{"id":23300,"date":"2017-07-23T03:54:14","date_gmt":"2017-07-23T03:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=23300"},"modified":"2017-07-23T03:54:14","modified_gmt":"2017-07-23T03:54:14","slug":"happy-trails-part-32","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=23300","title":{"rendered":"Happy Trails, Part 32"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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WOODBURY, Minn.<\/strong> — This blog isn’t about my being a mechanical dunderhead, although that will become evident as you peruse this brief post.<\/p>\n

It’s about the recreational vehicle community and the overarching friendliness that pervades it.<\/p>\n

My wife and I found ourselves without hot water at the start of the day. We pulled out the user manual for our fifth wheel. I pored through it looking for ways to troubleshoot the problem. I flipped switches, checked breaker fuses, tested the propane levels. I came up empty.<\/p>\n

Then we spent the day visiting my cousin and her husband before all of us returned to our RV park; my cousin wanted to see this “mansion” in which we travel. Her husband is a general contractor, but admitted to having limited knowledge about RV propane fuel systems.<\/p>\n

We fiddled around outside in the dark, flashlight in hand, flipping more switches and getting a bit more frustrated with each passing minute.<\/p>\n

Then up walked a young man named Andrew. “Hello. Are you fellows having trouble with your water heater?” he asked. “Uhh, yeah!”<\/em> I said.<\/p>\n

“I’m an RV tech,” Andrew responded. Quite suddenly, when I heard the words “RV tech” I’m quite sure I saw a light shine on Andrew as if the darkness was lifting all around him.<\/p>\n

He checked a few switches, asked about whether my wife and I were running our water heater on electricity or propane. We turned off the electricity, turned on the propane switch and then — presto!<\/em> — the pilot light lit.<\/p>\n

We now have hot water. Andrew offered us a helpful hint on how to operate our water heater. I’m still uncertain what caused the system to fail on us a few hours earlier, but I have an idea on what to look for when we take it in for service.<\/p>\n

We thanked Andrew profusely. He said he was parked two spaces over and saw us lurking about in the dark. So he thought he’d come over and lend a hand.<\/p>\n

Therein lies the spirit of the greater RV community as I have long heard it described. We all pull together, lend a hand when appropriate and seek to smooth the rough patches for our neighbors who we believe might be in some distress.<\/p>\n

Andrew came to the rescue. I appreciate him more than I expressed in the dark of night.<\/p>\n\n

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WOODBURY, Minn. — This blog isn’t about my being a mechanical dunderhead, although that will become evident as you peruse this brief post. It’s about the recreational vehicle community and the overarching friendliness that pervades it. My wife and I found ourselves without hot water at the start of the day. We pulled out the … Continue reading Happy Trails, Part 32<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[3920,4058],"class_list":["post-23300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-retirement","tag-rv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23301,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23300\/revisions\/23301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}