Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Hartford, Connecticut

June 10, 2011

The driver and passenger seats in the coach are very comfortable and have all kinds of electrically-controlled functions:  forward/back, footrest, heat, and up/down.  With the passenger seat turned to the back of the coach and the footrest up, the controls stopped receiving power.  Dave managed to turn the seat around enough to get the slide-out room in, but the extended footrest prevented the seat from facing forward.

With Jane on the couch, peering around the driver’s seat to try to help navigate, we headed for Hartford.  The scenic way.

Jane wasn’t doing too good a job of navigating and we missed the first turn to get to the freeway.  Then we missed the second opportunity to get to the freeway a few miles later and ended up taking the coach and car through the charming but excruciatingly narrow streets of downtown Doylestown.  That detour added about an hour to our trip.

Dave handled the constant high volume of traffic while Jane concentrated on not feeling motion sickness.  It was exciting to pass the exit to New York City–itself far to the east–and a huge relief to arrive in the campground in Hartford.

A call to Fleetwood (who made the Discovery) and we had a number for contacting a technician from the chair manufacturer.  He suggested Dave use a battery pack from his cordless drill to power the seat controls one at a time to get the footrest down.  Imagine both of us lying on the floor trying to hold wires in place while holding flashlights and operating the controls.  By process of elimination, we found the right place to touch wires together to lower the footrest.  We turned the seat around and were able to resume our trip in a more normal fashion.