In the wee hours of Friday morning as we were both drifting in the land of Winken, Blinken, and Nod, there was a tremendous roaring sound, some thumping and bumping, and then a magnificent CRASH! What in the high, holy hell? I went to the door to take a peep outside and identified the problem right away. There was blue-and-white striped canvas blocking the door entirely. The awning was not exactly in the position it had been just a few hours before. I had to push pretty hard to move the door so I could slip outside to survey the damage.
When we’d gone to bed the night before, we’d checked the weather. Forecaster was saying that the storms in the area would miss us and winds wouldn’t gust up over 10 mph. Liar. Out of nowhere, there was a freak gust of wind so violent that it ripped the aluminum arms that hold up the awning right out of the side of the trailer, mounting hardware, screws, and all. Just left holes in the fiberglass. The arms were mangled beyond all usefulness and the RV fabric itself was ripped nearly in half. Holy crap. Awnings are not cheap, and the entire thing was going to need to be replaced: fabric, roller, arms, hardware…all of it.
I went back inside and shared the bad news with Lex, grabbed the camera, and went out again so I could take photos. We’re insured, so I wanted to make sure to document the problem before it got worse. The whole assembly was hanging there and banging against the side of the RV whenever the winds would blow.
Lex got on the phone and called Geico. Fortunately, our comprehensive policy would cover it. The bad news: an adjuster wouldn’t be able to come out until the following week. Lex called them back after we talked it over and asked if it would be okay to cut down what remained of the awning. If we didn’t, it could further damage the RV. We got the okay to do that and went outside in the pre-dawn hours with a pair of scissors. It hurt my heart to do it, but I cut the rest of the awning down, and we just put the roller and bent arms on the ground. That left the bulk of the awning fabric to flap against the side of the trailer. Well, that’s better than heavy pieces of metal doing the flapping.
The canvas made it pretty tough to get in and out of the door, so we did what we could to pull it back out of the way. The clamp we used to fold back the awning wasn’t very effective, but at least the ENTIRE door wasn’t swathed in the stuff.
We spent the weekend like that, struggling every time we had to go in and out. The adjuster finally showed up today. I wasn’t here, but Lex says he surveyed the damage, interviewed her, and then got on the phone. He found someone to fix it, and all it’s going to cost us is our $250 deductible. Not bad considering the entire job is going to cost over $1200. One catch: we have to wait another week for the part to come in before the repair can be made. So that means another week of having this wreckage on the ground and this decidedly unsexy giant plastic rag covering half of our house.
The moral of this story is that anytime there is even the slightest hint of a storm in the air, the barest rustle of a breeze, we need to put the awning away. In fact, I’m not entirely certain I’ll want to unroll the thing once it gets replaced. Pricey lesson, indeed, but at least the damage isn’t permanent.
The weight of the falling roller just ripped the fabric right in half.
