Thursday 4 December 2008

The Move; Day Two

We received a wake-up call from the front desk at 6:30 am. Now that should have given us plenty of time before daylight to prepare for another day on the road. Richard first had to load the car; after waiting for the elevator for at least 5 minutes, he came back to the room not for the next load; but to ask me to ring down to the front desk and find out if there was a problem with the elevator at our end of the building. That sorted; Richard soon had the car loaded ready for today's drive. While he was loading I had breakfast; yogurt with a packet of oatmeal cereal mixed in; of course we didn't have a spoon handy or a bowl; so I used what was handy, a plastic cup and two stir sticks.

We checked out and Richard walked to the Motor Home and I drove the car. Once at our home on wheels I spent time with our two furry friends; Wyneken and Katie, who were not too happy about being left alone all night. The heater did stay on; so at least that was good news.

The next order of the day was to figure out how we were going to defrost the inside of the motor home windshield; as you probably know using the conventional scrapper does not work very well. Richard figured he could drive it with the small amount that was clear until I had the brilliant idea of getting the hair dryer from my case and using that to clear the windshield. As you can imagine we did not get on the road at first light. We ended up being at least an hour later than we had hoped for.

We traveled for a couple of hours when Richard pulled off the road; he was so cold. He only had on his leather jacket,a tee shirt, jeans and shoes; not really appropriate clothing for minus 13 with a windchill factor to bring the temperature down to -23.

We eventually pulled into Wal-mart in Drydan where Richard went on a shopping spree. First a Parker, then a sweatshirt, glove/mitt combination, and a pair of Solaris boots. We had lunch at McDonald's and then back on the road. Because we were not out of Northern Ontario the sun set really fast. We reached Kenora in time before Richard was illegally driving without headlights.

While he was registering us in at Days Inn the headlights miraculously came on; we laughed saw the irony of the situation but parked the motor home anyway. After unloading the car we headed over to the restaurant for supper.

The day has not yet ended; Richard remembered that he had forgotten to bring in the items that require refrigerating from the basement of the motor home; this turned out to be a good thing because the furnace had gone out. There was no way we can leave the motor home without the furnace running as we have all our liquids, canned food, etc. in there to say nothing of our two cats who also require the motor home to be kept at a minimum temperature. Richard is still not back in the room which means it is not just a case of relighting the pilot light, it may mean the propane has frozen in the bottom of the tank. Richard has taken the car and gone to Canadian Tire to purchase a portable heater. The motor home has to be at least 10-15 degrees all night; I would hate to think of the mess if things freeze, to say nothing of our poor babies.

Richard is back from the store; the propane is flowing, the air is blowing, but there is no heat from the furnace. We do not know what the problem is but for now Richard will turn off the furnace and propane and plug in the heater for tonight. Tomorrow is another day, we have a 5:30 am wake up call in place. Let us pray that tomorrow the adventure will be more of just many hours of driving with no mishaps.

2 comments:

Laura said...

Ronnie,

I checked out the map today....You moving really far away! How long is it going to take you to get there? You might have to sell the camper and buy a small plane! I hope the cats are fine for the night...brrrr....it is really cold up there. It'll will be nice to hear when you are home.

Laura

Sketti said...

OH my! Why do I have the feeling it's going to take you ages to get to PA! I sent you a message on facebook. I cant order the pushchair without a phone number... good luck over the next few days. I'll be thinking of you. x