Middlebury & Shipshewana

Breakfast in Middlebury, IN is not fast food. We drank coffee for nearly thirty minutes while the kitchen worked zealously to serve two tables of ‘old farts’, who likely do this every morning. When the server finally brought Janice’s waffle, she tossed it down in front of Janice and walked away with one word: “waffle”. Obviously, serving is not a fun job for her. She returned moments later with the rest of the food, all of which was very good.

Middlebury is on the way to Shipshewana where the Flea Market is open on Wednesday, our destination. Three dollars were paid to park the car to get to spend real money. Some vendors were just opening up, and making a sales while pulling tarps back. This place looked amazingly like flea markets in Florida. Our purchases were modest. Before we became too shopping committed, we received a call from our service writer at Monaco; one of the technicians wanted to talk with us. Oh, oh.

We arrived back at the service center about 11:30 AM to find the techs at lunch. Twenty minutes later Kim took us to the coach and introduced us to Chet. Chet has been working with Dirk on our coach. We now feel the Weldex is fixed correctly, the door locking system works correctly, and the antenna up light is fixed. Chet explained what he had done on each of these. His explanation of the problem with the leveling system was less optimistic; he has no confidence that he can solve the problem. This assessment was the only ‘bad news’ we received. Some issues remain, but the list is considerably reduced. We are still hoping to be done Friday. If that happens, we plan to stay here until Monday and drive the car to the places we want to visit in the area.

Coaches are returned to the lot between 2:30 – 3:00 PM; happy hour is at 4:00 PM. Several of the long term residents have kept the happy hours going, and we average about 20 attendees. Today we had a special treat. Two members of the Frustrated Maestros music group are here getting coaches repaired. They played keyboard and saxophone for three hours; awesome musicians. We had a great time.

Tomorrow is a key day: a decision on painting the slide is coming. We may go to a motel for a night when the coach is in the paint shop, but we don’t know if or when that will be.