We usually write every three days or twice a week but unfortunately we had a serious of unfortunate events just before Whitehorse and in Whitehorse. Lovely town, I don’t believe in luck or fate, but we had a bad run that’s for sure. The day before we arrived in Whitehorse I was having problems with the RV batteries. I was trying to troubleshoot while the most God awful mosquitoes ate me alive and then had battery acid spilled on my favorite jacket. I have to special order it from China, only $25 when a name brand on would be $100. After about eight hours I got the batteries working, not really sure what I did, but they were fixed so I left it. Especially since the mosquitoes are so big they literately take skin off, I don’t itch my bites and I had scabs all over.
The next day we made it into Whitehorse and my refrigerator promptly notified me it was at 50 degrees. I’ll save you the details but again it took another 8 hours (at least no mosquitoes in Whitehorse) and then ended up being a $15 fix with changing out the only spare part I carry, a thermistor. Talk about lucky, well, somewhat lucky.
The next day was the worst, some of you know I use electronic cigarettes. We were in a grocery store parking lot walking in to buy groceries. I had two spare batteries for the electronic cigarette in my pocket along with my keys. I had never heard of it happening but keys or other metallic objects can short out batteries, these are special high power batteries like your call phone but meant to release peak power quickly. Well one of the loose ones shorted, exploded in my pocket like a firecracker. Luckily there were many bystanders around to help. I ripped the burning pants off my thigh and was walked by security to sit down. The manager of the store came out and brought a case of bottled water to start pouring over my burning flesh, as instructed to do by the 911 dispatcher.. Initially I didn’t think it was a huge deal. But as it turned out I sustained second degree deep burns over 30% of my left thigh, front and back. A few weeks in a hospital (which I hate) is the usual treatment. Victoria said the could take care of the wound unless it gets infected. So I went to a clinic and got a powerful antibiotic cream and an oral antibiotic.
A couple days after the burn we decided we would head for Anchorage as it is in the states and is by far the largest town around if there were issues with the wound. Unfortunately as we ascended a hill leaving town the tuck started shifting funny and then we smelled burnt plastic (burnt out resistor causing the smell and low transmission fluid from a leaking gasket. We only had gotten about 2 miles out of town before we had to turn around. It was high noon on Friday so we had to wait till Monday before the tuck could get work done.
Over the weekend while the truck was in the shop, the solar panels stopped working. We couldn’t believe it. Solar panels are the most reliable thing on a an RV, usually good for ten years at least. I tried calling around and no shop would be able to see me for another week (This time of year is the busiest). I ended up finding an retired old man who didn’t advertise that would help me. After about two hours we found out the problem was a bad connector. We got it reconnected and BAM amps into the batteries, hallelujah. He only asked for $150 but I gave him $200 (Canadian) for getting it done that day even though I helped the whole time (it was good for me).
When we got the truck back we were set to leave. Whitehorse is a really cool town I highly suggest anyone in the area check it out. Mountains and wild life all over. We kept telling ourselves we were lucky to be in a big city with all this bad luck hit us instead of out in the boonies. My wound is healing nice, thank God. Now that it’s growing new skin, believe it or not the itching is worse than the pain. It actually woke me up yesterday. Benadryl regularly and a Zyrtec help but not completely pills take care of it. Cross your fingers all the bad luck is behind us.