Remnants, Streaks & Chunks

When I went for a walkabout on Saturday morning I noticed two things while standing in front of Scoopy. When I saw the first one, I thought, man, I’m glad that wasn’t me. When I saw the second, I thought, oh no, what have we done?

The first thing I saw was just to the left of the driver’s side. There were red taillight remnants embedded into a scarred tree trunk and even bigger chunks scattered all over the ground. Apparently, the guy who left just before we arrived decided that tree was no big deal. He was wrong. #22 is a nice wide pull-thru, so we have to pull pretty far to the left side to get the best access to our hook-ups. Given that, even I, the newest of all newbies, understood that in order to safely get out of that wide pull through, I first had to back up and swing right so that I could easily make the left hand turn onto the exit road with Scoopy’s taillights intact. This is exactly what I did last time when we were in #21. When I pointed out the red chunks on the ground, our neighbor in #23 remembered the previous occupants and said, “that’s gonna be an expensive fix.”

I’m glad it wasn’t me.

The second thing, well, it actually started with a phone call we got a couple of days after we celebrated our success in parking Scoopy in her tight storage spot. The gal from the facility called us to say that next time we should probably park about a foot further back so that we might avoid getting streaks on Scoopy’s mirrors caused by water dripping from the overhang. We had parked her with the greatest consideration to our neighbors behind us, making sure they had all the room they were actually paying for. But if we were being given another foot, then okay! That suggestion was the reason those Altoids were so important.

Of course, when we reunited with Scoopy, the first thing we did is check out her mirrors. All seemed just fine. Unfortunately, we did not check other parts of her to make sure the falling rain had not left its mark.

So, when I saw the streaks down the front of Scoopy, my heart fell. I called out to Steven to come take a look, and he agreed that the awful, ugly streaks were as a result of her position while in storage.

Oh, no! What have we done??

We rummaged through all the bottles and cleaners left behind by Lori and Odel. Trust me when I say that Scoopy has been well cared for and these items are plentiful. We tried each and every one, but to no avail. Those streaks were embedded, just like the red taillights in that tree.

I finally brought out the one thing I knew we shouldn’t use. Clorox Soft Scrub. I knew before we even applied it that we would sacrifice shine. So we applied a tiny bit in an inconspicuous spot. Yep, it got rid of the streaks. Yep, it took off the shine. Clearly, we need a Plan B.

Any suggestions?

I spent the afternoon organizing all the inside storage spaces. I had brought along some containers to wrangle all the cleaning supplies left in the rig and those I have added to the inventory. (Lori and I are two peas in a pod in this regard, I’ve never met a cleaner I didn’t think was the next great thing.) Meanwhile, Steven spent some time going through stuff in the storage bays, which were in disarray from our search for something to rid Scoopy of those horrid streaks. There are plenty of things down there, we just don’t know what they are or how to use them.

By the time happy hour rolled around, we settled in for a lovely dinner and another round of Spotify. This time, we made up our own game, “A to Z”. Alternating letters, we each had to pick a band and if we could remember one, the name of a specific song that we wanted to hear. I started things off with “Abba” and by the time I had to pick “C”, I realized I was able to poach some Interwebz!!

Without telling Steven, I started Googling band names. Amazingly, there are websites out there dedicated to listing artists by letters. After the letter ‘I’ rolled around and I called out Iggy Pop’s “Lust For Life” I started feeling guilty about my cheating. I finally decided to fess up, and I said to Steven, “I have a confession to make.” He said, “Will it involve rehab?”

LOL! I think he was relieved by my rather innocent confession. Although he did say that he noticed in the mirror that my computer had seemed quite active. There is no place to hide in an RV. You really learn this when you’re changing clothes. There’s always some mirror or window exposing you to the outside.

Sunday morning we began our usual departure routine, which took quite a long time as we did have some issues with dumping our black tank. That issue we had in Oregon was still rearing its ugly head, although in a very manageable way. We just knew it hadn’t been completely resolved. But as we were preparing to leave, whatever chunk of paper products that had managed to stay stuck now decided to unstick. It took Steven a while to figure it all out, but he finally did, and we were off to Puyallup to once again put our beloved Scoopy in storage.

When we arrived, we both decided we just had to try to back her into her spot. And we did it! It took only three tries and we got her right in. From the left, she looks perfect. From the right, she looks a little wonky. But she’s within her lines, and one foot back from the Altoids. YAY!

And just in case she’s not back far enough to protect her mirrors, we added a little protection of our own. It’s not high tech, but we’re hoping it does the job!

Our next trips to take Scoopy out for some exercise are already in the works. Stay tuned!

UP NEXT: Damn fine camping!

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