I got up a little after 7 AM. Juniper was prowling around the bed which is her way of letting us know she wants to be fed. If one of us does not get up and put food in their dishes Juniper starts chewing on the charger cords on our night stands and/or pushing things off onto the floor. I needed to get up anyway. The Tylenol PM had worn off and I was having difficulty finding a comfortable position. To my surprise and consternation, my back was much worse than when I went to bed. I could not find a comfortable standing position and was barely able to walk. I managed to get my robe and slippers on and make it to the bathroom to get my bite guard out, clean it, and put it back in its case. I made my way to the kitchen where I took three Ibuprofen with some orange juice and had a couple of cherry strudel bites (vegan). I then sat in the living room with the heater pad against my lower right back and set on high.
Linda got up at 8:15 AM. At 9 we had fresh grapefruit and cherry mini-strudels (vegan) for breakfast with orange juice and the last of the Ethiopian Yiracheffe coffee. We drank most of the coffee in the living room where I lingered until 10 with the heater pad on my right lower back.
I called Brighton Honda and the service department confirmed that they rotated my tires at my last service visit so they did not need to be rotated today. I called Discount Tire in Howell and cancelled my 10 appointment. That took some pressure off of our morning.
A clean bus is a happy bus, or at least makes for a happy bus owner. Although we have kept it vacuumed as we worked it needed a good interior cleaning. The insides of the cabinets needed to be vacuumed, the wood work need to be dusted, and the counters and mirrors needed to be cleaned. Linda did most of that yesterday. We also wanted to wash the floor but decided to do that after everything was loaded on board.
I did not get all of the tool boxes repacked last night so I continued working on that today as best I could. I also needed to go through all of the tubs that we keep in the front bay, decide what really needed to travel with us, and repack the tubs. The situation with my back, however, made for slow and uncomfortable work.
We took a break at 12:30 PM to have lunch. Linda has been using up frozen food to clear out the refrigerator so she made vegan “hamburgers.” The packing and loading work was further interrupted by several things we had to do away from the house and bus.
I dropped off my Honda Element at Brighton Honda for a 1:30 PM oil change appointment. Linda followed me in her car and picked me up. We went to Staples in Brighton and bought a pack of 9x12x4 inch boxes. I needed three of them to hold the complete sets of BCM issues (37 magazines each) that will be given away as door prizes at the Arcadia Bus Rally. I called Teeko’s to see if our coffee order was ready to pick up. It was. I called Brighton Ford’s NAPA parts department to see if the air filter had arrived. It had, but the parts guy wasn’t sure where it was and thought it might take a little while to find. No problem.
We drove to Teeko’s first to pick up our coffee and visited for a while with Mary. We then drove to Brighton Ford, which is next door to Brighton Honda, to pick up the air filter. The Honda dealership called to let me know my car was ready to pick up, so the timing was really good. Linda dropped me off at the Honda dealer and went on to Meijer’s. I got my car and headed home. In total the errand run took about two hours.
There was a USPS Priority Mail package waiting for me on the porch when I got home. It was a set of the BCM issues I need to make a complete set to use as a door prize at the Arcadia Bus Rally at the end of December. In my correspondence with Gary (owner/publisher) he agreed to send three sets and to ship them next week to the RV resort in Williston, Florida. Sometimes I wonder why I bother spending time and effort communicating carefully and in detail.
I continued working in the garage and Linda started cleaning the house. We worked until 6 PM and called it a day. We did not accomplish as much today as we wanted to but we got a lot done and felt good about that. Our original plan was to have the bus loaded by the end of the day tomorrow. As things stand we plan to finish loading it on Wednesday. As of now we are still committed to leaving Friday morning and should be able to do that.
Linda picked up a couple of Amy’s frozen enchilada dinners which, along with some fresh black grapes, made for an easy but tasty meal. After dinner I integrated the magazines I received today with the issues I already had to make one compete set which I boxed up and labeled. At 8 PM we settled in to watch our Monday night TV shows before taking some more Tylenol PM and going to bed.
