Life's Adventures

Blogging about life's adventures and books...

Adventures past, present, or future. And my books--then and now. 

Adventure I Could Do Without (part 2) 

To pick up where we left off, after a week, we returned to the RV to gather some needed items. We hadn't packed for more than a couple of days. Seeing, or rather smelling, it was still extremely smokey, we got in and out as quickly as possible. How would we ever get that smell out of there? Add to that problem, our awning was ripped at both ends. We decided to file a claim with our insurance company. We'd never had to in spite of a fire evacuation and two floods in prior years.

Back in Prescott, I started making phone calls. We were assigned an agent. I sent the required via email. She wanted the story and photos. A day or so passed, and we were assigned another agent because the first one didn't handle this type of claim. I sent photos again. But it's not possible to send photos of a smell! Anyway, were were told it would take a few days to go through the system and an adjuster would contact us. When he finally did, FDW jetted off to Tonto to meet him. And it was a joke. He didn't need to have the awning out...he could see it was damaged. He forgot his telecoping stick to take a photo of the roof in case we had fire damage from flying embers. And he was afraid of heights. So he went up a couple of rungs on the ladder, stuck the camera in the air, and took ONE photo from one end. The RV is 42' long with two air conditioners on top. His phone must have some lens on it to get the whole roof. When he came inside, he commented, "Yeah, it stinks." He also told FDW, he wasn't an adjuster, just a photographer.

A few more days, and we got an email that they weren't able to confirm damage. The awning is old so the wind probably didn't do the damage. Denied claim. In order to assess the inside and roof, we needed to take it to Mesa for a tear down. That's an hour and a half away and our rig is set up to travel. We received this on the day we were making the trip to Tonto again to water plants and get more odds and ends like food I was sure was going to go bad.

My anger spiked. No one else on the ranch had to take their unit in. The adjusters came to them and were already settling with what needed to be done. I wrote a couple of scathing emails...for all the good it did.

As it turned out, on this trip we were pleasantly surprised to find the smokey stink practically gone. We'd
left windows open and fans running. The trees were finally not burning. The awning works, even if it looks like trash. FDW wanted to fight, but I couldn't see the sense. The awning is old and even if the wind did some damage, that isn't worth the process of fighting the claim. Life's too short for battles of this kind that I'd get an enormous headache from and probably lose.

So, we spent a couple of more days in Prescott, dreading returning to the cleanup. Ashes were everywhere. We needed to arrange for a total wash and wax of the outside. We needed to find someone to replace the awning. I stripped the inside of all textiles and washed them. It's liveable. The mess outside is still not cleaned up. Too hot! The trees have been cut to the ground, but they haven't finished the removal or leveling of land.

So ends this adventure in living. Hey! Never a dull moment.

A heartwarming side note: FDW's boat covered was ripped to shreds by the tree encounter and the wind. When we came back, we found a brand new boat cover on FDW's boat as well as a motor cover. Our neighbors, the ones whose RV FDW kept the water hose on until the Fire Department arrived, had purchased and brought up and covered it. FDW was moved to tears. They're such good people!