Tag Archives: Pancakes Pirello (vegan)

2015/11/22 (N) Repackaging

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My lower back bothered me all night, so I did not sleep well, but we both got up at 8:15 AM, took showers, and got dressed.  My right lower back seemed to have gotten worse overnight.  I pulled a muscle yesterday and they tend to take quite a while to heal.  Not good.

The view of our rear deck from our dining room the morning after our major snowstorm. It’s pretty if you don’t have to go outside to pack a bus or drive in it.

The view of our rear deck from our dining room the morning after our major snowstorm. It’s pretty if you don’t have to go outside to pack a bus or drive in it.

According to the National Weather Service newsfeed on The Weather Channel iPad app Howell, Michigan got 16.5 inches of snow from yesterday’s winter storm, the highest in Michigan.  The highest accumulation in the country was 18 inches somewhere in South Dakota, so we were very close to that.  The official amount was no doubt recorded at the Livingston County Airport about 11 miles west of us on the west side of Howell, but based on what we see on our deck we got at least a foot of snow here at the house.  It was sunny but only 25 degrees F when we got up.  The high temperature was forecast to only reach 30 and the low tonight is forecast to be 18.

Linda made vegan pancakes for breakfast.  She cooked blueberries into hers but I had mine on the side.  I think the blueberries add additional liquid to the batter and keep the pancakes from cooking properly, but Linda likes the way they turn out.  I made a pot of coffee with the last of our Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans.  I took some Ibuprofen along with my usual morning pills.  Linda got the heating pad out and I sat with it against my lower right back on the living room sofa while we drank our coffee.  In spite of having a lot to do between now and Thanksgiving Day, we got a slow start to our day.

Linda cleared our front sidewalk so she could get to the front door of the bus.  She also shoveled a path to my car, which I parked behind the bus yesterday, and cleared the snow off of it.  She checked the snow depth with a ruler at several places on our rear deck.  It was 13 inches.  Not 16.5 inches, but it’s still a lot of snow, and it could certainly have been deeper out in the yard.

Her agenda for the day was to vacuum the inside of all the cabinets in the bus, dust the woodwork, and clean the counters and mirrors.  I exchanged some text messages with Chuck including a couple of photos.  I sent one of our bus buried in snow and he sent one of the palm trees and lush vegetation on the unoccupied lot next to theirs at Pelican Lake Motorcoach Resort.  Chuck said it has been too warm to play golf.  I did not know that was even possible but I did not feel too sorry for him.  I sent an e-mail to Butch to let him know I had delivered the antique SUN Electric distributor tester to Bill a week ago Friday.

I resumed working in the garage and spent most of the day repacking my tool boxes.  My objective was to reduce the number of boxes from five to four while maintaining some sort of reasonable logic to how they were organized.  I took short breaks throughout the day to get off my feet and had a few pretzels with hummus for lunch.

Sometime during the afternoon Kerry showed up and plowed as much of the concrete driveway as he could.  Linda must have been vacuuming in the back of the bus and I was working in the garage (with doors closed) so neither of us realized he was there until after he was gone.

I decided that I needed some additional storage boxes for organizing small parts so I drove to Lowe’s hoping to find the Stanley boxes I already have.  They had similar boxes from a different manufacturer but not the exact ones.  I tried The Home Depot but liked the boxes at Lowe’s better so I went back there and bought six, three with 10 deep bins and three with 17 medium bins.  I stopped at Meijer’s for orange juice and picked up a few other things.

When Linda was done cleaning the bus she started loading the things onboard that she had ready.  She got almost everything on board that was staged in the middle bedroom and the kitchen.  She then made three more batches of granola.  That made nine batches since Friday evening, eight of which are in the freezer.  Linda thinks a batch will last at least two weeks if have granola every other day.  If that proves to be true we should have enough granola with us in the bus to get through the end of March.

By 5:30 PM we were both ready to stop for the day.  I changed into my robe and sat on the living room sofa with the heating pad on my lower right back.  We spent 45 minutes considering possible waypoints between here and Williston, Florida.  We did not come a decision but it is very likely we will stop at two of the same places we used two years ago, the Oh Kentucky campground in Berea, Kentucky and the KOA near Cartersville, Georgia.

The Oh Kentucky RV Park in Berea is just west of I-75 at an interchange.  It wasn’t fancy but provided easy in/out access and would allow us to plug in for the night.  Just east of the Interstate at the same exit is a Walmart where our friends, Chuck and Barbara, stayed on their way south a few weeks ago.  The RV park options north of Atlanta, Georgia are surprisingly limited.  The Cartersville Castle-White KOA is convenient to an exit off of I-75 and also provided easy in/out access.  Staying there Saturday night means we can drive around Atlanta on I-285 on Sunday morning, our favorite time to bypass major cities.

Our final waypoint before going into Williston Crossings on Tuesday, December 1st will probably be Mayo, Florida where we can boondocks for two nights at John Palmer’s place.  This itinerary would have us traveling about 400 miles on Friday, 300 miles on Saturday, 340 miles on Sunday, and 75 miles on Tuesday.  Friday would be a longer drive by about 2 hours than we normally plan, but very doable.  Also, this time of year we like to get as far south as quickly as possible.

Linda opened a bottle of Leelanau Cellars Mixed Berry Winter White wine to have before, during, and after dinner.  For dinner Linda cooked a squash and heated up some frozen corn and mock chicken tenders (vegan).  After dinner I tried to check my e-mail but our Internet connection had slowed to an unusably slow speed.  At 8 PM I participated in the SLAARC Information Net and then came back upstairs and went to bed.  We both took some Tylenol PM at 11:30 and then turned out the lights.

 

2015/11/12 (R) Unforced Solutions

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When I got up at 7 AM Linda had already left for the bakery.  I had granola for breakfast and made a cup of Stash China Black hot tea.  I went to my office and processed the photo that Byron sent me of him and Betty and e-mailed it to Gary and Jorge at Bus Conversion Magazine.  I then replied to an e-mail from Nancy (& Big Bill).  We met them at Suncoast Designers in Hudson, Florida in April 2014.  They are from Ontario but have a place near Ocala, Florida where they spend at least part of the winter.  I also replied to an e-mail from the Mitch in Florida regarding good places for bus service and forwarded my reply to Chuck.  I cleaned the kitty litter tray and finally got to work on the bus.

A piece of scrap SurePly underlayment used as a spacer/guide for the Porter-Cable oscillating saw to undercut he bottom edge of the side wall panel so it can be removed above the floor tile.

A piece of scrap SurePly underlayment used as a spacer/guide for the Porter-Cable oscillating saw to undercut he bottom edge of the side wall panel so it can be removed above the floor tile.

First up was to finish screwing the down the SurePly underlayment on the floor of the passenger seat platform.  With that done I turned my attention to trimming the switch panel next to the passenger seat.  This panel is just 1/4″ walnut veneered plywood but has both AC and DC switches mounted in a row across the entire top portion.  The added thickness of the underlayment and tile on the floor and back wall of the platform required the bottom and back edges of the panel to be trimmed so it could be installed and removed in case I need to get to the wiring behind it.  I used pieces of underlayment as spacers/guides and trimmed off the edges using the Porter-Cable oscillating saw.  This was the perfect tool for this situation where I could not remove the panel and take it to the shop.

With the panel trimmed and the sawdust vacuumed up I turned my attention to the tile.  After test fitting some pieces to see where the edges would land I decided to tidy up the front of the bus so it would be easier to work.  While that was certainly true it was also a tactic of stepping away from the work and letting solutions float into consciousness rather than trying to force them out.  After several trips to bring things inside the house and garage it was noon and time for lunch, which meant more time to relax and let my subconscious work on the tile layout.  Hummus and sourdough pretzel nibblers made a quick, easy, tasty meal and a cup of Constant Comment decaffeinated tea helped wash it down and warm me up while I worked on this post.

Two scrap pieces of the Armstrong Alterna Luxury Vinyl tile used as feeler gauges to make sure the side wall switch panel will clear the floor and rear wall tiles.

Two scrap pieces of the Armstrong Alterna Luxury Vinyl tile used as feeler gauges to make sure the side wall switch panel will clear the floor and rear wall tiles.

As long as I was taking a break I called Pat/Vickie Lintner to let them know I would be coming through Elkhart tomorrow (Friday) and verify that they would be home in the morning.  That sounded fine to Pat.  I will be picking up an accessory for a Nutone power base unit from them.  We have one of the power bases installed in the kitchen counter of the bus but the blender was the only accessory that came with the bus when we bought it.  Pat and Vickie had a power base in their bus but it broke years ago.  They never replaced it, and don’t plan to, so they no longer needed the accessories and were willing to give them to us.  We got most of the pieces from them at the GLCC Surplus and Salvage Rally back in September but we were missing a critical piece which Vickie thought she still had and eventually found.

After my break I reinstalled the large front trim board on the driver side vertical wiring/plumbing chase that is located on the outside wall next to the back of the driver’s chair.  I don’t recall how I got it out but I could not get it back in.  I ended up trimming off a small protrusion on the lower end and then it went into position without any further difficulty.  It was a small thing, but it needed to be done and it was good to get it checked off my (mental) “to do” list.  When I cannot solve the problem I am trying to solve (tile layout) I try to keep moving and get other small tasks completed.

I took a few more minutes to carefully measure the adjustment needed to the bump out on the passenger side HVAC duct cover and the dimensions for the two new pieces of walnut that will go on either side of the sofa seat.  I brought the old pieces in the house and found the leftover walnut in the garage as I have to take some of it with me tomorrow to Jarel’s cabinet shop in Logansport, Indiana.  I think an hour of my day disappeared between these small, simple tasks.

I continued to ponder the tile layout for quite some time, taking and retaking measurements as I tried to figure out an arrangement that would allow the joints to fall in reasonable places while making sure I could notch around things that go through the floor and avoid having any small pieces.  That is a lot of constraints.  The arrangement I finally came up with had three full 16×16 tiles centered on the landing and into the driver area.  There will be pieces about six inches wide along the fore and aft edges, and the first full tile will also be about six inches back from the edge of the landing (by the entry stairs).  The joints (grout lines) resulting from this placement will continue up the front of the passenger seat platform and result in tile placements on the platform that should work out well.

Linda called at 4:15 PM to let me know she was on her way home from the bakery and was stopping at Kathi’s on the way.  I was done working in the bus for the day so I adjusted the thermostats on the heaters and checked the house battery bank status.  The battery bank voltage was at 25.0 VDC, just slightly down from the 25.2 V level of a fully charged and rested “24 V” lead acid battery (2.1 V per cell x 12 cells in series).  The State Of Charge (SOC) was at 84% and I decided to leave the charger off until Saturday morning after breakfast.  I did have the shorepower turned off for a few hours Wednesday so the refrigerator was running on the inverter for a while but there are no DC loads operating in the coach at the moment and the Magnum remote is showing zero current coming out of the battery bank.  There must be some loads, however, as the battery SOC wound not drop that much that quickly due to self-discharge.  I locked up the bus, went in the house for the evening, and turned on the outside lights for Linda.  Given when she left the office I knew it would be dark by the time she got home.

I took a few pictures throughout the day so I went to my office and off-loaded them onto my computer.  I had an e-mail from Gary at BCM with the latest markup of the PDF for the December 2015 issue.  I proofread my article and highlighted a half dozen things that needed to be changed, using the sticky note feature for the first time to indicate the corrections, and e-mailed it back to Gary and Jorge.

Linda got home about the time I clicked ‘send’ so I wrapped up my desk work and went upstairs.  She had not been grocery shopping this week and wasn’t sure what to fix for dinner so I suggested vegan pancakes.  Fifteen minutes later we were enjoying flapjacks with real maple syrup and cups of hot tea.  Breakfast for dinner is always a treat.  We spent a little time in the living room by the fireplace and then went to the rec room to watch a few TV programs while we doodled on our iPads.  We have been trying to break the habit of watching TV in bed but we finished watching the last show in bed and then turned out the lights.  In a reversal of our recent usual morning routine I have to be up early and Linda does not, but she still fell asleep before I did.

 

2014/07/02 (W) Trees And Rocks

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Steve arrived at 6:45 AM and got right to work using the excavator to place additional large boulders for the rear retaining walls.  He was done by 8:30 AM and loaded the excavator back on his trailer to take to another job site.  I noticed that one of his trailer tires was very under-inflated so I got out my large portable air compressor to inflate it.  This tire turned out to have a puncture in the tread and was not going to hold air.  Steve knew the tires were not in good shape but I discovered that they were not an adequate load range for the weight he was carrying even if they were inflated to their maximum cold pressure, which they were not.  I inflated all of them as high as I was comfortable given their age.  If it had been my trailer I would have taken it, unloaded, immediately to a nearby tire store and had them put on four new tires with an appropriate load range.  I am not a tire expert, but we have been to enough seminars on RV tires and weight safety, that I have a better understanding of the subject then most people.

The excavator working on the rear retaining walls.

The excavator working on the rear retaining walls.

Linda made her yummy vegan pancakes for breakfast after which I decided to trim trees in the southeast corner of the yard.  It was cooler than yesterday but still a bit humid, so the working conditions were not ideal.  I worked until mid-afternoon and got one tree pruned of all its deadwood and took some low dead limbs off of several other trees.  I enjoy the pruning; it requires some thought about ladder placement, choice of tools, and where to cut, and I have a nicer/healthier looking tree when I am done.  Taking the small branches off of the larger limbs, cutting the limbs into shorter lengths, and carting everything to the fire pit; not my favorite thing to do.  Linda assures me that cleanup has never been my forte.

Two landscapers showed up around 10 AM and worked on the retaining walls.  There were supposed to be three of them, but one guy could not make it.  The hand work they were doing really needed three guys, so it was hard for them.  They got to a point where they were waiting on a delivery of sleeved plastic drain tile that wasn’t showing up in a timely fashion so I gave them directions to the Lowe’s at Grand River and Latson Roads where they bought a 100 foot roll and tied it to the roof of their car to get it back to our house.  They were then able to place the landscape fabric behind the first course of boulders, across the bottom of the shelf and up the back, lay the drain tile in the trench, and back fill the trench.  This gave them a place to stand as they worked on the next shelf.

Linda spent the morning cooking a batch of her amazing granola and her equally amazing vegan potato salad.  She boiled and then cubed red potatoes and mixed them with vegan mayo, apple cider vinegar, celery, onion, dill pickle, and dill weed.  We have been having tofu hot dogs for lunch with some regularity as it is an easy, tasty summer treat (with mustard, onions, and relish).  The potato salad was the perfect accompaniment, especially as it was still slightly warm.  Sweet cherries provided the finishing note for a tasty summer lunch.

Steve came back around 3 PM to check on the progress of his crew, gave them some specific goals for the rest of the day, and took off.  The crew was here until 6 PM.  Everyone has been working hard but we are at the stage in the project where there has been a lot more destruction than construction.  We have been through enough construction projects over the years that we know what to expect, but it is still stressful to see everything torn up.

Linda made baked stuffed acorn squash for dinner with a side of grilled baby bok choy.  The stuffing was made from carrots, celery, mushrooms, onions, sun dried tomatoes, bread cubes, raisins, walnuts, flax seeds, and sage.  It reminded me of stuffing from a Thanksgiving holiday meal.  We had a small glass of Franzia Sweet Red wine which paired well with the savory main dish.

 

2014/01/01 (W) Happy New Year!

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A few rigs left yesterday but most of the rally attendees stayed around for the New Year’s Eve dinner and party.  A lot of us were up later than normal, so the first day of 2014 had a slow, quiet start.  Even so, there were a couple of buses that started up and pulled out before we got out of bed.  The weather was partly cloudy with pleasant temperatures, not the way we are used to starting a new year.  We have been tracking the weather back home and the key words are snow, ice, cold.

Although the rally was officially over we knew from conversations that some of them would be staying at the Turner Agri Civic Center for a few more days.  Some were headed home to places like the Carolina’s or Tennessee, but many others were headed somewhere in Florida.  Jack and Paula live less than 14 miles from the rally site and were headed there along with some of their friends.  Mike and Maryann were headed south about an hour to the Peace River Campground.  Bill, Karen, Mike, and Kathy were headed to Orange City up towards Orlando.  Others, like us, were headed north up the west coast.

We targeted 10 AM as our departure time and finished preparing the coach for travel.  By 9:30 AM we had everything ready to go except for the electrical shoreline, which I like to leave plugged in until the last minute.  We took one last stroll to find Bill and Brenda and thank them for a wonderful rally and say “happy new year” and “until we meet again” to anyone we encountered.  We chatted briefly with Dave Rush who also took a lot of photographs and shot video with his iPad.  You can find his images at http://tikvahmarketing.com .  Look for the Arcadia Rally link on the home page.

There was finally nothing left to do except leave.  We disconnected and stowed the electrical shoreline and did a final walk around.  We checked the lights and found that the towing lights on the car were not working.  I had noticed when we arrived that the connections on the umbilical cable were a bit corroded so I cleaned those and voila, we had towing lights.  We lit up the engine, pulled across the field that separated our site from the entrance road, and were on our way.

We made the 40 miles on FL-70 W to I-75 N in dry conditions, but not long after turning north on I-75 we encountered rain, which stayed with us for the rest of the trip.  We made a brief stop at the Pilot Truck Stop at exit 341 on I-75 to top off the tank and add our diesel fuel additive and biocide.  We wanted to make sure we arrived a Williston Crossings RV Resort with a nearly full fuel tank to keep moisture condensation to a minimum and the biocide to make sure nothing grows in the fuel while we are sitting for three months.

It was raining lightly when we got to Williston Crossings RV Resort so I put on my rain coat and unhooked the car while Linda got us registered.  We had scoped out our site (#439) when we were here a week ago, so I knew it was big enough for us and that backing into it should not be a problem.  We ended up coming at that task from a slightly different direction, but with the help of two resort volunteers and one of our new neighbors I got it backed in and lined up fairly easily.

The site was so level that I did not have to adjust the level low system, which I switched out of ride height position before shutting down the engine as it seems to help hold the air in the suspension.  I hooked up the shoreline (in the rain), shut off the air to everything that didn’t need it, and went inside to help Linda set up the coach for living.  We have more privacy on this site than we normally do in an RV park/campground, and we are parked facing due north (the ideal direction) so we decided to put our front shades all the way up and remove the upper side window covers, which we have never had off until now.  The four windshields form a picture window that is 8.5 ft wide and 6 ft high.  Having those uncovered opens up the sense of interior space, lets in lots of light, and affords a panoramic view as long as we are not parked where they get direct sunlight, which tends to heat up the interior.

We will be here for three months during which time we do not plan to move the coach.  This winter trip to Florida will be the longest period of time we have spent in this or any RV, and the three months at Williston Crossings RV Resort will be the longest we have lived in it while parked at the same spot.  That means we will finally get to use some things, like our printer, that we brought along for the first time but have not yet retrieved from their storage places and set up.  Likewise, it means we can store some things that normally sit out as we won’t need them again until April 1st.

We did not eat breakfast this morning, we never do on travel days, so once we were set up Linda made a pot of coffee.  She had some berries to use up, so she fixed breakfast for dinner; Pancakes Pirello (vegan) with blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries and real maple syrup, and vegan sausage patties.

Most of Florida is having a prolonged rain event, and the rain at the resort continued all evening and overnight.  I am happy to report that as of this writing none of our water leaks have re-appeared, a combination of Michele Henry’s good work at Phoenix Paint (Edwardsburg, MI) and perhaps warmer temperatures causing things to swell slightly and seal.  Whatever the reason, it was nice to be sitting inside on a rainy day with no drips.