Friends,

We are well into our Michigan and Wisconsin Trip and I am going to start a series of emails about our trip. Last year I just sent you all emails and you responded if you did not want to get them. This year you MUST respond if you want to get the emails. If you do not respond by the time I send the next email I will delete you from the list and this will be the first and last one you get. You can get added to the list if you let me know you would like to get the emails at any time.

Since we have been gone for over a week, this first message could be very long, but in order to keep it short I will only describe the first day of our trip in this message.

We left home on August 18 and headed to Ohio to visit our friends John and Amy Fraser who run an RV repair business in Springboro, just south of Dayton. We had just started when I realized that I did not have any trailer breaks. I thought it might not be too bad to just rely on the van breaks, but I had not gone far when I realized I really needed to get the brakes fixed. I stopped at the first good place to stop, which was the first rest area on I75 North of exit 20 where we got on. I checked everything I could think of before I called John Fraser. He helped me understand that there had to be an open circuit somewhere and before he got off the phone I found the problem! But, finding the problem was far short from fixing the problem. All I needed was a wire nut, but I did not have one with me. I was finally able to get the three wires connected and that solved that problem. We were at the rest area over an hour!

Notice, I said "that problem" at the end of the last paragraph, since there were two more problems to come down the road.

The second problem we had was that the air conditioning on the van got less and less as we went on until we had no air conditioning at all. Oh well, it was not too hot out so we reminisced about the time we did not have any air conditioning and used open windows to keep cool.

Then, just about 33 miles from our destination, as we were going through Cincinnati someone slowed down and pointed to the van and we knew there was something wrong. I thought "Maybe I forgot to put the gas cap back on when I last got gas", but no such luck! The left rear tire on the van was just about flat. I put the portable air compressor I had on it and it registered less than 10 psi! After the compressor had been on it for about half an hour, there was enough air to get safely off of I75 and to a place I could put on the spare.

Needless to say we were late getting to John and Amy's place. Our friends, Jane and Dolph Diamond were already there waiting for us. We were planning to travel up with Doug and Sharon Anderson, but they were not able to come with us. More about that in the next installment.

So that was our first day's adventures!

Remember, if you would like to additional installment about this trip, just reply to this message.

Jared

PS If you know someone who might also like these messages, forward it to them and if they reply I will add them to the list.