Sparky's version of Fortunately, Unfortunately

There's a great couple of children's books with the "fortunately, unfortunately" theme in them so here's Sparky's version: By the way, Sparky is a nickname (my last name is Sparks) and it's been my nickname every place I've ever worked...

Geesh! We get one thing fixed and now the Honda wants to get in on the act!  After towing 7 hours yesterday, we pulled into the Walmart parking lot and kept the car hooked up to the RV. Unfortunately, our mistake was to not run the car around town a bit...but, hey! We were exhausted! You know where this is going, dontcha? What's happening, in my not so tech savvy car knowledge, (where are the Car Talk Magliozzi brothers when you need them?) is something is pulling down the juice of the car battery little by little. It's a two year old battery, but it could be dying a little, who knows? Fortunately, the battery was fine last night, but unfortunately, it must have been a little low. It's possible we are getting a dead battery for two reasons--the manual suggests  pulling a radio accessory fuse for long tows (we don't), and we don't run the car enough between two days of long towing. The fuse thing in the manual is almost an afterthought the way they suggest it, and they don't say how long "long" is, and it's a huge pain to pull the fuse. But, it's an even bigger pain in the butt to charge the car, so I guess I better start being smarter and not so stubborn about the towing procedure.

Fortunately, this morning the car started right up, we packed up, got on the road, and after about four hours, Eldy and I decide to pull into a rest stop. And now, I, being leery of the battery just possibly running down, attempt to start the car. Unfortunately, it was DEAD! AGAIN! Arrrrrgggghhhh! Eldy said, "Whatever you do, DON'T SHIFT THE CAR OUT OF NEUTRAL!!!!" (So we can move it if we have to.) UNFORTUNATELY, I panicked upon seeing that the car was dead and shifted out of neutral--whoops! Now we are stuck where we are, which was in a rest stop (fortunately), and I'm gonna have to redo the transmission procedure. But first, we have to jumpstart the car. Unfortunately, the  new battery charger we just got last week, which I lost for about a week (a re-occurring theme in this household) was still not fully charged up because it was buried in the ceiling high mound of belongings in the car (story for another day)  and it didn't have enough power to do the job. Fortunately, the car was in a good position for someone to come alongside for a jump start. I go into the rest stop, and Holey Moley! It's a STAFFED rest stop...Indiana is way behind the times (and money, of course) on this one. Fortunately, I was able to sweet talk an employee into jumpstarting the car. It starts right up at the first crank, so it couldn't have been too dead. Whew! By the way, Alabama has beautiful rest stops, very large and spacious. We oughta know, we spent quite a bit of time in them today.

We're the one in the middle, lol

We are in Castleberry, Alabama, staying in a little campground for one night called Country Sunshine RV park. "Park" is a loosely used term here. It's somebody's front yard with about 17 hookups. Hey, it's only $10.50 a night if you have Passport America membership--a good investment, and a great price for this campground. There's a lot of road noise right out front, as it is a main road to get to I-65. We look a little out of place here, enough that the owner mentioned as an aside..."if the power should go out, you just reset it at the post back there" and she pointed back towards a dilapidated old barn in the backyard. I asked innocently, "Oh, do you have power problems here?"  and she just clarified that because our unit was so big, we might have some. I could see that if it was summer, as we have two air conditioners, but we should be ok with just 30 amp this time of year....Hm-m-m-m, power problems seem to be the theme of the day here......today, Alabama...tomorrow....FLORIDA!  (I heard Angola got an inch of snow yesterday...sigh!)  Just teasin', Eldy!  "See you in Florida," says Sparky. It will be about a two hour drive for us......piece of cake!