Nothing is a thing you can find, but usually not for free

Hello Everyone,

In science, if you conduct an experiment and find that there is no correlation between two variables, that is a valid result. It may not be exciting, but finding nothing is, paradoxically, finding something. It advances knowledge, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to say if there is a link between the variables at all.

Today, I found nothing. And like a science experiment, it was not without effort, or cost. I had my camper into the dealership to see if there was something wrong with it. And they found nothing. The truck guys suspected there was a short somewhere and that was what blew a fuse in the truck. Well, the camper guys found there was nothing wrong with the camper, and suspected that the truck guys didn't know what the Sam Hill they were talking about.

Bottom line: there’s nothing wrong with the camper, and there are a couple of ways that a surge could have shorted the fuse, mostly involving a loose connection on the 7 pin.

Side note: talking about the battery disconnect switch is like an Abbott and Costello sketch. Because the name of the the thing itself is a negative, it’s not at all clear whether having the switch on or off is the one that disconnects power. If the disconnect is off, is that like a double negative that means that the power is on? Also, referring to a circuit as open or closed further confuses things. It’s the opposite of a closed loop or open loop. I’ve gone back and forth with 3 different technicians trying to describe whether the battery was disconnected or not.

Anyway, after paying a bunch of money to find out there was nothing wrong with my camper and that I can go ahead and use it as normal (which is actually something of a relief), Arthur and I headed for the hills to get some riding in.

Albuquerque sits in a dusty desert bowl (dessert bowl?), but just to the south of the city, if you cross the Sandia Mountains, you get a much more verdant environment. It’s literally just the other side of a ridge line and the difference is striking. We put in a solid 10 miles of up and down, so I’m feeling pretty good about my day as a whole.

Side note: Grampa was known for saying a bit more than his prayers, but I remember him once saying that growing up as we have, next to two of the largest rivers in the world, distorts our view of what other people consider a big river. I crossed the Rio Grande today on my way to the trails, and Grampa was right on this one. It’s a creek.

Wes