DAY 34
Week 5
MINNEAPOLIS (Minnesota, USA) to GREEN BAY (Wisconsin, USA)
Monday July 24th, 2006
TODAYS MILEAGE – 307 miles or 494 kilometres
TRIP MILEAGE – 4350 miles or 7000 kilometres
Hey it's only money right??? 
An hour and a half at Brambillas RV, plus $1567.45 equals a new fridge in the Man Pad. What do you do??? Nothing you can do other than suck it up and pass out the shekels.
After the trials and tribulations I've had with Man Pad, over the past month, it would be easy to get frustrated and simply say fuck it and get rid of it. Any sane reasonable person with all their marbles probably would have, yeah and I should have, but that's not the point.
With all that's gone on, I can honestly say that I've had to do a fair bit of soul searching as a person. A year ago, I honestly would have said fuck it and be done with it, but I feel as you get older you tend to take a step back and take another look at what you are trying to achieve. Yeah, the RV is a work in progress and gives me the irits at times, but I have the ability, nouse and talent to repair it. Tell me, who do you know that can say the same.
The Man Pad is more affectionately know to me as "Waltzing Matilda". I only ask her to plod along at a gentle mile-a-minute and every time a truck & trailer goes past, they push the girl to the side of the road. I'm so gentle on her that I have only passed three vehicles the entire trip so far — and they were all downhill!!!!
In deference to my Aussie background and to how the girl lives by the simple rule that her owner pays all his taxes — so she'll use all the road, hence "Waltzing Matilda"!!!
After 32 days of near drought conditions, I was about 95 miles (153 kilometres) from Green Bay (Wisconsin) when I ran into one of the worst torrential downpours, with hail no less, that I've ever driven into and it went all the way into Green Bay (Wisconsin). Green Bay??? Shit, the sky's were battleship grey (or worse) all the way into Brett Farvesville!!!
To add to the mayhem of the heavens opening up and sending all the fury she could muster at the time, I had a complete wiper failure when I couldn't see 6 feet in front of me. When purchasing the Man Pad I knew I needed to replace the wiper blades as they had perished. I wasn't about to pay $77.00 for a pair of "RV" wiper blades, so I found a similar length set and adapted them for a total of $16.75.
I ran the wipers on the low speed as there was not much rain when I was testing the new setup in Boise (Idaho, USA). Unfortunately, today when I went to the fastest speed on the wipers, the extra long stainless steel screws that I used got caught up in the opposing wiper arms and locked up the wipers solid. Not a good thing when cruising down the freeway in a torrential downpour with no wipers. On the clacker valve factor, it was right up there with coming down the hill with no brakes — TWICE!!!!
I was pleased that the Man Pad returned some of the best fuel figures for the trip and pulled real nice. It's pretty obvious that "Waltzing Matilda" is true to her form of being a lady in that she's a smooth operator in the cool and tries to shy's from the heat.
That's it for the day, as tomorrow will be the future.
• MINNEAPOLIS (Minnesota, USA)