This morning, still awake from the day prior, just as we were depositing the very last box of our belongings into the camper, Tara turned to me, her face crumpled like a deflated balloon. I was confused until I saw what she was pointing at: a pie-sized stain of dirty, brownish water that had materialized on two of our brand new cushion covers.

Sure enough, I could see a drip, coming from the speaker screen directly overhead. While Tara wearily and weepily removed the two dirty covers to clean and dry them, I sighed deeply, fetched a ladder, and climbed up to the roof to see if I could find the source of our problems. Why on earth didn't I check up here before we bought this thing!?

There, in plain sight, right over the source of the drip, was a large, arrow-shaped tear in the trailer's EPDM rubber roof. When I gently pressed my finger into what should have been plywood beneath, it sunk in, as though the roof was a rotten log. This was very, very bad.

Back inside the house, I broke the news to Tara. Feeling as though I was watching the scene unfold from outside myself, I calmly and deliberately explained what I had found, and that we'd have to have it repaired before we could go anywhere. Roof damage or no, there was no way we could leave for our reed-collection workshop today anyway. Besides, neither of us had slept in 26 hours.

It was already 8:00 AM, so I called the local RV center. When I explained the situation, they said they could easily repair the hole using eternabond, but the resulting water damage was a done deal. Unfortunately, they had no techs working on Fridays during the winter, so they wouldn't be able to help us out until Monday. The next nearest place was an hour away, but at least they had the staff on hand to help.

Crestfallen, but glad we would be able to get this looked at today, we took to the icy roads, mustering up the energy from god knows where to make the drive. The trip to Monticello RV was a misty and snowy blur, and we made our way there as safely as we could in our exhausted state.

An hour later, we surrendered our new camper to the professionals. While they assessed the damage, we made ourselves at home in two comfortable camping chairs, and fell into a deliriously deep sleep. Eventually, the shop's owner came to report the news...