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Well, it’s July 5th, and Stef and I have been in Medford for two days.  It’s not terrible.  It’s not awesome.  But it just won’t end.

The day started well enough.  I was able to get the RV started without too much fuss at 7am.  We got to the Mercedes Sprinter repair facility (Mercedes of Medford) right when they opened, and we were treated very well by the staff there.  It took a couple hours of diagnosis before we all zeroed in on what I thought the problem was all along: the starter.  Some wrangling of parts from nearby outlets and the predicted time for the RV to be ready was about 3pm.  They gave us a loaner car (yes, a Mercedes – like I said, it’s not terrible) and we headed back to the Homewood Suites to clear out of our room.

The Homewood had only one room left the next night, so we had to clear out by 1PM.  The staff at the Homewood was awesome to us, and let us keep some of our things in their refrigerator and our bikes in the conference room until the RV was ready.  We don’t travel with actual luggage in Das Bus, so we had to go all ghetto with black plastic bags for our things, but we got cleared out.  We even had a little time to look around nearby Ashland.  Then we went back to Mercedes to pick up our RV.

Except our RV wasn’t ready.  While we were packing up, they had found another obscure part that had gone bad and needed to be replaced.  Oh, and also, the EGR valve was leaking and spewing black goo all over the place.  OK, another gazillion dollars.  Fine.  Except these new parts had to be ordered from California (hey, at least it’s not Germany) and won’t be here until FREAKING TUESDAY!  That’s pretty much the end of our trip!

So, taking stock of the situation: It’s 114 degrees.  We’re stuck in Medford, Oregon for another four days.  We’ve got a Mercedes filled with garbage bags of our stuff.  We’ve got  cheese and salad dressing in a hotel fridge across town.  In the interim, the Homewood has sold that last room they had.  So now we’ve got NO PLACE TO STAY.  And, at this point, we’re both pretty cranky.  Awesome.

Stef is trying to call the “Meth Inn” down by the freeway to see if they have any rooms.  But I’m going to exercise my veto power on that one.  More on the situation as it unfolds…