19-30NOV11 - Houma, LA (turkey day & m3 maintenance)

Saturday, 19NOV, after recovering from the Willie Nelson concert we headed back to our daughter, Rebecca’s, & Raymond’s driveway in Houma, LA. The rest of the week was spent preparing for the Thanksgiving meal & Black Friday shopping (at least by Corrie). Since some stores (ie Wally Mart) are starting their “supposed” good deals on Thanksgiving evening; this resulted in Corrie leaving the house soon after the Thanksgiving meal was completed to grab a spot in line. But before she disappeared for the rest of the day, we had another great Thanksgiving meal; unfortunately our son, Joe, was offshore & not present.

After completing the majority of our Xmas shopping, it was time to string the Xmas lights on the house. As usually many of the light strings that worked fine last year wouldn’t cooperate this year. End result was all new strings purchased once again. Dan thinks that the manufacturers purposely make the light strings to self destruct after a couple of months, no matter how good you take care of them.

Sunday, 27NOV, we unhooked the RV & headed to Slidell, LA, for RV maintenance at the nearest Freightliner dealership. As we have described in previous BLOGs getting routine maintenance on your RV when you live in it as “full timers” is one of the few headaches with the full time lifestyle. As we have previously discussed for the more complicated servicing you must go to a semi-truck facility that often will not deal with reservations. See the below BLOG entry for more on RV chassis maintenance & our favorite service facility discovered so far.

http://theryanrvexpress.blogspot.com/2010/11/06-16nov10-phoenix-az-red-stick-la.html

For our Freightliner chassis there are three recommended maintenance intervals – M1, M2, & M3; with the M3 being the most complicated & time consuming. Since we were due for a M3, Dan tried over the phone to convince the service manager that the required work would take two days. Eventually it was agreed that if we got there first thing Monday, 28NOV, morning they would get us in first & could get it done in one day. Since it takes almost two hours to drive from Houma to Slidell & because we didn’t want to fight New Orleans rush hour traffic, we decided to drive up the day before, ie Sunday, & stay at an RV park right next door. After checking into the RV park, it was into New Orleans for dinner at Roma Café.

First thing Monday morning, 28NOV, bright & early we were at the Freightliner dealer in Slidell. Once again Dan tried to convince the service manager that the M3 maintenance would take more than one day. Since the service manager felt it was doable, Dan asked that if it couldn’t be done, to leave the RV in drivable condition at the end of the day so we could go a RV park. We needed this as a back-up plan because the Freightliner dealership has no RV hookups & does not allow you dry camp on their facility. In fact, at 6PM they kick everyone out & lock the gate. We won’t bore you with the details, but they didn’t get it done in one day & we were back first thing Tuesday morning for another six hours! Then it was back to Rebecca & Raymond’s driveway in Houma.