Well, we survived the setup last night, or so we thought! We didn’t have the trailer fully level but thought “it would do”. After walking around for a while, and noticing doors closing on their own, it became obvious that it wouldn’t do! In addition, the fridge wasn’t working too well…. took a long time to cool down both on gas and hydro.
This morning was a continuation of yesterday, wet,wet and more wet. It was decided, for better or worse that we would not pack up the trailer to level it, rather we would jack up the axles on the offending side and place big “lego” blocks under the wheels.
This was a great plan, until a hunt through the trailer AND the instruction book failed to locate a jack! Ummm, must be a jack in the truck, sure enough there was. It had never been unwrapped or used, but looked like a good hydraulic jack. This should be easy!
Foiled again, aforesaid-mentioned jack looked like a hydraulic one, but in reality it was a wind up one. This should be fun to use under the trailer. Anyway, it all worked out in the end, the jack worked, the wheels got blocked, the place got level, the fridge cooled down and I got wet.
Once that got sorted, it was time to work on the WiFi. The campground has a WiFi hotspot and the signal just about reaches our site if there is a following wind. Last night we had about 15 minutes of signal which was just enough to write the blog. Today nothing. At the hotspot all was well with an excellent signal, but not so in the trailer. No problem, we previously bought a 3G dongle to use cell phone access to the web so that we wouldn’t be reliant on campground WiFi, just top up the account and off we go…. easy!
Wrong, after 20 minutes arguing with Virgins automated moron named Alex I finally upset him enough that he connected me to a human agent who proceeded to take all my details so I could use my credit card to top up the account. Ten minutes later he came back and told me I have a Canadian Credit card, correct says I, we don’t take foreign credit cards says he, )(*(0@@%@$!# says I and hang up.
By now it’s lunch time, I am a wet and not too happy a camper, Lyn is hiding somewhere, away from flying objects and expletives, reading her book and we have no food. Time to cleanup and go shopping. Just as we are about to leave my memory wakes up and remembers we have the remains of last nights pizza in the fridge…. a good and wholesome lunch!
Finally hit the road in search of a Radio Shack where I can buy a Virgin top-up card with my foreign credit card. Radio Shack wasn’t to be found, but Staples was. Unfortunately Staples don’t sell the right top up card, but they did sell the Iconia Tablet I was looking for…. things are looking up at last. We discovered that radio shack was hiding in the mall across the street. On the way there we stopped off to do the grocery shopping …… a relatively non event. Found RS and got the top up, headed back to the camp site and discovered the booze store…. MA is like Ontario in being rather backwards with its booze selling.
Finally made it back to the campsite with two more jobs to do, set up the WiFi and set up the Satellite TV. I was dreading setting up the TV as we are in a heavily wooded area, but much to my amazement it was set up in under 10 minutes with the best signal strength I have ever seen. Things are getting better! Next came the WiFI, that only took 5 minutes…. on a roll now.
Time to go play with the tablet, maybe camping isn’t so bad after all!!