Ah, a cute little bird, yet somehow grouchy looking!
Last week wasn’t the easiest week. A lot going on, and a few headaches associated with full time RV’ing. While going through photos from the Chiricahua trip I found one that reflected my feelings fully about the week. “Grumpy Bird.” Sure, we’ve all seen Grump Cat, but Grumpy Bird trumps him completely. He can fly!
So why was I grumpy?
Okay, last week we rolled with the punches that are associated with full time RV’ing. And I rolled well until Friday. Friday bummed me out. Let’s re-cap what happened for the week.
Sunday night / Monday morning I woke up to Jodi messing with the inner door handle in the Airstream. The handle fell off and we were “locked in.” She was up at 1:30 a.m. because the power at the park we were at went out, and caused my battery backup alarm to sound.
After messing about with the door for a while (and waking up), we finally had to use the emergency exit to get out of the Airstream. We tried to figure it out, but it was the middle of the night. Finally we got back to sleep and figured we’d check it when we got up.
Getting up we found that the handle was good and broke. We also found that my driver side front tire was flat! Issue number 2 for the day. Ugh. But okay, still rolling with it.
We got ourselves patched up, hooked up and headed to Prescott. We had an appointment for last week that couldn’t wait, so we had to get back. As we were driving “up the hill” I started noticing a “wub wub wub” sound coming from the back right tire….. Uh oh.
Fortunately we made it to Prescott and Point of rocks. Unfortunately we were greeted by a neighboring camper’s disaster (didn’t blog about this one). Happy to say though, they left after 2 days (I’ve never seen so many gun cases lying around on the ground). Did I mention the dog poop all over our site…..? Oh yeah, there was that too.
Some good happened too. We finally started on the Airstream renovation. And fortunately it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Don Rantz offered his time in exchange for some help I’ve done for him on the Social Media and SEO front. So all I had to spend on was materials. And they came in under $200 which was awesome. We can’t really afford big expenditures currently, small business ownership is tough sometimes.
And finally we’re talking about Friday. That’s when I took the Nissan Titan into the dealership to find out what the odd sound was coming from my right rear tire. It wasn’t the tire at all. It was the whole axle. Oh, and the left axle too. They’re shot! Repair costs? $1,600. So yeah, it made me a grumpy bird to be sure.
The wrap up
I’m currently still waiting for the door handle parts from Airstream Supply. We placed the order Tuesday and got a call on Thursday that it wasn’t in stock. So it was drop shipped from the manufacturer for extra shipping charges after already paying for 2 day service. No tracking number, so I have no idea when it’s coming.
Nissan also has me in a holding pattern. We’re waiting on the axles to come in, so I’m stuck at the Airstream until I hear from them and we get the truck in. The price is on par with one month’s living expenses so this one hurts.
Finally on the good note, the new Airstream workstation got stained last night, and will get one more coat today. It should be setup on Wednesday at the latest.
I’ve got the grumpies behind me, but now I’m scrambling to find our next client. So if you know anyone who needs a super effective website designed by someone who will work directly with them…..please pass our info along. I’d like to share happy bird photos instead of grumpy bird photos! 🙂