A week in a two-star hotel

There are no pictures with this post. I haven't been anywhere or done anything.

Monday, I turned my trailer over to Camping World to have the roof replaced. They thought they might be able to finish it in a day but to be safe, I booked two nights at the Ramada. I checked out on Wednesday and went to pick it up, but there was a problem. The gutter rails, which they normally reuse, needed to be replaced. They'd been ordered and would be in at 10 on Thursday. Also, they were having difficulty with the microwave/convection oven replacement. First it was ordering a trim kit, then it was a retired model, then the new model was out of stock. Finally, they said they had a unit in the shop they could install, but it had controls on the side and if they took out the controls on top for the old microwave, there would just be a hole there. So, when this microwave is installed, it will look like I have two sets of controls but only the ones on the side will work.

I checked back into the Ramada for Wednesday. Out on Thursday and spent the day in a Starbucks trying to get some work done while not having anyplace to land. Got to Camping World at 4:00, when they said it would be done, and the part still hadn't been delivered. Back to Ramada. No, the Ramada and every other hotel in the area were booked full for the rest of the weekend because of the Chili Bowl. That's not a chili cookoff event as I initially supposed. It's some kind of midget car race. By the time I found another hotel within the price range that I can't afford no matter how cheap, it was seven miles south in the area known as Broken Arrow.

Checked out again on Friday. Went to Camping World. No part. Rushed back to EconoLodge and managed to book another night. Different room. This time I called Saturday morning and was told that the part still hadn't been delivered so it would be Monday before the trailer is finished. I rushed to the lobby and extended my stay for two more nights. Then I went to Camping World and managed to get into the trailer to get some clean clothes because what I've been wearing for five days was about to rot off my body.

I still went to Starbucks and did my best to get some work done, but all I could concentrate on was formatting and editing. As a result, I only got about 5,000 words written this week. Not my best. If the trailer is ready Monday, it will be too late in the day to travel anywhere, so it will be another night in the Camping World parking lot before I can finally head south. Sheesh!

Well, that's my week. I hope yours has been better. I had no intention of spending a week in hotels and Starbucks!

On the road again… almost

Just a great time!

The day after solstice, I was I was working on a new story and typing madly. I’d had to run an errand and as long as I was out, I stopped at QT to try their coffee. Nothing really to write home about, but it was hot. I quickly sat down at my writing table to get back into the story and proceeded to knock over the flimsy cup and drench my keyboard (and my lap) with hot coffee. Dead computer.

I actually had my backup disk out ready to backup all my files but, of course, I hadn’t done it yet. I settled into a deep funk. That’s how I spent Christmas. But on Monday, I headed to Best Buy and the Geek Squad said no problem. They recovered nearly all my files and I restored them to my other computer. The one with the spill was toast.

Unfortunately, it was only ‘almost’ all my files. The one I was working on and was open on my screen died a horrible death. I had enough recovered, however, that I could recreate the missing part. Everything is backed up now.

I got a nice note from Google maps that included a tracking of all the places I’d visited in 2019. I have location sharing turned on so I can use the GPS on my tablet. Apparently, Google collects all that mapping information and was kind enough to share it with me.

It reminded me, however, that cold weather was forecast in the coming week, so it was time for me to pull up stakes and move south. The time at Will Rogers Downs KOA had been pleasant but bad weather was coming.

I needed some maintenance done, though. Remember my water line leak? And my bent stabilizer jack? And my combination convection/microwave oven that only microwaved? I dropped the trailer off at Camping World and took a room for the night at the Hard Rock Casino/Hotel just up the street. But, when I dropped it off, the inspection pointed out that I’d damaged my roof in a close encounter with a tree limb and hadn’t noted it.

That damage runs almost the full length of the trailer. This time I needed to call the insurance company. The adjuster got out on Friday and approved the repair but since it is a two-day job to replace the entire roof of my trailer, it’s scheduled for Monday morning.

And guess what! Thunderstorms were moving in rapidly with flash flood warnings out all over the county. These guys came out to dry off the broken part of the roof and apply roof tape to temporarily seal the hole so it wouldn’t leak. And then the rain came like gangbusters. I still got some leakage into the trailer along the wall but it would have been much worse without that temporary patch.

So, now I’m "camped" in the parking lot of Camping World so I don’t need a hotel until Monday and Tuesday night while they have the trailer inside to repair the damage, i.e. replace the roof. I was glad to be in the trailer even though Saturday was cold as hell. We had an ice storm and then snow. But if their estimates are correct, I should be able to hit the road by Wednesday or Thursday. Hopefully, this time I’ll make it more than 35 miles!

And in other news, I am working on two new books. My American Royalty 1: Coming of Age has now entered the rewrite and revise stage. I’m still getting comments from beta readers, so there will be a lot going on there. I look at the photo I’ve chosen for the cover and think of all those statues of men on horses I saw in Europe the last time I was there. It seemed like every instruction I got started, “When you leave the train station, there’s a statue of a man on a horse…” Ah well. Wenceslas has nothing on this kid.

I’m still on track to release this new book in June and will be talking to Meghan soon about repeating a release party at her venue.

I’ve also started and am nearly finished with a new Devon Layne work, Things I Never Told My Wife, True confessions of a Shakespearean actor. It all started (so I say) when a fellow was entertaining our table with the story of how he became a nudist. “The truth is, I just like boobs.” Then he hushed suddenly as he glanced around the table. “Don’t tell my wife I said that.” She was sitting right beside him and rolled her eyes. “As if I didn’t know,” she said, lifting her own prodigious bosom. That got me thinking about what little things a guy might just fail to mention to his wife and, of course, most of them were sexual escapades, but not all.

I sat down and wrote: “I met my soul mate when I was sixteen. Of course, I never told my wife about that.” And then I just kept building story after story through his life, each one getting a little more ridiculous. I made the character a Shakespearean actor because there is no place with more opportunity to misbehave than in the theatre!

‘True confessions?’ Come on now. I lie for a living.

I mean write fiction.

The difference between most of my fiction and the news we read or watch on a daily basis is that fiction needs to be believable.

Who knows where I’ll post from next? Someplace south of here!