Gypsy Lee hooked up at Lake End RV Park in Morgan, Louisiana. -- Photo by Pat Bean
“My recipe for dealing with anger and frustration: Set the kitchen timer for twenty minutes, cry, rant and rave, and at the sound of the bell, simmer down and go about business as usual.” — Phyllis Diller.
Just for Today
Sunday I drove 65 miles from Arkansas’ Felsenthal National Wildlife Refuge to Camden, where my youngest daughter lives.
Gypsy Lee, my Volkswagen RV with a Winnebago home atop it, had a rare tantrum on the drive. It was her third in about a year. The engine check light came on, the RPMs on the tachometer increased slightly, and she shifted late and hard.
Sunset at Lake End as viewed out Gypsy Lee's window. -- Photo by Pat Bean
Monday I took her into the shop in Camden but everything checked out except a loose air conditioning fan belt, which the small repair shop didn’t have in stock. I called and made an appointment with a VW dealer near Dallas for Wednesday morning. It’s one of the rare places that provides full-service for VW Vistas, and fortunately my oldest daughter lives in the Dallas suburb of Rowlett.
Tuesday I drove the 250 miles from Camden to Dallas in a perfectly behaving Gypsy Lee, although the engine light was still on.
This morning when I started Gypsy Lee up, the engine light was off – and she drove perfectly the entire 33-mile trip through heavy commuter traffic to the large VW sales and service center in Lewisville, where she’s getting a thorough going over, a new fan belt and an early lube service before I start my zig-zagging trip to Idaho Friday.
The trained VW mechanic shook his head questioningly when I explained Gypsy Lee’s erratic behavior on Sunday. He was hopeful the diagnostic test would give him a hint. It hasn’t in the past I told him.
Meanwhile my daughter picked me up at the shop and loaned me her car for the day, and I’m currently waiting to hear back from the mechanic.
I wonder if anyone has ever spanked an RV for misbehaving?
Pat Bean's blog 
The Jolly Swag gets into adolescent mischief now and then. I think she has a pet poltergeist. AL
Ride with me and Lightnin’ on our Year on the Road at http://allevenson.wordpress.com/
Well, Pat, I’ve always been leery when car problems “fix themselves” so I’m glad you continued to the repair shop anyway. Trouble is, those nonrepeatable things don’t always show up on test equipment. Good luck with that! LOL Oh, and maybe it’s a computer thing; Mercury is retrograde right now and Merc affects all sorts of things from computers to communication to travel. Hmmm. *G* Sam
Love the quote from Diller. I know I can relate to misbehaving vehicles. Your post has me replaying a family road trip to Maine in the early ’80s. Weeks prior to this trip, my mom kept telling my dad about a “whistling bird” noise coming from under the hood of the car. My dad is a Type B, my mom a Type A. Dad ignored my mom’s requests to check this problem out prior to starting our journey. On the homeward leg of the trip, the “bird” gave way and we were forced to make an emergency stop to get a belt replaced. This took a couple of hours. I don’t believe Diller’s anger/frustration technique would have done it for my mom in this case.
That last line was a hoot. Never spanked an RV, but I sure have had words with an SUV a time or two. The Isuzu I drove through college and into my first teaching job was almost as old as me and had some pretty cantankerous habits!
I thought that was you. Did you see me wave? Glad that Dallas has a dealership to help you. I’ve seriously considered thrashing my vehicle from time to time. Didn’t speak to for a week when it broke down in the parking lot at the mall when I was playing hooky from work.