Awning all done? Ah, that would be a no.

It's been an entire two weeks since my last post.  Obviously the awning motor replacement must be done, but no, and it's still not done :-(  

We are very lucky to be surrounded by friends who are ready to offer their help, so we gathered to take on the awning project.  Now first of all, the awning in question is mounted such that there is no access to the end where the motor is located, so there are basically two choices, remove the awning completely, it's about 400 pounds, or possibly just pivot it enough to gain access to the front end.  So after some difficulty getting it loose due to a broken bolt, we amassed the group and pivoted, and it worked like a charm!

The right most arrow is where the motor lives
so we needed to raise that end and pivot on the
"pivot here" spot

Harold performing a very necessary and important job
to not allow the awning to slip off the roof!

Me pretty much doing nothing

Jack pulling the old motor with Scott overseeing

Wow, this is slick!  In a few minutes, we had the old motor out, handed the new motor to Jack since he was already in the hot seat, and..............no way to fasten the new motor in, it has a completely different end!  So here we are, after a whole year, and after the manufacturer sending the wrong motor which put off the project this long, so now do we once again have the WRONG motor?????  And it's conveniently a Saturday, so I can't get any answers until Monday, not good.

So on Monday afternoon, yes the manufacturer is in California, the guy says just attach the enclosed bracket to the end of the new motor and you're good to go.  What bracket I say?  The bracket that is enclosed in the box with the motor.  Well, there is no bracket, so he says I'll send you one, I say great, send it overnight since you are the reason twice now, that this project is taking so long, he says no I can't expedite, even if you pay for the shipping, GRRRRRR.  So I carefully give him my shipping address and he says he'll ship it right out and send me a photo of the bracket and send the tracking number.  OK, fine.

After an entire day goes by without anything I email and ask again, he says, oh I didn't get it out yesterday, but should get it out today.  At least he sends a picture of the bracket.

The old motor

The new motor

And what the new motor is supposed to look like

Well it's now been almost two weeks, and it's still not over.  I waited a few more days and still without a tracking number, emailed again, and finally get it.  I look it up and find it's been delivered!  That's nice, I never got it.  So I look around the motorhome again, recheck at the campground's office and mailbox, nothing, and decide to call Fedex to see what the shipping address is, ha, they won't tell you!  Security I guess, but on the tracking info one line says it was delivered to Nokomis, FL, where I am and where it is supposed to go, and another line says it was delivered to Sarasota where my mail forwarder is, so now being a little more than irritated I email the manufacturer back and ask what address did he ship it to?  Turns out he used the street address for the campground and the city of Sarasota with the Nokomis zip code, so actually he sent it to an unknown address, but it was delivered??????   Well, by the time I find out all of this, my mail forwarder has closed for the day.  Today I will find out if it possibly somehow ended up in Sarasota, or I'll have to go through the whole process again.  Keep your fingers crossed!

So instead of awning repair, Jan and I have been doing other things to include finding a really good sushi restaurant right here in Venice that we didn't know about.

Delicious and beautiful!

Devouring some yummy stone crab.

And spending some interesting time over at the jetty, look what we saw come in.

This pulls in

Getting ready to fly

All set and heading for the water.

It is an amphibious ultralight built for two, pretty cool.  We wanted to see it fly but the owner was waiting for an instructor, he had just bought it, and he was late and we didn't stick around.

So a lot of nothing, hopefully today I'll find the elusive bracket and on my next post I'll be able to tell you that the awning motor is replaced and the awning works perfectly.