Never A Boring Day!

 It started out as a quite innocent day. Despite the weather forecast predicting a grey sky and possible rain, there was no sign of imminent rain, nor were there any serious clouds in the sky this morning. We did our morning walk with Dixie along the canal enjoying the sunshine and the peace.

Today's agenda was to take a drive to El Centro for some groceries and possibly to find 2 new foldable camping chairs.

We were lucky enough to find the desired chairs at Harbor Freight and the groceries at ALDI and yes, Walmart. 

Shortly after being back in camp, Bea noticed that one of her hearing aids had gone missing. She had only been out of the van once at a Dollar Store in Holtville, so she quickly went back to try find it in the parking lot. IF she'd lost it there it would be on the ground, as we had parked in the last slot of the paved parking lot.

By now the wind had picked up a lot and it hit our trailer broadside. 

While she was gone I had made myself a sandwich and was just stepping outside, when suddenly the trailer was jolted sideways and a little backwards. EARTHQUAKE, was my first thought. Holy smokes, what was happening. Walking around the trailer I saw what had caused the sudden movement. The wind had rocked the trailer back and forth and finally pushed it off of the blocks we had put under the wheels for leveling. 

I quickly discovered that the movement had caused some damage on the rear set of electric support jacks. The side which had been supported with blocks, was now bent.

OMG, what to do? While the front jacks were OK, I wasn't even able to get the rear ones entirely moved up. 

A closer look made me think that maybe I could get it straightened out by tying a rope around the bent part and pulling it with the van. It should work. At least I may be able to use the electric again. 

But Bea was gone with the van!

After an hour she was back, but without the other half of her hearing aid. Too bad!

I hooked the trailer up to the van and pulled it forward, so I could get the van behind the trailer. I had borrowed a rope from a camp neighbour, and tied it around the jack with the other end around the hitch ball. Bea got behind the wheel and started pulling carefully. It only took a few seconds and the jack looked straight to me. I tried the electric motor  - and lo and behold - it worked. Wow, at least something was accomplished today. 

Now, instead of putting the low side on blocks again, we rather dug a hole in the ground on the high side and rested the other side on flat plastic levelers. The whole thing took about an hour and a half to straighten up.

And we are really glad that this happened in the afternoon and not now, while the wind has increased dramatically over the last couple of hours. Even after the wind turned to the west hitting our trailer only from the rear, it is rocking like crazy. While we were having supper a rain shower came down hard on us, but lasted for a few minutes only. 

According to the weather men, the wind is gonna die down after midnight.

Looks like we never have a boring day.