for 9:00 Tuesday. So, we spent Sunday in the RV working on projects. I’m working on the Christmas card and changing our address.
Last year, when we decided to go full-time in June, I told all our contacts about our new address. In most cases this was easy but terribly time consuming. In several cases I had to get paperwork mailed to us, get notarized signatures and mail it back. Did the company get the address right? You guessed it. The company that took the most effort and paperwork got the address wrong in the end. Wouldn’t you guess? Throughout the rest of the year, every time we’d get our monthly mail delivery, I’d get several pieces that had to be forwarded from our old address. Slowly but surely, I worked through these until by April, I thought I had it all done. I hesitated to throw away my ‘address change’ folder but was getting ready to do so when we were told that our mailing service itself was going to move. No kidding. Guess what my project is this year? You guessed it, I get to change our address with all our contacts again. I sure hope this doesn’t become an annual thing.
Meanwhile laundry and other necessary things take time too. But, I won’t have to go grocery shopping for a while - we’ve got to use up what’s in the refrigerator as much as we can.
Actually we did have a bit of excitement during our first days here: Gary ’s new iPhone arrived. No case yet so he’s improvised. Looks like Gary’s as cheap as I am. That’s the case it came in with a rubber band holding it in.
OK, now it’s Tuesday and we’re finishing up with breakfast and cleaning up when I hear a knock on the door. Oops, it’s 8:30 and Pat, the service tech is here - just a bit early. He knows where the refrigerator is, gets his ladder out and goes to work. It doesn’t take him too long to realize that our cooling unit is almost kaput, not completely but enough to warrant a change. Interestingly enough, it is working enough now (after our drive down the road juggled it) to keep our food cold. But, the writing is on the wall. On the other hand, since it is working, if only minimally, we do not need to put as much dry ice into it as if it weren’t working at all.
So what are our choices? Replace the part for about $1900 most of which will be covered by our extended care insurance. Buy a new refrigerator for about $4000 plus labor, none of which will be covered. Or - buy a residential refrigerator which will cost less but then we’d need a new inverter and need to replace ALL of our batteries which are not as strong as they would need to be for a residential refrigerator - if we wanted to dry camp - which we do.
Oh, yeah, it’s been two days since we put dry ice into our refrigerator - time to put some more in. Do you know how hard it is to find dry ice? Since it begins to disappear from the day it is made, very few stores want to deal in it. They might buy some, but, if no customer buys it from them, it will dry up and disappear. Money down the tubes for them. However, there are a few stores that will carry it - and they price it so that they can still make a profit even though some has disappeared. Some Walmarts carry it and there is one in Foley, the next town over.
Let’s go dry ice shopping. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do. However, we have been able to keep our food cold enough so that we don’t have to toss it out and meanwhile we’ve been eating it up. I haven’t shopped for anything but yogurt and milk for about 1 1/2 weeks.
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