{"id":2874,"date":"2021-06-02T15:08:38","date_gmt":"2021-06-02T22:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5401.temp.domains\/~gagnonsg\/?p=2874"},"modified":"2021-07-08T02:14:35","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T09:14:35","slug":"crisis-averted-how-a-stranger-saved-quinns-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skanvie.hr\/website_58e85257\/planning\/managing-mishaps\/crisis-averted-how-a-stranger-saved-quinns-birthday\/","title":{"rendered":"Crisis Averted: How A Stranger Saved Quinn’s Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Crisis Averted: How A Stranger Saved Quinn’s Birthday<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Angels In Disguise In Lassen National Park<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Last year it was a Father\u2019s Day breakdown on the way to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon from a missing radiator cap that almost derailed us 3 days into our trip. This year, trouble came only hours in. What could have been a total fiasco actually turned into a cascading set of circumstances that led to a truly memorable birthday for Quinn, and an example for all of us about how God sometimes sends us angels in the form of strangers. This is the story of our angel, Fred.<\/span><\/p>

The story starts with our refrigerator. One of the key selling points of our new RV is residential sized refrigerator\/freezer combo. With a family of 6 on the road, this thing is clutch. Allison spent days stocking our food supply before the trip, and by the time we departed at 1pm on Tuesday, the fridge and freezer held well over a thousand dollars in fresh and frozen foods to last us for weeks. The typical RV refrigerator can run off of electrical when you\u2019re connected to shore power, and then switches over to liquid propane power when you\u2019re unplugged and either driving or staying in a location without hookups (referred to as \u201cdry camping\u201d or \u201cboondocking\u201d). While the upside of the residential refrigerator is storage capacity, the downside is it runs exclusively off of electrical. Our RV has two 6V house batteries to power an inverter that runs the refrigerator when you\u2019re disconnected. Since I knew we\u2019d be spending some time in national park campgrounds that seldom have power hookups, I even had solar panels installed on the roof the week before we left to charge the house batteries and make sure we\u2019d have ample power to run the refrigerator and not need to worry about it. Putting solar on a RV isn\u2019t cheap, but I didn\u2019t want to take any chances.<\/span><\/p>

It took about five hours for us to make our way up to Lassen Volcanic National Park, and we went straight to the Manzanita Lake campground to get setup for the first night of our journey. It felt great to be back on the road and out in the parks again, and the we were prepared to dry camp in the park at Lassen for a couple nights. We settled in, played catch with the frisbee and softball, grilled up carne asada tacos, and made a campfire to roast some s\u2019mores. As night fell, I headed into the RV to pour Allison a glass of ros\u00e9.<\/span><\/p>

As I opened the refrigerator, I could immediately tell it wasn\u2019t running. It wasn\u2019t nearly cool enough, and the light in the refrigerator wasn\u2019t coming on. Sometimes these things are a simple fix, and I opened the exterior cabinet that house the inverter. The inverter was clearly on and I could see that the house batteries we\u2019re fully charged, but there on the panel, the output read very clearly \u201c0W\u201d. The refrigerator wasn\u2019t drawing power from the inverter at all, and the \u201cbattery power\u201d indicator light that lets you know you\u2019re drawing on the house batteries (versus shore power or generator power) remained unlit. There\u2019s only three buttons on the control panel, and since I had no idea what any of them did, I did the logical thing and started pushing all of them in random sequences. The panel cycled through numbers and indicators, which may as well have been greek hieroglyphics. I had absolutely no idea what any of it meant. I went to the solar control panel and tried the same thing to no avail. Clearly I wasn\u2019t going to be able to fumble my way to a solve, so I went to my method of last resort – I pulled out the manuals for both.<\/span><\/p>

I first tried just flipping to the \u201ctroubleshooting\u201d section of the manuals. The inverter manual spoke of a \u201cfault indicator light\u201d, but mentioned nothing about what to do if the fault indicator light is <\/span>not<\/b> lit, but the damn thing still isn\u2019t working. After trying to glean the solve from the skimming the manuals, I ended up reading both manual cover to cover while sitting in the stairwell of the RV entry. I could hear Allison and the kids enjoying the fire and the s\u2019mores outside, but my frustration was mounting as I tried <\/span>everything<\/span><\/i> to get the inverter going again. I pulled off panels to reveal circuit boards and wiring, having no clue what I was looking at. I tried pushing circuit break reset buttons, and flipping all of the breaks in the coach. Nothing.<\/span><\/p>

After well over 90 minutes of troubleshooting, I had gotten nowhere. The refrigerator was still not running, and it was now after 10pm, and the entire campground was falling silent as families retired for the evening. While I could run the generator to power the refrigerator, campgrounds have \u201cquiet hours\u201d that prohibit generator operation, typically after 8-10pm depending on the site. Even if we were \u201cthat guy\u201d and fired up the generator after quiet hours and pissed everyone in the campground off, we still weren\u2019t going to be able to run it over night. I knew we needed to find a campsite with power hookups for the night.<\/span><\/p>

I hate admitting defeat. It\u2019s rare that I get to this point, but after you\u2019ve spent almost two hours exhausting every possible solution you can think of, sometimes you\u2019ve just gotta call it. At 10:15pm, I told Allison \u201cwe\u2019ve gotta go\u201d. We had no cell reception, and couldn\u2019t look up where we\u2019d even go, but we knew we were about 60 miles from Redding, and we\u2019d just have to head the direction and hope to find an RV park we can pull into after hours. Our neighbors must have loved the commotion we made as we packed up our campsite in the dark and fired up the RV, but in minutes, we were on the road.<\/span><\/p>

We left Lassen, and after about half hour of driving in the pitch black down the mountain, I saw the KOA RV park in Shingletown that we passed on the way into the park. We pulled into the KOA at 11pm, where we lucked into the last and only spot big enough to hold us. With a 30amp hookup, the site would do the trick to get the refrigerator online again, and I went to bed exhausted, and resolved to figure out a plan the next morning.<\/span><\/p>

The next morning, we talked to the guy at the office at the KOA and asked if he knew of any mobile RV techs in the area. He said there\u2019s a great guy named Fred who lives in his neighborhood a few miles away, and if I could reach him before he left for the day, I might luck into having him come by. He offered to dial him up on the office phone. A woman answered, \u201cHello?\u201d I wasn\u2019t expecting to have been calling him on his home phone, but I asked for Fred. The woman was super sweet and told me that Fred was tied up at the moment, but if I left her my number, she\u2019d pass it along to him. I left him my mobile number, not confident that I\u2019d hear back from him, and resolved to start working down the list of other options.<\/span><\/p>

My next step was to call the dealer, Happy Daze in Livermore. I ended up getting connected with the tech who did the solar install who told me he had no idea why the solar installation would have impacted the inverter, but maybe he didn\u2019t hook the inverter up properly after he installed the solar controller? No shit, bro. He clearly wasn\u2019t going to be any help, and I knew I needed someone to diagnose it in person.<\/span><\/p>

My plan was to hit the phones to find either a mobile RV tech or a shop in Redding that could figure out what was going on. This proved more difficult than I initially anticipated, with the difficulty exacerbated by the fact that cell service was \u200b<\/span>terrible<\/b>\u200b in Shingletown. I felt like the guy in the Verizon commercial; \u201c\u200b<\/span>Can you hear me now?<\/span><\/i>\u200b\u201d Only apparently that dude took Verizon\u2019s rural NorCal coverage with him when he bolted for Sprint, because no, they couldn\u2019t hear me now. There are few things more frustrating than trying to explain yourself several times on the phone to different people only to find they can\u2019t hear you.<\/span><\/p>

I finally found one spot in the RV park where I could get coverage. I stood there and started dialing for dollars with mobile RV techs. I got ahold of three different people, all of which told me they were booked solid until mid or late-July. Apparently the PG&E Campfire fires had hit the region hard, and there were a ton of RVs and motorhomes needing work. The last guy I tried told me he moved out of the state, but gave me the phone number of local guy who he\u2019d recommend named Fred. I tried Fred again, and this time got a busy signal. Things weren\u2019t looking up for me.<\/span><\/p>

It was almost 11am now, and I started getting worried we weren\u2019t going to be able to get it resolved today. On top of it all, it was \u200b<\/span>Quinn\u2019s birthday<\/b>\u200b, and I had a pit in my stomach thinking we were going to spend the day driving around trying to find a shop to fix the inverter. I knew I had to get it fixed today, and decided I\u2019d just bite the bullet and drive back down to the other Happy Daze location in West Sacramento. We were 130 miles away from West Sac, but I was out of options to get this resolved today. I called Happy Daze in Livermore and told them they needed to get me into their West Sacramento service center immediately.<\/span><\/p>

The thought of having to spend several hours on Quinn\u2019s birthday driving to an RV shop only to wait for them to fix it and then drive <\/span>back<\/span><\/i> to Lassen was terrible, and Allison and I figured we\u2019d be better off if I drove them all back to Manzanita Lake at the entrance of Lassen where they could spend the day. Bear in mind, Lassen has no cell service, and I\u2019d just be dropping Allison and the kids off with a backpack of food and water and be like \u201cWell, hopefully I\u2019ll get this fixed and meet you at back at the campsite around dinner time?\u201d It wasn\u2019t a great plan, but it was the best we had at the moment.<\/span><\/p>

We left the KOA and headed toward Lassen. We\u2019d only been driving for a few minutes when my phone rang. I was shocked I even had one bar of service to get the call, and immediately pulled over in the turnout a couple miles ahead to take the call. It was Fred calling me back. I explained the situation to him, and told him we had just left the KOA and were on the road back to Lassen. He asked how long we\u2019d be driving, and when I told him just a few minutes, he drilled down even further. I answered a few of his question about my surroundings, and he said \u201cI\u2019m pretty sure you\u2019re right by my house. Come on by and we\u2019ll see if we can get your squared away.\u201d He told me the street we\u2019d be turning left on, and we set out. Turns out the street was literally 500 feet from where we had pulled out, and we were in his driveway in less than 60 seconds, before he even had time to make it out there to open the gate.<\/span><\/p>

Fred was the nicest guy, and when I explained the predicament, he expressed his own disappointment with the RV industry in general. \u200b<\/span>\u201cIt\u2019s obvious you spent a pretty penny on this thing, and it\u2019s just a shame we don\u2019t do a good enough job as an industry making sure you\u2019re taken care of when you head out to make memories on a trip like this one. We\u2019ll see what I can do to get you setup and on your way.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u200b<\/span><\/p>

After testing the inverter, Fred confirmed the house batteries were fully charged, and there was DC power coming from the batteries into the inverter, but for some reason the inverter wasn\u2019t converting to AC and powering the refrigerator. He tinkered with it for a while, and then tried the <\/span>one thing<\/b> I didn\u2019t think to try…he unplugged the telecom cable running from the inverter to the remote control panel into the RV and then plugged it back in.<\/span><\/p>

It doesn\u2019t make any sense why this would work, but it did. The inverter fired up and started powering the refrigerator. Fred\u2019s working theory was that Happy Daze hadn\u2019t \u201creset\u201d the inverter properly after installing the solar to ensure that it was working, and reconnecting the communication cable provided the reset it needed. We were back up and running, and Fred could have easily just sent us on our way. Instead though, he spent the next half hour walking me through the various tools I would need to get to diagnose situations like this one, and how to use them. He recommended a voltmeter, a GFCI receptacle tester, and an AC fluke meter to round out my toolkit and help me to diagnose electrical issues. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to own one of these [a motorhome] and take it out on the road, you basically have to become your own repair technician.\u201d I\u2019m pretty handy as it is, but the time spent with Fred on how to use electrical diagnostic tools was all new to me, and much appreciated.<\/span><\/p>

Fred had already saved the day at that point, and we were about to make our way out and head back to Lassen when he asked, \u201cSo who\u2019s got the birthday today?\u201d Quinn raised his hand, and with a huge grin, Fred motioned to me and Allison to come with him out of earshot of the kids to talk to us. \u201c\u200b<\/span>You guys want to take the birthday boy kayaking on the Manzanita Lake this evening? I\u2019ve got nine kayaks over there, and we\u2019d love to take you guys out and celebrate. If you\u2019re up for it, I\u2019ll go check in with Dana [his wife] and see if 6pm works?<\/span><\/i>\u200b\u201d<\/span><\/p>

We were floored by the gesture, and didn\u2019t skip a beat. Allison chimed in with, \u201c\u200b<\/span>Uh, YES! We\u2019d love it!<\/span><\/i>\u200b\u201d Kayak rentals down at Lake Manzanita were suspended due to coronavirus, and the only way to get on the lake was with personal kayaks and rowboats. It was one of those moments where you\u2019re thinking, \u201c\u200b<\/span>Hmmmm…what\u2019s the catch here? This seems too good to be true<\/span><\/i>\u200b.\u201d A while back, we adopted the family mantra \u201cJust Say Yes\u201d from our good friends the Gallos, and we just went with it!<\/span><\/p>

We met Fred and Dana down at Lake Manzanita at 5:45pm, and spent over an hour on the water with them. The kids had the best time, and we kayaked all the way across the lake and back. Fred coached them all on how proper kayaking technique, and Quinn was thrilled he even got his own kayak! He was amazing out there too, and led the pack across the lake. The water was like glass, with only 3 or 4 other boats and kayaks out there with us. The view of Mount Lassen from the lake was breathtaking, the temperature ideal, and the evening truly perfect. Quinn was on cloud nine, and was so happy the whole time.<\/span><\/p>

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We got to know Fred and Dana a bit out on the water. Fred is a former high school teacher, and he\u2019s lived in Shingletown for almost 30 years. Fred and Dana are grandparents of young boys with another on the way, and they\u2019re both passionate about families enjoying the outdoors and experiencing the beauty of nature. Their own boys were summitting Lassen at six years old, and they loved seeing us out here on the road creating these experiences for our kids and wanted to do something nice for Quinn on his birthday. The fact that Fred could even get 8 kayaks down to the lake was incredible, and all enabled by a custom-built kayak trailer that he fabricated himself. He admitted that while he wishes he was blessed with the ability to play a musical instrument, but that God blessed him with other talents in being handy and mechanically inclined.<\/span><\/p>

Quinn admitted that this was an incredible birthday, and way better than his last birthday in Arches. The series of events that led to our beautiful evening on Lake Manzanita were divinely inspired. The malfunctioning inverter led us to the KOA where we were referred to Fred, who happened to call us on the particular 1\/2 mile stretch of highway 44 where we had cell service and pulled over literally right in front of his house.<\/span><\/p>

Whenever situations like this happen, Allison and I always marvel at the journey and how it all ties together. We believe it to be God\u2019s hand in our journey, and it reminds me of advice my Aunt Fran gave me not long ago. \u200b<\/span>\u201cHoney, I can\u2019t tell you why the things that are happening to you right now are happening, and I know you\u2019re frustrated with the circumstances and wondering \u2018why\u2019 too. But what I can promise you is that that misfortunes that you\u2019re experiencing right now will prove to not be misfortunes at all, but rather part of God\u2019s plan for you. You are good and faithful, and he will continue to bless you abundantly beyond your own comprehension, even when you can\u2019t see how the trials could possibly become a blessing.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u200b<\/span><\/p>

I can assure you that in the moment when I felt defeated and made the decision to abandon our Manzanita Lake campsite on the first night of our trip, I did not anticipate that the inverter challenges were the first domino in God\u2019s plan that would lead us to a wonderful celebration on Quinn\u2019s birthday with complete strangers. That is exactly what transpired though, and I feel blessed and incredibly grateful that God sent us an angel that day in Fred. It was an experience we could never have planned for, and that we won\u2019t ever forget.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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