The Great Mystery of Our Cracked Trailer Frame

Our drive out to Indiana was long and grueling. We bounced our way over the bumps of the Ohio Turnpike trying to ensure we arrived to the ATC manufacturer before they closed for the day. We had been up since dawn that day, packing as much as we could into the truck ahead of time, while also doing our normal travel day checklist. The morning was rainy which drenched a lot of our things as we packed, delaying our departure from our Boondockers Welcome site. It's so important to not feel too chaotic on the morning of a travel day because that energy is dangerous, but there was only so much we could do to stay the course. We had a big day ahead of us. We had a 5.5 hour drive without stops, and we knew we'd at least want to stop for gas/lunch and to dump our tanks as we got closer to ATC. Then, once we got there, we still needed to clean out our fridge and pack our last few belongings. Afterwards, we would drive another half-hour to our Airbnb.

Besides the extra packing, the worst part about driving to a repair facility is that there are so many unknowns. We had no idea how long we would be without our trailer. We booked our Airbnb for 5 nights in order to get us to the weekend. We assumed we'd have answers by then and would either be back in our trailer, or we'd need to book a stay somewhere else. We call this the "booking on a rolling basis," just taking the news as it comes and trying to not feel too stressed out about all the last-minute decisions we'd need to be making.

The plus side is that we were excited about our Airbnb. We booked a little cottage up the street from Lake Wawasee in Syracuse, IN. We try to follow our own advice to choose places that will be fun and functional. Whenever we stay in a hotel or Airbnb with the pets, we don't like to leave them "home alone," so we want somewhere that we can hunker down for a few days. We typically use this time to catch up on work. We've mentioned before that we actually crave this downtime because we can regroup. Between the lightning strike, changing plans constantly, and having our Niagara adventures, we had been go-go-go for a while. It was time to be still for a little bit. We just needed to get through our drive day.

After 7 hours on the road including stops, we got to ATC and had just enough time to do a walkthrough and get the rest of our stuff out of the trailer. Then we were off to the cottage. Safe to say we all felt a little like this when we got there:

The next handful of days were productive. Anthony had a bunch of work calls and projects that kept him busy, and I tackled a scary high pile of therapeutic music videos I needed to edit. We did have a chance to walk down to the lake one afternoon, as well as take advantage of our backyard that had a little patio. Mid-week the rain moved in, but it brought the cool, crisp fall weather - right on the fall equinox, no less!

That day we also heard from ATC. They were getting all our repairs done and could have the trailer for us by the end of the day if we could make it there on time. Otherwise, they'd have to keep it through the weekend and we could pick it up the following Monday. We had a busy workday and wouldn't be able to pack up and get there the same day, so we made the decision to stay put. This would mean needing a second place to hang our hats for a couple of days, but we were OK with that. Sometimes work needs to take priority, and we'd rather get back to our trailer knowing we had less stress hanging over our heads. Even if all the repairs went super smoothly, getting things back in order was going to be a hefty task.

We were told that most of our repairs - the transfer switch, the bed platform, and the cabinet panel - would be fairly quick. The wild card was our trailer frame. If the cracks were small and sealable, we'd be able to get our trailer back quickly. If they looked indicative of more structural damage, it could be a while. Our trailer was done in 3 days, so obviously there wasn't structural damage, which was a huge relief. What's interesting, though, is that there actually wasn't any damage at all.

We left the engineers bewildered. Anthony saw cracks in the frame. I saw cracks in the frame. 4 ATC dudes saw cracks in the frame. But when the engineering department got their hands on it, they saw nothing. The cracks had disappeared! Their only explanation is that perhaps it was silicone or something that looked like cracks but then came off. That left us with a lot of questions. Silicone from what? Why did it feel like cracks? Why was it only on the part of the frame nearest where the lightning struck? Perhaps this will remain a mystery to all of us, but we were just happy that there wasn't any structural damage to our frame, and finally we were feeling like we were nearing the end of our lightning strike saga. The generator miraculously healed itself, and now it was looking like the frame did too. The transfer switch was getting replaced. Things were looking up.

Speaking of looking up, we took advantage of our extra few days out of the trailer. We were enjoying the lake life and decided to up the ante. We booked another cottage on Airbnb, only this time we had the lake literally right at our doorstep. The first cottage was nice, but this next one was so incredibly peaceful, we actually felt like we had a little bit of a vacation. We were caught up with most of our work, we were staying there on a weekend, and the ambience was perfect for a couple days of peace and serenity. Living the RV life isn't a vacation. We get to see amazing things and go on awesome adventures, but we squeeze those in among work, chores, errands, and everyday life. When we have a little bit of time to de-stress, it's such a nice way to reset. Now we'll feel much more refreshed when it comes time to pack everything back in the trailer and hit the road again.

In our last post we gave tips for making displacement more bearable. One of our tips is to book buffer days on each end of your hotel/Airbnb stay. We did that with this Airbnb, keeping it until Tuesday, just in case something delayed us getting our trailer back. Turns out nothing did, but we decided to stay until Tuesday anyway, just to have one more day in our little lake house. We love our trailer and have gotten some great views from our campsites, but it's not every day we can live in luxury in our own little heavenly cottage. The flexibility we gave ourselves really worked out in the end. We had a pleasant workday in the cottage on Monday, and Tuesday we were ready for a big travel day as we started heading back east.

It's a big lesson in RV living, that when life goes off-course, make those changes work for you! Actually, that's a lesson in life in general, not just RVing. We've been really proud of how well we cope with unforeseen situations, and so often everything turns out alright.