Tag Archives: Technomadia

2015/01/16 (F) Making Contact

The Aqua-Hot came on a couple times last night for a few minutes and it was nice to hear that old familiar roar and know that it was working the way it is supposed to. I need to see if I can put a new clamp on the hose that comes out of the middle zone pump. I also need to shorten and re-route the tube to the expansion tank, but the burner/combustion process is finally working correctly for the first time in 3-1/2 months. At some point Butch and I will try to figure out what is wrong with the other burner and fix it if we can. I also need to make the same wiring/connector modifications to the second burner so it is plug-n-play interchangeable with the installed one.

Butch and Fonda decided to make a run to Yuma today. He needed parts from Home Depot, Lowe’s, or Tractor Supply Company that he figured he could not get in Quartzsite, Blythe, or Parker, although Blythe has a good sized NAPA Auto Parts store. We chose not to go this time for various reasons, not the least of which was that Linda’s sister is arriving on Thursday and Yuma, along with Los Algodones, Mexico is one of the places we want to take her. But more immediately we wanted to meet up with Gary Hatt from Bus Conversion Magazine today and attend a get-together that Technomadia scheduled at Beer Belly’s for 1 PM. I also received an e-mail yesterday that Lou and Val Petkus had arrived in Quartzsite so we are trying to arrange to meet up with them. Lou is the head staff photographer for the SKPs Escapade in March and I am the assistant staff photographer.

Our out-and-about day, however, did not start until late morning so that left the morning open to get other things done. As usual, Linda went for a walk while I started writing an article for BCM on the work we did yesterday on our Aqua-Hot. Linda and I took lots of pictures and I think it will be a solid technical article when I am done.

We left at 11:15 AM and drove to the Quartzsite Market Place dry-camping area. The entrance is on the north side of Kuehn Street east of Central Avenue (US-95) but is not easy to spot. We stopped at the Too Crazy Ladies trailer and picked up our engraved SKP Ham BOF call sign tags and Rescue Our Cats sign. We then took the back entrance into the RV parking area, which is just to the left of the TCL trailer. It did not take us long to find Gary Hatt back with the Eagles International Bus Rally group.

Gary Hatt, publisher of Bs Conversion Magazine, recently acquired this Eagle bus conversion. We met him for the first time at this Eagles International Bus Conversion Rally in Quartzsite, AZ. Linda is talking to Aqua-Hot service technician Lloyd DeGerald (left).

When we arrived Lloyd DeGerald was there with his assistant working on the Aqua-Hot in Gary’s recently purchased Eagle bus conversion. Gary’s friend John was working on other projects on both the Eagle and the MC-9 Moose Creek Motor Cabin. Lloyd determined that the Webasto controller was not functional and needed to be replaced. He had a new one for $800 and a used one for $400. Gary went with the used one and had Lloyd do a full service on the unit as well. While the technicians were working on the Aqua-Hot Gary gave us a tour of both coaches. By the time he was done with the tours Lloyd had the Aqua-Hot running very nicely. Before he left I chatted with him about the photocell flame detector and he said he had one for me at a discounted price.

We walked around the market area visiting the vendor booths by the street to kill a little time and found a particular vendor open who had been closed the last few times Linda checked. They had organic dried apple slices as well as organic dried veggie chips. We bought a bag of the cinnamon apple chips and a bag of the veggie chips and had a few of each while we strolled. We worked our way back to Gary’s buses by 12:45 PM, gathered him up, and walked over to Beer Belly’s “Adult Day Care” (outdoor bar) for the Technomadia RVillage get-together at 1 PM. It took us a few minutes to spot Chris Dunphy’s signature black hat, as Beer Belly’s was crowded, but we finally did and joined the group that was gathered there. They have also written articles for BCM but like us had never met Gary in person so I made the necessary introductions.

Beer Belly’s had Amber Bock on tap so Linda and I each had one. We don’t normally drink at 1 in the afternoon, and beer is not normally my first choice if I am going to drink, but the sun was warm and the beer was cold and it was all good. We stayed about an hour, chatted with some of the other folks that showed up, and then walked back to Gary’s buses. We agreed to come back and pick him up at 5:30 PM and drive him to our campsite so he could see our bus and get away from the crowd for a little while.

L-to-R: Gary Hatt’s Eagle, his MC-9 Moose Creek Motorcabin, and some of the other Eagle bus conversions at the Eagles International rally.

Given the timing of our social encounters we decided to have an early dinner. I was using my iPad when the FedEx truck pulled in. I went out to meet the truck but Barb beat me to it. There was one package addressed to Butch so I figured it was the gauges from PartDeal.com but we left the box on a chair by the front door of their bus. Barb indicated that someone named Jim was supposed to come work on something on Butch and Fonda’s bus and was going to park his motorhome onsite for a few days. The generator bay door was open so I wondered if Butch was having a problem with the genset. If so, he had not mentioned it to me.

For dinner Linda made white rice with greens and things and heated up some mock orange chicken she has had in the freezer for a while. It was a relatively quick and easy meal to prepare but very tasty. We were just starting to eat when a familiar looking SUV pulled in with two kayaks on top. It was Chris and Jim Guld of Geeks On Tour. I knew Jim wasn’t here to fix a generator but was pleased to find out that they were checking out of the Scenic Road RV Park tomorrow and moving in with us for the next week. We have known them for a few years but never really had a chance to just socialize in a relaxed setting so we are looking forward to a little quiet social time with them.

I left a little after 5 PM to fetch Gary and John and drove by the DeGerald’s motorhome first to buy the photocell flame detector but they were not there. We were back at the coach before it got dark and I had just enough time to give them a tour of the bays. It was chilly so we went inside and gave them a tour of the interior. We had a little wine or beer, as suited individual tastes, and just sat and visited. All too soon I had to drive them back.

Butch and Fonda pulled in around 8 PM. We were getting concerned about their dogs only to discover that the dogs had traveled to Yuma with them. I chatted briefly with Butch and a little while later he brought over our turbo boost gauge. We turned in early as we are headed to Lake Havasu City very early tomorrow morning.

2014/07/07 (M) Needs And Wants

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My first task most mornings is to make coffee and my second task is to eat breakfast. Linda puts a lot of thought, time, and effort into our meals so I take my responsibility to eat them very seriously.

Bruce operating the excavator!

After breakfast I called Steve at Village Landscape to check on their plans and he said they were headed our way shortly. He was bringing the excavator so I let him know that the retaining wall worksite behind the house was a muddy pond from last night’s rain but the front of the house looked suitable for working on the sidewalk/stairs project. We would really like to have a front sidewalk and stairs before Ron and Mary get here on the 20th of this month.

My first computer task of the day, after starting my machines, is always to log in to RVillage and my second task is to check e-mail. Those tasks usually recur throughout the day. Beyond those tasks it’s whatever else needs to be done that I also feel like doing and there is often a considerable lack of congruence between those two ways of considering the tasks at hand. At the top of both lists this morning was installing the Jetpack plug-in on the other two WordPress websites I run; the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches and our personal one. I actually managed to get this done today, but not until the afternoon. Go back to any of the previous gallery posts and click on one of the images to see how much nicer they are to view now.

When the power flickered last night it interrupted our viewing of Doc Martin. I was momentarily confused by that until we realized that Linda’s iPad was connected to the Amped Wireless access point in the basement which was not plugged in to a UPS unit. It was at one point but that UPS unit failed and I had not yet replaced it so I went to the Best Buy store in Brighton this morning and bought a small APC unit. It will be adequate to maintain power to the access point and also provide surge/spike protection for the audio equipment. And it was on sale. While I was out I picked up a new pruning lopper at Home Depot (a Fiskar’s ratcheting model) and some soy milk at Meijer’s. Such is the way with tasks and errands.

The landscapers had not yet arrived by the time I got back from my errands but did arrive around noon. Steve brought the excavator and a crew of four and they worked all afternoon on the front stairs. They removed the old half circle step from in front of the porch, excavated for the new steps, back filled with crushed limestone, leveled and compacted it, and set the top three steps and the bottom step. The steps are precast concrete 46″ wide, 19″ deep, and 7″ high. They are being installed with a 17″ tread depth which is very comfortable for walking up and down the stairs. The stairs flare out at the bottom by the driveway, so the bottom step is three of these precast units set end-to-end. The next step up will use two of these precast units. All of the other steps are a single unit in width. The area between the upper steps and the lower steps will be a brick paver sidewalk.

Before Steve left for the evening he positioned the excavator over by the trash pile and walked me through the controls. After dinner I spent a couple of hours “practicing” with the machine by picking cinder blocks, bricks, and cut up trees out of the woods and putting them in a trash pile. The controls were “touchier” than I expected and I had a tendency to jerk the machine around rather than operate it smoothly. I also found it tricky to coordinate the two joysticks to make it move in certain ways. There wasn’t anything intuitive about most of the controls; certain functions are simply assigned to the two joysticks, and the buttons on them, and you have to operate it enough that it becomes second nature. As fun as it was to play with, you would be pretty sore at the end of a long workday if you had to run this machine for a living.

Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard of Technomadia hosted another live video chat this evening for the Mobile Internet Aficionados (MIA) private/membership group. We were going to participate but did not because I was playing with the excavator, a task that wasn’t even on my list this morning. Membership in the group was one of our premiums for contributing to their Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign. They used the campaign to finance the re-write of their Mobile Internet Handbook. This is THE definitive resource for people, especially RVers, who are mobile and need to be online. The technology is changing so rapidly that a re-write and expansion was already needed just a year after the book was originally published.

I did not accomplish all of my computer tasks today, but I did accomplish the one at the top of both my need and want lists. It happens; sometimes. I also got to play with a life size Tonka toy, which was very cool. I think that is the first time I have operated a piece of construction larger than a two-person posthole digger.

2014/06/08 (N) Positioning

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We were up around 7:00 AM, showered, dressed, and gathered up toiletries and other last minute items for our outing. I did a last minute check of e-mail and RVillage and then shut down the computers, printers, and NAS units and packed up my laptop. We started our final loading process at 9:00 AM and had everything on board by 9:20 AM. While Linda configured the car for towing, I turned the chassis batteries on, disconnected the shorepower line, stowed the cord, checked that the inverter was operating, and opened the air valves for the engine accessories and the air line to the car auxiliary braking system. While Linda closed up the utility bay I fired up the main engine and drained the moisture out of the auxiliary air tank. We checked the lights and finally checked that all of the bays were closed and locked. GPS and TPMS on with all tires reporting in, all gauges reading normal, and side mirrors adjusted. Tag axle up for the tight 180 degree turn exiting the driveway and all ahead slow while Linda verified the car wheels were turning. She was on board and buckled in at 9:30 AM and we were on our way. We have gotten reasonably efficient at this departure routine, but when driving a bus with a car in tow you do not simply turn the key and drive away.

We had light rain overnight and it was still drizzling as we pulled out. No problem; cloudy skies often make for easier travel. We drove up to M-59 and headed west, picking up I-96 westbound on the west edge of Howell. By the time we turned onto I-69 southbound at the southwest corner of Lansing, Michigan we had run out from under the rain and the overcast gave way to partly cloudy skies with patches of blue making for very pleasant driving conditions. At Coldwater, Michigan we headed west on US-12, a route we have driven many times and always enjoy. Just north of Elkhart, Indiana we exited US-12 onto M-205 which swings south and becomes SR-19 as it crosses into Indiana. About two miles into Indiana we turned east on County Road 4 and 0.7 miles later turned into the entrance to Elkhart Campground. It was a little before 1:00 PM and we had made the 160 mile trip without rest or fuel stops. I set the cruise control at 60 MPH on the Interstates and 55 MPH on M-59 and US-12, but had to slow down for interchanges and lower posted speed limits going through small towns. We usually base our expected travel time on an average speed of 50 MPH which seems to account surprisingly well for all of these variations.

We got checked in to the Elkhart Campground using our Escapees membership to save 15% off of their overpriced 50A FHU grass sites. They put us in a new part of the campground we have not used before. The spot was level so I but the tranny in neutral, set the parking brake, and shut the engine off. I shut off the air and chassis batteries and hookup up the shorepower line while Linda got the inside ready to use, our standard arrival routine. In all fairness, Elkhart Campground is not a fancy RV resort but is nice enough, and one of only two RV parks in Elkhart, Indiana, so part of what you pay for here is location. We have been here at least 9 times, usually for Great Lakes Converted Coaches rallies. It is centrally located for much of our membership and has a building with meeting rooms and kitchen facilities that they let us use for no additional charge. Our reason for being here now is to add a couple of days of RV use to the GLAMARAMA rally and position ourselves for an easy, early morning entry into the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds on Tuesday.

For lunch Linda served some of the cold three bean salad she made yesterday along with tofu hotdogs (with mustard, relish, and onions, of course). After lunch we got our WiFi Ranger connected to the campground WiFi network and checked in to the campground on RVillage. The website indicated that there were 11 other people checked in here, but we knew that some of them had been here after the recent SKP Escapade and subsequently left. We went for a walk around the campground and found the FMCA Frustrated Maestros (Great Lakes Chapter) camped by the activities building. It was obvious that they were having a pre-rally and using it to rehearse before heading to the GLAMARAMA rally in Goshen on Tuesday. We recognized Ron and Meredith Walker’s Prevost XL bus conversion but did not see them outside.

As we were finishing our walk we ran into Nick Russell of The Gypsy Journal and he invited us in to their motorhome for a brief chat. Terry was busy removing their old combo washer/dryer to make room for the new one they are supposed to get tomorrow, but she put her work aside to visit. We finally got to see her loom which we have read about on Nick’s blog. Considering what a sophisticated device it is, it fits surprisingly well in their Winnebago Ultimate Advantage (which has slides). Terry was obviously very excited to have it and enjoyed describing its operation to us. She is mostly self-taught and already producing some very intricate designs.

For dinner Linda made a nice green salad to go along side a bowl of the vegetable chili she made yesterday, served with crackers and a glass of Franzia Sweet Red wine. We went for a walk after dinner and ended up having a conversation with several of the Frustrated Maestros, including Ted (K0DDB) who took up the banjo at age 56. As we walked past Nick and Terry’s motorhome Terry was outside talking to Greg and Jan White. Greg was “parting out” the combo washer/dryer that Terry had just removed from their rig to salvage as many usable spare parts as possible since they have the same model in their American Eagle coach.

We got back to our motorcoach just before 8:00 PM and tried to connect to the Technomadia live UStream videocast they were doing for the Mobile Internet Aficionados private membership Facebook group, but the WiFi at Elkhart Campground was not up to the task and I did not feel like turning on our Verizon MiFi device. Linda turned the TV on instead and checked out the stations available to us. We had all of the major networks and decided to watch the final episode of Cosmos and then turned in for the night.

2014/05/26 (M) Memorial Day

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This is what I think about on Memorial Day. For most Americans Memorial Day, or rather the Memorial Day weekend, marks the beginning of the summer “play” season; time to prep the cottage or the get the RV out of storage, get out the summer “toys”, attend summer camps (or summer school), and take vacations. It has a much more serious and official meaning, of course, which is to remember those who served and died in the defense of our country while on active duty. It is not necessarily a day to honor “all” veterans, although it seems to have turned into that. We have another holiday for that purpose; it’s called Veteran’s Day.

Regardless, there is no doubt that each citizen owes the existence of our nation, and the freedoms we enjoy within it, to those who served to build it and defend it, and especially those who paid the ultimate price. It a shame that some of those lives were wasted in the name of foolish nationalism, but the shame is not the soldier’s, it is the government’s. And the government is merely a political manifestation of the will of the majority. In our system the majority rules (or is supposed to) but that does not always make its actions right. Those who served did so with a sense of duty without which we could not have a functioning military. My father survived the invasion of Normandy on D-Day. He was one of the troops who took Omaha Beach. His unit suffered 90% casualties. He was barely 19 years old at the time. He was wounded on the drive inland through France and received the Purple Heart and almost 50 years later a unit commendation for the service his unit rendered that day and in the days that followed.

My cough subsided enough that both Linda and I finally got a little sleep last night. She made her yummy vegan pancakes for breakfast and my sense of taste had returned to the point that I enjoyed them. I still wasn’t feeling up to much physical activity, but managed to pull up all of the stakes for the pole barn and mark the location of each one with green marker paint. I was feeling well enough to work at my desk and spent a good portion of the rest of the day downloading and installing apps on my new ASUS laptop.

I was working at my computer this afternoon when I had one of those associative moments where I suddenly remembered something I was trying to recall a week ago. As a young pre-teenager in the early 1960’s there were three things that I had set as “life goals” but I could only remember two of them, although I was clear that I had accomplished all three. I was looking at the support thread for the Participant’s Database WordPress plug-in, where there was a lot of detail on “coding,” when I recalled that the missing goal was to “learn to program a computer.” Duh!

These “life goals” were not career goals; they were just ideas that sounded interesting and “out there” at the time. I actually ended up “programming computers” for a living for a while and did some very fancy FORTRAN programming for my electrical engineering Masters Degree project and again to create the Monte-Carlo simulations that were the foundation of my doctoral research and dissertation. My other two goals where to “understand nuclear energy” and “learn to fly an airplane” both of which I also accomplished, at least to my satisfaction. I never made a living in aviation, although my dad spent almost his entire adult working life in the aerospace industry, both defense and space. I did end up studying physics as an engineering student, and teaching it at the high school level, so in a sense understanding nuclear energy also touched on earning a living at one point in my life. As an Air Force ROTC cadet from 1973 – 1976 I was a pilot candidate. If not for the sudden end of the Vietnam Conflict, I would have made my living in aviation, at least for a while.

Perhaps these seem like strange life goals for a pre-teen, but they were very forward-looking and exotic notions in the early 1960’s. The fact that I accomplished them does not mean my life is complete or that I have accomplished everything else I attempted in the last half century. Nor does it mean that I ran out of things to do or the motivation to do them. I simply find it interesting that I accomplished them and find a certain satisfaction in that. To this day whenever I see an airplane fly by I wonder how many people see that same plane and wonder what it must be like to fly it or are mystified by how it is able to stay in the air? I also wonder how people manage to make sense of a world connected together by technologies about which they have no real understanding, or how they understand a universe ruled at its most fundamental level by randomness and chaos. Downloading and installing software leaves me a certain amount of time to think, and I downloaded and installed a lot of software today.

Linda made a wonderful vegan potato salad this afternoon and we had it for dinner with jumbo vegan hot dogs, with mustard, onion, and relish, of course. And grapes; but no adult beverages as they are contraindicated for my medications, and frankly are not the least bit satisfying when ill. I know I’m getting better when my appetite starts to return. I will know I am fully recovered when I once again look forward to a glass of wine with dinner.

Technomadia did a one hour live video chat at 8 PM with RVillage founder/CEO Curtis Coleman. It was a good, relaxed chat with enough questions from the audience to keep it moving. I think they had 45 people online at one time. They use UStream for these live video events and were interrupted three or four times by commercials. The first one I got was in Spanish, but someone else got one in French. The problem was that the hosts do not get a heads up that UStream is going to cut them off, so they keep talking until someone messages them that they are not on the air. But it’s a “free” service, and of course almost everything in life that’s free has a hidden cost, especially if it involves the Internet. Somewhat ironically the RVillage website went offline during the broadcast. The head of development was monitoring the chat and got right on it as soon as it was reported; something about “backend server overload.” RVillage passed the 7,500 member level just before the video chat went live. Whatever the issue was they had it straightened out quickly. RVillage lives on very robust servers run by Amazon.

2014/05/15 (R) Base Leg

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As a private pilot of a small airplane there is a standard way to approach an airport that does not have air traffic controllers directing the flow of aircraft to/from the runway(s) and surrounding air space. That standard way is called “the pattern” and when landing one must enter and follow the pattern correctly. The pattern will be clockwise (right hand turns) or counterclockwise (left hand turns) and involves segment called “legs.” Standard radio frequencies may let you know which runway and pattern are currently in use.

The pattern is usually entered on the “downwind leg” which is parallel to the runway with the wind coming from behind (tailwind) as much as possible. You generally enter this leg at a specified altitude above the runway elevation and then start to descend. How far you need to be from the runway is partially determined by your airspeed, but when I flew I would typically be a quarter to a half mile away. As you pass the end of the runway you continue descending on the downwind leg for another 1/4 to 1/2 mile and then turn 90 degrees towards the runway.

This was our way out of the Elkhart Co. 4-H Fairgrounds horse track infield. Not gonna happen.

As you complete the turn you are now traveling perpendicular to the centerline of the runway on what is known as the “base leg” where you continue to descend. On the base leg you often have a crosswind trying to blow you sideways off of your intended path and have to correct for that. As you approach the centerline of the runway you again turn 90 degrees towards the runway, timing your turn so that you are lined up with the centerline as you complete your turn.

You are now on “final approach” and descending at a rate that puts you very close to the ground as you cross the end of the runway. On final approach you are flying into the wind as much as possible, causing your ground speed (motion with respect to the earth) to be slower than your airspeed (motion with respect to the air mass you are flying through). This slower ground speed makes it easier to land, particularly on a short runway. Once you are over the runway you cut the engine power, bleed off more airspeed, and put the wheels on the ground.

Lou Petkus, head Escapade photographer, at the SKP Photographers BOF “row” table with Linda. My friend Kate designed the logo.

Landing an airplane is a complex task but all of the things you need to do become second nature with enough practice. You develop a “feel” for your aircraft and the ability to visually judge altitude, distance, and speed, or use instruments to know these things.

So what does that have to do with the Escapees RV Club Escapade? Not much, except that I have always liked analogies and today was the “base leg” of the event. Tomorrow we “turn on final” and land. Saturday is when we taxi from the runway back to our hangar. For other attendees it will be a “touch-and-go” in which the landing is immediately followed by the application of full power and the airplane is taken back into the air. Perhaps it will go around in the pattern and land again or it may vector off in some direction on a cross country trip. I could extend this analogy in other ways, but I’m not going to.

Linda at the SKP Ham BOF “row” table pretending to use the HF rig. We had a special event call sign (W9E) but not a good location for antennas.

It was cold and overcast with light rain this morning and the Escapade decided to stop running the golf carts into the infield where we are parked because they were getting stuck in the mud. (Golf carts are not off road vehicles.) That meant we had to walk through the mud and puddles (small lakes, really), drive our car, or stay put in our coach. I checked-in to the 7:30 AM ham radio 2 meter net and then put on a pot of coffee.

We wanted to hear Nick Russell’s seminar at 10 AM so we drove over around 9:45. We gave a lift to one of our fellow infield campers who was struggling through the bad conditions using a cane. After Nick’s talk we were heading to the hospitality area when I got a call from Curtis Coleman, founder/CEO of RVillage, inviting us to his rig for a chat. We spent an hour with him and Patty (village tart) and his dog, Augie, who was very cute and friendly. The central focus of our conversation was FMCA and how to get the leadership to understand what RVillage is, and how an FMCA/RVillage relationship is a win-win situation. I have been appointed to the FMCA National Education Committee, which is charged with examining this issue and making recommendations to the national executive committee and that is why Curtis and I have been trying to arrange a conversation for awhile.

Curtis had an online business meeting to attend so we made our exit and headed over to the Geeks On Tour seminar on The Cloud. In many respects the “cloud” is just another name for the Internet, with a subtle but important distinction. In the past our interaction with the Internet (World Wide Web) was conscious, intentional, explicit, and initiated/controlled by us. We typed in web addresses and navigated websites. With the Cloud, much of the interaction with the Internet has been moved into “apps” that automatically move our data around and make it accessible from multiple devices from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. Take a picture on your smartphone and it shows up on your laptop and tablet. Click, click and it’s in your latest blog post which shows up in a subscriber’s aggregator/reader. It’s not magic, but it seems like it at times.

L-2-R Cherie and Chris of Technomadia and Curtis, founder/CEO of RVillage.

We went back to our rig and Linda prepared fresh grapes to take to the RVillage social at 4:30 PM. We had a good turn out with about 90 people in attendance. Many of them were already RVillage members, but some were not. Just prior to the social there were 39 RVillage “members” “checked-in” to the 54th Escapade, although some of them, like us, were couples. Everyone brought a snack, hors d’oeuvres, or beverage to share. We mingled for a while and then Curtis connected his computer to the projector and grabbed the microphone. He spoke at length and his vision, enthusiasm, and passion for this project was obvious. Even those of us who are active on RVillage learned something.

After the social we moved the car over by Lou and Val’s 5th Wheel, which is parked near the Assembly Hall. We watched the slide show and were pleased to see that quite a few of our images had been used. We did not win a door prize, and left before the Ham-O-Rama talent show began. Lou was there so I did not need to stay and take pictures. Since he was taking photos I gave Val the Compact Flash card from my camera so Lou could transfer the photos to his computer after the talent show. We then returned to our rig.

As the sun sank low in the western sky I photographed the infield of the horse track where we are parked. The fairground is placing large quantities of gravel to try and repair the rutted, muddy mess that has developed as a result of the rains this past week and vehicle traffic going in and out of the infield. The fairgrounds and Escapade management worked out a deal whereby we have been asked not to move our rigs until Sunday in exchange for a free night’s stay Saturday night. We have been towed out of two other fairgrounds in the past, and would rather not repeat that experience if it can be avoided, so we will be staying until Sunday. We would like to get out then as we have company coming for dinner Sunday night, but if not we will stay until we can.

I worked with Butch via telephone to get them set up on RVillage. Even though they are parked next to us, we were both comfortably situated in our own buses for the evening and did not want to go back outside. The high temperature today was around 50 degrees F and dropped quickly as the sun set. With a strong wind from the north the wind chill was even lower.

2014/05/12 (M) Opening Day

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Today was the opening day for the 54th Escapade, the 6th time the Escapade has been held at the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds. This is our third Escapade. Our first was in 2010 at this same fairgrounds and our second was last summer at the CAM-PLEX in Gillette, Wyoming. The opening ceremonies were held at 3:00 PM, but there were things going on starting early in the day.

The 54th Escapade banner displayed in the hospitality area.

Parking for arriving rigs resumed at 8:00 AM and the registration and vendor areas opened at 9:00 AM. The vendor area also included “The Row” where the SKP Chapters and C-BOFs have tables with information about their groups. A group of musicians who like to jam gathered at 1:00 PM to do their thing. The speakers and seminar hosts also gathered at 1:00 PM for an orientation meeting. First time attendees gathered at 2:00 PM for the first-timers orientation. On our walk over we ran into Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard, of Technomadia / Two Steps Beyond, who were headed to the 1st-timers orientation. We knew they arrived yesterday because they checked-in to the Escapade on RVillage, but we had not yet located their converted bus. It turned out that they were parked fairly close to us on the other side of the fence surrounding the infield, but obscured from our view by low trees.

Most of the attendees gathered at 3:00 PM for the opening ceremonies, which started with a video on Escapees RV Club founders Joe and Kay Peterson followed by two “blast off” door prize drawings for $500 cash each. The local American Legion chapter provided a color guard, after which we were all welcomed and received a lot of information about the upcoming week. The opening ceremonies concluded with the Chapter, C-BOF, and SKP CO-OP parade of banners. We photographed as much of this activity as we could.

Immediately following the opening ceremonies the attendees went to the ice cream social in the Heritage Park green space just outside the assembly hall to enjoy a free ice cream bar, courtesy of FCIS Insurance. We photographed the crowd enjoying their ice cream and then headed over to the other end of the building where Paul Everts RV Country was hosting their 4:00 PM happy hour. Free wine and beer (on tap), and chili covered corn chips, make for a fairly happy hour. We each had a small glass of wine and a few chips, sans chili.

We went back to our coach and off-loaded photos to our computers and transferred them to our flash drives. Butch came over and we connected his radiator pressure tester to our Aqua-Hot, which appears to have a leak, and pressurized the system to 17 PSI. We had to get our photos over to Lou before the evening activities, so we left the pressure tester hooked up to be checked later. We skipped dinner because the heat and humidity had subdued our appetites and dropped our flash drives off en route to the evening door prize drawing and entertainment. We got there early to see the slide show Lou had put together from photos that he, Sue, Linda, and I had taken on Saturday and Sunday.

Drawings for door prizes started at 7:00 PM. We did not win anything but did try to capture a few photos of the drawings and prize winners. At 7:30 PM Johnny Counterfeit and his three-piece band took the stage. Johnny impersonates singers, mostly country and country-rock, and mixes in some stand-up comedy. The group was good and Johnny was funny and entertaining. The acoustics were less than ideal, but that is usually the case in the buildings found at county fairgrounds. I tried to get a few photos, but the lighting was also less than ideal, which is usually the case in the buildings found at county fairgrounds. It was also difficult to get close to the stage with a good angle.

We stopped at Lou and Val’s 5th wheel so Lou could capture my photos from my Compact Flash card. Our photographic work done for the day we headed back to our rig and had a light dinner, watched a little TV, checked the weather, and turned in for the night.

2014/04/24 (R) WBCCI

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We stayed at the RV park today to relax and work on “at home” things. Linda worked on her counted cross-stitch and did a load of laundry. I dumped our waste tanks and filled our fresh water tank and then worked on our blog, and checked e-mail, and RVillage. We are now getting about 70 spam comments on our blog every 24 hours and so far the Akismet plug-in/service has been 100% accurate in trapping them while allowing legitimate comments through for moderation or posting if previously approved. We learned about this plug-in from Chris and Cherie of Technomadia when we stopped to visit them in Billings, Montana in late July, 2013.

Linda reading in the shade of our rig at CCRVCG.

We decided to extend our stay at CCRVCG another day and Linda took care of that with the office. We are definitely leaving on Saturday morning. Our current plan is to continue on I-65 into Indiana and spend the night somewhere near Columbus. We researched places to stay but did not make any decisions. We will move to an RV park near Coldwater, Michigan for Sunday evening, and arrive home on Monday with empty holding tanks.

Sometimes staying in the RV park leads to interesting things. When we got back to Cave Country RV Campground yesterday we noticed several Airstream trailers parked together near the activities building at the end of our row. Linda commented at the time that it looked like they might be early arrivals for an Airstream rally. That turned out to almost be correct. As the day progressed a steady flow of Airstream trailers came into the park, along with three Airstream motorhomes; two class A’s and a Sprinter-based class B. By dinner time there were 26 Airstream RV’s in the campground. Other RV’s had also arrived and the campground was almost full. Linda learned (while doing laundry) that 25 of the Airstreams, including the three motorhomes, were participating in a 21-day caravan of Kentucky organized by the Wally Byam Caravan Club International (WBCCI).

We watched as the participants walked down to the activities building for what we presumed was a kickoff dinner meeting and I took that as an opportunity to photograph their rigs in the late afternoon light. I have put a selection of photos in a separate gallery post. We learned in conversation that the caravan was a highly planned, all inclusive, and pre-paid experience. All RV park registrations and fees, all entrance fees, and all meals were included in the price. Participating rigs each received a 3-ring binder containing all of the information they needed for the duration of the caravan. Just follow the Airstream in front of you and park where you are assigned and everything else is handled. We also figured out on our own that each caravan appears to have a special decal. I saw a woman putting a bright yellow cutout of the profile of a running horse on the back of her trailer shortly after it was parked and set up. While walking the campground after dinner we noticed that most of the Airstreams had added this same decal to their collection, which was different for each rig.

Our female cat, Juniper, in the sunlight.

There is a Fleetwood Discovery motorhome parked opposite our site and the owner came over to chat for a while. He turned out to be a recently semi-retired tugboat captain who had spent many years working ships in and out of the Crystal River, Florida powerplant. If you hang around the campground and stay outside where folks can see you, they will stop and say “hi” and you will likely meet someone interesting. Yesterday we had someone knock on the door. He was a fellow ham (amateur radio operator) who saw the Amateur Radio vanity license plate on our car while walking the campground and stopped to chat.

At 8:30 PM CDT we connected to a live video chat on blogging for RVers that Technomadia (Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard) was doing with assistance from the Snowmads (Jason and Kristin Snow). Our WiFi connection was sufficient to connect to their low-resolution video with good audio transmission.

2014/03/12 (W) Welcome To RVillage

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Today was a big day. The new RVillage social networking website was publicly unveiled and I am now free to talk about it online; encouraged to, actually. We have been privately beta-testing the website for some weeks now and think it is going to be a “must have” tool for RVers looking to connect with old and new friends while on the road. RVillage is not about making virtual “friends”; it is about creating real community with real people with whom you share real interests.

Cherie Ve Ard and Chris Dunphy of Technomadia have been coordinating the private beta-testing and are playing a key role in the public launch. They posted a very comprehensive description of RVillage today and I recommend it as the best starting point. There is a link to the website at the end for their post, or you can go directly to the website at RVillage.

My whole day was not taken up with the RVillage launch. The RV Resort held a golf cart rodeo starting at noon. A 2-person team had to navigate a course around traffic cones, including backing between two cones. Easy? Not if the driver is blind-folded! I photographed the event for a while and then returned to the coach, photographing some of the first blooms of the impending spring.

I took advantage of afternoon high temperatures in the mid-70s, partly sunny skies, and a nice breeze to clean the outside of all the bus windows, no small task. There is a lot of glass on this bus and most of the windows are between 6 and 12 feet above the ground so this required many trips up and down our 7 foot Little Giant folding/telescoping step/extension ladder. Although it takes up valuable space in our front cargo bay this ladder is an essential tool in our traveling RV toolkit, and the only way we can get on the roof.

Here are some pictures from today:

Our bus on site 439, at WC RV Resort.

Golf Cart Rodeo spectators and waiting contestants.

Golf cart rodeo spectators at WC RV Resort.

Sharon (driving blind-folded) and Kevin navigating the course.

Kevn & Sharon coming in to the finish line of the golf cart rodeo course.

Sharon being congratulated by Allen, one of the WCRVR owners.

Bob and Allen getting ready to try the course.

Some of the first blooms in the RV park.

2014/02/22 (S) Tin Can Tourists Rally

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The Tin Can Tourists (TCT) winter rally was being held at the Sertoma Youth Ranch about 15 miles southeast of Brooksville, Florida. It started on Thursday, February 20 and was scheduled to conclude on Sunday, February 23. TCT rallies almost always include a public open house. For this rally the open house was Saturday, February 22 from 11 AM to 3 PM.

I left WCRV Resort around 10:15 and took the fast route down US-27 to I-75 and then south to exit 293. From there it was a couple of miles on back roads to get to the Sertoma Youth Ranch. There was a $5 charge to park, which I knew about in advance and gladly paid. This is the second TCT open house that I have attended. Although smaller than their main gathering in May at Camp Dearborn in Milford, Michigan (10 miles from our house) they had good participation with more than 50 rigs. (I could have been as high as 70, but I didn’t count).

There were a few folks there that I knew. Cherie Ve Ard and Chris Dunphy (Technomadia) were there with their 1961 GMC 4106. Forrest and Jeri Bone were there, of course, as Forrest runs the TCT organization and planned the rally. Hunt Jones, who I met at the Arcadia Bus Rally, was there, and so was Al Hesselbart, the historian for the RV/MH Museum in Elkhart, Indiana. I had a brief visit with Al and a longer visit with Chris and Cherie. I learned that the super secret project they are working on (RV social network) is scheduled to “go live” on March 1^st. Assuming that happens, I will have more to say about in my post for that date.

Almost all of the rigs were available for viewing. Some allowed visitors to go inside; others had the door open but blocked so you could see in but not enter. Many of the units were beautifully restored and others were somewhere in the restoration process. Most were “staged” for display with table settings and items arranged on counters. The owners were all very welcoming and enthusiastic about their vintage RVs. I photographed most of them and have include some of those photos in the gallery at the end of this post.44

Al invited me to join him and some friends from Breezy Oaks RV Park for Chinese buffet in Brooksville, but I decided to pass, a combination of still being a bit tired from my long day on Thursday and not wanting to over-eat, which I tend to do at buffets. I left at 3 PM, the end of the public open house, and returned to Williston via US-41, a longer but more scenic and relaxing drive than I-75. I made a sandwich for dinner, caught up on some e-mail, and headed over to the fire pit around 7:15 PM. We had our usual group of 20+ people. John played his guitar and sang, and another man brought his guitar and joined him. There was plenty of singing along, but folks were more conversational than at many of our previous campfires.

Photo Gallery: Click on thumbnail images to open for viewing. Maximum dimension is 640 pixels.

: Entrance sign.

: The entrance to the Sertoma Youth Ranch camping area.

: TCT fills a special niche in the RV world.

: Tehnomadia’s bus – a 1961 GMC 4106.

: Forrest & Jeri Bone’s Spartan trailer. Forrest started and runs the reincarnated TCT.

: Forrest Bone (left) chating with some fellow TCTs.

: Al Hesselbart (seated) listens to an accordian played through a midi synthezier so it sounded like a theater organ!

: This 1965 AirFlot was featured in a TV program on RV makeovers.

: A trailer interior to match any luxury motorhome.

: One of the nicest RV interiors I’ve ever seen.

: Towables come in a wide range of sizes and styles.

: The GMC motorhome was way ahead of its time. Linda and I wanted one years ago but could not afford them even used.

: The classic Airstream trailer.

: Not an Airstream. I had never heard of Silver Streak before seeing this unit.

: A 1953 Pontiac Chief. It’s 45 feet long but designed to be towed with a Pontiac sedan of the same vintage. The rear overhang was longer than some of the small trailers at the rally!

: At the boundary between tent camping and RVing, this Scotty had an outdoor kitchen.

: One of the smallest trailers at the rally. The owner said it was 13 feet long, but it didn’t look a foot over 10.

: TCT is not just about vintage RVs. Many rigs are towed by restored cars from the same period.

: Another vintage combo.

: A shiny car to pull a shiny trailer.

: Hunt Jones’ classic Airstream and pickup truck.

2014/01/23-24 (R,F) A Gathering

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On Thursday morning we followed our usual home routine; breakfast, computer work (for me), cross-stitch (for Linda), a walk around the park, and a light lunch. We walked by the clubhouse / pool / pond / pavilion area to check on the progress of the deck being built along the north edge of the pond. The deck construction was finished and the landscaping was being installed. We continued on to the rear entrance to check on the new landscaping that was being installed the day before.

The new deck by the pool at WCRVresort.

The new landscaping by the rear entrance.

Mid-afternoon John and Marian Hagan drove up in their car from their home in Dunnellon for a visit. It was the first time they had been to Williston Crossings RV Resort and the first time they had seen our converted bus. Shortly after John and Marian’s arrival David and Marie Ross walked over from their motorhome, which was parked just around the corner from ours. Linda had set up all six of our folding chairs and our one folding table, but it was just too chilly to sit outside and talk. Our coach will accommodate six adults for seated conversation, but just barely. We had met the Hagan’s last week for the first time and the Ross’s just yesterday for the first time and this was the first time the Hagan’s and Ross’s had met but we quickly settled into a long comfortable chat. This has been our experience to date with every member of our FMCA Freethinkers Chapter that we have had the pleasure of meeting.

Around 6 PM we took the conversation down the street to Angelina Mia, the only Italian restaurant in Williston. Once again Linda and I had a pizza and side salads. This time, however, we had a Manhattan Supreme “white” pizza with olive oil, garlic (lots of garlic), spinach, sweet basil, tomatoes, and mushrooms, hold the cheese. It had a thin, crispy crust the way we like it, and was a very acceptable vegan pizza. Everyone else had regular Italian dishes, and like the last time we were here, they all indicated that the food was pretty good. We stayed at the restaurant two and a half hours eating and talking. John and Marian headed home directly from there and we dropped David and Marie back at their rig. A little more chat in the brisk evening air and we decided to call it a night, but not before agreeing to go out to breakfast the next morning.

L-to-R Me, John, Marian, Marie, David, and Linda at Angelina Mia’s in Williston.

Friday morning the Ross’s picked us up a 9 AM and went to Melanie’s. The parking lot was so full we had to park across the street by a vacant building. Linda had rye toast, dry, and I had a plain bagel, dry; a pretty typical breakfast out for us. David and Marie had regular breakfast fair, and seemed pleased with their choices. We lingered and drank coffee, but eventually had to go back to the resort as they were expected at Fort Wilderness in Orlando, Florida that afternoon. We said our “until next time”s and left them to concentrate on t heir departure routine. A final wave as they drove out and they were gone.

Living in an RV, even part-time as we are doing, can be an isolated, even lonely experience if that’s what you want it to be or if you fail to take some action to make it otherwise. Cherie Ve Ard and Chris Dunphy of Technomadia and been full-timing for at least seven years now and have put a lot of thought and energy into the issue of “nomadic community.” They have run into people all over the country, both randomly and intentionally, and then used their knowledge of communications and social networking technology to stay in touch and forge enduring relationships. Cherie’s most recent post discusses the difference between what they call a “convergence”, which is what is occurring in Cedar Key, Florida at the moment, and an RV rally or other such organized event.

We have some busy days coming up, so I took the opportunity to do a load of laundry mid-afternoon while Linda went for a walk. I think she planned to go for a long stroll, but cut it short because it was just too chilly to enjoy even with sunshine. We planned to eat dinner early and go over to the Friday night bonfire at the fire pit but Linda did feel like going, so I went by myself for a while. Part of living in a RV is that it has to be OK to not always do everything together.

2014/01/20 (M) Gallery Post

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This is a WordPress Gallery post of photographs from our visit to Cedar Key, Florida today. Click once on each thumbnail to open it in a separate tab full size. The largest dimension for any image is 600 pixels wide or 428 pixels high.

: A bay of the Gulf of Mexico at low tide with expoed oyster beds, part of Cedar Key Museum SP.

: Bald Eagle aerie near the Cedar Key Museum SP (FL). There is an adult eagle visible in the aerie.

: Front of the Whitman house at Cedar Key Museum SP (FL).

: The kitchen of the Whitman house at Cedar Key Museum SP (FL).

: Pelicans and other birds on an old pier off of the Cedar Key marina.

: Part of the Harbormaster Hotel on the Cedar Key waterfront.

: The Island House Hotel in Cedar Key, FL. Very old.

: The entrance sign for Sunset Isle RV Park and Motel.

: Technomadia’s bus nestled into its site at Sunset Isle RV Park in Cedar Key, FL.

: The office & cafe front door at Sunset Isle RV Park.

: Linda and Cherie Ve Ard of Technomadia by the Sunset Isle RV Park Office and Cafe.

: The clubhouse at Sunset Isle RV Park.

: Sunset Isle RV Park bath house.

: Inside Technomadia’s converted bus. Cherie (seated, center) demonstrating a project they are working on.

: The Low Key Hideaway motel.

: The Low Key Institute – gateway to the Low Key Tiki Bar. Note that Detroit is 1049 miles in “that” direction. The owners used to live at Camp Dearborn in Milford, Michigan.

: Back porch area of the Low Key Hideaway motel.

: The 3 RV sites at the Low Key Hideaway.

: Ocean-side view of the Tiki Bar at Low Key Hideaway.

: Interior of the Tiki Bar at Low Key Hideaway.

: The Low Key Hideaway / Tiki Bar patio area.

: Hurricane evacuation instructions – hey, this is serious business in the Gulf.

: Us on the dock at the Low Key Hideaway Tiki Bar. (Photo by Chris Dunphy.)

: Cherie Ve Ard and Chris Dunphy of Technomadia.

: Sunset illuminated sky looking north from Low Key Hideaway towards Sunset Isle RV Park.

: Sunset from Low Key Hideaway.

: Sunset from Low Key Hideaway.

2014/01/20 (M) Cedar Key (FL)

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[Note: I had enough photographs from today that I put them in a separate Gallery Post with today’s date.]

With a forecast of sunny skies and high temperatures in the mid 60’s we decided to head to Cedar Key today. Mid-morning I e-mailed Cherie that we were headed that way and would drop by the Sunset Isle RV Park and Motel mid-afternoon after checking out the town.

From Williston we took US-27 Alt WNW to Bronson and then took FL-24 SW to Cedar Key, a total distance of 45 miles and approximately one hour driving time. FL-24 is the route of the old rail line. Just before getting to Cedar Key we saw a sign for the Suwanee National Wildlife Refuge which is located some miles north of the Cedar Keys area. When we got to Cedar Key we headed to the Cedar Key Museum State Park where our annual park pass covered the $2 entrance fee for each of us.

We had a nice chat with the park volunteer and learned about the vast amount of land, marsh, tidal flats, and water that is reserved, preserved, and protected along the Florida Gulf Coast stretching far to the north and south of Cedar Key. We walked through the small but informative museum and then toured the Whitman house which had been moved to the Park as a well-preserved display of housing and domestic life from a bygone era in that part of Florida. Mr. Whitman was an avid shell collector, and part of his collection was on display the house.

The park was small but had a nice trail that got us down to the shore. The tide was out allowing us to see exposed oyster beds and large animal footprints leading into the water. Probably just someone’s dog, but… We also spotted a mature Bald Eagle soaring overhead. We then met a woman walking a dog who told us that just down the street behind the museum was the Bald Eagle nest (aerie) up in a large pine tree. We walked quietly and slowly in that direction. Bald Eagle aeries are enormous and it was easy to see. To our delight and good fortune there was an adult eagle clearly visible in the nest. I took a few photographs and then we left the way had come.

Although the Bald Eagle has been removed from the endangered species list, it is still highly protected as our national bird. Of more significance to us, however, is that the presence of Bald Eagles is still a marker of wilderness as they require a large area of specific habitat and generally stay away from populated areas. While Cedar Key is certainly a very remote and relatively small community surrounded by a vast area of protected habitat, the fact remains that this aerie, and what we must presume was a nesting pair of Bald Eagles, decided to live in someone’s backyard.

We drove back to the main downtown/waterfront part of Cedar Key, parked the car, and explored on foot. Cedar Key is not a big place, but it is old, and very charming, and even a bit “funky.” We stopped at the only grocery store we had seen, bought some lunch munchies and beverages, and had a quick lunch in the car. We then headed back towards Sunset Isle RV Park which is actually on a small island just before you get to the main island where most of Cedar Key is located.

We parked in front of the motel and walked around back to find Chris and Cherie’s bus. (Chris and Cherie blog and write under the name a Technomadia.) We spotted it right away, but before we got that far we spotted another familiar RV; a beautiful Spartan trailer that belonged to Forrest and Jeri Bone of the Tin Can Tourists. We first met them at the Arcadia Bus Rally when we attended Forrest’s presentation on the TCT’s and later toured their Spartan trailer during the open house. Forrest and Jeri actually hail from Gregory, Michigan not far from where our house is located.

We went on down to the Technomadia bus and Forrest came down shortly thereafter. Chris and Dani then stopped by (they are part of the NuRVers group that converged at Sunset Isle this January) and we had a good visit, Cherie demonstrating a project that she and Chris are working on. Forrest left to help Jeri do the laundry and Chris/Dani headed back to their rig (a Westphalia camper) to work. We eventually wandered over to the Tiki Bar at the Low Key Hideaway three “doors” south and hung out there while the bar filled up and the sun went down. The bar was neat, the people were neat, and the sunset was neat; long and colorful. We bid farewell to our old and new acquaintances and headed back to Williston. A quick stop at the Winn-Dixie supermarket for soy milk and the Sunoco filling station for fuel and we were home in time for dinner and some PBS before bed.

2014/01/19 (N) Things That Go Bump

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We slept in this morning and had a light breakfast. I called Cherie (of Technomadia) to see if she and Chris were up for a visit today. They are camped at Sunset Isle RV Park just a mile north of Cedar Key, Florida. It is 45 miles from Williston Crossings RV Resort to Sunset Isle and the drive is estimated to take about one hour. Chris answered the phone and indicated that a front was just pushing in off of the Gulf and that it was raining, and was expected to continue for much for much of the day. We agreed that it wasn’t the best day for a visit and decided to stay home and try again tomorrow or the next day. A quick check of the sky showed heavy cloud cover and the weather radar confirmed that the storm front was also going to bring rain to our RV resort, so we decided to get a walk in before it started. It was a short walk as it started raining lightly while we were out!

Living in an RV is obviously different in many ways from living in a fixed dwelling, but in equally many ways it is not different at all. One of the ways they are different is that RVs get moved around and so the environment around them changes. That, in turn, means the pattern of sights, sounds, and smells is always shifting. Even if you stay in one place for a while, as we are currently doing, other RVs still come and go and the external pattern of daily activity changes. I suspect most full- and extended-time RVers enjoying the change in their external environment, but it also means you are constantly exposed to “unexpected” stimuli that draw your attention.

One of the ways fixed and mobile living are the same is that our dwellings each have a unique “personality”, which is to say, they are structures full of systems that have characteristic sights, sounds, and even smells that occur in routine and predictable ways. It’s almost as if they are alive, but we become so accustomed to the personality of our dwelling that we hardly notice it. Indeed, this is essential to being able to live there. If we paid close attention to every little detail of a dwelling we would not be able to do anything else.

As long as it is behaving the way it normally does, we are only dimly aware of our home’s personality or the environment surrounding it. But when there are deviations from the norm we are acutely aware of them and none more so than things that go “bump” in the night. This evening while watching TV we had such a noise. It appeared to come from the cockpit area, possibly from the bay under the driver’s seat, and sounded more mechanical, like our A/C shutters, than like a motor or moving air. That bay is where most of the auxiliary air system components and chassis leveling valves are located, but even when it happened while I was standing right there I could not identify what was causing the sound. I went outside and checked the bay with a flashlight, but nothing looked out of place.

Mid afternoon I had been working in the front TV cabinet and the media cabinet behind the driver’s seat hooking up the cable TV from the resort. The media cabinet has an electric toe-kick heater in the base and I thought perhaps a cable was coming in contact with the fan. I turned the heater off while the noise was happening and it did not go away immediately. It stopped a short time later, but the sound never lasts very long anyway. When trying to figure out what is wrong, it often useful to know what is not wrong.

BTW: I did get the cable hooked up and working and even used the old video switcher to select between OTA TV antenna and cable. We get more channels on the cable but they are marginal quality analog signals and we only get the primary PBS station. We get a much better digital signal over the air and get both of the PBS sub-channels in addition to the main channel. As it was Sunday evening Linda watched Downton Abbey and then we both watch the first episode of Sherlock Holmes. It was a double-episode.

We are probably more sensitive to noises in our coach than we are to noises in our house. For one thing, the coach is a smaller, more intimate space where no noise goes unheard. For another, it’s capable of being stranded right where it sits if the wrong components fail. This is part of RV life, and we are much more comfortable with it than when we started, but not completely at ease yet, especially when something goes bump in the night.

2013/12/26 (R) Our Recent Travels

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We left Williston Crossings RV Resort in Williston, Florida at 10:15 AM and traveled to the Turner Agri Civic Center in Arcadia Florida for the Arcadia (Bus’in) Rally 2014. Our route took us down US-27 to I-75 to FL-70 to US-17 and over to the rally venue, covering 200 miles in 3 hours and 45 minutes. I-75 had a lot of traffic and a few construction zones, but US-27 and FL-70 we excellent roads with very few vehicles. I have not been posting maps of our daily travels, so here is the route we have traveled starting on the 19^th. We have traveled about 1,300 miles in that time.

View Larger Map

We were met at the check in station by Bill and Brenda Phelan who now run the Arcadia Rally. Linda took care of the paperwork while I introduced myself, indicating that I had been asked by the publisher of Bus Conversions Magazine to do an article on the rally. We unhooked the car and were escorted to our back-in site. We immediately recognized the bus parked behind us as belonging to Bill and Karen Gerrie. They always travel with Karen’s sister Katherine and her husband Mike, and sure enough, they were here too! By the time the rally starts on Sunday we expect there to be other converted bus people here that we know.

We were escorted to our site, backed in, straightened out, and leveled and then went through our usual arrival routine; Linda setting up the inside while I hooked up the electrical shoreline and checked the house battery state of charge and that the inverter/charger was working. We then deployed the awnings.

While opening and securing the main patio awning the front rafter arm started to come off of the awning shaft. Closer inspection revealed that there was supposed to be a retaining pin or bolt holding these two pieces together, but it was missing. Yikes! I looked down and there was a black bolt of approximately the right diameter and length on ground in front of me. Was it possible that this had just fallen out? I looked at the other end of the roller tube and there was the matching part, but with a Nylok nut on the end. I went back to the other end and looked for the nut, but didn’t see it. It probably fell off a long time ago, if it was ever there in the first place. No one has worked on these awnings since they were installed by the Zip Dee Factory outside of Chicago, Illinois in October 2012. It would have been very, very bad if these two parts had separated while we were traveling on the highway.

I managed to get the bolt back through the mating holes, but I did not have a Nylok nut of the correct size in my parts kit. The Gerrie’s have a 1965 GMC bus that they converted. Bill is a very knowledgeable and resourceful guy when it comes to buses, but he did not have an 8-32 Nylok nut either. I did have some regular 8-32 nuts, however, so I double nutted the bolt and snugged it up nice and tight. We added 8-32 Nylok nuts to our growing list of supplies we needed to buy and things we need to do.

With that chore out of the way, we pulled up the chairs and settled in for a chat. I mentioned the Check Engine Light issue and erratic speedometer problem we’ve been having, and quick as a wink Bill had his ProLink/NexIQ engine diagnostic tool out, hooked up to our bus, and we were reading codes. The DDEC II engine computer did not have any active codes set and only one inactive code. The inactive code was for a fuel temperature sensor high voltage. Joe Cannarozzi (our mobile mechanic) and I had replaced the fuel temperature sensor back in the spring but I never got around to hooking up my ProLink and clearing the old code. That little oversight has caused me way too many anxious moments. My bad.

Bill also had a special card for his diagnostic equipment that allowed us to look at the error codes from the ATEC transmission computer. No codes were set, indicating that the vehicle speed sensor was sending a good signal at least as far as the transmission computer. We assumed that was the case as the transmission was working great and the cruise control was working as it always has. The erratic speedometer appears to be either a wiring problem between the computer and the dashboard or the speedometer gauge itself. The easiest/cheapest thing to do would be to clean the connectors on both ends. The next easiest thing would be to replace the speedometer and hope that’s the problem, but that will not be the least expensive solution if turns out not to be the gauge.

Although I had stopped worrying about the Check Engine Light, it was a great relief to know that there were no active error codes being generated by the engine or transmission computer. One of the great things about rallies in general, and converted bus rallies in particular, is that many converted bus owners have done their own conversions and have a special sense of community about their machines. They know their way around buses, travel with tools and parts, and are usually willing to help each other when there’s a problem.

With a potential awning disaster discovered and averted and the Check Engine Light issue resolve, we finally settled in to our chairs for a long, well-deserved, chat. While we were talking four Sandhill Cranes walked by about 50 feet away. These magnificent gray birds have a distinctive red cap on their heads, and can stand almost 4 feet tall. Although they tend to spend summers much farther north in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Canada, we have them on our property in southern Michigan during the late spring to early winter. We also saw kildeer, and several other birds we did not recognize. On the drive down today we saw pelicans and egrets plus the usual raptors that can often be spotted along highways.

By 5:30 PM it was getting dark and mosquitoes started to appear so we wrapped up our conversation and headed inside for the night. With all of the activity and socializing we had managed to skip lunch. Rather than take an hour to prepare something, we had the chickpea salad Linda made the other day. It’s one of our favorite cold dishes and reminds us of egg salad.

Linda turned on the TV and scanned for channels. We are parked facing west with the front OTA TV antenna pointed slightly north of our nose. That’s somewhat in the direction of Tampa St. Petersburg although they are actually northwest of our location. The scanner found 60 digital stations, so she flipped through them to see what was there. We had the PBS trio, a weather station, the usual commercial offerings, and lots of Spanish language stations. Impressive really; if you look at a road atlas Arcadia is 40 miles east of I-75 and appears to be in the middle of huge swamp.

We could not find a usable Wi-Fi signal so we turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi device and got online. If you need to be online while traveling, you need to have more than one way to get there. (Technomadia has the definitive book on the subject for RVers.) We checked e-mail and I worked on this post. We took a few minutes to have vegan chocolate cake with fresh strawberries. We finished up our online work and went to bed early. Although the rally does not start until Sunday, I have to start acting like a reporter tomorrow so I can write a really good article on this event with lots of good photographs.

2013_09_23-27 (M-F) Getting Ready

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There is always lots to do around the house when we return from an RV rally, more so since we are still getting moved in to our new (to us) house and trying to get it ready for an open house / house warming. We decided about a month ago to have the house warming as a way to “force” us to accelerate the moving-in process and so far that seems to be working.

Arriving home yesterday we were able to pull in to our pull-through driveway with the car attached, which was very nice. With the added “fines” (sandy silt) material mixed in with the 21aa road gravel, the driveway is now packing together very tightly and easily supporting the weight of the bus. The planned driveway geometry has worked out well allowing us to pull in and out with the car attached. That means we cook hook/unhook the car in the driveway rather than in the street.

Linda babysat for Madeline on Monday while I worked around the house, unloaded the clothes and bedding from the bus, and started doing laundry; not very interesting, perhaps, but satisfying work in its own way. We both spent a fair amount of time on our computers this week, Linda with household accounting chores and RV park research and me with some CEPI work, our website/blog, and websites for several other organizations. Using WordPress to create/manage websites and blogs has really grabbed my interest. I’m not very proficient yet, but I’m leaning.

We hung the last few pieces of artwork for now and spent part of the week opening and moving boxes. Linda was looking for papers we could take to a shredding company and managed to accumulate quite a few boxes of them. At this point we’ve run out of time to open boxes and sort through the contents, so we turned our attention to finding places to “hide” them until after the open house. We’re not there yet, but we are comfortable that the house will be presentable enough by the time it needs to be.

We decided to harvest some of the apples from our apple tree and discovered that a large branch (3-4” diameter) had peeled loose in three places, probably due to the copious amount of fruit on it, the age of the tree, and the fact that it had not been pruned properly (or at all) for years. We don’t know much about fruit trees, but we know that this is not the time of year to prune them. With the tree obviously damaged, however, we decided to cut the branch off and let nature take its course. We took it off in three pieces to make sure we could handle them. The branches of an apple tree tend to get intertwined, especially if it isn’t pruned, so we really had to pull to get the pieces down. That brought lots of apples to the ground besides the ones on the damaged branch. We left the branches and their apples on the ground for the deer and other animals that frequent our backyard.

We collected a large bag of apples and Linda spent time during the rest of the week peeling them, dipping them in lemon, and freezing them. She also made apple sauce and apple bread (both of which were outstanding). She commented at one point that “I am starting to understand why farm wives never got out of the kitchen.” Cooking real food with real ingredients (whole-food, plant-based) is a lot of work. Linda finds the work satisfying, however, now that she has the time to do it, and I certainly find the results satisfying as well. Yummy.

Ed and Betty Burns arrived on Thursday afternoon in their Tiffin Phaeton motorhome and stayed until late Friday morning. This was their second visit in about a month and we really enjoyed having them here again. They have been working at the Middleton Berry Farm and finished their tour of duty on Thursday. I moved our motorhome out of the pull-through driveway so they could pull in and park in a level spot with power.

They got here in time for dinner and Linda put out a nice meal. She served a nice Waldorf style green salad using some of our fresh-picked apples with homemade apple bread. The main course was a lentil loaf with a baked potato and homemade applesauce on the side. I chose the Blueberry Wine from Forestedge Winery in LaPorte, Minnesota to go with the meal. (It only occurred to us later than we had an apple wine from the same winery, which would have really completed our apple-themed meal.) Forestedge Winery is owned by Paul and Sharon Shuster, who are members of our FMCA Freethinkers associate chapter as are Ed and Betty.

Linda made apple crisp for dessert, but none of us had room, so we saved it for breakfast the next day. In addition to the apple crisp, breakfast included Linda’s homemade granola cereal with fresh blueberries, fresh banana slices, and raspberries that we had personally picked at the Middleton Berry Farm a few weeks ago and frozen. A little orange juice and a 50/50 blend of Ethiopian Yirga Cheffe and Kona coffee rounded out the meal.

We decided earlier in the week that we would try Florida for our first snowbird experience. (Snowbird is a term used to describe folks who live in northern climates where it snows and head south for the winter to get away from same. If there is a corresponding term for folks who live in the south and travel north in the summer to avoid heat and humidity, I don’t know what it is, other than perhaps Bridwons. Think about it.) Our decision was motivated by the desire to attend a large converted bus rally in Arcadia, Florida that is held each year from December 26 to January 1st. (The actual rally is Dec 29, 30, 31, but you can arrive as early as the 26^th and departure is the 1^st.) The rally was started by Jack and Paula Conrad, who ran it for the first ten years.

Ed and Betty used to live in Florida so we were eager to draw on their knowledge and experience before trying to book a place or places to stay. Earlier in the week we called the Low-Key Hideaway RV Park and Motel in Cedar Key, but they were not able to accommodate us. We knew about Low-Key Hideaway Cherie Ve Ard’s Technomadia blog postings, and it appears that the place has developed quite a clientele, perhaps in part as a result of Technomadia’s publicity.

At the last two GLCC rallies we had talked at length with Pat and Vicky, who winter in Florida. I also had an in-depth conversation this week with two other fellow RVers (Ed and Al) who winter in Florida and got their thoughts, suggestions, and recommendations. Our friends and fellow H3-40 owners, Chuck and Barbara, have spent the last seven winters in Florida and the last several at Pelican Lake Motorcoach Resort in Naples, Florida. We delayed our return home following the Holistic Holiday At Sea cruise in March so we could drive over from Ft. Lauderdale to see the resort and have dinner with them. It was very nice, as you would expect.

We learned a number of things as a result of this quick “research”. Some of it was stuff we knew, or assumed as a form of common sense, but some of it we did not:

The cost per day generally goes down the longer you stay in one place. The usual breakpoints are week, month, 2-month, 3-month, 4-month, 6-month, and year. (You can also purchase lots, but probably don’t want to calculate the per day cost for that.)
The farther south you go, the more expensive it gets.
The reason for the previous point is the average daily temperate range. In northern Florida it is not unusual for temperatures to drop into the upper 30’s at night, and record lows have been recorded in the teens. That doesn’t happen in Key West, and money tends to follow the pleasant climate.
The closer you are to one of the coasts, the more expensive it gets. You pay a price for beaches and sunrises/sunsets.
No-See-Ums, however, can be a real problem near the coasts, and some folks have very bad reactions to their bites.
If the RV park has “resort” in the name, it will be more expensive, with “motorcoach resort” costing even more, and “luxury motorcoach resort” costing even more than that.
Most of Florida is swampy; being inland or staying at a “luxury” resort does not guarantee that you are not camped in or next to a swamp. Think bugs, snakes, and alligators.
You can almost always rent a deeded site at a higher-end park directly from the owners much cheaper than you can rent it through the park management office. Check the classifieds in the back of FMC Magazine.
Moving every week is expensive and tiring, but gets you access to more of the state.
Staying more than one month at the same place can get a bit boring, but that’s a personal thing.
Some parks are in dense urban areas, others are near small towns, and some are in the middle of nowhere. It’s a shopping convenience versus solitude thing. You can end up having to drive 20 miles or more for groceries if you are not paying attention when you choose an RV park.
Not all parks are “big rig friendly” (even though they will claim they are).
Most parks have punitive refunds polices, so be sure before you know what they are before you book.
Make sure your park of choice is located near things you want to do (hike, bike, kayak, fish, watch sunrises and/or sunsets, or have access to highways so you can visit natural and historic sites in your car, etc.) Tallahassee is not a good base camp for visiting Key West.
Many RV parks are adjacent to a major freeway, railroad track, or airport; sometimes all three. If you don’t think the noise will bother you, you’re wrong.
Some RV parks are gated (if you care).
Whether the residents in a park or nice or not seems to have little to due with the physical appearance and amenities of the place.
There are a lot of older parks with mixed use, i.e., year-round “Park Models” in addition to sites for vacationers and snowbirds.
Check the type/quality of the interior roads and parking pads (concrete, gravel, grass, hard dirt, or sand), it might matter with a big, heavy coach.
The spacing of the sites varies greatly; some parks have sites that are small and close together (but they will tell you they are very spacious).
Find out whether there is any landscaping, especially shade trees around the sites.
Find out whether the roads and sites have trees trimmed up and back sufficiently to not scratch your RV.
Check to see if “lakes” on the property actually have water in them (seriously).
Check on the availability and cleanliness of onsite bath/shower facilities and Laundromats.
Check the availability of onsite activities (which could be a plus or a minus) and facilities such as swimming pools, tennis courts, etc. If you don’t want them, why pay for them?
Find out if the park has pet restrictions, and if so, what they are.
Some parks are 55+ operations, others allow/encourage/cater to families with children. Know which type you are signing up for and make sure it’s what you want.
The photos on the website always look beautiful, but somehow manage to avoid showing you views of the parking sites from a vantage point that allows you to assess all of the factors mentioned above.
Google Earth and other satellite image websites/apps are your best friend and ultimate research tool.

Our goal was to book a park or parks for January and February by the end of the day Friday, but we didn’t make it; too much to ponder and no time to make phone calls. We will get back to it early next week as Tuesday is October 1^st, and January 1^st will only be three months away.

Tom and Tom from TOMTEK HVAC were back on Friday afternoon to finish up repairs on our hydronic heating system. They did not have one of the parts they were going to replace but it didn’t matter as they discovered some additional issues that will require a return visit.

The first thing they discovered was that the propane shut off valve didn’t shut off the propane. We had to turn off the supply at the tank so they could replace the valve before doing anything else. When they removed the propane diffuser cone to clean it and replace the gasket they discovered that the end of the cone had large holes in it. These holes were preventing the propane from burning as efficiently as it should, and if they got bigger could prevent the furnace from working at all. Parts like this for a Weil-McLain GV Gold Series hydronic heating system are not common, i.e., they don’t carry them on their truck or even stock them at their office, so they had to special order it.

As long as they had the combustion chamber open, they went ahead and vacuumed it out. They had me look at it, and it had what appeared to be a couple of inches of rusty debris lying in the bottom, the result of a lack of proper (professional) service over a very long period of time (or perhaps any service at all). They put it all back together and will replace the diffuser cone, gasket, and igniter (along with the part they forgot to bring) when they return next week.

I don’t know if this qualifies as serendipity in the usual sense, but we are lucky that we decided to have the system “serviced” in advance of the start of the heating season. If not, we would not have discovered defects that could have led to a wintertime failure of the furnace with serious consequences for the house.

As I was working at my computer Friday evening an e-mail showed up with the PDF version of the October 2013 issue of Bus Conversions Magazine. The article I wrote on the mid-August Back-To-The-Bricks rally in Clio, Michigan was the cover/centerfold article, the fifth one I have had published in BCM. (See the BCM page of the website for the complete list and information about Bus Conversions Magazine.) That was a nice end to nice week.

2013_07_28 (Sun) Heading East

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What could have been an easier travel day for us started a bit earlier and got stretched out by our choice to put diesel fuel in the bus (twice) and our desire to stop in Billings, MT for a while to visit with Cherie and Chris of Technomadia. We pulled out of Green Creek Inn and RV Park just after 8 AM and immediately pulled into the adjacent gas station to the east and added 25 gallons of diesel fuel to the tank as insurance for the first leg of our trip.

We took US-14/16/20 from Wapiti back to Cody where we picked up US-14 Alternate going east. Yup, that’s the same US-14A we drove across the Bighorn Mountains (in our car) from Burgess Junction to Lovell with a stop at the Bighorn Medicine Wheel. The stretch from Cody to Garland, however, was in the valley and relatively flat. In Garland we picked up WY-114 to Deaver and then took US-310 into Montana and finally connected with I-90 eastbound.

We got on I-90 at exit 434 and got off at exit 452. Those numbers, of course, are miles from where I-90 enters the western edge of the state. Montana is a big place. Exit 452 is US-87 / Main St., the truck route through the east end of Billings (known as “the heights”), and the location of Interstate PowerSystems where Chris and Cherie have been since early June getting their 8V71 rebuilt after it developed a problem while traveling in the area east of there. But they are close to being back on the road, and we just caught them on the first leg of our return trip home. Although we had a six hour drive to get from Wapiti, WY to Miles City, MT the visit in Billings broke it nicely into two pieces.

Chris and Cherie of Technomadia, “camped” at Interstate PowerSystems.

We had a nice visit with Chris and Cherie. I have been following their blog and purchasing their iPad apps and e-books for some time. We had met them once before at the mid-August GLCC/CCO Back-To-The-Bricks Rally in Clio, Michigan. We use Verizon/Android cell phones, and they recently released their “State Lines” app for that market. Besides both having bus conversions, we have in common that we are both “re-doing” previously converted buses bit-by-bit and contributing articles about it to the recently rejuvenated Bus Conversions Magazine. Beyond that, they are full-timers (we are not), they are still actively working (we are not), and they are much younger than us (smile). We chatted for a couple of hours, but did not want to overstay our welcome as they are deep into several projects that need their time and attention and we still had to stop for fuel and make another 148 miles to get to Meadows RV Park in Miles City, MT.

We returned to I-90 eastbound and exited three miles later for the Pilot / Flying J truck stop. Our PFJ card saves us a few cents per gallon, but mostly we like the truck pumps; wide lanes, no overhead obstructions, fill from either side with large nozzles, and they sell a lot of diesel, so it doesn’t sit in their underground tanks for very long.

We had been cautioned back in June (in South Dakota) that RV sites might be hard come by in eastern Montana and western North Dakota, but that did not turn out to be the case. Meadows RV Park gave us a place to rest our heads and recharge our batteries (literally, the house batteries are not currently set up to charge from the Zena engine-mounted alternator while we are in transit, as described in a previous blog post).

Linda made a wonderful salad for dinner and incorporated some of the Kholrabi she bought at the Cody Farmers Market yesterday. I believe this is the first time either of has (knowingly) had this vegetable, described as a “German cabbage.” I didn’t find it particularly cabbage like, but it was very tasty.

Practicing the bagpipes are Meadows RV Park in Miles City, MT.

We were getting ready to go for an after dinner walk when we both noticed the faint sound of bagpipes. I went outside to investigate and sure enough, one row over from us was a gentleman practicing the bagpipes. That was a first.

2013_07_27 (Sat) Where We Go From Here

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We have had an intense but wonderful week in northwest Wyoming and the Green Creek Inn and RV Park has been just the right spot for us to base camp. The RV park is away from the hustle and bustle of Cody, yet close enough to be convenient for shopping and entertainment, and is close enough to Yellowstone N. P. and Grand Teton N. P. to make them accessible as day trips. And although it’s a small RV park with only nine sites, we had excellent full hookups, laundry facilities, a WiFi connection to the Internet, and free popcorn. Our 50 Amp site allowed us to run all three house air-conditioners all day while we were away to keep our cats safe and comfortable. We needed to do this because of daytime highs in the mid-80’s with bright sunshine and constant wind that prevented us from using our awnings to shade the passenger side of the coach.

Although $45 per night is more than we generally pay to stay in an RV park, it was a fair price given the location and facilities. The WiFi/Internet bandwidth was limited, but we were glad to have what we had as there was no useable Verizon 4G/LTE signal here, and even 3G EVDO was marginal for making phone calls. The WiFi connection was generally very strong thanks in part to or WiFi Ranger Mobile Titanium, which has been working very well for us since we bought it at the FMCA rally in Gillette, WY last month. Interestingly, the only OTA television signal we could pick up was Wyoming PBS from the general direction of Cody. (Smile)

This was a quieter day for us, but by no means an idle one, as we needed to prepare for our departure tomorrow morning. We noticed this morning that it was overcast, the first time since we arrived here a week ago. We did have clouds today, and a few drops of rain, but Jeff informed us that the haze we were seeing was from the various forest fires burning in the west.

Linda drove to Cody in the morning to do our shopping. The main attraction was the local Farmers Market, located, conveniently enough, in the parking lot of the Whole Foods Trading Company. She came back with quite a few bags of stuff!

While she was gone I drained the waste tanks, stowed the hose, and added our Pine Sol / water / Calgon solution to the tanks. I also drained the little bit of fresh water that was still in the tank, flushed it with a bit more, and then refilled it. I left the fresh water shore line connected so we could use if until we depart, conserving our onboard water for use on down the road. I also worked on getting our blog postings up-to-date.

When Linda got back she did the laundry. At our house in Michigan this is usually my chore, but for some reason she seems to take care of it on the road. Although we are trying to learn not to over-plan, we are not full-timers, and we have a house and family to which we have to return from time-to-time. We knew the route we wanted to take back to S. E. Michigan, but the timing and overnight waypoints were still undecided. We want to see the Theodore Roosevelt N. P. in western North Dakota, but the campgrounds there do not have any hookups and do not appear to be big rig friendly. Medora, ND is the closest town, but it is 410 miles driving distance from Wapiti. That is more than we care to do in one day, especially given our planned stop at Interstate Power Systems in Billings, MT to visit with Cherie and Chris of Technomadia. (http://www.technomadia.com).

Using the online Good Sam campground finder we located the Meadows RV Park in Miles City, MT, 280 miles away, and made a reservation for tomorrow night. That should give us a 5.5 -6.0 hour drive, leaving plenty of time to stop and visit in Billings.

I continued to work on our blog while Linda paid our bills and continued to research overnight stops. We decided we would try to stay two nights at an RV park in Medora if we could find an opening. And we did! We made a reservation at the Red Trail RV Park just off I-94. It is walking distance to downtown Medora and convenient to the Theodore Roosevelt N. P., which we will now have a day-and-a-half to explore.

Linda took time out to make wheat berry risotto with mushroom /garlic/onion /asparagus. She used some of the Argentinean Malbec wine we had on board, and served the rest with the meal. This was a fragrant, earthy dish with great “chew” that somehow fit the wildness of this past week. When she has the time to cook we eat very well indeed.

While the risotto was cooking we pulled the tray on the passenger side of the bus that houses the chassis battery disconnect switches and the Vanner equalizers (we have two as it turns out). We located the circuit breakers, and pushed them in to (possibly) reset them. (This refers back to the BAL light that came on while traveling from Sheridan to Wapiti on the 21^st of this month.)

Beyond Medora we hope to stay at a winery in Buffalo, ND about 30 miles west of Fargo. It was personally recommended to us by Harvest Host founders Don and Kim Greene. If they can accommodate us on the 31st, it will be our first use of our Harvest Hosts membership.

Along the same lines, we hope to stay the next night at the Forest Edge Winery in Laporte, Minnesota. Forest Edge is owned/operated by members of the FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter. Being a kind of “virtual” chapter in FMCA’s International Area (INTO) our members are spread out all over the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Rallies are difficult to organize and most of our interactions are by e-mail. We even hold our annul business meeting electronically. Thus any opportunity to meet in person is a treat. The fact that Forest Edge is also a Harvest Host business makes it easier and that much more special.

From Laporte we plan to head to Hibbing, MN to visit the Greyhound Bus Museum. Beyond that, we will make our way across Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to St. Ignace. From there we cross the Straits of Mackinaw (Mackinac) on the Mackinaw Bridge and head straight south on I-75 where we vector off on US-23 southbound to M-59, and home. Depending on when we get there we will have been gone almost exactly two months.

2013_06_21 (Fri) FMCA Day 3

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We went to bed last night with a 20% chance of rain in the overnight weather forecast. We are not sure when the rain started, but around 5:00 AM the skies opened up and it rained hard for an hour. We are camped on somewhat higher ground with good grass sites and red rock roads, so the water drained away and we did not have flooding or muddy site/road issues. This was not the case in other CAM-PLEX RV parks, as I discovered while walking to the 9:45 AM International Area (INTO) meeting. My timing was bad, and I walked the 3/4 mile to the Wyoming Center in a downpour that included pea-size hail. My raincoat and small umbrella were no match for the rain, and there was not a golf cart or shuttle (school) bus to be found anywhere. In the end it was just water, and clothes eventually dry out. Always looking for the learning experience in any situation, I resolved that we would purchase serious wet weather gear when we had the chance.

Linda remained in the coach to make sandwiches for lunch as we planned to meet up with Louise Stuart and Craig Davis after the 11:30 seminars. We went to the Nostalgic Look Back at the Early Coaches of FMCA, moderated by Mike Middaugh, F3456. Mike is yet another member of the Great Lakes Converted Coaches chapter that we also belong to. Mike was joined by several other vintage converted coach owners who shared photographs of buses from the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s, some of them buses they had owned.

We then walked over to Louise and Craig’s motorhome, a very nice 38′ Monaco Dynasty. We had our respective lunches and a great chat as we got to know fellow members of our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter. The service tech from HWH showed up around 2 PM to fix their slideout, so we took that as our cue to return to the vendor area in search of more knowledge and solutions to problems.

After some further discussion with the folks from A-1 Water Treatment we decided to purchase one of their water softeners with attached pre-filter. It was both heavy enough and bulky enough that we arranged to have them deliver it to our coach after the vendor area closed today.

We then stopped at the WiFiRanger booth and purchased a WiFi Ranger Mobile Titanium (WFR-MT) and optional AC power supply. (The Titanium version is identical in functionality to the standard version except for a metal case in place of a plastic one, and a 5-year warranty instead of a 1-year warranty.) The WFR-M/MT device mounts outside the coach and combines a WiFi “booster” (transceiver) and a WiFi router. The booster communicates with available Wi-Fi signals that can serve as on-ramps to the Internet. These signals originate somewhere beyond our coach and are paid for, and controlled by, someone other than us. These can be public/open (unsecured) or private/closed (secured). Use of a secured signal requires the correct authorization (password). Public/open networks are, by definition, free to use as you do not need a password to connect to them. Secured networks may be free, such as at some businesses, or there may be a charge, as in airports, and some hotels and campgrounds. There is an extensive system of public/open WiFi access points available at the CAM-PLEX, sponsored by WiFiRanger. It has been very good around the Wyoming Center, but varies out in the Boxelder RV Park. The booster allows us to receive this weak signal, use it, and send a suitably strong signal back. It does not, however, guarantee on-demand, robust access, as this is also a function of how many other stations are trying to access the system at the same time.

The router section of the WFR-MT generates a secure, local network that we control. Although it is generated on the outside of the bus, it should be strong enough inside and around the coach to allow us to use our devices wherever we want around our campsite (within reason). We won’t know this for sure until we hook it up, of course, but the device has been used and well reviewed by other travelers, including Technomadia. Being a full-fledged router, it not only allows multiple WiFi devices to securely connect to the Internet (via the external WiFi source), but should allow them to securely communicate with each other. (BTW: Technomadia has the definitive book on mobile connectivity. http://www.technomadia.comor Amazon.com)

I plan to mount the WFR to the cable entrance weatherhead with zip ties if it will work. The device has an Ethernet cable that plugs into a POE (Power Over Ethernet) power supply. The front cable entrance weatherhead opens into the cabinet behind/above the drivers head where a 19″ CRT TV was once housed. It comes with a DC power adapter, but we purchased the AC power adapter as there is already AC power in this cabinet that is supplied from the inverter subpanel.

Our Verizon 4G/LTE MiFi 5510L Jetpack device does essentially the same thing as the WiFi-M, except it communicates with Verizon cell phone towers instead of external WiFi sources. We will be using the Wi-Fi Ranger when possible, and the Verizon 5510L otherwise (assuming it has a usable signal). This means we could have two different WiFi networks running simultaneously. The upside to this is that we could have multiple devices accessing the Internet through different pipelines, resulting in faster data transfer. The downside to this is that devices on one network can’t communicate with devices on the other one. (We could solve that problem with a WiFi Ranger GO.) Although interference between the networks is possible, it is unlikely.

We needed an additional length of hose to hook up the new water softener when it arrived, so Linda picked up a 10′ long food grade hose from the Camco booth. She then returned to the coach to straighten it up for a visit later from Louise & Craig while I went off to the Great Lakes Area Motorcoach Association (GLAMA) gathering at 3:15 PM.

I attended the Great Lakes Area Motorcoach Association (area) meeting in the late afternoon. The main items of interest at the GLAMA meeting were the upcoming GLAMARAMA in mid-September 2013 and the 2014 GLAMARAMA planned for next June. Both rallies will be at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds in Goshen, IN. After that the intention is to move it around through Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Ontario (Canada), perhaps doing two consecutive years in each state/province.

On the walk back to the coach I had a long, technical conversation with Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint in Edwardsburg, Michigan regarding how to remove and reinstall the broken searchlight on the front roof while minimizing damage to the paint. Michele’s shop did the roof repair and repaint on our coach, and she always has a good sense about how to approach something like this. She talked me through the best way to approach it, and after considering the process carefully, I decided to defer an actual repair until we can get the coach back to her shop.

Louise & Craig came by around 5:30 PM and we continued our conversation over snacks and some Red Ass Wine from the Prairie Berry Winery in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The new water softener got delivered just as they showed up, so hookup was deferred until later. We put out the Blue Diamond Wasabi Soy almonds, and I think they caught Louise by surprise. (Sorry Louise. We really should warn folks about these. If you like almonds, and you like spicy, you will find these addictive.)

The Phase Place

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

Tag Archives: Technomadia

2015/01/16 (F) Making Contact

2014/07/07 (M) Needs And Wants

2014/06/08 (N) Positioning

2014/05/26 (M) Memorial Day

2014/05/15 (R) Base Leg

2014/04/24 (R) WBCCI

2014/03/12 (W) Welcome To RVillage

2014/02/22 (S) Tin Can Tourists Rally

2014/01/23-24 (R,F) A Gathering

2014/01/20 (M) Gallery Post

2014/01/20 (M) Cedar Key (FL)

2014/01/19 (N) Things That Go Bump

2013/12/26 (R) Our Recent Travels

2013_09_23-27 (M-F) Getting Ready

2013_07_28 (Sun) Heading East

2013_07_27 (Sat) Where We Go From Here

2013_06_21 (Fri) FMCA Day 3