Fixing the trailer roof….again…..sigh
So you know that saying “If anything can go wrong, it will”? Sigh...let me tell you, it’s true!
After our axle accident we vowed to get all the axle supports reinforced so that we wouldn’t have to deal with that problem again. Well, while we were at the Brazos Bend state park, got the name of a local welder who could do that for us. Dave made an appointment to get that work done when we left on February 17. So we got up early and made it to his place for 9:30 am. The weather however, didn’t cooperate. It rained and it didn’t stop. Too wet to do arc welding, something about it not being safe to work in those conditions (240 volts in hand while lying on wet ground). Oh well, on to the next place earlier than we thought.
Arrived at the 60 North RV park in Bay City, TX about an hour later. It’s an urban RV park, new last November so not much landscaping done but the sites are big and paved and the WIFI is excellent. Lots of pipeline workers stay here while on the job but we never see them, we only hear them when they leave at 6 am in their loud diesel trucks.
Anyways, back to Murphy, he’s far from finished with us. First night we’re here, it pours rain, torrentially at times. At about 5 pm Dave notices that there’s water on the kitchen counter, just under the window. It’s leaking and we think maybe the caulking around it has cracked. Dave goes outside and pulls out the awning to help keep the rain off the window. More rain, it’s still leaking. Dave goes outside again and then calls me out to look at the roof. There’s a tear in it, right along the edge. Exact same spot we had to repair when we got back from Costa Rica last year. How the F%$! did that happen??? It was fine when we left the state park so it had to happen when we left to get here.
We know for sure it didn’t happen in the state park, there was nothing we could have hit there, the roads were clear of trees and obstacles. There was only one spot, on the road where the welder was located, that had some lower hanging tree branches that could have caused the damage. But even there, we saw another 5th wheel go under that spot and it appeared to have lots of clearance. Not so for us I guess. Again F#$%! So not only didn’t we get the welding done, the trip there cost us an unwanted roof repair.
Anyways, we couldn’t do a single thing about that leak when we discovered it because it was pouring rain. We just had to keep our fingers crossed that it wouldn’t be too bad. Ha, Ha, Ha.....
After continuing to rain most of the night I woke up at 6 am to find way more water on the kitchen counter. Wiped it up, half asleep and then heard drip, drip, drip. Is it outside? Please let me be dreaming, it can’t be dripping inside can it? F$%#, yes it is, dripping inside and in multiple places. Thank god for all the towels we have, needed them. What a mess!!! It was continuing to rain so we had to do something to minimize the water coming in. We did have one small tarp that Dave managed to McGyver to cover most of the tear with. Keeping it on the roof was also a challenge since it was quite windy as well as rainy.
As soon as the stores opened up, Dave went shopping for a bigger tarp and hopefully the stuff we need to repair the roof. Why don’t we have stuff on hand to repair the roof after fixing it last year? Well we did, until 2 days ago. Dave used most of that good Eternabond tape up to fix the tears in our awning which have been there for almost a year. Only freaking Murphy could have known we’d actually need it for a roof repair in 2 days. Luckily Dave tracked down a roll of the tape in a near by town and he got huge tarp to cover the entire trailer roof. While he was gone, I managed the leaks and the ever growing pile of wet crap. To top it off, I felt horrible the whole day. I’d just started some antibiotics for a bladder infection and they weren’t agreeing with me at all. Was I depressed, oh yeah!
Off course, as soon as Dave got the giant tarp on the roof, it didn’t rain for the rest of the day but we just didn’t trust the weather. Plus it was incredibly windy, the tarp flapped around all night, and between it and the wind, the trailer rocked. Sleep was somewhat elusive that night.
Those 2 days, February 17 and 18 represent the “quantization of Murphy's Law” “Everything goes wrong all at once.”
(Taken from a long list of corollaries and revisions to Murphy’s law found on the internet)
Next day was sunny so we let the trailer dry out as long as possible and that evening, we got the tape on the roof and sealed the leak. Ideally we would have preferred to let the trailer dry out more but based on the forecast, we didn’t have the luxury of time. Also on the bright side, I felt much better that day as well. Good thing because I did 9 loads of laundry. 2 of those loads were our normal accumulation of stuff, the other 7 were all created due to the leaks. The free laundry benefit I got on our first stop was now entirely cancelled out.
Enough with the problems already...give us break Murphy and stay the F#@! away....PLEASE!