Tag Archives: thunderstorms

2016/03/24-26 (R-S) Cocoa-Beach-Historic-District ENT Dirty-Talk

2016/03/24 (R) Cocoa Beach Historic District

I got up at 8:15 AM, put on my swim trunks that I use as a pair of casual shorts, and walked over to the campground office to get a couple of cups of coffee. The coffee is not that good, but it’s hot and I don’t have to make it or clean it up. While I was there I inquired about extending our stay. Robert assisted me and found two full hookup sites in the same part of the campground where we are now that were available for three nights starting on the 29th and marked them on a campground map.

Linda was asleep when I left and still asleep when I got back so I gently woke her up to have some coffee. She was feeling a little better. Her sore throat was almost gone and she had regained a little of her hearing and speaking. We checked the long-range weather forecast and it looked like next week’s weather should be good with moderate temperatures and low probability of rain. We discussed the available sites and agreed that #358 looked like a great choice. It is directly behind the site we are currently on (#352) and is large with good access. It also faces northeast which is a plus. We will have to remove the windshield covers in order to move the coach and the northeast orientation means we will not have to put them back on while we are here.

I walked back to the campground office and reserved site #358 for March 29, 30, and 31, with departure on April 1 by noon. All things being equal (which they never are) we would rather not be driving on April 1st as there is, apparently, a mass exodus of snowbirds from Florida on that date and the northbound highways are bumper-to-bumper and very slow. I can check with the office each day to see if there have been cancelations that would allow us to stay longer on one site. We also discussed making a reservation for a few nights back at Williston Crossings and cooling our heels there before heading north.

I texted Vickie to let her know about our modified plan. She and Pat were headed to the beach for a walk and Linda decided she wanted to go along. While we waited for them I texted our children to let them know we had extended out stay at Jetty Park and that their mom was doing better. Oops; apparently no one ever told them Linda was sick and my text message prompted a quick phone call from our daughter.

We walked along the ocean towards Cocoa Beach for 1.5 to 2 miles. (We had three pedometers between us but each one recorded a different distance.) Pat and I headed back while Linda and Vickie went a little farther before turning back. The girls walk faster than we do and wanted to give us a head start. They caught up with us just as we reached the boardwalk back into Jetty Park.

We were back at our coach at 11:45 AM and agreed to get back together mid-afternoon and drive to Cocoa Beach to see the Historic District. None of us had eaten breakfast and Linda clearly needed a nap before doing anything else today. I made a sandwich with mock deli slices, Daiya non-dairy cheese, raw onions, lettuce, and mustard and cut it in half for us to share. I had a few pretzels with hummus and washed off the rest of the grapes and set them out.

I noticed yesterday that I had a critical update for Windows 10 but when I checked today it was no longer there. My presumption is that it got downloaded and installed. Linda had the same update still pending, along with the Visual C++ update that keeps trying to install but apparently does not do so correctly.

There was a magnificent full moon rising last night but we did not notice it until it was well above the horizon. I tried to take a few pictures from in front of our coach but I spent most of the time messing with the camera’s controls and settings. I suspected that I failed to capture the beauty of the moment and after I copied them to my computer to examine them my suspicion was confirmed.

Linda takes a minute to pose while watching one of the Disney cruise ships (Magic?) leave Port Canaveral and head out of the channel into the Atlantic Ocean.

We both took naps but by 4 PM had not heard from Pat and Vickie. I called Vickie but got Pat. Vickie had a sore neck and they had decided not to venture back out today. Linda’s sore throat has largely abated, and her voice has improved a little, but her hearing is still very impaired. This afternoon she got very concerned about it and had me try to contact a local ENT. The office was closed until Monday morning and the call was routed to an answering service. The answering service gave me the number for another ENT in Titusville. I called them and got their answering service. They took my name, number, and some information and said the office would call me at 8 AM when they opened.

The weather forecast from 5 PM on was for an increasing probability of thunderstorms headed towards 100% by 11 PM. The weather was moving from southwest to northeast along a front that appeared to be drifting slowly from west to east. As a result air temperatures were hanging in the 70’s and the humidity was very high. Rather than sit around the coach we decided to drive down N. Atlantic Ave. (FL-A1A) to/through Cocoa Beach just to have a look. First, however, we closed up the coach and turned on the air-conditioners.

We had a nice, leisurely drive south through Cape Canaveral and then Cocoa Beach; first through the main business section and then through a more residential part. In spite of the high-rise residential and resort buildings that dominate the ocean shore along the eastern edge of the Cape, the main avenue still has some of the look and feel of “old” Cocoa Beach, with the Ron Jon Surf Shop as a centerpiece. Many of the beach houses are charming without being massive and lavish, like the ones we saw on Captiva Island on the Gulf Coast.

By the time I turned around to head back dark storm clouds had moved in and it had started raining intermittently. We stopped at the CVS Pharmacy to see if they had an OTC medication that might help Linda’s right ear. The pharmacist said the only thing he had was a pill that would promote drainage which might help remove infection and pressure but was certainly not a substitute for a prescription medication. We bought a pack as it seemed like a better option than doing nothing.

We got back into the northbound flow of traffic, which was bumper-to-bumper and slow because the right hand lane was closed for construction. Heavy rain had moved in, with reduced visibility and minor road flooding, which did not improve the traffic situation. We weren’t in a rush, and it would not have mattered if we were, so we just took our place in the parade until I got to a traffic signal where I turned left and went into the Publix parking lot. Linda stayed in the car while I went in to buy a few grocery items. It was raining lightly when I came out of the supermarket. I loaded the grocery bags in the back of the car and returned the cart to the front of the store. In that short time torrential rains fell and I had to wait for it to abate before I could return to our car. (In spite of the forecast we left the coach without our raincoats or umbrellas.)

Back at our coach we got the groceries inside and put away. Linda felt like fixing dinner so she heated the vegan Italian sausage with sautéed onions and peppers and served it next to an arugula salad. I cut up some of the strawberries we just bought and served those for dessert.

Our usual Thursday evening CBS TV programs were preempted by the NCAA basketball tournament but I found an interesting series of talks about “American Generations” on PBS. The three hours covered, in order, Boomers (us), Gen-X (both of our children), and Millennials (both of our grand-daughters). The basic point of the lectures was an updated and expanded version of the central concept of a presentation by a sociologist that I saw in the late 1970’s titled “What you are is where you were when…”

Our TV viewing was occasionally interrupted by severe weather alerts and a tornado warning, although the warning was not for our specific location. We spent some time with our iPads trying to understand the implications for us and our rig and decided we were not in any imminent danger. Lightning activity increased around 11 PM accompanied by some thunder and then rain. The rain and lightning intensified as midnight approached and the leak around the bedroom vent fan reappeared but did reach severe levels and the winds were not an issue. At midnight the channel 9.3 radar showed one cluster of storms pushing out to sea by us but another fast moving line sweeping across the Gulf of Mexico and stretching across Florida from north of Jacksonville to north of Tampa and moving our way. It was all too obvious by this point that we had miscalculated the intensity and duration of the storm when deciding to leave our awnings out. I finally tried to go to sleep not knowing if they would be OK in the morning. The ENT office was supposed to call at 8 AM and we wanted to be up, dressed, and ready to go in case they could see Linda right away.

2016/03/25 (F) Orlando ENT Visit

With the thunderstorms last night I did not get a good night’s sleep. The cats were nervous and wanted my attention but would not settle down and sleep. When Juniper did finally settle down she curled up on my pillow. The roof vent/fan in the bedroom leaked on the foot of the bed so I had to deal with that. I was also concerned about the two awnings we left out. And last, but not least, I was concerned about Linda’s hearing loss. Nonetheless, I was up at 7:30 AM and got dressed. Linda was up shortly after me and got dressed. She also did not sleep well for most of the same reasons. We each had a quick bite for breakfast in case we had to leave on short notice.

I had not heard from Dr. Patel’s office in Titusville by 8:10 so I called them. They were the backup for Dr. Widick’s office in Cocoa Beach which was closed until Monday morning. Dr. Patel was not available today and would not be until Monday. Some backup. The receptionist was not able to refer us anywhere else. Linda’s initial annoyance at not being able to hear had become a serious concern and melted briefly into a panic. We both got online and started searching for ENTs in the Orlando area.

There were several dozen with no meaningful way to call all of them to find one that was open with an available appointment slot. We were starting to think about going to a hospital ER when I spotted a listing for ENT services at Florida Hospital in Orlando. I called the number and the operator wasn’t quite sure what to do with my call but then transferred me to the hospital’s physician referral service where Tim took the call.

Tim gave me the name of Dr. Lehman at Ear, Nose, Throat Plastic Surgery Associates P.A. http://www.ENTOrlando.com/Portal 407.644.4883. I called them and they were not going to be able to get Linda in to see Dr. Lehman, or any other ENT, until Tuesday. I pleaded the desperation of our situation and they finally said we could see a P.A. in their Orlando clinic office at 1 PM. The receptionist took some basic insurance information over the phone and told us to be there by 12:30 PM to take care of paperwork. She also gave me the address and phone number of the clinic.

Our mapping apps indicated a 52 mile trip (one-way) that would take about one hour. We decided to leave at 10:30 AM to allow plenty of time and still arrive early. It was only 9 AM so rather than sit around I texted Vickie to let her know our plans for the day and that we were headed over to the office to get some coffee and kill a little time. She and Pat met us there and provided a much needed distraction for Linda.

We knew that another round of thunderstorms was forecast to move through the Cape Canaveral area sometime during the afternoon so at 10:15 we headed back to our coach and retracted the patio awning and large driver side awning. By the time we gathered up all of our stuff, which included our SunPass transponder, and pulled out of our site it was almost 10:45. I headed south on N. Atlantic Ave. and stopped at the Shell station to top off the fuel tank. A half mile later I headed west on Central Blvd. and then turned onto westbound Astronaut Blvd (FL-A1A).

The clinic was located at 44 W. Michigan St. southeast of downtown Orlando, Florida. Approximately 40 miles of the 52 mile trip were on FL-A1A and FL-528 and somewhere between 30 and 40 of those miles were toll road. The only traffic congestion we encountered was after exiting FL-528 near Orlando International Airport onto FL-428. We arrived at the clinic before noon.

While Linda was filling out all of the paperwork I got a call from Butch. They were on the move traveling north on I-25 in New Mexico and hoping to make it to Amarillo, Texas before dark. I brought him up to date on Linda’s situation and we then discussed travel plans. He thought they would be home by the end of next week, which is when we plan to pull out of Jetty Park. Butch is willing to help me disassemble and rebuild the driver side tag axle caliper, if that’s what is needed, and I really appreciate that. I am inclined, however, to get Linda and the cats back to the house and then take the bus to Butch and Fonda’s place. I also need to have him work on the three CruiseAir air-conditioners and I cannot have the cats onboard while that work is taking place. All of this might also depend on if/when Joe is in Michigan and available/willing to work on the bus.

At 1:15 PM someone came out and called for Linda. It was the audiologist. She took us back to a room with an anechoic chamber and tested Linda’s hearing. We went to an interior waiting room while she complied the test results and were then taken to an examine room by a nurse who went over the information Linda had provided and filled in some details. A few minutes later the Physician’s Assistant, Bibi Farida Hussain, PA-C came in with a nurse.

We immediately liked her. She was friendly and upbeat but very professional; exuding a confident competence. She went over Linda’s history, symptoms, and audiological test results. Linda’s test results showed that her hearing in her right ear was well below normal and that her eardrum was showing limited movement. Farida’s examination of Linda’s right ear revealed some wax build up that was obscuring her ability to see anything else, so she cleaned it. She was then able to clearly see the inflammation and the presence of fluid in the middle ear. The fluid was preventing the movement of the eardrum and Bibi was fairly certain that was responsible for the greatly diminished hearing.

Farida had Linda pinch her nose and blow gently to force a little air up the eustachian tubes to help displace some of the fluid. She recommended that Linda do this about 10 times per day. She also suggested that Linda continue to use the OTC 12 hour nasal decongestant pills as they were helping drain the eustachian tubes and middle ear. She prescribed a six day course of steroids and sent the prescription electronically to the CVS Pharmacy in Cocoa Beach. She also recommended OTC Flonase nasal spray and gave us a $5 off coupon for the 120 dose size. Finally, she gave Linda a copy of the audiological test results and suggested that she follow up with her ENT back home (Dr. Michael Sideman) in two to three weeks. We paid the estimated co-pay and were on our way by 2:15 PM with Linda feeling relieved and reassured that her hearing should recover substantially within a week with no long-term damage.

We did not have much for breakfast and decided to get some lunch before driving back to the Cape. A POI search using our Garmin 465T GPS unit revealed that there was a Panera just 0.3 miles east of the clinic on Michigan St. Perfect! It was cold inside and pleasant outside so we ate outside. As we were finishing our lunch around 2:45 PM, very dark and foreboding clouds blew in quickly from the west and we got a few rain drops. We made it back to the car before the skies opened up, which they did shortly thereafter.

The entire drive back to Cocoa Beach was through a hellacious rain storm with strong winds, very limited visibility, water ponding on the roads, and generally reduced speeds. We did not have to be anywhere by any particular time so I tried to move along at whatever speeds felt comfortable to me while not going so slow as to get rear-ended. It was about 4:30 PM by the time we made it to the CVS Pharmacy in Cocoa Beach and picked up Linda’s Rx and OTC medications.

The northbound traffic on FL-A1A (Astronaut Blvd.) was bumper-to-bumper as we drove through Cape Canaveral into Cocoa Beach so I took side streets back to Jetty Park. I know I’ve been someplace for a while when I can start to find alternate driving routes. The rain had moved through and out to sea by this time and we had a nice drive through yet another pleasant part of the Cape. We were back at our coach by 5:15 PM. I texted Vickie to let her know and we agreed to meet around 6:30 PM to go for a walk around the campground and park. I then texted Butch and Chuck with status updates while Linda texted both of our children with the same information. People really do care, and were concerned, and it would be thoughtless to not let them know.

Having had a late, filling lunch we were not hungry so Linda doodled on her iPad while I took a short nap. We met Pat and Vickie and walked out to a beach access/overlook where we saw the Victory casino ship heading out to sea. I took a few pictures because, well … I had my camera and that’s what I do. We then walked along the shipping canal where I took a few more pictures. We stopped at the office for coffee and then walked to the laundry room closest to our site to check it out. Linda was tired by this point so we said “good night” and headed back to our coach.

It was 7:45 PM and we both were finally a little hungry so we each had a sandwich. We turned on the TV and flipped channels. There wasn’t much on that we wanted to see until Linda noticed that Foyle’s War was on one of the PBS stations. That was an excellent show that we really enjoyed when it originally aired. The signal was intermittent but we watched it anyway. I then tuned in the NCAA basketball tournament for Linda on CBS 6.1 (solid, steady signal) as she made ready to sleep in the captain’s chairs again tonight. I went to bed, put on the TV, and wrote for a while before going to sleep around 11:30 PM.

2016/03/26 (S) Let’s Talk Dirty

I woke up around 7:15 AM and was out of bed by 7:30. Linda was still sleeping soundly, so I quietly got something to eat for breakfast and took my vitamins but did not make coffee, which involves using the coffee bean grinder and is fairly noisy. Linda woke up around 8:30 and started taking her steroids. After reading the package more carefully she realized she could have taken all six of the first day’s pills last night at one time. That annoyed/frustrated her as she is anxious to get her hearing back ASAP, but there was no turning back the clock.

I needed to do laundry today and I also needed to mail two envelopes to my sister with various tax returns in them. I searched online for laundromats in Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach and found several, but one in particular caught my attention; a full service laundry on N. Atlantic in Cocoa Beach named Let’s Talk Dirty.

The shower/laundry buildings at Jetty Park Campground only have three washers and dryers each, but their main drawback is that you cannot drive your car and park near the buildings; the only way to get your laundry there is to carry it. We have seen quite a few people using rolling carts to get their stuff to the beach and I suspect the long-term, regular campers also use them to get their laundry to/from the building. We do not have such a cart and since I had to drive to the Cape Canaveral Post Office anyway I decided I would treat myself and let someone else wash, dry, and fold our laundry today. It might cost as much as going out for a moderate dinner, but it’s been a hard week for me as well as Linda and I figured I deserved a break.

I gathered up the laundry, put it in the car, and took off, leaving Linda to rest. I found the Post Office easily enough and got the two envelopes mailed Priority Mail with tracking. I then drove another four miles south on FL-A1A (Atlantic Ave.) to the laundry service. It was in a little strip mall just before Atlantic Ave. splits at the beginning of Downtown Cocoa Beach. It was around 10:30 when I got there. I had 29 pounds of laundry at a $1.05 per pound. I had Jill wash everything “cold” but there was an extra $5 charge for splitting it into two loads, lights and darks. I had to pay in advance, but that was OK. Jill said it might not be ready until after 3 PM and let me know she was closing today at 5 PM. No problem.

I enjoyed my drive back to Jetty Park and stopped at the Dunkin Donuts for a couple of coffees to go. The place has always been empty when we have stopped there before but it was mobbed this morning! But then, I guess that’s not really surprising for a Saturday morning on Easter weekend on the Cape.

Vickie texted me around 1 PM to see how Linda was doing and to let us know she was headed out to do some shopping and see if we needed anything. She did not specify groceries but I presume that what she meant. Linda was sleeping and we really did not need anything as we/I have been to Publix two or three times since we arrived at Jetty Park. I was working on this post when Jill called around 1:30 PM to let me know our laundry was ready for pickup. By this time Linda had a short grocery list from the last couple of days so we brainstormed a few additional items and I took it with me.

Atlantic Ave. was busy and congested near the Merritt Island Causeway. The “cause” of the backup was a large group of protesters at the intersection. As best I could determine their “cause” was saving the Indian River Lagoon, from which I gathered something was going on that the protesters believed threatened said lagoon in some way. Their signs directed passersby to the group’s Facebook page for more information. Once I was clear of that intersection the next congested section was by the public park farther south on the east side of the avenue. It was closed to public use for a special function and there were a half dozen police cars there with their lights flashing. The police had also placed cones along the lane markings and were directing traffic. Everyone had to slow way down, of course, and occasionally stop. Once I was clear of that obstacle it was easy sailing the rest of the way to the laundry.

It only took a few minutes to retrieve our laundry which was folded and bagged as advertised. There was no way to avoid the traffic congestion at the park but once I was clear of that I kept an eye on my GPS unit for the first available opportunity to get off of Atlantic Avenue and over one street to the east. That street begins/ends south of the causeway so I used it to bypass the congestion and demonstrators at that intersection. I have nothing against protests and demonstrations; they are a sign of the health of our democracy, but I was already aware of their cause and not in the humor to sit in traffic. Although there is an occasional stop sign and a 25 MPH speed limit, the side street is a lightly used, pleasant road that runs through a residential area. When I was sufficiently far from the causeway intersection I returned to Atlantic Avenue and continued north to the Publix supermarket.

It was sometime between 2:30 and 3 PM by the time I was parked and headed inside the supermarket. There have always been shoppers (and their cars) here on previous visits, but nothing like today. The parking lot was 75% full, the aisles were crowded, and some of the shoppers seemed frantic. Saturdays are busy at most supermarkets and other shopping venues but I could not discern to what extent these shoppers were residents with jobs doing their weekend chores, snowbirds doing their weekly grocery runs, or vacationers just arrived on the Cape and stocking up for the week. It was also the Saturday before Easter Sunday and I only found out later that Publix would be closed tomorrow. It was a perfect shopping storm.

I was back in my car with the groceries by 4 PM. There’s a side street with access to the Publix parking lot that has a traffic signal on N. Atlantic Avenue so I always use it to make the left heading northbound. Although Atlantic Avenue is four lanes with a center turn lane the speed limit is typically 35 MPH and it is lined with businesses on both sides. Traffic moves slowly, and is frequently interrupted by vehicles leaving/entering the traffic flow, which causes it to be bumper-to-bumper and makes left turns across lanes especially difficult.

Back at the campground I got the clean laundry and groceries into our coach. I put the clothes bags on the bed and then unpacked the groceries and put them away. Linda was hungry and feeling well enough to make a salad with arugula, dried cranberries, slivered almonds, and Ken’s Sweet Vidalia Onion Dressing. Yum. I heated a can of Amy’s Vegetable Barely Soup, washed off some black grapes, and sliced up part of the baguette that was left over from our lunch yesterday at Panera. It seemed like it was the first meal we have sat down and eaten at home in a while.

I thought it would be good for Linda to get out of the bus and go for an easy walk. She was still experiencing some dizziness and nausea but agreed to go. We walked over to Pat and Vickie’s coach, which we can see from ours’, and found them at home. They had just finished dinner and we were all going to go for an easy stroll when I noticed dark clouds moving in from the west. Pat pulled up the radar on his phone and, sure enough, a storm cell appeared to be headed our way. Linda was tired anyway so the stroll was called off and we walked back to our rig.

In spite of being surrounded by some 60 TV channels there are only a few that we can receive strongly enough to lock in the digital signal and they do not generally include the two PBS affiliates. Saturday evening TV programming tends to be a bit of a wasteland anyway and we ended up watching the NCAA Basketball Tournament. I eventually tuned it in on the bedroom TV as well just to have something on while I unpacked the clean laundry, put it away, and made the bed. Linda set up the living room captain’s chairs for sleeping, took her evening medications, and snuggled in for the night. Sleeping in a sitting position minimizes the amount of coughing during the night, which leads to better rest. I turned off the lights in the front of the coach and retired to the bedroom for the evening.

2016/01/16 (S) – 2016/01/20 (W) A Capitol Experience

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2016/01/16 (S) Fort Myers Beach Marilyn

I got up at 8:15 AM, cleaned the cats’ food bowls, fed them, and then made coffee. I replied to an e-mail from BCM publisher Gary Hatt regarding which article he planned to run in March and which one in April. I then downloaded my photos from the last two days from my camera to my computer. Linda slept in and did not get up until 9:10. We both felt like we have had too much less-than-ideal food to eat the last few days and split a grapefruit for breakfast.

Our plans for the day revolved around meeting Linda’s sister, Sr. Marilyn, at noon at the Diamond Head Beach Resort and Spa in Fort Myers Beach where she is attending an educational conference and taking CPE courses to maintain her counseling license. The conference was being put on by her religious community, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Corondelet. Marilyn told us the resort parking was outside but the entrance had a relatively low bar over it so I took the ham radio antenna off of our car before we left at 10 AM for the drive to Fort Myers Beach.

Two hours should have been plenty of time to get there but we finally discovered the downstate traffic congestion that many fellow RV/snowbirds have mentioned to us. The trip down FL-31 south was an easy, pleasant drive through citrus groves and ranches. It ended at FL-80 where we headed west towards Ft. Myers. We had the GPS set for “shortest route” so it took us through town instead of putting us on I-75 but it was an interesting route and we got to see different parts of the city including downtown and McGreger Avenue, which is lined with large Royal Palms. It was also the location of the adjacent Henry Ford and Thomas Edison estates. In spite of the traffic we will probably venture back there at some point to see the estates.

Apparently everyone was headed to Ft. Myers Beach today as the last few miles to get onto the island took one hour. It was the worst traffic I seen in years. There is only one bridge connecting the north end of the island to the mainland and there are two lanes of traffic that funnel down into one. The lanes have a divider between them and are controlled by separate stop lights. We had never seen anything like it before. Linda texted Marilyn with a revised ETA.

Marilyn and Linda at the Diamond Head Beach Resort & Spa, Ft. Myers Beach, FL.

When we finally pulled into the parking lot of the hotel at 12:30 PM Marilyn was waiting for us. We paid for parking ($10), parked the car, and went directly to Cabana’s, the hotel’s beachfront bar/restaurant. Linda had a margarita and I had a frozen strawberry daiquiri. What can I say? I like fruit drinks.

For lunch Linda and I both had veggie burgers and Marilyn had the Portobello mushroom burger. The veggie burgers were mushy, as they often are, but the French fries were coated with something before being fried, probably flour, and were excellent. After we were done eating Linda and Marilyn walked out onto the beach where Linda took her shoes off and walked in the ocean. Our $10 parking fee got us a voucher for the same amount which we applied to the lunch bill.

We spent the next 90 minutes strolling a portion of Estero Boulevard, the main/only street that runs the length of the island. I took a few photographs and we wandered into a few shops but did not buy anything. We also walked out on the pier where we got a close up look at two Pelicans and a great view of the very crowded beach to the north and south. This place definitely had that upscale but slightly funky, seaside resort, winter getaway vibe that is one of the reasons people flock to such places.

The Beach at Ft. Myers Beach, FL.

We were back at the hotel at 3:30 PM. Marilyn had something to do at 4 PM so we took our leave and got back into the bumper-to-bumper traffic that was now moving slowly towards the bridge and off the island. But at least it was moving, and once we cleared the bridge traffic moved along much better. I changed the GPS to “fastest route” and it took us over different roads to I-75 and then north five miles to FL-80 where we retraced our earlier route (in reverse) to get back to Arcadia. At the intersection of FL-80 and FL-31 we stopped at a Publix supermarket and bought a couple of bottled drinks.

It had been a long day and I did not feel like working at my computer. We tuned in a program on PBS at 8 PM and doodled on our iPads. Linda was checking the weather and the forecast for overnight was starting to look ominous. When the program ended at 9:30 we went outside to retract our awnings and put our folding chairs and table away. We stowed the big patio awning last and it started to rain lightly as we completed that task. We left the TV on and watched the weather situation closely. I finally went to bed at midnight knowing that we would not got a full, restful night’s sleep.

2016/01/17 (N) Bad Weather

The cold front that swept across the Florida peninsula overnight was draped off of an intense low pressure system that moved from Texas along the Gulf coast shore into the Florida panhandle and eventually along the Florida/Georgia border and off into the Atlantic. The front, combined with a low level jetstream, raced across the area at 50 to 60 miles per hour triggering numerous thunderstorms and spawning a few tornados.

We had followed the development of the system closely before going to bed at midnight as both channel 11 and 20 had continuous storm team coverage. At 4:30 AM we received severe weather alerts on our phones. Linda’s phone has a loud klaxon warning sound associated with these alerts and we were instantly wide awake. We put on our sweats, so that we would at least be dressed in case we had to leave the rig, and turned on the TV.

Arcadia, including our Big Tree Carefree RV Resort, was in the northeast corner of a tornado warning box. It had started raining, off and on, well before midnight but as the storm front moved into our area thunderstorms came with it, one with Doppler radar indicated rotation. There was lightning and thunder, of course, and the rain became steady and very heavy. The wind really picked up but never became tornadic. We stayed up until 5:30 AM by which time the main storm front had passed. There were a few lingering cells behind it but the meteorologists gave the “all clear” for our area and we went back to bed.

The temperature was in the upper 60’s when we got up at 8:30 AM, rose slightly to about 70, and then dropped throughout the day as the front that triggered the storms raced off into the Atlantic opening the door for much colder air to flow in behind it, courtesy of the Polar Vortex that was plunging most of the Eastern U. S. and Canada into a deep freeze.

The rest of the day was uneventful with pleasant weather. My focus was selecting and processing photos from the recent Arcadia Rally 2016 for the bonus content section of the digital edition of the March 2016 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine. Linda worked on her counted cross-stitch project and went for several walks. I joined her for brief strolls after lunch and dinner. For dinner Linda made vegan chili from scratch. It was very good. We watched Downton Abbey on PBS after which Linda went to bed while I continued to work on photos.

2016/01/18 (M) The Capitol Steps

The air mass behind the cold front that swept out of the Gulf of Mexico, across Florida, and out into the Atlantic Ocean yesterday was noticeably colder and drier than normal for southwest Florida. The temperature overnight dropped to 47 degrees, so we slept well and woke to clear skies and crisp air.

Our day revolved around the 3 PM performance at the Venice Theater of the political comedy musical group The Capitol Steps. Venice is over an hour’s drive from Arcadia so we arranged with Steve and Karen Limkemann to make a day of it that would include lunch, photography at the Venice Rookery, the show, and dinner.

We skipped breakfast, showered, and dressed up enough to be presentable for the theater. We gathered up several layers of outerwear and I put the 100-300 mm zoom lens on the Sony a99v. We left at 10 AM and stopped at the Shell station in Arcadia to top up the fuel tank. Dunkin Donuts was right next door so we each got coffee and a blueberry bagel to split. I got a frozen coffee drink made with almond milk and mocha. I had never had one of these from DD and it was pretty good.

I had the GPS set for fastest route. It took us out FL-72 towards Myakka State Park, which I expected, but then took us south on County Road 769. Along the way we saw the usual assortment of citrus groves, ranches, and birds but also saw a Bald Eagle. CR-769 turned southwest and eventually intersected I-75 where we headed “north.” Although it was another 25 miles to the Nokomis exit, I-75 ran mostly east-west for this stretch so this route actually made a lot of sense. It was only a couple of miles from the exit to Steve and Karen’s place and there was a Publix supermarket along the way, so we stopped and bought them a bag of M&M’s to replace ones we had eaten on our last visit and were going to eat on this one. Not vegan, but a small indulgence.

We got to Steve and Karen’s place at Bay Lake Estates at 11:30 AM. At 11:45 we walked to Cafe Evergreen about 1.5 miles away, an easy walk on a sidewalk without having to cross any major streets. Cafe Evergreen is a small, all organic, restaurant with a good selection of vegetarian and vegan dishes. We both had salads for lunch and they were very good. Everything we have had to eat here has been excellent and the service has always been on a par with the quality of the food.

We walked back to Steve and Karen’s and visited until we left at 2:15 PM to drive to the Venice Theatre. Parking can be a problem in downtown Venice but Steve found a parking space on a side street near the theatre. We have enjoyed The Capitol Steps every time we have seen them and this show was as good as any. Laughter really is the best medicine.

Herons and Egrets at the Venice Rookery, Venice, FL.

The show was done around 5 PM. By the time we made our way to the restrooms and out of the theatre it was 5:15 PM. Steve drove us to the Venice Rookery where we bundled up against the chilly air and Steve and I got out our cameras. The sky was clear except for some thin clouds to the west and I took quite a few photos in the quickly changing light. Sunset was just before 6 PM and we stayed until 6:30 to watch bats emerge from their purpose-built houses atop tall, slender poles. We headed back to Cafe Evergreen where we had 7 PM dinner reservations.

Linda, Karen, and I drank lots of coffee, which was smooth and warm. Linda and I had stir-fried kelp noodles with vegetables served over a bed of couscous with an Asian style sauce. It was delicious and had a wonderful texture. We each had a vegan indulgence for dessert; cranberry pecan for me and chocolate peanut butter for Linda. It was a very satisfying meal.

We got back to Steve and Karen’s at 8:45 PM and decided to head for home. We reversed our earlier route and were back at our coach before 10 PM. We watched NCIS Los Angeles and went to bed, tired from a long, but very satisfying day.

2016/01/19 (T) VZW Data Usage

We left the windows open about inch yesterday, along with the kitchen ceiling vent (but no fan), so it would not get too warm inside from the sun while we were away. It was cool inside when we got home at 10 PM and we closed up the coach in anticipation of the outside temperature overnight dropping into the low 40’s. Last night was another cool one, literally.

Herons and Cranes at the Venice Rookery, Venice, FL.

There are only a few hot dishes that Linda makes for breakfast and most of them are a lot of work. The one dish that is relatively easy is oatmeal, and it is a great choice for a cool/cold morning. It stays warm long enough to eat it before it gets cold, is a hearty (and heart healthy) dish, and stays with you for quite a while.

Linda stopped at the resort office yesterday to see if they could cut the grass around our site while we were gone for the day. The awnings were up and our chairs/table were still put away from the weekend storms, so the site was clear. The office said they probably would not get to it on Monday as the ground and grass was too wet but when we finally left the coach today we saw that they had, in fact, mowed the area.

We have been on the go more than sitting still for the last week and needed some time at the coach to do things. I needed to wrap up work on two articles for BCM and settled in today to do that. Today (the 19th of the month) is also the end of our Verizon Wireless billing cycle. We do not have park Wi-Fi at our site in Big Tree Carefree RV Resort and have been leaving our Verizon Mi-Fi on continuously. We managed to use almost all of our 11 GB of data during the current billing cycle so I wanted to spend today working on photos for the articles and defer uploading them until tomorrow.

Before getting back into my BCM rally article I copied all of the photos that I took yesterday at the Venice Rookery from the camera to my computer. Linda tries to create a new postcard for Madeline every Tuesday and wanted a picture from the Rookery. My best photos were of individual birds or small groups but she wanted something that would give Madeline a better visual understanding of just what a rookery is.

I finally selected a photo with lots of different birds in lots of different positions, including some in flight. Linda logged into the PhotoCardApp on her iPad and determined that the post cards the company creates and mails out are 8.25″ by 5.5″, which is a 3:2 aspect ratio. That is also the native format of my Sony SLT-a99v. Using Faststone Image Viewer (FIV) I was able to resize the image to the exact size of the postcard. I then e-mailed it to Linda’s Gmail account which, in spite of our local area network in the bus, is the easy (only?) way to get it from my computer to her iPad.

While I was processing the image Linda looked up the term “rookery” and discovered that its meaning is more specific than we thought. While it is, indeed, a place where birds roost and build nests (typically in trees) it is actually specific to rooks, which are a crow-like bird. It has, however, become the generic term for a place where one or more species of bird roost, breed, nest, and raise their young.

Besides the main post card photo the PhotoCardApp allows you to create your own stamps. Creating a stamp costs two credits but once it’s created you can use it over and over for just the cost of the postage. (You get 30 credits for $25 and each card costs 2 credits to create, produce, and mail.) We do not have a lot of photos of the two of us together as one of us (usually me) is typically behind the camera. We have a nice head and shoulders photo that our son took that I use at the end of my BCM articles. I e-mailed that to Linda and she used it to create a personalized stamp. I found a second photo of us that someone took at the 2014 GLAMARAMA Rally so I processed it and e-mailed it to Linda to use for a second stamp if she wanted. We are both wearing our bright yellow GLCC dress shirts, so it is very RV specific.

We tried Facetiming with Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline Sunday evening but the connection was too slow so we talked on the phone. They were in Washington D. C. for a conference related to Shawna’s research and Madeline got to visit the Natural History Museum and see dinosaur skeletons. The PhotoCardApp also has a large collection of “stickers” that can be added to a post card, so Linda added an electronic dinosaur “sticker” to the one she was working on.

A Great Blue Heron at the Venice Rookery, Venice, FL.

The last couple of days there was some confusion between BCM owner/publisher Gary Hatt, the layout person (Jorge Escobar, in Columbia), and myself regarding which article they were running in the March 2016 issue. Gary cleared that up in favor of my article on the Arcadia Rally 2016. That, in turn, allowed me to move ahead with finishing that article today, which I finally did around dinner time. My only breaks were to eat lunch and go for short walks.

Linda worked on her counted cross-stitch project but took time out to go on several longer walks, including one to the local Winn-Dixie supermarket. She planned to make a bean soup for dinner and needed a few ingredients. The soup was based on a package of mixed beans and lentils she bought at a health food store in Frankenmuth, Michigan back in October. She added water, tomato sauce, garlic, onion, greens, chili powder, and turmeric. By the time we sat down to dinner the sun had set and the temperature was dropping so the hot soup was not only delicious but really hit the spot.

We walked over to the mail room after dinner. My new driver’s license had arrived. The registrations and tabs for the bus and car arrived a few days ago so as of now we are not expecting any more mail.

Back at the coach I turned on the electric toe-kick heaters and plugged in the Broan portable cube heater rather than run the Aqua-Hot. We put on our Tuesday evening TV programs but I was in a groove and turned my attention to selecting and processing photos to go with blog posts. I got through my images for November and December and the first few days of January by 11 PM when the last show ended and Linda headed off to bed.

We still had 1.5 GB of data left in our current billing cycle, which ended at midnight, although I was not sure in what time zone. I knew the data for my BCM Arcadia rally article was not more than 0.5 GB so I uploaded it before our data allocation reset. It’s expensive to exceed our allocation but there is also a “cost” associated with not using what we have paid for.

I turned the thermostats on the toe-kick heaters back and turned off the Broan cube heater. I turned on the electric heating pad on my side of the bed, set it to 4, and activated the pre-heat function. I finally got to bed around 12:30 AM and snuggled in under the blankets.

2016/01/20 (W) Cellular Options

I don’t know if the outside temperature got into the upper 30’s last night but even with the coach closed up the temperature inside dropped to 59 degrees F. Linda got up first this morning and turned up the thermostats on the electric toe-kick heaters. I got up a few minutes later and turned on the Aqua-Hot diesel burner and the three thermostats that control the zone pumps and fans on the heat exchangers in the house portion of the bus.

We had slept in a bit and were sitting around in our sweats while the coach warmed up when we realized at 7:55 that the Wednesday coffee was starting in five minutes. We did not feel like going over in our sweats or changing clothes so I made coffee in our coach like I do almost every morning. The problems (for us) with the Wednesday morning coffee, based on having been one time, is that there is no opportunity to socialize and it takes too long. It was well attended the one time we went so it apparently serves the needs of the resort management and most of the residents.

Linda used her iPad2 to check in on the world and I used mine to finish up my blog posts for the last few days. We eventually had granola with blueberries and bananas for breakfast, which is always a treat. Linda walked our kitchen trash over to the dumpster and then continued walking the park for her first walk of the day.

My original objective for today was to upload image and document files for my Arcadia Rally 2016 article to my BCM Dropbox folder, but I got that done before I went to bed last night. Although I have a lot work to do on several websites, including ours, I wanted to put the finishing touches on my featured bus article about Ronnie and Diann Mewbourn’s 1969 Model 07 Eagle bus conversion and move two technical articles from “proofreading” to “ready” status. Gary has not had Kathy proofread/edit any of them yet so that had to wait for another day. I also wanted to continue selecting/processing photos for my January blog posts but got distracted with system updates for my ASUS laptop computer.

I ran the CCleaner program and then ran the Windows 8.1 disk check utility. I ran it because MS Outlook keeps “encountering a problem and has to close” or stops responding. The check disk utility did not find any errors so I downloaded a new version of Defraggler and started it. I probably should have run it overnight as it ran all day and through the evening. I think I could have worked while it was running but I have always preferred to let disk defragmenters run without anything else tasking the system.

With my computer tied up and my blog post drafts up-to-date I had a little time on my hands. Linda is always up for another walk so we walked over to the CellularSales store, an Authorized Verizon Retailer located on an out lot of the Walmart shopping center. The shopping center is on the other side of Highway 70 so we used the crosswalk at the traffic signal for the shopping center entrance. This stoplight also serves the entrance to the 55+ community immediately to the east of our RV resort and is where we make our U-turn when headed east to head back west to the entrance to our resort.

The reason for our visit was that we became eligible for device upgrades back in April and wanted to check out what was available in smartphones and data plans. We were also looking for a new Mi-Fi device that Chris and Cherie (Technomadia) reported on in their Mobile Internet Aficionados (MIA) site. We usually work with Verizon corporate stores but there isn’t one in Arcadia. The store was large, spacious, very nice, and not busy so Toby was able to spend some relaxed time answering our questions.

The Mi-Fi device we wanted to see was the new Netgear AC791L but CellularSales did not have one and Toby was not familiar with it. They did not even have the Novatel 6620L and were still selling the Novatel 5510L which is what we have now and want to replace. We got our 5510L in June 2013 from a Verizon retailer in Gillette, Wyoming and our friends at the RV Mobile Internet Resource Center (MIA) consider it obsolete and no longer even report on it.

We also looked at new phones and learned that the Samsung Note 4 and Note 5, along with the Galaxy VI smartphone, do not have removable batteries. Toby viewed that as a negative and we agreed. The Galaxy V smartphone, which does have a removable battery, would still be an upgrade over our Galaxy III phones. It has a larger screen but not as large as the Note devices, which are almost too large to hold up to your ear. Toby also showed us the new LG phone which was very nice but again did not have a removable battery. It’s the newest competitor to the Samsung Galaxy S VI. We will do more research before deciding what, if anything, to do. The AC791L, in particular, appears to be available online without a contract and at a better price than in a retail outlet.

As long as we were on the other side of the highway we stopped at Walmart and bought a loaf of Italian bread to go with our soup for dinner. When we got back to our coach the disk defragmenter on my computer was still only part way through the disk and indicating the time remaining as “> 1 day.” The temperature outside was near perfect, not too warm or cool, so Linda got out one of our chairs and sat outside reading while I stayed inside and took a nap.

I got up a couple of hours later and wiled away what was left of the afternoon. We have been keeping an eye on our male cat, Jasper, who has lost little patches of fur from several spots on his back, and finally decided that we should get him in to see a vet. The closest one is on FL-31 less than a mile from our RV resort and is the one that folks in the resort recommended. Linda was looking for reviews online but could not find the clinic so she drove over in the car to get the name and phone number. It turned out that she had found the veterinarian’s name but he used to work out of his house at a different location. We plan to drive out towards Lake Okeechobee tomorrow but will call the veterinary clinic first and make an appointment for Friday.

The Venice Rookery at sunset, Venice, FL.

As the sun sank in the western sky the temperature cooled off quickly and we closed up the coach. Linda heated the rest of the soup she made yesterday and we sat down at 7 PM to a simple but delicious dinner of soup and bread. We turned on the TV after dinner, watched Jeopardy, and then switched to PBS to watch the Wednesday night nature/science programs.

The last 10 days have been very busy and somewhat intense for us. We had been to the woodcarvers expo in Punta Gorda, visited with Steve and Karen, met Ron and Mary at Myakka State Park, visited with them again at our RV resort, attended the Tampa RV Supershow in conjunction with strong weather, visited Marilyn in Fort Myers Beach, dealt with severe weather again, followed by a long day of working on photos for my BCM rally article, had a long day visiting Steve and Karen in Nokomis again and seeing The Capitol Steps at the Venice Theatre, eating at Cafe Evergreen twice and then visiting the Venice Rookery to take photographs before returning home, had finally had another really long day yesterday selecting/processing photos and placing them in my BCM article. Looking back at all of that we were probably due for an easy, low activity day, and one of the nice things about retirement is that we can usually have “do nothing” days whenever we want.

When I checked my computer it was still showing 17 hours to complete the defragmentation so I went to bed.

2016/01/11 (M) – 15 (F) Family and Friends

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2016/01/11 (M) Jack and Paula

Linda was up at 7:30 AM and read quietly. I got up at 8:15 AM and made coffee. We had granola for breakfast with fresh strawberries which finished the current batch of cereal. Linda got another batch out of the freezer to thaw. We have five batches remaining.

Linda was checking e-mail and noticed that we had been billed yesterday for almost $500 by iPage for web-hosting services. I originally signed up with iPage in January 2013 for three years. I transferred everything over to QTH in August 2013 but did not cancel the iPage account. I did not realize that the account was set up for automatic renewal. I logged in to see if I could close the account and cancel the transaction or initiate a refund but the website just gave me a number to call. I did and finally got to talk to Scott in billing. He was obviously a native English speaker and was able to take care of everything quickly and efficiently and provide a confirmation number. If iPage’s technical/customer support had been that good I might never have switched to a different web-hosting service. I am, none-the-less, very glad that three of the four websites I work with are on QTH.com‘s web-servers and wish that all four of them were. The technical and customer support there is second-to-none.

Linda wanted to send another postcard to grand-daughter Madeline so I downloaded the photos I took yesterday and selected one of a heron to use. I post-processed it at several different sizes and copied it to the NAS. She needed it on her iPad, however, so I e-mailed it to her. Even though our iPads (and phones) can connect to our secure Wi-Fi network they are not able to access the network resources such as the NAS and printer. I really should take the time to figure out if there is a way to do that.

On the drive home last night the Honda Element started displaying a message to “Check Gas Cap.” I pulled off the road and checked but it was on tight. The message, however, did not clear. When we got home Linda Googled the message and found several sites that indicated it was a periodic system check and would clear the next time around, assuming the cap was not, in fact, loose. That could take days, however, depending on how much we drove the car. The answer for most of this week will be “not much.”

Linda went for a late morning walk. The Element needed fuel so I drove to the Shell station on FL-70 to fill up the tank. Linda had walked to Winn-Dixie and was just returning as I was pulling out so she rode along to the filling station. She ran into Claudine Elbisser at the produce market and found out that she and Paul were still at Jack and Paula Conrad’s place south of town. Jack and Paula started the Arcadia Bussin Rally and ran it for the first 10 years before turning it over to Bill and Brenda Phelan.

Back at the coach Linda heated some Amy’s vegan chili for lunch. She opened a new (sealed) pack of saltine crackers as we like to crumble them in our chili and have a few on the side with vegan butter spread. They did not taste quite right but we were not sure just why. They were not spoiled but it seemed as if they were slightly stale (not crisp) and the flavor was also “off.” They were Publix branded and all of the grocery items we have ever gotten from there have been good quality but we decided to throw the crackers away.

A Green Heron at Myakka State Park, FL.

We went for a walk after lunch during which Linda got a call from her sister-in-law, Mary. They agreed that we might do something together tomorrow if Spence and Nancy had not made other plans for them. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon but cool with highs in the upper 60’s. Rather than sit around the coach I called Jack to see if we could stop by for a visit. He and Paula did not have anything specific going on so we drove to their place about 10 miles south of Arcadia.

When we arrived we were greeted by Jack and Paula but found out that Paul and Claudine had pulled out this morning, so we did not get to visit with them. We then realized that when Claudine told Linda she had to run “because Paul was waiting for her at Walmart” he was waiting in the bus. John and Lois Vickrey were there, however, and the six of us had a nice visit. There were two other converted buses at the Conrad’s but the owners were not around. We did not recognize their names but both coaches were at the Arcadia Rally 2016 and we would probably have recognized them on sight.

By 4:45 PM the sun was low in the sky and the temperature had dropped into the low 60’s. We were getting cold so we excused ourselves and left. We stopped at Walmart on the way back to our RV resort for a box of angel hair pasta and a box of Nabisco saltine crackers. Back at our coach I closed the two roof vents and we closed all of the windows. I checked e-mail and Linda started working on dinner.

She started with a nice salad of baby kale, scallions, olives, and pumpkin seeds dressed with balsamic vinaigrette. The main course was angel hair pasta with a vegan mushroom cream sauce. She used the Miatake mushrooms we bought yesterday at the Farmers Market in Punta Gorda. It was outstanding and we really liked the taste and texture of the mushrooms, which were a new culinary experience for us.

We went for our usual after-dinner stroll around the resort and stopped by the activity building where lots of residents were playing bingo and smaller groups were playing cards and games. In another building a dozen men were playing pool. It was a beautiful clear night with the constellation Orion rising in the eastern sky. Although the air temperature was crisp folks were out walking, just like us.

Back at our coach we settled in to watch our usual Monday night TV programs (CBS). They were all re-runs, which we thought was odd, but we watched them anyway. We were off to bed at 11 PM and straight away to sleep. I turned on the electric heater pad and set it on 3. Toasty.

2016/01/12 (T) Myakka River State Park (FL)

The overnight low temperature was 47 degrees F; not cold enough to warrant turning the heat on in the coach but cold enough to cool off the interior by morning. We pulled up the blankets when we went to bed and I turned on the electric heater pad on my side of the bed; a more efficient use of energy than heating the whole coach. As a bonus, the cooler the coach the less the refrigerator runs, although the new one is much more efficient than the old one. When it gets cool enough in the coach Juniper (the cat) gets under the covers between us and puts her head between our pillows. She is such a princess.

A pair of alligators in the Myakka River, Myakka SP, FL.

We finally got out of bed at 8:15 AM and slipped into out sweats. I made coffee while Linda talked to Kathi at the bakery back in Michigan. We doodled on our iPads while we drank our coffee and let the coach warm up. By 9:30 it was 72 inside. I turned off the heaters and we sat down to a breakfast of homemade granola with blueberries and bananas and a small glass of orange juice. We doodled for another half hour after breakfast and then got dressed. In preparation for meeting Linda’s brother, Ron, and his wife, Mary, at Myakka State Park at 11 AM Linda made a picnic lunch and I got the camera gear ready to go.

We had planned to be on the road by 10:30 AM but actually left at 10:39. The 29 miles to the park entrance was not all 60 MPH, so we did not get to the visitor center until 11:20 AM. Ron and Mary were already there waiting for us. We looked at maps and discussed what we wanted to do. Ron and Mary wanted to see alligators in the wild, so they had come to the right place. The main park road crosses the Myakka River about a mile into the park from the entrance / visitor center with parking at both ends of the bridge. We knew from our visit two years ago that this was an excellent place to see alligators, as well as a variety of birds and so it was again today. After spending some time on the bridge we walked along the south/east bank of the river and found two more alligators sunning themselves on the opposite bank.

A little farther down the road was the parking area for the Canopy Walk and Nature Trail. We climbed the tower, walked across the suspension bridge, and then climbed to observation deck at the top of the second tower. The suspension bridge goes through the forest canopy about 35 feet in the air and affords a view of the forest that most of us rarely see. At 76.1 feet AGL the observation level put us well above the top of the trees with a commanding 360 degree view of the park and beyond. I shot a nine frame panorama from west through north to east.

By the time we got back to our cars we were all ready for lunch so we drove to the developed area on the south shore of Upper Myakka Lake. This area has one of the two campgrounds, a boat ramp, air boat tour concession, restaurant, restrooms, picnic tables, and a trail that leads out to a platform where the lake flows out and becomes the river. We found a picnic table in the sun near the shore and had our PB&J sandwiches, oranges, pretzels, and water. After lunch we walked out to the platform and were rewarded with more views of wildlife.

Ron, Linda, & Mary atop the 76.1 foot observation tower, Myakka SP, FL.

Our next stop was the “Birdwalk,” an elevated boardwalk near the northeast corner of the lake that goes out into an open harsh and gets people close to the shore. There was lots of wildlife out there but most of it was some distance away. A sign indicated that the donation box was to raise money to build an observation tower at end of the boardwalk above the existing viewing platform.

Our final stop for the day was the parking area for a trailhead in the northeast corner of the park. The main trail led to primitive campsites as much as 10 miles away. We did a loop of about 2.5 miles (by my estimate). Although the entire trail (park) was level terrain the footing was rough or soggy in places. Portions of our hike were through the forest and the rest was through prairie. It was our most vigorous hike of the day and I did not take any photos even though I carried the camera along.

By the time we got back to our cars it was 4:45 PM. The sun was low in the sky and the temperature had dropped. We discussed our plans for Thursday and then headed our separate ways. We had just left the park entrance and headed east on FL-72 when I spotted a group of 6 to 8 feral hogs on the north side of the road by a stream about 100 feet from the road. Linda did not spot them in time so I turned around and went back. As I slowed down they took off but Linda got to see them. I turned around again and headed towards Arcadia. Less than a mile down the road I saw four more in the ditch just off the north side of road. They were very large adult animals.

We were back at our coach by 6 PM and had left over Asian salad for dinner. It had been a slightly more physical day than normal so after dinner we settled in to watch our Tuesday evening TV programs on CBS.

2016/01/13 (W) Coffee Clutch

Today was our second Wednesday at Big Tree RV Resort. The only significance to that factoid is that Wednesday morning is the weekly resort coffee. As new arrivals in the resort we received a coupon for free coffee but forgot to go last week so we made a point of getting up and going this morning. The coffee starts at 8 AM but we had been “advised” by folks to arrive early if we wanted a seat. We got there around 7:50 AM and the place was packed. We got in line to get our coffee and found out that today’s gathering was sponsored by an insurance agency and was free of charge. We found seats and made the acquaintance of the people sitting near us.

Ron, Mary and Me atop the 76.1 foot observation tower, Myakka SP, FL. (Photo by Linda)

This was not a coffee clutch where folks stand around, mingle, and chat. There are somewhere between 700 and 800 people in this park and I estimated that at least 400 of them were present at the coffee. Everyone was seated on both sides of long tables for the entire duration of the coffee, which lasted until 9:15 AM. It was very organized and consisted of introductions, lots of announcements, lots of door prizes, and a 50/50 drawing. For the seasonal and permanent residents the information is probably useful, but it was not that interesting or useful to us. We might go one more time just to take advantage of our free coffee coupon but the nature of the gathering won’t afford us any opportunity to meet people and talk to them over coffee so we probably won’t make a priority of going.

Today was laundry day for us. Linda needed a few things from Winn-Dixie, including a few Powerball lottery tickets, and walked down to get them. I gathered up the laundry, sorted it by color and temperature into three batches, and drove over to the laundry room in the activity building. The washing machines only took about 25 minutes so I stuck around until they were done. After getting those loads into dryers I went back and got the bedding, returned to the laundry room, and put it in a washing machine. I took my iPad with me but ended up in a conversation with a few folks. By the time I was done with the laundry and back at our coach it was 2 PM.

A flock of birds takes flight at the north end of Upper Myakka Lake, Myakka SP, FL.

I took a long a long nap during which Linda went for a long walk, prepared ingredients for tomorrow’s lunch, and worked on her counted cross-stitch project. I finally got up just in time for dinner. After dinner we watched a fascinating documentary titled “Autism in Love” as a result of which we did not watch Nature. We did, however, watch NOVA. It was also a fascinating program exploring new discoveries and understandings about the role and relationship of minerals in the origin and evolution of life on earth.

I watched some of the evening news on channel 11-1 and also checked the weather on channel 11-2. A strong low pressure system was moving east from New Orleans across the Florida panhandle with strong storms coming ashore in that area. A long, comma-shaped cold front extended from the low far down into the Gulf and was advancing on the peninsula. It was forecast to come ashore starting north of Cedar Key after midnight and then progressively affect all of the shore communities south to Marco Island with strong thunderstorms along the front and a low possibility that some of them might become severe. Rain, possibly heavy, was due in Arcadia starting around 4 AM and getting heavy by 5 AM. Knowing this obviously doesn’t change whatever is going to happen, but knowing what is expected allows us configure the coach properly and to be prepared and react appropriately to events as they unfold if needed.

2016/02/14 (R) Ron and Mary

We were up by 7:30 AM this morning, had showers, got dressed, and had breakfast. Linda finished food preparations for lunch today and then straightened up the inside of the coach while I dumped the holding tanks and filled the fresh water tank.

I was outside a little later in the morning and learned from a neighbor that the sewer line that services row K (where we are parked) had developed a blockage and sewage had “backed up into a couple of rigs.” No one, however, was able/willing to be more specific than that. A plumber was called and I chatted with him briefly when he arrived. He confirmed that the sewer line ran from our end of row K south towards the front of the park by Hwy 70. He determined quickly that there was indeed a blockage and I learned from him later that it extended along a considerable length of the sewer pipe. This was not the first time he was called to deal with this and was able to get the drain line opened up.

Piecing together the available information I figured it was entirely possible that the sewage that backed up was from our tanks but that the blockage was not something we caused. Linda, however, was of the opinion that the plumber had been summoned before I dumped. Regardless, I’m sure it was unpleasant for those who were affected and I hope we do not have a repeat of this situation while we are here. While in no way our fault, we would hate to have contributed to the situation in any way, however inadvertently.

My reasoning was that we are the second rig from the far end of the drain line and the tops of our waste tanks are almost 4 to 5 feet above ground level. The tanks are large and if they were near full would release a considerable volume of effluent with a significant head pressure. If the drain line was mostly constricted (reducing its available volume), and the blockage was not very far down stream (also reducing its available volume), the weight of the contents of our waste tanks could cause the drain line to quickly fill and then force the effluent up through any available path, such as another rig’s dump hose. This would continue until the levels reached equilibrium.

In a trailer with its floor not that far off the ground sewage could, hypothetically, back up into waste tank(s) and then into the toilet and/or sinks. None of that would happen, of course, unless the dump valves on the other RV(s) had been left open. We have always been told that leaving the dump valves open on an RV is a very bad idea but the reason is that getting a good, thorough, dump requires a nearly full tank. Today’s events have given us additional reason to keep the valves closed except to dump.

Now that’s what I’m talking about! We have got to get one of these. A 4-wheel drive, Sprinter-based Class B conversion from Sportsmobile as seen at the Tampa RV Supershow, Tampa State Fairgrounds, Tampa, FL.

Ron and Mary arrived a little after 11 AM. We gave them a tour of the interior remodeling work we have done and then sat and visited. Eventually we were hungry and spread the tablecloth on the outside picnic table and had lunch out there.

After lunch Ron drove us to Joshua Citrus a couple of miles south of our resort where we bought a variety of citrus fruit. We then drove to downtown, parked, and walked around poking our heads into some of the antique shops. Mary was looking for a pair of clear glass lamp chimneys with a 2″ diameter base. The closest she came was a pair with a 2-1/4″ base. Apparently 3” diameter bases are common, 2” diameter bases, not so much.

We returned to the coach for a while and then took two cars and went to El Pirata for dinner. It was our first time there although friends had told us it was OK and it was the #4 rated restaurant in Arcadia. Linda did not care for her margarita and also did not care for the veggie fajitas or any of the sides that came with the dish. I had Dos Equis Amber in a bottle, so it was fine. I thought the food was OK; not outstanding but not disagreeable, so perhaps she just wasn’t in the mood for Mexican food tonight.

The restaurant wasn’t full so we lingered and chatted for quite a while but eventually it was time to leave. We were only a few minutes from home but Ron and Mary had an hour’s drive to get back to Spence and Nancy’s place. Back at our coach we settled in to watch our usual Thursday evening CBS TV programs and then headed off to bed as we planned an early departure tomorrow morning to get to the Tampa RV Supershow.

2016/01/15 (F) Tampa RV Supershow

As forecast, the rain started around 4 AM and by 5 AM was fairly heavy. I was not, however, aware of any lightning, thunder, or strong winds. We got up at 7:30 AM, got dressed, and had some of the Honeybelle tangelos we bought yesterday. Honeybelles are only available for about a month starting this time of year and are highly touted so we bought a quarter-Bushnell bag. We were, however, quite disappointed in their taste and texture. We will eat them anyway, of course, but they will not be the treat we were counting on.

We planned to leave at 8:30 AM to drive to the Florida State Fairgrounds for the Tampa RV Supershow. It was still raining and was forecast to continue through the morning. I took the vertical grip off of the Sony SLT-a99v to lighten it and make it easier to carry in the Cotton Carrier camera harness/holster. I packed a couple of extra batteries, we took our raincoats, and headed out.

We encountered very heavy rain between Arcadia and Tampa, especially along FL-70 between Arcadia and I-75. We arrived at the fairgrounds around 10:15 AM, got our tickets, and made it into the Expo hall just as another heavy band of rain moved through.

A Prevost H3-45 VIP conversion shell on display at the Tampa RV Supershow. The driver side of the coach is elevated on ramps and mirrors on the floor allow show attendees to see the underside of the bus.

Just inside the door to the right was the major display of Prevost bus conversions and to the left was a major display of Airstream trailers and Class B motorhomes. We crossed paths with Steve Zigler, Prevost Sales Manager for conversion shells and chatted briefly. We met Giesle from the home office in St. Claire, Quebec and also met Melanie from Millennium Coach. We found out from Melanie that Millennium is now the primary corporate support for the Royale Coach Club. Apparently Liberty Coach took over sponsorship when Royale Coach folded around 2005 and Millennium took over from Liberty some time more recently. We were members at one time but have not paid dues in several years.

The Prevost coaches were one of the main things we came to see and meeting people from the company was a bonus. Our other objective was to check out all of the parts and accessories vendors, of which there were many, and RV Parks and Resorts, of which there where an equal number. We mostly picked up literature until we found Bill and Brenda Phelan’s booth. One of their products is tire covers made from heavy nylon mesh material. It blocks most of the sunlight while allowing moisture to escape. We have meant to get tire covers for years but never have so we ordered six in a dark brown material. They are a significant purchase, but not compared to the tires they are designed to protect. They will make the covers based on our tire size and ship them to us. They also make nylon mesh windshield wiper covers but I need to measure the length of our lower wiper blades and send Brenda the measurement. Another product of theirs are windshield and side window covers. These, however, are custom made on site.

The interior of the Prevost H3-45 VIP motorcoach conversion shell. This coach was actually in the process of being converted by Millennium for a customer. Note the interior layout marked out on the floor.

In the other vendor building we stopped at the booth for Williston Crossings and Belle Parc RV Resorts. Alan, who is the managing partner for both properties, was staffing the booth so we chatted with him briefly. We also stopped at the booth for Florida Grande Motorcoach Resort in Webster, Florida. This was the other RV Resort that our friend, Ed Roelle, suggested we check out two years ago. Unlike Williston Crossings, where we ended up, the lots in Florida Grande are all for sale as deeded properties with a fractional ownership in the common grounds and structures. At least that was our understanding.

The sites at Florida Grande sell for about $48K and a coach house can be added for about $31K. HOA fees currently run about $550 per quarter but we did not inquire about how the level is set or what limits might exist on them being raised. Lots can be placed in a rental pool when unused but we did not ask if owners can arrange their own sublets. We heard from someone later than only about half the lots are sold. That means lots are still available for purchase, but also makes such a purchase potentially risky. It means plenty of unsold lots are available to rent and if the rest of the lots do not eventually sell in a reasonable amount of time the future of the whole development would be in doubt.

We are not planning on purchasing a lot anytime soon, in Florida or elsewhere, but it is an idea that interests us longer-term. We might drive up in the car to check it out or, more likely, stop there for a few days in the bus when we finally leave Big Tree RV Resort in March.

We eventually found our friend, Al Hesselbart, manning his Antique RV booth at the far end of the fairgrounds. He was asked by the RV Show organizers to put together an antique RV display but relegated him to a remote corner of the show. He had commitments from the owners of eight antique RVs, plus his own 1978 Newell, but four of them backed out at the last minute and the other four simply did not show up. Whatever their reasons it was disappointing and inconsiderate. Al had a large TV monitor with a slide show of about 500 images running automatically in a loop. He had them in a shelter to protect them, and him, from the worst of the rain.

It was almost 5 PM by the time we got back to our car. We discussed calling Ed and Betty Burns, who live near Bradenton, to see if they were up for a visit but we were at least an hour away and decided it was too short a notice, too late in the day, and we were too tired. We fought our way through Friday rush hour traffic across US-301 to I-75 and headed south to exit 217, which is FL-70 to Bradenton (west) and Arcadia (east). We stopped at the Speedway for gasoline and bought two coffees to scare away the cobwebs. It had been a long day.

As we continued east on FL-70 Linda got a call from her sister, Marilyn, to finalize plans for tomorrow. We got back to our coach around 6:45 PM and had a light dinner of garbanzo bean salad sandwiches and a small glass of wine. We then watched a program about Agatha Christy on PBS/Create followed by two episodes of Miss Marple. Linda headed off to bed before the second episode was over while I remained up to continue working on my blog posts from today and the previous two days.

I stayed up to watch the WINK evening news (channel 11-1). They reported that the storms this morning included a confirmed EF-1 tornado in south Fort Meyers and wind damaged property in Lehigh Acres. The meteorologists made it clear that the January tornados from today and last weekend would normally be quite rare for this time of year but were not unusual in an El Niño year like this one. We are headed to Fort Meyers tomorrow for the first time to visit with Marilyn and the weather forecast looks fine if a bit cool. Another round of strong storms is forecast for Sunday morning in connection with the passage of yet another cold front trailing from a strong low pressure center moving east across the Florida panhandle. We plan to stay home Sunday but Marilyn is flying back to St. Louis, Missouri, weather permitting.

2015/09/29 (T) Bus Windshields

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Today was windshield day. A week or so ago Chuck made appointments for both us to have windshields replaced on our buses by the local Safelite franchise. Chuck knows Scott, who now has a management position with the company, and arranged the work through him. The appointment was nominally from 8 AM to noon so Chuck was at his shop before 8. We figured it would take a while for the crew to do his two lower windshields so I got up around 7 AM but did not have coffee or breakfast. I finished yesterday’s blog post and then went through my final departure tasks starting at 8:30 AM. I texted Chuck at 8:45 AM and pulled out of our driveway at 8:50 AM, figuring that was late enough to miss most of the morning traffic headed into the northwest corner of the Detroit metropolitan area. Chuck texted back that I could take my time as the crew had not shown up yet.

The first raindrops came as I was pulling out of our driveway. As I pulled out onto Hacker Road I had a clear view of dark clouds to the northwest. Although my destination was 20+ miles to the southeast I headed north towards M-59. The shortest route would have been south, and gotten me quickly onto pavement, but there are some low branches before the road ends at Grand River Avenue so I do not go that way. From Hacker and M-59 the shorter route would have been east to US-23 and then south to I-96 but that interchange is a left exit, left entrance in the middle of an extensive construction zone; not the sort of thing I wanted to deal with in the bus. So I waited patiently for a break in the traffic and then headed west on M-59 towards the storm clouds. A guy heading east had to slow down while I pulled out a flipped me off as he went by. I hope he had a nice day.

I encountered heavier rain as I traveled west for about four miles. I turned south onto Latson Road and drove away from the rain, reaching I-96 about four miles later. I headed east on the I-96 and had an easy drive all the way to Beck Road with only an occasional raindrop. Even at this hour of the morning there were traffic slowdowns along the way but no parking lot traffic jams. The Beck Road exit was easy to navigate going south and it was equally easy to position myself for the left turn onto Grand River Avenue. About a mile and a half later I pulled into the parking lot for Chuck’s shop and phoned Chuck to let him known I was there.

I knew in advance how he wanted me to position my motorcoach but there were enough vehicles parked in various places that I wanted him to spot for me. I lifted the tag axles, pulled up to the building, and then turned hard to the right. I backed around to the driver’s side to get somewhat parallel to the building and then started angling towards the passenger side. There is space next to the building in front of Chuck’s shop directly across from his large (bus size) overhead door. My objective was to back around into that space and then pull forward steering hard to the left to get lined up with the door. I have done this before and managed to do it again with Chuck’s assistance. Our Prevost H3-40 VIP conversion is surprisingly maneuverable with the tag axle lifted off the ground.

There were two Safelite vans there when I arrived and Charlie and Eric were already busy working on Chuck’s lower windshields. Chuck had backed his coach into the shop so I could pull in nose first and get the front end out of the rain if needed. Since there were only two guys, and the removal and installation of one of these windshields is a two man job, I just parked my bus outside and shut it off.

I called Linda at home but did not get her so I tried her cell phone. She was at Kensington Metropark walking with Diane. She said we had heavy rain at home before she left and that it was moving towards the shop. I could see the dark clouds to the WNW and it eventually rained bucketfuls, albeit for only a brief time.

A couple of years ago Chuck and I went together and bought five lower windshields from Prevost for our H3-40 VIP coaches, two for him and three for me, for the ridiculously low price of $125 each. They were shipped to his shop in a big triple set of cardboard boxes with foam spacers on a pallet and have been sitting there waiting for us to find someone to install them. Chuck decided to use both of his, in part because there were stone chips in the current ones, and in part because he is vacating his shop and needed to reduce the amount of stuff that has to be moved and stored.

The existing windshields on Chuck’s coach both cracked rather badly when they were removed, as in multiple dozens of fractures, but did not shatter. Safety glass is a wonderful thing. He was not planning on keeping the old ones but it was obvious that removing a windshield in order to install a new gasket with the idea of reinstalling the glass was probably not possible. Charlie and Eric removed the old gaskets and then cleaned off the frames. Chuck’s old gaskets had been slit at the corners by a previous installer, probably to make it easier to get the gaskets over the glass, but should not have been altered in that way.

Chuck had new gaskets and spline material so the guys got one of the new gaskets installed on the frame. It looked like it would be too big but by the time they got it pressed fully into place it was a perfect fit. They lubricated the gasket and set the new windshield in place. After working the top of the gasket over the top edge of the glass they slid the windshield from the outside edge all the way towards the center pillar.

Chuck and I were both hungry and thirsty. Since Charlie and Eric were working on his coach I took Chuck’s suburban to Panera for coffee, a muffin (for Chuck) and a bagel (for me). I made the trip twice. I was almost there when I realized that I did not have my wallet and went back to get it.

The guys finished installing Chuck’s windshields and went to lunch. We did not leave as we had no idea how long they would be gone. It turned out to be about an hour. When they got back I had Charlie look at my two lower windshields. The passenger side was cracked and definitely needed to be replaced. The driver side had two small rock dings but they were not directly in front of the driver’s seat and not near an edge so I decided to only replace the passenger side lower windshield at this time.

I started up the bus, pulled the nose into the shop, and lowered the suspension to make it easier for the guys to work on it from the outside. I pulled in far enough to make sure the front part of the roof was completely inside the building as it is lower than the rest of the roof and slopes forward. I lowered the rear more than the front to make sure any rain that hit the portion of the roof that was outside the building ran to the sides and rear rather than forward and down the windshields.

To remove my windshield they removed the spline that locks the glass into the gasket and then managed to get the glass and gasket out as one assembly. The glass already had a 10″ crack when they started and was fractured in 100 places by the time it came out. They cleaned off the frame, which had a lot of crud on it, and then put the new gasket on. The gasket for the lower windshields is reversible and is used on either side. It is not rectangular, however, with the vertical edge by the center pillar being longer than outside edge where the glass wraps around into the A pillar.

With the gasket in place they installed the windshield by using large suction cups to pick it up, front and back side, and setting the bottom edge into the gasket with the right edge about four inches from the center pillar. The passenger side mirror was in the way so I had to loosen one of the set screws and swing it out of the way. They used a hard plastic stick with a rounded tip and edges to get the gasket over the outside of the top edge of the glass. Using glass cleaner as a lubricant they then slid the glass towards the center and into the gasket channel. The glass did not slide easily but Charlie and Eric were big, strong guys and it eventually was in place. They then used the plastic sticks to get the gasket out from behind the glass and over the edge all the way around. The last step in the installation was to put Sikaflex adhesive caulk between the frame and the gasket and between the gasket and the glass, all from the outside. They masked off the frame to protect the paint but did not mask off the glass. Gasketed glass installation was not something I knew anything about so it was informative to be able to watch every detail of this process.

They had our invoices with them but had to have the office redo mine and e-mail it since I only had one windshield replaced instead of the two we originally scheduled. Chuck and I each wrote them a check. Eric had us sign on his Note tablet and printed our receipts on a portable wireless printer. It had been six hours since they arrived and they had spent five of those working pretty hard. We gave each of them a $20 tip.

Charlie and Eric loaded up our three old broken windshields and left. I then backed my bus out and parked it. Charlie wanted it to sit for at least an hour before driving it to let the Sikaflex cure a bit. Chuck locked up the shop and we went to Panera (again) for a late lunch. We both had Black Bean Soup and Chuck had a half sandwich. Barb called as we were finishing our meal and said she was her way to the shop so we headed back. She arrived at the shop just ahead of us and inspected the new windshields on their coach. I then showed her the work we have done on the interior of our coach. We sat around in the shop talking while I waited for the worst of the rush hour traffic to pass before driving the bus back to our house.

I called Linda around 5 PM and then left for the drive home, reversing my route from this morning. Traffic was heavy but moved along. Linda heard me pull in the driveway and helped get me positioned. It’s hard to sneak up on someone with a Detroit Diesel 8V92 engine. Once I was parked I shut off the accessory air to the engine bay, disconnected the chassis batteries, and plugged in the electrical shorepower line. Back in the coach I noticed that the refrigerator had come out of the alcove about 12 inches. It had not budged on the drive to/from Edwardsburg and Elkhart but I will obviously have to secure it after all.

Dinner was reheated chili and Saltine crackers. When Linda makes chili she always makes extra and freezes it to have on hand for easy heat and serve meals. It is a one pot meal the way she makes it and is as good, or better, left over as it is fresh.

Ferman had called while I was gone and let Linda know that he had the Sandstone Corian he needed to build the small table for the bus so after dinner I texted Josh to let him know. I then checked e-mail but did not respond to any. We watched NCIS and NCISNOLA on the big TV in the basement and then went to bed.

2015/09/19 (S) Rally Wrap Up

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Today was the last full day of the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches (GLCC) annual Surplus and Salvage Rally. It started with strong storms overnight but they had dissipated by breakfast time. The skies eventually cleared on brisk winds with a chilly northerly component and the high was forecasted to be 67 with some clouds. The clouds turned out to be white, scattered, and fast moving and it turned out to be a lovely late summer day with a hint of fall in the air.

The breakfast provided as part of the rally was pancakes and sausage but Linda and I had our granola and finished up the berries. We decided to stay around the campground and have an easy day. Initially, however, we had some post-breakfast excitement.

Juniper caught another mouse. It was another very small dark gray house mouse, obviously very young but old enough to wander away from a nest in search of food and water. I got it away from her and into the paper cup that we kept for this purpose and put the paper bowl on top. Linda took it back to the woods and set it free.

Even after catching two mice in the last 16 hours the cats continued to show great interest in the base of the bathroom sink cabinet. The front of the toe kick space has one of the many brass colored expanded metal screens for the OTR HVAC ducts and several things were becoming clear to me at this point. 1) We had a nest somewhere in the bus; 2) the nest was likely in the base of this cabinet, or accessible from there, and 3) the baby mice were apparently small enough to get through the expanded metal grate. I also suspected that something had happened to the mother mouse which is why the babies were leaving the nest.

Some of this was confirmed when I got down on the bathroom floor with a flashlight and was looking through the grate when a small mouse came out of the 4″ flexible duct. I tapped on the grate and got it to turn around and go back. I measured the rectangular opening. Linda cut a piece of cardboard about 1″ larger in width and length and I taped it over the opening.

We were away from the coach visiting with Scott Crosby of http://BusGreaseMonkey.com and others before Scott left for home. Scott and Tami Bruner came over too, followed by their friends/neighbors Misty and Gary who brought their GM3751 Silversides to the rally. When we returned to our motorcoach it was immediately obvious that Juniper had caught, or at least cornered, something, probably another mouse. Her posture and vocalizations are distinctive in the presence of prey. What was odd was she was by the front of the new built-in sofa rather than in the bathroom.

I shushed her away and she left the area without much protest. I did not see a mouse and walked to the bathroom to make sure our cardboard cover was still in place. It was, so if there was another mouse it must have gotten into the living area of the bus through some other opening, perhaps the OTR HVAC air return under the sofa. When I returned to the living room the mouse was climbing up onto the top edge of my slippers. I did not see exactly where it came from but it could have been inside one of them to escape the cats. I got the paper cup and bowl and caught it fairly easily.

I put on my Crocs, which we use as easy on/off camp shoes, walked back to the woods at the southern boundary of the campground, and set the mouse free. It scampered under some leaves but its odds of survival were probably as small as it was. The temperature was forecast to drop into the upper 40’s tonight and I heard a Great Horned Owl off in the distance. Still, its survival odds in the bus were probably worse. We had live trapped an adult house mouse under the kitchen sink when the bus was still at home, but that was a couple of weeks ago so there is no way it could have been the mother of these current juvenile mice unless it found its way back into the bus. My assumption was that the mother was not around and the young mice were desperately trying to find food and water. These circumstances made me a bit sad, but we simply cannot have mice getting into the living area and becoming play toys for our cats. Ultimately we need to find a way to keep them out of the bus altogether but so far a solution to that problem has proven to be elusive.

The official rally lunch was leftovers after which folks divided up whatever was left. Linda split the remaining salad lettuce with Vickie and took some bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, and bottled water. I grabbed a mostly full 2 L bottle of diet Coke.

Marty Caverly stopped by to see the bus remodeling and stayed to chat a while. Marty had spent the better part of a day at the Back-to-the-Bricks Rally last month getting Pat and Vickie’s cruise control to finally work reliably. He spent most of this morning getting their air leveling system to work reliably. Marty is an electrician who did a lot of work with electronics in his 40 years with General Motors and is the “go to” guy in our club for most electrical issues.

There was a lull in our social activities and Linda settled in to read while I worked at my computer transferring drafts of blog posts from e-mail to Word. I edited a week’s worth from the third week of July and got them ready to upload but did not post them. I will do that when we get home. I used the MCD day shade while sitting at the desk to cut down the light while still affording me a view. Linda forgot her iPad and was using mine to read one of the latest novels in Nick Russell’s Big Lake series. She went for a walk which gave me an opportunity to work on this post as I write them using the Note app on my iPad.

We saw Pat and Vickie walking towards the office and figured they were making arrangements for next year’s Surplus and Salvage Rally. They stopped at our coach on the way back with the signed contract. The dates are September 21 to 25, 2016 and the nightly camping rate is $35 plus tax for 50A full hookup sites. It’s pricey, but the campground is conveniently located in the heart of the Elkhart area with convenient access to many RV surplus businesses. We also get the exclusive use of a meeting room with a full kitchen, and they always reserve sites for us that are close to the meeting room. It should be a lovely time of year to have the rally, being the first five days of fall. Unfortunately we will probably not be attending as we do not plan to be back from New England by then.

Meals for this rally usually include dinner on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, with Friday also being a business meeting, and breakfast on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The only lunch is the “must goes” on Saturday. Saturday dinner is traditionally out at a restaurant and the choice this year was McCarthy’s on the Riverwalk. The Elkhart River splits as it comes into the city, joins back up with itself and eventually flows into the much larger St. Joseph River at two points. McCarthy’s features some very interesting Irish fare but the ambiance is slightly upscale restaurant rather than an Irish pub feel. Our food choices were very limited, of course, but we knew that before signed up to go.

We rode over with Pat and Vickie and sat with them at one end of the table. I think we had 13 of the 23 attendees at dinner. Linda had a Guinness and I had a lighter beer that had “cider” in the name. We each had a house salad with a very nice balsamic vinegar dressing but no cheese and an order of French fries. The service was OK but not outstanding. I asked for Tabasco sauce and Vickie had to remind the waitress to get it. I was over half done with my fries by the time it arrived. The serving was small but the fries were good and we did not leave hungry.

Most of us went for a walk along the river after dinner. The sun was already below the downtown skyline, however, and it was chilly. None of us brought jackets so it was a shorter walk than it might otherwise have been.

Back at the campground Scott and Tami started a campfire in the fire pit by their rig. Linda and I brought over our chairs, blankets, a bowl of grapes, and our glasses of wine. Vickie brought her chair, popcorn, and a popcorn skillet designed for popping corn over an open fire. Dan brought his chair and joined us. It was a clear, crisp evening but the fire (and blankets) made it comfortable, the popcorn and grapes made it yummy, and company made it worthwhile.

Although relaxing in some ways, rallies are intense in other ways. We have only been here 3-1/2 days but we arrived tired, ran around taking care of things, and when we finally relaxed the tiredness washed over us. We gathered up our things and went back to the coach at 10 PM where we watched an episode of Grantchester on the local PBS affiliate, went to bed, and fell asleep.

2015/09/08 (T) Polyurethane

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I was awakened at 6:30 AM by heavy rain. I was not sleeping comfortably and had to get up anyway, so I put on my lightweight robe and slippers and took my iPad to the living room. Naturally the cats wanted to be fed so I took care of that and then settled in to put the finishing touches on yesterday’s blog post. The rain lasted for about 20 minutes. I e-mailed the post to myself at 7:15. Linda got up at 7:30 AM so I made coffee but we deferred breakfast until later.

I was thinking about the house battery voltage issues Butch was having and the role of the Vanner battery equalizer in his (and our) house battery system. I did another Google search on “battery equalizer …”, and selected “batter equalizer circuit” from the list. One of the listings was for the original patent application by James D. Sullivan as assigned to Vanner, Inc. ( http://www.google.com/patents/US4479083 ). (I found it interesting that Google has a special directory for patents.) As I expected, it is a DC-to-DC converter and in its most common configuration it is designed to take charge from the upper portion of a series battery pack and supply it to the lower part of such a pack or to any loads connected across just the lower bank.

One of its features is that it looks at the voltage across the entire battery pack and uses a voltage divider network (two resistors in series) to generate a reference voltage that is compared to the voltage across the lower bank. Differences as small as 0.01 volts result in the transfer of charge from the upper to the lower bank when the lower bank has the lower voltage. As implemented for use with buses and other vehicles that have 24/12 dual voltage DC electrical systems the divider network consists of two equal resistors and the reference voltage is 1/2 the overall battery pack voltage. The design can “balance” other configurations, in which the “upper” and “lower” banks do not have the same voltage, by changing the divider resistors to have the correct ratio. I will call Butch again this evening to report what I found and see how things stand with them in general.

When we had consumed a sufficient amount of coffee to be alert enough to work intelligently and safely we went to the garage to finish assembling the left plenum/support box for the built-in sofa. I forced mating pieces into alignment while Linda drove in the screws. These parts dry fit perfectly so this should not have been a problem. I blame the slight misalignment on the corner clamps that I used. I was reminded, once again, that cheap tools are almost never a bargain.

We had breakfast at 8:30 AM; homemade granola with leftover mixed berries. We also spilt a banana that was getting past ripe. As we were finishing our meal I got a call from Steven Weber at Martin Spring with another question on the Webasto system in the Prevost Bus Conversion he is servicing. He had isolated a cracked fuel pipe and needed to order a replacement. I suggested Sure Marine Service but also mentioned Lloyd DeGerald and Darin Hathaway.

Linda needed to spend some time at her desk preparing for a 1 PM meeting with the I.T. department at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor so I took a shower and got dressed to work. I gathered up the laundry, started a load, and then spent some time in the garage sanding pieces of the built-in sofa while Linda showered and got dressed for her meeting. She planned to leave at 11:45 AM. I left at 11:30 and went to Lowe’s to buy tack cloth.

Tack cloth is like sticky cheesecloth and is probably called that because it is “tacky” to the touch. It is used to remove sawdust, drywall dust, and other little tiny particles from surfaces such as sanded wood just prior to the application of finishes. While I was there I looked at inline water separators and inline oilers for use with air compressors supplying air to pneumatic tools. I also looked at copper fittings to see if they had 90 degree elbows that I could use to modify the Aqua-Hot coolant lines that feed the two front fan-coil hear-exchangers.

Linda left before I got home. I moved the laundry to the dryer and went back to the garage to work. I was contemplating what I wanted to do next when Keith pulled up in his truck and trailer. I chose to skip having the lawn mowed this week which will help Keith get the rest of his clients taken care of in his shortened 4-day workweek. The grass has grown since last Monday but not that much and is still short and brown in places. With rain in the forecast today, tomorrow, and Thursday giving it another week should be good for it. I showed him the floor in the bus before he left.

I returned to the bus project and realized that I needed to stain the underside of the built-in sofa shelf as part of it might be visible through the notch in the vertical front panel at the floor. As long as I was staining that I also stained the tops of the plenum/support boxes so they would blend with the two stationary pieces at either end of the seat.

With the staining done I came inside to make a few phone calls. The first one was to Josh Leach at Coach Supply Direct to check on the details of the Corian countertop for the custom desk. Josh said the Corian normally comes bonded to plywood which protects it from cracking in shipment. I want to go ahead and cut the 3/4″ plywood top that will join the two pedestals together. I also wanted to know if his Corian vendor could come out on the afternoon of the 14th to measure and possibly install the countertop by the end of the week. His vendor turns out to be an Amish craftsman who does not “come out and measure” or “come back and install.” Josh said he would check with the vendor to see if he would use my plywood base and also see if he had the Sandstone product in stock.

My next call was to Pat Lintner to check on dinner plans for the upcoming GLCC Surplus and Salvage rally. I need to coordinate with Crimp Supply to have them provide catalogs for the attendees and perhaps speak to the group before dinner. I got his answering machine and left a message.

My third call was to Jim Miteff (N8KUE) returning his call/message from earlier. We had a long chat about RVing and Prevost bus conversions. It’s a big topic and I sometimes forget that I have spent the last 10 years learning about it. When I think back to the beginning of this adventure, however, I recall how exciting yet overwhelming it was initially. I see Jim in the same place, but he is a very quick study and professional researcher so he will get past the overwhelming part fairly quickly.

While I was talking to Jim I heard a loud bang and then another one. They sounded like it had come from within the house. After the second one I got up to investigate. As I peeked out the front door a Consumer’s Energy truck was backing out of the driveway. I flagged the driver down and asked what was up. He said they had detected a leak and that he had just fixed it. I presumed it was at our meter but he wasn’t any more specific than that. I thought it was odd that he did not knock on the door first to let me know he was on site, but I guess they have the right to service their infrastructure. I have smelled gas on that side of the house occasionally ever since they installed it but dismissed it as a “purge valve” doing its thing. We had the same issue at the old house and they kept telling me it was a “vent” mechanism on the meter. I never belief that, but whatever.

I wrapped up my call with Jim, put in another load of laundry, and returned to the garage to apply polyurethane to as much of the built-in sofa pieces as I could. Each piece has to be done in two steps and requires two coats, so that’s four applications that will have to spread out over a couple of days.

There wasn’t much else I could do, and I did not feel like working at my desk, so I hung up the dry laundry and then worked on my iPad in the living room. Linda had made an appointment with Renee to have her hair cut at 4:30 PM. She stopped at Meijer’s on the way home and finally arrived at 5:45 PM. I went back to the garage at 6 PM and applied another coat of polyurethane.

Linda bought an Amy’s Roasted Vegetable pizza for dinner and made a nice salad to go with it. I had some more of the Leelanau Cellars Apricot wine and we had the last two vegan cupcakes for dessert. I tried calling Butch twice but his phone was either off or out of range. I called Pat Lintner again and this time he was home. Saturday dinner will be at a restaurant so that will not be a good time for Crimp Supply to talk to the rally attendees and pass out catalogs. I will call them tomorrow and see what I can arrange.

I headed back to the garage yet again, applied polyurethane to all the surfaces that had not yet been coated, put the brush in the soapy water, sealed up the can, and closed up the garage. I think I have just enough polyurethane left to put one more coat on the top surface of the shelf. I plan to do that in the morning before I start anything else.

On the drive home Linda heard a weather forecast that thunderstorms were headed our way this evening with up to 1″ of rain, strong wind, and possibly small hail. Linda headed off to bed at 8 PM to watch NCIS and I caught the last half of the show. I turned the channel to Create on Detroit PBS and watched A Chef’s Life, a series about a wife and husband who run the Chef & The Farmer restaurant in eastern North Carolina, and then turned the TV off.

I checked the weather with my iPad and it appeared that system had fallen apart although there was still a reduced chance of scattered thunderstorms at 11 PM and again from 2 to 4 AM. I turned the light out at 10:30 PM.

2015/07/14 (T) Red Chili Wine

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Storms moved through the area overnight with more lightning and thunder than rain, or at so it seemed. The storms were triggered by a cold front, behind which we had a cloudy day with periods of rain. Linda was up at 7 AM and read quietly until I got up at 8. I made a full pot of coffee (Cafe Europe half-caff blend from Teeko’s) and then joined her in the living room.

Linda was checking Dr. Michael Gregor’s speaking schedule and saw that he will be at Wayne State University in December and will be one of the keynote speakers for the 2016 Holistic Holiday at Sea vegan cruise. We have not heard him speak in person, and will not be here in December, so that would be another reason to go on the cruise again. By 9:45 AM Mara had not emerged from her rig so we went ahead and had breakfast. Linda then went for a walk and I went to my office and worked on the design of the custom desk for the bus.

Mara finally emerged at 10:30 AM and we chatted for a while until Linda got back. Our chat was briefly interrupted by a call from Mike (W8XH) on the Novi repeater so Mara got to see ham radio in operation. My reception was weak and noisy and according to Mike my transmitted signal wasn’t any better. The only thing that has changed since we tested this late last week is that I got the repaired M-302N VHF/UHF lightning arrestor back from Morgan Manufacturing yesterday and re-installed it. Mike is going to help me do some more testing, but I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that these units are defective by design and I will have to replace them with something else. I am disappointed to say the least.

It was another cool, cloudy, rainy day, just the kind of day for staying inside and getting stuff done. Linda and Mara both had things to do and settled in at the dining room table to work. Mara has been focused on planning her upcoming travels and spent much of the day making reservations. Linda worked on the bookkeeping for our GLCC chapter and SLAARC ham radio club (she is treasurer of both). She also renewed our Coach-Net emergency road service and our Harvest Host membership, which had expired, and probably took care of a lot of other things that I don’t even know about. Except for an occasional break I worked on the custom desk design until 6:30 PM. On one of those breaks I needed to measure something in the bus so we gave Mara the inside tour.

When I came upstairs Mara was taking advantage of the unlimited hot water available in our guest bathroom to have a nice long shower. We know from personal experience what a luxury it is to take such a shower when living in an RV. Linda had started preparing our dinner so I opened the bottle of Hatch Red Chili wine. This wine, from St. Claire Winery in Deming, New Mexico is one of the more unusual wines we have ever had but we really like it. It is a slightly sweet red wine with no tannin, a hint of chili flavor, and heat in the back of the throat on the finish. We had vegan mock Italian sausages with sautéed onions and red peppers and the wine went well with it. I had mine on a hotdog bun with mustard. Mara had another serving of her beef stew, which she is trying to use up, and Linda put out a plate of whole, fresh strawberries.

One of the nice things about having visitors is that meals take longer to eat as we linger at the table in conversation. Mara returned to her rig around 9 PM to have some quiet time with her cats before going to bed. Linda decided to watch a couple of TV programs and I went back to work on the desk design. I called it quits around 10:45 PM and went to bed to work on this post. The overnight low is forecast to drop into the upper 40’s which should make for excellent sleeping.

2015/06/15 (M) Cover Up

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Linda was originally scheduled to go into the bakery today but it got rescheduled to tomorrow so we did not have to be up by any certain time other than to be ready for the delivery of our new roof shingles. Apex Roofing is scheduled to put a new roof on our house this week, weather permitting, and assuming they can finish up jobs they had scheduled for last week when it rained so much.

The truck from Wimsatt Materials in Waterford showed up at 8 AM with our shingles but they were unable to deliver them. They brought them on a boom truck that was too tall to fit under the phone lines across our driveway and there was nowhere else they could position the truck that would allow them to operate the boon. They were on the phone with their dispatcher and I called Pat Davidson at Apex roofing to let him know what was going on. The decision was that they would be back this afternoon with a conveyor truck which would fit under the wires and be able to get the bundles up to the roof. Pat called back to let me know they would be starting in the morning around 7:30 AM.

Later in the day someone showed up in an Apex van with a large enclosed trailer. We moved our cars and he backed it up in front of our single garage door. Wimsatt did not return with shingles so they will presumably deliver them first thing tomorrow morning. They will need to back into the driveway and position the truck in front of our double garage door but that is also where Apex plans to put their debris trailer. The guy in the van also made it sound like there would be at least six cars/trucks here needing someplace to park. It should be an interesting morning, especially given the overnight weather forecast which includes drenching rains and possible severe weather and flooding. The forecast for the daylight hours, however, looks OK.

After the Wimsatt truck left we finished the last batch of granola for breakfast and then got busy with our chores and projects. Linda spent part of the day at her desk working on the financials for our local ham radio club (SLAARC). She also tried to contact PayPal to opt out of their upcoming RoboCall campaign but was not able to get through to a real person.

I settled into my office for the morning, dealing with e-mail but focusing on editing blog posts for the last seven days. Kate got in touch with me to see if we wanted to see The Bikinis musical production at the Meadow Brooke Theatre this week. Wednesday through Sunday is the final run. She also forwarded an invitation to a former colleague’s retirement gathering in a couple of weeks.

We have an RV Critter Guard that seals around our 50 A electrical cord and water hose to keep “critters” from entering the coach via that access hole. We lost our original foam insert when I forgot to remove it from the cable entrance hole in the floor of the bus utility bay and it fell (blew) out while we were driving. I checked the RV Critter Guard website and my exact products were not listed. I measured our existing tongue and groove plate and then contacted the company via their contact form and explained what I needed. I got an e-mail back indicating that my product was custom made and asking me for one additional dimension from the plastic plate. I got that measurement and e-mailed it to them and indicated that I wanted another plastic plate and two spilt foam inserts. I expect to receive an e-mail tomorrow with the price. Once I have that I will call them to place the order.

I have tried several times in the last two years to order products from EZ Connector but they have always had another question for me that required me to go check something and I have never managed to close the loop with them. I’ve been on a roll the last couple of weeks and decided that today was the day to get this done. The company is in California, so I called them during the afternoon (my time). The woman I spoke to on the phone gave me some good information but suggested I e-mail Joe with my requirements. Joe e-mailed me back and answered several questions but had another one for me. I responded to that question and went on to something else while I await the prices. Once I have the pricing I will have to call them and finalize the order.

I exchanged e-mails with Josh from Coach Supply Direct and got a series of revised quotes from him for our new RV furniture and window shades. What I really need are the drawings that show the exact dimensions of each piece including the size of the base and the location of the pivot (swivel) point. Apparently he is having difficulty getting these from Flexsteel. I would also like to have these for the Lambright Comfort Chairs but we took our own measurements at Bradd and Hall. The whole process of getting furniture is getting very frustrating. I need to contact Mike at Suburban Seating regarding the ISRI 6860 and pick a day to drive to ISRI USA in Galesburg to look at fabrics. While I am at it I should probably get a price from Prevost.

I finally got back to work in the bus this afternoon. I shut off the auxiliary air compressor, closed the valve on the air manifold that supplies air to the toilet and other house accessories, and drained the water separator. I then investigated what will be required to remove the toilet.

There is a shut off valve on the water line behind the toilet so I closed that. The water line is attached to the toilet mechanism with a plastic connector with two wings and looked like I could undo it by hand. The air line looked equally easy to disconnect but the drain looked a bit trickier. It goes out the back of the toilet rather than through the floor. There is a metal sleeve with band clamps at each end that connects the discharge pipe to the drain line. Fortunately the band clamp screws are accessible.

The toilet is screwed to the floor with four Philips head screws. The centers of the screw heads are threaded and there are plastic caps with posts that screw down into the mounting screws to conceal them. With the water, air, and waste lines disconnected once I unscrew the base the toilet should slide forward and then we may have to lift it to get clear of the water line. The trick to getting it back in will be to get the four mounting screws back in the exact same holes.

The humidity outside was near 100% and I did not feel like running the bus air conditioners so I did not remove the toilet today. I need to get it out, however, to remove the last few pieces of ceramic tile from the bathroom floor. Once it is out it will have to stay out until the new floor is installed.

I tried pulling on one of the window latch knobs on the fixed window across from the kitchen counter and was surprised by easily it moved the latch. I did not pull it far enough to unlatch it but it appears that getting the window unlatched will be relatively easy. Getting the frame open without damaging the frame seal, and getting it closed again so it is weather tight, may be slightly more challenging.

I used a chisel to try removing the thinset and mastic that was adhered to the plywood subfloor. It came off better than I thought it would but it was a slow process. In addition to being humid in the coach it was very warm as I have had to leave the roof vents closed with the fans off due to the rainy weather. I removed enough thinset, however, to convince me that it is worth renting the power floor scraper from the Home Depot in Howell for a day and see how it works.

Late afternoon Linda worked in the kitchen making another batch of her fabulous granola and a black beans and rice dish for dinner. She soaked two Hatch chilies, two Ancho chilies, and four Pequin chilies and used them in the bean dish. I had a call from Pat Lintner before dinner to let me know that they took their Prevost to McMillers in Nappanee and were very pleased with work and the price.

I thought about driving to the Lowe’s in Howell after dinner to order the new Frigidaire refrigerator for the bus but it got too late to go. We have decided to have it delivered to Chuck Spera’s shop in Novi. We can pull it inside and he has a forklift, so hopefully that works out OK.

We were both tired and headed off to bed at 10 PM. The weather radar showed a band of more intense rain setting up to our southwest and taking aim at us. Linda fell asleep quickly but I was still up writing when the rains started around 11:15 PM. We had the house closed up with the air conditioner running and a small fan for air movement so the sounds of the weather are not as noticeable as when we have the windows and doorwalls open. I checked the radar again on Wundermap and it looked like we might be in for a long stretch of persistent rain unless the line drifted south just enough to miss us. The strongest weather in the region stretched from Ft. Wayne, Indiana WSW to just south of Logansport, Indiana but there were lots of pockets of yellow with some orange on the screen over all of the southern half of Michigan’s lower peninsula and the northern half of Indiana. It looked like it might be another restless night.

2014/07/30 (W) Winter In July

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By the time we started breakfast the landscapers were back. Steve started to dig a trench for a drain line from the end of the lower deck and hit 2×8’s on the flat about 2-3″ below the surface, so he abandoned that work and moved the excavator around front to the trash pile.

The major construction work up in the back is nearing completion and the lads were picking up some of the smaller debris, the larger stuff having been moved around front to the trash pile yesterday. Steve used the excavator to load some of the trash onto the trailer (normally used to move the excavator), where the crew covered and secured it. He loaded more of it into the back of his pickup truck. They are still having tire issues with the trailer so I charged up my 200 psi air compressor (150 psi regulated) and rolled it over so they could fill one of the tires.

Steve moved the excavator to the southeast corner of the house to dig a short (10′) shallow trench for a drain line to get water from the downspout away from the house. I conferred with him regarding the exact location because the main propane line enters the house at that corner, the electrical service for the RV outlet runs under there, there is a tree about 12 feet southeast of that corner, and that corner is where the new natural gas meter will be installed. There will be a similar short drain line at the southwest corner of the garage, but it will be dug by hand as the main electrical service runs directly under there about 2′ below the surface.

The lads continued to work in the back placing egg rock. They were about 1/2 cubic yard short and I asked Steve to order a full cubic yard and use the other 1/2 yard on the west end of the north edge of the lower upper deck to match what they had done at the top of the west retaining wall. Steve gave the crew instructions on how to prep that area, add a piece of edging to define where the rock will go, and install landscape fabric. He and I then looked at the boards he hit in the back while trenching and it turned out there were only three of them 4-6′ long and they appeared to be old construction material that had possibly been used as a step off of the lower deck.

Linda gathered up household trash and recyclables and headed off around 10:45 AM. I finally got started on my projects for the day around 11 AM, opening the garage door so I would have light when the power was turned off at the sub-panel main breaker. My first task was to move the new outlet I installed in the utility closet the other day. The return air duct will be installed against that wall and would cover the current location. When we installed the door yesterday we did not put any 2×4’s above the door and up to the ceiling. Darryll is going to run the supply duct straight out from the furnace above the door and then angle it over against the east wall of the garage.

With the outlet relocated I cut some scrap insulation to fill the lower half of the open wall cavities and then stopped while I pondered getting a ground wire into that space. Linda got back from running her errands about then so I decided over lunch to call Bratcher Electric to see if they could give me an idea of what it will cost to run a 100 Amp service entrance cable from the transfer switch in the southwest corner of the garage to the garage panel in the northeast corner of the garage. (I estimated it would take 40′ of cable, but have no idea what the labor will be.)

The earliest I will be able to talk to Mike Bratcher is next Monday so I decided that I really needed to run a ground wire from the sub-panel to the main panel allowing me to disconnect the ground wires from the neutral wires in the sub-panel by removing the bonding screw in the sub-panel and giving us a code-compliant, and much safer, sub-panel until such time as it gets re-wired as a main panel.

Linda and I determined that I needed about 40′ of #10 copper wire to get from the sub-panel to the main panel. Pondering sometimes leads to good things. I really did not want to stop working to go get wire when I remembered that I had a length of green insulated copper wire I had used for grounding a ham radio and antenna mast at the old house. It was coiled up on the floor in garage and when we uncoiled it we discovered it was … 40′ long! I love it when that happens. I checked the gage and it was #8, so it was actually larger than required for the 60A cable that feeds power from the main panel in the basement to the sub-panel in the garage.

I checked the approximate location for drilling a hole and then drilled a 1/2″ hole from the inside of the garage just above the base plate and out through the siding. I fed the ground wire through the hole from outside the garage, pulled it up into the sub-panel, and secured it to one of the ground bars. I dressed it and fastened it to the side of a stud and coiled up the extra outside on the lower upper deck. I will complete the run to the main panel another day.

With the ground wire installed I was able to install the insulation I had cut earlier and secure it with our staple gun, which I had managed to locate in the tub of tools we took with us out west last summer. With Linda’s assistance I cut and installed two pieces of drywall from an old scrap piece we had. I then taped the seams and mudded the screw dimples. By the time I finished it was 4 PM. Spencer came to the garage to let me know that they would all be leaving around 4:30 PM due to a severe thunderstorm that was on course to hit our area around 5 PM.

By 4:45 PM we were hearing thunder and I decided to stop work temporarily and help Linda close up the house. The storm came, a cold wind blew, and it rained hard, but only for a few minutes and we did not get any of the hail that was reported prior to the storm’s arrival at our location. An hour later we had a lovely summer evening with blue skies. Linda made roasted winter vegetables for dinner. It’s the end of July, but we had overnight lows in the mid-40’s two nights ago. The first six months of this year have been the coldest in 21 years, so winter vegetables were appropriate for dinner even though it is the end of July.

I had planned to do a lot of other electrical work today, but it was a full day and everything that got done was something that needed to get done. It was also work that had to get done in the order in which it was accomplished. My original plans were obviously too ambitious, and today’s work involved details that required time to figure out and execute.

2014/07/27 (N) Attic Access

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We had a long day of work today. We were up just after 7 AM, had a light breakfast of toast, fruit juice, and coffee, read a few blog posts, and got to work. My first task was to apply a second, light coat of drywall compound to all of the divots in the wall.

Our main morning task was the installation of the fold-down ladder for the garage attic. It was definitely a two-person job. Per the instructions, we installed temporary installation boards to support the assembly while we secured it in place. The installation required one of us to be in the attic and that job fell to me. We put the assembly on top of a plastic shelving unit to get it close to the ceiling. Once I was in the attic with all of the tools I would need, including a headlamp, Linda slid the shelving unit so the assembly was directly under the rough opening. It was still too far from the ceiling for me to reach from above so she placed two footstools under it. I was then able to reach one end from above and pull it up into the opening while she lifted the other end into position from below.

We read and followed the directions carefully so we already had the pull string and T-handle installed. That allowed Linda to move the plastic shelves out of the way, carefully open the door from below, and position the step ladder. I dropped her the cord for the worklight and then had enough light to work comfortably. We temporarily secured the unit with deck screws. They were cheap screws and the heads tended to strip easily, but we got them in far enough to hold the unit in place while I installed the lag screws.

The 10 lag screws got installed through pre-drilled holes, six of which went through metal hinge plates. The instructions said to drill through these holes into the trusses and headers, but the folding ladder hardware made that difficult, and my drill buts were all a bit short to do much. By cutting the zip ties and partially unfolding the ladder I was able to get all 10 lag screws most of the way in with my drill. They all had to be shimmed. The final tightening was done with a socket and ratchet.

We took a break for lunch around 1 PM and had leftover miso soup, tofu hot dogs, and fresh apples. I made a quick run to Lowe’s to get some additional electrical parts I needed to install lights and a light switch in the garage attic. While I was there I also bought a baby gate for our basement stairs. Up until now we have blocked the landing for the basement stairs with a couple of chairs when grand-daughter Madeline has come to visit. Now that she has successfully spent the night at our house we anticipate many more such visits and wanted a more permanent solution.

The device I bought had a gate with a latch. It was designed to be installed under tension, but the directions said it had to be anchored to the walls if used at the top of a flight of stairs. We were not thrilled about mounting it to the walls, but we did. The installation took about an hour to complete.

Back in the garage I found an old, unopened drywall sanding/finishing sponge. It had a 1/4″ thick coarse pad on one side for sanding. The regular sponge side was used to wipe off the drywall and slightly wet the areas to be sanded. I let the sanded areas dry, wiped everything down, and applied a coat of white exterior semi-gloss to the area of the two existing walls and the ceiling that will be inside the utility closet.

The probability of rain rose steadily though the day and finally resulted in thunderstorms around 4:30 PM. Steve said yesterday he would be here today and I tried to get him to understand that based on the forecast he needed to be here early. He wasn’t. He showed up with the excavator about an hour after the rains, by which point the retaining wall work site had turned to mud.

He took the excavator back there anyway and we watched him work while we had dinner, which consisted of a very nice green salad with strawberries and the rest of the Pad Thai from last night. (Even left over it was still exceptional.) He was moving boulders and a lot of dirt trying to get rid of the small mountain range that blocked the flow of water away from our lower deck and was spreading the dirt around in an effort to create some of the final grading. He brought a helper with him and they had long lengths of drain pipe that I think the intended to install. But the skies darkened, the rain started, the wind came up, and the warning sirens came on. He shut off the machine and the two of them made a run for their truck and left. More rain is forecast for tonight with a chance of thunderstorms, possibly severe. The probability for rain on Tuesday is currently 60%, and stays at 40% through Wednesday. At this juncture it appears that they won’t get much work done here this week, and their machine may be stuck here until it dries out.

After dinner Linda and I finally built the base for the platform where the library HVAC unit will be installed. It’s a 40″ deep x 46″ wide box with center cross bracing. It’s made of pieces of 2 x 12 on edge. We set it in the northeast corner of the garage, leveled it with shims, and secured it to the studs in the walls with 3.5″ nails. I had to make all of the cuts with my Rockwell 8″ circular saw as the chop saw won’t cut something that wide. I did not cut the plywood platform as I need to install it after the new (west) wall of the utility closet is in place so I can nail through the base into the wall studs. I will, however, cut the plywood tomorrow before the wall is built as I will be able to set it on the base and trace around it on the underside to get a perfect fit.

My goal for tomorrow is to cut the platform, build the west wall, set it in place and anchor it, and install the platform. Linda has a 12:30 PM dentist appointment, so I will have to do most of this work by myself. By that point I will need to get cleaned up, shift gears, and get ready for a 4 PM FMCA Education Committee work session.

2014/07/06 (N) Charmed

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Between the landscapers, tree trimming, and having grand-daughter Madeline here for several nights I have not worked at my desk very much this past week. I have several projects in process that require me to work at my computer(s) and the most efficient place for that work is generally in my office at my desk.

Since we did not get to go out for our usual ham radio club breakfast yesterday we treated ourselves to a trip to Panera in Brighton this morning. Comfy chairs, good Wi-Fi, yummy bagels, and tasty, unlimited coffee made for a pleasant morning. When we were working we went to the local Panera by our previous house almost every Sunday morning. We did not expect to see the landscapers today, and that turned out to be the case.

I had three main objectives for today and got one of them partially completed. That’s about “par for the course,” as the saying goes. I continued to research WordPress plug-ins that would provide a better display of WP gallery images and finally concluded that the best option was the Carousel feature of the Jetpack plug-in from Automattic. My second choice was the Responsive Lightbox by dFactory but, based on the descriptions, the Carousel more closely matched the functionality I was looking for.

I installed the Jetpack on the FMCA Freethinker website I am developing to test it. This website only had a few image galleries, each of which only had a few images, so it was a contained experiment. The plug-in installed without difficulty and it was easy to activate and link through my WordPress.com account. It was also easy to activate and configure the Carousel component and de-activate most of the other components that I did not need/want at this time. When I viewed the existing galleries the thumbnails on the page looked the same as before but when I clicked on an image the Jetpack Carousel took over the display of the gallery. Instead of opening the image in a browser page it displayed the image in a full screen lightbox with forward and backward arrows. It also had a button to view the current image at its “full size” and provided information about the technical aspects of how the image was created (camera, lens, aperture, shutter speed, etc.). So without having to recreate galleries, or edit the shortcodes on pages/posts where the galleries appear, any native WP Gallery on the site now displayed better; much better. And it was free.

I have learned not to be overconfident when it comes to software, so it did not surprise me when the installation on the new SLAARC/WP website did not go as smoothly as the Freethinker installation. The SLAARC site is hosted on GoDaddy and, according to the Jetpack support forum on WordPress.org, users were having all sorts of problems following a GoDaddy server upgrade just a week ago. I got an “internal server error” on my first attempt, followed by an installation failure due to the presence of pre-existing folders. I had to log in to GoDaddy and use the file manager to delete the Jetpack plug-in folder and everything it contained. While I was logged in to GoDaddy I had to close and re-open the file manager twice to get it to work. I also ran CCleaner on my laptop which cleared the Google Chrome browser cache. “The third time’s a charm,” as the saying goes, and I finally got it installed, activated, and configured. I tested it and it worked like a charm. I sent an e-mail off to Mike (W8XH) and Larry (K8UT) to let them know and ask them to take a look when they had time.

We watched another episode of Doc Martin, during which we had another momentary power failure. This one was so brief that our whole house generator did not even notify us of the power blip. As the episode was concluding we heard the faint rumble of distant thunder. A check of The Weather Channel and Wundermap on our iPads showed a large storm cluster north west of us moving east. It looked like it might miss us, but a little while later we lost our power again, this time long enough to trigger the notification from the GenSet, but not long enough to cause it to start. Within 10 minutes of that second power blip we had a steady summer rain event. It looked like it might rain through the overnight. If so, the landscapers won’t be able to work on the retaining walls on Monday, at least not with the excavator.

2014/07/01 (T) July And Counting

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Well, here it is the 1st day of July, the beginning of another month, and things are just not getting checked off of the “to do” list as fast as I would like. It finally felt like summer yesterday, and the heat and humidity erupted into severe thunderstorms overnight. We had the house partially opened up when we went to bed with a couple of fans going in the bedroom, but I still heard the sirens when they were activated around 2:15 AM and I woke up enough to see the first flashes of lightning. I got up and closed all of the open windows and then checked the weather on my iPad.

A storm front, which ran the most of the length of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, was pushing east producing severe thunderstorms with up to 70 MPH winds and 1 inch diameter hail. The storms pushed through our location between 2:45 and 3:15 AM. There was plenty of lightning and thunder, and the trees whipped around quite a bit, but the rain was only moderate and I did not hear any hail. By 3:30 AM the front had moved east of us and I was able to go back to sleep.

I would have liked to sleep in this morning, but I got up around 7:00 AM to make sure I was ready for the landscapers when they arrived between 8:00 and 8:30 AM. They didn’t, and with the rain last night it’s anybody’s guess if/when they will arrive. We moved the bus yesterday evening in anticipation of the landscapers being here early. It was also very warm yesterday, which was easier on the engine when starting it. I had not started the bus since we got back from the GLAMARAMA rally and with the humid conditions of the last couple weeks the auxiliary air tank had a LOT of water in it. After I backed it up, with Linda acting as spotter, I lowered the suspension all the way down and turned off the auxiliary air compressor. I will leave it off until I get the aux air water separator/filter replaced. That’s one of the projects that is not getting checked off of my list as I am waiting for the landscaping to be done first. Why? Because once I open the air lines the bus cannot be moved until I get everything put back together. No air, no brakes and no suspension.

I uploaded the blog posts for the last three days including a gallery post of the photos from Saturday. I then spent some time researching alternative ways to display photos in a WordPress website/blog. The native Gallery feature of WordPress is very easy to use, but is not very sophisticated when it comes to viewing the images. The WordPress Jetpack includes a Carousel feature that sounded like it might be what I need. The Jetpack makes a large collection of features available to self-hosted WordPress sites that were previously only available to sites hosted on WordPress.com. My hesitation with the Jetpack is that I don’t need, and do not plan to use, most of its features so it potentially complicates my control panels without corresponding benefit.

Linda went to the local Salvation Army resale store in search of a highchair to keep at the house for Madeline. They did not have any, so she tried Walmart and Target and found one she liked at Target. She stopped at 5th/3rd Bank to make a deposit for our FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches chapter (GLCC) and while she was there she set up the account so she can get online statements. Our chapter has done its banking with 5th/3rd for a while and does not pay any fees for the account. She inquired as to the requirements for a free account and was told that the organization had to have 501(c)3 status (IRS non-profit entity). We were looking at the IRS 501(c)7 status for the SKP Photographers BOF, which is for “social clubs,” but we will have to set it up as a 501(c)3 if we want free checking.

The landscaping crew arrived just after lunch, followed by a truck that dumped a load of very large boulders in the yard just west of the driveway. A little while later another truck showed up and unloaded the nine pre-cast concrete steps for the front stairs. They are 46″ W x 19″ D x 7″ thick and very heavy. Steve showed up a little while later with his excavator, a Kobelco sk35sr-3. He unloaded it and drove it around back to do some excavating. He then used it to select some of the largest boulders and place them on the trailer so he could haul them to the back. He used the excavator to unload them and roll them down the hill to where he needed them. Steve needed the excavator on another job so he loaded it back on the trailer and left. He came back at 9:20 PM, unloaded the excavator and used it to place a few very large boulders onto the lower shelves on either side of the walkout. He quit at 11 PM and left the machine here so he could get an early start tomorrow morning and continue placing boulders so his crew would have work they could do when they showed up.

Pre-cast concrete steps for front porch.

Boulders for the retaining walls behind the house.

2014/06/18 (W) Weather Delays

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We had some serious thunderstorms overnight which meant that Village Landscape Development would be delayed yet again in starting our front sidewalk/stairs and rear retaining walls drainage projects. At this point it will very likely be early July before they start, assuming it ever stops raining.

We are expecting company tomorrow, so today was house cleaning and repair day, along with more laundry and some pole barn related work. Gary from GM Construction finally made it over and we had a long chat about the pole barn project. He seemed to have a good understanding of what we are trying to accomplish and a good understanding of how to get it done in Oceola Township, Livingston County, where he also lives and works.

The pole barn is proving to be a difficult and discouraging project. Conceptually it is a relatively simple building. In practice it is a medium-large building with very high side walls. The trusses have to span 32 feet with 2 foot overhangs, so they will be 36 feet long and 6 feet high from the bottom cord to the ridge. Building 16 foot high walls requires scissor lifts to do it efficiently and safely. Getting the trusses on top of walls that high requires a crane, while securing them to the walls requires a scissor lift on each end. I got a quote from Chelsea Lumber for the building materials and it was 80% of what we hoped to spend on the whole project. I already have the site prep and finish grading quote and it’s a third of what we hoped to spend on the whole project. I don’t even have prices yet for concrete, electrical, or spray foam insulation. What this is adding up to is a project that may cost 150 – 200% of what we were prepared to spend, and I’m not sure we are prepared to do that. That’s money I would rather put into the bus, yet the fact remains that one of main reasons for moving was to have property on which we could build a pole barn for the bus, not just to get it out of sight, but to get it out of the weather where I could work on it. Ugh.

The Phase Place

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Tag Archives: thunderstorms

2016/03/24-26 (R-S) Cocoa-Beach-Historic-District ENT Dirty-Talk

2016/01/16 (S) – 2016/01/20 (W) A Capitol Experience

2016/01/11 (M) – 15 (F) Family and Friends

2015/09/29 (T) Bus Windshields

2015/09/19 (S) Rally Wrap Up

2015/09/08 (T) Polyurethane

2015/07/14 (T) Red Chili Wine

2015/06/15 (M) Cover Up

2014/07/30 (W) Winter In July

2014/07/27 (N) Attic Access

2014/07/06 (N) Charmed

2014/07/01 (T) July And Counting

2014/06/18 (W) Weather Delays