Ed & Betty’s Tiffin Phaeton in our pull-through driveway.
Ed and Betty joined us for breakfast and we continued our lively conversation from the prior evening. Around 10 AM they turned their attention to preparing for departure. An important piece of RVing etiquette is to leave folks alone when they are making or breaking camp. Every RVer (who has used their rig more than a couple of times) has developed routines for each of these situations. Engaging them in conversation during these routines is a distraction that creates a risk that something will be overlooked. It’s dangerous and it’s rude, and seasoned RVers simply don’t do it.
The view from our front door.
With their preparations finished, we talked a bit more about future plans and when they might be back this way. They wanted some pictures of themselves in front of their coach, and so did we, so we helped each other out with that.
Ed & Betty Burns in front of their motorhome.
Because our bus is in our garage driveway blocking the exit from our pull-through driveway, I had to have Ed back their motorhome out. As the name implies, the pull-through driveway wasn’t really designed for backing a 40 vehicle out the way it came in. The entrance to the driveway is at an angle to the road that makes it easy to get in when coming towards our house from the main road. It’s designed so that we can pull out going forward onto the concrete driveway and make the turns needed to get us pointed back out towards the main road.
Us in front of our bus.
Because of this design, I had to have Ed make a “12-point turn”, jockeying their coach forward and backward until I could get the front end clear to pull forward onto the road while being careful not to have his tires get off the edge of the driveway or have his rear end hit the neighbor’s mailbox. We managed to accomplish this in a reasonable amount of time with minimal damage to the approach portion of the driveway, which wasn’t designed to have a heavy vehicle sit in one place and turn its steering tires. This part of the driveway was still very wet from the heavy rains we had two nights ago, and we ended up with deeper ruts than I had hoped, but not enough to get them stuck.
With the coach extracted from the driveway, Ed got it parallel to, and near, the edge of the road and Betty brought the car up. Again, we left them alone to go through their toad hookup routine. More hugs and they were on their way around 11:30 AM. If things work out as planned we will see them again on Sunday or Monday when we hope to visit the Middleton Berry Farm and pick some fresh raspberries.
My plan for the rest of my day is to sign up with our new registrar/hosting service at QTH.com. QTH.com is owned and operated by fellow amateur radio operator Scott Neader, KA9FOX. (QTH is ham radio shorthand for “location, destination, or home base”, as in “I just arrived at my QTH”, so it’s a clever name for a hosting service.) The process should be relatively smooth, but there may be a window of time during which our website/blog URL and e-mail addresses are unavailable. My plan is to position that window near mid-night this evening. Since there is always the possibility of something going wrong, or it just taking longer to complete the switch, I am ending this post here around mid-afternoon while I know I still have access to the website. I will do a second post when the transition is complete and everything is working correctly again.