“Dead Short”

Thursday, 7/3/08 10:30

Kathy, Scott, and the girls arrived yesterday morning at 6:15 am. They got to a late start, so instead of slipping schedule, they drove through the night. We loaded, grabbed a quick breakfast, and were off by a little after 9:00. The RV, though smaller than what you probably think of, is amazing, and quite comfortable for the 5 of us. The morning and afternoon were mostly uneventful, primarily spent teaching me the ropes of the coach, learning to drive it, and heading towards St. Louis.

The RV did have two significant issues. There were various electrical oddities – lights, radios, etc. would turn on and off unexpectedly, on their own. And the generator, though it ran, wasn’t supplying power, so nothing in the RV that didn’t run directly off the motor would function while we were on the road (no big problem except for the air conditioner, it made for a hot drive).

I took my first turn as pilot for Bessie. It’s very different from driving the truck or a van or SUV. Despite the fact that this RV is smaller than most, it still feels like it straddles the lane lines on both sides, and the steering is a little loose, so you have to spin the wheel back and forth a good bit to keep the vehicle centered down the lane.

Then, a problem in the early evening. The throttle began misfiring, I started losing power, and the gas gauge started dropping rapidly (even more rapidly than it would otherwise). By the time we got to the next exit, I couldn’t go faster than 30, and we were down half a tank.

We were being protected. That exit happened to contain a truck repair shop, there happened to be two mechanics there, and they happened to be working two hours past closing time. Larry diagnosed Bessie’s primary battery to be a ‘dead short’. This is the term for a battery that has a short somewhere inside the battery, like connecting the positive and negative terminals of the battery with a wire. Larry told us that a dead short battery would produce exactly the kinds of symptoms that we were experiencing. And with that, Larry sold us a new battery and we were on our way. I'm not certain why Larry was so familiar with the concept of dead shorts, but it may have had something to do with his girlfriend(wife?) who took about 15 minutes and two calculators to add $7 to the bill because we also needed oil. While we were stopped, Scott analyzed the generator and found a tripped relay. He reset it, and the generator worked again. Huzzah!

Exuberant with multiple victories, we proceeded into St. Louis in top working order. I was driving again, and had a bit of a scare with an incoming storm just as we passed by the Gateway Arch in the early evening. I was on a high overpass, and 60 mph gusts were pushing me all over the road, and in heavy traffic, early evening, and rain. It made for a nail-biting experience, but we arrived in the Eureka KOA without further incident, just off historic Route 66. We picked this KOA because the other St. Louis KOA had a surly receptionist, and the Eureka one was very nice. We got in a little late, but they had waited for us, and we settled in for a rainy night, complete with Lee’s homemade pesto pasta supreme and blissfully cold air-conditioning.

We took a leisurely morning (with a surprise birthday gift for me - a parrot poker party t-shirt and funny “Does a bear sit in the woods” boxers – no that’s not a typo), and we were on the road back to downtown St. Louis around 10:00 local time.