There Be Awning…

The year, 1986.  The event, Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home.  Scotty utters one of his many, famous lines, this one being, “Admiral, there be Whales here!”  I now feel Scotty jubilation….because “Folks, there be AWNING here, and it is up on the motorhome doing its job.”

It took quite a voyage to get here, there were many battles which had to be faced, but in the end, Kerry McColloch at McColloch’s RV repair and storage got the new awning on, put in the toilet gasket, ordered the line for the propane which should be in Thursday or Friday and Arny and I will install it, all for $375 after taxes.  We got it in there a little after 8 am, and as we were leaving he was crawling under it looking at the missing propane line, and he already had opened the awning and verified that everything was there.  Now that is service, and Kerry gives good service.  He is just a tad younger than I am, he works with his son and another “hired hand”.  I asked him which one of them did the toilet, and he looked me in the eye and said, “I did it myself.”  Wow, would have never guessed that, but that is the type of guy he is.  If you ever need service in Sacramento, give McColloch’s RV repair and storage a try…I don’t think you will be disappointed.

With the motorhome out of the “perch”, I told Arny that I would clean the RV pad.  Didn’t know he had a very high pressure washer, so I did the RV pad and the driveway leading up to it.  It did not get all the marks and stains out, but it sure looks better.  I told him that I would do the patio another day, and do the driveway again since I ran out of gas before I could give it a second shot.

This little White-breasted Nuthatch has been hanging around a lot lately.  Has some characteristics of a Woodpecker, but it is of the Nuthatch family instead.

And I also got some good pictures of the hummingbird…I think it is the same one that was hanging around, or should I say, keeping all other hummingbirds from hanging around, that was here last year.  He is very protective of “his area”, always chasing other hummingbirds away, except for another female who he allows to use “his” feeder.  I nearly got a picture of the Black Hawk that has been hanging around also.  Had him in the camera view and just as it was auto-focusing…whoosh, it was gone in the blink of an eye, and I had a picture of fuzzy tree.  I sure hope I can get a picture of it before we leave in a few months, it is a huge hawk.

Where oh Where Is Our Little Awning Now….

Quick recap….When we bought our Dynamax Isata six weeks ago, it had no awning over the slide-out.  On the PPL website the picture of the slide-out shows a “ripped” awning, but after the picture was taken the owner asked them to take it off since other potential buyers wanted him to fix the awning.  Now this would have been around a $400 fix…after the awning was taken off and the unit did not sell the price dropped two or three times, once by $1,000 just as we were looking at it.  So it was a bad decision of the owner to remove it and not fix it, that is for sure.  For us, it has been a bit of a drama getting one put back on.

So we took possession on the 18th of April, and made arrangements for PPL to put an awning on the 28th if we returned…and since we would be there, we included some other work to be done too.  Well, they assured us they would have the awning, and we agreed to the other work.  Well, the other work got taken care of, but the awning never arrived in time.  So Joy, the service manager, agreed to ship the awning once they got it to my sister’s house in California.  On May 13th, in response to my email, Joy told me that the awning had arrived, “will be sent out today”.  On Friday May 16th I asked for a tracking number, and, well, here is what it said….

So “it will go out today” means, “we will ship it out on Friday when you ask for the tracking number”.  But, it got worse….of course….

As you can see in the upper right corner, it was being sent to Holiday Florida, and not Citrus Heights, California as we had agreed to.

So on to Tampa it went, where the new delivery location request finally stopped it short of being delivered (it was on the truck!).  Thursday it arrived at Orlando….and it stayed there and stayed there and stayed there.  So Tuesday morning I called and had a harsh talk with PPL, who talked with FedEx, and I was promised delivery on Wednesday, May 28th.  I even talked to a representative at FedEx who assured me that it was going to be on a plane Tuesday and would be delivered Wednesday.  And until 11:45 pm Pacific Time Tuesday, nothing had changed on the website, until…..

…just 15 minutes earlier it had arrived at Sacramento.  By 8 am it was on the truck and going out for delivery.  And here it is 6 pm and I am still waiting for it!

I have had some kind words said on the blog about PPL, both times we bought from them.  Frankly, I still think good things about them, but I also feel a bit let down.  We made a special trip to Houston for this awning, and although other work was performed, the awning was the reason we went there.  But when they said they would ship it to California, that made things better.  But it arrived to PPL, could have been there a few days and it took my email to inquire about it before Joy said, “It will go out today.”  Even then, it did not go out for another three days….and then, it was sent to Florida, and I am the one who caught the mistake.  Then, FedEx sat on it in Orlando, due to the holiday I was told, and it will be here today unless the truck breaks down.

UPDATE:

The awning arrived!  Just before we went to dinner, FedEx delivered the awning.  The box was not in the best of shape…the two metal covers were not at either end where they belonged, and the upper end in the picture the box was broken nearly all the way around, but taped up.  As for the awning, I cannot see any apparent damage, but we hope to have it put on next week and the “experts” at the RV repair place we use will determine its condition.  I just hope it is the right size and everything, we went through enough already with this thing.