Awning update and almost home for the holidays

The plan was -- and still is -- to leave Yuma tomorrow and drive back to SLC for Christmas.  The plan almost got derailed, however, by our rig awning.

I mentioned a few posts ago that something happened to the mechanism that rolls the awning into its metal case.  So the awning has been fully extended for the last couple of weeks through the biggest rainstorm Yuma has seen in a while plus some wind.  Jim did a great job of creating a system of straps and cement blocks to hold it the awning in place so it wouldn’t break or tear. But until we could do something with it, we couldnt move the rig. And we wanted to put the rig in storage tomorrow and drive home in the tow car.

A mobile repair service looked at the awning and ordered a part.  The part arrived Thursday and Friday the repair guys came out to the Fam Camp -- only to discover they ordered the wrong part.   But they were able to get the awning rolled up and secured.

The repair guys drove back to their shop to see if they had an old part they could use. Meanwhile, Jim and I discussed options if there was no used part:  1) Stay in Yuma until the correct part arrived; 2) Have the repair guys order the part and fix the awning when we return to Yuma 3) Remove the awning, throw it in the trash, and buy a new one down the road.  After a lot of back and forth, we decided on Option 3.

There was, as expected, no used part available.  However, it also appears that the awning is attached very, very well  -- that sucker is not coming down without a huge fight.  So we switched to Option 2.

In a couple other pieces of news:

--Last night my OSU (Ohio State) was beaten by the Michigan State Spartys in the Big 10 championship game.  I was glad Urban Meyer didn’t play Marcus Hall, a senior starter who gave the double finger (Jim’s been calling it, the “double Buck You”) to the crowd as he left the stadium after being ejected from the previous week’s game.  I know the players are kids, but that’s classless.  Maybe Hall's not playing impacted the outcome of the game; I doubt it.  Congrats to MSU and Go Buckeyes!

--The burros are back.  Cracks me up.  Yesterday our next-door neighbor saw them on the other side of the Fam Camp fence.  Today the burros are once again roaming around the RVs. In preparation for leaving Yuma, I shut off the fridge and moved food to a cooler we'll take home.  It's chilly tonight, so I was going to leave the cooler outside until I thought about the burros.  They would have had a feast.  So the cooler is spending the night in the car.

Jim's MacGyvered system of cement blocks and straps kept our awning from blowing away.

The awning is now rolled back into its case and held shut with plastic zip ties.