Have you ever heard the expression, “The cure is worse than the disease”? This statement applies to our recent Airstream experience.
If you follow us on Facebook you will undoubtedly recall, last summer on our way to Oklahoma City, a rogue spaghetti jar and some of his hooligan tin-can friends decided to escape the confines of their luxurious pantry and dance about on our pristine white Airstream floors. Their party was so raucous that spaghetti sauce found its way into some of the most obscure parts of our trailer. Needless to say, the owners of said partiers were in shock, and ultimately deeply depressed. The brand new Globetrotter had been defiled. This is a poetic way to say that our Airstream suffered some serious consequences from that mishap.
After two dealer recommendations and five home remedies, the mess only seemed to get marginally better. Was this an insurance claim? Was this a warranty item since the pantry lock had failed to do its job properly? Was it the result of owner stupidity? A few days later and after some serious conversations with the warranty people at the Mothership, it was determined this was indeed a warranty item — a $15,000 warranty item. There was a sigh of relief that this problem could be solved and return our Airstream to her previous glory.
Fast forward a few months. We found ourselves at Foley RV Center and Airstream of Mississippi to get the repair. (Originally we were going to travel to Jackson Center, Ohio for the repairs, but Foley has been highly recommended and since they are closer to home we could drop it off and avoid paying for hotels until the repairs were done). Mind you, this repair is not as simple as it might sound. The warranty work required that anything touching the floor, or connected to anything that touched the floor, had to be removed from the Airstream, and reassembled after the floor was replaced. That meant removing all of our personal stuff from the rig. We decided to use this opportunity to do some reorganizing and cleaning when we got it back from warranty work.
After removing everything, the last things to come up were the rugs. We reexamined the floor. To our astonishment, the stains had largely and substantially disappeared! On the drive from Conroe to Gulfport, we came to the conclusion that the cure (tearing everything apart and reassembling it) might be worse than the disease (some residual, very light staining). We spoke to John, the service manager, and while he would have loved to receive the $15,000 revenue from warranty work, he also felt that leaving it as is was likely the more prudent course. Decision made.
We are returning home as we write this blog from Gulfport, on TX SH-12. It’s a beautiful, sunny, 71 degree Friday morning, a perfect day to clean the rig and put everything back where it belongs. All the additional warranty items have been repaired, and Roam Home seems to be feeling pretty good. Surgery was avoided and she will just have to live the rest of her life with only a small scar as a reminder of a piece of her journey.
Isn’t this much like us? We begin life with hopes and beliefs that our journey will be blemish-free. Then real life happens. We too find ourselves with the residue of regrets and bad choices, bumps and bruises, with scars along our path. But once we meet the Divine Service Advisor, we learn that we can be whole again even if not perfect (until we meet Him in eternity). The damages that we once had so much sorrow over become tutors to a better future.
(Thanks to Tim for helping me write this blog on our journey home from Mississippi. He has also started learning Spanish with me using Duolingo, so we are honoring our language studies at the end of each blog.)
À la prochaine…hasta la próxima vez…until next time!
Foley RV Center and Airstream of Mississippi (above). View from our hotel window (left).
