TS4-1 Hop 4
The extra truck miles – nearly 250 – were incurred in making the innumerable trips into Binghamton and surrounding communities trying to get the brake controller fixed.
This hop was just a bit longer than the previous one and the truck continued to perform well. The roads were good and the traffic was surprisingly light for a Monday. The destination was unusual – not an RV campground but an RV repair facility, ACE RV Sales and Rentals. It was time to repair the damage done in the near catastrophe. And we might as well fix the other problem – the broken #2 black water valve – too. That one had been annoying us for over 3 months.
We arrived at the shop at 2:40 pm. I was distressed to see that not only was the shop’s yard full, but the street near the shop was lined with RVs as well. We had to park in a “no parking” zone while, with some trepidation, I went into the office, to find Ali Khan, the head of the repair operations. I expected to be told that there was no place to put the RV and please come back tomorrow. But, no, he greeted me with a smile, assured me they had a place and took command of the truck to haul it to its repair location, just outside the shop. A worker immediately started unscrewing the undercarriage so that they could inspect the damaged gray water tank. We chatted a bit about other recommended work, got our suitcases out of the RV and were on our way to Jett’s sons’ house in Alexandria by 3:30 pm after promising Ali that we would be back in the morning to go over the list of repairs. We were amazed. We had never experienced – over even heard of – such prompt service. We left believing that the third phase of our disaster recovery would be quick and easy.
But not inexpensive. I was guessing that the repairs would run between $3000 and $5000.
We were very impressed with ACE after this initial meeting. They even plugged the RV into an electrical supply, which obviated the need to empty the refrigerator. Jett really liked that unexpected courtesy.
One of the reasons that we chose to get the RV repairs done in VA was that we had cheap (i.e. free) accommodations with Jett’s son for as long as we needed. Of course we wanted to resume the TS4 as quickly as possible so we hoped that the repairs could be completed quickly and we could be back in the RV within 5 days. But that depended on whether a new gray water tank was needed. I waited for news on that with great anxiety.