Tag Archives: John & Diane Rauch

2016/04/21-25 (R–M) Bad Brakes & More

2016/04/21 (R) More Bad Brakes

[NOTE: There are no photos for these posts.]

We were up before 8 AM, had coffee in the living room by the warmth and glow of the fireplace, and had fruit for breakfast around 8:45 AM. We left at 9:40 to take my car to Brighton Honda for its 110,000 mile service appointment at 10 AM. Linda followed me in the Civic to drive me back to the house but as long as we were that close to Brighton we decided to go to the Verizon corporate store. To our surprise, the store was permanently closed. We were pretty sure there was still an “authorized retailer” a little farther down on Grand River Avenue (which never made any sense to me) but after the authorized retailer in Arcadia, Florida was unaware of the Mi-Fi device I was interested in (AC791L) I really wanted to talk to someone in a corporate store.

We did not investigate further as to whether the store had been moved and, not having any other business in Brighton, we headed home. On the way I got a phone call from our State Farm insurance agent’s office about a long-term care premium that was due last month. Apparently one of our children did not recognize it was a bill when they checked our mail and did not alert us to its presence. It wasn’t a big deal, and Linda took care of it when we got home.

I started a load of laundry and settled in to work at my desk. I did not have a reply yet to my support ticket for our WiFiRanger. I checked-in to RVillage and saw that our member status had been upgraded to GOLD. I did a search for used tractors and was researching a portable water deionizing system at AutoGeek.com when I got a call from Curtis Coleman of RVillage. While Curtis and I were talking I got a call from Gary at Brighton Honda. He left a message and I called him back. The rear brake rotors and pads on my Element needed to be replaced. It seems we have not been able catch a brake break in the last six weeks.

Linda made a haircut appointment with Renee for tomorrow at 10 AM but got a call back from Renee that she was not working tomorrow. Renee had an opening at 1:15 PM today so Linda took that instead. It was already noon so Linda heated a can of Amy’s Chili and we split that for lunch along with some fresh black grapes. We left at 12:40 PM for the drive to Twelve Oaks Mall. I went along because I wanted to stop at the corporate Verizon store in Novi.

I don’t usually go along with Linda to her haircut appointments since she now cuts my hair at home, but it was good to see Renee again. She did a nice job with Linda’s hair and we were out of there in under 30 minutes. For many years the Verizon store was located on the Twelve Oaks Mall property near Twelve Mile Road but it recently moved, so we put the address in the GPS unit. The new location was nearby on Novi Road just the other side of I-96 from Twelve Oaks and West Oaks Malls.

We were assisted by Christina, who was both knowledgeable and helpful. We went in thinking we might upgrade both of our phones and our Mi-Fi device and increase our data plan. I was interested in the AC791L Mi-Fi device. They did not have one in stock but she knew what it was and said we could have one delivered to our house on Monday via FedEx. We then looked at phones and Christina steered us towards the latest offerings from Motorola. We selected one for pricing purposes and she worked up the costs, including a higher data plan.

The new phones would have each cost $26 a month for 24 months, and the extended warranties would have been another $11 each per month for as long as we cared to pay it. The phones had some nice features—specifically a shatterproof screen, wireless charging, and a screen-facing flash (for those all-important selfies)—but $74/month ($37 x 2) for two years seemed like a lot of money to us, especially given that our Samsung Galaxy S3 phones still work just fine. Another negative for us is that the new phones are also bigger and we like the size of our S3’s. Besides, I have a belt clip flip-top soft case for mine that fits nicely and works well.

Offsetting the increased phone costs was the fact that the line charges for our phones would drop from $40 per month per line to $20 per month per line. Also, the $80 we currently pay for 10 GB of shared data per billing cycle would now buy us 12 GB of data for the same time period. Finally, upgrading the phones would get us an additional 2 GB of data per phone per billing cycle for “life”, so our 12 GB plan would actually be 16 GB. We would lose the bonus data, however, if we ever reduced the monthly gigabytes on our plan.

In looking at the cost worksheet I noticed that for $100 per billing cycle we could get 18 GB of shared data and bump that up or down at will without losing anything. In the end we bought the AC791L Mi-Fi device for $90 ($100 with a $50 rebate and a $40 activation fee), changed the data plan to 18 GB for $100 (per billing cycle), and decided to keep our current phones. Ignoring the one-time charges connected with the new Mi-Fi device we increased our monthly data from 10 GB to 18 GB, got a new/better Mi-Fi device, dropped our monthly cost from $180 to $160 (before taxes), and were not locked in to anything. Christina also said to keep our eyes open for special deals on phones, especially around Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Roger that, and will do.

By the time we got back to I-96 and Grand River Avenue (GRA) in Brighton it was 3 PM so we stopped at Brighton Honda to check on my car. While waiting for parts the technician got shifted to another job so my car was not ready yet. Making a left out of the dealership onto GRA is always difficult and can be impossible in heavy traffic. Our solution is often to turn right and go to Panera on GRA just south side of I-96, which is exactly what we did. They did not have any decaf brewed but were happy to make some for us. It had been cool and overcast all day so we sat by the gas fireplace and enjoyed several cups of coffee.

While we were sitting there I took a minute to call Philip Jarrell and let him know we were back in town. We discussed the French drain he installed at the west end of property last fall, which seemed to be working well, and the trenching on the other side of the road, where the culvert empties, which had become a small pond. I mentioned that the new driveway and RV pad looked nice, and that I really wanted to get the ham radio tower erected this year. That project would require his services for a morning. By 4:15 PM I had not heard anything further from Gary at Brighton Honda so we drove home.

Gary called at 5 PM to let me know the car was done and the technician was test driving it to make sure everything was correct. The dealership was open until 8 PM, and we did not want to fight rush hour traffic, so Linda fixed dinner. We had a salad of arugula and Italian kale with slivered almonds and dried cranberries, microwaved sweet potatoes, and vegan Italian sausage. Everything was very tasty and I particularly liked the spices in the mock sausage. Linda tries to make our diet primarily plant-based whole foods, but not having been vegans for most of our lives we find a certain satisfaction (comfort) in the occasional veggie burger, soy hotdog, seitan stroganoff, or other “mock” dish.

After dinner I hung up some laundry and started another load in the washer. I checked e-mail and had one from my niece Amanda. She and Ryan were looking at Wednesday, September 27, 2017 as a wedding date and wanted to know if all of us could make it to Hermann, Missouri for the event. I replied that it would not be a problem for Linda and me and cc:d Brendan and Meghan. I then texted both of them to alert them to the e-mail. I also had an e-mail from Kate de Fuccio wanting to know when we expected to be back in Michigan. I let her know we were back and had gotten preoccupied with opening the house and unloading the bus, but I felt bad that I forgot to text her as soon as we were home.

I also had a reply to my WiFiRanger support ticket requesting that I send screen shots of three of the tabs in the control panel. I replied that I would try but did not mention that I really wasn’t sure how to do that. Linda (the Google Queen) suggested that I “Google that” so I did. It turns out that “alt+prtsc” captures the current window as an image and copies it to the clipboard. From there you can do what you want with it. Easy breezy. (I subsequently ended up with something called “Easy Capture Manager” on my computer that just requires me to push the “prt sc” key and then lets me select what I what to capture.)

By 6:545 PM we were headed back to Brighton Honda to retrieve my car. Linda dropped me off and returned home. I paid the bill and returned home a few minutes later. Thursday night is CBS comedy night and by 8 PM we were ready to just sit and laugh. But first I had to transfer some of the laundry from the washing machine to the dryer. I worked on blog posts while being entertained and hung up the dry laundry before going to bed.

2016/04/22 (F) Networking

I was up a little later than usual last night and would have slept in this morning but the cats had other ideas; they always do. We were up by 8 AM and I made a pot of the Costa Rican Terrazu half-caff coffee that we bought yesterday at Teeko’s Coffee and Teas. We were both still a little tired, and the thick fog further subdued our moods. We countered that by treating ourselves to an easy start to our day enjoying our coffee in the living room to the warm glow of the fireplace.

We eventually got dressed, had breakfast, and got on with our day. Linda got a call from Bill, who handles computer and networking technology for the bakery, and he walked her through the VPN setup for the bakery’s upgraded server. She then made a grocery list and went shopping. When she returned I discovered two boxes on the front porch. UPS had obviously been here without my being aware of it. The large box was the Instant Pot Linda ordered the other day and the small box was my prescriptions, which I was not expecting to see for another week.

My main focus for the afternoon was dealing with networking issues. I uncoiled a long Cat 7 Ethernet cable that I found in the ham shack yesterday. I unplugged the network cable for Linda’s computer from our AT&T gateway/router and plugged in one end of the Cat 7 cable in its place. I took the other end of the cable into the bus, plugged it in to the HP Color LaserJet 3600 printer, and turned the printer on. I brought my laptop computer upstairs, connected it wirelessly to the gateway, and tried printing a simple Word document without success. I checked the printer settings and the TCP/IP addressing mode was configured for a manual address that did not match the address range of our home network. I reconfigured it for DHCP and it acquired a new IP address in the correct range. I tried printing again but it still did not work. I reconfigured the address in the printer device properties on my computer and was finally able to print. That was a relief as we would really like to leave this printer on the bus and have it networked rather than operating from a USB cable.

I then turned my attention to the WiFiRanger Mobile Ti (WFR-MTi). I took my computer to the bus so I could use it to control the WFR and capture screen shots. I was able to connect it to the WFR without difficulty but the WFR could not “see” (detect) any external Wi-Fi signals even though it is on the roof outside the bus and my computer could see them from inside the bus. Back in the house I plugged in the Amped|Wireless SR20000G Range Extender / Router and configured it to repeat the AT&T gateway which does not broadcast a very strong signal. Back in the bus my computer could see the strong signals from the Range Extender but the WFR still could not detect any external Wi-Fi signals. I captured the screen shots for the MAIN, WIFI, and SETUP tabs, as requested by technical support at WiFiRanger, and pasted them into Word documents for uploading to their support system.

I took my computer back to my basement office and cabled it in to the network switch. I wrote a reply to the WiFiRanger tech support thread, attached the screen shots, and posted it. Clearly the WFR is not working and I am certain I will end up requesting an RMA and returning it for service, probably sooner than later, but I wanted to start with the online tech support system in case they had any good ideas that had not occurred to me.

Linda spent the afternoon getting acquainted with the Instant Pot and running it through its test procedure. It checked out as fully functional so she used it to prepare seitan stroganoff for dinner. I laid down at 5 PM and napped for an hour, finally getting up at 6 PM when Linda put our dinner salads on the table. She served the stroganoff over brown rice with a side of steamed broccoli and the whole meal was wonderful.

We sat in the living room until 8 PM and then decided to watch Sleepless in Seattle on PBS. I had forgotten what a good movie it is and enjoyed seeing it again. Linda fell asleep right after the movie ended and I watched Episode 6 of Ken Burn’s JAZZ before calling it a night. Like all of Ken Burn’s documentaries, JAZZ is a masterpiece of historical storytelling. At some point I would like to watch all 10 episodes back-to-back.

2016/04/23 (S) Ham & Eggs

Today was our first Saturday back home, and that meant it was also our first opportunity to have breakfast with our fellow amateur radio operators (hams) from the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC). Before going to sleep last night I set wake-up alarms for 7 AM this morning, but I was awake before then and had time to grab a quick shower before getting dressed. I also took a few minutes to reattach the ham radio antenna to the magnetic mount on my car and reinstall the ICOM IC-2820 radio control head and microphone. Even so, we were still on our way by 7:30 AM and arrived at George’s Senate Coney Island on the north edge of South Lyon around 7:50 AM. During the drive I was part of a group chat with Steve (N8AR), Mike (W8XH), and Bill (W8NN), who was on an HT while riding with Larry (K8UT). The Yaesu Fusion repeater sounded good and it was good to be on the air again with friends.

Besides our coffee, dry toast, and dry English muffin, Linda and I split a fresh fruit plate. It was OK at best, but we don’t go for the food. It was good to see and talk to folks in person and to be back into this part of our “at home” routine. Today was testing day so a few people left to run the testing session, but most of the group, which numbered 19 people, stayed until 10 AM.

There was an accident this morning on westbound I-96 just east of the US-23 interchange. It was still being cleared when we drove home so we got stuck in a traffic backup that could easily have been avoided. Fortunately we did not have to be any particular place by any particular time and worked our way slowly through the congestion.

Back at the house I worked at my desk while Linda started cooking black beans in her new Instant Pot as she wanted to use some on a salad for our lunch. Normally she would have to soak dry beans overnight and then cook them for quite a while, but the Instant Pot, which can function as a pressure cooker, took them from bag-to-plate in 45 minutes, during which time Linda went for a walk. Pressure cookers can be very useful.

Once we got back to our house my initial task was to proofread and markup corrections to my article in the latest draft of the June 2016 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine. Once that was done I uploaded the PDF to a folder in my Dropbox and e-mailed Gary and Jorge that it was there. Next I checked my WiFiRanger support ticket and discovered that my reply yesterday, with screen shots attached, did not post correctly. I replied again and this time it posted correctly, or at least appeared to. With that task taken care of I copied a few images from the Sony a99v camera to my computer. I then started transferring files from my computer to the NAS that we had with us in the bus. I was about to start copying files for from that NAS to the older one we left at home when Linda called me up to lunch.

She made a large salad for each of us with tomatoes, blueberries, sliced strawberries, black beans, slivered almonds, and dried cranberries with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. She also made some hot tea after lunch which we took to the living room. Both of us were tired and by 2 PM laid down and took naps. It was 68 degrees F in the house but it felt very cool. I think winters in Florida and Arizona have reset my comfort zone from 70 degrees F, plus or minus, to 78 degrees to 80 degrees F. Jasper found a sunny spot on the floor by one of the living room windows and Juniper curled up with me. I got up at 3:15 PM and took my iPad out on the deck to work in the crisp air and warm sun. Linda came out around 3:45 PM but decided it was too cool and went back inside; I did the same around 4 PM.

Linda arranged for us to meet John and Diane Rauch at Camelia’s Mexican Restaurant at 6 PM. Camelia’s is walking distance from our old house, but we never walked there because the route was not pedestrian friendly. It’s a half hour drive from where we live now. I reinstalled the cellular booster in my car and we left at 5:20 PM to leave a little extra time in case we encountered traffic problems. And sure enough, we did. The right lane of eastbound I-96 was closed where it ties in to southbound I-275 as the right lane continued to be closed for a construction project.

Our children’s grade school vocal music teacher, Jennifer Davidson, (who moved here from Tennessee) once remarked that Michigan only has two seasons “winter and road construction.” Truer words were never said. We stayed to the left, because that’s what we had to do to get onto eastbound I-696. Although traffic was slow it was moving, unlike the right hand lanes trying to stay on I-96/I-275. Vehicle speeds returned to “normal” once we got past the split, which around here is 5-to-10 MPH over the maximum posted limit, and a few minutes later we exited the freeway at Orchard Lake Road. This is the same exit we used for 35 years to get to our house, and I have undoubtedly used this exit more than any other Interstate highway exit in country. It was familiar, yet strange, as we rarely get back here anymore except to visit with John and Diane, meet someone at Camelia’s (or one of the other many restaurants that can be accessed from the Orchard Lake Road exit), or go to our optometrist or veterinarian, both of whom are two to three miles south of this exit.

We had our fill of chips and salsa and split an order of vegetarian fajitas. They were OK, and much better than the ones we had a week ago at Mi Camino Real in Logansport, Indiana. After dinner we went to John and Diane’s house, which is very close to the restaurant, and continued a nice conversation in a quieter setting. By 9:30 PM we were all tired and started wrapping up our visit. We left a little before 10 PM, got home at 10:30 PM, and went right to bed on stomachs that were still very full. WTVS (Detroit PBS) was fundraising around an early Rolling Stones performance that did not grab my interest so I watched Lidia’s Kitchen and the beginning of Martha Stewart’s Cooking school. She was filleting fish so I turned the TV off and went to sleep.

2016/04/24 (N) Family

We went to bed on full stomachs last night and I did not sleep well, suffering from indigestion for much of the night. I should have used a second pillow and tried sleeping on my back with my head elevated, but that is not a natural sleeping position for me and I doubt that would have slept any better. To compensate for the poor sleep I stayed in bed and kept falling back to sleep. Linda was up way before me, having apparently slept better than I did, and I finally got up to stay at 9 AM. That was unusually late for me, but at least I felt somewhat rested.

As soon as I got up Linda sliced oranges for our breakfast and prepared to toast bagels while I prepared our morning coffee. We were not quite done with our preparations when I got a phone call. It was from Chuck Spera so I answered it.

Chuck and I talk frequently but not usually at 9:30 AM on a Sunday morning. He and Barbara were on the road and had just crossed into Kentucky on I-75 having left Sevierville, Tennessee early this morning. Before pulling out this morning Chuck had noticed a little oil by the driver side tag axle during his walkaround, specifically in the holes of the Alcoa aluminum wheels. He had removed the decorative hub cap and found an oil film there as well, but did not see any pooling. He assumed that an axle seal was leaking a little but was not sure how to check the oil level in the hub or add oil if needed. Because of both past and recent experiences, Chuck figured I would know the answers to both questions. While that was probably unjustified optimism, in this case I did, and gladly shared what I knew about the sight glass and rubber plug in the wheel hub for the oil reservoir.

We had just finished our bagels and orange slices when Brendan texted Linda to see about plans for today. We had all planned on getting together at Meghan and Chris’ house this afternoon to visit and have dinner but Madeline had come down with Hand, Foot, & Mouth disease (a virus) earlier in the week and Brendan thought he might be getting it too. Given that Linda had not yet fully recovered her hearing we agreed that it would be best to avoid contact until we knew that no one was contagious.

Madeline was understandably disappointed that she would not see us today and, in lieu of that, requested a FaceTime session. We were equally disappointed that we would not get to see her (and her parents) but an hour of FaceTime made up for it a bit. After our FaceTime session we lingered in the living room by the fireplace enjoying our coffee and doodling on our iPads. We finally got dressed at noon and left for Meghan and Chris’ house at 12:30 PM.

We arrived around 1:15 PM and were greeted by our daughter with a paper grocery bag full of some of our mail. We had a long, relaxed afternoon to visit and catch up. Meghan made vegan burgers from scratch and a salad with beans, corn, red bell pepper, and avocado with a lime-based dressing. We brought a bottle of Barefoot Red Moscato and I found it very much to my taste (sweet).

We departed just after 7 PM and stopped at the new Gas 2 Go station at the northwest corner of I-96 and Latson Road. The station was still under construction when we left in November. I was pleased to see that it is a Shell Oil Company station with a Tim Horton’s. I have had a preference for Shell gasoline for most of my adult life and Tim Horton’s has coffee on a par with Dunkin Donuts, although I do not like the lids they use. There is also a traffic signal on Latson at the side road for the station, no doubt because this is also the access road for the Livingston County Road Commission complex. (Leave it to them to take care of themselves while the rest of rest life and limb to get out of the Lowe’s/Walmart center just south of there.) Whatever the reason, it will slow down traffic exiting I-96 and heading south on Latson Road, making it easier to get out of the Lowe’s/Walmart parking lots.

We were home a little after 8 PM and turned on the TV to watch Grantchester on PBS and Elementary on CBS. Around 8:40 PM I realized I had missed the SLAARC Information Net which started at 8 PM. I need to reestablish the habit of tuning in on Sunday evenings, but that time slot competes with some of our favorite programming on PBS.

2016/04/25 (M) Pick Up Sticks

We had a typical start to our day. After catching the weather on channel 10.2 we were up by 8 AM, had coffee and granola with blueberries and bananas, and used our iPads in the living room with the fireplace turned on. Our Kitchen Aid mixer broke last year and today Linda was finally ready to replace it. She decided to get the slightly larger and more powerful model with the crank up mixing bowl as she wants enough power to mix bread dough. She also wanted it in white to match most of the other kitchen appliances. To our surprise the white color was more expensive than red or blue but less expensive than some other colors including copper bronze. She was trying to convince herself that red or blue would be OK but I convinced her to order white. All of our appliances (and cabinet knobs) are white. With Amazon Prime it will be here on Wednesday.

The weather forecast was calling for a cold front to move through our area triggering rain, and possibly thunderstorms, starting late in the afternoon and extending through the evening and into the overnight hours. The grass in most of the yard is not very tall yet, except right in front of the house by the concrete driveway. The yard is also moist, but not soggy, and we do not expect Keith to be here to cut the grass for the first time this season until sometime next week at the earliest. The temperature mid-morning was in the low 60’s and was forecast to reach a high of 72. All-in-all it was an excellent day to pick up sticks around the yard in advance of Keith’s first visit and get the Honda self-propelled lawn mower out and cut the grass in front of the house.

I started my yard cleanup with area around the front berms, raking small branches out of the grass and stacking larger ones on existing brush piles. While I was working out front a UPS truck showed up with our Max Burton Induction Cooktop and our new Verizon Mi-Fi unit. I signed for the Mi-Fi and took the packages inside. Linda used the induction cooker to make some nectar for our hummingbird feeder and also prepared a batch of homemade granola. She eventually came outside and helped me pick up some of the downed tree limbs in the back yard. We got the easternmost two acres (2/5ths of our yard) picked fairly well. We will work on the westernmost three acres another day.

I got the Honda lawnmower out and topped up the tank with fresh fuel. Small engine Honda equipment is known for starting on the first pull, but my experience is that this is only true when they are new. No doubt our lawnmower needs to be cleaned up and tuned up, and would start more easily if it was, but I eventually got it started and once it warmed up it ran fine. I mowed the little bit of the lawn near the house/driveway that looked like it was overdue for a cut. This is also one of the only parts of the yard anyone really sees if they pull into the driveway.

I had just shut the lawnmower off and was putting it in the garage when the U. S. Mail truck pulled into the driveway. It was our mail carrier, Michelle, and she had a very large box for us, along with our typical bundle of Monday junk mail. The box was not very heavy and Linda informed me that it was the 48 rolls of toilet paper she recently ordered. Well, alrighty then.

It was approaching 1 PM so Linda made salads for our lunch with the leftover bean-corn-tomato salad (that Meghan made yesterday) on top of a bed of mixed greens. After lunch Linda took her Amateur Extra flash cards outside to study and I focused on getting the new Verizon Jetpack Mi-Fi (Netgear AC791L) assembled and activated. Assembly consisted of installing the Lithium Ion battery and back cover. I decided to charge it for a bit while I read the user guide and activation procedure.

When I was fairly certain I had all of the information I needed at my fingertips I called the 877 activation number and keyed in the requested information. It took a couple of tries to get it right but I finally did. With the activation completed I turned the device on, looked up the SSID and Password, and connected my iPad to it. I then entered the relevant information in a new entry in Passwords Plus.

I got a phone call from Gaye Young and chatted with her at some length about RVillage and its relevance to FMCA. (Gaye is the FMCA National Secretary and chairperson of the National Education Committee.). She and husband Jerry are at the Rally in the Pasture at FMCA National President Charlie Adcock’s place in Arkansas (or maybe it’s Alabama?) and I knew from talking to Curtis Coleman last week that he was on his way there too. A year and a half ago the NEC researched and recommended that FMCA partner with RVillage and a year ago the FMCA executive board accepted and endorsed that proposal but then nothing happened. The FMCA Executive Director was recently let go and Charlie is now trying to get the RVillage train back on the tracks, along with lots of other things as FMCA continues to loose members at an alarming rate.

I suspect that the loss of members is a combination of several factors. For one, the median age of FMCA members has been in the upper 60’s for quite some time. That means a certain number of members are “aging out” almost daily. For another, the downturn in the economy in 2007 was particular hard on the RV industry. Not only was the industry slow to recover, when it did it was building mostly towables, not motorhomes. In the past many RV dealers basically “included” an FMCA membership with the purchase of a motorhome, or at least provided information about the Association and an application form. Another possible factor is that RVers under 50, including Gen-Xers and Millennials, don’t tend to join things. FMCA is not the only organization suffering membership decline and having difficulty attracting new members, especially younger ones.

Chuck and Barbara got home yesterday and were settled enough for Chuck to call me at 5 PM and update me on their hub oil leak. Linda made salads for dinner and reheated the brown rice and seitan stroganoff. After dinner I replied to an e-mail from Gaye and then settled in to watch TV with Linda. And so it goes.

2015/11/14 (S) Tiling the Cockpit, #1

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I was up at 6:30 AM and got a shower. Linda got up closer to 7 and we were on our way to our ham radio club breakfast by 7:20; but not before I released two more mice. Either we have a significant colony living nearby or the same few animals are finding their way back into the house. We find it hard to believe, however, that if they are returning they would re-enter the trap.

We had a good showing for breakfast, minus a few regulars due to the ham fest in Ft. Wayne, Indiana today and tomorrow. We were the second two people to arrive so we got to sit across from the other Bruce and Linda. They are leaving for their new place in Florida before the next breakfast so the next time we see them will be in the Sunshine State. We had a lot of work to do on the bus this weekend so we did not linger over breakfast and were on our way home by 9:15 AM.

The seat cushions and spacer cushion for the built-in sofa in the bus.

By 10 AM we were working on the floor tile for the front of our motorcoach, which I often refer to here as the “cockpit” as a convenient shorthand. In a sense the cockpit consists of several sub-areas. I think of the “entry” as consisting of the stairs and the first landing. At the same level as the landing is the “driver’s area.” I sometimes refer to this as the pilot’s seat as most of the controls for operating the bus when it is in motion are located here. The dashboard, however, extends into the landing area and contains controls for some of the house systems.

One step up from the landing level is the “front passenger seat platform” which I often refer to as “the platform” as a convenient shorthand. The portion of the platform closest to the entry door side of the bus is where the front passenger seat is located, which I sometimes refer to as the co-pilot and/or navigator seat. It’s really not a co-pilot seat as you cannot operate the bus from there, so navigator is really the more appropriate term. In the center of the platform, and extending towards the driver’s side of the bus, is a step which gets you up to the main floor level.

Because the pilot and navigator seats are on different levels from the main floor those seats are not usable as part of the living room, making the front portion of the interior a distinct and dedicated space with its own character, much like a cockpit in an airplane or ship. Nonetheless, we used the same fabric on the these two seats as we did on all of the other living room furniture and we are using the same tile on the floors and walls as we used on the main floor.

Bruce uses the heat gun to soften a piece of the floor tile so he can cut it. (Photo by Linda. )

We worked from 10 AM until almost 4 PM measuring, cutting, and dry fitting the tiles for the landing and driver’s area. The driver’s area in particular took a lot of time as every tile had to have something special done to it. Intricate curves had to be cut to fit around the steering column, brake pedal, and the perimeter of the area and holes had to be drilled for the seat base bolts. All of this intricate trimming was done by heating the back side of the tiles with a heat gun (much hotter than a hair dryer) and cutting the softened tile with a razor knife.

We quit working for the day at 3:45 PM and changed clothes. By 4:15 we were on our way to meet John and Diane Rauch at the Livonia 20 Cineplex on Seven Mile Road just west of I-275 for a 5 PM movie. Ever since Daniel Craig started playing the role of James Bond in the 007 movies we have gone to see them with John and Diane not long after opening day. After the movie we went to the Macaroni Grill, which is walking distance from the theater on the northeast corner of the intersection of Seven Mile Road and Haggerty Road.

We had to wait awhile for a table but we had plenty to talk about and the time passed quickly enough. We were seated by 8:20 PM and finally left our table at 10:20. We started with bread, olive oil, and wine. We split a two liter bottle of the Chianti house red wine. It was priced the same as five glasses, but we each had more than two glasses, so it was a good deal. All four of us had a “make your own pasta” dish with a salad, and each one of us chose a different pasta and add-ins. I had linguine with a garlic olive oil sauce, mushrooms, tomatoes, and fresh spinach. Linda had farfalle (bow tie) pasta with arrabiata (spicy tomato) sauce, garlic, mushrooms, and spinach. Both dishes were well prepared and tasty, and they were vegan!

I stopped at our local Shell station to fill the fuel tank in Linda’s car and it was a little after 11 PM when we got home. We had another mouse in the trap so I took the trap to woods on the southwest part of our property and released it. Back inside I went straight to bed. It had been a long but productive and enjoyable day that ended with too much food and too much wine too late in the evening but we were glad to have had a wonderful conversation with our longest standing Michigan friends.

2015/10/30 (F) 21AA

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Linda was up and out the door at 6:15 AM. I got up an hour later, got dressed to work, and had the last banana-nut muffin and a glass of orange juice to wash down my vitamins. I turned on the fireplace and settled in to do a search for Chevron Delo 100 conventional SAE 40 motor oil. O’Reilly’s Auto Parts had it listed online and available in some of their stores locally but not the ones closest to me. I called the store in Howell and Ron checked the warehouse. The inventory showed 32 ‘units’ but he said they were packaged with three one-gallon bottles to a box. I needed 8 gallons to change the oil in the bus’s DD8V92TA engine so I ordered 3 boxes.

I thought I had heard a heavy truck earlier as I was getting dressed but did not investigate. Around 8:30 AM I heard another one and eventually the gravel hauler pulled into sight. That meant Phil was already here so I put on my coat and hat (it was chilly outside) and grabbed my camera. Phil had already spread out some of the construction fabric and the gravel hauler was backing in to the third driveway entrance to dump a load of 21AA road gravel. He pulled out, unhooked the rear trailer, backed in with the front trailer, and dumped a second load. The sun was up but low in the sky. It was brilliant, lighting up the fall colors against darker gray skies to the west but blue skies and white clouds overhead, so I snapped a few photos.

Construction fabric in place on the upper and lower portions of the driveway extension.

The gravel hauler reconnected his rear trailer, drove down the street, and turned around by backing his double trailer into the road that leads to the court. Phil had told me the driver was incredibly skilled but I was impressed watching me maneuver his tractor-trailer train. After he was gone I helped Phil (a little bit) position some of the construction fabric. The gravel train was due back in an hour with another load so Phil started up his Takeuchi front loader and started moving the large pile of gravel into place. I took a couple more photographs and then went inside to have granola for breakfast. I did not feel like making coffee so I had some Stash China Black tea with soy creamer. While the water was heating I turned up the thermostats in the bus and the garage.

While I was chatting with Phil he mentioned that he gets all of the things he needs to maintain his Peterbuilt truck and other equipment from Southwest Brake on Haas Lake Road off of Grand River Avenue. That is certainly closer than driving to W. W. Williams in Dearborn so I checked it out. I talked to Jack but he could not tell me if they had the filters I needed without part numbers to cross reference. While I was at it I Googled W. W. Williams and checked the distance to their Dearborn and Saginaw locations, which were 53 and 63 miles respectively. I also checked the website for A & L Systems in Redford, which is where I get the replacement elements for the Racor fuel filter / water separators. Before I went to any of these places, however, I checked my existing supply of filters as I try to keep these on hand.

The gravel train returned at 10:05 AM and unloaded two more trailer loads of material. I checked my stock of filters and appeared to have an oil filter, a spin on fuel filter, and two filter elements for the Racor fuel filter / water separator, but I wasn’t sure. I spent the rest of the morning checking websites and making phone calls to track down the ones that I needed.

W. W. Williams in Dearborn had the oil filter and secondary fuel filter based on our engine serial number. That’s pretty cool, and I have confidence that these relatively inexpensive, but critical, parts are the right ones for our engine and the best quality available. They could not identify the spin on coolant filter or the air filter, however. The air cleaner assembly is apparently determined by the vehicle manufacturer and the two coolant filters on our bus are threaded on to a manifold that is not part of the engine. I let Chuck know that I might be going to W. W. Williams this afternoon and he asked me to pick up 8 gallons of Detroit Diesel PowerGuard 40 weight oil for him, which I agreed to do.

I had a box in the tub where the filters were stored for a NAPA 4070 Coolant Filter / Conditioner. I found it on NAPA’s online store but it turns out that Brighton Ford is also a NAPA store so I ordered it from them for pickup tomorrow morning. They did not have the 6623 (546623) air filter and could not get one for pickup tomorrow. Their price was higher than I recalled paying for the last one, and I did not need it right away, so I did not order it.

My last call was to A & L Systems, a small company that carries specialty products for heavy trucks and construction equipment. I got our T. F. Hudgins Spinner II centrifugal oil cleaner from them but they are also a Racor dealer so I get the Racor fuel filter / water separator products from them as well. John helped me figure out what I already had, which included two replacement elements for the large water separator on the main engine that also serves as the primary fuel filter. The NAPA 2276 turned out to be the air filter for the generator. I did not ask about the filter / separator for the Aqua-Hot as I am not going to have Joe change it (I can do it myself when I have time).

At 12:30 PM I chatted briefly with Phil to let him know I was leaving. He figured he would be done placing and compacting the stone before I got back. I think he was also going to level out some of the sand he placed at the west end of the yard but I wasn’t sure about that. He still needs to bring in topsoil to fill in and grade both sides of the driveway and the low areas at the west end of the yard, but he needs the west end to dry out first.

I drove to W. W. Williams in southeast Dearborn. I bought two secondary fuel filters and two oil filters for me, and eight gallons of Detroit Diesel PowerGuard SAE 40 oil for Chuck. I then drove home. It was just under an hour each way plus my time there, so it was a big chunk out of my day, but I did not have a choice as I needed to have the filters on hand by the time Joe got here.

Phil was, in fact, gone when I got back around 3 PM. It appeared that he had finished spreading the gravel out, leveled the parking area, and driven over it with his track loader to compact it. The track loader leaves ruts from the tracks so I drove up and down the driveway many times with my car to compact them and even out the surface. It was mostly for cosmetic purposes, but it looked better and that made me feel better. I took the filters into the garage and then used one of our metal toothed rakes to even out a few remaining ridges in the gravel. When I was done I texted Chuck that I had his oil.

Linda called a little before 4 PM while I was working with the rake to let me know she had left the bakery and was stopping at Meijer’s to pick up something for dinner. I suggested we go out to dinner instead and she quickly agreed. I figured she would be at least an hour getting home with Friday rush hour traffic so I took a shower and put on my going-out clothes. Traffic was heavy, as I expected, and she was tired, so it was long, hard drive home for her, as I expected. We spent over half an hour considering our limited restaurant options without coming to a decision when Linda got a text message from Diane about walking tomorrow morning. Linda texted back to see if they wanted to have dinner at Camelia’s, the little Mexican place near their house. It took a phone call to confirm and finalize the arrangements but we agreed to meet them there at 7:30 PM.

Camelia’s is a nice little Mexican restaurant and we had a good meal over good conversation with old (long-time) friends. Linda and Diane had Margaritas while John and I had draft beers (Dos Equis, of course). Linda and I split an order of vegetarian fajitas. They were smoking hot, literally, when they came to the table and very tasty. We lingered at the restaurant until 9:30 PM. John and Diane invited us to their house, which is near the restaurant, for tea but we deferred as we were tired, had a half hour drive to get home, and had to be up at 7 AM to drive to South Lyon for breakfast with our fellow amateur radio operators.

We got home a little after 10 PM and went straight to bed. We caught a few minutes of weather and then went to sleep.

2015/08/02 (N) No Swap Sunday

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The forecast for today was for warm, humid weather so we closed up the house and turned on the air-conditioners as soon as we got up. We left around 9 AM for the Howell Farmers Market so I did not make coffee and we did not have breakfast. At the market Linda bought a nice assortment of fresh vegetables. I bought a bag of Kenya AA coffee beans from Teeko’s and some apricot and raspberry Rohlicky from the Czech Bakery. It turns out they are not vegan so I won’t buy them again.

We decided to see if John and Diane were available for dinner. We had no sooner made these arrangements when I got a text message from Chuck indicating that the coast was clear at his shop in Novi and we were good to go on the refrigerator swap. I talked to him shortly thereafter and indicated that we had assumed it would not be today so I had not yet cut the support 2x4s or found the additional help that we would need and, in light of that, had made other plans. That was fine with him and we agreed to aim for next weekend.

Linda surveyed her inventory of ingredients and decided that the warm Farro with dried cranberries and nuts would be a good dish to have Diane help make. Diane retired at the end of the school year in June and had asked Linda if she would show her some of the ingredients and prep/cooking methods she uses. Linda likes working with friends in the kitchen, sharing what she has learned and learning new things herself in the process. Diane is her longest term, non-family friend. As an English teacher she had lessons to prepare and papers to grade almost every evening. As a result John, who has worked most of his adult life as a framing carpenter, took care of preparing their evening meals. Now that Diane is free of her teaching obligations she would like to learn more about cooking.

Linda wanted some non-dairy ice cream for dessert so I was sent to get it. I went to the Home Depot in Brighton first where I bought some thin (1/8th inch thick) rubber sheet material, a small tool pouch, and 2-person forearm lift strap. The rubber material will be for the edges of the plywood in the new built-in sofa, cushioning the seat when it is closed. The tool pouch is for working on the tower (my carpenter’s tool belt is too big) and the lift strap is to help with the refrigerators and anything else heavy we might need to move.

The only place within a seven mile radius of our house that consistently has the non-diary “ice cream” we like is the Kroger on M-59 at Old US-23, so that’s where I headed next. In addition to the Coconut Bliss they had a cashew milk based product so I bought some of each. I bought vanilla and salted caramel in the CB brand and snickerdoodle in the cashew product. By the time I got home I only had a couple of hours left before John and Diane were due to arrive so I worked in my office and uploaded blog posts for June 16 – 20.

John and Diane arrived right on time at 4 PM. I opened our bottle of Viva La Roja from Heart of the Desert Winery in Alamogordo, New Mexico and we settled in to easy conversation. I found this red table wine particularly to my liking; very smooth with a hint of sweetness and no tannin.

Linda and Diane eventually started preparing dinner. John and took that as an opportunity to go look at the bus project. The ladies made a mixed greens salad with dried cranberries and other add-ins and put out a choice of dressings and sliced a loaf of Italian bread that they brought, along with a bottle of Pinot Grigio that we opened to have with the meal. The main dish was Farro with dried cranberries, almonds, onions, garlic, and kale. It was all very tasty and well received.

By the end of the meal it had cooled off enough to sit on the deck comfortably. Linda served the cashew milk snickerdoodle non-dairy ice cream with fresh sliced strawberries and it was very good. I showed them what we had done with antennas on the tower and the cable entrance box and then we went back inside. John still works full-time so they left around 9 PM as it takes at least 30 minutes to get back to their house in Farmington Hills which is about a mile from our old house.

2015/04/02 (S) SLAARC and Company

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We arrived at the Senate Coney Island before 8 AM for the weekly SLAARC breakfast. Paul (N8BHT) was already there and we were followed in closely by Steve (N8AR), Mike (W8XH), and Jim (N8HAM, the best call sign ever). Bruce (W8RA) and Linda (NF8C) came in next followed by Harvey (AC8NO) and Diane, and then Gary (WA8TJA). Others continued to come in but I lost track after that. We sit at a long, two-sided table arrangement, so you can only talk easily to the person on either side of you and the three or four people across from you. Bruce and Linda sat across from us. The two Lindas like to talk so we try to arrange the seating to make that possible when we can.

Bruce and Linda just closed on a 25 acre property in Florida that includes a very nice house with a ham radio shack and five (5) towers with antennas so that was the main topic of conversation. Bruce is also thinking about putting up a “barn” with a pad next to it for an RV so we talked about the requirements for the pad and the type/placement of the hookups. We both had coffee and Linda had her usual dry rye toast. I decided to change things up and had a dry, toasted bagel instead of my usual dry, toasted English muffin. Sometimes you just have to live on the edge.

After breakfast we went to First Merit Bank along with Harvey and Diane. Harvey is the SLAARC President, I am the VP, and Linda is the Treasurer and we are the folks currently on the account. There was an issue with the bank’s paperwork and they needed to photocopy our driver’s licenses and get our SSNs. It turned out that they also did not have the club’s EIN even though Linda and Paul, the outgoing treasurer, took care of some of this in late February. Nancy helped us and was very nice, explaining that the bank had changed its policies and procedures recently and now required more documentation than in the past. No problem, the bank is open on Saturday mornings and we are almost always in town for breakfast.

With our banking business concluded we headed towards home via Grand River Avenue. We knew from yesterday that traffic was moving through the I-96/US-23 construction zone just fine, as long as there wasn’t an accident, but we wanted to stop at Brighton Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram which is on GRA just west of US-23. We walked around the lot looking at the Jeep Wranglers, especially the Unlimiteds, and after a suitable amount of time David Wade came out and introduced himself. He showed us around, answered our questions, and gave us a nice brochure (book) and features/options guide. We liked his attitude and demeanor and left feeling comfortable with him and the dealership.

We focused in fairly quickly on the Willy’s Unlimited model as the one that we thought would best fit our needs and budget. It is similar to the Sport, which is the base trim level for the Jeep, but is available with the hardtop and, most importantly, the Rubicon heavy-duty suspension and off-road (knobby) tires. The Rubicon is the top of the line Wrangler Unlimited (4-door) but it is not just fancier in terms of electronic gizmos; it has an entirely different suspension, transfer case, and other “features” that make it the most off-road capable as delivered by the factory. We liked the copper/bronze color, as it would go nicely with the paint scheme on our bus, but I am also partial to the canary yellow as it would be the most visible if we were broken down in some remote place.

A new Jeep Wrangler Unlimited would be a big purchase for us but no more expensive than buying a used one as they appear to hold their value better than most vehicles. With a new one we can order it just the way we want it, leaving off all of the expensive upgrades we do not want/need (in-dash GPS, entertainment system, etc.) and adding only those that we do want/need (hardtop and suspension upgrade). New also means a 6-year, 100,000 mile powertrain warranty and a 3-year, 36,000 mile bumper-to-bumper warranty. David also told us that we can purchase a lifetime bumper-to-bumper warranty for about $3,000. We will obviously have to do some research on that.

We finally got home around 10:30 AM Home. Linda added a few more items to her grocery list and went to the supermarket. I started a load of laundry and then moved a lot of my “stuff” from the dining room to my office. After rearranging old stuff to make room for the new stuff I settled in at my desk to work on computer/web-based tasks.

Gary was the SLAARC webmaster before me and indicated at breakfast that he was still getting e-mails from the SLAARC reflector and asked that I remove him from the e-mail forwarding on our GoDaddy account. My focus for the last two years has been getting the WordPress website built and launched so I had never looked at this aspect of our web-hosting account. I had some familiarity with the concept, however, from the e-mail accounts that are part of our personal domain and sub-domain. It was fairly easy to figure out how to edit the existing account and add new ones. Once I was done I e-mailed all of the club members who were affected by the changes and asked them to review them. I will check for replies tomorrow and then send test messages.

I got an e-mail from Linda at BCM with the SD version of the March 2015 digital issue attached. I logged in to the website and downloaded the HD version. This issue is two months late, the latest it has been since Gary took over the magazine in October 2012, due in part to yet another change in editors that did not go smoothly. The magazine has been at least a month late for a year now and is slipping farther out rather than closing the gap. The sad reality is that the magazine does not have enough subscriber base or enough advertisers to be sustainable and Gary is not able to pay enough to get an editor who can/will put out a quality magazine once a month. But he has not shut it down yet so I will continue to work on articles. I don’t get paid for my writing and photography. It’s a hobby and I like it that way as I am not obligated to do anything and I can make my own ground rules.

John and Diane Rauch arrived at 5 PM to visit and have dinner. They are our longest/best Michigan friends and we always enjoy visiting with them. They also have two children who went to school with our kids and now have children of their own. Diane is an educator and is retiring at the end of the school year after a long career as a high school English teacher. Naturally, our conversation had to do with retirement, travels, and family.

Linda used our outdoor grill to roast marinated potatoes and cook veggie-fruit kabobs. John and Diane brought a nice Riesling from Woodcreek that we enjoyed before dinner. We opened a bottle of our 2009 Egri Merlot to serve with the meal and had Biscotti cookies and vegan chocolate “ice cream” later for dessert. Linda and Diane got a new online game configured on Linda’s iPad and got several things straightened out on Diane’s iPad. They headed for home around 10:30 PM as it’s a half hour to get back to their house which is only a few minutes from our previous home.

We stacked the dishes in the sink and left any further cleanup for tomorrow. We tried to watch the 2nd episode of the 1st season of Sherlock (PBS) but either the DVD was damaged or there is something wrong with our player. The disc was obviously scratched so that may have been the cause, but I want to rule out a defective player. We have another one in the basement that I will use to test the disc. If the player needs to be replaced new ones are relatively cheap and I will get one that can also play Blu-Ray discs.

2014/10/23-29 The Bus Work Continues

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2014/10/23 (R) Close Encounter of the 1st Kind

My two main bus projects today were the lighted handle by the entrance door and the Progressive Industries remote display installation. The lighted handle needed new machine screws and some additional gasketing on the upper securement. It turned out that all five of the screws that I removed were stripped to a greater or lesser extent. After trying several different screws I concluded that the threaded holes must be messed up. Butch loaned me a 10-24 tap and I used it to re-tap all five of the mounting holes. I cut two additional pieces of the vinyl shower pan liner and trimmed them to fit just inside the upper securement. That allowed the piece to be reattached to the body using the 10-24 stainless steel screws I bought last night without causing interference with the LED bulb.

Some time ago I bought a remote display kit for our Progressive Industries Energy Management System (EMS). The kit consists of a second display unit and a selector switch unit. I mounted the selector switch in the utility bay in place of the display unit, moved the display unit to the left, and connected it to the switch with the short cable provided in the kit. I routed the long cable from the switch through the bay to the other side by the Aqua-Hot and fed it through a small hole into the electrical bay, which is the next bay going towards the front of the coach. I temporarily mounted the remote display in the house panel. I then repeated the work I had done yesterday to relocate the Magnum inverter/charger remote. This time I used serial cable #1, removed the DB-9 connectors from each end, and connected the wires on each end. The difference from yesterday is that Progressive Industries wires their cables so that pin 1 of the RJ-11 on one end is wired to pin 1 of the RJ-11 on the other end. That meant I had to keep the wire colors the same between the two surface-mount phone jacks, i.e., black-to-black, red-to-red, green-to-green, and yellow-to-yellow, rather than cross wiring them like I did yesterday.

ITR Oasis Combi in Butch & Fonda’s MC-9.

Butch’s major focus today was the ITR Oasis Combi. He and Fonda worked for much of the day running new diesel fuel lines. By late afternoon I was done with my projects and went to work on the fresh water plumbing for the Oasis. Prior to the last couple of weeks I had not worked with PEX tubing and fittings. Butch has a crimper that he showed me how to use. By the time we quit working to have dinner we had the fresh water tank connected to the inlet of the Shur-Flo 4048 pump, the outlet of the pump connected to T-fitting that supplies cold water to the house and to the Oasis Combi inlet, and the outlet of the Combi connected to the line that supplies hot water to the house.

For dinner I fixed a salad, a Thai Kitchen mushroom noodle soup bowl, and a bowl of fresh strawberries for dessert. I took everything in the house and dined with Butch and Fonda. After dinner I went back to the coach to try and straighten things up a bit. I must have opened the cabinet door under the kitchen sink a dozen times to throw away food scraps, product packaging, and paper towels. I had bundled up the various recyclables and opened the cabinet to remove the trash bag when the mouse jumped out and ran under the passenger side couch.

I say THE mouse because I presume it is the mouse that has obviously been in the coach recently based first on getting into my loaf of bread and then finding a nest where none had been previously. It was a cute little dark gray field mouse, not more than two inches long (without its tail), but I am going to have to find a way to catch it and remove it. I will set a live (no kill) trap next week and see if I can find it a nice field to live in somewhere far away from Butch and Fonda’s house and both of our buses.

It was still in the upper 40s and rather pleasant outside so I straightened up the back of my car rather than wait until morning. After retiring to the guest bedroom I organized most of my clothes. I should be packed and on the road about an hour after I get out of bed in the morning.

2014/10/24 (F) Around the World in 80 Days

As much as I have been traveling back and forth between Michigan and Indiana I feel as if I could circumnavigate the world in 80 days but today my “journey of a thousand miles” began with a 260 mile trip home. I was up a little before 8 AM and finished packing all of my stuff in the guest bedroom and loading it into the car. I gathered up some last minute laundry, foodstuffs, and recyclables and put those in the car as well. I sat and chatted with Butch and Fonda until 9:10 AM and then said farewell until Sunday evening. I pulled my car out its normal parking spot at 9:15 AM and headed east on SR-16. I followed my usual route home from there: US-31 north to US-20 east to CR-17 north to I-80/90 (Indiana Tollroad) east to I-69 north to I-96 east to M-59 east to Hacker Road south and then home.

Hand cut gaskets for upper piece of lighted entrance handle on our coach.

Our friend Kate had contacted us yesterday to see if we were available to go to the Meadow Brook Theater to see a live theatrical performance of an adaption of Jules Vern’s Around the World in Eighty Days. Her cousin is working as an intern at the theater this season and was able to get courtesy tickets. Linda was feeling well enough to go so we left early and stopped at a Panera on the way over to the theater where we met up with Kate. The performance was very good and we thoroughly enjoyed it. We wanted to have coffee together afterwards, but by the time we met her cousin and chatted for a while it was late and everything was closed. Besides, we had an hour’s drive to get home and Kate probably had at least 90 minutes.

2014/10/25 (S) Here And There

Linda slept in to rest and try to recover from her cold so I went to the SLAARC Ham Radio Club Breakfast by myself. She was awake by the time I got back and feeling well enough to run errands with me. We stopped at Recycle Livingston and then picked up our new natural gas fireplace logs from Country Squire in Howell. We got the business card of the independent technician who does installations for them and gave them a call to set up an appointment. I left a message and they called us back later. We stopped at our Bank of America branch enroute to Staples in Brighton in search of a larger size of graph paper, but they did not have the size I wanted. I need larger paper to draw accurate designs for the custom desk/pantry and printer stand/table that we want to have made for our converted bus. We fueled up at the Brighton Meijer’s and then bought groceries. We needed a new coffee maker but decided not to purchase one until we had checked online.

Back home we searched for coffee makers in a white finish rather than black/stainless. There were only a few choices and one of them was a Mr. Coffee programmable model that was available at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. As long as we were looking for things online we found a pad of 50 sheets of 17″x22″ graph paper with a 1/4″ grid pattern and added that to our Amazon Prime shopping cart. We also added a Camco RhinoFLEX RV sewer hose kit and various accessories.

Back side of house systems panel. Bus conversions are complex.

Linda had arranged for us to meet John and Diane at Camellia’s in Farmington Hills for dinner at 6 PM. We left the house around 4 PM and stopped at the Brighton Bed, Bath, and Beyond to get the Mr. Coffee coffee maker. We stopped at the Meijer’s in Wixom and picked up the filters and then stopped at J. C. Penney’s at Twelve Oaks Mall for some necessary clothing items. We headed into Farmington Hills but were still early for dinner so we drove through our old neighborhood, which is very close to the restaurant. Our former across-the-street neighbor, Dan, was working on a car in his driveway so we stopped to chat. While we were there the young man who bought our house arrived home on his motorcycle. He never removed his helmet before putting the bike in the garage and shutting the door, so we never actually saw him. Our daughter handled the closing in July 2013 since we were in Wyoming at the time, so we never meet the buyer or his parents. He has apparently been a very quiet neighbor who keeps to himself.

We got to the restaurant shortly after 6 PM and John and Diane were already seated so we did not have to wait for a table. We had the veggie fajitas, our standard choice at this particular Mexican restaurant. While we were dining our friends, Jim and Kristine Gullen, came in and sat in a booth near us. When we were done with dinner John and Diane headed to their house (nearby) and we lingered for a few minutes to chat with Jim and Kristine before joining them. Diane had bought some Coconut Bliss Chocolate with Salted Caramel non-dairy “ice cream.” It was the best vegan ice cream we have had. By 10 PM we were all having trouble staying awake so we said farewell and headed for home and went quickly to bed.

2014/10/26 (N) Pack and Go

We both slept in this morning, the combined effect of being tired (both of us), sick (Linda), and having taken Tylenol PM last night (both of us, again). In spite of her cold, Linda wanted to cook something for me before I took off again for Indiana, so she made her wonderful vegan blueberry pancakes for breakfast. We used the new coffee maker and, as expected, the coffee tasted the same as with the old one.

After breakfast we sorted and folded laundry (we have such exciting lives) and I selected and packed the items I needed for the week ahead. I had not copied photos from my laptop to the network drives since October 10th so I took care of that. I also made more careful measurements of the dimensions of our color laser printer to use in refining the design of the printer cabinet for the bus. Likewise, I took measurements of our Dewalt air compressor as I plan to build a wooden divider for the back of the Honda Element that will secure it on the floor and create space next to it and above it for storing other things. Obviously the two rear seats will be removed when this insert is in use.

Junction boxes for the ME-ARC remote (bottom) and the PI-EMS-50 (top)in the house systems panel.

By 2 PM I was ready to load the car so Linda helped me with that task. I pulled out of the driveway at 2:16 PM and followed my usual route to Indiana: Hacker Road north to M-59 west to I-96 west to Lansing Road south to I-69 south to I-80/90 (Indiana Tollroad) to CR-17 south to US-20 west to US-31 south. I exited US-31 at IN-25 (Rochester), topped off my fuel tank and then picked up fresh greens and fruit at the Kroger. I headed south on IN-25 to Fulton where I took Aitken Road east to Meridian then headed south to SR-16 and finally headed east to Twelve Mile.

Butch and Fonda had their family holiday gathering today. They had 27 family members in attendance during the day and for dinner but by the time I arrived (7:45 PM) everyone had left except Brittiny and Rock, and they departed while I was unpacking food and storing it in the coach. I moved all of my clothes and technology into the guest bedroom, like I always do, and then visited with Butch and Fonda for a while before retiring to my room for the evening. If the weather forecast holds true we have two unseasonably nice days in store on Monday and Tuesday and the rest of the week doesn’t look too bad either. We have a lot to do and could use some favorable weather.

2014/10/27 (M) Heat and Light

We had an unseasonably nice day for working outside. It was already in the upper 40s when we got up and made it in to the 70s under partly cloudy skies with breezes from the southwest. I was up before 8 AM and had my usual granola, orange juice, and coffee for breakfast and then got to work.

Butch worked most of the day on assembling the two fan-coil heat exchanger units that will get plumbed into their ITR Oasis Combi diesel-fired hydronic furnace to provide heat to the house portion of their converted bus. While he worked on that I worked on replacing our patio light. The ballast on the old one was no longer working and the way the unit was designed it could not be replaced. Butch happened to have an identical unit, so I used it as the replacement.

Old patio light fixture after being removed from the side of the coach. Not pretty.

The old unit was not removed from the coach when it was painted. This was a nice idea at the time as it provided a paint seal on the top and both sides where the unit met the side wall of the bus. Unfortunately, removing the unit required me to cut the paint seal with a very sharp knife. The unit was secured with two screws, but it was stuck to the side of the coach with a generous amount of automotive putty. Most of it came off with the fixture, but not all, so after I cut the two wires and removed the fixture I had to carefully scrape the rest of it off using the thin end of a wood shim.

I checked the voltage at the two wires coming out of the wall and I definitely had 13 VDC controlled by the same switch that turns the lighted entrance handle on and off. I prepared the back of the new fixture using new automotive putty to create a seal all the way around the back at the outside edges. I also placed a ring of putty around each of the screw holes in the back and the access hole for the wires. I attached shielded spade lug disconnects to all four wires, held the fixture in place, and connected them. I pressed the fixture into position, lined up the screw holes, and secured it. I put the two F8T5 florescent tubes back in, snapped the cover back in place, and made sure the on/off pushbutton switch on the bottom was in the on position. I then applied a bead of NAPA RTV Black Silicon Rubber sealant along the top seam and the two sides. (Sorry Michele, but I had to make sure it was not going to leak.)

The switch that controls this light is one of three in a 3-gang box next to the passenger seat and is the one closest to the entrance door. I had removed the cover plates last week so today I took another look and it appeared that the other two switches did not have any wires connected to them. I removed them and that was indeed the case. I think tomorrow I will re-wire this so the first switch controls only the lighted entrance handle and the second switch controls only the patio light. If I cannot figure out something to control with the third switch I will probably leave it out and get a new cover plate that has two switch openings and a blank, assuming I can find one.

With the patio light project done Fonda helped me remove the fan belt and the two A-C compressor drive belts from the engine in our bus. We put the two compressor drive belts (NAPA CG-96) back on but reversed their position. The inside one seemed loose compared to the outside one last week and we wanted to see if switching them would fix that problem. We then installed the new fan belt that I ordered/received last week.

I started the main engine and let it run for a while on high idle with the air-conditioning turned on to put some load on it. The CG-96 that was now on the outside of the pulley still appeared to be looser than the other one, so I think I will order a replacement set. The new fan belt ran very smoothly. I turned the A-C off, dropped the idle down, and shut off the engine. I started to close the rear access hatch but found that it was stiff and made a sound like an elephant trumpeting. I sprayed some WD-40 on all the hinges and on the piston rods for the air springs. I then put a small amount of NAPA Syl-Glide on the piston rods, worked them up and down a few times, and wiped off any excess. The hatch now opens and closes smoothly and quietly with less effort.

Butch pressure washing the radiators for his fan coil heat exchangers. MC-9 (L) and H3-40 (R).

While I was lubricating the hatch Butch was using a pressure washer to clean the radiators (heat exchangers) for their fan-coil units. As long as he had it out, he sprayed around all of our front windshield seals while I looked for leaks inside. We found three for sure. One was in the upper inside corner of the lower driver-side windshield between the center pillar and the seal. The second one was in the lower outside corner of the upper driver-side windshield between the seal and the glass. We were not able to identify the point(s) of entry for the third one but it appeared to be somewhere above the upper windshields near the center pillar, a least that was where the water was coming in on the inside. I cannot see the underside of the front cowling in that area and there are lots of places water could come in: five front marker lights, two upper windshield mounts, and perhaps a dozen screws on top of the front roof holding various things down.

Leaks are annoying and potentially destructive so I am still pondering what I want to do. We have new windshield seals but have had trouble finding someone locally to install them. For one thing, the bus really needs to be inside for that work and most glass shops, including ones that work on “semi tractors,” do not have overhead doors high enough for the bus. I may make judicious use of the NAPA RTV Silicone Rubber sealant or I may just use black tape as a temporary fix.

When we were done checking the windshields I used the pressure washer to clean off the coach as best I could. The last time it was cleaned was right before we left Williston Crossings RV Resort in early April and it had accumulated a few miles, bugs, and dirt in that time.

Because the weather was so nice Butch decided to replace a short section of badly deteriorated coolant hose on their engine rather than risk having it fail on the road. He shut some valves to isolate the engine from the coolant lines that provide heat to the coach and drained quite a few gallons out of the engine (almost three 5-gallon buckets). The old hose turned out to be extraordinarily difficult to remove. The new piece was no easier to get in and required modification of two parts. This was definitely not a job you want to do on the side of the road in any kind of weather.

While Butch and Fonda worked on the coolant hose I tinkered in the dashboard area of my bus. First I replaced a couple more bulbs in illuminated switches. I then pulled the CB radio out of the dash to see how the coaxial cable (transmission line) was marked. That allowed me to identify the other end in the old ceiling-mounted TV cabinet behind the driver’s seat. I also looked around in that cabinet for the other end of the coaxial cable that was once connected to the antenna for in-dash AM/FM radio/cassette/CD player. I did not see anything that looked right, so I pulled the radio out of the dash (actually the whole panel along with four switches) to get the identifying marks off of it. Even with that information I was not able to locate the other end of the cable.

Working on the bus and living in the bus are often not compatible.

By that point it was 6 PM and we had weather approaching from the southwest. Clouds had moved in, greatly reducing our natural light, and gave the first indications of the rain that was forecast for the evening hours. I will look again for the radio antenna cable tomorrow as I have a TuneTrapper antenna that I want to install on the underside of the front roof via the old TV cabinet and I need to plug it into the cable that goes to the radio.

I had a small glass of Moscato while I prepared my dinner. I fixed a salad of power greens with peanuts, dried cranberries, and fresh diced onions and finished a bottle of Ken’s Sweet Vidalia Onion dressing. I grabbed a can of Amy’s “No Chicken Noodle” soup, some crackers, my jar of peanut butter, and some ICE brand water and went inside to eat with Butch and Fonda. I returned to the coach after dinner, cleaned up my dishes from the day, and bagged up my recyclables. We bought a small container on Saturday that is intended for storing pet food but it has a gasketed lid with a snap latch that I thought would make a nice mouse-proof kitchen trash can. (I figure the mouse will leave if it cannot get any food.) Alas, the container does not fit in the base cabinet under the kitchen sink so it will likely end up being used for its intended purpose after all.

2014/10/28 (T) Under the Bus

In corporate life “getting thrown under the bus” is not a good thing, but if you are the owner/builder/maintainer of a converted highway coach, getting under the bus will eventually be a necessity. Today was finally my day, but not until mid-afternoon.

The forecast for today was for rain in the morning tapering off to zero by noon and then turning sunny; and that is exactly the day we had. Knowing that the morning would be wet, I took a couple of Tylenol PM last night and slept in a bit later than normal. After my usual breakfast of granola, orange juice, and coffee, with some spicy V8 thrown in for good measure, I set to work on the interior of the old TV cabinet located above and behind the driver’s seat.

Yesterday I pulled the CB radio and the AM/FM radio out of the dashboard and identified how the coaxial antenna cable for each one was marked. I located the cable for the CB in the TV cabinet but was not able to find the one for the AM/FM radio. I got my twin tube florescent worklight and rigged up a couple of zip ties with mounting tabs to hang it from. I looked again this morning but still could not locate the AM/FM radio antenna cable. Rather than waste time not finding it I decided to organize the inside of the cabinet which has had an outlet strip, an OTA TV antenna controller, the Wi-Fi Ranger POE adapter, DC power supplies, and a mess of cable that has been lying around in it for a couple of years now.

Using the tab mount zip ties I coiled each cable and secured it to one of the two side walls. The OTA TV antenna cable (signal and control) was very long, so I wound it around a 5-gallon plastic bucket to make a nice round, large coil. The outlet strip had mounting slots on the back, so I mounted it to the wall on the lower half of the back of the cabinet. The upper half of the back is open to the area above the driver and entrance stairs and under the front cap of the roof.

Late in the morning I took a break from the TV cabinet work and helped Butch cut access panels out of a 1/8″ aluminum sheet that will cover the inside of their entrance door. We tried using a sabre saw but the only blade we had was not sharp enough or was the wrong type. We used his Ryobi cordless reciprocating saw with a metal cutting blade and it made much quicker, and surprisingly clean, cuts. I then used Butch’s angle grinder to round the corners of the sheet and remove burrs from all of the cut edges.

I stopped for lunch around 2 PM and enjoyed a hummus and onion sandwich. By the time I was done the day was as warm and sunny as it was going to get so I decided to scoot under the bus and measure the ride height linkages. This was the first time I have been under the bus. Please note that the bus was supported on four stands that Butch made for me out of 1/2″ steel plate and 4″ square steel tube with 1/2″ thick walls. In other words, the bus was not supported by the tires and air springs so the bus would not move if there was a failure in one of those components.

H3-40 front axle ride height valve and linkage.

The linkage in the front was easy as I could slide under the bus just in front of the driver side steer tire and then sit up between the front tires with lots of room to work. The linkage is directly above the center of the front axle and connects the axle to a lever arm on an air valve that determines the amount of air that goes into the front airbags (when in drive mode), and thus sets the suspension at “ride height.” Butch wanted me to remove the linkage but I chose not to. As it turned out I should have and will probably slide back under the front tomorrow and remove it.

The rear linkages were much more difficult. First of all, there are two on them, one for each end of the drive axle. They are located just inside the body panel directly in front of the outside dual drive tire and are covered by a protective shield. The shields are bolted on at four points, none of which are easy to reach and one of which ultimately required me to get under the rear end of the bus. Access is much tighter here because of: 1) The dual drive tires on each end of the drive axle; 2) The drive axle carrier, and; 3) The exhaust pipe for the Aqua-Hot which runs under the bus from the passenger side to the driver side where it ends up next to the exhaust pipe from the generator. I was able to scoot under the bus from the passenger side just in front of the drive tires, but just barely, and once I was under far enough to sit up there was much less room to work compared to the front. Because of the difficulty of getting to the linkages to make an accurate measurement of the center-to-center distance between the mounting bolts I went ahead and unbolted them and removed them.

The linkages consist of a length of metal rod approximately 1/4” in diameter with a rubber bushing on each end that looks a bit like and eye-bolt. The rubber bushings slip over the ends of the metal rods and are secured with band clamps. They appear surprisingly fragile given the critical nature of their function, and Butch has already had one that was only a couple of year’s old break on their coach. He ordered metal versions in both left-hand and right-hand threads and is going to assemble replacements using threaded rod and stop nuts. With a left-hand threaded bushing on one end and a right-hand threaded bushing on the other end we will be able to turn the threaded rod one way to increase the distance between the two mounting bolts and the other way to shorten it, affecting both ends equally in the process. The stop nuts will lock the bushings relative to the threaded rod so they do not move in operation. All-in-all this will be a neat little project.

In spite of the lovely weather Butch needed to get to the NAPA store in Logansport before they closed at 5:30 PM. At 4:30 PM I wrapped up my work with the linkages, put all of my tools away, washed up, and grabbed my wallet, cell phone, and shopping list. We got to the NAPA store a little after 5 PM and took care of our business there. We then headed to the O’Reilly’s Auto Parts store for a few other things. I called Linda and chatted briefly with her and was relieved to hear that she sounded, and was feeling, considerably better. Butch called Jaral Beatty to see if he had finished cutting the oak valences for the front of their bus. He had, so we swung by Jaral’s shop to pick them up.

Front flat-panel TV/monitor with cabinet door closed. Look ma, no wires!

While we were at Jaral’s he ripped a nice piece of 3/4″ thick oak for me to just under 3″ wide. The piece was about 4′ long and he did not charge me for it. I plan to attach this piece of wood to the center windshield pillar and use it as a mounting plate for a compass, flat panel monitor, PressurePro TPMS receiver, and the mirror that is currently mounted at the intersection of the four windshields. I have to do this, of course, in such a way that it does not obscure my vision while driving. From Jaral’s shop we went to Home Depot where I bought a thin (1″ thick), 13″ long, under-cabinet, single-tube florescent, AC powered light fixture. I also got a blade for my Porter-Cable oscillating saw.

When we got back to Twelve Mile a little after 7 PM Fonda started preparing their dinner and I did the same. I had a nice salad of power greens with onions, dried cranberries, and roasted peanuts topped with a sweet and sour dressing. I also had a bowl of Thai Kitchen spring onion soup, some canned pears, and half a piece of pita pocket bread. After dinner I washed my recyclable containers and went back to the coach for a while where I cleaned and dried a few utensils. I then mounted the new light fixture in the TV cabinet. As I expected, it provides very nice illumination for the entire inside of the cabinet.

Depending how the day goes tomorrow I plan to continue working in the front TV cabinet. I would like to mount the TuneTrapper AM/FM antenna and get it connected to the AM/FM radio. Butch’s brother, Tom, is coming over sometime during the day to winterize his motorhome. Butch called and asked him to bring the faceplate from an old Kenwood radio that he had that was very similar to the one in our dashboard. The backlight illumination bulb is burned out on ours. I also need to create an access slot in the door for cables to pass between the back of the flat panel TV (which is mounted to the outside of the door) and the inside of the cabinet. To create this access slot I will have to drill holes centered along a line and then use Butch’s root-zip tool to connect the holes into a slot. The bushings for the ride height linkages are supposed to be in tomorrow, so we will be making a morning trip towards Kokomo to pick them up. Butch is also trying to tap into the engine coolant loop that provides OTR heat for their bus as part of the Oasis Combi installation, so it is likely to be a very full day.

2014/10/29 (W) Outside In

My main project today was once again the front TV cabinet only this time the focus was on cutting a horizontal opening in the door behind the flat panel TV that is mounted on the outside of the door. The approach I used was to drill two 1″ holes, one at either end of a horizontal line, and then use a roto-zip tool as a mini-router to connect the tops of the holes together and the bottoms of the holes together, creating a horizontal slot with rounded ends. The slot is below the horizontal center line of the TV set and offset to the left (as viewed from the front of the TV) to line up with the area on the back of the set where the power, video, and data cables exit downward. The position of the slot allows them to gently bend and pass from the outside of the cabinet to the inside of the cabinet where they get connected. This also allows the cabinet door to be closed and latched with none of the cables visible. It sounds simple but it took me a good part of the day to get it done. We have a second flat panel TV in the bedroom mounted on a similar door that covers another old TV cabinet. Cutting a similar slot in that door is on my task list for tomorrow.

Front TV cabinet; making use of the space where the 10″ CRT was mounted.

When I wasn’t working on the TV cabinet I spent a few minutes learning how to use an air-powered cutoff tool and giving Butch a break by using it to help cut off a piece of the center tunnel sidewall in their passenger side front bay. Butch is removing this panel in order to gain access to the engine coolant lines that provide heat for the bus when it is underway. He needs to tie a stacked-plate heat exchanger into these lines as part of the ITR Oasis Combi hydronic heating system installation.

Butch spent most of his day working on their Suburban installing a Ready-Brake auxiliary braking system and extra rear lights for towing. I checked in with him from time to time, but he was either in the middle of one-person tasks or had Fonda helping him. Late in the afternoon we rolled his Ryobi belt sander out of the warehouse and used it to sand his two valence boards and my piece of oak that we picked up yesterday from Jarel. We had to change the sanding belt and it took us a few tries to get it right, but it did a nice job on the boards once we had a good piece of sandpaper on it.

By the time we finished it was twilight and very cool. Tom and Tracy showed up about then to winterize their motorhome. There was a locked cover over the fresh water fill connector and none of Tom’s keys would open it. I got a long flat-blade screwdriver and was able to slip it up under the cover and pop the lock. I left the winterizing to Butch and Tom and retreated to my coach to putter and contemplate (and eat) at a lovely 67 degrees F. The Aqua-Hot has been working very reliably, cycling on and off automatically in response to the space and water heating demands of the coach.

Tom brought an old Kenwood car stereo that he got from Butch a while back. Although similar in appearance to our Kenwood dashboard radio, it was not similar enough. The electrical connector on the back of the removable faceplate was in a different location than ours. I had a Singapore Noodles dish in the coach and then made a salad to take into the house and dine with Butch and Fonda. It was after 9 PM by the time we were done eating and I turned in for the night shortly thereafter.

2014/08/30 (S) By All Accounts

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We went to the weekly SLAARC breakfast this morning. We stopped on the way back to the house to get a food processor. I shut down my ASUS laptop PC, packed it for travel, and headed for Mike’s (W8XH) QTH; the first time it has been out of the house since I bought it at the end of April.

I worked with Mike on the new SLAARC WordPress website, walking him back through the process of creating photo galleries. He then uploaded pictures from the 2014 Field Day event, added captions to some of them, and created photo galleries.

I was going to create user accounts, but that turned out to still be a bit premature. In showing Mike around the site we discovered that the home page login widget for the WP-Members plug-in was not working correctly. It was last night, but that was before I installed the Global Hide Admin Toolbar plug-in. Suspecting a minor incompatibility (although the site did not crash, thank goodness) I had to engineer a work-around. The problem and solution turned out to be multifaceted.

One aspect of the problem was that we needed to remove the WP-Members widget from the Home screen, but it was the only place where a logged in user could log out. Another aspect of the problem was the realization that users would have to click on one of the pages in the Member Only Area to get a login screen that would actually log them into the site and allow them to navigate wherever they wanted.

One facet of the solution was to create a new page that would appear at the right hand end of the main menu bar and place the WP-Members widget on that page. It was not immediately obvious to me how to do this, or if we even could, but I eventually figured it out. That provided something on the main menu bar, which remains visible at all times, where users can go to logout. (They should also be able to log in there, but it’s the same widget that didn’t work correctly on the Home page.)

The other facets of the solution involved editing the e-mail that gets sent to a new user when their account is created and editing the User’s Guide, both of which describe the login and logout procedure. As long as I had to create and upload a new version of the User’s a Guide, I decided to put the link on its own page so it would show up in the menu structure and be easier for members to find. I did the same thing with the links to the official club roster documents. Adding those two page then required me to edit two pages to remove the old links. As the saying goes “it’s a process.”

Mike was still creating photo galleries so I drafted a notification e-mail for him to send to the members and sent it to him. He had to leave to run an errand right after I left and planned to deal with sending the e-mail later that evening. I will wait at least 24 hours after he sends it before I start creating user accounts.

I was back home in time to relax and work on this post before John and Diane arrived around 5 PM to visit and have dinner. They brought a salad that Diane made and two bottles of wine; a sweet Shiraz that was unusual but delightful, and a more traditional Cabernet Sauvignon. Linda made a penne pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and mushrooms, and made Italian bread from scratch. She also made the chilled no-bake double chocolate torte for dessert. It was so good everyone had a second piece.

Diane now has an iPad Mini and Linda spent time with her after dinner helping her configure some things. They also managed to get connected through the iMessage feature. Storms rolled in around 9 PM and we had brief periods of heavy rain and diffuse lightning all around. There was a lull in the weather just before 11 PM so they gathered up their things and hit the road. I cleared the table and Linda loaded the dishwasher. She started it and then we were off to bed, tired from a long but very satisfying day.

The Phase Place

Welcome to the next phase (hosted by QTH.com)

Tag Archives: John & Diane Rauch

2016/04/21-25 (R–M) Bad Brakes & More

2015/11/14 (S) Tiling the Cockpit, #1

2015/10/30 (F) 21AA

2015/08/02 (N) No Swap Sunday

2015/04/02 (S) SLAARC and Company

2014/10/23-29 The Bus Work Continues