Started off by waking up early and showering, then off to Waffle House for breakfast by 7 or so. Waffle House is just plain overpriced. $12.50 for the two of us. And they didn't give me Texas toast- just regular toast, which she said was "from the end of the loaf." We won't be doing Waffle Houses again.
Dropped the motor home off at Camping World, fully expecting to have the air conditioner repaired, under warranty.
Then headed over to our new mailbox drop and were unpleasantly surprised at how trashy and dirty the place was. Did not inspire us, to be honest. We got our little welcome packet, discovered we had no mail yet, and left. EWWWWWW.
Then we headed over to the local Nationwide dealer, had a little trouble locating her, but we finally did, and spent an hour or so getting our insurance for the car and motor home done. Cross that off the list. Despite many hints dropped by me, we didn't even get a free pen! Nothing, Nadda, Zip. That will be remembered come renewal time.
Then, since we were ahead of schedule, we headed over to the tax assessor's office to start the ball rolling on getting our license plates. A very nice lady, Faye, worked with us, then had a computer glitch, and had to start all over again. We managed to get as far as the title for the Malibu, when it became close to her lunch time, and the time for our scheduled appointment for driver's licenses. So we tabled the license plates, and headed on over to Captain D's for a yummy lunch, which was on special. Good deal, and it was good food too.
On over to the license bureau, which was in a word, a complete cluster ****. We gathered that their computer system had crashed, our first clue was the line out the back door in the 96 degree heat, and lots of unhappy faces, and a complete waiting room of people sitting in chairs, and a lady sitting at a desk talking on the phone instead of moving people through the line. I had a flashback to the way the SC DMV used to be before Gov. Sanford "reformed" it, to the skilled, efficient service it is today..... anyway, Bette and I had scheduled an on-line appointment as we had been told to do by our good friend Mr Dan, a point which I quickly pointed out to the sort of lady in charge- who first said something to the effect that well, appointments didn't count, to which I replied yes they did, and she took our forms over to the line, and just as Bette and I sat down, presto, my name was called out, ahead of about 75 other people and with about a 5 minute wait.
We got Harry to take care of us, and he was really cool- had a great attitude, very witty, and took good care of us.
Back over to the license place, and Miss Faye was out, but in her place her cubicle mate, Willy, was ready to serve. Well, due to some confusion, a double entry in the system in error by the driver's license folks, and other discussions, it took us nearly 2.5 hours and $189 to get all that straightend out, and the end result is we now have a nice new Florida plate on the Malibu, and a temporary plate on the motor home, since the title for the motor home is still in possession of the bank. We'll have to come back to Pensacola on the way home to snatch up our permanent Florida plate and need to do it before 1 September, when the fees for everything will double. We got 2 year renewals today, in advance of the rate increase, so it was like a buy one get one free promotion.
So, all that is crossed off the list. New Florida driver's licences, new Florida license plates, well almost, insurance set, and good to go, except for coming back for the Motor Home plate.
With regard to the air conditioner, terrible news.
The repair shop that I entrusted to make earlier repairs to the AC made an attempt at a repair that has caused the 3 year warranty on the unit to be voided.
I am taking half the blame, but I still feel the shop should have advised me that a warranty claim could have been made, rather than making a repair out of ignorance that caused the warranty to be voided.
The end result is we are now responsible for over a thousand dollars in replacement costs. I've put it behind me, Live and learn. The folks here at Camping World went out of their way to try to help- they were very compassionate with regard to the situation- the didn't charge me full charges for the diagnostic work, and located a replacement unit out in California, and made calls on our behalf to verify that they indeed had a unit, and got them to agree to ship it UPS on over to the Camping World at Denton Texas, where we were going to be anyway to have repairs made at McClains.
We're to meet in the morning with the local folks to get tracking numbers, etc etc, and then we'll head on up to Vicksburg tomorrow- which is about a 260 mile trip. We'll maybe do some downtown things either tomorrow after arriving, or maybe first thing the next morning, then we'll head on over towards Denton. The air conditioner is due to arrive by Friday morning, and we hope to have the installation done either Friday or Saturday.
We had dinner tonight with our temporary next door neighbors, who are in for fifth wheel repairs, and thoroughly enjoyed meeting them and dinner at O'Charley's.
Despite some setbacks, we're rocking on! Vicksburg tomorrow.....
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