Meet Frostbite

Here is Frostbite safe at home after a cold hour long drive from Clarksville. She's got some years on her but she looks pretty good from 20 to 30 feet away where you can't notice all the scars and wrinkles on her face.

Notice that she has been backed up into my driveway. I did this myself after what felt like 30 minutes of blocking traffic, wildly spinning the steering wheel, and cursing like an LA gangbanger.

As soon as I got her perfectly in place and my heart stopped racing, I realized something as I looked up my driveway towards the road. Notice that I said I looked "up" to the road. My house is on a hill. Not a steep hill, but enough of a hill that a lawn mower facing the downhill side can roll down it if left unattended. I know this for a fact but that is another story.

I realized that if I unhooked Frostbite from Bluebell, there was a pretty good chance that Frostbite would, slowly at first but assuredly gaining speed, go careening down the hill over my pear tree, through my wooden fence at the front of my back yard, over another pear tree, through the fence at that back of my back yard, and into the woods behind my house. Being sort of a doomsayer (I think of the worst thing that can happen in any situation and plan for that) and knowing full well that there was an element of inevitablility to this mishap, I then started thinking about how I would back Bluebell through all the wreckage to fetch Frostbite out of the woods. I wondered how much trouble it would be to catch my two junkyard dogs that live in the back yard now free due to the crushed fence, assuming, of course, that they were not crushed by the runaway camper.

Since Frostbite was still safely attached to Bluebell, I had a chance to change the future. This was one lesson I won't have to learn the hard way. Trust me, MOST lessons I learn are the "hard way" so this moment was quite a luxury.

We all piled into my other vehicle, Sonny, and drove to Autozone where I purchased 2 wheel stops for ($9). This makes this the first money spent on Frostbite on top of what we paid for her. I'll be keeping track of the money I've burned spent on Frostbite's renovation on the blog's main page.

OK, I'm about to use some technical speak here so try to stay focused. There are these two metal bar like things in the back, each one has a little square "foot-like" looking thing at the end. They each fold down and the foot-like thingie slides down like a telescope so it rests against the ground. Are these called "stabalizer jacks" or "stabalizer stands?" I don't know. For now I'll just call them "the two legs in back." Anyway, I folded them down and pulled out the foot until it touched the ground.

There are another 2 hand cranked jacks that the New York Dude had at the front corners of Frostbite. I opted for double safety and put them in back along with the two legs for added security from the aforementioned freefall roll down the hill.

With that done, I thought it safe to unhook Bluebell and, as the picture clearly demonstrates, Frostbite was home.

Since the sun was starting to go down and the balmy 20 degree temperature we endured all day was about to drop considerably, I left Frostbite alone to let her get used to her new surroundings. The next day, Sunday, I planned to open her up for the first time and pray that the electricity worked so I could put a space heater in her.



When I walked around her one final time, I did notice that there were several "outlets" and "hookups" on the side. I wish now I had asked the New York Dude what those were for. "Everything works" resonated in my head and I managed to maintain my feeling of confidence. I saw there was what looked like a water hookup which *I assume* was for connecting a hose from the campsite water to the camper. There was another larger plastic connector thing (I could not imagine what that one was for). A small pipe with a knob on top (I don't know what this is for either.) There was a metal, electrical looking, hookup. I squatted down and peered into it. I could see that at one time there was a cover that should have covered the hole but it was now missing. Here, I thought, was where an electrical cord *should* be. Inside the hole was a rolled up blue napkin. I pulled out the napkin and stared into empty blackness.

That can't be good.