Bakersfield CA 10-18-2018

Woke up early ready to put some miles down today, its sunny and warm and my shorts and t-shirt are perfect fit for the weather. I head towards the office to pay for our space and meet a jovial owner behind the desk ready to accommodate me and my Passport America discount card. Most RV parks offices are a combination of office, vending machines, bulletin board with possibly a lounge area and TV, this one was no different. Got them paid at a reasonable rate of $24.00 and then back to the RV to disembark. Got everything unhooked, the slides are back in and off we go. As we leave the RV park, we hear an unusual kind of popping noise from slide roof behind my seat, so only a few blocks down the road we pull over to investigate, I look up at the top of the main slide to see the awning is again pinched on the facia of the main slide, I have Angela push the slide button to activate it and can see its not going to work, we slide it back in and my mind races to this cant be happening we just had this fixed. I do surprise myself sometimes under pressure, I become pretty logical and don’t freak out. We decided rather than to be parked a side street we would return to the RV park to discuss a strategy. Feeling frustrated at having another RV quality issue we resolve to figure out how to get it fixed. I call Jason Johnson at Coachmen Warranty to not only let him know how unhappy we are again but who can he suggest we go to get this fixed. Jason is unavailable so I leave a voice message and call the main office where I finally get connected with a Tech in another department that does have a list of RV service people in the area that will do Coachmen warranty work. I start down the list and call 5 of them, one company answers and said as we suspected they are out at least week to even look at it, all the other RV service companies don’t return my call but one which was hours later. So, we move our focus to farther outside the area and look to Bakersfield, we call Barry’s RV Outlet. By the way Bakersfield is over 3 hours away but at least in the direction of Texas. We get sent to the service department and greeted with a friendly voice of Joe Cowell, service manager. We describe our tale of woe and find him very accommodating, he said sure come on in we look at it and see what we can do, we were giddy with hope he could fix it. The day continues to warm up and we push the RV to get there before he closes. Joe gives us directions to stay of some of the roads due to traffic so we are on some secondary roads that take us through many agricultural farms. We arrive about 4:30 and park on the street because of out tow vehicle. We briskly walk in to Barry’s RV to find Joe, he greets us with a friendly hello and says I will grab Mike my tech and come out to see what you have. We are already feeling confident in Joe and after Mike climbs up on the roof, they conclude pretty quickly that they have seen this before and have a fix. I’m excited but know its one thing to know the fix another to have the parts to do it. Joe explains that a spacer is needed to push the awning out farther so the facia with not get pinched. Joe goes further to say he thinks they have some spacers in the shop, we almost fainted to have some who can fix it and have the parts on hand, well we felt liking buying a lotto ticket. Its now late in the day and need to unhook the Cooper so we can be mobile, we know they will start on it tomorrow morning which is Saturday but where to stay tonight, we could stay in a hotel but that seems silly when we have an RV, there are some RV parks around but Joe says you can stay on our lot and we agree that would be great, also the RV will be in first place in the morning to be worked on. They give us the combination to the gate lock and realize the Cooper needs to be jumped as we have not resolved the battery going dead on the cooper while being towed. Joe says they have a jumper, I decide to unhook the Copper and turn the RV around to jump it, Joe brings out the portable jumper, I tell him its pretty dead and I’m skeptical, he says oh this will do the job. We hook it up and yep nothing, so I hook the RV and give it a minute before starting and it starts. With plans made to stay on the lot and the cooper running we decided to find a place to eat. Angela feels like having Mexican food so we both race to our phones and search Google where to go, we find El Captain Mexican Grill a few miles away. The food was great and reasonable, we had enough for another meal. We return to Barry’s RV Outlet open the gate and make ourselves at home in our RV.