Tag Archives: Chuck & Barbara

2015/11/04 (W) Southbound Liberty

Linda decided last night to work at home today rather than driving into the bakery in Hamtramck. That meant she did not have to get up at 5:45 AM. She was up just before 7 and I was up just after that. I made a large pot of Sweet Seattle Dreams half-caffe coffee and Linda toasted slices of cinnamon raisin bread for breakfast. After breakfast she settled in to work at her desk while I tended to several chores.

I last changed our whole house water filter in May (of this year) and it looked like it was overdue for replacement. I had one filter element left so I used it. The process is simple enough: I turned off the well pump, shut off the valves on either side of the filter housing, released the pressure in the housing, and unscrew the removable bowl. When I unwrapped the filter and read the directions I was reminded that I am supposed to clean the bowl with warm, soapy water, rinse it clean, and then sanitize it with a bleach solution and rinse it out again. That requires water, of course, but I had the water shut off and the filter housing disassembled so I had n way to turn the water back on. The only way to accomplish this would be to stage the needed water before shutting off the water system but I never remember to open the new filter element are read the directions before I start. I mean, really, it’s not the sort of procedure that requires me to read the directions each time.

One of the old swivel bearings (L) and one of the new swivel bearings (R). The new one is obviously smaller than the old one and was not compatible with our pedestals and power bases.

Not having any running water I wiped out the bowl with paper towels as best I could. The directions called for lubricating the main O-ring with silicon grease. I knew I had some from the last time I changed the filter. It was hiding in plain sight but took me a while to find. After greasing the gasket and installing it back on the bowl, I put in the new filter element and screwed the bowl back into the filter head, tightening it with the filter wrench. I turned the well pump back on, opened the inlet and outlet valves for the filter, and let the trapped air out with the purge valve.

Our filter housing takes a larger than usual element. It is 10″ long, which is the most common length, but 5″ in diameter, which is much bigger than usual. It’s a dual density spun polypropylene material with a 50 micron nominal rating at the large outside surface and a 5 micron nominal rating towards the smaller core. These filter elements are not available at the local home stores so I get them from Adam’s Well Drilling and Water Treatment, who installed out current water treatment system.

I gathered up the laundry and put a load in the washer. I took the label from the new filter element and headed out on an errand run. My first stop was Adam’s where I bought four filter elements and two bottles of chlorine tablets for the taste and odor portion of our water treatment system. Wilson Marine is located next door to Adam’s so I stopped there to see if they sold marine grade plywood. They didn’t but I had a good chat with the associate. He suggested that for patching the floor in the bus I just use treated plywood or use Thompson’s Water Seal to treat whatever wood I use.

One of the new swivel bearings on top of one of the old swivel bearings clearly showing that the new bearing is small in diameter, inside and out, than the old one.

My last stop was O’Reilly’s Auto Parts. Their parking lot was finally open so I could park near the door. Ronald had me load the containers of used oil and the bag of filters into a shopping cart. The bag had leaked onto the paper towels I put under it in the back of my car so Ron gave me a cardboard box to put it in. He simply put the bag of filters in a container but he emptied the six containers of oil and gave them back to me. They recycle oil but not the containers.

When I got home Linda checked to see if we could take the plastic oil bottles to Recycle Livingston. Used motor oil is considered hazardous waste and anything that has had used motor oil in it is considered a hazardous material so we could not take the containers there. I helped Linda load all of the other recyclables into my car and she made a run to the recycling center, the first in a few weeks. After moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer and putting another load in the washer I got back to work on the bus floor.

The area behind the panel to the right of the co-pilot/navigator seat. The mouse nest is gone and the damaged wood has been removed from between the side-to-side seat mounting rails.

I spent most of the afternoon working on the floor under the front passenger seat. First I removed the blocking that provides support for the bottom edge of the switch panel but also spans the three floor boards. I cleaned out the mouse nest behind the switch panel and found the skeleton of a small mouse. I then got the piece of wood between the mounting channels out. The drain line for the front CruiseAir evaporator went through this floor near the outside edge but the floor was rotted enough that I was able to break out the wood on the back side and pull the board out. As I did this I was reminded, once again, about how much of this conversion was built with the idea that it would never have to be disassembled.

I took a break for lunch, which was leftover lentils and quinoa pilaf with some fresh fruit. After lunch I resumed working on the floor under the front passenger seat in the bus. I managed to remove most of the rusted metal filler plate. I made a lucky guess as to where my wire brush was stored and used it to clean the surface of the rusted metal that remained. I played with different combinations of wood thicknesses and pondered how I will rebuild this area. I then sprayed the rusted areas with POR-15 cleaner/degreaser and scrubbed them with a sponge soaked in hot water.

I moved to the driver’s seat area and repeated the process. There was one area with damaged wood that I still had to deal with. There was an edge about 10 inches long capped with two thin gage metal angles that were badly rusted. I removed as much of the angles as I could. I cut off a strip of wood about 2″ wide and 10″ long and removed the rest of the angles. I wire brushed the area but left the POR-15 cleaner/degreaser for tomorrow. In anticipation of applying the POR-15 tomorrow and coating it with black spray on rubberized undercoating paint I began masking off the area with painter’s plastic.

For dinner Linda made a salad, roasted eggplant with garlic and breadcrumbs, and mock fish with vegan tartar sauce. We finished the Frey Natural Red wine with our meal. I would love to support this company but this wine is too dry for my pallet.

PBS had an interesting lineup of shows this evening on continental formation, natural wonders, and the human brain. I dealt with e-mail before the shows and we turned in after the last one. Chuck and Barbara were planning on leaving this morning, southbound for Florida in their 1993 H3-40 Liberty motorcoach. I did not have any messages from Chuck today so I presume they got away as planned. They bought a lot at the Pelican Lake Luxury Motorcoach Resort in Naples where they have spent the last six winters and that is where they are headed. We will be staying about 90 minutes north of there in January and February and will get together with them as time and commitments permit. We are looking forward to seeing their lot; it has a coach house and they are doing some landscaping, including large palm trees.

2015/09/29 (T) Bus Windshields

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Today was windshield day. A week or so ago Chuck made appointments for both us to have windshields replaced on our buses by the local Safelite franchise. Chuck knows Scott, who now has a management position with the company, and arranged the work through him. The appointment was nominally from 8 AM to noon so Chuck was at his shop before 8. We figured it would take a while for the crew to do his two lower windshields so I got up around 7 AM but did not have coffee or breakfast. I finished yesterday’s blog post and then went through my final departure tasks starting at 8:30 AM. I texted Chuck at 8:45 AM and pulled out of our driveway at 8:50 AM, figuring that was late enough to miss most of the morning traffic headed into the northwest corner of the Detroit metropolitan area. Chuck texted back that I could take my time as the crew had not shown up yet.

The first raindrops came as I was pulling out of our driveway. As I pulled out onto Hacker Road I had a clear view of dark clouds to the northwest. Although my destination was 20+ miles to the southeast I headed north towards M-59. The shortest route would have been south, and gotten me quickly onto pavement, but there are some low branches before the road ends at Grand River Avenue so I do not go that way. From Hacker and M-59 the shorter route would have been east to US-23 and then south to I-96 but that interchange is a left exit, left entrance in the middle of an extensive construction zone; not the sort of thing I wanted to deal with in the bus. So I waited patiently for a break in the traffic and then headed west on M-59 towards the storm clouds. A guy heading east had to slow down while I pulled out a flipped me off as he went by. I hope he had a nice day.

I encountered heavier rain as I traveled west for about four miles. I turned south onto Latson Road and drove away from the rain, reaching I-96 about four miles later. I headed east on the I-96 and had an easy drive all the way to Beck Road with only an occasional raindrop. Even at this hour of the morning there were traffic slowdowns along the way but no parking lot traffic jams. The Beck Road exit was easy to navigate going south and it was equally easy to position myself for the left turn onto Grand River Avenue. About a mile and a half later I pulled into the parking lot for Chuck’s shop and phoned Chuck to let him known I was there.

I knew in advance how he wanted me to position my motorcoach but there were enough vehicles parked in various places that I wanted him to spot for me. I lifted the tag axles, pulled up to the building, and then turned hard to the right. I backed around to the driver’s side to get somewhat parallel to the building and then started angling towards the passenger side. There is space next to the building in front of Chuck’s shop directly across from his large (bus size) overhead door. My objective was to back around into that space and then pull forward steering hard to the left to get lined up with the door. I have done this before and managed to do it again with Chuck’s assistance. Our Prevost H3-40 VIP conversion is surprisingly maneuverable with the tag axle lifted off the ground.

There were two Safelite vans there when I arrived and Charlie and Eric were already busy working on Chuck’s lower windshields. Chuck had backed his coach into the shop so I could pull in nose first and get the front end out of the rain if needed. Since there were only two guys, and the removal and installation of one of these windshields is a two man job, I just parked my bus outside and shut it off.

I called Linda at home but did not get her so I tried her cell phone. She was at Kensington Metropark walking with Diane. She said we had heavy rain at home before she left and that it was moving towards the shop. I could see the dark clouds to the WNW and it eventually rained bucketfuls, albeit for only a brief time.

A couple of years ago Chuck and I went together and bought five lower windshields from Prevost for our H3-40 VIP coaches, two for him and three for me, for the ridiculously low price of $125 each. They were shipped to his shop in a big triple set of cardboard boxes with foam spacers on a pallet and have been sitting there waiting for us to find someone to install them. Chuck decided to use both of his, in part because there were stone chips in the current ones, and in part because he is vacating his shop and needed to reduce the amount of stuff that has to be moved and stored.

The existing windshields on Chuck’s coach both cracked rather badly when they were removed, as in multiple dozens of fractures, but did not shatter. Safety glass is a wonderful thing. He was not planning on keeping the old ones but it was obvious that removing a windshield in order to install a new gasket with the idea of reinstalling the glass was probably not possible. Charlie and Eric removed the old gaskets and then cleaned off the frames. Chuck’s old gaskets had been slit at the corners by a previous installer, probably to make it easier to get the gaskets over the glass, but should not have been altered in that way.

Chuck had new gaskets and spline material so the guys got one of the new gaskets installed on the frame. It looked like it would be too big but by the time they got it pressed fully into place it was a perfect fit. They lubricated the gasket and set the new windshield in place. After working the top of the gasket over the top edge of the glass they slid the windshield from the outside edge all the way towards the center pillar.

Chuck and I were both hungry and thirsty. Since Charlie and Eric were working on his coach I took Chuck’s suburban to Panera for coffee, a muffin (for Chuck) and a bagel (for me). I made the trip twice. I was almost there when I realized that I did not have my wallet and went back to get it.

The guys finished installing Chuck’s windshields and went to lunch. We did not leave as we had no idea how long they would be gone. It turned out to be about an hour. When they got back I had Charlie look at my two lower windshields. The passenger side was cracked and definitely needed to be replaced. The driver side had two small rock dings but they were not directly in front of the driver’s seat and not near an edge so I decided to only replace the passenger side lower windshield at this time.

I started up the bus, pulled the nose into the shop, and lowered the suspension to make it easier for the guys to work on it from the outside. I pulled in far enough to make sure the front part of the roof was completely inside the building as it is lower than the rest of the roof and slopes forward. I lowered the rear more than the front to make sure any rain that hit the portion of the roof that was outside the building ran to the sides and rear rather than forward and down the windshields.

To remove my windshield they removed the spline that locks the glass into the gasket and then managed to get the glass and gasket out as one assembly. The glass already had a 10″ crack when they started and was fractured in 100 places by the time it came out. They cleaned off the frame, which had a lot of crud on it, and then put the new gasket on. The gasket for the lower windshields is reversible and is used on either side. It is not rectangular, however, with the vertical edge by the center pillar being longer than outside edge where the glass wraps around into the A pillar.

With the gasket in place they installed the windshield by using large suction cups to pick it up, front and back side, and setting the bottom edge into the gasket with the right edge about four inches from the center pillar. The passenger side mirror was in the way so I had to loosen one of the set screws and swing it out of the way. They used a hard plastic stick with a rounded tip and edges to get the gasket over the outside of the top edge of the glass. Using glass cleaner as a lubricant they then slid the glass towards the center and into the gasket channel. The glass did not slide easily but Charlie and Eric were big, strong guys and it eventually was in place. They then used the plastic sticks to get the gasket out from behind the glass and over the edge all the way around. The last step in the installation was to put Sikaflex adhesive caulk between the frame and the gasket and between the gasket and the glass, all from the outside. They masked off the frame to protect the paint but did not mask off the glass. Gasketed glass installation was not something I knew anything about so it was informative to be able to watch every detail of this process.

They had our invoices with them but had to have the office redo mine and e-mail it since I only had one windshield replaced instead of the two we originally scheduled. Chuck and I each wrote them a check. Eric had us sign on his Note tablet and printed our receipts on a portable wireless printer. It had been six hours since they arrived and they had spent five of those working pretty hard. We gave each of them a $20 tip.

Charlie and Eric loaded up our three old broken windshields and left. I then backed my bus out and parked it. Charlie wanted it to sit for at least an hour before driving it to let the Sikaflex cure a bit. Chuck locked up the shop and we went to Panera (again) for a late lunch. We both had Black Bean Soup and Chuck had a half sandwich. Barb called as we were finishing our meal and said she was her way to the shop so we headed back. She arrived at the shop just ahead of us and inspected the new windshields on their coach. I then showed her the work we have done on the interior of our coach. We sat around in the shop talking while I waited for the worst of the rush hour traffic to pass before driving the bus back to our house.

I called Linda around 5 PM and then left for the drive home, reversing my route from this morning. Traffic was heavy but moved along. Linda heard me pull in the driveway and helped get me positioned. It’s hard to sneak up on someone with a Detroit Diesel 8V92 engine. Once I was parked I shut off the accessory air to the engine bay, disconnected the chassis batteries, and plugged in the electrical shorepower line. Back in the coach I noticed that the refrigerator had come out of the alcove about 12 inches. It had not budged on the drive to/from Edwardsburg and Elkhart but I will obviously have to secure it after all.

Dinner was reheated chili and Saltine crackers. When Linda makes chili she always makes extra and freezes it to have on hand for easy heat and serve meals. It is a one pot meal the way she makes it and is as good, or better, left over as it is fresh.

Ferman had called while I was gone and let Linda know that he had the Sandstone Corian he needed to build the small table for the bus so after dinner I texted Josh to let him know. I then checked e-mail but did not respond to any. We watched NCIS and NCISNOLA on the big TV in the basement and then went to bed.

2015/08/17 (M) Wallpaper Search

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We awoke this morning to find wild turkeys in the yard behind our bedroom. The deer feed block and natural mineral rock initially attracted a doe and her faun but has been a much stronger attraction for the wild turkeys and crows. Both the turkeys and crows also like to clean up the bird seed that falls to the ground under the seed block that Linda hung from a branch on one of our White Pine trees. The turkeys eventually moved on and we sat down to a breakfast of fresh mixed berries, juice, and coffee, which we took to the living room while we used our iPads to read, write, or play a few games, as is our morning habit.

I had a text message exchange with Chuck regarding the moving of our old bus refrigerator out of his shop. He and Barbara are headed off to Oscoda on Friday with their race car so I e-mailed Harvey (AC8NO) from our SLAARC ham radio club to see if he could help us move the refrigerator on Friday.

We had quite a few downed branches, and a couple of downed trees, scattered about the property as a result of winter snows, spring/summer storms, poor drainage, and age. With Keith coming this morning to mow the grass I decided I should pick up as many of them as I could. When I started at 9:30 AM it was already warm and muggy. Keith showed up at 10 AM and got right to work but I managed to stay ahead of him and got everything of any size picked up except for one tree. It was at least 8″ in diameter at the base and at least 30′ long so I will have to de-limb it, cut up the trunk with a chain saw, and haul the pieces away using the lawn tractor and utility dump trailer. That, however, won’t happen anytime soon.

We skipped last week’s mowing because it had been dry and the grass had not grown noticeably, but we got rain during the past week and the grass responded accordingly. The yard looked good when Keith was done and the timing of his visit was fortuitous as there is rain in the forecast for the next few days with slightly cooler temperatures.

We had a light lunch and then Linda settled in to work at her desk while I worked in the bus. I spent a couple of hours using the belt sander to grind down the residual thinset and mastic on the floor. I wear a dust mask, hearing protector, and safety glasses when sanding, which is even less comfortable than normal when the temperature and humidity are elevated. But I needed to have the floor prep finished by the end of this week, and the new floor installed by the end of next week, or I risked not being ready for the installation of the new seating on September 14 and 15.

I suggested to Linda that we go to Ann Arbor to look at wallpaper, visit Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline and then pick up some things at the Whole Foods Market that we cannot get locally. Linda researched wallpaper stores and made arrangements with our son while I took a shower and got dressed for visiting.

We left around 3:30 PM and drove down US-23 to the Washtenaw Road exit. If we had put the address in the GPS sooner we would have taken M-14 west instead of staying on US-23 as the Delux Drapery and Shade Co. is on West Stadium Boulevard. Still, we got there in a reasonable amount of time. We told the sales associate that we were looking for something that would stand up to use in a motorhome, preferably something that could be wiped, washed, or scrubbed. We wanted something light and neutral (off white) without a pattern that had to be matched, but with some texture. She pulled out several sample books and we looked through them. We ended up signing out three books each of which had one or two papers that we liked and thought might work well with our woodwork, floor tiles, and upholstery.

We drove back across town to our son and daughter-in-law’s house. Our daughter’s car was also there but no one was around so Linda called Brendan. As we suspected they were at Burns Park so we walked over there and found them. Madeline was very excited to see her Grandma Linda and ran over to give her a hug. As we were heading towards the park exit that most directly leads back to their house we spotted Madeline’s friend Maya and her dad Jason. That unplanned encounter resulted in 20 minutes of child play and adult socializing before we finally resumed our homeward trek.

Back at the house we continued to visit until dinner time. Meghan left to go fix dinner for herself and Chris. Madeline had her dinner and then let her dad read a Curious George story. Brendan and Shawna had packing to do for their flight tomorrow so we took our leave. The three of them are flying to Denver to visit Shawna’s mom (Carol) and her husband (Cliff), who live nearby in Golden, Colorado. Madeline is well-traveled for a 30 month old child.

We stopped at the Whole Foods Market on Washtenaw Avenue, which is close to their house and conveniently located on our route out of town. The main item on our list was plain soy creamer. We used to be able to get this at both the Meijer’s and Kroger stores near our house but they are only carrying the vanilla flavored version which I do not like. We picked up a bag of sauerkraut to go with the vegan beer brats, six bottles of wine, because you get a 10% discount on six or more bottles (mix and match), two pieces of vegan cake, and some other stuff. It’s probably a good thing that we do not have a Whole Foods closer to our house.

By the time we got home it was 7:45 PM. Linda heated the sauerkraut and the vegan beer brats and served them open-faced on hot dog buns with mustard, of course. Black grapes provided a sweet contrast to the savory main dish. We sat for a while in the living room, playing iPad games and writing blog posts while we had some of the vegan cakes, before turning in. I continued to write while we watched a TV program and then went to sleep.

2015/08/10 (M) Keep on Buss’in

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We have a doe and her spotted faun that have been coming in the early morning to the deer block we set in our back yard the other day. They were there again this morning and the block is close enough to the house that we got a good look at them through the bedroom doorwall. They must be comfortable with the setting as the faun wandered off towards the western part of our property and the doe let it go while she continued to lick the block. Eventually, however, the faun was out of sight and the doe headed off in that direction to find it.

We had cinnamon raisin toast and soy yogurt for breakfast, with orange-grapefruit juice to wash down the vitamins. I used up the last of the Sweet Seattle Dreams half-caff coffee beans for our pot of morning coffee. Keith usually mows our grass on Mondays and he came to the front door around 9:30 AM to ask if we wanted it cut this week. That’s the first time he has done that this summer but it was an appropriate and timely question. We have had very little rain the last couple of weeks so the grass had not gown much since last Monday and was a little brown in places. We agreed to skip this week, which I think was what Keith was hoping I would say. There was a high probability of rain starting around noon and I suspect he had another yard he wanted to cut before it started.

We have been very busy the last few days and I have not had time to do more than outline my blog posts. Linda needed to work on an analysis for the bakery so I spent much of the day filling in the details of my recent posts. Our days are very full and if I wait too long I cannot capture them accurately.

Linda looked up the information on the DTE Energy “Energy Efficiency” appliance recycling program. I called the 866 number and was assisted by Reginald. The earliest available pickup date was Friday, August 28 so I took that. It took quite a while to arrange the pickup but Reginald appeared to get all the pertinent information and give me a confirmation code and a phone number to reach the truck on pickup day.

Once the refrigerator pickup was arranged I texted Chuck to let him know the details. That prompted a return phone call and a conversation about refrigerators. Having seen how our swap went on Saturday he and Barb are also thinking very seriously about replacing the refrigerator in their bus. The rationale is the same as ours; the fridge is old, so it is noisier and less efficient than newer ones, and having it break on the road would be more than inconvenient.

Replacing a refrigerator in an RV, especially a residential unit in a bus conversion, is not like replacing one in a home. Access is a major problem and there is not a lot of space to maneuver it or get more than two pairs of hands on it. If they replace theirs here (in Michigan) their bus will be inside their garage/shop, the forklift will be available to do the heavy lifting, and trusted friends and family will be available to help. And, most importantly, they won’t be living in it and dependent on the fridge for preserving their food.

Before the day got away from me I pulled up the PDF of the manual for the wireless keypad for the large garage door. When I installed the new opener for the small garage door and reprogrammed the wireless remotes for our cars I inadvertently rendered the keypad inoperable. Reprogramming it was simple enough once I had the procedure. It’s the small, simple tasks like this one that become big burdens if not taken care of in a timely manner.

The predicted rain started around noon and was steady until 3 PM. It was just the kind of rain we needed; gentle enough to give it a chance to soak in but hard enough to provide a useful quantity of moisture to the ground. Six to 10 hours of this would have been even better but we were glad for what we got.

I had thought that we might mask off the inside of the coach today with painter’s plastic but with the rain and humidity, and plenty of other things to do, I decided to defer that until tomorrow. During the afternoon Jarel texted me a couple of pictures and a brief status update on our custom woodworking projects. Not surprisingly he is already well along on the construction of the pull-out pantry and has spray lacquered the pieces for the built-in sofa.

One of the photos showed one of the 1/8″ thick aluminum plates that will form the side rails for each shelf in the pantry. He applied a brushed finish to the plate and countersunk the screw holes so the heads would not protrude beyond the surface. Jarel did metal work at one time before he became a cabinet maker so he knows how to do this kind of stuff. He is also meticulous and takes great pride in his work. Given a choice I would always prefer to hire a craftsman who cares as much, or more, about the quality of their work as I do.

When I know I am going to have a long full day, such as this coming Wednesday, I will try to “write ahead” on my blog, basically outlining the plan for the day but obviously not filling in the details of things that have not yet happened. Along the same lines, I often use future blog posts as a planning tool. As things occur to me that I need to do I will note them in the draft of a future post. If the thing actually gets done on that date I flesh out the details, and if not, I move it to a new date.

I think I did several loads of laundry today and spent some time editing and uploading blog posts during the evening, but as I am finishing this post later in the week I have lost the details and will just end here.

2015/08/08 (S) A New Bus Fridge (Finally)

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We overslept and did not get up until 7:15 AM. The weather has been very pleasant all this past week but we awoke to light rain. We left for our SLAARC breakfast at 7:25 AM and took a different route than usual to see how it would be for the bus. I headed north on Hacker to M-59, east to US-23, and south to I-96 east. The ramp from US-23 south to I-96 east is a left exit, left entrance, with a very short merge lane in the middle of a major construction project. I decided that was not our best option for the bus.

We arrived at breakfast at 8 AM to find a dozen people already there but at least 10 more showed up after us. We enjoyed the conversation, as we usually do, but did not linger and were on our way back home by 9:15 AM. As soon as we arrived we changed into our work clothes and got busy with the final preparations to move the bus to Chuck’s bus garage in Novi.

I pulled the bus out at 10:30 AM and Linda followed in the Element, which had all of the pieces we had removed from the old refrigerator along with tools, blankets, and some 2x4s. The bus roof was brushed by a few small, low branches getting from our house to N. Hacker Road, reminding me that I need to covertly trim trees and bushes along our street. I say covertly because they are not on our property. The last time I took the bus out we went south on Hacker to Grand River Avenue. This would have been our preferred route today except that the trees are not trimmed up in a few places and one of them, just before Bendix Drive, clunked the stuff on our roof pretty hard last time. I did not care to repeat that so I went north as we had this morning in the car.

At M-59 I headed west to Latson Road, a trip of some four to five miles in the wrong direction. The reason is that Latson Road going south has a relatively new, and easy to navigate, intersection with I-96. From there we had an easy run to the Beck Road exit, a short jog south to Grand River Avenue, an easy left turn, and the final mile to Chuck’s shop where we arrived at 11 AM.

Chuck had already pulled his bus out of the building and parked it out of the way but there were several trucks and a dumpster trailer blocking access to his door. They belonged to a motley crew that the owner of the building in front of Chuck’s shop had hired to clean up some of the mess left behind by the sunroom company that just moved out of the building. He had me pull up to the right and position myself to back up and then negotiated with the workers to move their vehicles. I pulled up the tag axles and waited. The workers were not happy about it but they did it.

To get our bus into Chuck’s shop nose first he had me back parallel to the building and then bring it around to the passenger side into a space adjacent to the front building until I was perpendicular to his door. I was then able to pull straight in but I did not pull in all the way. Chuck had me stop with the fixed window frame opposite his forklift which he had already positioned for use. The on again, off again light rain was not a factor as the window frame we needed to open was well inside his shop.

Linda and I unloaded all of the stuff from the car and brought it inside the shop. We realized that we forgot to bring the camera so Linda tried to capture the progress of the work with her cell phone camera. I have put those images in a separate gallery post for this date.

Randy, the owner of the Printology business in the suite adjacent to Chuck’s, came over to see what we were up to and stuck around to help. With me working from an 8 foot step ladder outside the bus, while Chuck and Linda worked inside, we opened the window frame about 24 inches and propped it with a piece of 2×4. I then carefully lifted the window higher while Linda sighted along the bottom of the upper cabinet. When I had the frame high enough to be clear of the cabinet Chuck measured the length of 2×4 we would need to prop it open.

It looked like 52 inches would do the trick. I had a 56″ piece of 2×4 so I cut it down to 52″ with my 7-1/4″ Rockwell circular saw. I used the first piece to mark a second piece on an 8 foot 2×4 and cut that. Linda took both pieces inside the bus where she handled one and Chuck handled the other. As I lifted the bottom edge of the window from outside the bus the window hinge (at the top) made some unpleasant (and a bit unnerving) sounds but I got it high enough that they could put the two braces in place and the frame did not come unhinged. We had just finished this task when John Rauch and his son, John, arrived at noon to help move the refrigerators.

The old refrigerator was lying face down in the bus. The two Johns lifted it as a test and determined that they would not have any difficulty moving it. Linda fetched one of the blankets and dropped it over the sill of the open window to protect it and the side of the coach. Chuck had placed the long forks on his forklift about two feet apart and slid a narrow pallet over them. He raised the forks and brought the forklift forward towards the bus. We got him to position the top of the pallet even with the top of the sill and about 3″ away from the side of the coach.

John and John are very strong and were able to lift the old refrigerator case and pass it through the window onto the pallet. With a person on ladders on either side of the pallet we slid the refrigerator all the way out. Chuck then tilted the forks slightly, slowly backed away, and lowered it down. John and John got the old refrigerator off the pallet, carried it out of the way, and stood it upright on its base. They then lifted the new refrigerator onto its back, picked it up, and placed it on the pallet. They went back inside the bus while Chuck brought the forklift up to the coach and raised the forks until the pallet was at window sill level. John and John slid it into the bus, stood it up, and rolled it into the alcove. I then secured it in place with a piece of 1×3 wood screwed to the floor across the front to keep it from rolling out while driving. There is approximately three inches of space above the fridge but it cannot tilt out very far before the upper back edge catches the ceiling of the alcove.

John, John, and Chuck raised the window frame slightly to remove the 2x4s and close the frame when the top hinge started coming apart. Linda yelled for me and I scrambled over to get another pair of hands on the frame. With me and Chuck holding the outside (free) edge and the two Johns holding the hinge edge I was able to see where the hinge was out and direct folks as to what to do. It took several tries and a few minutes (that seemed like hours) but we got the hinge re-engaged and then closed the window frame. We took a few minutes to rest and chat and Chuck showed John (the father) his race car. The heavy lifting was all done so John, John, and Randy took off, but before they did Linda gave John (the son) a gift for their new baby girl, Lucy Violet.

Linda and I put all the shelves and bins in the new refrigerator and then reattached the two doors. That was a bit of extra work as it came with the hinges on the right side but we needed the door to open on the right side. With the doors on we took a moment to consider our choice of size and color (black) and felt we had made the right decision. We started to reassemble the old refrigerator but we were all hungry and decided to go to lunch first. I started the bus and pulled it all the way into the shop so we could close up. Chuck then drove us down the street to Panera for lunch. We took our time and had a nice meal and a nice chat.

Back at the shop we decided to switch the buses around so Chuck would be free to leave. He wanted a picture of the two buses together so I backed ours out of his shop, swung around to the passenger side, got parallel to his bus, and then backed up so the nose of our bus was about 10 feet behind the nose of his. He and Linda then both took photos with their cell phones. When the photo shoot was done I pulled forward to the left and then backed in parallel to the building about four feet from the curb. That gave Chuck plenty of room to pull up next to me on my passenger side and then back around next to the front building and get lined up to pull straight into his bay just as I had done earlier.

Back in the shop Linda wiped out the inside of the old refrigerator and then we reattached the two doors. As she cleaned each rack, shelf, and bin I placed it back into the refrigerator. When it was fully reassembled we plugged it in. It came on, ran for about 60 seconds and then shut off. It obviously was not cold yet, and might have been cause for alarm if I had not dealt with this “problem” before.

I knew from prior experience that the defrost timer had probably disconnected the compressor and connected the evaporator defroster. Chuck pulled out three of his lawn chairs and we sat around waiting for the refrigerator to restart. The only thing missing was three cold beers. We knew the unit still had power as the lights were working. There was an outside chance that the overload protector (fuse?) might have blown, but I did not consider that to be likely. Our patience was rewarded about 25 minutes later when the compressor came back on. While we were waiting we gathered up our tools and various materials and loaded everything back into the Honda Element.

Chuck had a message from his wife, Barbara, with her ETA so we decided to settle back into the lawn chairs and kibbutz until Barb arrived. She showed up a little while later and Chuck got out a fourth chair and we sat in the shop listening to the sound of the functioning refrigerator and debriefing the events of the day. As a result of the window frame hinge coming loose I am now of the opinion that I did not need to remove the two stop blocks. I suspect they are there to “stop” the hinge from coming apart and I should not have removed them. Chuck is also thinking about replacing the refrigerator in their bus and is going to check with Prevost regarding these blocks. As much as anything I was annoyed with myself for the amount of time I wasted removing these blocks but what is done is done and I now need to reinstall the one block that came off undamaged and get a replacement for the other one, even though I can only attach it with one machine screw. Butch thinks he can make one for me, otherwise I will have to get one from Prevost.

Our local electrical utility, DTE Energy, will pick up used appliances. In the case of a refrigerator it has to be plugged in and running, which I presume means it is functioning and cooling the interior. If so, they will take it away and send us a check for $50. From our end that’s a good deal as we don’t have to pay someone to haul it away. Because of the R-12 Freon there are very few places that will deal with it. My guess is that DTE has a sub-contractor who will recover, clean, and recycle the R-12, which is no longer being made and has become very expensive. They may also recycle the copper tubing and electrical wire, and possibly the metal case and other materials. Even with the labor to do this work the unit must be worth more than $50 to them.

We all needed to get some dinner so we wrapped up our visit and started up our bus. I pulled out onto westbound Grand River Avenue followed by Linda in the car. At Beck Road we turned north and then got on I-96 westbound. The bus was at 3/8ths of a tank of fuel so I decided to stay on I-96 and go to the Mobil truck stop at M-52, a run of about 30 miles that would allow the engine and transmission to come up to normal operating temperature. Linda exited at Latson Road and stopped at Meijer’s to do some grocery shopping.

The Mobil truck stop is run down with a very poor, pot-holed apron and parking area, but there are usually several tractor-trailers fueling here when we pull in as it is one of only two places that a semi can refuel between Detroit and Lansing. There weren’t any trucks getting fuel when I pulled in but it was 7:30 PM on a Saturday evening and there were a half dozen tractor-trailers settled in the parking area for the night. I poured two bottles of Stanadyne diesel fuel additive into the fuel tank followed by two ounces of Racor Biocide. I then added 125 gallons of diesel fuel to the tank, which took about 11 minutes. By the time I paid for the fuel and was ready to pull out it was 8 PM.

I called Linda to let her know I was on my way and then reset the trip odometer. I drove east on I-96 for 10 miles to the M-59 / Burkhardt Road exit and got on M-59, which only goes east from there. Eleven miles later I made the turn south onto N. Hacker Road and completed the drive to our house. Linda heard me idling in the street, where I stopped to lift the tag axles before making the tight right turn into our pull-through driveway, and came out to help get me parked. Once I was positioned correctly I put the tag axle back down, let the engine low idle for a minute to let the turbo spin down and let the heads cool off and the temperature to equalize, switched the Level Low system out of drive mode, and shut off the engine. I shut off the air supply to the engine accessories, shut off the chassis batteries, connected the shore power cord, locked everything up, and went in for the evening.

It had been a long day and we were glad to have it behind us. I had been anticipating the refrigerator exchange, with some dread, for well over a month. The concern was that we would not be able to move the units out/in through the window frame, requiring us to remove and replace the lower passenger-side windshield, or that something would go wrong, like the hinge, and turn out to be an expensive and difficult problem to fix. With each passing day it was also becoming a bottleneck in our remodeling project, at least psychologically if not physically. But it was finally done and ended well. We will plug in the new refrigerator tomorrow to make sure it works. We tested it in Chuck’s shop when it was delivered so we expect it to work now. There is a lot of work to do but now we can get on with it and I expect it to go well.

In spite of being tired we stayed up and watched the PBS broadcast of the Simon and Garfunkel reunion concert they did live in New York City’s Central Park 10 years after they split up as a duo. Their music remains among my most favorite from my youth and it has lost nothing with the passing of many years.

2015/07/11 (S) Impactful Tools

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We had a small crowd for our SLAARC breakfast this morning but good conversation. After breakfast we drove to Chuck’s house and picked up the manual impact screwdriver. Barb was up in the thumb visiting her brother-in-law who recently lost his wife (Barb’s sister). We lingered for a while and then left for home, stopping for gas on the way.

Back at the house I started a load of laundry and then went to work on the stop block screws. Linda helped steady the ladder and pass tools and parts back and forth. I got three of the four screws out of the two stop blocks but the head stripped on the forth one so I was only able to remove the aft stop block. I tried different bits and even tried drilling a small hole in the center of the head to allow the bits to go in farther but it did not work. The next approach will be a screw extractor, but first I have to go buy one.

We had soy yogurt for lunch with red grapes and I had a few pretzels with roasted red pepper hummus. I kept trying to get to the basement to work on the desk design but kept getting detoured. Once I finally reached my office I found that the mouse trap that I had placed under one of my desks was out in front of it. The food was gone but there was no mouse, only mouse poop. I realized that the trap was upside down which allowed the door to swing open. Our best guess is that a mouse was trapped and the cats pulled the trap out from under the desk and accidentally turned it over while pawing at it trying to get the mouse. Since there was no sign of a mouse having been caught by one of the cats my best guess is that it escaped, for now.

I checked e-mails and found the one with the credentials and instructions for the QTH.com web-hosting of SLAARC.com so I shared those with the other members of the SLAARC website team and then logged in to check out the log file I had created the other day as a test.

I decided to reconnect the Yaesu FTM-400 radio to the Diamond X-50 antenna on the tower so I could monitor the Novi and South Lyon repeaters while I worked in my office. I had quite a mess on the ham shack desks and decided the best way to deal with it was to install Mike’s Icom IC-2820H in my car in place of our Icom V-8000 2m rig. At least that would get the 2820 off the desk. I checked that the mounting brackets and they were identical so I removed the V-8000 but left the mounting bracket installed in the car.

Mike had modified the power cord on his radio by cutting off the T-connector and replacing it with Andersen PowerPoles so I had to modify the power cable in my car to match as I could not modify Mike’s radio. I removed the fuse from the positive (+12VDC) lead and then cut off the T-connector, leaving about 6″ of wire so I can add PowerPoles and make it into an adapter cable. I brought my Hakko soldering station up from the basement, set it up on the floor behind the center console, ran an extension cord from the garage, and used it to solder PowerPole contacts to the two wires. I then inserted them into the black/red housing pair and snapped them in place.

I mounted the IC-2820H, connected the power cable and connected the coax from the antenna. I reinstalled the fuse in the positive lead, started the engine, and turned the radio on. A couple of hams were chatting on the Novi repeater, one of whom I knew (Jim, KB8TAV). When they finished I gave Jim a call and he came back to me, the first time I have been able to use the Novi 440 repeater from my car. Jim signed off and I switched to the South Lyon 2m repeater and gave a general call. Steve (N8AR) came back to me and we had a short QSO that verified the radio/antenna was also working on 2m. As we were wrapping up Linda started fixing dinner.

Linda fixed a simple salad and Dr. Praeger’s vegan hamburgers with Daiya non-dairy cheese. These patties were also squishy rather than firm and, like the ones at Zingerman’s Roadhouse the other night, where not very satisfying. They tasted OK, and we ate them because we are not inclined to waste food, but there is a lot more to what makes food satisfying than just taste. Sight, smell, and texture (mouth feel) are also important.

Linda had several TXT messages from Mara letting us know that she would be arriving tomorrow sometime before 2 PM as she wanted to watch the Wimbledon finals at that time. Linda and I considered how best to accommodate Mara’s motorhome and finally decided to just pull our bus straight forward until the nose was at the edge of the concrete driveway. That created more than enough space on the level part of the pull-through driveway for her to park and plug in to our 50 amp service. The only loads we have in the bus at the moment are battery chargers so we used our 15 amp cord to plug it into a garage outlet. Since I had to start it to move I switched it to high idle once I had it positioned, leveled it, turned on the OTR air-conditioning to put a load on the engine, and let it run for 30 minutes.

I returned to my office after dinner and work on the desk design for a while but by this point I was tired and not really in the mood. The last time I updated the BCM page on our website was after the February 2015 issue came out. I have had articles in the March, April, and May issues and will have articles in the June and July issues. I captured the covers from March, April, and May and updated the page.

I exchanged e-mails with several people and spent some time looking at dual and triple monitor stands on EBay. We rarely use EBay and the site made me change our password before it would let me log in. There was a large selection of products but none of them were exactly what I am looking for. There wasn’t any rush so I decided to revisit this tomorrow.

2015/07/07 (T) Field Day Photos

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We did not sleep well last night, were slow to get up this morning, and slower to get going. A cold front was pushing in from the northwest with the promise of cooler temperatures and sunny, blue skies, but first we were in for a day of overcast conditions and rain, which started around 8:30 AM. It was a perfect morning to sit quietly in the living room, reading, writing, and drinking our coffee but too warm to turn on the gas fireplace logs.

Yesterday Linda started researching RV parks in southern Florida for this coming winter and we spent some time this morning looking at them online. There was one in particular, Riverside RV Resort and Campground, which caught our attention. Located on the Peace River near Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda, it is a short distance southwest of Arcadia where the annual Buss’in rally is held. We went to the rally two years ago and had a great time so we will go again this year if we decide to winter in Florida, which is our current inclination.

One of the reasons for us to winter in Florida, at least occasionally, is our many contacts there. Our friends, Steve and Karen, bought a mobile home near Venice; our friends, Chuck and Barbara, bought a lot at Pelican Lake in Naples; our ham radio friends, Bruce and Linda, bought a house on 25 acres near Brooksville; our GLCC fiends, Ed and Janet, bought a place that I think is near Sarasota; our FMCA Freethinker friends, John and Marian, bought a place in Dunnellon; and our other FMCA Freethinker friends, Ed and Betty, bought a place in Bradenton. In addition to all of those folks quite a few of our RV friends, like Pat and Vicki, spend the winter in Florida, and the state has a lot of things to see and do, including one of the best state park systems in the nation.

Linda left for her appointment with the dermatologist and I got to work at my desk. I continued to deal with e-mails related to the SLAARC domain transfer and an ongoing conversation with BCM publisher Gary Hatt. I got a Dropbox link to some Field Day photos from Steve (N8AR) a few days ago and downloaded them. Last night I got a similar e-mail from Mike (KE8AGY) with a Google Drive link and today I got one from Jim (N8HAM) so I downloaded all of those photos. I spent most of the rest of the day selecting and processing the photos I took and then processed all of the ones I got from other people.

I took a break to chat with Linda when she got back from her appointment. I then removed the defective Morgan M-302N VHF/UHF Lightning Arrestor from the cable entry box and boxed it up to ship back to Morgan. I took another short break for dinner, which was an excellent Farro and kale dish, and then worked until 8:30 PM when we had agreed to watch a movie. This evening’s choice was The Imitation Game, a film about Alan Touring and the concepts he invented that allowed the British to build a machine that broke the coded messages generated by the German Enigma machine during WWII. I spent another hour at my desk after the movie before going to bed and finishing this post. Tomorrow morning I plan to finally upload some blog posts and then get back to work on the design of the custom desk for the bus.

2015/06/13 (S) On to Illinois

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It has turned out to be a wet June so far and we had more heavy rain last night. In spite of waking up during the night I was up at 7:30 AM and made coffee. Everyone else got up as suited their level of rest and we sat around chatting for a while. Ron put a load of laundry in the washing machine and then we sat down to a light breakfast.

Ron and Mary spent most of the rest of the morning repacking all of their stuff for the drive to northwest Illinois and their week-long bicycle ride. FedEx Home Delivery delivered the Cyclo 5-Pro Mark II Dual Head Orbital Polisher I ordered along with all of the foam pads and detailing chemicals.

Ron retrieved their laundry from the dryer and after they finished packing we had a light lunch. By 1 PM they were ready to load up the car so we helped get their bags out. After a brief “farewell and safe travels” they were on their way. They had a five hour drive but would gain an hour as they entered the Central Time Zone so they would be at their motel by 5 PM local time with plenty of daylight and time to eat dinner.

Linda took a short nap and then went for a walk. I read through the manual for our SureCall Fusion5s cell phone booster and was part way through the manual for the Cyclo 5 when I decided to take a nap. Linda returned from her walk and a little while later a USPS mail carrier delivered the OTA TV antenna I ordered from Antennas Direct. All I am waiting for now is the cable entrance box I ordered from KF7P Metalwerks.

Once the cable entrance box arrives I will have a bit of a project. First I will need to drill two 2″ holes through the east wall of the house and into the sump pump closet in the northeast corner of the basement, mount the box to the wall, and ground it to the outside ground rod by the tower. I may also need to install additional ground rods. I will then need to climb the tower by the house and do the following:

take down the old OTA TV antenna and rotator;
mount the new OTA TV antenna and aim it;
mount the amplifier for the OTA TV antenna;
attach a short piece of 75 Ohm co-ax from the antenna output to the amplifier input and weatherproof the connections;
attach a longer piece of 75 Ohm co-ax to the output of the amplifier and weatherproof the connection;
mount the outside antenna for the cell phone booster system;
attach one end of a 50′ piece of LMR-400 or RG-213 co-ax to the cell phone antenna and weatherproof it;
unmount our Diamond SG7900 2m/70cm ham radio base station antenna and remount it at the top of the tower;
attach a 50-to-60 foot length of LMR-400 or RG-213 co-ax to the ham radio antenna;
dress and secure all of the coaxial cables with plastic cable ties (zip ties).

Once I am done with tower work I will need to do the following to complete the installation:

install the lightning arrestors in the cable entrance box for the cell phone booster and OTA TV (?) co-ax cables;
route each of the co-ax cables into the bottom of the cable entrance box and attach them to appropriate lighting arrestors;
attach additional co-ax cables to the lightning arrestors and feed them through the 2″ holes into the basement;
mount the Surecall Fusion5s in the sump pump room and connect the co-ax for the outside antenna and the power supply;
run a 50′ length of LMR-400 from the sump pump room across the basement ceiling and up through an old vertical furnace exhaust chase to the attic;
drill a hole in the ceiling of the main floor hallway near the chase;
mount the inside done antenna for the cell phone booster system to the ceiling with the co-ax dongle in the attic;
connect the antenna dongle to the co-ax coming up from the basement;
run additional co-ax from the sump pump room to the ham shack;
run additional co-ax from the sump pump room to the video distribution point in the laundry room (or directly to the locations of the two TV sets);
turn on the Fusion5s booster (transceiver), adjust the gain (if needed) and test it with our phones and Mi-Fi;
test the TV sets (and hopefully not have to go back up the tower to reposition the antenna);
connect our Icom IC-7000 amateur radio and test the antenna connection.

As I wrote out this list it occurred to me that I need to make a list of all of the co-ax types/lengths/connectors I need and that, at a minimum, I probably need to order a length of LMR-400 orRG-213 co-ax cable and the proper N-connectors to complete the ham radio antenna connections. It also occurred to me that I might be able to do some of the inside wiring while I am waiting for the cable entrance box to arrive. Also, once the TVs are connected Linda can scan for channels and communicate with me with our HT ham radios if I need to change the aim of the antennas on the tower.

All of this reminded me that I need to follow-up with a Bratcher Electric on running a new 100 Amp main feed from the transfer switch to the panel in the furnace room in the garage. I also need to order some new split foam fillers from Critter-Guard and new electrical hardware for connecting the bus to the toad from EZ-Connector in California.

I must have been sleeping lightly and dreamed all of these details because I got up from my nap around 5:30 PM, finished reading the manual for the Cyclo 5, and then took a shower and got dressed for dinner. Barb Spera had called Linda yesterday to see if we were available for dinner this evening. They had really enjoyed our meal at La Marsa in Brighton a couple of weeks ago and wanted to go again so we agreed to meet them there at 7 PM. We did not have to wait for a table and our waiter, Najheem (Naa-gheem), was delightful. Barbara had the Koshary again, and Chuck had the Chicken Shwarma with tabbouleh salad, while we split an order of spicy vegetarian ghallabah with rice and a salad. I had a mango smoothie and we all enjoyed the swarm pocket bread and garlic spread.

It was after 9 PM when we got home and we headed off to bed at 10. We knew Ron and Mary had arrived at their destination because Ron played a Scrabble word. Linda had also checked that our daughter and son-in-law were on their way back from Las Vegas.

2015/05/30 (S) Chuck and Barbara

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There were thunderstorms west of Lansing just before midnight last night but they did not reach our house during the overnight hours and we slept OK. We were up at 7 AM and off to our weekly SLAARC breakfast. Linda had a phone message yesterday from Nancy at FirstMerit Bank indicating that there was still a problem with the SLAARC bank account so we stopped there after breakfast but Nancy wasn’t in. They have frozen the account while we sort out the paperwork, causing our annual insurance check to not clear. Linda has been in touch with the insurance company, so they are aware of what is going on. When we got back to the house she wrote a personal check for the insurance premium and put it in the mail.

I gathered up the laundry, sorted it according to color (light/dark) and temperature (cold/warm), and started the first load. I downloaded and installed updates last night for my ASUS laptop computer so they finished installing when I started it this morning. I developed the habit a long time ago of checking for additional updates any time I install some and sure enough there were 11 more optional ones available. I did not install Skype for Windows Desktop 7.3 since I have Windows 8.1 and I did not install the update for a Ricoh printer as we do not have one.

There was an 80% chance of rain starting at 11 AM but the rain did not wait until then to start. Around 10:45 AM the skies opened up and the rain came down as if poured from buckets. By noon it was partly sunny, but steamy. I checked the national radar on my Wundermap iPad app and it looked like we would have more rain as the day went along.

Linda loaded a few things on the bus before the rain started and then busied herself with food preparation. Larger RV rallies have multiple activities going on every day and evening and Linda does not have the time to prepare meals from scratch. Being as we will only be gone for a week she prepared enough food to see us through and will only require reheating in the microwave. It’s a good approach; we still eat well and she has the time to fully participate in the rally.

In spite of the threat of rain I decided to wash the exterior of the bus. It was already wet anyway and the conditions were otherwise good with a heavy overcast, no direct sun, and moderate temperatures. I got the outside water turned on, got out some hoses, and connected the pressure washer. A bucket of McGuire’s Deep Crystal automotive soap (purple bottle) and the long, adjustable handle brush completed my bus cleaning arsenal. The water softener only had 137 gallons remaining when I started and I ran it down to zero by the time I had cleaned the bus and the Honda Element, so I do not know exactly how much water I used cleaning the vehicles but I’m guessing it was 150 gallons. That sounds like a lot of water but it is surprising how much water we go through in a typical day, especially if we are doing laundry or running the dishwasher.

I was finishing up washing the bus around 3:30 PM when Linda let me know that around 3:20 PM Chuck Spera had texted me and left a voice message letting us know that he and Barbara were in our general part of town and asking if they could stop by. Linda replied to the text message and said “sure” and Chuck replied that they would be here around 4:30 PM. I started the regeneration cycle on the water softener, got all of my equipment put away, and changed clothes. I uploaded my blog post for May 28th and was sitting in the living room using my iPad when they arrived.

The reason for their visit was to see what we were up to with the remodeling of the interior of our bus. I had extended an open invitation to Chuck a week ago and today worked for them. We showed them the bus and explained what we planned to do. Linda and Barbara went inside to sit and chat while Chuck and I continued the bus conversation in the bus.

Chuck and I finally came in the house and I showed him the ham shack/office which he somehow missed seeing on previous visits including our open house. By 6:30 PM we were all hungry and Linda suggested La Marsa in Brighton. It had started raining again and that, combined with the slightly later dinnertime, resulted in available parking spaces and immediate seating. After studying the menu we suggested the Koshary and salad. They accepted the recommendation so we each had lentil soup and split an order of Koshary. The only difference was that we had ours’ spicy and they had theirs’ regular. They also liked the garlic spread and warm pocket bread. We finished the meal with coffee and Barbara sweet talked the manager, Gordon, out of complimentary baklava, this being their first visit to a La Marsa restaurant.

We got home around 9:30 PM. The water softener finished regenerating around 8 PM so I put the next load of clothes in the washing machine. Driving on our street we noticed that a branch on the south side about 0.2 miles in from the main road was hanging out farther and lower than usual to the point where we would not be able to navigate past it in the morning without scraping (scratching?) the side of the bus. I located a small saw and Linda drove me back down there to try to cut it off. At the point where I could reach the branch it was over 2″ in diameter and my little saw was not up to the task of cutting through it. I did make enough of a cut, however, that I was able to bend it and get it to crack. That allowed me to pull it down and tuck it into some other low branches and keep it off the road. Not the nicest pruning job, but it was raining steadily and it was dark and I was standing in a ditch.

Linda transferred the laundry to the dryer and then started the dishwasher. We finally got to bed at 11 PM where Linda read while I worked on this post and played a few games on my iPad. We still have quite a bit to do to get ready to leave but should be able to pull out of here tomorrow around noon.

2014/09/20 (S) Bus Talk

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All days have the same number of hours. How those hours are divided up between light and dark, awake and asleep, busy or at leisure, varies with each day. Basically, our day went like this:

We went to our weekly SLAARC breakfast in South Lyon.
We returned home so Linda could get to work on the bakery software conversion project. She did that all day except for a break to go for a walk.
I called D. R. Electric Appliance to check on the range. As I had figured it did not arrive yesterday (they would have called if it did). They supposedly ordered it on Tuesday and told me it would take three days to get. They do not receive product on the weekend so maybe Monday.
I worked at my desk on editing and uploading blog posts until 11:30 AM.
I went to Recycle Livingston with our weekly load.
I stopped at Lowe’s for a 250VAC/15A circuit breaker, outlet, and box.
Lowe’s parking lot connects to Walmart’s parking lot, so I stopped there for ICE brand flavored sparkling water and picked up a couple of bottles of Leelanau Cellars Witch’s Brew seasonal spiced wine. We had this last fall and enjoyed it.
When I got back to the house we had a light lunch of sourdough pretzel nibblers and hummus and then resumed our work.
By mid-afternoon I was tired so I took a nap. I often do better sleeping when I’m tired rather than when I am supposed to sleep. I also wanted to be rested enough to enjoy dinner this evening.
We met Chuck at the Carrabba’s at West Oaks Mall at 7 PM. He had arrived ahead of us so we only had to wait about 20 minutes to get a table. Linda and I both had the Tag Pic Pac, one their two vegan options. It was long, relaxed meal and a great conversation, some of which was about buses (Chuck and Barbara also own a Prevost H3-40 converted coach). We pulled out of the parking lot a little before 10 PM.
Back home we watched season 5 episode 8 (final) of Doc Martin.

That was our day and did not include construction projects or taking photographs.

2914/06/20 (F) Couch Potatoes

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Over the last few months I managed to connect our friends and fellow Prevost H3 owners, Chuck and Barbara Spera, with our friends and fellow Prevost XL owners, Pat and Vickie Lintner. Chuck was looking for a sofa to replace the one in their motorcoach and Pat and Vickie had one they were looking to sell. Today was the day for consummating the deal, which necessitated a road trip from the Detroit, Michigan area to the Elkhart, Indiana area to pick up the couch, pay for it, and bring it back to Chuck’s shop.

Chuck and I drove down in his Ford Excursion. I went along to keep him company, for the opportunity to catch up on a lot of conversation, and to help load and unload the couch. We arrived in Elkhart just after noon and grabbed a quick bite to eat at Burger King. I had French Fries, thus today was about couches and potatoes.

While I was away on the road trip, Linda went to Ann Arbor to visit our 18 month old grand-daughter and her parents (our son and daughter-in-law). By dinner time we were both tired so we had Amy’s Pad Thai and turned in to watch two episodes of Doc Martin. We did not get to watch any episodes while we were at the rally in Goshen, Indiana so we are catching up.

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_11_01-07 (F-R)A Busy Week

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The first week of November was very busy, enough so that I was unable (unwilling) to do daily blog posts. Covering the whole week in one post makes for a longer post, but probably shorter than seven separate ones.

2013-11-01 (F)

We were supposed to get our bus back from the shop on Friday, November 1. We didn’t. That meant I could not take it to Phoenix Paint in Edwardsburg, Michigan on Monday the 4^th. I was reminded yet again that a true traveler has no fixed plan. With that off the table temporarily, we turned out attention to other things; Ham Radio Breakfast on Saturday, for instance. It was good conversation, as usual, and we finally arranged to have one couple over for dinner in a few weeks.

2013_11_02 (S)

Saturday afternoon Steve and Karen came over to visit and have dinner. They were not able to attend our open house/warming because they were in Arizona where Steve had made arrangements to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon from the south rim and back up to the north rim. Alas, the park was closed and they had to adjust their plans and find other things to do; which they did (true travelers have no fixed plan). We don’t see them very often, so when we do we have a great, long visit. We had a wonderful dinner of enchiladas and Mexican rice, finished off by chocolate cake with raspberry topping made from raspberries that Linda and I picked ourselves at the Middleton Berry Farm back in September. All vegan, of course.

After dinner we looked at some of their photographs (digital) and they looked at some of ours (also digital). Steve brought along a Raspberry Pi computer. It was slightly larger than a deck of cards and had a 16 GB SD Card that served as its solid state hard drive. It had a couple of USB ports, an HDMI port, and some other connections. Steve had a wireless network adapter in one of the USB ports and a wireless keyboard transceiver (Bluetooth, I presume) in the other. We already had an HDMI cable on the TV so he hooked up to that and voila, pictures. He was even able to control the Raspberry Pi using our TV remote! Now you have to admit, that’s pretty cool. We were also delighted to find out that they have spent part of the last few winters in the Venice, Florida area and are returning again this year. We shared our Florida plans and agreed that we would get together.

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Sunday we worked around the house and on our computers until late in the afternoon when Chuck and Barbara, our friends and fellow Prevost H3-40 converted coach owners, showed up to visit and have dinner. Although they did make it to our open house/warming we did not get to visit with them very much that day. We talked buses, of course, but we discussed a lot of other things too, including Florida, where they have spent the last six or seven winters, most recently in the Naples area. Again, plans were made to meet while there.

As long as I am on the subject of Florida, we started thinking about extending our stay for at least another month because of potential problems with “seasonal weight restrictions” on the roads around our house. I found out from Phil (of the pull-though driveway) that the restrictions usually go up March 1 and stay up until April 15. Most of the roads in our county, and all of the roads we would have to use to get to our house, are subject to these seasonal weight restrictions but the signs never say what that means. As it turns out, it means a weight limit of 8,400 pounds per axle. Our drive axle (four tires) weighs 20,000 pounds and we have over 7,000 pounds on each of the front/steer tires, so there’s actually no legal way for us to get the bus to our house during that 45-day window. What to do? Stay in Florida for another month! Problem solved. New problem: where to stay? New solution: the same place we are already staying, if they will let us extend our reservation.

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Monday came and went without the bus being ready. While this delayed my plans yet again, it also provided more time to work on WordPress projects. I checked on the WordPress Backup To Dropbox (wpb2d) plug-in and it appeared to be correctly backing up all four of the sites I am working on to our personal Dropbox account. That was good to see. I also started soliciting “beta testers” for each of the sites. I continued working with the WP-Members plug-in and it appeared to be functioning correctly to block access to selected pages/posts behind a user login. Given that, I started generating user lists for each of the sites to generate usernames and passwords and keep track of when I have created those in WP and provided them to each user.

2013_11_05 (T)

On Tuesday Linda was able to extend our stay at Williston Crossings RV Resort until April 1^st (no fooling). We will figure out later how to manage our trip back to Michigan so that we do not arrive before April 16. Sometime during the week I received an e-mail from the Prevost Owners Group, to which we belong, that the Prevost Motorcoach Show would take place in Tampa, Florida on January 13 and 14, with a reception hosted by Prevost Car Inc. the evening of the 13^th. That sounded like an opportunity to finally meet some folks from Prevost in person, and to admire brand new conversions (that we will never buy) from the likes of Marathon, Millennium, Liberty, Parliament, and Vantare. Sometime during the week it also came to our attention that the Prevost Community group we belong to is planning a rally for the first week of April 2014 at LazyDays RV Dealership in Seffner, Florida! Well Bob’s your uncle. It looks like delaying our return until at least April 16 won’t be that difficult at all.

I needed to make an appointment for my annual physical, so I got on the Henry Ford Health System website. They have a new “feature” called MyChart. When fully functional, which it is not yet, you are supposed to be able to directly book an appointment, and see all of your lab results. But first you have to set up your account. I called the number and got an activation code which I then used to create a Username and Password, and was finally able to log in. The direct scheduling feature wasn’t available for my primary care physician, but there was a “Request An Appointment” page. So I did. I asked for an Adult Physical on Mon., Tue., Wed., or Thu. afternoon between Monday November 25, 2013 and Friday December 6, 2013. Less than 24 hours later I received an e-mail informing me that I had been scheduled for a 1:00 PM appointment for an Office Visit on January 15, 2014. Huh???

I used to program computers for a living, and I used to do systems engineering, and I used to do sales and marketing of these things, and I ended my career as a consultant. This didn’t strike me as bad programming; it struck me as bad policy that got translated into a bad systems specification. So I wrote back to HFHS customer service and told them, as politely as I could, that their system was stupid, that is to say, the policies behind the implementation of their system were not “customer-centric.” If I had wanted an appointment in mid-January I would have requested one. So as of now, I do not have said appointment.

The bus was ready to pick up on Tuesday, so Chuck drove me down to W. W. Williams to get it. I took care of the paperwork and left with Chuck following me in his truck. I no sooner hit the highway than I got a Check Engine Light. It came on and stayed on, so I phoned Chuck and let him know that I needed to turn around and take it back if he was willing to follow me and take me back home. He was, so this we did; my plans further delayed. There are worse things that can happen on this bus; the Stop Engine Light, for instance. This light means exactly what it says, the engine is going to stop and you need to get to the side of the road, now, before it does. I’ve only seen that once, shortly after we bought it. We took care of some key maintenance issues and have never seen it again (and I hope that we never do). I figured I wouldn’t get the bus back from W. W. Williams until Wednesday afternoon at best, so any trip to Edwardsburg was now delayed until Thursday. I called Michele to let her know. She had Pato and Tommy lined up to look at it on Friday, so I was getting anxious to get it down there. But there’s nothing you can do until the mechanics (they are now called technicians) are ready to give it back to you. And frankly, you really don’t want it back until they are sure it is fixed.

While I was gone dealing with the bus, we got a call from Steve (mentioned earlier) wondering if he had left his Raspberry Pi computer here on Saturday. We checked. Yup, it was here. Rather than meet him somewhere, we agreed that he would come back to the house on Wednesday to get it and do some work on our computers while he was here.

2013_11_06 (W)

Steve arrived late Wednesday morning, Linux “tools” in hand. The principle target of the work was to install Linux on one of our machines and then install/configure the Apache web-server program. This would allow us to have a “virtual web-server” that I could use to build duplicate installations of my WordPress sites, allowing me to develop and test them before making the same changes to the live sites. That sounded cool. Steve has been trying to get me interested in Linux for 10 years but I never saw a real need for it until now. It turned in to an all-day project (of course, don’t they all?) due to the age of the machine we decided to use, but that was the machine I wasn’t using for much of anything else, so that’s where it needed to go. Steve got Linux installed and then installed Apache2. We ran out of time to configure the Apache2 program, but that was OK as it will give Steve a reason to come back.

While we were working on the computers we talked some more about Florida. It turns out that the Capitol Steps are scheduled to appear at the Venice Stage Theater in Venice, Florida at the end of January. Our annual get-together with Steve and Karen has often involved dinner and a performance by this group, which specializes in political satire, much of it musical. They said we could stay overnight at the place they rent for winter in Venice if we wanted to go to the performance, which is at 8:00 PM on a Monday evening. The nice thing about traveling with cats is that you can leave them for 24 hours and they are fine. They sleep for 20 of those anyway.

I checked Wednesday afternoon and the bus was reported as “ready to go.” I decided to pick it up early Thursday morning and head directly to Edwardsburg. That meant towing the car so I had a way home, but it also meant that Linda did not have to drive me to W. W. Williams. That worked out well as she had to head in to the bakery on Thursday anyway.

I sometimes get a bit anxious the night before I am going to drive the bus as I don’t drive it every day and we are still finding a fixing “issues.” I used to experience the same thing when we would book one of the Southgate Flying Club airplanes and go flying. Again, I didn’t fly every day. Does this ever happen to you? As I was drifting off to sleep I suddenly remembered that I had planned to fill the fuel tank at the Mobil Truck Stop on I-96 between Howell and Lansing. But that was based on leaving from home. Now wide awake, I got my iPad, pulled up the map application, and zoomed in on the I-94 Baker Road interchange west of Ann Arbor. There are three truck stops there, two Pilots and one Travel America. I was able to examine each one carefully, checking in/out access and pump locations. I decided the Pilot station on the north side of the highway was my best option. I knew I had enough fuel in the tank to get that far easily, so I was then able to go back to bed and finally fall asleep.

2013_11_07 (R)

I must have been sleeping lightly because around 4 AM I was awakened by the faint sound of running water. That’s another one of those sounds that will jolt you awake once you become aware of it. The new flapper in the master bedroom toilet wasn’t quite sealed and the water was running ever so slowly trying to keep the tank full. I was finally able to adjust the flapper a couple of days later and get it to seal, but between the truck stop research and the running water, it turned out to be a short, fitful night’s sleep. Not good preparation for a long day of driving.

I would like to say that the trip from W. W. Williams to Phoenix Paint was uneventful, but Check Engine Lights are definitely an event, and I saw ours come on four times. It eventually went off each time, finally staying off after the 4^th time; once it’s come on I tend to be a bit on edge wondering when I will see it again (or worse).

I stopped for fuel at the aforementioned Pilot truck stop on the north side of I-94 at Baker Road and pulled in behind a truck at the last pump, or so I thought. I sat there for a while until the driver came out and moved it, at which point I pulled up only to discover that there wasn’t a pump at that position. So I pulled out of the truck stop onto Baker Road, came back in the entrance, and got in line behind a truck that was putting fuel in its tanks. That truck finally moved and I was able to pull up to the pump.

Getting fuel at a truck stop isn’t like putting fuel in your car. The gallons and dollars involved are usually an order of magnitude larger and you usually cannot run a credit card at the pump. I went inside, waited in line, and was finally waited on by a nice woman. I told her I probably needed 150 gallons and I failed to recognize that she ran my credit card for $150. I was only half done washing the windshields (the bus has four) when the pump shut off. It had put in 37.9 gallons for exactly $150. So I went back inside, stood in line again, and had her run the card for another $350. Back outside, I restarted the pump, waited for it to finish, then went back inside, got back in line, and got not one, but two, receipts with the dollars and gallons on them. By the time I got back on the highway the fuel stop had taken about one hour. More delay.

No sooner was I on the road then I got a call from Chuck checking on how my trip was going. That was both thoughtful and reassuring; it’s comforting to know folks are aware of you and concerned for your well-being. In some ways, owning a converted coach makes you part of a “fraternity”, if you care to join. While we were on the phone the Check Engine Light came on for the 3^rd time since I had left W. W. Williams. It went off and came on again. I discussed it with Chuck and decided to pull off at MY FAVORITE REST AREA to check the coolant level in the overflow reservoir. (I talked about this rest area in my article in the February 2013 issue of Bus Conversions Magazine. This is the same rest area where I was stranded while Linda and I repaired the patio awning that came loose a few miles earlier on westbound I-94. Ironically, I was on my way to Phoenix Paint at that time as well. I’m not superstitious, but I don’t like unlikely coincidences.)

The rest stop in question is near Grass Lake, Michigan, about 12 miles east of Jackson, Michigan. It’s a very nice rest stop; I just seem to end up stopping here for less than nice reasons. I popped the rear engine hatch, improvised a dip stick, and checked the level in the overflow reservoir. It was up to the bottom edge of the filler tube, so no obvious problem there. I looked around the engine bay for any sign of a coolant leak, but everything looked dry. I took some comfort in the fact that Bob, the service manager at W. W. Williams (Dearborn) had told me that he and the technicians were very impressed with the condition of our engine; that it sounded good and ran well. They’re real experts, so that’s no small thing.

The rest of the trip really was uneventful. The Check Engine Light did not come on again, the transmission shifted well, the cruise control worked properly (as it always has), the engine coolant and oil temperatures ran normal, and the speedometer suddenly decided to work again! I took I-94 W to I-69 S to M-60 W to M-40 S to US-12 W to M-205 W and pulled into Phoenix Paint just a mile north of the Indiana border around 1:00 PM. I’ve done this trip many times, but it was a very pleasant drive with fall colors still in evidence, light traffic, and nice weather.

Michele got me into the building and parked and had me air up the suspension so they could have easier access to the inside of the wheel wells. She and Pato got right to work removing the damaged panels while I hooked up the electrical shoreline, got the house battery charger turned back on, and activated some circuits for the inside of the bus including the auxiliary air compressor. I stopped to look at things and answer questions as I unloaded some items from the car, and then moved stuff from the bus to car that had to return home with me. What started out as a trip to have paint scratches buffed out had become a trip to also find and seal roof leaks and repair/repaint damaged body panels, so Michele and I looked the coach over and discussed the work to be done. I was there about 90 minutes—a really short visit for me and Michele—and got back on the road for home around 2:30 PM.

I had originally planned to spend a few days at her shop working on some small projects of my own, but that was based on a Monday arrival. We had plans to meet up with our friend Kate in Ypsilanti on Thursday evening to see Roy Blount, Jr. at Eastern Michigan University’s Pease Auditorium. I made it home with just enough time to change clothes, but not to eat, and we headed off to Ypsi. We got there just as Kate and her friend Teresa were arriving and got four seats together. RBJr was very interesting to listen too when we could hear him and understand what he was saying. He speaks somewhat softly, and the PA system for the auditorium was not adjusted properly to compensate for that.

After the event we headed over to the Sweetwater Café, just a short walk from the auditorium, for coffee. They had some nice looking veggie rollup sandwiches, so Linda and I had a late/light dinner. We finally got home around 11 PM, a long day for me.

Although my health is better than it has been for the last couple of decades, I do not pretend that I am not in my 6^th decade. I can still do the all-day-drive thing, but I am much more tired at the end of it, and it takes me multiple days to recover from it.

The Phase Place

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Tag Archives: Chuck & Barbara

2015/11/04 (W) Southbound Liberty

2015/09/29 (T) Bus Windshields

2015/08/17 (M) Wallpaper Search

2015/08/10 (M) Keep on Buss’in

2015/08/08 (S) A New Bus Fridge (Finally)

2015/07/11 (S) Impactful Tools

2015/07/07 (T) Field Day Photos

2015/06/13 (S) On to Illinois

2015/05/30 (S) Chuck and Barbara

2014/09/20 (S) Bus Talk

2914/06/20 (F) Couch Potatoes

2013_11_01-07 (F-R)A Busy Week