Tag Archives: Michele Henry (Phoenix Paint)

2016/01/26-31 (T-N) Coming Off The Road

Leave a reply

2016/01/26 (T) Filter Me This

The low temperature overnight was forecast to be 50 degrees F.  That’s good sleeping weather for us, so we left several windows open and did not need the furnace and I did not turn on the heater pad on the bed.

As I have written the last couple of days I have not been feeling quite right.  This morning I had a productive cough.  That is never a good thing but it is better than having stuff in my lungs that won’t come out.  I was feeling better today so perhaps I am finally kicking out whatever it is that got hold of me.

I made our morning coffee and used up the last of the current batch of coffee beans.  We have used six pounds of coffee in the last 60 days; a pound every 10 days on average.  We left home with eight pounds of coffee from Teeko’s; two pounds each of four different beans/blends packaged in 1/2 pound vacuum sealed bags.  I blend pairs of beans in equal proportion when I grind them to make our daily half-caffe morning coffee.  We have four 1/2 pound bags left, which will carry us for about 20 more days at our current rate of consumption.  We have been vacillating about whether to order more beans from Teeko`s but decided today that we probably should, and do so relatively soon.

The entrance to Gold Tree MH community in Bradenton, Florida where our friends, Ed and Betty Burns, bought a place after they came of the road as full time RVers of many years.

The entrance to Gold Tree MH community in Bradenton, Florida where our friends, Ed and Betty Burns, bought a place after they came of the road as full time RVers of many years.

Breakfast was our usual, but always scrumptious, granola and fresh blueberries with orange/grapefruit juice.  After breakfast Linda spent some time trying to get in touch with someone from the Florida Sunpass (toll road) system but was unable to ever speak to an actual human being.  We have a Sunpass transponder in our Honda Element from two years ago and have a Sunpass account to go with it.  Unfortunately, we did not record the details of that account in our password app and have been unable to access the account to see if it is still active, has a credit balance, or to add money.  Up to this point we have not needed to use the Florida toll roads, but eventually we will.  She finally got frustrated, sent an e-mail to their contact address, and then went for a walk

When she returned from her stroll, Linda busied herself with her counted crisis-stitch project.  Last night she made arrangements for us to visit SE Florida and the Florida Keys.  She zeroed in on February 9, 10, and 11 and confirmed that Mara was willing/able to take care of our cats while we were away.  After looking at various options we decided that we wanted to use Homestead, Florida as a base from which to explore the area.  One reason was that the prices for lodging in Marathon were $200+ per night and in Key West $400+ per night.  We are not late night party animals, so we did not need to spend that kind of money just to have a place we could stumble home to in the middle of the night.

 

The best price she found for a hotel was a well-rated Travel Lodge in Homestead for $109 per night but Trivago would not let her specify a non-smoking room.  The Travel Lodge website clearly showed both smoking and non-smoking rooms so we were not about to risk ending up in a smoking room.  The next best deal was for a non-smoking room in a Hampton Inn for $160 per night, which includes breakfast.  We have always liked Hampton Inns and as a bonus they did not have a reservation cancellation fee.  She booked us for the three nights.

Our plan is to leave early on the 9th and visit Everglades National Park via the Homestead entrance.  We will then check in to the Inn late in the afternoon.  On the 10th we will leave early and drive through the Keys, seeing what there is to see along the way, and eventually arriving in Key West.  We will get a taste of the Conch Republic but leave in time to get back to the Inn in Homestead at a reasonable hour.  On the 11th we might return to Everglades National Park and/explore other things in the area.  We will probably sleep in on the 12th, enjoy the complimentary breakfast (as much of it as we can eat), and then check out and head back to Arcadia.

While Linda was walking and working on her project I edited seven more blog posts.  Late morning I took a break to finish the regeneration of the water softener.  I removed the clear housing from the pre-filter housing attached to the inlet on the water softener, removed the diverter tube and flat washer, and returned them to the plastic zip lock bag I store them in.  I put the opaque blue housing back on without a filter element inside and ran water through the tank to flush out any remaining salt brine.  I tested the water coming out of softener and it was at 1.5 gpg.  That was a very discouraging result given that I just used almost 52 ounces of table salt to regenerate it.  In the 3-1/2 years we have owned this water softener I have only once successfully regenerated the softener back to zero (0) grains per gallon.  Overall it has been a disappointing purchase.

It was time to replace the sediment filter ahead of the softener and the carbon filter going into the fresh water tank but we did not bring spare cartridges with us.  I took a minute to take several pictures of the caulk that is peeling loose from our new passenger side lower windshield and attached one to a text message to Chuck Spera which resulted in a brief exchange.  I then took the car and went on an errand run.

My first stop was Walmart where I found a pair of 5 micron 10″ sediment filter cartridges, a pair of 10″ charcoal wrapped taste and odor whole house filter cartridges, two 48 ounce boxes of coarse Kosher salt for future regenerations, and a bag of animal crackers.  (I checked the label and they did not contain animal products)

My next stop was the local NAPA Auto Parts Store.  They had small tubes of silicone adhesive caulk, both black and clear, but I did not buy any at this time.  My next stop was the local Shell station where I topped up the fuel tank.  I then moved the car next door to the Dunkin Donuts and got a frozen mocha latte made with almond milk.  It was warm today and I wanted a treat.

Back at our coach I measured our windshield wipers and then e-mailed Brenda Phelan the dimensions so she can send us the correct sun covers along with the tire covers we ordered from her and Bill at the Tampa RV Supershow.  With that done I contacted Florida Grande Motor Coach Resort near Webster, Florida to see if we could take advantage of their 2-for-1 special and stay two weeks for the weekly rate.

Our current departure date from Big Tree RV Resort in Arcadia is March 7th.  Florida Grande was able to take us starting on that date for two weeks so I made the reservation.  The resort is south of Ocala and The Villages, north of Bushnell, northeast of Brooksville, northwest of Lakeland, and west of Orlando, so it is centrally situated to a part of the state where we can easily spend two weeks exploring and touching base with some friends in the area.

With Florida Grande in hand I pulled up the website for Jetty Park Beach and Campground at Port Canaveral on Cape Canaveral.  We were hoping that we could get in there when we left Florida Grande.  Our GLCC friends, Pat and Vickie Lintner, moved to Jetty Park when they left Fort Wilderness at Disney World in mid-February.  They have done this every year for at least the last six years.  I visited them there two years ago after dropping Linda at the Orlando airport, so I know it’s a nice little park in a unique location and an ideal place to explore Florida’s Space Coast.

The Jetty Park online reservation system indicated that no sites of the type we wanted (full hookup) were available starting on March 21st but said to call or e-mail the office.  I knew from my conversations with Pat and Vickie that the park campground was extremely popular with repeat visitors who book their reservations a year in advance.  They had also told me that folks occasionally cancel reservations but if I called and checked repeatedly we might be able to get in.

I got an answering machine and left my name, cell phone number, and the dates we were interested in.  I got a call back a short time later from Scott.  He was able to put us on a site for one night on March 21st at the daily rate, and a different sight for seven nights starting on the 22nd, which qualified for the weekly rate.  Sold.

Jetty Park is a bit more expensive than what we normally like to spend for camping but it is on the Atlantic Ocean between the Kennedy Spaceflight Center and Cocoa Beach.  It is also on the south shore of the channel that separates the park from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and the Spaceflight facility as well as and a U. S. Navy submarine base.  If you are there at the right time submarines can be viewed as they are going into or out of the base.  The Port/channel is used heavily by cruise ships, including the Disney Cruise Lines.  If the timing is right, rocket launches can also be viewed from there, up close and personal.  I was lucky enough to see a military satellite launch when I was there two years ago.  My recollection is that it was me and about 10,000 other people, not only in the park but lining the access roads for miles to the west.  I remember thinking then that it would be much better to be camped at Jetty Park Campground than fighting this traffic after the launch.  Indeed, I crashed (no pun intended) on Pat and Vickie’s sofa for 90 minutes until the traffic dissipated and then drove back to Williston Crossings.

I e-mailed Pat and Vickie to let them know we got into Jetty Park Campground and give them the dates.  We hope they will still be there for at least part of our stay but even if they have already moved on there is way more to do in the area than we can experience in one week.  I then e-mailed Ed Roelle and Bruce/Linda Whitney to update them on our travel plans.

With all of that accomplished I returned to working on our water system.  I use a sediment filter cartridge in the first housing, which I removed and replaced with the 5 micron cartridge I bought earlier at Walmart.  I then unscrewed the housing that is mounted inside the water bay.  I had to use my large slip pliers since the filter wrench could not be positioned properly to turn it far enough to loosen the housing.  The element that was in there was a specialized cartridge that I bought it in Quartzsite, Arizona this past winter.  It was more expensive than most and my recollection is that it contained some silver and had a very small micron rating.  We have a 0.5 micron drinking water filter that filters for five different things including cysts, lead, and VOCs, so a whole house carbon wrapped filter on the water input to the coach fresh water tank should be more than adequate.

We went for a walk and stopped at the activity building.  We were expecting a package from Amazon tomorrow but Pat, one of the resort managers, flagged us down to let us know it arrived today.  We picked it up from the office and carried it back to the coach.  It was 15 pounds of the Science Diet Sensitive Skin and Stomach cat food, which we could not find locally.

For dinner Linda made sautéed kale with garlic and turmeric and vegan quesadillas with Daiya cheddar cheese.  Red grapes rounded out the meal, which was simple but delicious.  We went for another walk after dinner and then settled in to watch our Tuesday evening TV shows.  All of the shows were repeats that did not require our full attention, so Linda worked on puzzles and I worked on this post.

2016/01/27 (W) Rained In

The rain started around 2 this morning and intensified through the 4 AM hour before tapering off and ending, temporarily, around 7 AM.  We awoke at 7:45 AM and realized it was Wednesday.  The weekly coffee at Big Tree Carefree RV Resort (BTCRVR) is Wednesday at 8 AM so we got dressed quickly, grabbed our complimentary coupon, and walked over.  As with the last time we went, the place was packed with no seats available as the “regulars” had all arrived at 7:30 AM.  They were out of regular coffee so we both filled our travel mugs with what was left of the decaf.  We decided not to stay for the announcements and door prize drawings and walked back to our coach.

The weather forecast was for the rain to resume late morning and continue until dinner time tomorrow so Linda decided to get a long walk in before the rain returned.  While she was out I used my computer to upload two more blog posts.  My goal is to get 5 to 7 of them uploaded each day, but after doing two I tired of the task.  I don’t feel sick, but I am still coughing stuff up occasionally and I feel a little tired, which I attribute to fighting off whatever ailment I have developed.  Jasper, our 11 year old male mackerel tabby cat, started sneezing yesterday and the sneezing became more frequent today.  He is eating and drinking, and does otherwise appear to be out of sorts, but we will have to keep an eye on him.

Mid-morning I phoned Teeko’s Coffee and Teas back home and ordered eight (8) pounds of custom roasted coffee beans, two pounds each of four different things, to be vacuum packed in 1/2 pound bags.  I ordered Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, both regular and decaffeinated, Seattle Blend (caffeinated), and Sweet Dreams, a decaffeinated blend.  When I grind the beans just before making our coffee I mix the Yirgacheffe beans 50/50 or I mix the Seattle Blend and Sweet Dreams 50/50 to make Sweet Seattle Dreams.  The Yirgacheffe is a single bean coffee, smooth and pure, whereas the Sweet Seattle Dreams is a blend of many beans and is slightly more complex in flavor.  We like both so I usually alternate between them from day to day.

We left home the day after Thanksgiving Day with eight pounds of the same assortment of beans.  At our current rate of consumption of one pound every 10 days our current supply of beans should get us to mid-February, approximately 80 days from when we left to head south for the winter.  The new beans will be shipped USPS and should be here in 7 to 10 days.

That was the last thing I did of any note for the rest of the day.  We were socked in by the weather since we chose not to walk in the rain.  Linda worked on her counted cross-stitch project and I took a nap.  I eventually got up and played games on my iPad while she took a nap.  I laid down a second time and flipped through the various local OTA TV news and weather stations but did not fall asleep.  Rainy days are good for that, especially when there isn’t anything else I feel like doing.  Eventually Linda made dinner which was a bit of work.  She made mujadara, a brown lentil and basmati rice dish with cumin, cayenne pepper, and cinnamon, topped with caramelized onions.  It was very good.

After dinner we watched the PBS Newshour, which is providing reasonably intelligent coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign and the upcoming Iowa Caucuses.  We then watched our usual Wednesday evening PBS nature and science programs.  Linda went to bed at 10 PM but I stayed up until midnight to watch Charlie Rose, which I consider to be one of the most intelligent shows on television.  I went to bed to the pitter-patter sound of rain lightly falling on the roof of our coach and drifted off to sleep.

2016/01/28 (R) Bloody Nose

The rain continued overnight into this morning and intensified between 4 and 6 AM.  I was awake off and on starting at 3 but awake to stay by 7.  We both got up at 7:30.

Jasper, our make cat, started sneezing occasionally a couple of days ago and was sneezing more frequently yesterday and into the evening.  We awoke this morning to find blood spattered on the living room floor and a couple of spots on the captain’s chair nearest to the desk.  It appeared that Jasper was probably sleeping in that chair when he had to sneeze.  We were able to clean all of the blood off of the tile and get the spots out of the chair fabric.

Before I could make our morning coffee I had to open the last four vacuum-packed bags of coffee beans and transfer them to the airtight stainless steel storage canisters.  While I did that, and then ground the beans and prepared the brewer, Linda researched sneezing and bloody noses in cats.  (She is our Google queen.)  Based on what she found, he almost certainly has an upper respiratory infection, but beyond that it’s hard to say.  He is eating and drinking, which is good, and his behavior has not changed as far as we can tell, which is also good. (He’s an 11 year old cat and normally sleeps more than he is awake.)

The rain quit by 8 AM but it was solidly overcast.  The chance of precipitation through lunch time was only 15% but jumped back up to 30% at 1 PM.  Juniper, our 7-1/2 year old female cat, seems to be just fine and climbed up in Linda’s lap where she likes to be whenever possible.  While we drank our coffee Linda used her iPad to check in on the world and play a few games, while I used mine to finish up yesterday’s blog post and start on today’s post.

I decided to call the veterinarian’s office at 9 AM and see if we needed to bring Jasper in.  They said we probably should and scheduled an appointment for 12:30 PM.

We had granola for breakfast and then got dressed.  I settled in at the desk and worked on blog posts for the rest of the morning.  The rain was forecast to continue through the day and into the evening before finally clearing out of the area by midnight.  There was a bit of a lull during the morning, during which Linda walked over to the dumpster with our small daily bag of kitchen trash and then got in a long walk before returning to our coach.  Once she got back Linda worked on her counted cross-stitch project.

We put Jasper in his carrier at 12:15 PM and drove the short distance to Desoto Veterinary Services where Dr. McNulty checked him over.  His lungs were clear and his heart was strong and normal, but his temperature was elevated slightly.  Doc gave him a shot of a multi-acting antibiotic and antibacterial nasal drops.  The drops were actually ophthalmological, but he pointed out that anything designed to work in the eyes will also work in the nasal/sinus area as that is where fluids from the eyes end up via the drainage tubes.

As long as Jasper was there Dr. McNulty scarped some tartar off of his teeth.  I had never seen this done on a cat that had not been anesthetized but Jasper tolerated it quite well.  Linda said she had seen our vet back home, Dr. Carron, do this before.  In addition to the bill for today’s services we purchased six more doses of Cheristin flea medication.  That will cover both cats for February, March, and April until we get home.  We will switch them back to Revolution as we still have quite a supply of it and it also protects against heartworm.

Before returning to the RV resort we drove to the Turner Agri-Civic Center to drop off our plastic recyclables.  By the time we got back to the coach it was starting to rain again.  Jasper was glad to be back in the coach and out of his carrier and we glad to be snug in our home-on-wheels and out of the rain.

We had a bite of lunch and I resumed editing blog posts but was struggling to maintain my concentration and interest, so I took a nap.  When I got up I checked e-mail and had a reply from Pat and Vickie Lintner.  They will be at Jetty Park Beach and Campground at least through the end of March so we will get to hang out with them while we are there.

Late afternoon I had a call from Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint.  We chat occasionally but this call was promoted by a visit to our website where she noticed that my latest blog post was from early October 2015.  She was wondering if I had stopped blogging or if we had, perhaps, stopped traveling.  The answers were ‘no’ and ‘no’, of course, but that was just an opening to a conversation, not the end of one.

For dinner Linda made tortilla wraps with BBQ pan-seared tofu and caramelized onion and served a side of corn and edamame.  I really like this way of preparing tofu but it is messy.  I have come to the conclusion that my favorite way to have it is wrapped in a soft, warm tortilla.  It’s tasty, and helps contain the mess.

After dinner we tuned in the PBS Newshour for our daily dose of presidential campaign nonsense and analysis.  We then watched our usual Thursday night CBS TV programs for a brief escape from the bizarre reality of American politics.

Ed & Betty’s place at Gold Tree MH community in Bradenton, Florida with our car in the driveway.

Ed & Betty’s place at Gold Tree MH community in Bradenton, Florida with our car in the driveway.

The rainfall over southwest Florida in the 48 hours from late Tuesday evening through late this evening has been epic, and the rainfall totals for the month of January have been historic.  Some places closer to the Gulf Coast to our west, southwest, and south received almost 13 inches of rain and most locations received 5 to 10 times their normal rainfall for the entire month.  Fortunately Arcadia, in general, and Big Tree Carefree RV Resort, in particular, seem to drain well and we did not have any issues with flooding.  Our coach continues to have leaks, however, and while that is frustrating enough by itself, they seem to appear in new places and not reappear in previous locations.

This time around the carpet runners on the entry stairs were soaking wet.  Besides the leak around the new, and newly installed, passenger side lower windshield, it appears that water has gotten under the new landing platform as the passenger side rear lower corner is water stained and wet.  My guess is that water ran down into the stepwell from there but how it got there in the first place is a mystery.  Given the problems I discovered with water under the pilot and navigator seats, my guess is that water somehow got to the landing from there, but that only begs the question of where the water gained entry and how it got that far in the first place.

2016/01/29 (N) Ed and Betty

Jasper had a difficult night, sneezing often and usually multiple times when he did.  As a result I did not get the best night’s sleep.  The weather cleared out overnight and in spite of Jasper’s difficulties I did get some rest.  I woke around 7 AM to a beautiful sunrise lighting scattered clouds to the southwest.  We had coffee, toast, and juice for breakfast, showered, and got dressed.

We pulled out of our site at 10 AM and stopped at the Resort dumpster on our way out.  We left the Resort about 10:10 and headed west on FL-70 towards Bradenton.  We stopped at the Publix supermarket in Lakewood Ranch, just east of I-75, and Linda bought flowers.  We arrived at Ed and Betty Burns’ home, just east of I-75 and south of Fl-70, around 11:15 AM.

It was great to finally see Ed and Betty again.  Since the last time we saw them they have sold their motorhome and bought a manufactured house (double wide) in a nice development in Bradenton, Florida.

For lunch Betty had baked a loaf of German Rye Bread and made a pot of vegan vegetable soup from a mix she found.  She also had grape tomatoes and orange segments.  It was an excellent lunch of good food shared with good friends and we very much appreciated her accommodating the way we eat.

After lunch we went for a walk around their gated community and I took a few pictures along the way.  We stopped at the clubhouse and pool to check it out.  Like the rest of the park they were large, excellent facilities.  Back at their house we sat outside chatting and enjoyed some hot tea.  It eventually cooled off to where we started to get cold and went inside to continue talking.  Rather than go out for dinner we decided to have dinner at Ed and Betty’s.  That led Linda and Betty to drive to the Publix supermarket about a half mile from their house to gather ingredients while Ed and I stayed home a opened a couple of bottles of wine.  We chatted into the late afternoon enjoying wine and tortilla chips with peach salsa.

Linda and Betty started preparing our evening meal at 5 PM.  We had a nice salad that included non-dairy Daiya mozzarella style “cheese.”  Slices from an Italian baguette with non-dairy spread accompanied the main dish of angel hair pasta with a slightly sweet Ragu pasta sauce.  We waited a while and then had dessert of Marie Callander’s Peach Cobbler served hot with  Almond Dream non-dairy ice cream on the side.  Once again it was a wonderful meal and we were stuffed.

We finally left at 8:30 PM and drove back to Arcadia.  We stopped to check our mailbox and were back in our coach by 9:45 PM.  An episode of Endeavour had started at 9:30 PM and we picked it up in progress.  When the episode was over at 11 PM Linda headed to bed and I tuned in Charlie Rose.

2016/01/30 (S) Blog Swimming

The temperature dropped back into the 50s last night so we had good sleeping conditions and the coach was only slightly chilly when we woke up this morning.  I ran the heating system just long enough to bring the temperature inside up to 70 degrees F and chase away the chill.  We had a beautiful day on tap with high, scattered clouds, sunshine, light winds, and temperatures climbing into the 70s.  This is why people come to Florida in the winter.

After coffee and a light breakfast of grapefruit and toast, Linda went for a walk and I settled in to work on blog posts.  She ended up at Walmart looking at swimming suits for me and called me to see what my waist size was.  I did not know, and did not want to dig out a tape measure at the moment, so I told her I would go to the store later and find something.  The swimming pool here is heated and there is also a hot tub with a whirlpool feature.  Both of them are used regularly but we had not been in them yet as the weather has been too cool and/or too wet.  I thought it was still too cool today, but Linda was determined to get in the water.

When Linda returned from her walk I took the car and drove over as I wanted to top off the fuel tank while I was out.  I had measured my waist so I had a rough idea of what size swimming suit I needed.  Walmart only had one style that I liked so I bought one, along with a new pop-up nylon mesh laundry basket.  When I got back to our coach I tried the swimming suit on.  It was huge and needed to be returned.  I wanted this swimsuit crisis dealt with now.  Linda had bought something that she wanted to return so I took both items and their receipts back to the store.

It seems that there are often long lines at Walmart Customer Service counters, but that is just a matter of timing.  I did not have to wait very long and the returns were easily accomplished.  The problem with the swimming suits at Wally World is that there are gaps in the waist sizes.  They had the same style I had previously purchased but the next smaller size looked like it would be too small.  Given how much too large the supposedly correct size one was I decided to buy it.  I did not have much in the way of options at that point.

I tried it on when I got home and it seemed to fit OK.  At my urging Linda had already gone over to the pool.  I wore a shirt with my swimsuit, put on my Crocs, and walked over to join her.  I found her in the pool hanging on to a foam swim noodle and floating around with a smile on her face to match that of any kid.  We were both good swimmers when we were kids, but that was a long time ago.  I no longer regard water that is deeper than my shoulders as a friendly place.

The pool was cool on first contact but I could tell that the temperature would be OK after I had been in for a few minutes.  I eventually got all the way in and got my exercise by walking around in water up to my neck while moving my arms back and forth through the water.  All movements under water are done against considerable resistance and provide good exercise.  When I first got there the sun was still bright and warm but eventually thin clouds started to obscure it.

When we were done in the pool we moved to the hot tub, which was quite warm, and Linda turned on the whirlpool pump, which was quite invigorating.  When we were done in the hot tub Linda rinsed off in one of the showers to get the chlorinated water out of her hair.  I had not gotten my head wet, so I did not bother rinsing off.  I had the slight shell of chlorine about me the rest of the day and evening, but it was OK; kind of like a perfume for men.

I resumed uploading blog posts until dinnertime.  For dinner Linda prepared large salads with mock cold cut slices, garbanzo beans, fresh blueberries, grape tomatoes, and Daiya shredded non-dairy cheese.  She finished up the balsamic vinaigrette and dressed my salad with an Asian soy-ginger vinaigrette.  We had a couple slices each of the Italian baguette she bought yesterday and it made for a large, tasty, and satisfying meal.

After dinner we took our iPads and smartphones to the activity building and used the Resort Wi-Fi to download and install all of our app updates.  Linda also downloadable and installed the latest update to the iPad operating system (iOS 9.0.2 I think).  Once the updates were done we walked back to our coach and watched another episode of Endeavor, which tells the story of the beginning of Endeavor Morse’ career with the Oxford, England city police department and how he became Inspector Morse.  Like most BBC dramas, it is extremely well done.  We stayed up and watched an episode of “As Time Goes By”, a delightful British comedy starring Judy Dench.  There wasn’t much else on that interested us after that and we turned in earlier than usual.  I had the lights out before 11 PM.

2016/01/31 (N) Bus Article Photos

Today was another pleasant day, weather wise, with light winds and a high temperature in the mid-70s, but more cloud cover than yesterday.  Whatever I caught a few days ago is still with me and Jasper is still sneezing, so the boys on the bus are both still a little under the weather.

I met Dave Aungier at the Arcadia Rally 2016 and photographed his 1977 MCI MC-5C bus conversion.  Dave wrote an article about his bus for Bus Conversion Magazine (long hand) and had his friend Bonnie put it into MS Word.  She e-mailed the file to Dave and to me.  Other than breaks for lunch and to go for a walk with Linda, I spent most of the day reformatting the article in two columns, doing some minor editing, and then selecting, processing, and inserting photos into the article.  I did not finish the work by dinner time and figured I would finish it tomorrow.

Linda and Betty strolling down one of the interior roads at the Gold Tree MH community.

Linda and Betty strolling down one of the interior roads at the Gold Tree MH community.  Gold Tree is a clean, well-kept, and attractive gated manuactured housing community with nice amenities.

Our friend Mara was scheduled to be at Horizon Coach tomorrow for repairs on a slide out seal and then check into our RV Resort.  Her cat, Sabra, has been ill and she decided to push everything out by a day so she can take Sabra back to the veterinarian where she is staying near Ft. Lauderdale.

Lunch was roasted red pepper hummus with onion on the dark German rye bread that Betty Burns baked for us last Friday.  Double yum.  On our first joint walk of the day we found a small group of musicians playing at the gazebo to an equally small audience.  The Petanque (p’tunk) and shuffleboard courts were also in full use and there were folks in the swimming pool.  Petanque is a form of Bocce Ball that is favored by the Resort residents from Quebec.  Linda went swimming later in the afternoon.  We had baked potatoes for dinner topped with a sauté of onions, mushrooms, broccoli, and kale.  A dollop of Tofutti vegan sour cream added a bit of creaminess.  We went for another walk after dinner and stopped by the activity building.  The library was full of folks playing dominoes and other folks were gathering for the 7 PM karaoke session.

I was done working for the day and settled in with Linda to watch Downton Abbey and whatever else might be on TV this evening.

 

2015/09/18 (F) RBus Anniversary

Leave a reply

The predicted thunderstorms came overnight with heavy rain and lots of lightning and thunder.  I was aware of the rain but Linda seemed to be more aware of the lightning.  Based on the radar just before going to bed the strongest storms passed north of us.  Even with furnaces and air-conditioners we are more intimately connected to the weather in our RV than we are in our house, especially during storms, but we like that aspect of the lifestyle.  If we wanted to live in a climate controlled bunker we would build one at the house.

Our bus at the GLCC Surplus Salvage Rally at Elkhart Campground in Elkhart, IN. We bought it six years ago today. We are the 4th owners as best we can determine.

Our bus at the GLCC Surplus Salvage Rally at Elkhart Campground in Elkhart, IN. We bought it six years ago today. We are the 4th owners as best we can determine.  The older GM buses behind ours are also members of the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches chapter.

We bought our bus six years ago today.  It is an H3-40 VIP motorcoach that was manufactured by Prevost Car Inc. in Quebec, Canada in August 1990.  It is powered by a Detroit Diesel 8V92TA diesel engine manufactured in April 1990.  It went directly to Royale Coach in Elkhart, Indiana in September 1990 and the conversion was finished in October 1991.  Because of the timing it was titled as a 1992.

In Michigan vehicles have to be at least 25 years old to qualify as “historic” so we are still a couple of years away from that benchmark, but she is a grand ole gal none-the-less.  Technically historic license plates, which carry an inexpensive registration fee, are only supposed to be used on vehicles that receive limited use, such as in car shows and parades, but people routinely put them on everyday use vehicles to avoid paying higher registration fees.  We, however, do not intend to do that.  It’s the kind of thing that some bureaucrat in the future can decide to do something about and end up imposing retroactive penalties.  It’s just not worth the risk of having to deal with that hassle.

We spent an hour after breakfast figuring out the required dimensions for the Corian table that will go between the two captain’s chairs in the living room of the bus.  I then called Countertops Plus and left a message for Ferman Miller with the dimensions.  It turned out that the table needs to be 22″ wide and 38″ long and I doubt that he has enough material in his 96″ by 30″ sheet to make both the desktop and the table.  I will follow up with him on Monday if I do not hear back from him before then.

We left late in the morning to visit two of the surplus and salvage businesses on US-12 in Michigan.  Johnson’s is just west of White Pigeon and Bontrager’s is east of White Pigeon but not as far as Sturgis.  I found two switch plates at Johnson’s that might fit two small 12V DC switches I need to mount.  At Bontrager’s I found a 1-1/2″ Bristol blade valve to replace the one on our fresh water tank.  We also bought four packages of small 12V DC LED rope lights.  Each pack is 5 meters (16′) long and has 60 warm white LEDs per meter.  They are rated at 4.8 Watts per meter and are very bright.  My intention is to use them around the inside of cabinet openings in place of the incandescent light fixtures that are original to the coach.  The will give a brighter light and illuminate the entire inside of the cabinet rather than shining light from a single location.

We looked at a powered fresh water hose reel with a 40′ hose and a powered 50A shoreline reel with a 33′ cord.  They wanted $200 for the water reel and $400 for the cord reel.  Linda looked them up online using her phone.  The asking prices were certainly less than retail at Camping World, but not enough less to make me shell out that kind of money for something that might not get installed for a year or more, if I could figure out a way to install them at all.

We stopped at Martin’s on the way back to camp and bought two Amy’s frozen vegan lasagna entries for dinner.  The other rally participants were having regular lasagna and we wanted to fit in.  🙂  Salad was also being served and Vickie was making it without cheese, eggs, etc. so we could have some.

Pat and Vickie had a Nutone Food Center years ago and still had some of the accessories plus a replacement motor.  They brought all of it over to see if it would fit our unit.  It did, but was missing one piece, a right angle drive that was needed for some of the accessories.  Vickie was pretty sure they had it somewhere at home but would have to look for it after the rally.  They also did not have the food processor, which is the accessory that interests Linda the most, but it was nice to get what they had.  Linda can start checking EBay now that we know the other accessories fit our recessed power base.

I helped Pat with the wiring for an LED replacement bulb for a fluorescent light fixture.  They have 12 of these fixtures (with 24 tubes) in their 1987 Prevost XL conversion.  Pat found LED replacements that can be wired directly to the switched 12V DC supply, completely eliminating the use of the electronic ballasts.  It turned out that the pins at each end of the tubes were also electrically active and we had to cut all of the interconnecting wires.

Ed Roelle stopped by to find out what we were doing with all of the food equipment.  Apparently someone thought we were “giving it all away.”  Not true, of course; it belongs to the club and isn’t ours to give.  What we wanted was for different people to take the things that will be the most useful at the rallies they host.  Linda and I do not make it to all of the rallies, and next summer we will miss two of the big ones; Back-to-the-Bricks in August and Surplus & Salvage in September.  We plan to attend the Escapees Escapade Rally at the end of July in Essex Junction, Vermont, and then the FMCA rally in early August in Massachusetts.  We will then head for the Canadian Maritimes and work our way back down through New England over the course of the early fall.

Pat Caverly stopped by to see the bus.  Linda showed her around and then we all sat down to visit for a while.  After they left to help with dinner preparations I finished the posts for yesterday and the day before, e-mailed them to myself, and started working on today’s post.

Dinner was scheduled for 6 PM and most folks were gathered by then.  Rain looked imminent so I closed the three roof vents in our bus, gathered up the bag of chapter T-shirts and flags, and went to the meeting room.  I conferred with Pat, Vickie, Tami, and Linda and decided to hold the brief business meeting before dinner.  It took all of 10 minutes.  Dinner was salad and lasagna.  Vickie prepared the salad by keeping all of the ingredients separate.  That allowed us to build our salads using only things we eat, which we really appreciated.  Linda heated the frozen Amy’s vegan lasagnas that we bought at Martin’s for our main course.

Linda was helping clean up in the kitchen and I was sitting at a large round table swapping bus stories when Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint came in.  She was on her way home, which is not far from the campground, and knew from talking to Josh (at Coach Supply Direct) that we were here for a rally.  She stopped in to see if she could find our coach, which of course she could even in the dark, since she is the one who painted it.  Linda and I excused ourselves and went back to the coach with Michele, retrieving her kids from her car.  We showed her the interior remodeling and had a long chat.

While we were talking Juniper caught a small house mouse.  We knew there was one around because she had been focused on the bathroom most of the day exhibiting stalking behavior.  Something got my attention and when I went back to the bedroom it was immediately obvious, even in the dark, that she had a mouse on the bed and was “playing” with it.  I got a paper cup and went to the bedroom to try and catch it.  It was very small, clearly a very young mouse.  I made Juniper release it and it hunkered down on the floor by the HVAC duct.  When I put the cup down it started to go the other way but Juniper was there and it turned around and ran into the cup.  Although the cup was not big it was big enough, and slick enough, that the mouse could not climb out.  I put a paper bowl over the cup to make sure it did not escape and we continued to chat.

It started raining while Michele, Raven (her daughter), and River (her son) were visiting.  At one point the rain was very heavy and the lightning was intense and frequent so they stayed long enough for the storm to pass.  It was getting late and we were all a bit tired so they prepared to leave.  I took the bowl off of the cup and placed a plastic zip lock bag over the cup and zipped it shut.  Raven carried the cup and Michele said they would release the mouse about a mile down the road near an area of fields.

Linda turned the front TV on and we watched an episode of Gotham, which we will not have to watch again, and American Masters (on PBS).  The American Masters episode was on the photographer Pedro Guerrero.  Although known as perhaps the best photographer of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, he had a far-reaching and distinguished career.  As always, it was a well done program on a fascinating individual who made important cultural contributions.  Linda was dozing at the end, went to bed, and fell asleep.  I tried to write for a while, gave up, and went to sleep.

 

2015/08/18 (T) Walking Grind

Leave a reply

We were up at 8 AM and I made a pot of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe half-caff coffee while Linda got breakfast ready.  She made a batch of granola yesterday so we had some with fresh blueberries and unsweetened soy milk.  It’s our standard breakfast, but that’s because we like it so much.  She had an e-mail from Robin at the bakery and had to deal with some issues related to the bakery’s new account, The University of Michigan Ann Arbor.  As I do most mornings I sat in the living room working on my iPad, drinking my coffee, and paying attention to our two cats.

Being Tuesday Linda had a date with Diane to walk at 10 AM and left at 9:30 for Kensington Metropark.  I continued working on my iPad for a while and enjoying my coffee.  At 10:15 AM I called the Livingston County Sheriff and reported the mailbox incident from late Friday evening /early Saturday morning.  Shelby took the call, was very nice, said she was not aware of any other mailbox reports, but would pass the info along to the Desk Sargent.  I checked my e-mail and confirmed with Harvey for Friday at 10 AM to move the old bus refrigerator.  I finally went out to work on the floor of the bus at 11 AM, by which time the outside air temperature was already in the 80’s.

I leave three of the awning style windows in the bus open a few inches so it doesn’t get too hot inside.  I opened all three roof vents, turned on their ceiling fans, and set them to exhaust air rather than draw it in.  I also left the entrance door open to allow more air to flow through the inside of the coach.  I then sanded and vacuumed until about 1 PM.  When I came back in the house I had two missed calls from Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint so I called her back.  I was on the phone with her when Linda got back from her walk.

Once I wrapped up the call with Michele we had a light lunch of hummus with pita chips and both black and red grapes.  While we were eating we were entertained by a gray squirrel who had gotten onto the bird feeder and was hanging upside down by its hind legs.  It would curl its body to bring its mouth up to the bottom of the feeder, emancipate some seed, and then uncurl to the more relaxed stretched out position and eat it.  All of this was also being watched with both interest and considerable skepticism by three crows who were hanging around on the ground under the feeder.  They grabbed seeds that the squirrel dropped but seemed very wary of it, which surprised us.  I speculated that perhaps they had never seen a squirrel behave in this way and were, therefore, understandably and appropriately cautious; crows are very smart, after all.

After lunch we took the three wallpaper sample books to the bus to look at them with the woodwork.  Before we could do that, however, we discovered a small bird trapped in the coach and had to deal with it.  I say “trapped” because it was up on the dashboard and obviously confused by the windshields as it kept trying to fly out through them.  It did not realize it could get out the same way it came in, through the open door.

The bird seemed small and I think it was an immature sparrow but I’m not sure.  It was seeking safe shelter in the space between the dashboard cover and the lower driver side windshield.  I used a broom to try to gently encourage it to fly towards the door but it was understandably suspicious of my good intentions.  I put on a pair of canvas work gloves and it allowed me to gently pick it up.  I tried to release it at the door opening and it flew into the door causing Linda to make a comment about why we use the phrase “bird-brained.”  I caught it again, got outside the bus clear of the door, and tossed it gently away from the bus.  It immediately took flight and flew off to the southwest, apparently none the worse for its ordeal.  I can only image the story it told the other birds.

I got a piece of the Armstrong Alterna Luxury Vinyl floor tile from the garage.  Many of the wallpapers that we thought would look good with the floor tile turned out to be too yellow, and most of the ones with good color tone were too dark, but we found a few that we liked.  Those tended to be lighter without a lot of pattern and a neutral, off-white color.  We are, however, far from a final choice as we do not currently have a sample of the Lambright Notion Linen upholstery fabric or the MCD night shade material and the wallpaper has to work with all of these simultaneously.

We measured the areas that need to be repapered and in the process decided that we would leave the old wallpaper on the inner wall of the hallway, at least for now.  (The paper in the bathroom, which is different from the rest of the coach, is generally in good condition and we are not currently planning on replacing it as part of this project.)  The existing wallpaper in most of the coach is a string cloth with a beige base but distinct vertical threads that contain a noticeable amount of grey and a more subtle herringbone pattern.  It looks good with the walnut woodwork and worked well with the old white carpet, black ceramic floor tile, and bone leather upholstery, so we think it will continue to look good with the new floor tile.

If Josh is at his shop tomorrow we will try to stop and pick up the Lambright Notion Linen sample as whatever wallpaper we choose has to work well with the furniture fabric.  On Thursday we will revisit the papers in the three books we currently have with an eye towards something that has some grey in it.

It was another warm, humid day and I was done sanding so I closed up the roof vents, locked up the coach, and went inside.  Linda prepared a pizza using the gluten-free crust recipe she got from Mara.  Yum.

After dinner I went to Lowe’s and bought two bags of TEC Skill Set Universal Floor Patch and Skim Coat, a mixing bucket, two bags of tile spacers, and three 4’x8′ sheets of 1/4″ SurePly underlayment.  I meant to buy a folding metal sawhorse but left it somewhere in the store.  I was going to buy premixed floor leveling compound but they only had 1-quart containers for $10 each and the directions said it would only cover 1.5 square feet.  I have about 80 square feet of floor to patch and level, so that clearly was not a good solution.

The Universal Floor Patch is a powder that has to be mixed with water, but each bag will cover 20 – 25 square feet at 1/8″ thickness and costs $13; much better than the premixed stuff.  I have a few areas to patch that are deeper than 1/8″ but the material can be applied up to 1/2″ thick per coat, and most of the area just needs a much thinner skimcoat.  It can also be sanded within 24 hours which will allow me to make it very smooth and keep the work moving along.  My goal is to have the floor leveled and sanded smooth by bedtime on Saturday so I can install the 1/4″ underlayment on Sunday and start laying tile on Monday or Tuesday next week.

I stopped at Teeko’s Coffee and Teas to get some more of the Cafe Europe half-caff blend.  They had the regular blend but not the decaf blend so I had Roger use the Columbian decaf instead.  He roasted the beans for me while I waited and Jeff showed up along with his wife as I was leaving.  They were married last September and are expecting their first child late next month.  Jeff was wearing his Pepsi delivery shirt, confirming what the woman at the Kahuna Coffee Shop told us last Friday.

We turned in early as we will be getting up very early tomorrow to drive to Indiana again.  Linda watched an episode of NCIS after which I watched a PBS special on the origins and evolution of the Navy Seals.

 

2015/07/01 (W) Coach Supply Direct

Leave a reply

We were up at 7 AM and left at 7:45 to drive to Coach Supply Direct in Edwardsburg, Michigan.  On the out of town we stopped at Teeko’s Coffee and Tea for coffee and bagels to go.  The coffee was single origin Kenya and was very good.  We drink half-caff at home so I will check with Jeff to see if this also comes in a decaffeinated bean.

We took I-96 west towards Lansing and then took the Lansing Road cutoff to I-69 south.  We exited at M-60 and headed west towards Three Rivers.  Our plan was to drop down M-40 to US-12 for the final run into Edwardsburg but M-60 was closed in Minden and the detour took us south on M-66 towards Sturgis.  We were about half way to Sturgis when the detour turned west back towards Three Rivers so we continued on to Sturgis where we picked up US-12 and continued our westward journey.  We stopped at the McDonald’s in White Pigeon for a second cup of coffee and then finished our trip to Edwardsburg.

Coach Supply Direct is located on Elkhart Road just south of US-12.  It was easy to find and Josh greeted us as we pulled in.  We looked at his Lambright fabric samples again and were just not finding exactly what we wanted so Josh suggested we check out the selection at Pro-Forma (?) on the southeast side of Elkhart.  They are a major supplier of surplus yard goods in the area and he often gets fabric from them for projects.  He offered to go over with us but we did not want to pull him away from his work more than we already had.  He called to let them know we were coming without him.

We took US-12 back east to M-217 and dropped into Indiana where the road becomes County 17.  Just before US-20 we turned west and about 1.5 miles later we turned south onto Hall Road and pulled into Pro-Forma’s parking lot.  Bob (the owner) was out but we found Mike back in the warehouse.  He took us to the room with the sample books and we looked at a sample of every fabric they had but did find anything even close to what we were looking for.  Bob returned from his errand run and we commented that apparently plain off-white upholstery cloth was out of style.  Quite to the contrary, he said it is very much in use and as a result there is very little, if any, surplus coming out of the Elkhart-based RV manufacturers.

I took a different route back to Edwardsburg, driving through Elkhart on some streets I had not driven before.  After talking with Josh some more we had him do a final estimate (quote), sans fabric selections, as follows:

  • Two (2) Flexsteel 529 Class C captain’s chairs with skirts, adjustable arm rests, 8.5″ swivel pedestal with 20″ seatbelt bar, tan seatbelt, and slide tracks.
  • One Flexsteel 591 Class A driver’s captain’s chair with skirt, adjustable arm rests, and power lumbar option.
  • One Flexsteel 591 Class A co-pilot captain’s chair with footrest, skirt, adjustable arm rests, and power lumbar option.
  • 15 yards of additional fabric TBD.
  • Seven (7) MCD Duo Shades with dark out fabric TBD.
  • An estimate of a 2 to 6 hours labor to install everything.

Josh converted the estimate (quote) into an invoice and Linda wrote him a check for the requested 50% deposit.  He then let us select Lambright fabric samples to take with us.  We removed six from the binder rings and also took one of his sets of MCD dark out material samples.  I had planned to stop and visit with Michele Henry at Phoenix Paint but had not told her that we were coming so she was not expecting us.  By the time we left for home it was 3 PM so we waved as we drove past her shop.

Linda had packed food for the trip so she ate her vegan yogurt and got out the grapes for both of us to munch on.  Instead of retracing our route from the morning I stayed on US-12 all the way to Coldwater.  By the time we reached I-69 I was hungry so I pulled into the Walmart.  I ate my yogurt in the car and then we went in to buy Snyder’s sourdough pretzel nibblers, Blue Diamond Wasabi Soy almonds, and some mini-strudels (apple and cherry) that did not contain any animal products (according to the label).  We got on I-69 going north and I exited at M-60 for fuel.

We got home around 6:45 PM.  UPS had delivered the order I placed yesterday with Amateur Electronics Supply so I brought that in from the porch and set it aside for tomorrow.  I opened one of the boxes of Armstrong floor tiles, removed a tile, took it to the bus, and set it on the floor in the kitchen.  We took the Lambright fabric and MCD dark shade samples to the bus and had an initial look at all of them together with the walnut woodwork, floor tile, and existing wallpaper (which is going to get replaced with something).  We left them to look at again tomorrow in better/different light and went in to have dinner.

Linda reheated the potato-kale curry leftovers and served some fresh watermelon.  I checked e-mail and responded to some that related to the SLAARC website.  We relaxed by watching two episodes of “First Peoples” on PBS and then went to sleep.  It was a long, tiring day with somewhere between 350 and 400 miles of driving and 7 to 8 hours of sitting in the car.  We were glad to have the chairs and shades ordered, and to have decided (for now) to go with the custom made sofa cushions, but we were frustrated by still having the fabric and shade materials undecided.  We told Josh we would have a decision by Friday so tomorrow will be final decision day.

 

2015/06/19 (F) Roof Box

Leave a reply

The Apex roofers were back again this morning just before 8 AM and we were up and ready for them.  I made coffee but we deferred breakfast until after we settled the bill with owner Pat Davidson.  By 9 AM he knew what the added costs were over and above the base quote.  The major one was the 32 sheets of plywood they used to repair/replace bad areas of the roof deck.  He left around 10 AM and took half the crew with him to start another job.  The other four guys stayed behind and finished roofing the garage and cleaning up the job site.  The job was pretty much wrapped up by noon.  Sergio (the foreman) did the final walk-around and cleanup and left around 1 PM.  There is very little evidence that they had been here except for an attractive new roof and two skylights in the living room that light up the space in a nice way.

I spent the morning inventorying coaxial cables.  We have quite an assortment of 50 and 75 ohm cables in lengths from 1 to 100 feet.  I need to have all the necessary cables on hand when I climb the tower next week to remove and install antennas.  If we already had appropriate cables I wanted to use those instead of buying new ones.

The custom cable entry box from Chris at KF7P Metalwerks arrived today.  I opened it after lunch, which consisted of fresh apples and leftover black beans and rice.  We both agreed that the beans and rice dish was even better than when it was fresh.  We unpacked all of the parts that were stored inside the cable entry box and checked them off against the spreadsheet I used to order them.  Everything was there but I was initially concerned because the box was turned 90 degrees from what I ordered.  I specified a 16″ wide by 20″ tall box but got a 20″ wide by 16″ tall instead.  I suspect that Chris buys the boxes with the door/hinge already attached but it would have been nice to know that ahead of time.

We took the box outside and held it in place to see if it would be usable.  The lower left corner will hang down in front of the basement window in the sump pump room but that will be OK.  The horizontal orientation of the box will actually make it easier to get coaxial cables through the access holes in the bottom.

There were two a Morgan Lightning arrestors mounted on the copper back plane for amateur radio use; one for HF and one for VHF/UHF.  The UHF arrestor was upside down so I unscrewed it, rotated it 180 degrees, and screwed it back down.  The box also had a Morgan M-348 lightning arrestor.  I ordered an M-348B, which is the 12-wire version, but the installed arrestor had 12 terminals on top (3 strips of 4 each) plus one on each side.  There were no instructions, however, on how to wire it up so I sent Chris an e-mail regarding the anomalies and missing information.

While I was working on that e-mail, and a couple from Josh at Coach Supply Direct, we got a call from Curtis Coleman of RVillage.  The development team had launched some new features and he wanted to walk me through them.  He had just been to Prevost in Nashville for some repairs on his tag axle brakes and was headed back to Cleveland, Ohio.  He thought he might be headed in our general direction after that.

I spent some time thinking about how to mount the cable entry box on the east wall of the house which is sided in a shiplap fashion, i.e., the horizontal siding boards are angled (not plumb) and overlapped.  I needed a hole saw and arbor for my 1/2″ drill to drill the holes for the two 2″ conduits that will pass from the box through the bond into the sump pump room in the basement.  I probably already have one but I cannot get to most of the stuff in the garage and can’t afford to delay getting this box mounted; there are too many other things that need to get done that require this box to be in place first.

I was suffering from a decided lack of patience which is not the proper frame of mind for working on scale drawings of custom furniture so I went to Lowe’s to get a hole saw.  The fitting measured 2-3/4″ OD and I decided to get a 3″ hole saw just to make sure the hole would be big enough.  While I was at the store I considered how I might use different materials to mount the box.  I ended up buying a 36″ length of 1″ square aluminum tube and some stainless steel lag screws, bolts, washers, and Nylok nuts. My plan was to cut the tube into two 18″ pieces and use them in a vertical orientation between the box and the house.  They would span multiple boards, creating a plumb mounting surface, and provide support for the lower left corner which would otherwise be unsupported.

When I got back to the house I took the tube out to see how it would work.  The idea was a good one but the 18″ lengths would be too short.  I bought the only piece of 1″ tube that Lowe’s had so I knew I would have to find another one somewhere else.  Linda suggested that we try the Lowe’s in New Hudson after breakfast tomorrow but I was still feeling impatient about the whole thing.

I had a long chat with Michele Henry from Phoenix Paint.  I then relaxed with a small glass of Moscato, a nice pre-meal wine, while Linda prepared a wonderful dish for dinner of roasted red potatoes with onions, garlic, rosemary, and power greens.  It was a simple dish but so delicious and hearty.

The meal concluded and the table cleared I went to The Home Depot in Howell where I found a 48″ length of 1″ square aluminum tube.  If 24 inches turns out to be long enough to support the box the way I want I will cut the 48″ piece in half and return the 36″ piece to Lowe’s.  I called Chuck on the drive home to follow up on a text message I sent him yesterday regarding the delivery of our new refrigerator to his bus garage in Novi.

Feeling like I had finally accomplished something today we relaxed for an hour and then settled in to watch a movie.  Linda had borrowed the DVD of Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon, from the Howell Library earlier in the week and we reserved this evening as movie night.

My goal for tomorrow is to get the cable entry box installed.  That sets the stage for climbing the tower and installing three antennas once I have the proper coax cables and some rope to temporarily guy the tower.  But those details will wait until Monday as family is coming to brunch on Sunday for Father’s Day and a belated birthday celebration for our daughter.

 

2015/04/21-25 (T-S) IN, MI, Home

Leave a reply

2015/04/21 (T) Back to Twelve Mile, IN

The outside air temperature dropped into the 30’s (F) last night and the air temperature in the coach fell to 60, so when I got up this morning I turned on the Aqua-Hot diesel-fired hydronic heating system to take the chill off.  We eventually got up, got dressed, and walked across to Small Town Brew to get a couple of cups of coffee and chat with owner Lisa Paul and her friend/neighbor, Ashley, who helps her run the coffee shop.  Both of them remembered both of us, which was nice.

It’s interesting sitting in a small town coffee shop, where everyone is a friend or relative, and just listening to the conversation.  We are outsiders her, of course, strangers to most of the folks who drop in, but everyone is nice to us.  Some are curious about who we are, and where we are from, but rarely ask why we are there, in this little coffee shop in this little town, surrounded by corn fields.  Of course, we usually mention that we are friends of Butch and Fonda, so that probably answers whatever questions they may have had.

We eventually returned to our coach and had breakfast.  We tried connecting our WiFiRanger to Butch and Fonda’s Wi-Fi router yesterday and it was able to connect and obtain an IP address but the data transfer rate was so slow that web pages would not load and e-mail would not download before timing out.  I turned our Verizon Mi-Fi on and we had a very weak but usable signal, so I connected the WFR to the Mi-Fi and we were able to do the few things we needed to do online.  We then went in the house to let Butch and Fonda know we were awake and see what they were up to.

Butch’s brother, John, and his nephew, Brock, showed up and helped Butch with the driver side front wheel assembly on Butch and Fonda’s MC-9 bus.  The tire/wheel was off when we arrived yesterday and I learned that Butch is replacing the hub bearings and seals, installing an automatic slack adjuster for the brake, and replacing the brake pads.  It looked like quite a job with some large, heavy parts, so I did my part by staying out of the way.  I also took a few pictures at Butch’s suggestion.  He does not want to write articles for Bus Conversion Magazine, but he has been interested in having me write articles about projects on his bus.

Linda spent some time working with Fonda’s new sewing machine that she got while they were in Quartzsite, Arizona.  It is a little smaller than a regular sewing machine, only weighs 13 pounds, and only cost about $130.  Linda gave her sewing machine to her sister many years ago but now that she is retired she is thinking that it might be nice to have one for mending tasks or projects, such as new privacy curtains for the bus.

Butch got a catalog recently from Crimp Supply in Royal Oak, Michigan, which is not at far from our house.  I glanced through it last night and it contains a lot of specialized parts that would be useful to a ham radio hobbyist or someone converting a bus into a motorhome.  I called and requested a catalog and had a nice chat with Debbie.  She was willing to provide me with additional catalogs that I can give to members of GLCC and CCO at the Back-to-the-Bricks and/or Surplus & Salvage per allies in August and September respectively.  She was also willing to show up in person and give a brief presentation on her company and hand out the catalogs.  Cool.

Brock had to leave after which Butch and John decided to go to the shooting range along with a third guy whose name I did not get.  I went along to see the range and watch what they were doing.  Butch had home-brewed some shotgun shells for his Ruger revolver and wanted to test them.  They caused the revolving chamber to jam so they will require some additional work.  John had a new semi-automatic pistol and wanted to see how it handled.  He also had ammunition he had loaded with bullets he had cast and wanted to test fire them.

I was offered the opportunity to shoot but declined.  I have never handled a pistol and it would have been a waste of good ammunition.  I did take a class in rifle marksmanship while I was at the University of Missouri – Columbia many years ago.  I was in the Air Force R.O.T.C. Program at the time and thought I should know something about how to handle a firearm.  Learning to handle a pistol correctly would have been more relevant, but I do not recall a course being offered for that.  I bought a Ruger 10-22 rifle at that time, and I still have it.  It’s a .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle designed to look like an M-1 carbine and features a 10-round rotary clip that is flush to the bottom of the stock when inserted.  I was only interested in shooting at paper targets so I added a scope to it.  It is safely tucked away with a trigger lock on it, but I have not fired it in many, many years.  I should probably bring it to Twelve Mile the next time we come down, let Butch inspect and clean it properly, and take it to the range just for grins and giggles.

John and the other guy went back to Logansport from the range.  When Butch and I got back to the house he continued working on the driver side front wheel of their bus.  I helped a little, but mostly by taking photographs for a possible future article.  After putting tools and parts away we sat and relaxed for a while and then all of us went to Logansport for dinner at Pizza Hut.  It was 8:45 PM by the time we got back so everyone said “good night” and turned in for the evening.

2015/04/22 (W) Chillin’ in Twelve Mile

Yesterday looked and felt more like winter than spring with gray, cloudy skies and blustery, cold winds.  The temperature overnight dropped into the mid-30s but we were toasty warm under blankets with our electric heating pad turned on.  I got up at 7:30 AM and turned on the thermostats.  The temperature in the kitchen was reading 63 degrees F but the temperature by the dashboard was only 53.  The Aqua-Hot has performed very well since I rebuilt the blower bearings and quickly brought the temperature in the coach up to 70 degrees F.

We put on our sweats and walked over to Small Town Brew for coffee and conversation with owner Lisa Paul and whomever else might be there.  Three local guys were enjoying their morning brew when we arrived.  They eventually left and were replaced by others.  Most of the patrons seemed to be retired or semi-retired farmers.  One fellow, Lee, chatted with us at length about a canvas covered hoop barn he put up.  It was constructed using laminated wood hoops rather than steel, was 30′ wide by 70′ long and cost about $4,000 15 years ago, although I was not clear whether that included the 4-foot high poured concrete walls.  He already owned concrete forms and the heavy equipment that one finds on farms, so he was able to do a lot of the work himself without renting equipment or hiring contractors.  Still, it has to be the lowest cost way to create a structure for getting our bus out of the weather and out of sight.  It is unknown, however, whether the Township and County would let us to put it up.

Butch left at 8:30 AM for medical appointments in Logansport and Fonda came over at 10:45 AM to gather up Linda for a girl’s day out.  Linda wanted to go to McClure’s Apple Orchard on US-31 between IN-16 and US-24.  Although it is very close to Twelve Mile Fonda had never been there.  They were then headed to Peru.  Although it is the same distance from Twelve Mile as Logansport and Rochester it is the city that Butch and Fonda visit the least.  Peru’s claim to fame is that it was the birthplace of Cole Porter and Emmet Kelly and was the winter home of several circuses many, many years ago.  I believe there is a circus museum there that Nick Russell wrote about in the Gypsy Journal.

With no bus project or social interactions I settled in to work on my blog and await everyone’s return.  It started out sunny this morning but by 11 AM was thickly clouded over and looking wintery with blustery winds.  The only bus project I had in mind to do today was to pull out the chassis batter tray, check the circuit breakers, disconnect the batteries, swap the upper 12 V pair with the lower 12 V pair and reconnect them.  It was not something I wanted to do alone and I did not have to do it today, especially under cool, windy, overcast conditions, so I ended up not doing it.

Linda and Fonda eventually returned, having first gone to the Walmart in Logansport.  Linda picked up some hummus and Snyder’s sourdough pretzels so we snacked on those for lunch.  Linda then hung out with Fonda while I continued to work in blog posts.  Butch finally returned from his medical appointments and busied himself with something.  Whatever it was, he was not outside working on their bus and neither was I.  I managed to get the post for April 1 – 3, 2015 uploaded to our blog.

Linda and Fonda developed a plan for dinner.  Fonda made a nice salad and baked a loaf of par-baked bread that we got from Marilyn.  Linda made black beans and rice and prepared a mix of fresh blueberries and strawberries for dessert.  Linda and I each had a glass of Franzia Red Sangria.  After taking all of dirty serving containers back to our coach we returned to the house to visit a bit longer and finally returned to our coach just after 9 PM.  That left me enough time to pull together the posts for April 4 – 6 and upload it before turning in for the night.

2015/04/23 (R) Return to Michigan

I was awake at 6:30 AM and finally got up at 7 and put on my sweats.  The Aqua-Hot was already on so I turned up the thermostats and turned on the engine pre-heat loop.  I also turned on the Broan cube heater and pointed it into the cockpit as the temperature on the dashboard was only 50 degrees F.  I walked over to Small Town Brew, got a cup of coffee, and said “so long for now” to owner Lisa Paul.  Linda was still asleep when I got back so I fixed a couple slices of toast for my breakfast, turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi, and settled in to take care of a few e-mails.  Linda finally got up and, as I suspected, had not slept well last night.  She had some toast and orange juice but had no interest in coffee, a strong indicator of just how tired she was and not feeling completely well.

When she was done with the toaster I turned the cube heater off and turned the electric block heater on.  The overnight low temperature was forecast to drop into the upper 20’s and starting the big Detroit Diesel at that temperature is hard on the engine so I wanted it nice and warm before I cranked it over.

Butch had an appointment with an ophthalmologist in Indianapolis around noon and had some other things to do down that way as long as they were there so he and Fonda planned to leave by 9 AM.  He came to our bus just before 9 AM to let us know they were close to leaving and that he put an air hose out by the automotive bay so I could fill the front tires on the bus if needed.  Based on the readings from our TireTraker TPMS, however, no adjustment was needed.

We planned to leave sometime after they did but not later than 10 AM.  The main reason for not leaving sooner was to give us time to digest our breakfast, but the other reason was our relatively short drive today to Camp Turkeyville, an RV park on I-69 just north of I-94.  This will be the first time I have been in Michigan, which I certainly consider home, since we left on November 30, 2014.  Turkeyville is only 80 miles from our house, but we will have a full hookup site so we can dump our waste tanks tomorrow morning and not need to use them on the final short drive to the house.

We started getting ready to leave around 9:45 AM.  I shut off the block heater, put Butch’s air hose away, and then took care of the chassis batteries, auxiliary air, and shorepower.  The DD fired right up and I switched it to high idle while it built air pressure.  As soon as the chassis was at ride height and the air dryer purged I pulled onto IN-16 pointing eastbound and pulled into the curb/parking lane.  That was around 10 AM.  I left the engine idling while Linda pulled the car up behind the bus.  By the time we hooked up the car for towing, checked the lights, and pulled away it was closer to 10:20.  I noted that the time was 10:30 AM EDT as we pulled onto US-31 N from IN-16 E.

Traffic was light and we had an easy run up US-31 to US-20 except for the 15-20 MPH crosswind from the WNW.  I also had a very cold breeze blowing into the cockpit by my feet and had to turn the heat up to stay comfortable.  We were an hour into our trip when I finally realized that I had not opened the air supply valve for the shutters on the two front house air-conditioner condensers which are installed in what is normally the spare tire bay.  Those shutters are held open by a spring and held closed by air pressure.  When they are open air can easily find its way into the cockpit.  There is also a mechanical damper that is supposed to regulate fresh air flow to the cockpit, or cut it off completely, but the flexible actuator cable broke some time ago and the damper/cable are difficult to access so it has not been repaired.  Either the cable broke with the damper in the closed position or I taped some sort of cover over the air inlet once upon a time because once I closed the shutters for the A-C compressors I no longer had cold air coming in by my feet.

Traffic was heavier on US-20 eastbound but it always is as it runs just south of South Bend and Elkhart, Indiana, and a bit north of Goshen.  It is still a limited access highway until east of Elkhart, so it moved along up to that point.  There was one stretch between there and Middlebury where major construction was taking place, but we got through that easily enough.  After that it was a nice, rolling, 2-lane highway and we rolled along at 55 MPH except for the occasional town on intersection.  We always enjoy driving through this part of Indiana.

We turned off of US-20 onto I-69 N, crossed into Michigan at 12:53 PM EDT, and pulled into the Michigan Welcome Center five minutes later.  We only had 37 more miles to our destination but we both needed a short stretch break and I wanted to open the air valve for the A-C shutters, which is in the bay under the driver’s seat.  We resumed our trip and exited I-69 at exit 42 around 1:45 PM, crossed over the highway, and traveled the 500 yards to the Camp Turkeyville entrance.  We followed the long, wide, winding entrance road and stopped at the office where Linda got us registered.  They put us in a 50A full hookup pull-through site with easy access that was long enough for us to leave the car hooked up for towing.

We went through our usual arrival routine and then Linda fixed a light lunch of French Country Vegetable Soup and a tofu hotdog on pita bread with mustard and relish.  She also made a pot of coffee.  We connected our WiFiRanger to the RV Park Wi-Fi system but did not seem to be able to move any data so we turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi and connected the WFR to it.

Linda spent the afternoon reading a book on her iPad and I mostly worked on my blog post for April 7, 8, and 9.  I had 14 photos for that post but inserted them into the post rather than put them in a WP image gallery.  I logged into our personal WordPress site, installed WordPress 4.2, and then installed updates to plugins and themes.  Once that was done I uploaded the blog post and uploaded/captioned/inserted the photos and generated the tags.  I clicked the “Publish” button about 7:10 PM.

Linda put dinner on the table about 10 after I finished working.  She made a nice tofu scramble, a dish that vaguely resembles scrambled eggs, and served it with toast and jam, a small glass of juice, and black seedless grapes.

I thought about working on my blog post for April 10th, as it is the last one for which I have photos, but I was too tired to get involved in that tonight.  We pointed our front OTA TV towards Battle Creek and Kalamazoo, found the local CBS station, and watched a couple of episodes of The Big Bang Theory and whatever else was one.  We caught some local weather and decided to enable the diesel burner on the Aqua-Hot, turn the thermostats on, and set the temperatures for 60 degrees F.  The overnight low temperature was forecast to be 27 and it was already 29 when we went to bed.  Welcome to Michigan in late April.

2015/04/24 (F) Touchdown

I awoke at 6:30 AM to an outside temperature of 27 degrees F.  Our coach has several ways it can be heated if we are plugged into adequate electrical power, including three electric toe-kick heaters.  I turned on the Aqua-Hot diesel burner and electric heating element last night before going to bed and left the living room and bathroom thermostats turned on with the temperature dialed back to just under 60 degrees.  I also turned on the Broan cube heater, dialed back the thermostat, and set in on the step to blow into the cockpit.

I got up at 7:15 AM and put on my sweats. It was 60 degrees F on the kitchen counter, but the refrigerator adds some heat mid-coach.  The thermometer on the dashboard read 53.  I turned the thermostats up to 68 and turned on the Aqua-Hot engine preheat loop.  I also turned on the front electric toe-kick heater.  I made coffee and then turned on the electric block heater for the engine.  I checked e-mail and monitored our amperage while I waited for the coach to warm up and for Linda to get up.  We were drawing about 30 A on Leg 1 and 20 A on Leg 2.  On a true “50 A” RV electrical service with a main circuit breaker that functions correctly we can safely draw 40 Amps on each leg, so our usage was not going to trip any breakers.

By 10 AM the temperature was up to 40 degrees, the sun was shining, and it’s was delightfully cozy in the rig.  I got a call from Michele Henry at Phoenix Paint in response to an e-mail I sent her yesterday and talked to her for 15 minutes.  We had planned on a 10:30 AM departure but by the time I connected the sewer hose, dumped the waste tanks, and put the hose away it was 10:45.  We had the bus and car ready to travel by 11AM and pulled out of our site.  We had to wait for a few minutes until someone moved a 5th wheel which they had temporarily parked in the middle of a two-way road while waiting to get into their site.  We finally made our way out of Camp Turkeyville and pulled onto I-69 N at 11:13 AM.

We had an easy run to our house and our wheels “touched down” on our driveway at 12:45 PM.  Even the dirt roads for the last two miles of our trip were in reasonably good shape, which made for a nicer homecoming.  We opened the house, put the cats in their carriers, and took them inside.  I got the bus plugged in and the air shut off while Linda put the batteries back in the water softener and sanitizer and turned the well pump on.  I turned the gas back on for the kitchen and fireplace and then set all of the thermostats up to 65 degrees F.  We unloaded a few things from the bus and then had lunch, after which I sent text messages to both of our children and to Chuck Spera to let them know we were home.

After lunch we unhooked the car from the bus and continued unloading the bus but did not get everything taken off.  I was tired and took a long nap, only getting up when Linda told me it was time for dinner.  We had a Daiya Mushroom and Garlic pizza.  We have used Daiya vegan cheese for a while but did not know they made pizza products until we saw them at the Dierbergs Market in Edwardsville, Illinois.  It had a thin, crispy, rice flour crust (gluten-free), lots of garlic and cheese (of course), and was very tasty.  I wish we could buy them near our house.

After dinner I called Butch to let him know we made it home safe and without any new or reoccurring bus issues.  He had reassembled the driver side steer wheel and discovered that the new brake drums he got from MCI some time ago are the wrong ones, so he is going to have to track down the correct ones next week.

2015/04/25 (S) Return to Regular

Do you remember when OTA TV stations used to break in to programs with special news bulletins or emergency alert tests?  At the conclusion of such interruptions the announcer would say “we now return you to your regular programming.”  Having spent most of 61 years living in stationary dwellings we still consider being back at our house to be the baseline for our regular lives.  The last two years, however, we have spent half of the year, more or less, living in our converted motorcoach.  That fact, combined with the fact that we moved to a new-to-us house just before we started our extended traveling, has altered our perception of what constitutes “regular.”  All we know for sure is that living this dual lifestyle is our new normal and we like it.

Whether living at home or in the bus we have routines.  Part of our “at home” routine is Saturday morning breakfast with our friends from the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC) and that is how we started our day.  We took our usual route to South Lyon and were surprised by the extent of the construction work at the I-96 and US-23 interchange.  We knew this interchange was scheduled to be rebuilt starting this year but as of March 1st, when Linda last drove through there, work had not started.  A lot has happened since then, and from the look of things this is going to be a BIG project.

There were a LOT of people at breakfast, 24 by Linda’s count.  It was good to see our friends and ease back into ham radio talk.  The club president, Harvey Carter (AC8NO), had the personalized club jackets we ordered from Sunset Sportswear in South Lyon over the winter so we got those from him after we were all done eating.  The jackets are dark blue with fleece lining and yellow embroidery that looks very sharp.  The left breast says “South Lyon Area” on top and “Amateur Radio Club” underneath.  On the right breast is our first name (in script) on top and our call sign underneath in block letters.

We stopped at Barnes and Noble on the way home to pick up a gift for grand-daughter Katie and found two books that we thought would interest her.  One was on rocks and gems and the other was on snakes, both of which are interesting to Katie.  Both are also an integral part of the desert southwest where we spent the winter.

When we got home I set about the tasks of moving various pieces of technology from the entrance foyer to my basement ham shack/office, reconnecting it to power and our network, and starting it up.  I started up our Linux box but the video driver would not “catch” so I shut it down and restarted it in Windows 2000 Pro, updated the es|et nod32 anti-virus database, and installed three Microsoft updates.  I checked e-mail on my primary laptop, responded to a couple, and then installed updates on all of the websites I manage.  WordPress just released version 4.2 and each new release triggers a flurry of plug-in and theme updates.

Our daughter, Meghan, had arranged for us to come over mid-afternoon to visit and have dinner without the bother and fuss of fixing a big meal.  Minn, the female cat, hid immediately but Inches, the male cat, hung around for a while.  Grand-daughter Katie is working at Pizza House in Ann Arbor where he dad, Chris, has been the general manager for a long time, but she got off work and arrived just after us followed by Chris, who had run out to pick up dinner at Seva.

Our son, Brendan, daughter-in-law Shawna, and grand-daughter Madeline showed up a little later, and Inches promptly disappeared.  Madeline is very sweet and interacts with her two kitties, Gus and Iggy, just fine but our cats, and Meghan’s/Chris’s cats, disappear whenever she comes to visit.  They are just not used to the size, motions, and sounds of a 28 month old.

Seva is a vegetarian restaurant that has been a staple of the Ann Arbor restaurant scene for many years but recently moved out of downtown to a location on the far west side of Ann Arbor.  While not just around the corner from Chris and Meghan’s house it is much closer, and easier to get to, than driving into downtown.  Many of their menu items are vegan, or can be made vegan, and that is mostly what they ordered.  We had a nice visit with excellent appetizers and main dishes, a dozen choices in all, and a nice Riesling wine from Washington State.

After appetizers we distributed the gifts we had picked up for everyone.  Besides Katie’s books Madeline got a “Dr. Seuss” book about deserts and a t-shirt from Marilyn with a design on the front that changes color in the sunlight. Both of our children, who kept an eye on our house for us over the winter and took in our mail, got the following:  A bottle of Red Chile Wine from St. Clair Winery in Deming, New Mexico; a bouquet of pequin chiles from Hatch Chile Sales in Hatch, New Mexico; a box of Prickly Pear Cactus jellied candies and a jar of Prickly Pear Cactus jelly from Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona; a bag of Green Chile Pistachios from Eagle Ranch (Heart of the Desert) in Alamogordo, New Mexico; a two box set of olive oil and peach balsamic vinegar glaze from Queen Creek Olive Mill in Queen Creek, Arizona; and a non-stick grilling mat from the “Big Tent” RV Show in Quartzsite, Arizona.  We appreciate what they do when we are away which would be more complicated for us without their assistance.

We enjoy looking for gifts that are unique to the areas we visit and tend to limit ourselves to items that are consumable so no one has to find room to store or display something, at least not for very long.  We saw many wonderful art and craft objects this winter but they present a special challenge beyond simply getting them home.  We are no longer collecting “things,” as we already cannot display or store the stuff we have, and our children are in somewhat the same situation (which is why we still have a lot of stuff instead of them having it).

Then there is the matter of taste.  Both children have their own taste in art and have carefully arranged items for display on their walls and shelves.  As much as we might like something, and think someone else might like it, buying art for other people is fraught with peril because there is an implied expectation that it will be displayed.  If it is displayed but the recipient does do not like it then the gift is intrusive.  If it is not displayed the giver is disappointed and potentially offended.  Better to stay clear of all that by avoiding surprise gifts.  The exception is if we know they are looking for something in particular and we come across one.  In that case it is a simple matter to take a photo with one of our smartphones and message them to see if they want it, making it clear that “no” is an acceptable answer.

Madeline goes to bed at 8 PM so she left (with her parents) at 7 PM.  Both Minn and Inches came out shortly thereafter to have a bite to eat and get the attention they had missed for the last four hours,  We stuck around for another hour which gave us just enough time to get home before it got really dark.  Brendan and Shawna had kept/used Linda’s Honda Civic all winter. They came in two cars and went home in one so that Linda could get the Civic back to our house.  There is a chance that she will have to go into the bakery a day or two this week and I do not like be without transportation, especially when we have a lot going on.

We sat in the living room for an hour reading and relaxing with our favorite iPad apps/games but without the benefit of our natural gas fireplace logs.  I lit them when we got home and they operated for about 60 seconds and then shut off and would not relight.  I turned the pilot flame off and will deal with that tomorrow.  I went to bed, read for a while longer, and then went to sleep.

 

2014/10/08-15 GLCC and Bus Work

Leave a reply

2014/10/08 (W) Rally Ho!

Today was a travel day so I had a light breakfast and went to the Small Town Brew for a cup of coffee rather than create a mess making my own.  I donated $2 for this cup and did not have a refill so the three cups I consumed over the last two days averaged out to $1 each.  I spent most of the morning helping Butch investigate possible routes for the engine preheat plumbing for their new International Thermal Research (ITR) Oasis Combi diesel-fired hydronic heating system.  I also adjusted the front bus tire pressures and all four of the car tire pressures.

As noon approached I switched to departure mode.  I changed out of my work clothes into something cleaner and more comfortable for driving, finished packing all the stuff I had in the guest bedroom, and loaded it into the bus or the car.  I targeted a 1 PM departure.  Butch had to go to town so we said farewell until Friday and he took off.  By the time I started the bus, pulled it across the street, moved the car over, hooked it up for towing, and checked the lights (with Fonda’s help) it was closer to 1:30 PM than 1:00 PM.

The drive to Elkhart was pleasant and uneventful.  The speedometer sat on zero for the first quarter of the trip, bounced around for the second quarter, indicated 85 MPH (max speed) for the third quarter, and settled in to something like the correct speed for the final quarter.  This is the way it had behaved for quite some time before it got unplugged so this confirmed that it did not work correctly and needed to be replaced.

I took SR-16 east to US-31 north to US-20 east to CR-17 north.  CR-17 becomes MI-217, the Michiana Parkway, which ends at US-12.  I took that west to Old M-204 west and followed it past Phoenix Paint back into Indiana where it becomes SR-19 south.  I turned east on CR-4 and a mile later turned into the entrance to Elkhart Campground on the south side of the road.  This route is at least 15 miles longer than necessary.  There is an exit for SR-19 north off of US-20, which is a much more direct route, but requires driving through the heart of Elkhart.  There was major road construction on this stretch of SR-19 the last couple of years, including a bridge, with narrow lanes and weight restrictions.  That work is all completed, and the road is much better now, but it is still a more urban route with stop lights, turns, and traffic.

Our coach (front, right) at the FMCA GLCC Surplus & Salvage Rally, Elkhart CG (Elkhart, IN).

Our coach (front, right) at the FMCA GLCC Surplus & Salvage Rally, Elkhart CG (Elkhart, IN).

I checked in to the campground and then got parked in my assigned site.  I was one of the last coaches to arrive.  I went through my arrival routine and got the coach setup to use before visiting with fellow GLCC chapter members, some of whom I had never met.  I chatted briefly with Michele Henry from Phoenix Paint to confirm her availability to work on a BCM article later in the evening and then went to Martins supermarket to get a salad for dinner.  The Martin’s supermarket on SR-19 at CR-4 has a really nice salad bar and I made a big salad with lots of ingredients, all vegan of course.

I took my salad over to the meeting room at 6 PM and had dinner with the group.  I was expecting Michele at 6:30 PM so I excused myself and went back to my coach.  She showed up a little after 7 PM.  We worked until almost 10 PM and managed to go through the entire article.  I did not have the photos on my new computer so the selection, processing, and captioning of images will occur later.

2014/10/09 (R) GLCC Surplus and Salvage

I went over for coffee around 8 AM without eating breakfast first.  By 9 AM plans had been made for car pools to visit the various RV surplus and salvage businesses in the area.  I went back to the coach and had a grapefruit for breakfast and then spent the morning taking care of e-mail and uploading blog posts starting with September 19th.

By noon I was tired of staring at my computer so I turned my attention to the speedometer.  After removing the dashboard cover I figured out a socket and ratchet combination that allowed me to remove the two Nylok nuts from the back of the instrument.  With the retaining bracket removed the old instrument slipped out the front of the dashboard.

Rear view of new VDO speedometer with custom adaptor cables.

Rear view of new VDO speedometer with custom adaptor cables.

I needed to redo the wiring so I got out my electrical tools.  I also tested to voltage to verify that the lighting circuit was 24VDC.  It was, and the actual instrument runs on either 12 or 24, so it didn’t care.  The existing connectors for the old instrument appeared to be the same 4-pin flat connectors used in personal computers for providing power to hard disk drives, CD drives, and other peripheral components.  I checked online and found that Michiana PC was located behind Menard’s a short distance away on the other side of the toll road.  I got an adapter cable with the proper connectors on it and then stopped at Menard’s for two different spade connectors.  As long as I was out driving around I stopped at Phoenix Paint to pick up coupons for Marco’s Pizza.  Since I had to drive past Martin’s on the way back to the campground I stopped and bought groceries.

The new VDO speedmeter temporarily connected.

The new VDO speedmeter temporarily connected.

Back at the coach I put the groceries away and got back to work on the speedometer project.  I cut leads from the old instrument light wiring as I needed the plug.  I then cut the unneeded end off the computer power cable.  I wired the lighting connector, spade connectors, and jumpers.  I then wired the instrument connector spade lugs to the computer power cable.  When all the wiring preparation was done I attached all of the wires except the two for the signal (#16 & #20) and connected the cables to mating chassis connectors.  I temporarily set the speedometer in dashboard hole, turn the chassis batteries on, and then turned the light switch on for the dashboard lights.  The speedometer lights worked, so I turned the ignition to ‘ON’ without starting the engine.  The gauge needle swept up to max and back to zero and the odo displayed 0.0.

I turned the ignition off and disconnected the chassis batteries.  I then pulled the instrument out of the dashboard and disconnected the two cables.  I got the H3-40 Service Manual out and figured out which wire was the + signal (#16) and which one was the ground (#20).  With the cables protruding through the mounting hole from the rear I pushed the spade terminals fully on and reconnected the cables.  It was getting to be late afternoon by this point and I decided to leave the finally assembly for tomorrow.

The new VDO speedometer (above & right of center).

The new VDO speedometer (above & right of center).

I took a shower and shaved and had plenty of hot water as the Aqua-Hot continued to cycle automatically.  I prepared an Annie’s Kung Pao noodle bowl for dinner and took it over to the meeting room at 6 PM.  I stayed there until 8 PM enjoying bus chat with a small group of chapter members that I know well.

The new VDO speedometer installed in the old hole.

The new VDO speedometer installed in the old hole.

Several members developed problems with their BCM subscriptions over the summer.  Pat Lintner gave me a flash drive so I could provide him with the issues he did not receive.  I took care of that back at the coach and then continued to upload blog posts and respond to e-mails.  I was two days behind on writing blog posts and stayed up until I was caught up which made for a very late night.

2014/10/10 (F) Bus Business

I was up way too late last night catching up on writing drafts of blog posts for the last few days.  Linda sent a text message this morning at 6 AM that I read at 7:30 AM letting me know that she was starting the drive to Elkhart.  I went over to the meeting room at 8 AM to have coffee and Linda showed up at 9 AM.  We visited with the other rally attendees until 10 AM and then went back to our coach to have granola for breakfast.

L-to-R: GLCC secretary Tami Bruner, Newsletter editor Scott Bruner, and Treasurer Linda Fay.

L-to-R: GLCC secretary Tami Bruner, Newsletter editor Scott Bruner, and Treasurer Linda Fay.

At 10:30 AM we drove to Phoenix Paint to deliver some additional copies of Bus Conversion Magazine to Michele and visited with her and Roxanne for a while.  Josh was supposed to come look at our coach in the afternoon but had to make an unexpected trip to Chicago.  Michele called him and got him rescheduled for tomorrow morning between 9 AM and noon.

Before returning to the campground we stopped at Martin’s supermarket for salad toppings and Radio Shack for a miniature “grain of wheat” light bulb.  Radio Shack did not appear to have the bulb I was looking for, but I learned later in the day from Butch that the bulb I need comes with two bare wire leads that fold over to form the contacts.

GLCC members gathered for the Friday evening dinner and business meeting.

GLCC members gathered for the Friday evening dinner and business meeting.

When we got back to the coach we were going to have lunch but I got busy giving a tour of our bus tour and then touring the late 1990’s MCI 102D Vantare conversion parked next to us.  Butch and Fonda arrived (in their car) while all of that was going on.  We visited for a while and then they took off for Bontrager’s RV Surplus store.

Many of the GLCC members were away shopping for surplus bargains so we hung around our coach where I worked at my computer and Linda read until she got tired and laid down briefly.  I was thinking about lying down too when Pat Lintner stopped by and then Butch/Fonda returned.  Before we knew what had happened to the afternoon it was getting to be dinner time.  Linda made our dinner salads and we went over to the meeting room a little before 6 PM where we enjoyed our salads in the company of our friends.  President Larry Baker conducted a brief business meeting at the conclusion of which Linda was elected to another 2-year term as chapter Treasurer and I was elected to a 2-year term as chapter President.  Dean Chipman was elected chapter Vice-President and Tami Bruner was elected chapter Secretary.  Pat Lintner stayed on as National Director and Frank Griswold as Alternate National Director.

L-to-R: GLCC National Director Pat Lintner talks to newly elected President Bruce Fay and members Charles Martin and Ed Roelle.

L-to-R: GLCC National Director Pat Lintner talks to newly elected President Bruce Fay and members Charles Martin and Ed Roelle.

Butch and Fonda had to get back to their home to tend to their dogs and left shortly after the voting was concluded.  We visited for quite a while with the chapter members before returning to our coach for the evening where we had a glass of wine and went to bed.

2014/10/11 (S) Transfers

The day dawned clear and cold with the morning low temperature in Elkhart at 32 degrees F and frost on the ground and vehicles.  We went over for coffee at 8 AM and chatted with fellow chapter members while they had breakfast.  Josh was supposed to come look at our coach between 9AM and noon but called to see if late afternoon would be OK.  It was fine with me and he agreed to call before he came over.

We returned to our coach and had granola for breakfast.  We spent the morning chatting with folks, including the Thornton’s, who stopped by to pay their dues.  We had transferred some things to Linda’s car yesterday and transferred some more things this morning.  By noon Linda was packed and ready to leave for home.  She texted me later to let me know she had stopped in Ann Arbor to visit family and shop at Whole Foods Market before getting back to our house.

Ed Roelle and Marty Caverly came to our coach to listen to our Aqua-Hot.  Ed agreed that it should not be producing any visible exhaust after initial startup and thought a likely cause was worn bearings in the blower shaft causing reduced rpm which resulted in reduced air flow which resulted in a rich fuel/air mixture.  Ed and Marty both thought the unit sounded normal for a unit with worn bearings.

After looking at the Aqua-Hot I found former chapter President Larry Baker at his coach and we transferred quite a lot of “presidential stuff” to my car.  He had been collecting and transporting this “stuff” for the last six years and was all too eager to be rid of it.

Josh called at 3:45 PM to let me know he would be at my coach around 4:45 PM.  I made a quick run to Radio Shack to check again for the “grain of wheat” 12 VDC bulb, but they did not have it in stock.  Josh arrived a little before 5 PM and we discussed our desired interior renovation for over an hour during which time he also took measurements.  By the time we wrapped up our discussion most of the rally attendees had left for dinner at a local restaurant.  I called Linda and then had dinner in the coach; a simple green salad, a roll with garlic vegan butter spread, and grapes.

I decided to top off our fresh water tank while there was still some daylight rather than doing it in the morning when it was forecast to be cold.  After the tank was full I shut off the water, disconnected and drained the hoses, and stowed them in our fresh water tub.  I removed and stowed the pressure regulator and water softener.  I then turned each of the three Aqua-Hot loops on, one at a time, to see if I could figure out which circuit included the heat exchangers in the water bay and front storage bay.  As best I could determine, the bays are plumbed into the bedroom circuit.  I would have preferred to have them plumbed in with the bathroom as we like the bedroom cool for sleeping but want to be able to keep the bays warm enough to avoid freezing.

Scott Bruner and his dad, Richard, were out so I chatted with them about the Aqua-Hot.  The Marin’s had a propane camp fire going at their rig next to ours so we went over there to talk for a while.  I finally got cold and went in for the night around 9:45 PM.  I uploaded the blog posts for the last three days of September and then went to bed and worked on this one.

2014/10/12 (N) Arduino SBC

I got up around 7 AM, got dressed, and spent an hour packing clothes, computers, and other things that would eventually be transferred to the car for the trip home.  I went to the meeting room at 8 AM to have one cup of coffee and socialize with the GLCC chapter members who had come over for breakfast.  There are special names for breakfast on the last morning of a rally.  The one I like best is “hitch up breakfast.”  Whether you have a motorhome towing a car or a car/truck pulling a trailer, most RVers have something that has to be hitched up for towing before they can depart.  It is also a distant but quaint reference to hitching up a team of horses to a wagon; the original RV having one to six horsepower.

I do not normally have coffee or breakfast on days when I have to drive the bus, but the bus driving portion of my day was only going to be two hours and I would not be pulling out until sometime between 10 and 11 AM.  Those who wanted to eat breakfast were done by 9 AM and a crew of women busied themselves cleaning the kitchen and re-packing the supplies.  Some of those supplies were destined for my car which was already connected to the back of our bus, so everything got loaded into Pat and Vicky Lintner’s car and they brought it over to my site and I transferred it to my vehicle.

I dumped the waste water holding tanks and stowed the drain hose.  By 9:45 AM I was packed and had the bus and car ready to travel except for a few last minute details.  I joined a small group of guys for some final conversation as several coaches pulled out.  I was in a site directly behind Scott and Tami Bruner and although I could have left before them it was going to be a lot easier to wait until they pulled out, which they did shortly after 10 AM.

I went through the final steps of preparing the car to be towed, turned the coach chassis batteries on, turned the shore power off, disconnected the shore power line, and stowed it.  I had opened all the air valves earlier, so I secured all of the bay’s, locked the entrance door (from the inside), and started the engine.  While it was building air pressure for the suspension and brakes I called Linda at 10:29 AM to let her know I would be underway shortly and then called Butch.  I did not get an answer at Butch and Fonda’s house so I called Butch on his cell phone.  He had misunderstood my travel timing and indicated that they might not be home yet when I arrived at their place.

I pulled out of my site at 10:30 AM and reversed the route I had taken on Wednesday, going east on CR-4 (IN) to SR-16 (IN) north, to Old M-204 (MI) eastbound to US-12 (MI) east to M-217 (MI) south (the Michiana Parkway), which became CR-17 (IN) southbound.  I left CR-17 and got on westbound US-20 over to US-31 south which I stayed on all the way to SR-16 west towards Twelve Mile.  I had a call from Pat Lintner while I was driving regarding the dates for the 2015 Surplus and Salvage rally which will be in mid-September.

I arrived in Twelve Mile at 12:15 PM.  I got the car detached and moved it out of the way.  While I was doing that Fonda got home from church.  After tending to their two dogs (Rascal and Daffy) she helped me back the bus across the street into its parking spot next to their bus.  I plugged in the shore power cord to get AC power to the house systems but left the bus systems on temporarily so I could reprogram the new VDO speedometer.

On the drive from Elkhart the speedometer, which had not been calibrated, was indicating just under 8 MPH when I was traveling 60 MPH according to my GPS.  That meant the signal from the Allison ATEC transmission computer was putting out fewer pulses per mile than the default speedometer program.  For some reason I thought the default might be 200,000 PPM so I computed the ratio between actual and indicated speed and divided  200,000 by that number which gave me 26,316.  I programmed that in using the PULSE mode but would not be able to test it until later in the week.  If the indicated speed is in the ballpark I will use the ADJUST mode to manually move the pointer to indicate the same speed as the GPS.  There is also a CALIBRATE mode that counts the pulses over a one mile distance and then programs that into the instrument.  That is the most accurate way to calibrate the speedometer/odometer if you have someplace safe to do it with accurate mile markers.

With that done, I turned off the chassis batteries and the unneeded air circuits in the front bay but left the valve for the engine air accessories turned on.  I typically do this when I leave it with someone in case they have to start it.  I turned the Aqua-Hot electric heating element on and turned on the bedroom thermostat but set the temperature to a cooler setting.  The heat exchangers in the water bay and front storage bay appear to be tied-in with the bedroom heat exchanger.

I transferred stuff from the coach to car the car and by 1:25 PM I was ready to roll, but Butch called and said he was almost back to the house so I waited for him.  He had made progress on the Wiremold in the bus kitchen and wanted me to see it.  He had also bought a 125 A main lug electrical panel so we discussed the mounting and installation, part of which I will probably work on later this week.  He had also received the ITR Oasis Combi unit, so I had to see that too.  Fonda built a 3-D cardboard mockup and Butch had it sitting in the water bay where he plans to install the Combi.  We will probably do more work on their bus than on ours over the next two weeks, but that’s OK; their bus has more/critical projects at this point than ours and he has helped me a lot with our projects.

I pulled out at 2:05 PM and decided to take a slightly different route home:  SR-16 east, US-31 north, US-6 east, I-69 north, M-60 east, I-94 east, M-14 east, US-23 north, M-36 (Nine Mile Road) east, Pontiac Trail north, to Dorothy Street and the SLAARC monthly meeting at the South Lyon Witch’s Hat Depot.  I do not usually take US-6 across Indiana although it is a fine road known as the Grand Army of the Republic Highway.  It is flatter than US-20 with more towns and associated lower speed limits and stop lights, but it was a nice drive with different scenery.

I arrived at the SLAARC meeting at 7 PM.  The business meeting was already concluded and Mike (W8XH) was setting up for his program on the Arduino SBC (single board computer).  He bought the experimenters kit and had been playing with it enough to discuss it with the group.  Larry (K8UT) discussed the four projects he has built using the Raspberry Pi platform and passed around some of the hardware.

It was 9 PM by the time I finally got to our house.  Linda helped me completely unload the car as I had an 8:30 AM service appointment at Brighton Honda and she was leaving before 6 AM for the bakery.  She had fixed some strawberries for me and they made a nice treat after a long day of snacking on vegan junk food while driving.  I worked for a while on this post before turning in for the night.

2014/10/13 (M) Grain Of Wheat

Linda was up early and out the door at 5:45 AM.  I got up a little after 7 AM, started a load of laundry, had a couple of homemade muffins, and got ready to take my car to Brighton Honda for its 90,000 mile service.  I got coffee at the Dunkin Donuts across the street from the dealership first and waited in the lounge working on yesterday’s blog post while they worked on my car.

I forgot to specify synthetic oil so the put in regular oil.  When the car was done I headed to Novi and immediately noticed a front-end shimmy that was not there when I dropped it off.  They had rotated the tires and may not have re-torqued the lug nuts correctly.  It also pulled to left, which might be a tire inflation issue.  I did not have time to take it back so I will see if it settles out on the drive to Indiana tomorrow.  If not, I will need to get at least the front tires/wheels loosened and retightened, and perhaps balanced.  Worst case I will have to get the front end aligned.

I found the FedEx/Kinko’s on Grand River Avenue just east of Novi Road and made 10 copies each of two 24″x36″ electrical diagrams; one for the DDEC I ECM (Engine Control Module) and one for the Allison 700 Series ATEC (Automatic Transmission Electronic Control).  I folded up an ATEC diagram for me and one for Chuck and rolled up the other eight and put them in a tube for safe keeping.  Chuck and I have DDEC II’s controlling our main engines so I rolled the 10 DDEC I diagrams up and put them in a second tube to protect them.  By the time I was done it was 10:45 AM and Chuck was at his shop just up the street so I drove there.

He had installed a dual battery maintainer and wanted me to see it.  He mounted it on the back wall of the small bay above the passenger side drive tire of their bus which got it close enough to the chassis batteries (in a tray above the tag tire) for the built-in charging cables to reach the correct battery terminals.  He was still pondering where to tie in the AC power source so we discussed some alternatives.  He had also put the red covers on the bulbs in his new VDO speedometer so I got to see that.  Ours are white for now but most of the dash lighting is green.  The red makes the speedo stand out, but if I change ours from white it will likely be to green.  Chuck had a supply of spare 12VDC, 1.2W “grain of wheat” light bulbs that are used in our illuminated switches and let me have four.  Our Aqua-Hot switch does not currently light up when it is turned on.

After checking out his projects we went to the Panera at Grand River Avenue and Novi Road for lunch.  We had a good chat and solved all of the world’s problems so he went back to the shop to find some new ones and I went home to take care of chores.  I continued doing laundry and worked on the SLAARC WordPress website setting up user accounts for several new club members.

Linda got home around 5:30 PM and got busy making dinner.  She started with a nice salad featuring a ginger dressing.  Dinner was 45 minutes later; a baked potato with Brussels sprouts on the side, a glass of Leelanau Cellars Winter White with Peach wine, and grapes for dessert.  She worked on something for Butch while the potatoes baked and I worked on e-mail.

We were both tired after dinner but took some time to sort and fold the laundry from which I selected and packed the clothes I will need for the next 10 days.  We were tired and turned in after that.  I had received an e-mail from Butch with seven photos attached of the place we are considering staying in Quartzite, AZ.  It took us a while, but we eventually matched them up with the correct lot on the Google Maps satellite view.  It is not the corner lot as Butch and I previously thought, but the 3rd lot north of Kenoyer on the east side of N Lollipop Lane.  With that issue resolved we turned out the lights and went to sleep.

2014/10/14 (T) A Crowning Achievement

Linda was up at 5:15 AM again and out the door on the way to the bakery at 5:45 AM.  At this hour of the morning she has clear sailing all the way to Hamtramck which is much less stressful than the parking lot that develops on I-96 inbound just a short time later.  I was up at 7:15 AM, showered, and started gathering and organizing all of the stuff that I had to load into the car for the trip back to Indiana.

Keith showed up at 9 AM to cut the grass as I was loading my car.  He was rained out yesterday and today was not looking too good either but he figured he would have a go at it.  I wrote out his check and paid him in advance as I would be gone long before he finished.  I had time for a cup of green tea and pulled out of my driveway at 9:30 AM.

My first destination was Gusfa Dental in Dearborn, Michigan where I had an 11 AM appointment.  Dr. Steve and his assistant, Margaret, installed my new permanent ceramic crown on the upper right tooth that had a root canal procedure in mid-September.  The crown fit almost perfectly and only required a little modification on the surfaces that abut the two teeth immediately adjacent.  The bite was just right.  Gusfa Dental is definitely not the cheapest clinic around, but the work is top notch and they have been our dentists for almost 40 years.

I was done and out the door at 11:20 AM and headed directly for Twelve Mile, Indiana.  The drive was wet but uneventful.  Given my starting point in Dearborn I changed my route yet again, this time taking I-94 west to M-60 southwest to I-69 south to the I-80/90 Indiana Toll Road west to exit 92 at SR-19 (IN) in Elkhart.  From there I headed south on SR-19 and wound my way slowly through Elkhart until I picked up US-20 westbound on the south side of Elkhart.  From US-20 I picked up US-31 south and exited at IN-25 south of Rochester, Indiana where I bought some groceries at the Kroger store.  I texted Linda and then called Butch.  As I was getting ready to head south on IN-25 I got a call from Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint with some questions about the Zip Dee awnings we had installed on our coach after she finished painting it.  I took IN-25 as far south as Fulton and turned east onto a small farm road that took me to Meridian then south to SR-16 and east to Twelve Mile.

While driving down Meridian I saw one of the most intense and perfect rainbows I have ever experienced.  It was deeply colored, very clear, and an entire semicircle was visible.  A second rainbow, fainter and partial, formed above the first one on the right (south) end.  The sky was very dark to the east with bright, low sun from the west.  The trees were blazing with color, intensified by the rains, and white farm houses glistened as if they had just been freshly painted.  It was spectacular but I was not able to get a photo of it.  I arrived in Twelve Mile at 5 PM and immediately unloaded and stored my groceries.  I then brought my clothes and technology items into the house and put them in the guest bedroom where I stay when I am here.

Butch needed some parts for various bus projects so I drove us to Home Depot in Logansport.  One the drive in he got a call from his brother Tom.  He had a problem with his air compressor and wanted Butch to look at it so we went there after our stop at Home Depot, with a stop at the local Mobil station so I could fill the fuel tank in my car.  Butch quickly made a tentative diagnosis of the compressor problem as the starting capacitor and/or switch.  Tom and Butch did some pondering about details of Tom’s project in which he is converting the front half of a Crosley sedan into a trailer.

We visited for a while back at the house and looked up the grain of wheat bulb I needed for the illuminated switches in the H3-40.  Napa Auto Parts shows it in their automotive lighting catalog as a #37, 12 VDC, 1.26 W, wedge based.  Butch looked online and found a place (Bulbtown) that sells them for $0.42 each.  Orders over $50 get free shipping and handling so we discussed doing a bulb inventory of each bus and then pooling our orders.

I spent a few minutes showing Butch how the photos that Joe sent of the lot in Quartzite matched up with the Google Maps/Earth satellite and Streetview images.  By the time we were done with that it was late and we all turned in for the night.

2014/10/15 (W) MC-9 AC Wiring

Cockpit house systems switch panel.

Cockpit house systems switch panel.

Butch bought a brass nipple (NPT) last night to thread into the fitting on his fresh water tank but the fit was still too loose.  He needed the nipple in order to put the fresh water tank back in the bus.  Between that and the really soupy 54 degree F weather it was obvious that today was not going to be an outside work day.  I suggested that we work on the AC wiring on their bus instead—a nice inside project—after breakfast.

House electrical closet in Butch & Fonda's MC-9 before rewiring.

House electrical closet in Butch & Fonda’s MC-9 before rewiring.

I had homemade granola with fresh blueberries and soy milk, a glass of orange juice, and two cups of Seattle Blend 1/2 decaf coffee.  While the coffee was brewing I unscrewed the switch panel with the Aqua-Hot switch and replaced the “grain of wheat” bulbs in the Aqua-Hot switch and the Engine Preheat switch.  We then got to work on the AC (house) wiring for their bus conversion.

New 20-slot AC panel for inverter circuits.

New 20-slot AC panel for inverter circuits.

The bus had three small main lug load centers, with six circuit breakers each, mounted in a future closet in the bedroom.  We ran an extension cord through the passenger side rear slider window to power a work light, disconnected the shoreline, and switched off the inverter.  I then removed the three panels one at a time, labeling each cable as I pulled it out.  With all of the old panels out we mounted the new 20-position panel box for use with the inverter circuit.  I spent the rest of the work day, except for a lunch break, pulling old and new electrical cable into the new box and making the connections to the ground bar, neutral bus, and the GFCI circuit breakers for all of the circuits that will be fed by the inverter.  We tied in the main AC power to the inverter AC input and checked that all of the circuits worked as planned, which they did.  I will mount two of the smaller boxes tomorrow and pull the cables for the shorepower/generator only circuits into those boxes.

We quit working for the day at 7:30 PM and I washed up before making my dinner.  I had a nice salad with “power greens” and various toppings and leftover Koshary.  Yum.  I drew a glass of Moscato, did the dishes, and went back to the house.  I had a text and an e-mail from Linda so I replied to those.  We were all tired and turned in a little after 9 PM.

 

2014/09/19 (F) Renewed Acquaintance

Leave a reply

After I installed iOS8 on my iPad2 yesterday morning my Logitech Bluetooth keyboard seemed to change its behavior, giving me double letters in some cases and feeling a little sluggish in its response.  The keyboard itself has not changed, so I presume this has something to do with iOS8.  I also presume the keyboard batteries have not run down already, but I suppose that is a possibility.  If so, I will be replacing them once a week.  While creating an image gallery for the SLAARC WordPress website last night I noticed that the drag and drop feature of the gallery editor did not work.  I upgraded to WP Version 4.0 about a week ago but this was the first time I had tried to use the gallery feature.  If there is a problem with this feature there is no way that I am the first person to discover it and I presume WordPress is aware of it.  I find it strange, however, that they have not released a maintenance update fixing it since an improved and more visual editor was a major feature of the 4.0 release.

A few weeks back I re-established contact through Linked-In with a colleague from 10 years ago.  Jim was Director of General Education Services at Livingston Educational Service Agency at the time and we went through NCA Ambassador training together.  It turns out that he lives and works in the Brighton area, so we are now neighbors of sorts.  He suggested we meet up for coffee and I finally called him this morning to arrange that.  We both had time at 1:30 PM today and agreed to meet at the Panera on Grand River Avenue by I-96 at that time.

Linda got the new Global Bake bakery software installed on her laptop yesterday so this morning she was able to start working on the software conversion process in earnest.  Her work requires a lot of concentration, and she gets very focused when doing it, so I went to my office to continue working on editing blog posts and photos.

In checking my e-mail I noticed that I was still getting failed login attempts from foreign countries on this site and on the FMCA GLCC website, which is sub-domain of this site, in spite having installed the premium (paid) version of the Wordfence Security plug-in.  I looked at the installed plug-ins for the GLCC website and discovered that I had one named “Limit Login Attempts” that I did not have installed on our personal website or the other two sites I manage.  I surmised that this plug-in might be doing just what the name implied and in the process preempting Wordfence from ever doing its job.  I deactivated it and saw a reduction in failed attempts, with none from outside North America, suggesting that the country blocking feature of Wordfence was now working properly.  I saw a similar drop in failed login attempts on our personal website when I activated the country blocking feature for all countries except the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.  Only time will tell, however, if Wordfence is indeed blocking login attempts from outside North America.

We had hummus and apples for lunch after which I hung up one load of laundry and put another load in the washer.  I left at 1 PM to have time to stop at Best Buy to get something to clean our various touch screens and monitors.  Traffic was very heavy in the I-96 and Grand River Avenue shopping area, but Best Buy is in the same shopping complex as the Panera, so I made it there on time.  Jim and I talked for almost two hours and which covered the highlights of the last eight years.

Back home I kept my focus on getting the blog caught up.  Linda wrapped up her work for the day and we finished the bottle of Alpha Rose from Red Trail Vineyards while she fixed a simple but tasty dinner of vegan burgers and corn.  I got a call from Butch letting me know that the company in Nevada had arranged for a semi and taken all of the parts they plan to take.  Everything that is left is Butch and Fonda’s to do with as they please.  The important thing for us is that I can now take our bus down there at my convenience.  I would like to get all of the natural gas related work taken care of and put the finishing touches on the garage project before I move the bus, but I may go ahead and move it next week if the scheduling of contractors works out.

During the evening I had an exchange of TXT messages with Chuck.  He had ordered some miniature 24VDC light bulbs (1829s) that are used in our bus dashboards and the order had arrived.  Rather than go to his shop after breakfast tomorrow we arranged to meet him for dinner tomorrow night.  I also got a call from Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint.  She had a new customer who just bought a mid-1990’s Prevost XL converted coach and she gave him my name and phone numbers in case he had any questions about the rig.  We agreed that we would try to find time during the GLCC Surplus and Salvage a Rally to work on the article I started last year about the process she used to repair the body and roof of our coach, seal and coat the roof, and paint the body.  We capped off the evening with the second to last episode of Season 5 of Doc Martin. We need to return the DVDs to the Howell Library on Sunday, so we want to make sure we get through all of the episodes for Season 5.

 

2014/06/13 (F) Day 3 Shop-Learn-Eat

Leave a reply

Day 3 of the 2014 GLAMARAMA kicked off with coffee and doughnuts at 7:30 AM.  Those attendees going on the morning tour of the Jayco factory had to assemble early.  We had coffee and visited with friends until the vendors opened at 9:00 AM.

At the 2013 GLAMARAMA last September I had decided to buy a small video camera/recorder to mount on the inside of the windshield and record what is happening in front of the coach.  By the time I went to buy it on the last day at 3:00 PM the vendors were closed.  I did not make the same mistake this time and bought one this morning.  We still need to get a 32 GB high speed SD card to go with it.

We had spotted some Velcro straps at another vendor and decided to buy a pair to use for securing the Pressure Pro TPMS repeater to the inside rear view mirror in our Honda Element.  The same vendor had an LED light that looked like it might fit in our downlights.  They loaned us one to try.  It fit well and the light was OK.  I returned the sample and bought a new one.  Lloyd De Gerald had his Aqua-Hot service booth right next to the Aqua-Hot factory booth and I purchased an inline secondary fuel filter from him.

Michele Henry from Phoenix Paint ordered some silver (white) reflective tape for us as it was on sale and we thought it might look OK around the lower portion of our bus.  (There is a channel on all of the lower body panels, as well as the front and rear bumpers, where this reflective tape is intended to go.)  Our hope was that the tape would reflect the adjacent paint color while making the bus much more visible at night.  Alas, it did not pick up the surrounding color and the tape was a little wider than the channel, which would complicate the installation.  I did not see it, but Linda did, and did not like the way it looked.

Josh Leach specializes in interior projects and is currently working out the Phoenix Paint facility.  He teamed up with Darin Hathaway (the Aqua-Hot technician who serviced our Aqua-Hot system on Monday) and Michele Henry (who painted our coach two years ago) to get a booth at the GLAMARAMA.  We discussed our interior remodeling ideas and agreed to have him come by the coach to see it.

Just after noon Linda drove to the Whole Foods store in Mishawaka, Indiana to get ingredients for dishes she planned to serve back at the house on Sunday.  I attended two seminars, both by Gary Bunzer (the RV Doctor).  The first one was on balanced battery systems.  The key concept of that seminar was that there are poor, OK, and optimal was to interconnect multiple batteries to form a battery bank of the required voltage and energy storage capacity (Amp-Hours).  The second seminar was on controlling/eliminating holding tank odors.  Linda dropped in on this one for a little while and then headed over to the reception for vendors and chapter officers.  I joined her at the reception after the seminar concluded.  Gary has published a column somewhere on RV maintenance and operation every month for the last 38 years.

The vendor and chapter officers reception was very nice, with fresh fruit and veggies, cheese and crackers, some deli meats, and a choice of wines.  We returned to our coach for a little while after the reception before heading over to the evening entertainment.  Keith Longbothum and his sidekick, an excellent harmonica player, put on a high energy show that was initially Nashville country but morphed into gospel and patriotic.  One thing I noticed about entertainment tonight and on Wednesday was the use of pre-recorded instrumental soundtracks which make it possible for a small ensemble to produce a very full sound without having to pay a lot of musicians.

There was a door prize drawing after the entertainment.  We did not win.  The head of the parking crew also gave instructions for departure on Sunday.

 

2014/06/09 (M) Mobile Service

Leave a reply

One of the interesting things about RVing is the availability of mobile service providers.  The mechanic who maintains our bus chassis, Joe Cannarozzi, travels all over the U. S. from his base in Chicago, Illinois.  Other vendors, many full time RVers themselves, travel the RV rally circuit providing on-site service.  We stopped by Phoenix Paint late in the morning to visit with Michele Henry, who painted our motorcoach in 2011/12, and met Darin Hathaway there.  Darin is an independent Elkhart-based factory trained/authorized Aqua-Hot service technician.  Our Aqua-Hot has not been running well the last few of times we have tried to use it, even failing to ignite once and producing copious amounts of white smoke for as long as five minutes if/when it did.  I described the symptoms we’ve experienced and what we have done to try and diagnose the situation.  Darin had time in his afternoon schedule to service our unit so we arranged to have him come over to Elkhart Campground to do the work there.

Darin arrived around 2:15 PM and performed the standard annual maintenance / tune up.  He let me watch and ask questions and I learned a bit more about the unit and how it functions.  He removed the burner and then removed the swirl chamber which had a buildup of carbon soot.  He removed the nozzle, flame sensor (photo eye), igniter electrodes, and the photo (mounting) disk.  He also noticed a small inline final fuel filter that needed to be replaced.  He clamped off the lines, removed it, and installed a new one.  I wanted a spare, but he only had the one with him so he said he would order one for me.

He disconnected the two main electrical harnesses, plugged in his service control box, and then installed a pressure gauge into the nozzle port.  He activated the fuel pump and the fuel pressure was just over 160 PSI.  It was supposed to be 145 PSI so he showed me the adjustment screw and backed it down to the proper level.

The photo disk was slightly wrapped which is not unusual, but could prevent it from sealing the combustion chamber, so he installed a new one showing me how to make sure it was loose enough that it could position itself correctly when the main blower/pump housing was re-installed.  I got a second disk to keep as a spare.  He installed a new nozzle and then reinstalled the two igniter electrodes and showed me how to set the spark gap.  He also pointed out that the cable clamp on top of the main blower/pump housing is the spark gap tool.  Nice touch.  He said the old nozzle was a bit loose which might have allowed a little fuel to get into the combustion chamber without going through the nozzle.  His tips for nozzle installation were to always use two wrenches and to tighten the nozzle, back it off, and tighten it a second time.  Apparently this helps the threads seat and seal.

He checked the four rubber grommets around the housing and said they were still in good shape and probably relatively new.  I got four for spares, two lefts and two rights.  I might as well get parts while I can.  He cleaned up the swirl chamber and re-installed it, seam side up.  Very important.  He checked the spark igniter and it worked and then failed.  He spent some extra time that was not part of the routine service diagnosing and fixing this issue.  He thought it might be a marginal or failed coil, but after tightening the wire connections and flexing the wires a bit, it seemed to work fine with repeated testing.  The coils are relatively expensive and decided not order one as a spare at this time.  Hopefully I don’t regret that decision somewhere done the road.

With critical components replaced, and everything cleaned and adjusted, Darin inspected the main combustion chamber for signs of fuel or coolant leakage but did not see anything out of the ordinary.  He secured the main blower/pump housing to the combustion chamber / “boiler” assembly using a short quarter-inch socket ratchet with a 12″ extension and suggested that I do the same.  Apparently it is very easy to over-torque these bolts and break the mounting tabs, which is a very bad thing to do.  A final test resulted in the unit starting up immediately with clean exhaust; no smoke, black or white.

We spent a few more minutes trying to determine which thermostats in the house (there are three) controlled which of the three circulating pumps, but did not figure it out.  The is important because the radiator for the water bay (where the Aqua-Hot is installed) is clearly part of one of the coolant circulation loops controlled by one of the thermostats in the house (the leftmost of the three at the top).  The radiator for the front bay is also part of one of the house loops but I do not know if it is tied in with the water bay radiator or with a different zone.  Darin said there was usually a separate thermostatically controlled zone for the bays, but I assured him that our coach was not configured that way.  Our unit does have a forth circulation pump that is tied in with the main engine coolant.  It can be used to pre-heat the engine or to provide heat from the engine to the coach.  Darin indicated that anytime the burner is lit one of the circulation pumps will be running, usually the middle one.  In our unit it seemed to be the engine pre-heat pump, but I later discovered that I had the pump turned on.

It was after 3:30 PM by the time Darin was finished and I had a 4:00 PM conference call meeting of the FMCA national education committee.  We turned the diesel burner on from its normal control switch and let it run for one complete cycle while he finished up the paperwork.  As the cycle finished I saw a little white smoke in the bay, which was still open.  I opened the door to the small compartment underneath the Aqua-Hot and it was full of white smoke.  I have the battery for the fuel polishing module installed in there but the compartment us otherwise empty save for a large diameter tube (5″?) that runs from the bottom of the Aqua-Hot through the compartment, and out the floor.  This tube provides fresh air to the combustion chamber and also provides a conduit for the exhaust pipe.  There was obviously a double problem:  1) exhaust gas was leaking from the exhaust pipe somewhere, and 2) the large outer tube was not sealed.  Add that to the project list.

I called in to the FMCA national education committee meeting at 4:00 PM and by 4:10 PM (EDT) we had enough members for a quorum.  Committee chair Gaye Young worked us through the agenda and we were done with our first meeting an hour after we started.  The committee is charged with looking at four topics, one of which is RVillage.

We had a quiet evening and had pan-grilled tofu with caramelized onions and bar-b-que sauce for dinner, followed by a final stroll around the campground.  We got online with the campground WiFi via our WiFi Ranger and took care of e-mail, RVillage, and WordPress tasks before turning in for the evening.