On the Road Again -- NOT!

We were making pretty good progress this morning, getting ready to leave Indy Lakes.  I had taken the garbage up to the dumpster; put the mail in the mailbox; traded the gate opener to the office manager for my $20 deposit back; and loaded the lavender plant and the doorstep into the Toad. We had put all the pictures, smoke detector. calendar, etc. away on the bed.  We pulled in the slide on the driver's side with no problem, but when we went to pull in the one on the passenger side -- nothing!  It raised up, but then wouldn't come in. Now, we can travel with the bedroom slide cattywampus and out a bit in the back, but not with the living room slide all the way out!

Stuart's Service in Elkhart where we have an appointment on Monday is not open on Fridays, so we could not even call them for advice.  We called Camper World who gave up the name of a mobile RV tech, who didn't answer the phone.  Forry went up to the office to tell them we would be staying another day.  They did NOT recommend the mobile tech we had called, saying that people here had many complaints about him.  But they did recommend we call a local RV dealer and ask for Jack.  While the dealer did not do off-site work, Jack did after hours.

Sure enough about 4:45, there was a knock on the door.  Jack had a few ideas about what we might be able to do to get the slide to go back in --

Finally he and Forry worked there way around to the back where Forry had seen quite a bit of oil leaking from the area of the bedroom slide near the radiator --

Jack ended up isolating and crimping off the leaky hose long enough for us to get the slide to go back in.  It looks like all of these hydraulic line hoses are bad and will need to be replaced when we get to Elkhart!

It was a $100 service call (plus a $20 tip), but worth every penny! We'll try again to head north in the morning...

The Brickyard

Since we are in Indianapolis, it is a given that we needed to go see the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Hall of Fame Museum there.   The museum is housed in a very impressive building --

We didn't realize that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is over 100 years old with the first car race here in 1909.  The track was made up of gravel and tar which didn't stand up at all.  So bricks were laid on the entire track before the 1911 race --

Forry was VERY fascinated by this race car that featured an open oil bath for the pistons on the bottom with the valves and camshaft on the top.  (This car was never allowed to race at Indy as it was too heavy in spite of the fact that they drilled over a hundred holes in the frame.)

We took a tour of the track on this bus.  It was a thrill to actually ride around the two and one-half mile track --

Of the over three million bricks that make up the track, these at the finish/starting line are the only ones that have not been covered with asphalt --

Other than during the two World Wars, there have been races at Indy every year.  The museum has about half of the winning cars on display, including this six cylinder Marmon Wasp which won the first Indianapolis "500" in 1911. Driver Ray Harroun won in 6 hours, 42 minutes and 8 seconds with an average 74.59 miles per hour.

On our way back to Indy Lakes, we stopped at a Walgreen's and got our flu shots.  One more thing checked off our "to do" lists!

Today at Indy Lakes

It was a bit busier day today.  We got ahold of Stuart Service in Elkhart, Indiana and made an appointment with Chuck to work on our errant bedroom slide next Monday. Since we have a few days to get there (it'll only take one long day or two short ones), we decided to stay on here until Friday instead of leaving tomorrow. That way we can go to visit the Indianapolis Speedway Museum.  I thought Forry was going to go see it while I was in Washington, but...

We are starting to see more Fall color around the area.  This is the view today looking out over one of the ponds here at Indy Lakes --

Daughter Mary Mae sent a fat box of mail that arrived today, so I spent a few hours sorting through it and then paying bills.  Later this afternoon we took a drive to check out the Interstate Battery store.  We will be stopping there on our way out of town to have our six 6-volt house batteries replaced. On the way back, we stopped at the neighborhood China Buffet for supper.  I'd say that on a scale of 1-10, it was at most a 4.  It was clean and the food was hot, but everything tasted exactly the same -- and was deep-fried beside!