THE ROVING POLLOCKS
2009 FALLISH

It has only been a couple of months since we last reported on our travel and travails. The latter has been winning as you shall soon see.

After our brief auto trip to North Carolina to visit our Grandson William, and his parents and to Virginia beach to catch up with Don and Kathee Larmee, we returned to the warmth of our mountain cabin …and our hot tub.

The first order of business was to get Pollock's Midway B & B into shape for the semi-annual visit from John and Ellen Albin (John’s lovely wife) and Piper, the wonder Westie. The Albins were migrating from Maine to the Florida Keys winter fishing grounds…at least John was. Our place is midway between. We had our usual great time hosting them. This time we explored historic Leesburg, Virginia and the less than historic nearby outlet mall. We did some windshield touring in the Virginia piedmont and Gisela prepared some gourmet chow.

This is Bill and John - Lobster Heads both.

Falling leaves, cooler days, and earlier sunsets told us that we better start thinking about our trip south before we were caught by falling snows, cold days and 4:00 PM sunsets. We had some work to do to get the motor home in shape for the winter.

We had been having problems with the tail lights on our “toad” vehicle, the Jeep nicknamed Wally (goes with the Beaver motorhome nicknamed the Beav. Any one out there that does not understand Wally and the Beav is too young to be reading this.) We thought the problem was in the motorhome wiring so we sought out an expert on towing stuff. He rewired the motorhome and replaced a gizzmo that combines two lights into one wire. We then hooked it up to the car…and promptly blew up the new gizzmo. We concluded that Wally was the culprit and took it to the trailer expert. He did some rewiring to make the system simpler and more fool-proof…just what Bill needed. Now it was time to return the Beav to get a new gizzmo. Turns our our selection of experts was a tad misguided because it was discovered that he had wired the first gizzmo up incorrectly. Thanks to Cliff Bedore for spending countless hours trying to make sense of our gizzmos and how they should be wired up. I learned that if you mention a technical problem to Cliff he does not like to see it remain unsolved. Thanks, Cliff. Our towing stuff expert did come through in the end and showed that his ethics exceeded his gizzmo wiring savvy since he more than made up for this mis-wiring by fixing it and giving us a new top of the line gizzmo for free. We really came to value small town America business ethics as shall be seen a bit later.

Back to our travails. On our way to deliver the Beav to the towing stuff expert, Gisela, who was following in Wally radioed to Bill, “White Smoke, White Smoke, White Smoke.” That would be OK if White Smoke was Bill’s call sign, you know like Navy fighter pilots call signs. Tom Cruise was Hollywood in Top Gun, John McCain…Playboy, and there was Booger. But it’s not. Bill’s call sign is Bill or sometimes "Hey, you." That meant White Smoke was a sign of... Big Trouble. Bill pulled the Beav over on the shoulder of Interstate 66 and went to look at the business end where the engine and transmission are located. He noted the location of the fire extinguisher on his way aft. However, the source of the White Smoke was soon evident…it came from engine coolant flashing on a hot engine and transmission. It seems that the folks that assembled the Beav back in 2001 ran a forty foot hose from the rear radiator to the dash heater a little bit too close to the hot exhaust system and after eight years that part of the hose was terminally dried out and it cracked under pressure. We love roadside repairs. If you refer back to March 2007 in this blog you can learn why. (Hint: Double front brake lock-up in the middle of the Florida Keys.) In this case it turns out that the hose could be spliced and after doing that and adding four gallons of coolant we were on our way. Did I mention that is was the expensive, long-life coolant…roughly $30 a gallon? Did I mention that roadside repairs always cost twice as much as repairs done in the shop? Well it was and they did.

But by the early days of November Wally and the Beav were loaded out, the hot tub was drained and winterized, we had our last dinner with Scott and Missy White, the best neighbors on this or any other planet, we said goodbye to our mountain amigos at the Coffee and Bagels Club and headed for Richmond. We spent nearly a week visiting with Bill’s daughter Ann and her husband, Dwayne. It was really great to be able to spend time with them.

Leaving Richmond, we headed for the Great Outdoors RV Resort near Titusville, Florida area and a rendezvous with Ron and Ginny Norton. Our visit was a bit different from past visits in that Ginny was taking pain pills instead of drinking wine. It seems that a “routine procedure” went wrong resulting in surgery and a long period of convalescence without wine. We still enjoyed our four days in the area. We were reacquainted with Pegs and Jokers and had some good seafood at the world famous, Dixie Crossroads. Never heard of it you say? OK, so, maybe it’s only fairly well known to snow birds in eastern Brevard County…good seafood nevertheless.

After four days with Ron and Ginny, we said our fairwells and see you laters, and headed for a Thanksgiving Indian Pow Wow near Fort McCoy, Florida. We were having the second annual, east coast, Escapee Boomer Thanksgiving ‘rang hosted by Cynthia Lee. As we drove east along State Route 40, we smelled something funny…but not as in 'funny ha ha.' Funny as in 'Oh, no, not again.' We stopped, inspected, sniffed, checked the front wheels for excessive heat and did not find the tell tale symptoms of brake lock-up. Relieved, we proceeded. A few miles later the smell was back and just like on the overseas highway in the Keys, there was no safe place to pull over. So we proceeded until we found one a couple of miles up the road at an abandoned doctors office now occupied by a guy selling Jerky. No mistaking the problem now. Thank you, Mac McCoy, known in RV circles as The Fire Guy. Mac had refilled our big foam extinguisher discharged in Michigan in the summer of 2008 when the left front wheel locked up and caught fire. This time it extinguished the fire in the right front wheel. We then headed down a familiar path. Call the Camping World Road Service. Get a mobile repair guy dispatched, etc. etc. etc.

This road side repair was the “mother of all roadside repairs.” We can’t go into detail about it because it is now under investigation by the Florida Attorney General, in litigation in small claims court, the subject of a Camping World Road Service complaint and a disputed MasterCard charge. You should be glad that the detail is not being provided…the complaint to the state of Florida runs over thirty pages. The good news neither us nor anyone else was killed or injured because we found the woefully negligent repair before the right front wheel came off a 29,000 pound Beav towing a 4800 pound Wally sending them crashing into a day care center. We took the Beav to another brake shop to have the melted ABS sensor replaced. The technician crept out from under the Beav (he was lying on a creeper, thus he crept.) and said, “Did you know one of the two bolts that holds the caliper on is sheared off? Well, folks, that and the fact the some astute price analysis by an old Navy contracting officer uncovered a serious case of “rip off” lead us to the current state of litigation, etc. No small town America business ethics here. More like ‘let's do defective repair work and then cheat those rich dummies driving those big motorhomes.‘ Stay tuned for the next chapter. Who knows, we may make it all the way to “Judge Judy.”


The Pow Wow Boomerang was great fun. We again met up with our old Boomer Amigo, Chris Christiansen and her dog Rufus. Chris had spent the summer in the Canadian Maritime Provinces had stopped to visit for a long weekend in Virginia on her way South. A big event on that visit was a Trader Joe's and Wegman's shopping spree. Chris was a bit starved for that sort of shopping since there is nothing comparable in Newfoundland. We also visited Chateau O’Brien in Markham, VA where we saved Chris from buying an $80 bottle of wine. Actually we were hoping she would. The Pow Wow featured a free Thanksgiving dinner of smoked turkey and wonderful stuffing but no gravy or mashed potatoes. Bill was told he should feel fortunate because the Indians at the first Thanksgiving served Swan and Maize according to his Cedar Springs High School classmate, Lisa Van Someren who has been living is the same state as Plymouth Rock since the 1970’s, and therefore, knows all about such things. We also got in a great boat ride on the Saint John’s River thanks to Chris’ friend, Barry, whose brother has a house on the river in Palatka.

At long last we headed for our winter nesting grounds on the banks of Orange Lake (what isn’t named “orange” or “gator” in Florida?) We arrived just in time to celebrate Jim Jaudon’s birthday with him and his lovely wife, Anne. Bill and Jim were ‘mates in the Navy. Can’t really say shipmates since they served together in buildings not ships. You know, like the Pentagon and Headquarters, Naval Material Command…buildings all.

We barely got oriented at Grand Lake RV and Golf Resort before it was time to head to Wildwood, Florida for the Grand Opening of Alliance RV Repair Center. The party was fun but we probably would not have gone if we did not have an appointment to have a few things fixed on the Beav. Five days and a few thou lighter in the bank account we returned to Grand Lake. It was the 20 labor hour “strip and seal” that got us. Remember the eight year old hose. Well, the same goes for eight year old roof caulk and sealant on windows, etc. Hopefully, we have put an end to the many nagging water leaks that have been plaguing us lately.

After a day at Grand Lake, we headed for Orlando International Airport to meet…. Mr. Cuteness himself, William Pollock V (Bill being IV), and his traveling companions, one of whom resembled Bill’s son and the other the nice girl with the French sounding name that Bill’s son married. We had a nice dinner together and took them to their hotel at Cocoa Beach where they were meeting up with Yvette’s dad, Brian and his lovely wife, Judith, who were taking William V and his parents on a Disney Cruise out of Port Canaveral. Lucky them. We did a RON -military lingo for remain over night- at Patrick Air Force Base. Lucked into a Distinguished Visitor Quarters suite right on the Atlantic Ocean for 48 bucks a night…pretty nice compared to the Super 8 down the road for twice that. The Air Force does a nice job with amenities.

Grandson William V and Son Paul



Another Silly Hat

We then headed back to Grand Lake for a couple of days before buttoning up the Beav and shooting up I-95 in Wally to spend Christmas and New Years with family and Friends.

We hope this finds you all well. We were saddened to hear of the passing of two alumni of the Navy Submarine acquisition community, Floyd Bedsole and Ed Washington. Our deepest sympathy goes out to Delores Washington and Floyd’s family.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

Bill and Gisela