Joe Btfsplk

There is probably only a handful of you out there that can recall the Lil Abner cartoon character called Joe Btfsplk. Joe went through life with a perpetual rain cloud over his head and everywhere he went bad luck followed. Yesterday, after living in a perpetual rain storm we packed up, battened down the hatches and got ready to leave for Carrabelle Beach. Crap, the jack down warning light was lit up. Got out and looked under the coach and sure enough the jack was down and the return spring was broken and laying on the cement. Got on the phone for mobile RV Repairs. There are only 2 local. One was down for the holidays, or at least that is what he had on the answering machine, and the other wouldn't come out to Camp Gulf because he had a peeing contest years ago with Camp Gulf management and lost. He did tell me how to raise up the jack so that I could drive to the repair shop. Got out my trusty 3 ton hydraulic jack and placed it under the hanging jack and while Mary held the rais jack button which released the valve I jacked it up to the fully retracted position. Half a roll of Duct Tape later I felt it would stay up until we got to the shop. Drove 20 miles the wrong way to the repair shop. Took the guy about an hour to replace the springs and we were back on the road again. After driving through about 1000 stop lights through Panama City Beach and Panama City we finally hit the open road and had a very pleasant drive to Carrabelle Beach RV Resort. Panama beach and Panama city are 100 yards wide along Hwy 98 and 20 miles long with a stop light every couple of blocks. It took at least an hour of stop and go to get to the other side. Having said all that we had a reasonably good visit in Destin Florida. Mary got to spend a decent amount of time with her number one son and we got to visit with several of his good friends. As usual we helped the local tourist industry out by hitting a bunch of good restaurants and took in several movies. The Big Short got 4 stars, Joy got 4 stars but Star Wars I could only give it 3 stars. At best. Carrabelle Beach is shaping up good so far. The sun is shining, my current wife is smiling and the coffee this morning is good.