#362 Towed RV to the Westside Unitarian Universalist Church

I decided to call a couple of UU churches and ask if I could use their parking lot in that if they didn't mind. It sure would save our butt and we would make a donation or something. Over several email exchanges and discussions with the board, the Westside UU said it would be okay which was so wonderful of them. I told them that we would make any kind of donation. I also told him I was very handy and I would help fix things and they were okay with all of it. They weren't meeting anyway so it wasn't too spooky for them because nobody was coming and going.

I thought I would share the email I sent. I clicked contact us on their website.

Hi there, we are long-term married folks and UU people. We are traveling full-time as RV people. We are in Lenoir City and the transmission of the truck has fallen and they're going to have to fix it over the next week. We're having a little trouble finding an RV campground because of the 4th of July weekend coming up. We wanted to ask if we offered a donation of some sort could we maybe stay in your parking lot for a week until they finish fixing the truck.

We just thought we would ask

Thank you

India and Randall Cothren

910 232 0455

The Response

Brad Kurtz <social@westsideuuc.org>

Fri, Jun 26, 8:55 AM

to me

Hi Randall, I received your message. I don't have a problem with it, but I will need to ask our minister. I'm sorry you're in a bind and I'll do what I can to help out. We have a family that lives in Lenoir City that might have enough room on their property to accommodate you for a week as well. I am reaching out to them, too.

Brad Kurtz

Office Administrator

Westside Unitarian Universalist Church

616 Frets Rd.

Knoxville, TN 37934

Later in the day, Brad said the minister was fine with it and gave us the go-ahead.

With all the permissions taken care of, we did a little scouting to see what the site looked like. We went by the church and mapped out where we were going to park and all that. The following day we had the tow truck move us over there. The one thing that was kind of messed up is we did get towed there and that was another $250 plus a rental car for about a week and a half I guess. All that was all very expensive but we landed and I began to get hooked up to a hose and an electrical outlet.

Somebody walked over and was a bit fussy with us and wanted to know what do you think you're doing. I said we have permission to be here. She said from who? I had to look on my phone to find the person's name I had talked to. They didn’t seem very good ambassadors of the UU. I guess they were just trying to protect the property from hippies and freeloaders but I was a little put off that. I had gone to so much trouble to get permission and they still acted like we were such bad people. Eventually, I found a message from the board of directors and the minister saying we have permission to be here. I showed it to her and she said oh well never mind. It was kind of scary but we got that behind us.

Our power source was a general-purpose outdoor outlet by the porch. Keep in mind I do not have access to a breaker panel so I've got to be careful not to trip a breaker. It was hot and we could have one air conditioner operating but very little else. We got settled in were grateful to be there. The next day the guy who does a lot of volunteering around whose name is Dave said, hey man is everything okay? I said yeah and I had told him as soon as you come up with some cool projects, we'll take a look at some of them. I had made it clear that I would like to volunteer my electrical or plumbing skills to help say thank you. I also looked on their website for ways to give and make a donation. I was just so beyond grateful that they had let us stay. We weren't really in their way because they weren't meeting or having services but they could have said no and they didn't they said yes.

Dave came by and I was able to add an outlet from a locked closet and blend them in my splitter combiner which really gave me 40 amps. This was a relief as it was pretty hot. He also left that closet door unlocked in case I needed to reset a breaker. I think on day three he gave me the code to get into the church and come and go as I wanted to which meant I have access to the other breaker. What a nice guy.

When I wasn't fixing something India and I would go hiking every other day and we kind of really nice trail 5 miles away at a county park. I was a multipurpose park, marina, and a nice restaurant right on the water.

The trails were not marked very well, in fact, they weren't marked at all.

We found it best to use the app called all trails.

Dave and I looked at a backflow preventer that had been offline for quite some time that supplies water to a water feature. It’s a beautiful flowing stream of river rocks but they are presently filling it up using a garden hose. Whenever it's working properly it uses separately metered water from the city and refills itself and maintains the water level automatically. They had been very concerned about it freezing and there had been a broken pipe involved so I went about working on that. This is when I learned a difficult lesson about bad glue.

We got the pipe fittings needed and I glued it up and it under pressure it popped loose. So, we went and got more pipe fittings and tried it again and it popped loose. Later I went to the hardware store to get more pipe fittings and now I'm really pulling my hair out. This time I bought brand new PVC glue and cleaner and this time it held. This meant that all those failed attempts were just because the glue was old and crappy. A lesson I will not forget soon. Now the backflow preventer is fixed and we tested it and it worked great. Then there was a concern about the electricity that fed an outlet that would operate a heat tape in winter. I was able to repair and replace the outlet and that was also solved.

In the bathrooms, he had bought some LED replacement kits for the lighting and they were going to get rid of the emergency ballast backup which is can be a hassle and put him just battery-powered backup bulbs. I suggested that we get the LED direct wire replacement tubes for the kitchen as they flickered or some had bad ballasts so we did that. We had done all those jobs it had been about a week and passed and thankfully now my truck was about finished and it cost about $4,000. I was able to get out of there on Friday, July 3 just in time to head to my sisters. I had to cancel a reservation at Tanglewood Park for the week that I was at the church but I had a one-day reservation that would still be good I could get there by the fourth.

As far as the transmission repair goes the people that I worked with seem very qualified and very good people and it was no more money than it would have been anywhere else It just took a while. I got the rental car returned got him paid and out the door and was ready to leave at 6:00 pm.