Dumbass II

Revenge of the Incompetent

(Note: Too far off the grid to post this last night. Trying to make up for too much lost time today to post until now.)

LOLO NATIONAL FOREST, Montana – I am tempted to just let this one pass. It’s because I don’t come off well. Just dumb. I’m worried that some of you will begin to see a pattern here.

So, when last we left this story we were waiting for the mechanic to bring the new starter. Larry arrived almost on time. He immediately reminded me of my friend Darrell, and not just because he was a mechanic, but because he had a quiet confidence to him, mixed with just the right amount of warm friendliness.

It was clear Larry knew where to find the starter on 454 Chevy crammed up into the nose of the Sunstream Motorhome. It took Charles and I no fewer than 10 minutes to find its hiding place up behind the right tire (and Charles had a bit of experience with these monster truck engines) but Larry went right to it.

Although Larry had the starter with him and could just as easily have gone straight into dropping the old one out and putting in the new one, he – thankfully – wanted to make sure that it was in fact the problem. After a bit of testing with the volt-o-thingy, he looked puzzled. There was no power going to the starter.

Ah-ha! I thought, that would explain why it’s not working. Oh, but that might mean something even worse.

Larry went over to his truck, disappearing for a moment only to reemerge with a single small wire bare on both ends. He said he was going to bypass something or other in an attempt to isolate the whatchamacallit. In non-technical terms, I think he meant he was going to hotwire my RV.

With me in the drivers seat, he shimmied himself back underneath the belly of the Heart of Gold. Unlike in cars, where the hood of the engine is out in front of you, you know, out where the engine is, in the Heart of Gold the guts of the machinery are actually inside the RV sitting between the driver and passenger seats. The “hood” is actually a lid that normally serves to hold my coffee, roadmaps, various books that Marley might be reading or a laptop or what have you.

But right now, it was opened up so that Larry and I could talk while he was about to work his mechanic’s magic from up under the bowels of the Heart of Gold. That’s when he said those words that will no doubt haunt me for many years to come.

“Okay, I’m about to connect the wire, just make sure it’s in park.”

Larry, at this point, was interested in self preservation. If it wasn’t in park, and his little wire did what he thought it would do, the whole RV could lurch forward or maybe backward with him under it. I’m just guessing here, but like trains, buses, tractors and other big machinery, I think it’s probably best to not be under RVs whenever it is they decide to start moving.

That’s when I saw it. And like a tidal wave, my stupidity came crashing down along the oh-so-vivid and not-so-long ago memory of me backing the RV into its berth the night before. Backing. As in reverse. As in “R” -- which, as it happened, was exactly the letter I was staring at on the little dial above the steering column.

In my defense, the “R” is right next to the “P” which stands for park, which, as it happens, is right where you want it when you’re trying to start the engine. Here’s a picture, just so you know I’m not making this up.

I find it interesting that when you’re in “R” and trying to start the engine how, in almost every way, it seems like you have a bad starter. Every way, except, the starter actually being bad that is.

In fact, when you move the gear shift from “R” to “P” the engine will start almost immediately. Remarkably, the only delay you’re likely to find is the time it takes you to turn the key. And this, as it turns out, is exactly what happened.

Larry was remarkably gracious only charging me for the service call and not the time it took him to prove that I was an idiot. More importantly, he did not point and laugh at me. I thanked him for that and, not that he needed my permission in the least, invited him to make me the butt of all his jokes for at least a few days… once we were gone.

So, after another 4 p.m. take-off, we’ve made it deep into Montana, bedding down among the pines of this national forest which I see is dubbed Lo Lo, which sounds more like a Teletubbie than a national forest, but who I am to judge. I don’t even know how to start a silly RV.