My Life in a Van - Florida Continued - Meeting The Rialta Jesus

Onward Indians, with this tiny blog series!

Florida - Loop 1 - Continued

The last post left off discussing some real kumbaya moments about my interactions with lots of unique people at the Florida Wildlife Management Districts (where we camped for free!) But the real miracle of our first loop came when we serendipitously met two special ladies, Nancy and Virginia, whom also owned a Rialta, at Anastasia state park in St. Augustine, FL.

We ended up at Anastasia after leaving Gainesville the previous day in an attempt to test drive the most recent attempted fix to our months-long stalling problem. (Shout out Hugo and Sons Mechanics if you are in Gainesville)

Hugo was the fourth mechanic we'd seen in a month or so, and though he was never able to figure out our phantom stalling issue, fate smiled on us by delivering us to the exact spot we needed to be to meet Nancy and Virginia.

@Dashie was so excited when she saw another Rialta coming that she popped up and started waving frantically. We got to chat with them, and by the next day, not only did they let us park in their spot in the campground to take a shower (we were in the overflow lot) but they invited us to a small "Rialta Rally" on their property in Palatka in the coming week or so. This was no ordinary rally, in fact the Rialta Jesus would be there.

Nancy and Virginia's Backyard

Rialta Jesus is a man by the name of Duane, who runs the Rialta Tech Group, and goes around sprinkling his magic fairy dust on down and out Rialta comrades. He knows the mechanics of the engine and the coach components, and for some strange reason he just likes helping people. He is a wonderful human being.

Rialta Jesus and Disciples discussing important matters

Things get a little crazy here, and I don't want to get too wordy, so suffice to say, we arrived at Nancy and Virginia's believing that our stalling issue had been fixed, due to successful hours long drives, and were excited to get to enjoy the time with fellow Rialta people, and get some tips on small fixes, like adding a cut-off switch to our coach batteries.

Virginia, bless her heart, suggested we go help another gentleman by the name of Jay out on his farm, feed his calves, stuff like that since he was preparing the farm to be sold. Jay was another Rialta owner and genius, and the farm was around an hour away. The day we left to Jays was hot, in the 90's F, and thank God it was as we stalled for the first time about 30 mins into our trip.

We stalled another 11 or so times in the heat of the day and an hour long drive turned into a 6 hour journey to Jays farm. Of course we were too late to help with the farm, but Jay took us in, hooked us up to power and we spent the next week with him and Rialta Jesus going through every possible thing that could be causing our stalling.

Trying to capture the data post-stallpocalyptico

They took hours every day, provided parts, and wanted nothing in return. In the end, they found our issue, which was a crank sensor, problem was, one of our previous mechanics was supposed to have replaced the crank sensor, and they did so with an non OEM part, a big no no for VW's.

It was early May, and though a month behind, thanks to the kindness of these strangers, who became Rialta family, we were finally able to leave Florida and begin our journey west.

*We did stall again getting into Santa Fe, 1600 miles later, but we were able to identify the issue quicker than the 3 months it took to identify it the first time. More on that in another post.

So that's it, still pretty wordy, but I just wanted to get out a post of gratitude to Virginia and Nancy, Jay and Rialta Jesus himself, Duane. Their kindness and selflessness carried an important lesson for me, and I reflect on it often. And when I do, I give thanks to Creation, and its wondrous way of carrying us to where we need to be.

Me singing a cover of Johnny Appleseed by Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros