Seconds from disaster!

Thursday was Brayden James day for TLE and I remained behind to do some minor repairs to our patio awning......I didn't write yesterday about what we came home to after dinner out with our daughter Meredith as I wanted time to really examine the awning before writing about what happened.......apparently while we were gone a gust of wind caught our awning resulting in it being essentially fold up over the roof.  Frankly it looked worse than it was, but it did require about 3 hours of my time Thursday to fix it.  Fortunately none of the hardware was broken, bent, or damaged in anyway.....everything was fixable by moi.  The part that took the longest for me to repair was the upper left portion of the fabric that had pulled out of the aluminum track (see picture below).....

.....fortunately I have had to reinsert this exact corner back in the aluminum track previously (not because of wind damage) and knew what had to be done, and that I had to take my time.  Ultimately I got it back together and, as you can see in the picture above it passes the 5, 10 and 15 foot test.  

So, what happened?  How did this happen?  In the 8 years we have owned the Newell we have never had a patio awning caught by the wind and damaged.  Many folks we know have had their awnings destroyed in seconds.  Normally we always anchor each corner of the awning to the ground, which has worked well all these years, but for right now we find ourselves on asphalt with no way to screw the anchors into the ground.  Usually when we are not able to anchor the awning we never leave it deployed when we leave the coach for any period of time.....it only takes seconds for a disaster to occur.  Well, this time I got lazy, and almost paid the ultimate price.  It is not often you make a mistake like this and not have it cost you a couple thousand dollars to repair.  All I can say is "Lesson Learned!".  If you are new to RVing and want to deploy your awning (unless you have one of those expensive automatic awnings that automatically retract if the wind gets beyond a certain point) always anchor each corner to the ground, and if you cannot do that then always stow it away if you leave the premises!

Once I had the patio awning repaired and stowed it away I got on my bike riding clothes and took a 12 mile ride on the Pacific Electric Trail into Rancho Cucamonga to my son's office to pick up some mail, and then ride south a few blocks to Sharon's apartment to visit the baby.  I hung out with Sharon, Brayden and TLE for about an hour before we put my bike on the bike rack and headed for home.

Thanks for stopping by!