Betty lost a window and we only have ourselves to blame.

We haven’t talked a lot about Betty… suffice to say, she is a Camplite, model 14dbs from the LivinLite. She was manufactured in their Indiana factory only a month before we left on our adventure. She was purchased from our now friend, Barry Millar from Millar RV in Metcalfe Ontario, just south of Ottawa.

In short, we have learned to love Her. In a future post, we will talk all about Betty, however, this post is about her broken wing.

We feel so bad… it’s all our fault. We are like negligent parents who have left a child unattended in the park and who have fallen off the Jungle Gym and broken an arm.

Perhaps an irresponsible pet owner who has left a helpless puppy in a locked car on a hot summer day. We are bad trailer owners.

Fortunately for us, there is no “Trailer’s Aid Society” or “Society for the Protection and Care of Trailers”… but there is Jack.

Let’s get back to the beginning.

We had been in New Orleans at an RV Resort just a stone’s throw from the Historical French Quarter. We had just spent 2 full days checking out the sights, enjoying good music and eating great food. It was time to leave.

We loaded up, completed our checks, and off we drove to Texas.

An hour or so into our trip, I saw a HUGE Cabalas store and quickly exited to check out the camping gear. That’s when we noticed Betty’s broken wing.

When I saw the damage a lump formed in my throat and I became light-headed. The small window over the kitchen sink was missing and the blinds were bent, contorted and misaligned.

It only took a brief flash of my grey matter to figure out what had happened. The window mustn’t have been secured when we left New Orleans, and the road wind had torn it from the hinges.

We messed up.

There was no time for the assignment of blame. The was starting to rain.

I ran into the Cabelas store searching for anything that could act as a temporary window. Tracy stayed in Betty and got on the phone to plan a more permanent fix.

I returned with a plastic boot mat that was a perfect fit. With the help of duct tape, I created a “new” window. It was raining lightly during the fix, however with the luck of Gilligan, it only started to rain heavily after the boot mat was secure.

Back to Jack.

In the now secure and dry trailer, Tracy tracked down Jack from the LivinLite home office in Indiana. He was wonderful. It only took a short, very pleasant and understanding conversation to get the fix in motion.

A replacement window was shipped to our next campsite by overnight courier.

Thank you, Jack.