Tag Archives: Bus Conversion Magazine

2014/09/27 (S) Eat Cut Eat

Today was VE testing day for our South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club so some of the members, who conduct the volunteer examinations, got to breakfast even earlier than usual. We had a good crowd and many simultaneous conversations. After breakfast we drove to Ann Arbor to return the charger for the baby monitor. It got left at our house yesterday when Linda took Madeline home. Madeline was dressed in her Michigan colors with a blue T-shirt and maize skirt. She gave me a tour of her backyard and toys and then we all went inside to visit for a while. Linda and I each got to read a book to her which is always a treat for us. We all had things to do, and we wanted to get out of town before the football game traffic clogged the streets, so we headed home before lunchtime.

Back at the house Linda straightened up and vacuumed, put together a grocery list, and then went to Meijer’s (grocery store) while I finished cutting the grass around the house. It took me a couple of more hours, but between yesterday and today I managed to cut all of the newly planted grass and some of the more mature grass close to the house.

It was another pleasantly warm late September day and I used that as an opportunity to start the main engine on the bus. I let it run for a while with the over-the-road air-conditioning turned on to put a load on it and bring it up to operating temperature, which helps drive off moisture. Linda got home with groceries while the bus was running and I helped her get those into the house.

I let the bus run on high idle for about 30 minutes with the over-the-road air-conditioning on, which brought the coolant temperature up to its normal operating level. The oil also warmed up, but not fully. Before shutting the engine off I backed the bus up about 5 feet to rotate the tires to a different spot. I turned the a-c off, dropped the idle to low, and let it run another 5 minutes, during which time I drained the auxiliary air tank. I then switched the suspension system from ride mode to Level Low mode and turned off the engine. As usual, I turned off the chassis batteries, shut off the auxiliary air to the air-powered engine accessories, and closed the shutoff valves for all of the air accessory circuits in the bay under the driver’s seat, except the circuit for the toilet. (Yes, the bus has an air-powered toilet.)

I put a load of laundry in the washer and then spent some time at my desk checking e-mail and websites. I had an e-mail from Gary regarding an article in the upcoming September 2014 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine. They decided to run my article on the Parker FPM-50 Fuel Polishing Module project and wanted me to proofread it and respond to a few suggested markups. I worked long enough for the washer to finish, moved the laundry to the dryer, and then shaved and took a shower. By the time Linda finished her shower my hair was dry enough to cut, which it really needed. We then got dressed to go out to dinner. I checked the dryer but it was taking longer than I expected and clearly would not be done before we had to leave for the restaurant.

We had arranged at breakfast to meet Bruce (W8RA) and Linda (NF8C) Whitney for dinner at LaMarsa in Brighton at 6:30 PM. Bruce and I both had mango smoothies (dairy free) and we got a veggie tray with hummus to share as an appetizer. Although two dishes would have been plenty of food for the four of us, Linda (NF8C) wanted to sample their offerings. There are basically four dishes on the menu we can eat so we ordered one of each. Each came with soup so we all had the crushed lentil soup. We had Koshary, Majadra, Ghallaba (garlic almond) and Mousaka (baked eggplant). (We did not get the spicy version of any of these.) It took the waitress a while to catch on to the fact that we were not going to order the whole meal at one time, but by ordering our courses one at a time we managed to spend a long time at dinner and had a great chat.

Back home I the set dryer on “Touch Up” and restarted it. I proof read my BCM article and e-mailed clarifications to the editor and publisher. I spent enough time on e-mail and websites for the dryer to finish, hung up the clothes, and played with my iPad for a little while. I was tired enough that I just turned in for the night and did not even work of the blog or play games. That’s pretty tired.

2014/09/10 (W) A Functioning Landline

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The Ibuprofen/Tylenol mix did the trick and I slept comfortably through the night. Twinges were just starting as we were waking up, so breakfast was two zucchini muffins, half of a banana, and 800 mg of Ibuprofen, washed down with orange/grapefruit juice. Linda went for a walk after breakfast as it was supposed to be rainy most of the day.

I spent part of the morning selecting and re-sizing photographs from the Arcadia Bus Rally 2014, uploaded them to a folder in our Dropbox, and e-mailed the link to Brenda Phelan who runs the rally with her husband Bill. She had put out a request on Facebook for photos if anyone had them. I did an article for Bus Conversions Magazine on that rally shot over 700 photos, so yeah, I had a few.

I registered us for an RVillage Ambassador webinar later today on the new mobile app, and then came upstairs to have lunch. We enjoyed the vegan Sloppy Joe’s Linda had made, along with some vegan baked beans (canned) and store bought apple sauce. It had been raining lightly for a while and the intensity increased while we ate, but it fell straight down with little to no wind. The radar loop on Wundermap (Weather Underground) showed that we were in the leading edge of a large fetch of moisture that would likely train over our location for several hours and that is, in fact, what happened.

I took a short nap. I rarely do that, but I always enjoy it when I do. I worked the rest of the afternoon at my computer editing blog posts and finally getting around to selecting and processing photos to go with some of them. I had called Kerry Fear this morning regarding snowplowing this winter and he stopped by the house around 3:45 PM to meet with us. He lives nearby and plows our neighbor’s driveway, which is how we got his name. We agreed to hire him for the season on a handshake; no contract or pre-payment. He will send us a bill every now and then and we will pay it.

Linda made creamed corn for dinner and served it alongside vegan Sloppy Joe sandwiches and fresh strawberries. Again, a soft, easy on the teeth, meal that was very tasty.

The RVillage webinar started at 7 PM EDT and lasted 45 minutes. They wanted feedback on this latest development by Friday so they can finalize it for general release. I continued working on photographs for the blog and installed a set of updates on our Linux box before calling it quits for the evening. Linda had started watching the first episode of Sherlock from last year so I watched most of it with her. Much to our disappointment Doc Martin has disappeared from Amazon Instant Video as part of our Amazon Prime account. We can still get it, but we would now have to pay extra. As much as we like the series we are not going to pay extra to watch it.

It spite of the rain today, we made and received a number of phone calls on our AT&T landline and were online through our DSL connection quite a bit, including streaming the episode of Sherlock, all without noise or service interruptions to the best of our knowledge. We are hopeful that our AT&T service is finally restored and will continue to operate reliably.

One of the calls was from Chuck letting me know that Matt at Bob’s Speedometer Service had tested his VDO bus speedometer and found it to be broken and not repairable. Chuck ordered a new one through Matt, who will take care of programming the odometer with the current mileage. Once it comes in and Chuck verifies that it works I will likely be ordering one for our bus since ours has failed in the same way as Chuck’s. I could go ahead and remove ours and take it in, but I have lots of other things to work on a figured it made sense to wait and see how this works out for Chuck.

2014/08/31(N) By Any Other Name

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My first task after breakfast was to sand drywall compound and apply the next coat where needed. I’m down to touch up work in most spots and so I am trying to apply very thin layers with feathered edges that will dry quickly and require minimal sanding. The old A-C opening in the library, however, is taking many, many overlapping layers. Fortunately I can finish that at my leisure as Darryll is not working in that location. Since he just this week installed the two pieces of duct in the lower part of the wall between the garage and the library I am still building up drywall compound to fill the irregular and, in places, large gaps on the garage side. Unfortunately, the thicker compound takes longer to dry and watching drywall compound dry is worse than watching paint dry as it’s even slower. The trick is to have something else to do while I wait. Fortunately, I have lots to do.

I had some e-mail correspondence on Friday with the publisher of Bus Conversion Magazine, Gary Hall, whose name turns out to actually be Gary Hatt. He had his reasons for not using his real name when he first took over BCM, which he explained and which made good sense. BCM is running my article on Suncoast Designers in the August 2014 issue and he sent me a Dropbox link to the draft. It looks like another really good issue, but is again coming out a month late. Ever since the editor had a minor heart attack in early May they have been a month behind. It appears that they will be doing an article on spin-on oil filters in the October issue and will also use my article on the Spinner II centrifugal oil cleaner that Joe and I installed a year and half ago. I only have one other article ready for them to use, so I guess I need to get busy and write some new ones.

When I am not working on the house, the yard, or the bus, there’s always computer work to be done. I have multiple projects to work on, but I also like to relax on a pleasant day and catch up on reading the blogs and RV magazines that I follow. It was very pleasant today so we turned off the air-conditioning, opened up the house, and sat on the back deck reading and watching wildlife. I addition to our resident American Red Squirrel we were treated to a visit by three Sandhill Cranes. The squirrel has been busy for most of the month harvesting and stockpiling pine cones in what we presume is a midden under a cluster of very large fir trees northwest of the house. The cranes spent a long time wandering around the back yard foraging. We sat quietly and watched them and they came closer to the house than usual so we got a very good look at them. They are large and magnificent.

I finally decided to continue editing the rough drafts of my blog posts for this month and get them ready to upload. I still need to select photographs to go with some of the posts, or to put in separate gallery posts, but I finally uploaded the tree photos I took on the 21st to our Dropbox and e-mailed the link to Paul at Detroit Tree Recycling.

I spent some time online searching for sources of supply for an ignition coil for our Aqua-Hot diesel-fired hydronic heating system. I can get one from Darin, but he quoted me MSRP and it is an expensive part. I wasn’t having much luck so I called Butch mid-evening to discuss the situation. He suggested that I hold off on getting a new ignition coil until I got the coach to his place and we were able to look at it more carefully. He said I should have had white smoke and a definite smell from the atomized but unburned diesel fuel. I didn’t which made him wonder if the problem might be fuel delivery rather than ignition spark. Good advice, as always. I don’t know enough about the control circuitry on the Aqua-Hot (it’s actually a Webasto inside) to know how the operation of the spark and fuel solenoid might be intertwined. I have the manuals, but I have not had time to dig into them. Besides, I have enough other things to work on right now that I am willing to let this one go for a few more weeks.

2014/07/24 (R) Back To Work

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We were up earlier than normal. Linda went into the bakery today and likes to be on the road ahead of the worst of the morning traffic rush. Since she was working I figured it was a good day for me to also do some paid work (plus a couple of loads of laundry). Earlier in the summer I agreed to write assessment items for some of the modules in the Michigan Assessment Consortium professional development series on Common Assessment Development. The items are needed for use with the Lectora platform, which Bill Heldmyer at Wayne RESA is using to re-package the modules. These are modules that other team members developed, so I have to spend some time with the content before I can write the items.

I did some work on this in June and then got busy with contractors and out-of-town trips. I am still tied up with construction, contractors, and other projects but a timely completion for this work would be early August so I spent much of today working on it. I already had one module done and hoped to finish the other six but only managed to complete three of them. I am anxious to get back to work on the HVAC prep in the garage but I plan to continue working on the assessment items tomorrow as I would like to e-mail them to the team for feedback before the end of the day.

I have a lot going on at the moment. I like being busy, but this is starting to feel like “work.” I have a growing list of “must do” bus projects that I have yet to start: 1) fogged window replacement; 2) auxiliary air filter / water separator replacement; 3) Aqua-Hot expansion reservoir replacement; 4) Aqua-Hot exhaust leak repair; 5) motorized windshield shade repair; 6) finishing the installation of the ZENA power generator (for charging the house battery bank while driving), and; 7) redoing the water bay (that’s a big one). I have an optional project to replace the rear view camera system.

Butch is building new ride height linkages for his bus and wants to build some for me as well, so that makes nine “bus projects” I would like to accomplish before the weather turns too cold to work outside. Some of these are projects I can do with the bus in front of the house once I can move it back into its normal parking spot. The rest are things I will work on once I get it down to Butch and Fonda’s place in Twelve Mile, Indiana, probably this September.

The FMCA education committee work is ramping up and I have three websites I am trying to launch, one of which has an August 11 target date, plus our own website/blog to maintain (as of this writing I am over two weeks behind on blog posts). I am also supposed to be writing a “featured bus” article for Bus Conversion Magazine on Marty and Pat Caverly’s MCI MC-5B conversion “Scooby Doo & Bookworm.” It’s a great conversion that has taken 20 + years to build and will be the cover/centerfold story when it is published. I have 1,500 photos from Marty and the only way I will make sense of the project is to sit down with Marty, select images, and make notes. Once I have a sense of the chronology of the work, and the images to illustrate it, I can weave the words together to tell the story.

Kyle and Spencer were here working on the landscaping for most of the day. Steve stopped by in the morning to go over the work from yesterday and outline the work for today. It’s coming along, albeit much more slowly than I think it should. For a job that requires a lot of manual labor we normally only have two guys on site, sometimes three and sometimes only one. And, sad to say, they simply do not work as hard and as persistently when Steve is not here.

Linda got home ahead of the afternoon traffic. We had leftover potato and lentil curry and naan for dinner and both the dish and the bread were still excellent. A few black grapes and dark, sweet cherries for desert and we were off to bed early.

2014/06/11 (W) GLAMARAMA14 Day 1

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Although the opening ceremonies for the 2014 Great Lakes Area Motorcoach Association (GLAMA) area rally (GLAMARAMA14) took place at 7:30 PM, the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds were busy with activity all day. The golf cart shuttles started running at 7:30 AM and the parking crew members were at their stations and started parking motorhomes at 8:00 AM. The registration building was open at 8:00 AM, the indoor vendors were open at 9:00 AM, and the food vendors were open at 10 AM.

The Fleetwood Motorhome Association (FMA) had rolled their rally into the GLAMARAMA, and as part of their participation they sponsored Gary Bunzer, the RV Doctor, as the featured speaker. Gary normally only does national rallies and GLAMARAMA14 was the first time he had agreed to speak at an FMCA area rally. He was scheduled for a full set of presentations starting at 1:30 PM today. There were no other seminars at that time and he drew a large crowd, as he usually does. He had a second seminar starting at 3:30 PM but we could not attend as we were scheduled to drive golf carts from 4:00 – 6:30 PM. Fortunately he is repeating that seminar on Saturday.

Sometime during the last day or so I received a draft copy of the June 2014 Bus Conversion Magazine for review of my cover/centerfold article on the Cool Cruiser; a GM PD4106 I photographed at the 2014 Arcadia Bus Rally in late December. I sent back a few minor corrections. The editor had some health issues that delayed the May issue and they are working very hard to get the caught up so I got my comments back to the ASAP.

We had received an e-mail a week or so ago regarding the RVillage Ambassador Program and had responded that we were definitely interested in participating. Earlier this week we were notified that a webinar was scheduled for Saturday May 14 at noon. I e-mailed back that we could not participate in the webinar at that date/time due to GLAMARAMA activities.

At 4:00 PM we picked up our golf carts and headed out for two and a half hours of fun driving around the fairgrounds meeting people and providing rides and/or directions. There had been a threat of rain all day but it held off until after our shift ended.

The evening entertainment was provided by New Odyssey, an extremely high-energy three-man group out of Chicago, Illinois that plays 30 different instruments. They put on a great, but slightly familiar, show and we finally figured out that we had seen them a few years ago at a G.L.A.S.S. rally in Berrien Springs, Michigan. (Great Lakes Area Spring Spree.)

Before the show ever started the skies opened up and it rained very hard. We had left the roof vents/fans open/on, with a running computer sitting directly under one of them, so I ran back to the coach to close everything up. It was a short distance, but I was soaked by the time I went 10 feet. Ironically, but luckily, not a single drop of rain had entered the coach, perhaps because we were parked under a very large tree. Still, I closed everything, dried off and changed into my rain gear for the walk back to the assembly hall.

2014/06/10 (T) Early Entry

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Today was early entry day for the FMCA Great Lakes Area Motorcoach Association (GLAMA) area rally, known as the GLAMARAMA. Following our usual departure routine I dumped our holding tanks and prepared the outside of the bus for travel while Linda secured the inside. We pulled out of Elkhart Campground around 9:30 AM and headed west on CR-4 to IN-19 where we turned north back towards Michigan. IN-19 becomes M-205 at the border and we followed it around to US-12 east. A few miles down the road we turned onto M-217, the Michiana Parkway, and followed that south back into Indiana where it became CR-17. We exited CR-17 at US-20 and headed east towards Middlebury, Indiana. The reason for going this way was to avoid driving through Elkhart and Goshen. Monroe Street in Goshen is closed at the railroad tracks forcing detours to get to the fairgrounds when approaching from the west. We knew from our recent visit to the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds for the Escapees RV Club Escapade rally that the easy way in and out of the venue was from/to the northeast.

GLAMARAMA14 is the second rally organized by GLAMA. The first one was in September 2013 at the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds. I wrote an extensive article about that rally that appeared in the January 2014 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine. A version of that article also appeared in the November 2013 newsletter of the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches (GLCC) Chapter.

We encountered unexpected road construction on eastbound US-20, but we had no particular time constraints and patiently worked our way through. At IN-13, south of Middlebury, we turned south, drove down to IN-4, and headed east. Before getting to Goshen we turned south on CR-29 and followed that to its terminus at CR-34 (Monroe Street) where we headed east a short distance to the northeast entrance to the Fairgrounds (Gate 5). The trip took us a little over an hour whereas the direct route, without road closings, would have taken 30 minutes. But it was an easy, stress-free drive and we arrived relaxed and ready to enjoy the rest of the day. Northern Indiana is a particularly easy place to drive a large RV; the roads are relatively flat with very few overhead clearance or weight restriction issues. The one thing you have to watch out for are the Amish buggies; they are everywhere in this region.

We indicated on entry that we were with the Great Lakes Converted Coaches Chapter. After unhooking the car in the staging area the parking crew escorted us to the sites reserved for our chapter in the fenced area directly behind the vendor and entertainment buildings known as “the compound.” We were the second bus to arrive; the Lintner’s having already been here for a few days. A short while later Bill and Karen Gerrie (1965 GM Transit) arrived with Mike and Kathy Dickson and Joe and Mia Temples (GM 4905 “Buffalo”). Later in the day Don and Sandra Moyer arrived in their 1948 Spartan with John and Paula Lingafelter in their 1958 Flxible Starliner.

In the early afternoon Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard (Technomadia) walked over from the FMA area to the GLCC area with Jason and Nikki Wynn (Gone with the Wynn’s). I introduced them to Bill Gerrie and Linda joined us for a brief chat. It’s always good to cross paths with Chris and Cherie and it was nice to meet Jason and Nikki.

We volunteered to drive golf carts during the rally and our first shift was today from 2:30 to 5:00 PM. Although the rally does not start until tomorrow the registration office was open and attendees from all over the fairgrounds needed to go there, without knowing where “there” was, so we had our share of customers.

2014/05/07 (W) Plumbing

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After breakfast Linda headed to Ann Arbor to babysit our younger grand-daughter. I had a long list of things to do at my computer today, and planned to spend the day inside at home doing them. I did not manage to do most of them as I ended up doing other things instead; so much for plans.

Wednesday is trash day (sorry, Prince Spaghetti), so I got the trash to the curb. (I know, I know, how have I managed to arrange such an interesting life?) A box of Bus Conversion Magazines arrived yesterday, so I opened it to check the contents and then e-mailed the publisher that all was well.

We do not have curbside recycling at the house the way we did in the previous one, so we have to take our recyclables to a drop-off center run by Recycle Livingston. The center is open Wednesdays and Saturdays. On her way out the door Linda reminded me that I had to take the recyclables to the center. We keep a set of cardboard boxes on the floor in the pantry and sort our recyclables as they become available. I loaded them in the car for later.

At some point in the past the shower diverter in the bathtub quit working, so that had been on my “to do” list for a while. Coincidentally, while we were in Florida I had seen an episode of “Ask This Old House” that dealt with this exact repair! I had to use a large pipe wrench to unscrew the old bathtub spout/diverter as the threads were corroded. With the old diverter off I now had a fairly good idea of what I needed in the way of a replacement part.

I had been putting off fixing the leaky dishwasher fresh water connection but today was finally the day to tackle that project. As I was thinking about heading to the recycle center, and then to Lowe’s for plumbing parts, I got a call from Steve at Village Landscape Development (VLD). He wanted to swing by and go over the front stairs and rear retaining wall projects again and get us on his schedule. We agreed on 1 PM. It was 11:30 AM, so I had just enough time to drop off the recyclables and get a new diverter from Lowe’s.

Steve (VLD) came by and we walked through the two projects. We were on the same page and settled on tentative start and completion dates, so we signed an agreement and I gave him a deposit. After he left, I called Wayne (KD8H), set up to get the tower tomorrow at 11:00 AM, and then e-mailed Steve (N8AR) to let him know the date/time. He had permission to use Bruce’s (W8RA) closed trailer to help me with the tower.

Back at the dishwasher I turned the water supply on and the connection didn’t just drip, it spurted. I redid the connection with pipe thread compound instead of Teflon tape but it did not help at all. I tried tightening it and it got worse. It was clearly time to rethink my approach.

I find that a good way to rethink my approach to a problem is to do something else, so I installed the new diverter for the bathtub/shower in the hall bathroom. It only needed to be threaded on hand tight as it is not a pressurized fitting. Water either flows out the spout into the tub or gets blocked and forced (diverted) up to the shower head; a pretty simple device, really. It was not quite the right length and left a 1/2 inch gap between the base and the wall tile. At least this way I could see if any water was leaking out the back end. 🙂 It wasn’t, so I let it go for now.

I returned to the dishwasher problem and took another look. It appeared that the rubber seal (O-ring) in the end of the hose may have gotten nicked or mis-shapen, perhaps from over tightening. There was no indication of a leak between the 90 degree elbow and the dishwasher inlet.

I headed back to Lowe’s for a new 8’ dishwasher connection hose. I could not purchase just the hose; it only came as a kit with the 90 degree elbow and another adapter, which turned out to be fortuitous. I noticed that the instructions did not call for Teflon tape or pipe thread compound and I verified that with the associate in plumbing. I also picked up a decorative filler plate for the diverter.

The flexible water line connects to the lower left front corner of the dishwasher, loops underneath the unit, goes through a hole in the adjacent cabinet at the lower left rear, goes through the other side of that cabinet into the space under the corner sink cabinet bottom, and finally emerges through a hole in the floor of the cabinet along with a water pipe. The only way to run the new flexible line, without removing the dishwasher and disassembling cabinets, was to attach one end of the new line to the dishwasher end of the old line and use the old line to pull it through. Zip ties have lots of uses, and this is one of them.

Before making any connections I read the instructions again. The connections at the end of the hose were to be “finger tight plus 1/4 turn.” Although “finger tight” is an incredibly imprecise term–some number of inch-pounds would be precise–these directions clearly indicated that over tightening was a bad thing to do. I connected the line at both ends following the directions as best I could and opened the supply valve a little. No more spurting but I still had a drip leak and shut off the water supply. I knew the hose was OK so it had to be the elbow. I had to pull the dishwasher part way out to get to the 90 degree elbow. (This why I installed an 8 foot hose.) After I got it out I examined it and did not see any obvious thread damage or cracks, but there was some pitting and one pit in particular looked like it might be a through pinhole. No matter, it was trash.

I installed the new elbow using pipe thread compound on the male NPT pipe threads that go into the female NPT fitting on the dishwasher. These kinds of fittings are always a bit tricky. They have to be tight enough to not leak, without overdoing it, and they have to be oriented a certain way to allow something else to connect to them; in this case the supply hose. I reattached the flexible hose, turned on the water supply, and voilà, no leaks! As long as I was on a roll I unscrewed the bathtub diverter, slipped the decorative spacer over the pipe, and screwed the diverter back on, lining it up carefully with the spacer and getting it snug but properly aligned. Even though it took most of the afternoon I had successfully completed two plumbing jobs in one day.

2014/04/14 (M) Photos And Articles

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We were still tired from our 350 mile repositioning to the Florida panhandle yesterday, and the weather forecast for today and tomorrow called for thunderstorms with a high probability of heavy rain, so we did not plan on doing any site-seeing. I worked at my computer, editing photos for two gallery posts, and then turned my attention to editing photos from our Suncoast Designers visit and putting the finishing touches on my article for Bus Conversion Magazine about our a RV window repair experience.

Our site at Live Oak Landing near Freeport, FL; an RVC Outdoor Destination.

We needed groceries and Linda located a Publix on US-98 in South Walton about 10 miles from the RV park. We decided to take a short drive east on US-98 and then down to the coast. We drove past Grayton Beach State Park as far as the resort community of Watercolor. We could not figure out if Watercolor is a condo development, a timeshare resort, or just a regular old resort. It’s an “architectural” place, very attractive and interesting, but planned and intentionally designed. A bike trail runs along the south side of US-98 and there were lots of cyclists, runners, joggers, and walkers using it.

Live Oak Landing Outdoor Destination borders one of the branches of the Choctawhatchee River on the north side just before it empties into the east end of Choctawhatchee Bay. This is a very large bay that connects to the Gulf of Mexico on the west end. The Choctawhatchee River was already above flood stage at Ebro, east of our location, when we arrived on Sunday at 4:00 PM CDT. We were watching the weather while we were in Hudson, Florida and heavy rains had pushed through this area and up into SE Alabama and southern Georgia early last week. All of that water eventually flows to the Gulf of Mexico through the Florida panhandle. From the time we got here my cell phone Weather Channel app issued a steady stream of watches/warnings for strong/severe storms, river flooding, and flash flooding for most of the panhandle, including Freeport.

Another view of Live Oak Landing. Our coach is at towards the end on the left.

Another view of Live Oak Landing. Our coach is towards the end on the left.

What better time for a thanksgiving dinner? We bought a Tofurkey brand roast, two yams, and fresh green beans on our trip to Publix and Linda cooked all of that for dinner. We finished off our box of red wine and had a few dark chocolate covered almonds for dessert.

A strong cold front approaching from the WNW provided the lifting mechanism for a massive fetch of Gulf moisture, resulting in powerful, sustained thunderstorms training northeast over much of the western Florida panhandle, southeast Alabama and southwest Georgia. Over the course of the day and into the evening the cold front pushed steadily eastward across the region and the rain finally reached us around 9:00 PM accompanied by a spectacular lightning display and booming thunder.

The Choctawhatchee River from Live Oak Landing RV park.

I had finished my article for Bus Conversion Magazine an hour earlier, had Linda proof-read it, and had made final corrections. I was uploading the article and photos to my Dropbox, and e-mailing the publisher and editor to let them know, when the storms arrived. I finished those tasks, shut down my computer and unplugged the power supply. I also turned off the NAS and unplugged both the power and data cables. I left the WiFi Ranger and the Amped|Wireless router on. It would be inconvenient to lose them it a lightning strike, but the loss of programs and data would be catastrophic.

We went to bed and tried to sleep but it was pointless. The coach was a bit stuffy with all the vents and windows closed and the lightning, thunder, and rain were non-stop. The most intense rain fell at the rate of 3 – 4 inches per hour accompanied by the kind of lightning and thunder that signals the end of the world. Warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico is the fuel that makes serious weather in this part of the country. Life in an RV puts you in intimate contact with nature.

2014/04/08 (T) End Of XP

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Today marked the official end of support for Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system, and with it the end of an era. Windows XP has been around for 12+ years, and one estimate is that it is still used on 30% of the Windows PCs worldwide. That’s a lot of computers, but my techy friends have pointed out to me that it is simply obsolete and, as Microsoft has stated officially, it’s time for them to stop putting band-aids on it and devote their resources to their current generation of OS and development of new ones. Somewhat ironically, I received notification that updates were available and one of them was a security update for Windows XP. A last hoorah? Perhaps support ends at midnight tonight, Pacific Daylight Time? I plan to get a new laptop when we get home, although I am not looking forward to the time required to set up a new machine and learn to use it. I’m very impressed with the quality of Linda’s Samsung and am waiting to see what new products they unveil this month.

We kept the coach closed up and ran two air conditioners overnight because of the elevated humidity and forecasted rain. It was cool enough (not really) but stuffy compared to what we have been used to for the last four weeks, and the bedroom A/C is noisy, so we prefer not to run it unless we have to. The rain started around 7:15 AM. We were cozy inside our rig and had our usual coffee and juice to start the day. We decided to have toast with jam and fresh fruit instead of our usual cereal. I put my rain coat on at 8:30 AM and made the short walk to Suncoast Designer’s office to fill out some paperwork.

Our “site” at Suncoast Designer’s in Hudson, FL.

It continued to rain through the morning, becoming heavy at times. Jim came out from the shop during a lull in the precipitation to see which windows we wanted repaired and mark them with tape. The rain put them behind schedule and they were not able to remove our windows today. I told them that we did not have to leave by any date certain, and we were OK with being here through the weekend if needed. It is much more important that they repair these windows correctly than it is that they do them quickly.

Several rigs at Suncoast Designer’s with windows removed and openings covered.

I also asked if they would allow me to do a story for Bus Conversions Magazine [ http://www.busconversion.com ] and was told to check with the general manager, Jeff. I took “before” photos of our windows and of a couple of the workers removing windows from other rigs and covering the openings. What I want to do is follow our windows through the whole repair process as much as possible. I will talk to Jeff tomorrow.

DS front awning window in our bus; badly fogged and etched inside.

By the close of business they had 20 RVs on site; 14 motorhomes and two 5th wheels in the sites with hookups, one motorhome off to the side, and three motorhomes dry camped in the back lot. Suncoast Designer’s is a busy place.

With so many other rigs here, most of them occupied, and with good area lighting and video surveillance cameras, we felt that the coach was perfectly safe if we left for a while and decided to explore the area south of here by car. We drove down Little Road as far as FL-52 and then headed west to New Port Ritchey. We found the old downtown area (along Main Street, of course) and looped through it. It was not super upscale, like Venice, but it was nice. We like the look and feel of these kinds of downtown areas. We worked our way back to US-19 and headed north back to Hudson. The drive down Little Road and through New Port Ritchey was nice. US-19 is an endless strip mall with a 6 – 10 lane divided highway running down its middle with lots of construction. It is not the sort of place to drive for fun, and most of the shopping areas did not make us want to stop and spend money.

When we got back to the coach the air temperature had dropped and the sun was mostly obscured by clouds. The relative humidity was still relatively high, but we decided to turn the A/C units off, and open some windows and the ceiling vents. For dinner Linda made a curry and garlic dish with red lentils, butternut squash, and spinach. We finished the bottle of Barefoot Moscato we opened on Sunday and I found that the sweetness provided a nice counterpoint to the food.

SKP Photographers BOF logo. Design by Kate de Fuccio.

My good friend and colleague from Wayne RESA, Kate de Fuccio, designed a logo for the SKP Photographers BOF so I would have something to upload to the RVillage Escapees BOF – Photographers group page. I also e-mailed it to the Escapees RV Club and they are adding it to the BOF listing on their website. Kate does great work. Thanks Kate!

Chris from Geeks on Tour posted on the RVillage Bloggers group in the WordPress Plug-ins topic about a plug-in named Wordfence Security (WS). The plug-in provides a variety of functions. It performs a daily scan of a WordPress installation and compares the installed files to the versions in the “official” WordPress library. It also looks for malware and other nasties. It provides protection against repeated login attempts by hackers, and defends the site from denial of service (DOS) attracts and distributed DOS (DDOS) attacks. This last feature is particularly interesting. WS has been downloaded almost 1.5 million times. Using U. S. based cloud servers, if a DOS attack is detected on any WordPress site running WS, it protects all sites where WS is installed and active, preventing the DOS from becoming a DDOS. It also includes a caching system that can speed up WordPress sites by 30 – 50 times. It has many other features, but those were the highlights for me on first look.

I installed Wordfence Security on all four of the WordPress websites I am working on and ran a scan on this website. While I was at it, I installed the Imsanity plug-in on two of the three other sites (I had already installed it on this site and used it to bulk resize image files).

Bus Conversion Magazine publisher Gary Hall put a post on the BCM BBS/Forum about the April 2014 issue of the magazine and e-mailed those of us who had articles in the issue. I adapted part of his post and posted it to appropriate topics in three different RVillage groups: Bus Conversions; FMCA GLCC; and Converted Coach Owners (CCO). I also posted it on our home page. I think that means the 32 people with whom we have Friend connections will see it on their home page. I could not post it, however, on the BCM Fan Club group because the forum feature is not enabled.

2014/04/05 (S) The Last Campfire

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I am really glad that I installed the Feedly app on our iPads and figured out how to use it. I enjoy starting most days with our freshly ground and brewed special blend coffees from Teeko’s (Howell, MI) while I easily read any new content on the nine or so blogs that I follow. I also subscribe to our blog, which makes it easy to check on how our posts appear on an iPad. Sometimes I catch typos and I can log in to WordPress from the iPad and fix them.

We got an e-mail yesterday from the Escapees RV Club reminding us that April 6 was the last day to order polo shirts for the upcoming Escapade. Apparently we missed the original announcements (we get a LOT of e-mail and do not always read the commercial messages carefully). We followed the link to the special website and ordered one for each of us to pick up when we check in at the rally next month. It’s always nice to have a new polo shirt, especially one that clearly identifies us as RVers. The other reason to order is that I prefer a pocket for my eyeglasses and the pocket shirts are only available pre-order. We also experienced at the Escapade last July that the limited stock of available shirts sold out very quickly.

As long as we were doing RV-related things online we registered for the FMCA Great Lakes Area Motor Coach Association area rally in June. GLAMARAMA14 will be the second area rally hosted by GLAMA. The first one was last September and two versions of an article I wrote about the event were published. One version appeared in the newsletter of the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches (GLCC) chapter. The other version was the cover story in the January 2014 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine. We will once again be parked with our GLCC chapter.

While Linda went to Gainesville for some specialized grocery items I worked on e-mail and RVillage stuff and then finished/uploaded my blog post for yesterday. I was reading the Harvest Hosts April newsletter and decided to see if Don and Kim had joined RVillage. They had, and had already created a Harvest Hosts Group! We joined the group and sent them a friend request, which they accepted.

I had an e-mail from Chuck indicating that he might have a problem with the Vanner Equalizer on their Prevost H3-40 chassis batteries and wondering if I knew where it was located? On the drive up from Pelican Lake in Naples, Florida to the Prevost Community rally at LazyDays RV in Seffner, Florida they got a telltale light indicating the upper and lower halves of the 24 VDC chassis battery bank were out-of-balance. It just so happened that I did know where the equalizer is located, but only because I had stumbled on it while servicing our chassis batteries not long after we got the coach. (It is mounted on the underside of the chassis battery tray or the adjacent chassis electrical disconnect tray.) I sent him the info and he called later to chat.

We are already thinking about what we have to do to be ready to leave on Monday. I shut of the fuel polishing module and removed the paper towel I had wrapped around the check valve last weekend to absorb fuel from the tiny leak. Polishing is just a term for “finely filtered.” The pump ran continuously for about six days, long enough to slowly filter most of the fuel in the tank at least once. The fuel polishing module draws about two (2) gallons per hour from the main diesel fuel tank through the pickup tube that supplies the Aqua-Hot, pumps it through the dedicated Racor water separator/filter for the Aqua-Hot, and returns it to the tank. Because the fuel is moved through the filter so slowly it is better able to remove any moisture, debris, and organisms that may be in the fuel.

We came in to WCRVR January 1st with a nearly full fuel tank, so the FPM needed at least four days to filter the 200 gallons we had on board. Of course, we have used the Aqua-Hot while we were here and also run the main engine, both of which circulate fuel through Racor water separator/filters, but not so slowly as the FPM. The pickup tube for the Aqua-Hot (and the one for the auxiliary powerplant) are (supposed to be) only 3/4 of the way into the tank (from the top) to prevent them from using all of the fuel in the tank. (We have a practical range of 200 miles on a 1/4 tank of fuel with a comfortable reserve; 250 miles if absolutely necessary. At 300 miles we would risk running out of fuel. That would not be good and require the engine to be re-primed once we had fuel on board.) The main engine pickup tube, however, is near the bottom of the tank, so running the main engine also has the effect drawing the fuel from the bottom 1/4 of the tank and returning it to the top, thus mixing all of the fuel.

I had disconnected the water softener yesterday so AALL*BRITE could use the water supply to wash our coach. One of my last chores before pulling out will be to dump the waste tanks and top off the fresh water tank so I reconnected the water softener in preparation for this task.

We gathered at Jack and Silvia’s site at 4 PM for happy hour along with John and Ali, Doug and Paulette, and Jeff and Kathy. We enjoyed a glass of the Barefoot Moscato that Jeff and Kathy gave us last night as a “thank you” for helping with the electrical issues in their motorhome. We also had a chance to chat with Paulette more than we have up to this point. By 5:30 PM we were all getting hungry and returned to our respective rigs for dinner. Linda made Cauli-power Fettuccini Alfredo for dinner using a recipe that replaces the traditional cream-based Alfredo sauce with a sauce made from cauliflower. She had not made this dish before and had to substitute angel hair pasta for the fettuccini. It was very tasty. In addition to Sloppy Joe’s she is making Itty Bitty Carrot Cake Cookies for tomorrow’s pot luck dinner. The cookie recipe calls for rehydrated raisins that have soaked overnight in water, so she had to get that started today.

Tonight was the last campfire we will attend at Williston Crossings RV Resort as we are scheduled to leave on Monday. The highs have been reaching into the mid-80’s, the lows only into the upper 50’s, and it has stayed light much later due to the switch to Daylight Savings Time and the steady advance of spring. These factors work against the appropriateness of a large fire and at some point, perhaps soon, WCRVR will stop having the Friday/Saturday night campfires until next fall when the long-term seasonal residents return. That won’t keep people from gathering at the fire pit to hear Smitty, Jeff, and others who might drop by, play their guitars and sing their songs.

Alas, we will not be among those retuning. As is clear from my many blog posts over the last three months we have enjoyed our stay at Williston Crossings and would not hesitate to come back here. Indeed, we recommend the resort without reservation to anyone visiting this part of Florida. But we are at the beginning of a journey in which we hope to explore and experience many places in North America over the next 20 or so years. There are too many unvisited places for us to return to one so soon, if ever, no matter how nice it is.

2013_06_18 (Tue) Early Arrival

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Upon our arrival at the CAM-PLEX in Gillette, Wyoming yesterday we quickly discovered that we did not have a usable WiFi signal so Linda Googled coffee shops and we found one with free WiFi. This morning we headed off early to City Brew for some coffee, bagels, and Internet connectivity. Alas, no bagels, so I had Raspberry strudel sticks (which were probably not vegan). We couldn’t connect to City Brew’s WiFi, but the adjacent Qdoba restaurant had a strong signal and no customers as they were not open yet. We mentioned that we were not able to connect and when City Brew reset their wireless router it worked fine. Linda caught up on our banking and entered receipts into Quicken while I updated Passwords Plus. I then tried to log in to our website (The Phase Place = www.omnibus-mi.us), which is a WordPress installation running on iPage servers, and discovered that I had not specifically recorded the username and password in Passwords Plus. I also realized that I had probably not updated the contact e-mail address with iPage since bfay@twmi.rr.com was shut down in May. Soooo…. I logged in to the iPage control panel and opened a new support ticket to get these issue resolved.

Our neighborhood – Boxelder, Lot 2, 7th St.

With our online business taken care of for the moment, we headed down the street to the HealthStyles Market to get some Daiya cheese for our dinner “cheeseburgers”. We received a 20% off coupon in our FMCA welcome bag, but didn’t have it with us, so we deferred other shopping for later in the week. What a nice surprise to find an organic market, with some of the vegan products we like, here in the heart of cattle country. The FMCA materials don’t even list grocery stores; instead they list “meat markets”. Yikes!

Because we both have personal and business need for Internet access, we stopped at the local Cellular Plus (Verizon retailer) outlet and purchased a Novatel Jetpack MiFi 5510L 4G/LTE Mobile WiFi hotspot device and added it to our existing Verizon “share everything” plan. This device creates a secure (private) relatively short-range WiFi network which will allow us to connect any/all of our WiFi capable devices together and to the Internet via our Verizon data service, as long as we have a usable Verizon signal. It’s a 4G/LTE device that is backwards compatible to 3G/EVDO, and supports IPv6 addressing in addition to IPv4. Many of its functions are accessible throughout the small device screen and buttons, but the full functionality is easily accessed through a web interface via a connected device.

By the time we returned to the coach it was lunchtime. After a light lunch we decided to deploy the large patio awning. We apparently failed to put the manual for the new Zip Dee Awnings on board, but still had the manual for the old ones. Design changes have been minor in the last 20+ years, and I was familiar with the changes, so though we could figure it out. We weren’t able to open it very far due to the close spacing of RVs in the campground and the fact that our neighbors had slide-outs (as most of the RVs here do). The manual indicated that partial deployment was possible and acceptable, but we could not get the rafter (upper) arms to latch onto the roller tube. Our new Zip Dee awnings are very nice, with a translucent fabric that allows some light through so the interior doesn’t get too dark. They are manual awnings, however, and deploying/retracting the patio awning requires a step ladder because our coach is so tall and the latches are out of reach.

We left the patio awning in what we felt was a secure position and walked over to the CAM-PLEX offices to take care of our camping arrangements for the 4 nights between the two rallies. On the way we stopped and visited with the owners of four vintage Flxible bus conversions that were on display in front of the Wyoming Center. Three of the owners were Great Lakes Converted Coaches members, and the 4th one was the son of a member. Bruce brought sample copies of the February 2013 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine, and said he would bring some over for the owners.

The folks at the CAM-PLEX office were very helpful and gave us our parking placard for the Windmill RV Park. This park is smaller than Boxelder. Most of the sites are 30 A electric, but some are 50 A FU. We were told we could move there on Sunday morning the 23rd at 10 AM as specific sites were first come, first served.

By the time we got back to our coach a predicted storm was building to the west and moving our way. With 50+ MPH wind gusts expected, we decided to retract all of our awnings and close up the windows and roof vents. Thick clouds, a cool air mass, and strong winds kept temperatures inside very comfortable. I went for stroll around the campground to take photographs of the clouds. I then came inside and preceded to nap through storm!

After dinner we finally turned on our new MiFi device and connected our phones, tablets, and computers. We spent quite a while trying to set up the computers on the network so they could see each other and share files, and appeared to have it working, only to have it not work and not be able to get back to where they did. It was not essential that we be able to do this, so we let it go for now. Since we now had functioning Internet access I checked the iPage support ticket and found that they had responded. I followed their directions and once again have administrative access to my WordPress installation and have updated my contact e-mails for iPage.