Tag Archives: TireTraker TPMS (Daryl Lawrence)

2015/06/04 (R) GLAMARAMA 2015 (Day 2)

We had a very full schedule today. Breakfast was provided from 7 to 9 AM by the catering branch of Das Dutchmen Essenhaus restaurant as part of the rally fee. We went over at 8 AM with the Canadian contingent of our GLCC chapter. Breakfast was eggs, potatoes, and ham, so we had potatoes along with coffee and orange juice. The potatoes were OK, improved by ketchup and Tabasco sauce, the orange juice was excellent, and the coffee was acceptable except that they ran out. Yeah, they ran out of coffee at an RV rally breakfast.

We walked over to registration at 9 AM to find out our pavilion assignment for the social this afternoon. They put us in Building 17, about as far from where most of us are parked as possible. Oh well. We walked over and put up our chapter sign and then started spreading the word as this was a different location than we had the last two years. With the help of Vicki Lintner and her bicycle we managed to get the word to everyone, including those chapter members that we knew were at the rally but not parked with the chapter.

The vendor buildings were on our way back to our coach so we walked through those. We stopped at Daryl and Cheri Lawrence’s booth and paid them for the TireTraker repeater Daryl gave us to try when we were in Quartzsite, Arizona this past winter. We were able to use our volunteer “vendor bucks” to pay for half of the repeater. Daryl also confirmed that we should be able to back the dill valve stems out of our inside dual tire extensions slightly (1/4 turn) to get the TireTraker sensors to activate more reliably.

Josh Leach was there from Coach Supply Direct so we chatted with him a bit. He can order the Flexsteel 1341-CH barrel chair with the Lambright fabric we like and can order the Flexsteel captain’s chair for the passenger position in the same fabric. He estimated delivery at five weeks. He can also get Corian countertops made and had a good assortment of sample pieces so we are going to try to get him to the coach with the samples and select something.

We also stopped at the MCD shade vendor and at one of their competitor’s booths. We are thinking about replacing the two shades in the bedroom with the duo-style roller shades. The MCD vendor also gave us a great tip on how to adjust our AutoMotion motorized windshield shades using layers of painter’s tape to get the fabric to roll up onto the spool correctly. The shades from either vendor are custom made and shipped. The MCD guy will ship them for free. The other guy is local to Elkhart so we could pick them up if needed, although there is certainly a real cost to the 300 mile round trip.

Back at the coach I returned a call from Mike at Suburban Seating and called Rick Short at ISRI USA but was not successful in reaching either of them. There was a meeting of GLAMA chapter presidents, national directors, and alternate directors at 1:30 PM with GLAMA President Jane Roush so I went to that. FMCA National President Charlie Adcock and Senior National Vice-President Jon Walker were also there.

While I was at the meeting Linda and Karen (Gerrie) left at 2 PM to pick up the food and sundry items for our GLCC chapter social. My meeting ended at 2:30 PM and I went back to the coach to get our chapter banner. Bill Gerrie agreed to help he put it up. He grabbed two chairs and I grabbed the banner and Scott Bruner, who was on golf cart transportation duty, drove us over. Bill and I got the banner tied up where it was visible and then sat and talked until Linda showed up in our car with the food. She had the air-conditioning on full blast to keep it cool. She’s a clever girl.

By 4 PM almost everyone had shown up so we had a moment of silence to allow folks to practice their individual pre-meal traditions. We were just getting in line to get our food when the photographer showed up and wanted a group picture. We gathered on either side of our banner and she apparently got what she needed although I only saw her take one photo. A few more members showed up and joined the food line. When everyone had their first helping, and a chance to eat some of it, George Myers asked if we could start the meeting and he could have the floor. No problem. I called the meeting to order and gave him the floor.

Besides being a member of our chapter George and Sue run the golf cart transportation service for the rally. George is also the GLAMA VP for Indiana. Since there was only one geographic Indiana chapter (the Hoosier Cruisers) all of the multi-state chapters, like ours, were put under the Indiana VP. Thus George had five chapters that he was responsible for assisting and had to go visit the other four. The main thing he wanted to cover was the FMCAssist program which is included as part of a full or associate membership in FMCA.

The rest of the meeting went smoothly enough. Of equal importance to me was that everyone seemed to enjoy the food. We had pizza the last two years so we were not sure how well our food choices would be received. We had at least 30 people there. Jane Roush, Charlie Adcock, and Jon Walker were supposed to drop in and speak to the group. I gave them a 5-to-6 PM window but they did not make it by the time our social broke up at 6 PM. Several folks helped clean up the pavilion and divide up the leftovers, some of which got loaded into our car.

Most of us are parked together and we ended up with a big circle of chairs back at our rigs. After putting away the leftovers Linda, Karen, and Vicki went to play card bingo while the rest of us talked buses and travel. I tried one of the Shortt’s Soft Parade beers we had in the fridge. To the extent that I like beer at all, which isn’t very much, I prefer fruit beers and lagers and do not care for the bitterness of hops. Based on that our daughter had suggested I try the Shortt’s. It had an orange citrus taste but also tasted too much like beer for me. But you don’t know if you don’t try. Eventually people drifted back to their coaches until the four of us who were left were chased indoors by darkness, bugs, and the chill of the night air.

Linda and I stayed up a while longer but we got word during the social that our older grand-daughter (Katie) had secured two tickets for us to attend her high school graduation ceremony tomorrow night. We were excited that she was able to get two more tickets but it also meant we would have a very long day tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2015/04/23 (R) Return to Michigan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2015/04/24 (F) Touchdown

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

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

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

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

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

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

2015/04/25 (S) Return to Regular

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2015/03/24-25 (T-W) RVillage WHQ Redux

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2015/03/24 (T) Return to Arizona City, AZ

[Note: There are no photographs for this post.]

We targeted a late morning departure from Hickiwan Trails RV Park. The normal checkout time is 11:00 AM but that had nothing to do with our target as we were paid through Tuesday evening and the park was empty enough that the manager did not care when we left. The timing mostly had to do with the necessity of having some agreed target time when traveling with other RVers, not wanting to feel like we had to get up at the crack of dawn and get on the road, and not wanting to drive into the morning sun but wanting arrive at our destination by mid-afternoon. There is a lot that goes into something as simple as answering the question “what time are we going to leave?” which was preceded by answering the apparently equally simple question “what day are going to leave?”

We only had 120 miles to travel so an 11 AM departure met all of our requirements. We pulled out of our site about 10:45 AM and hooked up our car. I tried to adjust the driver’s side rearview mirror and could not position it where I wanted it. The mirror had loosened and moved on the support arm and needed to be repositioned. Lou got out his small step ladder and I found a star bit for my screwdriver. It took a bit of back and forth but I got the mirror repositioned and tightened so that the correct view was near the center of the motorized travel that I can control from the driver’s seat. By the time we put everything away and were ready to pull out it was 11:20 AM. 11 AM was a target, not a hard and fast requirement.

It was a warm day and Lou decided that he wanted to keep his speed at 50 MPH because he was unsure of the spare tire he had installed on their trailer on Thursday. That is slower than optimal for our bus, especially when the speed limit is higher than that. He suggested that we travel at whatever speed was comfortable for us and they would meet up with us sometime later at our destination. Once we cleaned Ajo we had a good run up AZ-85 at 55 MPH. The road is posted 65 MPH but it is a 2-lane highway with very little shoulder, so 55 felt just fine. Once we got on I-8 headed east the speed limit was 75 MPH. I set the cruise control at 63 MPH and let it roll. The bus likes that speed which has the engine turning ~1,800 RPM in the top gear of the transmission.

We did not need to stop for fuel or to rest so we rolled slowly through Arizona City to our destination and got ourselves parked at the RVillage headquarters. Lou and Val stopped to eat lunch and take on fuel and finally arrived an hour or so behind us. We circled our camp chairs, slumped into them, and said a collective “ahhhh.” It was beautiful and peaceful here, as always, with warm sun and a cool breeze. Linda captured a gorgeous sunset over the lake and mountains to the west on her cell phone. It cooled off quickly after the sun set and soon enough we retreated to our rigs for the evening.

Curtis is a very gracious host and even though we are boondocking he lets us use his wireless Internet connection. I wasted almost 4 GB of our 10 GB Verizon data plan last billing cycle trying to download a map update for our Rand McNally RVND 7710 GPS that failed after most of it had been downloaded. The GPS is an excellent device but the download/update protocol is one of the most stupid I have ever encountered. Why do I say that? Read on.

Almost 1,000 files are involved in the update and even at that a few of them are gigantic. The entire download of 4.4 GB has to succeed or everything is lost and you have to start over. Even on a good Internet connection it takes one-to-two hours for the download so the chances of having it fail are definitely non-zero. By 11 PM no one else was using the Internet and I was able to get everything downloaded in a little over an hour. It took another 30 minutes to install the updates into the GPS, after which it indicated there were more updates available. Thankfully those only took a few minutes to download and install and I managed to get to bed by 12:30 AM.

2015/03/25 (W) Chill’n at the Lake

In a switch from our normal routine Linda got up before me and made coffee while I slept in until 8 AM. We have our customary ways of doing things, but they are not hard and fast rules. We had toast and jam for breakfast with fresh grapefruit and coffee. We opened up the windows and turned on the exhaust fans to keep the inside of the bus comfortable for the cats and then moved to the shaded table on the porch by the lake. I took my iPad and worked on drafts of posts for the last two weeks.

Linda made up a nice lunch platter for each of us and brought it to the table where Lou and Val eventually joined us with their mid-day meals. Mid-afternoon Lou wanted to go find some tire stores and get prices for two new truck tires and two new trailer tires. I was ready for a break so I went along. That proved useful as I was able to use Google voice on my smartphone to research places and request navigation. Linda uses this feature all the time, but I rarely do. It’s pretty cool and I should probably use it more than I do.

Our first stop was the local SpeedCo truck tire and lube facility in Arizona City but they only sold 22″ and 24″ truck tires. We stopped at the Love’s truck stop across the street where I found the 12 VDC cigarette lighter style plug I needed to wire up the TireTraker repeater we got from Darryl Lawrence at Escapade to try out. We stopped at Discount Tire in Casa Grande next and that turned out to be the best quote Lou got. We stopped at the Arizona City Post Office at 4:30 PM on our way back to camp so Lou could mail something.

The rest of the day and early evening was spent by the lake quietly using our technology. Once the light faded and the temperature started to drop we returned to our rigs to have dinner.

2015/02/24-28 (T-S) Bus Projects

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2015/02/24 (T) Little Bus Projects

I went to bed early (for me) last night but slept in until almost 8 AM. It was cool in the coach and I had cats snuggled up with me enjoying the warmth of the electric heating pad. When I finally got up I tended to their needs—food, water, and litter—and then tended to mine; fruit juice, granola, coffee, and grapefruit. It is Tuesday, which is trash collection day, so I gathered up the trash from the kitchen and took it to the refuse container by the curb. We will only have one more trash collection while we are here and that will likely occur after we have pulled out on Tuesday March 3rd.

I finished up yesterday’s blog post, got dressed, and got to work on my bus projects. I started by wiping off the spotting on the windows and body from the recent rains. I thought the reason I spent 40 hours cleaning and waxing the body was so water would run off if it but apparently I was mistaken. I had also noticed that the wax on the passenger side of the bus had not been fully rubbed down. I started working on this but without using additional water it just made it look worse so I quit somewhat disgusted with the whole situation and got to work on other stuff.

First up was the dashboard instrument lighting. For the turbo boost gauge I made a 5 inch extension lead with red #14 wire and insulated female spade connectors on each end to connect to the +24VDC supply wire for the old gauge. I made a similar lead with black wire for the ground but only put a connector on one end to attach to the new gauge bulb holder. I used a crimp style speed connector to splice the free end into the existing ground wire which had a fork connector on the end that I did not want to cut off. I put one of the 24VDC wedge base bulbs in the holder and snapped it into the gauge.

I undid the retaining ring on the speedometer and pulled the instrument out the front of the dashboard. I thought I had wired the two light bulbs in series to use 12VDC bulbs on a 24VDC circuit but discovered that they were already wired in parallel. I pulled the two bulb holders out and the bulbs were discolored as if they had been too hot. I could not determine the voltage rating on the bulbs so I replaced them with 24V ones. I reinstalled the speedo into the dashboard and put the dashboard cover back on. I will test the lights the next time I connect the chassis batteries.

I next considered replacing the MAC valve that controls the air shutters for the two A-C compressor/condenser units in front. I looked at the existing valve and decided to hold off until I could talk to Butch. He and Fonda had taken off for the day, so that would have to wait. The valve has a diagram on it that indicates how it operates but I was not completely clear on how to read it. When I built the new air panel I used identical replacement valves and plumbed them the same as the old ones. I searched online for “pneumatic valve symbols” and got all kinds of sites. One of them had a 25 slide presentation on ANSI standard symbols and schematics so I downloaded and studied it. With my new knowledge I was able to verify that the valve was, in fact, installed correctly. I figured it was since it seemed to work correctly (until it failed) but it was nice to know for sure. I am not certain that the three control switches are wired correctly, however, but that is a different project for a different day.

I really did not want to change the entire valve. I bought the replacement valve from Hei/Tek in Phoenix so I called them for technical support. They confirmed what Butch suspected; the operator (solenoid) can be changed without replacing the entire valve. They had a defective valve and offered to take the solenoid off and mail it to me for no charge. Deal. I should have it tomorrow so I deferred any further work on this project until the part arrives.

By now it was time for lunch so I made a nice sandwich with toasted sourdough bread, vegan deli slices, Daiya havarti style vegan cheese with jalapeños, lettuce, onions, pickles, veganaise, and honey mustard.

Next up was mounting the turbo boost sensor. It was a beautiful, sunny day but rather cool so I put on one of my long-sleeve flannel work shirts. Hey, who said the desert in the winter was paradise? Oh yeah, I did. I knew this was going to be an annoying little project and it was.

The turbo boost (intake manifold pressure) sensor is a small rectangular part about 1″ wide by 2″ long by 1/2″ thick. It has a weatherproof 3-wire electrical connector and a 1/2″ long tube that the pressure hose from the intake manifold slips over. The sensor is mounted to a somewhat larger flat bracket with a slight bend in it. The bracket has an angled slot and is supposed to be secured to the back side (towards the front of the bus) of the engine computer mounting bracket by a single bolt that the slot slips over.

No doubt there is an easy (correct) way to mount the bracket, but it probably requires disassembling other stuff to create access. That was not going to happen, at least not today. One problem was that there was not a lot of space to get my hands in there to work. Another problem was that I was working “blind.” Even though I had a telescoping mirror I could not position it correctly in the available space and I needed both hands to install the bracket. But the real problem was that the retaining bolt had long ago disappeared and I had no idea what bolt was supposed to be used or if it threaded into a hole or required a nut.

I had looked this up in my engine manual some time ago so I knew where and how the bracket was supposed to mount, but the manual did not call out the diameter, thread pitch, or length of the mounting bolt. I tried several bolts that I had but none of them where right. I asked Barb to keep an eye on my tools and bus while I made a quick run to Herb’s Hardware where I bought an assortment of bolts. None of them fit.

One of my original bolts was “close” but a little loose. I decided to wrap it generously with Teflon tape to see if I could fatten it up enough to hold. I reattached the electrical harness, shortened the pressure hose, and reattached it as I would not be able to make these connections after the bracket was mounted. I finally managed to get the bracket installed and I think my taped bolt will hold it until we get home and I can figure out the correct bolt. Even if/when I do, there is no good way to get in there and tighten it. I ended up using a 7/16″ short socket with a swivel adapter and 6″ long drive extension that I turned by hand. At least it was mid-late afternoon on a beautiful day with abundant sunshine illuminating the west-facing engine bay.

I still have a half dozen projects to take care off over the next four days but it was good to have the dashboard and turbo boost sensor completed. During the course of the afternoon I discussed with Barb and Jim what I had found about the use of potassium bromide (KBr) to control seizures in dogs and cats. I really hope they will discuss this with their vet.

I made popcorn for a late afternoon snack and then checked my e-mail to see if Stacy had proofread my Quartzsite 2015 article and deal with any other correspondence from publisher Gary Hatt. She had called in sick again, so the proofreading was delayed yet another day. Linda had called while driving home but caught me in the middle of working on the turbo boost sensor mounting. I called her back around 6:30 PM my time (8:30 PM EST). She was really tired so we did not talk very long.

At 7:30 PM (MST) I called David Lambert. David currently lives in a group home in Olympia, Washington (PST). He has long been the adult best friend of J.C. Armbruster, my best friend from high school (besides Linda, of course). I met David on a visit to Washington State many, many years ago and we also became friends. I learned then that David had struggled with bi-polar affective disorder all of his life and it has not gotten better for him with time. He does not have much contact with people outside of the group home other than J.C., who has really come to his rescue over the last couple of years. David does not usually have much to say, but I try to let him know that I know he exists. Tonight, however, he was a bit more talkative and told me about recent visits with his sister Mary Kay from Everitt, Washington and his half-sister Soliel, who is moving to Sacramento, California. He also like to watch the TV program “Axe Men.” He is at least a 3rd generation native northwesterner and logging is part of his family heritage.

For dinner I heated up the “Soyrizo” we bought at Albertson’s supermarket. I diced garlic, shallot, sweet onion, carrot, green and jalapeño peppers and sautéed them is a little olive oil before adding the soy Chorizo and heating it thoroughly on high heat. It was a filling but tasty dish. After dinner I resumed working on the photos of Larry and Carol Hall’s GM bus conversion. By the time I got to bed and turned the lights out it was midnight.

2015/02/25 (W) Another “Little” Bus Project

I was up at 7:30 AM, which seems to be my norm when I’m in bed by midnight. The local Farmers Market operates on Wednesdays and this would be my last opportunity to buy a loaf of Barry’s Basic Bread. I skipped coffee and breakfast, got dressed, and counted out enough dimes and nickels from the cup where we store our change to cover the $3 cost of a loaf.

Once I got back to the coach I made coffee and had breakfast and then settled in to finish yesterday’s blog post, which needed a lot of work, and start on today’s post. Jasper sat on my lap purring and enjoying my attention for quite a long time before moving to the dinette. Juniper ate breakfast and then stretched out on the passenger seat as she does most mornings. The cockpit is the part of the bus that gets coldest at night but since we are parked facing east it is the first place to warm up in the morning. The sun is not coming up due east yet, of course; that doesn’t happen until March 21st, but it is rising more directly in front than it did in late December and much of January.

I still had a list of bus projects to work on, but first I checked my e-mail. I did not have a communique from Stacy or Gary so I logged in to our WordPress website/blog and replied to a comment Kate had recently posted. While I was logged in I updated three plug-ins, deleted 80 spam comments, and initiated a Wordfence scan. I repeated the update process for the FMCA Freethinker and Great Lakes Converted Coaches websites and the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club website. “In for dime, in for a dollar,” and “no time like the present” are phrases that came to mind.

I don’t seem to get started on bus projects much before noon, but that’s OK; nowhere is it written that I have be working on the bus at sun up. The bus projects still to be done include:

Replacing the solenoid operator on the air-conditioning shutters.
Replacing the solenoid on the pilot valve that controls the level low front axle.
Securing the wheel well body panel just forward of the PS drive axle.
Starting the generator and making sure it works by turning on all three A-C units + Starting the bus and making sure everything works, including repositioning the bus and re-leveling it to make sure the Level Low system is working.

Butch and Fonda were gone all morning so I did not know if my operator solenoid had arrived yet via the USPS. I don’t have time at the moment to sit in a holding pattern so I decided to work on the body panel. It was being held on by only two screws and a bolt without a nut, so I was able to remove it without too much difficulty. (When someone says “without too much” it means “with some.”). Once the body panel was off I could see clearly that it was supposed to be attached at six points plus the bolt that connected it to the next piece of wheel well trim. Two more things also became obvious:

that the missing screw I had set out to replace could not be reached without removing the splash guard panel in front of drive tires, and
I was going to have to slide under the bus in order to reach some of the screws.

Given that reality, I slid one of my stands under the chassis just aft of the passenger side rag axle. The chassis was about 1″ above the stand but I was reasonably confident it would keep the bus from falling on me if the passenger side air springs failed suddenly. I also pulled out one of my large sheets of plastic that make it a lot easier and more comfortable to slide under the bus, especially on gravel.

I had removed and replaced the two splash guards at Butch and Fonda’s house this past fall when we replaced the ride height linkages. Fonda helped me with that project so we both knew how obnoxious a job it was even with the bus sitting on four chassis stands so I could get under it easily and work safely and comfortably. But there was no way around it, so the splash panel came off. We put the body panel back in place but had trouble lining it up with the holes in the chassis. Where the front top corner attached we could see that an old fastener had rusted into the hole and sheared off, probably when someone tried to remove it.

Someone showed up to talk the Butch and Fonda about their work-camping job for next winter so I continued working alone. I eventually got the panel secured at all six points plus the bolt and got a nut on the bolt. I also got the splash guard back in place with the three retaining screws installed. The fourth mounting point, however, used a bolt with a spacer tube and a locknut and was in a location that made it impossible to install by myself without getting completely under the bus and sitting up by the transmission or pulling both drive wheels off, neither of which was going to happen. That meant I needed Fonda’s assistance again.

I started putting my tools away and cleaning up my worksite while I waited for Butch and Fonda’s visitor to leave. He eventually did and Fonda came over to help me with the last attachment point on the slash guard. Once that was done, again with some difficulty, I put my tool boxes away and locked up the bays and the car. It took a whole afternoon for what started out as a job to replace one missing screw. That’s often how it goes with buses.

I washed up (buses can be dirty work) and then worked on this post for a while. I called Linda a little after 5:45 PM my time (MST) figuring she would be close to being done working for the day. I figured correctly and we talked for about 15 minutes. The issue with the generator required a new pressure regulator and some new hoses. Natural gas operates at 1/2 to 1/3 the pressure of propane and, even though the generator engine is supposed to work on either just by changing an electrical connection, Bratcher Electric said they have seen this delayed failure quite a few times when switching from propane to natural gas. It is still programmed to self-test on Thursdays at 11AM EST, so we will see if it auto-starts tomorrow like it should.

For dinner I made a mixed greens salad with onion, carrot, green pepper, dried cranberries, honey roasted peanuts, Daiya pepper jack vegan cheese, and Tofurkey brand deli slices cut into thin strips, dressed with Newman’s Own Creamy Balsamic dressing, and a couple of grinds of fresh black pepper.

I was starting to run low on the lightly flavored/carbonated water that I enjoy and we were almost out of raisins which I use on my salads. I was also out of hummus and Snyder’s Sourdough Pretzel Nibblers both of which are unacceptable things to be without. I had checked the Road Runner Market here in town a couple of days ago but they did not have any of these products. Our supply of small paper bowls and plates was also getting low. The forty mile round trip to Albertson’s in Blythe, California would take 75 to 90 minutes and two gallons of gasoline, costing $5 to $6, but I decided to make the trip after sunset rather than work at my computer. The left side of my neck and left upper back were bothering me more than usual as a result both of long hours at the computer and working under the bus on the body panel today.

As long as I was at the store I picked up a few things that were not on my list including: Ken’s Steak House salad dressings, several different fruit preserves, another bottle of honey mustard (with real honey), another pack of Tofurkey peppered mock deli slices, some black grapes, extra chips, and two bottles of Goslings Ginger Beer. It was an easy run over and back, a nice drive over the small mountain range that separates this part of Arizona from California. We have not driven around much at night since we have been in the southwest and I discovered that both Blythe and Quartzsite sparkle like gems at night. On the drive from Blythe back to Q I could easily see all the way to the other side of the valley once I was clear of the pass. Not only were the lights of the city spread out before me, I-10 was a ribbon of white and red light snaking up the KOFA Mountains until it disappeared over the next pass. It was quite a sight.

Back at the coach I got all of the groceries moved from the car to the kitchen and put away. The plastic bags often end up with holes in the bottom because they are so thin so I sorted them according to whether they had holes or not and ended up with five of each. How convenient. I put one holy bag inside each unholy bag creating five ready-to-use double bags. Sometimes I amaze myself. But I can only bask in the glory of my accomplishments for so long and then I have to get back to the processes of daily life. Tonight that meant cleaning up the dishes from dinner and checking e-mail. I lose track of time when I am working and it was well after midnight by the time I turned off the lights.

2015/02/26 (R) LiveStream

For some reason I was awake at 7 AM. I can function on only six hours sleep but I do better on seven. By eight hours I am uncomfortable and need to get up whether I am rested or not. Even before I got up I heard engine noses and voices outside and looked to see what was going on. It took me a moment to recognize Larry and Sandy’s motorhome and then remember that they were taking it to Yuma for a long weekend. Larry had told me yesterday they were going to do that so they would be in a good position to watch an air show at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma.

It has been getting cool overnight, dropping into the upper 40’s, so I put on my sweat pants and shirt. We bought these not long after we got to Quartzsite so we would have something easy and comfortable to wear on mornings when it was cool in the coach.

I fed the cats, refreshed their water, cleaned their litter tray, bundled up the trash, ground up some Sweet Seattle Dreams coffee beans, and brewed a pot of coffee. I got out the two blue blankets and put one on the dinette seat and one on the passenger seat. Jasper immediately curled up on the dinette blanket and Juniper curled up on my lap while I sat on the coach working on my blog posts for yesterday and today and enjoyed my first cup of coffee.

I like the start of the day; it is one of my favorite times. I am usually rested and generally relaxed and have the comfort of my small morning routine. The whole day is in front of me and it is still possible to accomplish something, anything really, but not everything, and sometimes not much. The end of the day is always more variable.

I only have a few repair tasks left to do on the bus plus one or two on the car. Bus-wise, I need to:

Replace the solenoid operator on the air-conditioning shutters.
Replace the solenoid operator on the pilot valve that controls the level low front axle.
Replace one of the driver side headlights (it has a small hole in it).

Car-wise, I need to:

Replace the two auxiliary tail lights in the car.
Wash and wax the car.

Although I have most of the parts I need I was expecting another solenoid operator for the shutters to arrive in yesterday’s mail. It did not, so I hope it arrives today as I really do not want to replace the whole valve nor do I want to disassemble the new one, even though I’ve been told that it is OK to do so. I think the headlight can wait until I get home, but I need to see if I have one with me.

The other things I have to do are not maintenance/repairs, just routine checks to make sure that we, the car, and the bus are ready to roll on Tuesday. These include:

Starting the generator and making sure it works by turning on all three A-C units + some additional load(s). That will also verify that the air-conditioners work.
Starting the bus and making sure everything works, including repositioning the bus and re-leveling it to make sure the Level Low system is working.

The things that will wait until Monday include checking/setting all of the tire pressures, which I will do on Monday morning, and making sure the hitch and tie bar are ready to go.

While I was working on this post I got a call from Joe Cannarozzi, the mobile mechanic who has maintained our bus chassis, generator, and some aspects of our main engine for the last four years. He is still in Mississippi but starting to arrange his spring service calls enroute to his summer job in upstate New York. Unfortunately it looks like he will be in Michigan in early April and we will miss him this time around.

By the time I finished breakfast it had warmed up enough in the coach to take a shower. I then started a load of laundry and settled in to upload some blog posts from early January. I decided to keep doing consolidated posts and started pulling together the ones for January 1st through 7th. I selected nine photos from these dates and processed them. My work was frequently interrupted by the three loads of laundry I was doing and some necessary housekeeping.

The water level in our fresh water tank was indicating below 1/3rd so I checked it visually. It was at 1/4 so I filled it, which took about 90 gallons. I tested the water coming out of the softener for total hardness (TH) using a test strip from each bottle as I wanted to make sure the strips gave me the same reading. They did, and it was somewhere above 0.0 and below 1.5.

As the tank was nearly full I noticed water on the floor of the bay and determined that it was coming from the fresh water tank drain valve. I soaked up the water that was there and tried moving the valve quickly open and then closed to see if that might clear a small piece of debris or somehow “seat” the valve. The leak was not coming out the drain pipe onto the ground. It was seeping around the top of the valve housing but I could not determine if it was coming from a seam or around the metal rod that comes out the top and attaches to the knife blade inside. This is a 1-1/2″ diameter valve of the type used on smaller RV waste tanks, especially grey water tanks. I will check in the morning to see if it leaked overnight and probably make a trip to several of the RV stores here in town to see if I can locate a spare valve. I won’t be able to attempt a repair, however, until the tank is almost empty so I only have to dump (waste) a small amount of softened fresh water.

Interspersed with my blog work I had some pretzel nibblers and sun-dried tomato hummus and eventually ate a grapefruit. I did not feel like fixing anything fancier so that constituted lunch. Butch and Fonda left at 1:45 PM to check the P. O. Box and then go to a meeting of the Quartzsite Gem and Mineral Club. They stopped at the post office on the way hone but there was no package for me.

Linda called at 2:45 PM my time. She had wrapped up her year-end work at the bakery and was back at the house making a cup of tea before settling in for one more evening of tax return work. She was fairly confident that she would have everything wrapped up tonight or tomorrow morning. There was a tentative plan in place for her to babysit Madeline Friday evening so Brendan and Shawna could go out. Plans were also in the works to attend a women’s gymnastics competition at the University of Michigan on Saturday and then go to dinner. She did not mention whether Meghan would be joining them.

Sometime during the afternoon I got the last load of laundry out of the dryer and put away. I took a break from working at my computer around 6 PM to sit and chat with Butch and watch yet another gorgeous Quartzsite sunset. In spite of a cooler air mass the sun was very hot today, but once it started to set the air temperatures asserted their presence and we eventually retreated to our coaches for the evening.

I continued working on my blog post, checking e-mails as they popped up. I had one from Gary with my Quartzsite 2015 article attached. Although Stacy had not made it into work she was feeling well enough to edit it at home. I had planned to view a live Technomadia chat on “Making Connections on the Road” at 7 PM but forgot to tune in. I realized my oversight around 7:30 PM and joined the event in progress, but first I had to create an account with the LiveStream service which involved the usual e-mail verification process. But it was quick and I got to see/hear the last 20 minutes of the event which was mostly Q&A. The whole thing was archived, however, so after it ended I nuked a vegan hot dog for dinner and then replayed the part I had missed.

I had not yet made the bed so I took care of that and then resumed working on my blog post. I finally uploaded the post sometime around 10:30 PM and by the time I uploaded and captioned the photos, created all of the tags, and clicked the “publish” button it was after midnight. Rather than wait until tomorrow, I went through Stacy’s edits of my article, accepted most of them, and rewrote a couple of awkward sentences. I uploaded it to the BCM folder in my Dropbox and then e-mailed Mike (editor) and Gary (publisher) that it was there along with all of the photos. I also e-mailed it back to Stacy and Gary so she could compare it to the one she sent me. I got to bed at 1:30 AM, later than I like but with some things accomplished.

2015/02/27 (F) Granola Express

In spite of going to bed so late last night (early this morning, actually) I was up at 7:45 AM. That was mostly because the cats do not care what time I went to bed. They have their routines and by 8 PM they figure breakfast and fresh water are way overdue.

Linda called around 9:15 AM my time to ask me about a bucket full of water in the furnace room. The double wall stainless steel flue pipe for the furnace runs horizontally under the floor joists through the furnace room and then through my office above a suspended ceiling and finally out the east side of the house. Moisture tends to condense inside the pipe and drip out of it at the joints between sections if they are not sealed. The bucket is there to catch the drips and it was full. It used to drip on the furnace but Tom from TOMTEK HVAC sealed that gap so now it drips somewhere else.

Linda checked the status of the UPS delivery of the “care” package Linda shipped to me. It was in Blythe, California at 5:15 AM this morning and scheduled for delivery by the end of the day. It will be nice to finally have my pillow and once again be able to enjoy Linda’s homemade granola.

After breakfast I checked my e-mail, updated my water usage spreadsheet, and finalized my FMCA Freethinkers 2014 financial statements. The statements are now ready for Linda to audit, which will take her all of 10 minutes (at most). I then took stock of my BCM articles that are “in-process” and decided to finish the one on the Turbo Boost Repair and move it to the proofreading stage. With that done, I started pulling together the next consolidated blog post for January 8 – 14, 2015.

For lunch I made a sandwich with sourdough bread, salad greens, vegan deli slices, vegan cheese, pickles, veganaise, and honey mustard.

The solenoid operator from Hei/Tek in Phoenix was not in today’s mail so something obviously went wrong. I called Hei/Tek and talked to Brie. She checked with her shipping department and called me back to let me know it got sent UPS ground to our P. O. Box. UPS does not deliver to P. O. Boxes so it was sitting in Blythe, California in an undeliverable status. I gave them our P. O. Box number because she told me on Tuesday they were going to mail it (USPS). Brie gave me the number for UPS, but it was a national 800 number. I looked up the local Blythe UPS center but it had the same national number listed. It also indicated their Will Call hours were M – F, 9 – 10 AM. I called the 800 number and Jose fielded my call. He changed the status to “hold for pickup” and we will have to drive to Blythe on Monday to get it.

Somewhat ironically I had a UPS delivery scheduled for today and it arrived around 4 PM. My part could have been on the truck had I done something about this on Wednesday or Thursday. The box contained an envelope for Butch and Fonda and a small envelope for me. My envelope contained license plate tabs and registration cards for both vehicles, and dues check for our FMCA Freethinkers Chapter. The box also contained my pillow, which I have missed, and four bags of Linda’s homemade granola, which I have really missed.

Since I could not get my part until Monday I decided to take the operator solenoid off of the new valve and put it on the old valve. This was certainly a faster, easier job than replacing the entire old value/operator with the new valve/operator. I put air to the shutters and used the low voltage control circuits to test the new operator solenoid and it worked as designed and built.

I settled in at my computer to work on the next consolidated blog post, stringing seven separate posts together and selecting/processing photographs. I worked on a detailed e-mail reply to Gary at BCM and then worked for a while on another article that has been “in-process” since January.

I was finally hungry around 9:30 PM and heated up an Amy’s frozen Sweet and Sour gluten free noodle dish. Much to my surprise it was not very good, which is unusual for Amy’s products. I needed to get up and adjust tire pressures first thing in the morning so I made sure I was in bed with the lights off by midnight.

2015/02/28 (S) Out With A Roar

I got up at 7 AM and debated whether to go ahead and adjust the tire pressures or make coffee and eat breakfast first. I was a short debate and I won. It was 8 AM by the time I finished my granola and my first cup of coffee. The sun was well above the horizon but partially obscured by clouds and the temperature was 57 degrees F. I put on my zip front work hoodie (sweatshirt jacket) and went out to take care of business.

I turned on the TireTraker Monitor and stuck it in my pocket. As I removed each sensor it triggered a brief alarm on the monitor. Most of the bus and car tires were close to correct according to my air pressure gauge, with some slightly over-inflated and some slightly under inflated, except the driver side steer tire on the bus which was four pounds low. When I put a sensor back on the valve stem it reestablished communication with the monitor. This is supposed to trigger a new/current reading on the monitor but it appeared to me that all of the displayed pressure values were off, reading high in most cases by 3 – 4 pounds. I am not convinced yet that this system works the way I was told it does.

With the tires taken care of I disconnected the air hose from the air-compressor and stored it in the tray over the driver side drive wheels along with the air pressure gauge and air chuck. I disconnected the power cord and rolled it back up on its reel and then put the air-compressor back in its travel compartment in the car. I then went back inside to have my second cup of coffee.

A wind advisory was in effect for today and through the overnight hours. Winds were forecast at 25-30 MPH with gusts over 40 MPH and that is what we got. The temperature barely reached 70 degrees F while the sun played peek-boo with partly cloudy skies all day. The combination made for a brisk day. The forecast for Sunday morning through Tuesday noon is for rain, with possibly an inch along and north of I-10, and a flash flood watch from 5 PM Sunday until 5 PM Monday. February was definitely going out with a roar.

I spent the central part of the day cleaning out the front bay of the bus and re-packing it. We acquired a few things while we here, most notably supplies for cleaning and waxing the bus, and they had to be stored someplace for travel. We had kept several cardboard boxes from UPS shipments and I used those to organize the new cleaning supplies and stow them in the back seat of the car.

Butch and Fonda put their mats away yesterday and I should have done the same but was busy with other things. Jim L. stopped by to use Joe and Connie’s WiFi DSL gateway. I gave him about 30 pounds of solar salt for his water softener and he helped me fold up our large patio mat. As I have written here, the solar salt is simply not effective in recharging our portable water softener. We could use it at home in our residential water softener but it is a heavy, bulky, and inexpensive commodity so it made more sense to leave it here with someone who could use it than to transport it over 2,200 miles.

Jim L. suggested that I pull out by pulling forward, cutting my front tires hard to the right, and angle out between a concrete pad and the Palo Verde tree (bush) by the light pole. The Palo Verde was hanging out far enough that I decided to trim a few branches so as to avoid any possibility of scratching the passenger side of the coach.

My one little repair project today was to try building a “retaining pond” on the floor of the water bay underneath the leaking fresh water tank drain. I used self-stick weather seal formed to circles, one inside the other. I had noticed that there is a small gap where the discharge pipe turns and goes through the floor. My solution was to contain the water that is seeping from the drain valve in the little retaining pond and give it a chance to flow down through the gap. We are going to pick up some inexpensive bath towels on Monday to soak up the water. We can ring them out, line dry them in the dry Arizona air and brilliant sun, and re-use them.

The only outside chores I have left to do to get us ready to leave are to:

dump the waste tanks.
clean and stow the dump hoses and fittings.
top up the fresh water tank.
recharge the water softener (maybe).
check the engine oil and top it up if needed.
check the hitch, tow bar, and cables.

Mid-afternoon I called J. C. and left a message. He called me back a short time later and we talked for almost two hours. J. C. was my best friend in high school (Linda had her own special status) and is one of the only people from that period in my life with whom I am still in contact. J. C. works at Boeing Aircraft as an inspector in the 737 production facility. He is only a few months younger than me but is looking at age 66 as his earliest possible retirement point.

I also had a call from Pat Lintner. Pat is the National Director for our FMCA GLCC chapter and is also the Senior VP of the FMCA GLAMA. He wanted to give me a heads up that Jane Roush, the GLAMA President, would be sending an e-mail later today to all of the GLAMA chapter presidents and national directors regarding a recommendation that the Midwest and Great Lakes areas be merged. The Great Lakes Area consists of Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Ontario and has 21 chapters, the smallest number of any FMCAA area. The Midwest Area is made up of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan and has 24 chapters. All of the other nine areas have more chapters. I did, in fact, receive Jane’s e-mail a few hours later and forwarded it to all of the GLCC members for whom I have valid e-mail addresses along with a few additional comments.

The rest of the day was spent doing this and that. Linda called and brought me up to date on her day. She went with Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline to Crisler Arena at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor to watch part of a women’s gymnastics competition. Meghan and Chris met them back at the Fay-Lee house for dinner. I cleaned up the dishes, mostly silverware that had accumulated over the last few days. I checked and replied to e-mails, mostly from Gary at BCM. I worked on my consolidated blog post for the second week of January and had it ready to upload by 11 PM but was too tired to start the process at that hour.

2015/02/14-18 (S-W) Busy Times in Q

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20150214 (S) The Lights of the City

Note: There are no photos for this post.

We stuck around Q today. While driving through Borrego Springs yesterday afternoon we came upon the Sea View roadside fruit stand. It was on the northeast corner of an intersection north of town surrounded by citrus and palm orchards. The stand had 5 pound bags of tangelo oranges and 10 pound bags of jumbo grapefruit for $3 per bag; self-serve. We stuffed $6 in the collection box and took one of each. We had grapefruit for breakfast this morning and several oranges throughout the day. After breakfast Linda went for a morning walk and I settled in to work at my computer on Bus Conversion Magazine articles.

We had planned to drive to Sara Park in Lake Havasu City mid-afternoon for the Western Pyrotechnic Association fireworks show but decided we would go tomorrow instead. We were tired after our whirlwind 2-day visit to California and did not feel like making the 150 mile round trip. Larry and Sandy drove up to see the show on Friday evening and said it was spectacular.

For dinner Linda made pan-roasted Brussels sprouts with balsamic vinegar and honey, quinoa, and mashed Romanesco brocciflower with salt and pepper. A small glass of white wine completed the meal, which we ate outside, and it was all delicious.

We had just finished eating when Butch and Fonda brought their chairs and their dogs over. They have gotten deeply involved in the Quartzsite Road Runners Gem and Mineral Club and we have been busy with travels so we have not had as much opportunity to chat as when we first got here. We sat and talked until long after the sun set. It still cools off here when the sun goes down but not as quickly or as much as it did in December and January. With proper clothing or a light blanket we can now sit outside well into the evening. Even with the lights of the city the stars are bright and numerous. Once we came inside we did our usual evening things for a while and then went to bed.

2015/02/15 (N) Winterfest 2015

We had a quiet morning at home that included the last of our Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee beans and some of the grapefruit we bought on Friday. One of the couples we were visiting with on Friday, Steve and Liz Willey, started, owned, and operated Backwoods Solar in Idaho for many years. They sold the business a few years ago but they still carry copies of the Backwoods Solar Planning Guide and Catalog when they travel. Much of the information in the planning guide section was written by Steve and he gave me a copy of the 2014 edition. We had exchanged several e-mails about a solar system for our bus so he knew I was interested in the subject.

I spent the entire morning reading through the Backwoods Solar book while Linda checked up on the state of the world, the weather back home, and, finding no good news, went for a walk. I checked my e-mail at 1 PM and then started getting ready to leave for Lake Havasu City at 1:30 PM. Today was the final day of the Western Pyrotechnics Association 26th annual conference which was also billed as Winterfest 2015. The gates opened at 3 PM and we wanted to be there by then so we could get a good spot for our chairs.

The ground displays were set up in the infield of the small Havasu 95 Speedway. Like most race tracks it had a high, curved fence surrounding the track. We entered from the east and by bleachers that were there facing west towards the mountains and, way off in the distance, the Colorado River. To either side of the bleachers were large areas where spectators could set their own chairs. We put ours to the left up against a border fence designed to keep spectators about eight feet back from the track fence. The aerial displays were launched from beyond the other side of the track. That area sloped downhill away from track so that the firing stations were not visible.

The sky was clear, the air temperature was warm but not uncomfortable, and the sun was hot. We brought a lightweight blanket to protect us from the chilly night air that would inevitably occur after sunset but we hung it on the fence as a sunscreen which kept the sun off of our legs. Although our Tilley hats could shade our heads and faces, we also had two small umbrellas that we brought just for this purpose. With all of our sun paraphernalia in place we relaxed, snoozed, and waited which was actually a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

We eventually got hungry. Given that the venue had food vendors and bathrooms we did not have a reason not to eat. Our choices were popcorn, soft pretzels, and veggie burgers with lemonade to drink. Unlike a lot of closed venues, the food was not overpriced and all of the workers looked to be high school age.

Just after 6 PM the sun slipped behind the small mountain range nearest to the track and we put our umbrellas away and took down our blanket. Although it was still daylight the crews started shooting off small aerials sporadically. By 7 PM the sun had set and there was a beautiful glow along the distant mountains. By 7:30 PM it was dark and the fireworks got started in earnest around 7:40 PM.

A local radio personality served as MC. Being a Western Pyrotechnics Association event it was different from other fireworks displays we have seen over the years. Before the main (commercial) display began they shot off shells and ground displays that had been made by WPA members in workshops during the four days of the Association convention. They were shot off (or lit) one at a time and the MC announced the name of the builder and type of firework. Most of us just watch a fireworks display and say “ooh” and “ahh” at the appropriate times, and maybe clap for a particularly impressive burst. Not surprisingly, however, the things we are watching all have names. Indeed, pyrotechnics has its own specialized vocabulary but most of us are never exposed to it. It made for an interesting as well as entertaining evening.

As the evening went on the air temperature cooled off and the fireworks heated up. We put on our shirt jackets and threw our blanket over our legs. The two professional displays were done by the Not Yet Ready For Prime Time Players and AM Pyrotechnics. The NYRFPTP show was all done from the infield and was very interesting. The AMP show was all large aerials that were shot one at a time. The main reason for this was so the buyers in attendance could see each shell by itself, but it had the same benefit for the other spectators and had the added benefit of extending the show without overloading the senses.

When the main show was finished around 8:30 PM most of the audience left, but WPA members were instructed to come to the launch areas and finish shooting off their products. Some people sitting next to us had advised us to stick around, so we did. By 8:45 PM more fireworks were being launched and lit and that was still going on when we finally packed up at 9:30 PM and headed back to the car, which was parked right by the entrance to the track.

There was a soundtrack but the fireworks were not synchronized to it. Perhaps the best part of the evening was that we were much closer to the ground displays and launch sites than is usually the case at a major Fourth of July celebration. One of the “effects” was a “wall of flame” that was set off on the far side of the track. I do not know what they used for fuel but we felt the heat where we were sitting! An interesting side note was that the larger aerial “bombs” (technically “salutes”) kept triggering car alarms.

We drove home in the dark but it was not our first time driving this route and traffic was light at that hour. We got back at 11:15 PM, checked e-mail, and headed off to bed. If we are back in this area again at this time of year we would likely position our coach closer to Lake Havasu City and attend the fireworks display all four nights. As with many other things this winter it was a new and unique experience.

2015/02/16 (M) Travel Preparations

With the Western Pyrotechnics Association fireworks display last night at Sara Park in Lake Havasu City our sightseeing and tourist activities in and around Quartzsite came to an end. Linda is flying home tomorrow for two weeks to deal with corporate accounting and both corporate and family tax returns. That meant today was spent getting her ready to leave and me ready to have her gone.

After our usual coffee, juice, and granola breakfast we drove to the Albertson’s supermarket in Blythe, California to stock up on grocery items for me. We bought lettuce so I can make salads, but we bought a lot of prepared/packaged vegan foods that do not require much cooking time or technique and have minimal cleanup. While Linda has a lot to do back home I also gave an ambitious list of things I want to accomplish while she is away. I also want eat well while she is away, but I do not want to spend a lot time cooking and cleaning up.

At the top of the list are six or seven small, but critical, bus projects. Right behind those is to finish cleaning and waxing the passenger side of the bus. We have acquired a certain amount of “stuff” since we got to Q and it needs to be organized and stowed for travel, after which the inside needs some deeper cleaning. After that it’s continuing to catch up on blog posts and working on drafts of articles for Bus Conversion Magazine.

When we got back and had the groceries stored Linda started a load of laundry and began gathering up her stuff for the flight home tomorrow while I worked on programming our new TireTraker TT-400C monitor and re-installing all of the sensors on the tires. Our original monitor had a charging problem and Daryl Lawrence mailed a replacement to us along with a charging cable. It arrived on Friday and Butch picked it up at the Post Office and gave it to me on Saturday morning. I tried all of the possible combinations and verified that the original charging cable was fine but the original monitor was not. We will return the old monitor and cable to Daryl and Cheri at Escapade in a few weeks. The driver side front tire was giving a low pressure alarm so I checked the pressure with my digital gauge. It was 97 PSI (it is supposed to be 115 PSI).

The Dewalt air-compressor was already out of the car and secured to the fence along the north property line so I plugged it in, got the air hose out, and filled the tire back up to 115 PSI. I was going to check/fill all of the driver side tires, since they were in the shade, but I really needed to do that in the morning when the temperature was near its overnight low and before the sun stared to warm up the passenger side of the bus. I may do this Wednesday, just to get them close to right, and will do it again on Monday, March 2nd so we are ready to leave on the 3rd without too much to do other than pull out and hook up.

When I was done with the TPMS we trimmed our two cats’ claws, which were overdue. This has been a “mañana” task for a while but finally became a “hoy” task when we ran out of days.

I called Buck Bolding to see if I could stop by his place tomorrow on the way back from dropping Linda at the Phoenix airport. Buck and his wife, Pat, were at the Eagles International Rally last month in Quartzsite with their gorgeous Eagle Bus Conversion and we discussed having me photograph it for a Bus Conversion Magazine featured bus article. Buck remembered the conversation but unfortunately this was not a good week for him for this project. He and Pat hope to make it back to Quartzsite yet this month. If so, they will probably stay at the Quail Run RV Park just north of us on Central Avenue (AZ-95) which would be very convenient for me.

Linda and I sat on the north-facing porch of Joe and Connie’s park model trailer to escape the sun and enjoy the light breeze that was blowing. Barb stopped by for a while and then retired to her motorhome. Fonda came over to show us the small opal she spent part of the day grinding and polishing. She went back to her bus and Butch cane over followed by Larry and Sandy. We discussed and compared the WPA fireworks display they saw on Friday to the one we saw last night. They returned to their motorhome and Linda went over to talk to Fonda leaving Butch and me to sit on the porch and solve all of the world’s problems. While we were doing that Linda and Fonda decided we should all go out to dinner at Crazy Jerry’s.

We had our usual 12″ pizza–thin crust, no cheese, with mushrooms and onions–and a side order of French fries. Our waitress was Michele and we had a nice chat with her about the restaurant and the town of Quartzsite. She and her husband own both the Main Street Eatery and Crazy Jerry’s.

When we got back to our coach Linda finished gathering up her stuff. All she has to pack in the morning are her computer, power supply/charger, and iPad. We were in bed by 10 PM and set the wake-up alarms for 6 AM.

2015/02/17 (T) Fly Away

We were awake before 6 AM but stayed in bed waiting for the wake-up alarms to go off. Linda set one on her iPad or phone, I’m not sure which one, but it did not go off. I set the alarm on the panel mounted click by my side of the bed and it did go off. Linda prepared herself for traveling and packed up her iPad, computer, charging cables, and other electronic paraphernalia without which modern life would be unbearable at best and impossible at worst. I did not make coffee and we did not have breakfast as the Phoenix Airport was a two hour drive with limited rest stops.

We had targeted a 7 AM departure but by 6:40 AM we were ready to go. Linda’s “suitcase” was a zip top nylon bag that I got at a conference some years ago. Everything she had with her, except her down coat, fit in that bag or in her computer bag. We pulled out at 6:45 AM, made our way through town to Exit 17, and got on I-10 going east.

We made good time as the speed limit on I-10 away from major cities is 75 MPH, allowing me to travel comfortably at 68 MPH. We got to watch night give way to dawn give way to the sunrise and then daylight. Once the sun was up driving was more difficult until it rose high enough in the sky that our sun visors could do their job. Traffic was light heading eastbound but there was a steady stream of trucks headed west. We made good time, even as we entered the Phoenix metropolitan area, until we were about 12 miles from the airport where traffic came to a standstill across all six lanes. The GPS indicated heavy traffic ahead and one hour to reach our destination.

We had planned to drop Linda at the terminal at 9 AM, two hours before her scheduled departure, so a one hour delay would be cutting it too close. Linda grabbed the atlas (so glad we brought it along) while I moved to the right hand lane. There were major surface streets paralleling I-10 to the south so I exited the Interstate, drove down to the first one, and turned left to continue our eastward travel. It moved a long reasonably well and eventually put us on I-17 southbound, which almost immediately curved eastbound. About five miles later we intersected I-10, headed north, and took the airport exit 1/2 mile later. From that point we just followed the signs for Terminal 3 which is the one that Delta Airlines uses.

As we were driving through the airport I got a phone call. I dug my phone out of its case and handed it to Linda. She said it was identified as possible spam and declined the call. She set my phone in the console between the front seats and we pulled up to the departure curb at Terminal 3. She took off the light jacket she wore in the car, grabbed her two bags and her down coat, gave me a quick kiss, and trotted off into the terminal. I pulled away and before I got to the turn-around to get back to I-10 reached for my phone only to discover it was not there.

A missing phone is a sickening feeling, on a par with a missing wallet. I searched around as best I could while driving and could not locate it. I thought that Linda might have inadvertently taken it with her. If so, my hope was that she would discover the mistake when she went through security and head back to the curb to look for me, realizing that I would be looking for her. I circled through the terminal road system for 20 minutes but she never appeared. As inconvenient as it would have been for her to take it with her, she could have shipped it back to me overnight. My worst fear was that it fell out on the ground at the airport, in which case the best (?) I could hope for was that someone ran over it and rendered it unusable. I should have found one of the cell phone lots and done a more thorough search of the car, but if it wasn’t in the car there wasn’t anything I could do about short of finding a pay phone, and when/where was the last time/place you saw one of those?

I circled the terminal one last time and then followed the signs for I-10 west and headed for Quartzsite. Phoenix has an extensive highway system, which always has its own complexity, but the traffic was ridiculous. We avoided Phoenix on our way to Q, using I-8 and AZ-85 to bypass the “big city.” We will be avoiding it again in a few weeks when we relocate to the Casa Grande area and then to Tucson.

I remembered seeing a QT (Quik Trip) filling station and convenience mart on the west edge of town when driving in this morning. Their listed price for Regular gasoline was $2.099, cash or credit. I could have made it back to Q on the fuel in tank but why risk running out, especially given the price? I exited the Interstate, used the facilities, and bought a cup of coffee. This QT had the fanciest coffee and tea self-serve area I have ever seen. I topped off the tank with some inexpensive gasoline, cleaned the windshield, and continued on my way. I also found my phone, which had not been placed in the center console like I thought, but just in front of it, allowing it to slip down in front of my seat where I could not see it while driving. Whew. I suddenly felt a lot better.

With the delay getting to the airport, the added time driving around the airport, and the stop for fuel I got back to our motorcoach around noon instead of 11 AM. Butch and Fonda were outside contemplating what appeared to be all of their worldly possessions which were arrayed on and around their patio. Butch was studying his new VDO electronic speedometer, a 437-152 just like mine. All of the printed directions referred to using a 12VDC power source but the instrument case said “12/24V”. Chuck Spera and I have both installed this exact same model gauge in our Prevost H3-40s and my recollection was that we had them wired to 24VDC ignition switched sources.

Butch put in a call to VDO technical support (Continental) and I called Chuck. He did not recall even checking the voltage and just used whatever was there. I was almost certain that I had checked the voltage and it was 24VDC, which is why I wired the two 12V light bulbs in series. Butch got a call back from VDO verifying that the gauge would work on either voltage while I had a long chat with Chuck in which he brought me up-to-date on their winter at Pelican Lake Luxury Motorcoach Resort in Naples, Florida.

Chuck mentioned that Prevost Community is having a “non-rally” rally April 17-20 at the Bella Terra Luxury Motorcoach Resort near Gulf Shores, Alabama. There is no rally fee and they negotiated a special group rate of $35/night. That may be a bit late in April for us to be that far south, but maybe not. We would like to be home by May 1st and we would like to visit family in St. Louis on the way. I-55 starts at I-10 just northwest of New Orleans and Bella Terra is an easy day’s drive from there. Chuck said there is an Indian Casino on Lake Charles that has an excellent RV park for $13 per night that might be a good stopping spot for just before/after the rally. He also mentioned that there is a thread on the POG forum about bus barns.

I made a nice, large salad for dinner, had a small glass of wine, and turned in early. I plan to start on cleaning and waxing the passenger side of the coach in the morning.

2015/02/18 (W) Wax On, Wax Off (Continued)

Today was my first full day without Linda here. This how it went.

I set my alarm and got up at 6 AM. I made coffee and had the raspberry pastry bites for breakfast. Yeah, they’re vegan, but definitely not WFPB. I got the trash and plastic bottles ready to take out and then worked on yesterday’s blog post. It was still dark out so I spent a little time straightening up the inside of the coach.

Once it was daylight I started cleaning and waxing the passenger side of the coach. I wiped the windshields off (again) and then did the side from the front corner back to the patio awning front support arm. I worked from 8:30 to 10:30 AM which was a bit too long as the sun was very bright and the body panels were getting quite warm causing the wax to dry too quickly.

I put away my supplies and gathered up my microfiber towels. I had enough clothing and towels to do a load of laundry and added the microfibers to the batch. This was the first time I have used the laundry room since we arrived so Barb showed me how to set washer controls.

Whenever I was not doing something else I worked at my computer. Other than a few e-mails my focus was BCM articles. In particular I am trying to finish an article on “Quartzsite 2015.” The article was basically written a couple of weeks ago, but we have done other things since then so I want to expand it a bit. What I mostly spent the day and evening working on were the photos.

I got the trash and plastic bottles ready and took them to their respective containers. I let Barb know that I needed to use the car port sometime in the next 10 days. I want to wash and wax the car and will need to get it in the shade. When I was done with the laundry I finally ate the grapefruit I got out for breakfast. I was still hungry so I also had a sandwich for lunch.

I checked the total hardness of the water coming out of the water softener and it was still somewhere between 3 and 7 grains per gallon, indicating that more regeneration was still needed. First I switched the hoses around and gently back-flushed the unit using filtered water. I switched it back to the regular configuration and added a 26 ounce container of non-iodized table salt. I ran the water through the unit until it was noticeably salty and then shut it off and let it sit for 20 minutes. I repeated this, letting about 10 gallons of water go through the softener each time. Late afternoon I removed the housing, rinsed out the little bit of remaining salt, reinstalled the housing, and gently ran about 15 gallons of filtered water through the unit to get the residual salinity out if it. It was dark by then so testing the TH will be a task for tomorrow.

I had several text messages and calls from Linda throughout the day. One was a photo indicating evidence of mice in the pantry. Oh joy. We were gone all last winter, which was bitter cold and snowy, and did not have a problem so we do not know what is different this year. Linda though that perhaps all of the construction work (landscaping and natural gas) had disturbed the local mice. Whatever the cause there wasn’t anything I could do about it from 2,200 miles away so I made a nice green salad for dinner and then continued working on photos for my article.

2015/02/07-11 (S-W) In and Around Q

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2015/02/07 (S) Bouse, AZ

We got up around 8 AM, got cleaned up, and had coffee and granola. Linda then cut my hair, which seems to be a once every 4 to 6 weeks thing when we are traveling. Butch and Fonda went to Yuma to meet up with Bell, Bell’s daughter, and Bell’s three grand-daughters. Bell’s daughter was in Yuma with her Roller Derby team and the family came along. We wanted to get out and do some more sight-seeing and decided to drive to Bouse, Arizona.

Cholla “teddy bear” cacti at Quinn’s Pass on the road to Bouse, AZ.

Bouse is a small town located in the next valley to the east of Quartzsite, which sits in the La Paz valley. It is on AZ-72 at the eastern end of Plomosa Road. The western end of Plomosa Road is at AZ-95 seven miles north of the city limit of Quartzsite. The first three miles of Plomosa Road heading east from AZ-95 runs through the BLM Plomosa Road STVA. The road is paved its entire length and provided a fun and scenic drive out to Bouse and back. We stopped at Quinn Pass to read the historical marker and ended up going on a short hike. We have wanted to do this little trip ever since friends told us about it, but today provided an added incentive to finally go; the Parker 425.

The Parker 425 is an annual off-road race in the desert east of Parker, south of the Buckskin Mountains, and north of Bouse. The course is a little over 140 miles in length and the race consists of three loops for a total of 425 miles. It begins and ends at the Bluewater Resort and Casino in Parker. Last year’s winner completed the race in just over seven hours. That’s an average speed of 60 MPH, and there are plenty of curves and bumpy areas where it is not possible to go that fast, so the vehicles are really moving every place they can.

When we got to AZ-72 we crossed the highway, drove three short blocks, and made a left on Swansea. I could see from the GPS that it was a paved road that continued in a northeasterly direction. I had looked at a map yesterday and had a general sense that one of the spectator areas was out that way. We did not have to drive very far before we saw Jeeps and ATVs parked on top of a big hill all facing the same direction. We drove past the turnoff for that area and just around the hill was a large parking area full of cars and RVs. The dirt road was closed, the Fire Department was set up there, and there was a checkpoint for the race. I found a place to park and we got out to check out the action.

We stayed long enough to see a dozen different vehicles pass through the checkpoint and I shot photos from several different vantage points. There are different classes of vehicles, but the ones we saw were of two types: highly modified small pickup trucks, and custom built off-road racers known as “grasshoppers” because of their long shape and the suspensions allow them to “bounce” over bumps in the road.

View looking NW from the Quinn’s Pass area between Quartzsite and Bouse, AZ.

The air temperature was pleasant but the sun was very hot so we drove the short distance back to Bouse, stopped at AZ-72, and quickly scoped out the town. We spotted the Coachman Restaurant just northwest of the intersection and drove over there to have lunch. We each had a garden salad and iced tea, and I had French fries. We can pretty much count on lettuce and potatoes in any restaurant we visit.

Bouse was founded in 1908 as a mining camp but as a waypoint between Phoenix and Parker it now survives on tourism, agriculture, and retirees. Measuring 10.1 square miles at 947 feet ASL with 996 residents (2010 census) the area enjoys sunny skies year-round. We saw RVs of all types throughout town and in the dessert along Plomosa Road which is all BLM land. There were also quite a few RVs in the Bouse Community Park.

We drove back to Quartzsite the way we came, a distance of 30 miles, because the only other ways back were via Parker (64 miles) and Phoenix (at least 250 miles). Linda wanted to walk through the Tyson Wells market area one more time as this is the last weekend for the Craft Show. We bought a cute hand puppet that we think grand-daughter Madeline will find very interesting. We drove over to Barry’s Breads to get a loaf of his Barry’s Basic Bread but he was not open. In fact, it looked like he was done for the season. Activity really has slowed down here and he is presumably getting ready to move to his next venue.

We stopped at the Road Runner Market and bought a loaf of French bread and some red grapes. We then drove to the Quartzsite Cemetery to take photographs of Hadji Ali’s (Hi Jolly’s) gravesite, which is marked by a small pyramid with a silhouette of a camel on top. As long as we were there we wandered around the rest of the cemetery, which was an interesting and well-kept place.

Once we were back at the coach Linda sat outside and read while I transferred photo files from my camera to my computer and backed them up to our NAS. I then continued selecting and processing images from yesterday’s outing to KOFA NWR Palm Canyon. I was starting to work on the images from today when Linda cane in and started making dinner.

She decided to make “Mustard Greens and Beans” using Great Northern beans. In addition to the usual onion and garlic, it had vinegar, a little sugar, and honey mustard. It was very tasty and we agreed it was a keeper. She served sautéed green beans on the side, cut up some of the French bread, and poured a couple of glasses of Franzia Refreshing White wine. Sliced fresh strawberries and cookies for desert completed the meal.

Butch and Fonda got back from Yuma while Linda was cooking. I gave Butch a call after dinner to discuss our TireTraker systems. He needs to charge their monitor this evening and I asked him to check on the behavior of the LEDS on the 12/24VDC plug.

As we do most evenings, Linda read and played online word games while I worked on this post for a while and then resumed editing photos on my computer. I checked e-mail again and had several regarding the upcoming Freethinkers gathering at the Liar Peg Leg Smith Monument boondocking area near Borrego Springs, California. One of them posited the question of how often Friday the 13th occurs? I did a quick online search and the answer appeared to be 1 to 3 times per year and every 12/7 or 1.714 times per year, on average. That is 171.4 times per century or 1,714 times per millennium. I posted that back to the e-mail reflector and went to bed.

Rocks and flora at Quinn’s Pass, AZ.

2015/02/08 (N) Another Meetup

I was up at 7:30 AM this morning and got the coffee made right away. Linda did not sleep well last night but got up as soon as she smelled the coffee. Breakfast was toast and preserves. I was planning on putting in a long day at my computer and Linda was planning on doing laundry and some work for the bakery but our plans changed before we got started. When I checked my e-mail I had one from Lou and Donna Rice of our FMCA Freethinkers Chapter indicating that they were at Mile Marker 2 on Plomosa Road. We drove right past them twice yesterday on our visit to Bouse but had no idea they were there.

Plomosa Road is about seven miles north of Quartzsite on AZ-95. We left at 10 AM and were parked next to their Jeep before 10:15. We sat and talked for four hours before returning to our coach. As soon as we got back I took our TireTraker monitor and charger over to Butch’s coach. We tried our charger on his monitor and it worked fine. We then tried his charger on our monitor and it did not work. Between our four devices it was clearly our monitor that was defective. I will have to call Darryl Lawrence tomorrow and see what we can figure out.

We each had a pear, some red grapes, and something to drink. Linda gathered up laundry and I got to work editing consolidated blog posts. In between loads she sat outside and read.

Fonda had two Poblano peppers she got at the Farmers Market on Wednesday and gave them to Linda. Linda found a recipe for stuffed grilled poblanos. The stuffing was white rice, scallions, black beans, tomatoes, vegan sour cream and cheddar cheese, and cumin. It resembled Mexican rice but with a creamy/cheesy dimension. She cooked the stuffed peppers on Butch and Fonda’s little grill and cooked the extra stuffing on our cooktop. She served the dish with Clementine orange wedges and a glass of Franzia Refreshing White wine to make an outstanding meal.

After dinner we sat outside Butch and Fonda’s bus enjoying the cool desert night air and watching the lights of airplanes flying overhead. It eventually cooled off enough that we returned to our coach where I continued to work on blog posts and Linda worked on the bakery accounting. She eventually went off to bed and I uploaded survey items to the FMCA Education Committee folder in our Dropbox and sent an e-nail to the committee. We have a committee work session tomorrow at 4 PM EST (2 PM MST).

Vehicles positioned east of Bouse, AZ to watch the Parker 435 off-road race.

2015/02/09 (M) A Bright Idea

Butch called around 8:20 AM to let me know that our light bulb order was at the Post Office awaiting pickup. He and Fonda were headed to the Quartzsite Gem and Mineral Club for a day-long class on faceting, so he gave me the parcel slip so I could go pick up the package.

While we were eating breakfast it suddenly occurred to me that we should visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West while we are camped near Tucson next month. Linda went to the website and discovered that it is in Scottsdale which is a northern Suburb of Phoenix and is closer to Quartzsite than it us to Tucson. We selected a couple of possible dates and she went online to get tickets. The “Behind the Scenes” tours are only done on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. She tried to get tickets for Monday February 16 but they only had one left. She called but they would not sell us two tickets. We waited way too long to think of this and painted ourselves into a corner so it may not happen on this trip to the southwest.

I drove to the Quartzsite Post Office after breakfast and retrieved the package, only my second trip to the Post Office to transact business since we arrived in Q. The first trip was to sign up for the P. O. Box. Linda usually takes care of the mail while she is out walking and Butch usually checks the P. O. Box, which is at a different location that is not quite as convenient a walk from our camp as the main building. We have not used the P. O. Box very much, but it has been invaluable when we have.

I worked most of the day on some of my blog posts for December 2014. I took a break around 12:30 for a bite of lunch and then called Daryl Lawrence and left a message regarding our TireTraker TT-400C monitor which appears to not be recharging.

The Parker 425 checkpoint east of Bouse, AZ. This race is a BIG deal with fire, EMS, and helicopter coverage.

Gaye Young called around 1:30 PM to make sure I was going to participate in the FMCA Education Committee work session at 2 PM. (Gaye is the chairperson of the committee.) There were only two items on the agenda and I had to give the status report on both of them. Our work sessions and meetings are conducted by telephone conference. They usually last an hour and today was not an exception. If committee members provide me with additional input this week regarding an education survey we are developing I will have some work to do the last two weeks of the month in addition to working on articles for Bus Conversion Magazine, completing some minor repairs on the bus, finishing the cleaning/waxing of the exterior of the bus, and cleaning/waxing the car.

I managed to upload consolidated blog posts, including some photographs, for December 5 – 8, 9 – 12, and 13 – 16, 2014. I did not take very many photos while we were traveling but once we got settled in Q I got the camera out and started using it.

I got a call back from Jeff at TireTraker support. I explained what the monitor was (not) doing and he agreed to mail me a new one along with a new charger. We will return the defective one to Daryl at Escapade next month.

Linda cooked up a couple of Tofurkey brand vegan Italian sausages with sweet onions and sweet red bell peppers and served some broccoli as a side dish. After dinner I removed my bulbs from the Bulbtown shipment and checked the quantities and prices against my spreadsheet. I then took the remaining bulbs over to Butch. He had ordered 10 #4003 bulbs to use in his bay fixtures and realized when he saw them that he should have ordered #4004s. Both are 24VDC bulbs but the #4003s have a single contact base whereas #4004s have a double contact base. I think my bay light fixtures may take #4003s. I will check tomorrow and if so I will buy them instead of Butch.

We sat outside with the lights off enjoying a glass of wine while watching the long lingering sunset backlight the mountains to our west. As the sunset faded we looked at the stars and watched aircraft lights moving east and west high over the desert. It still cools off here after the sun sets but not as quickly, nor as dramatically, as it did just a week ago.

I combined the blog posts for December 17 – 20, 2014. I had selected and processed photos for this post earlier so it was ready to upload at 11 PM but I did not want to go through the process at that late hour. I dealt with a couple of e-mails and then went to bed. A short time later Jasper threw up a large quantity of food so I had to get up and deal with that. It looked like it had some hair mixed in with it, but I don’t know if that was the root cause.

2015/02/10 (T) Deionized

We were planning on heading to the Peg Leg Monument boondocking area on Thursday, spending the night in Indio, California and visiting Joshua Tree National Park (JTNP) on Friday before driving home Friday evening. Ken Harrison from the FMCA Freethinkers indicated that he and Linda would not make it to Peg Leg until Friday. That prompted us to consider flipping our plans, doing JTNP on Thursday and Peg leg on Friday. Either way we will stay in Indio as we already have reservations at a motel.

The Polaris RZR (“razer”) was one of the most popular 4-wheel ATVs in and around Q.

We had another stay-at-home day relaxing while getting things done. Linda was going to drive to Blythe for groceries, but decided to go on Sunday as we will be away from camp all of Thursday and Friday and much of Saturday. She is going to see if the Farmers Market is still operating tomorrow morning. If not she will stop by the Road Runner Market.

As has been our pattern recently Linda went for a long walk (5 miles) while I continued to work on blog posts. We had a light lunch when she returned. I then called Teeko’s Coffee and Tea in Howell, Michigan and ordered six pounds of roasted coffee beans to be shipped to us here in Q. We are approaching the midpoint of our snowbird season and are almost out of the five pounds of coffee we started with. Jeff is going to roast two pounds each of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe half-caff, Sweet Seattle Dreams half-calf, and Cafe Europe Blend half-caff. He will let it out-gas for a couple of days and then vacuum seal it in one-pound portions and mail it to us in a USPS flat rate box that will go to our P. O. Box in Q. That should be enough to get us home even if we do not get there until late April.

Butch is always looking out for us and trying to help us spend our retirement dollars so he sent me a link to a portable two-tank water de-ionizing system that is available from RVupgrades.com. The system is intended for washing/finishing cars and RVs as de-ionized water has had all of the dissolved minerals removed and does not leave spots on surfaces when it dries. It is not, however, considered suitable for drinking. The two tanks are plumbed in series and use special resin beds that have to be replaced when exhausted rather than recharged. The first tank removes cations and the second removes anions, leaving the water completely deionized. The cations are the positively charged ones typically “removed” by water “softeners”, such as calcium, iron, and magnesium, through ion exchange with sodium. The anions are the negatively charged ones that water softeners typically do not remove, including fluoride and sodium. The dual tank system is about 33% more expensive than a single tank portable water softener, but given the time, expense, and frustration I am experiencing trying to clean and wax our motorcoach I am seriously considering ordering one tomorrow.

I uploaded two consolidated blog posts yesterday and another one this afternoon. I consolidated the posts for December 21 – 26, 2014, selected and processed the photos, and then took a break to sit outside and just enjoy the weather. No book, no iPad, no computer; just ahhhh. It was 78 degrees F with 19% relative humidity, a steady breeze from the northwest, and a hot sun shining through absolutely clear blue skies. Linda and I agreed that it was the most perfect weather day we have had so far this winter.

Linda had some seitan ‘mock’ beef in the freezer that she heated in a saucepan and served with basmati rice accented with soy sauce. Very simple but very tasty. After dinner I uploaded the December 21 – 26 consolidated blog post along with 12 photos, entered all of the tags, and published it.

I got an e-mail yesterday from Cherie Ve Ard of Technomadia asking if we would be interested in previewing/testing another new website. I said ‘yes’ and she responded with the URL for the development site. When I was done with our website I went to the new one and created an account. I got an activation e-mail, clicked the link, and was able to login. I spent an hour looking around the site and captured my impressions and suggestions in an e-mail back to the development team. I took a few minutes to investigate portable water deionizers but by then it was too late to get involved in any serious research so I went to bed.

2015/02/11 (W) Update This!

Hi Jolly’s (Hadji Ali’s) gravesite in the Quartzsite Cemetary; allegedly the most visited place in Q.

Linda’s cell phone rang just before 8 AM. It was Barb. She and Jim were up, dressed, and had the golf cart out and ready to go to the Farmers Market. When we mentioned it yesterday Barb said she wanted to go and Linda indicated that it was open from 8 AM to noon. Somehow that got translated into leaving at 8 AM to go to the market. Linda, being a good sport, got up, got dressed and walked over about 8:15 and said she was ready to go. No breakfast, no coffee, just the “git er done” spirit of the old west. I stayed behind and got the coffee ready to brew when she returned. I then got to work on computer stuff in the true “git er done” spirit of the new/virtual west.

They returned from the Farmers Market around 9:30 AM. Linda bought another Romanesco brocciflower, some Brussels sprouts, grapefruit, and oranges. To our delight Barry’s Breads was also there and had a few loaves of Barry’s Basic Bread. He told Linda he will be around, at least at the Wednesday Farmers Market, through the end of this month.

As much as I would like to have de-ionized water available for rinsing the coach as I wash it, I decided not to speed hundreds of dollars without first doing deeper research into the available technologies and their life cycle costs. I had enough other stuff to do today that I did not want to make time to dig into this new topic.

Linda saw a photographers vest at the Salvation Army resale store the other day but did not buy it as it was $15, pricey for the SA, and she wasn’t sure it would fit me. We drove over to the store to see if it was still there. It was, and it was too small for me. It also had a defective zipper. For a moment I thought we were going to have to buy it so I could take it home and cut it off. I managed instead to pull it off over my head like a t-shirt and Linda was then able to get the zipper undone and put it back on the rack. This was my first time in the store so while we were there I found two pairs of shorts for $2 each, a third pair for $0.50, and a lightweight, lined, waist-length London Fog jacket for $0.25. Linda found a white hand-held mixer with two beaters for $4. Deal.

When we got back Linda called the Prince of Tucson RV Park and made a reservation for the evening of Thursday, March 5th. Lou and Val Petkus will already be there and this will allow us to caravan into the SKP Escapade at the Pima County Fairgrounds first thing Friday morning. By coming in together we will be able to park together which will make our staff photography work more convenient.

My computer indicated that it had a large number of updates to install; 34, to be exact. It was a 334 MB download so I turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi and switched my computer over to it. The Mi-Fi is much faster than the Wi-Fi and I find that with large downloads the faster I get them done the more likely they are to complete successfully. When those were done downloading and installing I had to restart my computer to finish the installation. I also had an updated driver available for the NVIDIA GeForce graphics processor, so I downloaded and installed that.

I figured that if I had updates for my computer Linda would have them for hers. I switched her computer over to our Mi-Fi and checked for updates. She had 20 recommended and 4 optional. I selected all 24 and the download was 980 MB. That’s a lot of updates so I started it and let it run. As always, finishing the installation required the computer to be rebooted. When it restarted her computer the screen was once again functioning normally. Go figure. She also had an Adobe Creative Cloud update so I started that. It failed at the 29% point so closed it and restarted it. The second time it ran to completion.

Linda needed to work at her computer so we both sat at the dinette table and did our respective computer things. She brought our financial records up-to-date in Quicken and I compiled and then uploaded a consolidated blog post for the last six days of December 2014. I had e-mails going back and forth with some of our fellow FMCA Freethinkers regarding the Peg Leg gathering and ended up joining the Freedom From Religion Foundation. I’ve meant to do that for a while and the electrons finally aligned just right this afternoon.

Hi Jolly’s pyramid gravesite marker is a State Historical Site.

Somewhere during the course of the afternoon we had sandwiches for lunch and snacked on dried fruits and nuts. Kathi Slater called to check on Linda’s travel arrangements, after which I made popcorn. Linda borrowed a small cooler from Butch and Fonda for our 2-day trip to California and back. Fonda came over to go through the chores involved in caring for the cats while we are away and Linda gave her a set of keys to the bus.

I had seen a quick notification from the RV Internet Resource Center (Mobile Internet Aficionados membership website) that WiFiRanger had finally released their new firmware upgrade for the WiFiRanger Mobile. Using my iPad as the control panel I switched our WFR-MT from the Wi-Fi/DSL connection to our Verizon Mi-Fi. Again, I wanted to make sure this upgrade got downloaded as quickly as possible through the most reliable connection we have. The download was reasonably quick but the installation took quite a while. My iPad eventually lost contact with the WFR-MT and I just left it to finish and went over to visit with Butch and Fonda and Linda. We came back to our coach when their dinner was ready and the WFR-MT firmware upgrade had finished installing successfully. I switched the connection back to the Wi-Fi/DSL that we get to use as part of our “rent” while we are here. I switched our laptops back to our internal Wi-Fi network and then shut the Verizon Mi-Fi off to let it recharge.

Neither of us was very hungry after snacking late this afternoon so Linda sliced the remaining tofu and pan-seared it. She caramelized onions, added BBQ sauce, and served it open faced over the tofu. After dinner Linda made a list of things we needed to take tomorrow while I made a final check of e-mail. I e-mailed Lou Petkus to let him know that we were booked into the Prince of Tucson RV Park for March 5th. I sent a message to Curtis Coleman via RVillage to accept his invitation to boondock in his driveway and see if March 3 and 4 would work for him. He phoned back to confirm that it would be OK and then sent his address via TXT message. I also had an e-mail from Kate de Fuccio and replied to that. I checked for updates and my computer had several more to install so I started that process. I checked Linda’s computer but she did not have any updates pending. Although we got a lot of other things done today it felt like I had mostly dealt with computer updates. Update days are often like that and you cannot schedule them because you never know when Microsoft is going to drop a big ‘update bomb’ in your lap.

Linda went to bed around her usual time. I turned in shortly thereafter and much earlier than I have been. We plan to get up at 6 AM tomorrow, have a light breakfast, finish packing for our trip, and be on the road at 7 AM. We will stop at Albertson’s in Blythe, California for some water, ice, and other snack items to get us through the day to dinner at Native Foods in Palm Springs and give us something to eat on Friday while we are at the Peg Leg gathering. Albertson’s opens at 6 AM PST, which corresponds to our 7 AM MST departure time. We should arrive at the south entrance to Joshua Tree National Park around 7:30 AM PST which will give us a good, long day to explore the park.

2015/02/06 (F) KOFA NWR Palm Canyon

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Palm Canyon Road entrance to KOFA NWR.

I slept in until 8 AM, got up, put on my sweats, and made a pot of coffee. While that was brewing I turned the TT-400C TPMS monitor on and then adjusted the pressures in the four car tires and checked the passenger side steer tire on the bus. Based on the temperatures it was reporting the monitor appeared to not be picking up the six rear tires on the bus so I plugged the PressurePro repeater in. It is mounted in the passenger side rear corner bedroom cabinet and Darryl Lawrence said it should work fine with the TT-400C monitor. Consumer TPM Systems all operate on the same frequency of 433.92 MHz and the repeater just receives, amplifies, and retransmits signals on that frequency. The sensors have a unique digital identity and send out an encoded digital signal; that’s how the receiver/monitors know which signals to display and ignore the rest.

Linda in the parking lot at the mouth of Palm Canyon, KOFA NWR, AZ.

The north wall of Palm Canyon, KOFA NWR, AZ.

After a breakfast of juice and cinnamon raisin oatmeal Linda went for a walk while the air temperature was still cool. I stayed at the coach and dumped the holding tanks, made up our mixture of a bottle of PineSol with an equal amount of water and a cup of Calgon bath beads. Shake until dissolved and add ~60% to the black tank (via the toilet) and the other 40% to the gray tank via the bathroom and kitchen sinks, including the In-Sink-Erator.

The beginnng of the Palm Canyon trail, KOFA NWR, AZ.

With my chores done I recorded the dump in our notebook and then added the information to our Water Usage spreadsheet. According to the spreadsheet and our notebook it had been 19 days since we last emptied the waste tanks. I knew that wasn’t possible as we normally dump every 9 to 10 days when we are in normal water usage mode, and Marilyn was here for the first half of that interval. Clearly we had forgotten to record a dump 9 or 10 days ago.

The north wall farther into Palm Canyon, KOFA NWR, AZ.

I finished working on some additional draft items for the survey the FMCA National Education Committee wants to send out. I sent them to the committee chair (Gaye) and the member whose items I was revising. We have another phone meeting on Monday and I wanted to get these items out to the committee by tomorrow so the members have time to look at them.

I got an e-mail from Gary at BCM last night advising the editor that I was doing an article on Quartzsite for the February 2015 issue and would have it done by the end of next week. I e-mailed him back last night and then wrote it this morning and e-mailed it to him and Mike, the editor, for review. Although I am no longer employed, I sometimes still work better against a deadline.

Deeper into Palm Canyon approaching the 1/2 mile mark. KOFA NWR, AZ.

After cleaning and waxing the bus and spending a lot of time sitting in front of our computers we wanted to get away from camp and do some sight-seeing. The repair we had done yesterday to the passenger side rear tire on our car seemed to be holding so at 2PM we headed for the King OF Arizona (KOFA) National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) Palm Canyon area about 20 miles south of town.

A lone palm backlit high up on the south wall of Palm Canyon, KOFA NWR, AZ.

This seemed like a good spot to stop and let Linda take my picture for a change. Palm Canyon, KOFA NWR, AZ.

Palm Canyon is an enormous slot in the Kofa Mountains. The canyon is aligned ENE to WSW opening to the WSW so we figured the best light would be in the mid-to-late afternoon. To get there we drove south out of Quartzsite on US-95 about 19 miles to Palm Canyon Road and then east for seven miles on a good gravel roadway. Good is relative, of course; it took as long to drive the 7 miles as it did the 19. The trailhead is at the end of the road, which is the beginning of the canyon. There are also several areas just off the parking/turnaround designated for tent camping, and it would be a spectacular place to pitch a tent. The last mile or so of the road climbs more than you realize until you get to the parking area and are treated to a sweeping view of part of the La Paz Valley that stretches for over 100 miles from Parker on the north end to somewhere north of Yuma on the south end.

Looking WSW back out of Palm Canyon at the La Paz Valley. The trail climbs it goes deeper into the canyon. KOFA NWR, AZ.

There they are! The fan palms of Palm Canyon high up in a shaded crevice on the south wall of the canyon. KOFA NWR, AZ.

The trail is a 1/2 mile hike into the canyon near the floor but to the south of, and above, the central drainage wash. The canyon is named for the California Fan Palm trees that grow there; the only naturally occurring Palm trees in Arizona. There is lots of other vegetation in the canyon, however, and the palms are a bit elusive. About a half mile in there is a small wooden sign with an arrow pointing up to the left at a 45 degree angle. All the sign had on it was the word “PALMS.” And there they were, way up in a narrow crevice. Mind you, some of the trees in this main grove have trunks that are 20 inches in diameter, but the canyon is a big place and the trees are far away from where we were standing. The only wildlife we saw up close were small lizards about 3″ long, 6″ with their tails. We heard and then saw a bird soaring high above the southern edge of the canyon but could not tell what it was.

Delicate colors on the north wall of Palm Canyon in the late afternoon sun. KOFA NWR, AZ.

The light was nice hiking in and got better and better as we hiked out. The trail climbs quite a bit from the parking area, but not steeply in any one place. We took our time and I took a lot of photographs. By the time we got back in our car the sun had slipped behind the Dome Rock Mountain Range that defines the western edge of the La Paz Valley. We had nice colors in every direction but without any clouds we did have a particularly photogenic sunset. By the time we got back to US-95 it was approaching 6:20 PM and we needed our headlights even through the glow along the crest of the mountains continued almost all the way back to town.

Looking back into Palm Canyon as we hike out. KOFA NWR, AZ.

Linda made a green salad with fresh tomatoes and blueberries, dried fruit, and nuts and dressed it with Raspberry Walnut Vinaigrette. She heated up a couple of tortillas and used them to make a quesadilla-like thing with Daiya (vegan) cheese, tomato slices, and jalapeño pepper slices. We had a small glass of Franzia Refreshing White wine with dinner and had red grapes for desert.

Before we left for our hike I had unplugged the power supply from my ASUS notebook computer to let it cool off. It seems to me that it runs hot. I plugged it in when we got back and had a notification on the screen that the computer needed to be restarted to complete the installation of updates.

The only wildlife we saw up close in Palm Canyon. KOFA NWR, AZ.

The north wall at the entrance to Palm Canyon in the glow of sunset. KOFA NWR, AZ.

I decided to check my e-mail first and had a couple from Gary, so I called him after we finished dinner and we chatted for about an hour. It sounds like the article I sent him this morning on Quartzsite 2015 won’t run until the March issue, so that will give me a little more time to select and process photos, experience more things here, and possibly extend the article a bit. In the meantime Gary is going to have Stacy proofread all of the articles that are ready plus the one I just sent.

My ASUS laptop keyboard appears to be functioning correctly again so I was reluctant to restart my computer, but the message said it would restart in one day on its own anyway. I guess there’s no time like the present to find out if the machine has a problem. It finished whatever it was it needed to do, powered down, and restarted without a hitch. I then copied all of the photos from our canyon hike to the computer and NAS and started looking at them. I processed a few and then went to bed.

2015/02/01-05 (N-R) Another Month in Q

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2015/02/01 (N) Hola February

Yesterday would have been an excellent day to continue cleaning and waxing the outside of the bus—cool and cloudy without a lot of breeze—but it was also an excellent day for the inside computer work that we both needed/wanted to do. I downloaded the free version of the Simple:Press forum WordPress plug-in the day before yesterday and was going to make a priority of installing it today on the FMCA Freethinkers website I have been developing until the activation of the Jetpack Site Management feature caused the admin panel (app) to crash. We have had a problem for a while with one member who was unable (or unwilling) to interact appropriately online via our e-mail reflector. The reflector does not require a login and does not have any way to moderate discussions or block/remove posts, so our options as a chapter were very limited. A WordPress-based forum would give us all of those features.

I had an e-mail reply from support@ipower.com indicating that the Wordfence plugin had caused the problem. They needed the answer to the security question in order to authenticate my support request and fix the problem. Bob Pelc provided me with that information which I supplied back to ipower.com. Later in the day I got an e-mail indicating that the problem was resolved and I was, in fact, able to log in without any problems. The e-mail said the Wordfence plugin had caused the crash and that they disabled it, but after I logged in it was still activated. I did not, however, take the time to check if it was functioning correctly. I also did not install the Simple:Press forum at this time.

For breakfast Linda improvised a potato tofu scramble with nutritional yeast, garlic, and other seasonings. It was a hearty and flavorful start to the day. After breakfast I called Jim A. back to discuss the FMCA seminar listing categorization document we have been working on.

I settled in to work at my computer on the consolidated blog post for November 10-16 while Linda settled in to work on accounting for the bakery. She is also approaching the time of year when she has to pull tax returns together. She uses Turbo Tax and needs an updated version each year. The products she needed were on sale through Amazon Prime. She purchased and download them, which also placed them in her Amazon software library, and they installed and opened without a hitch.

I got an e-mail from Harvey Carter (AC8NO), president of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC), asking me to update the officer listing on the club website. I took care of that and also changed that contact form (Contact Us page) to e-mail him instead of former president Mike Sharpe (WX8H).

By 2:30 PM I was tired of sitting in front of my computer so I changed into my work clothes and spent an hour trying to clean and wax a couple of windows on the bus. The passenger side, which faces south, was so hot I cloud not touch it for very long, so I worked on the north side in the shade.

Jim/Flo L. and Jim/Barb B. disassembled the Select Comfort air mattress we had put in the park model trailer and divided up the parts. We were going to donate it to the Salvation Army but did not get it done fast enough. Jim B. would like the pump and controllers but Butch and Fonda need them to replace the defective unit on the mattress in their guest bedroom. Since that is where I sleep when I am there, it is in my best interest to give it to them.

We invited all of our neighbors to come over for happy hour at 4 PM. Barb B. came over with a glass of wine at 4:20 PM, so I poured a glass for Linda and me. Jim B. was taking a nap as were Butch and Fonda. (Hey; retirement is hard work!). Butch and Fonda eventually shook the cobwebs out and came over. Jim and Flo L. arrived but busied themselves with dinner preparations. They were joining Jim/Barb B. for a belated Christmas dinner. Jim B. eventually awoke and Barb left to join the other three for dinner. Fonda left just before 6 PM to go to church but returned a few minutes later. Apparently the evening service had been cancelled because of the Super Bowl. She and Butch visited as the sun set and eventually it got chilly enough that we all decided to go inside.

I e-mailed Chuck Spera and my long-time friend John (J. C.) Armbruster earlier in the day but had not gotten responses from either of them by bedtime. During the evening I had e-mails going back and forth with Steve Willey regarding the upcoming informal FMCA Freethinker gathering at the Liar Peg Leg Smith Monument boondocking area in Borrego Springs, California. I also e-mailed Jim Ellmore regarding the same event.

A typical sunset in Quartzsite, Arizona as seen from our campsite on the north end of town.

2015/02/02 (M) Market Day

The last 24 hours have brought into focus why we are here for the winter. It will be sunny and 80 degrees F today. Detroit got 16.7 inches of snow from the storm that hit over the weekend, with 12 inches in Ann Arbor and similar amounts in Dexter, Howell, and Brighton. When we checked this morning it was 7 degrees at home and going up to a high of 14. Yeah, we are not missing that.

Breakfast was the bland store-bought bulk granola we have had to eat since running out of Linda’s homemade granola some weeks ago. I wish we could carry a five-month supply of her granola; it’s that good. Right after breakfast Linda started putting together menu ideas and a shopping list while I reviewed the latest seminar listing from Jim A. and e-mailed it back to him. He called later to discuss it briefly. I started working on yet another consolidated blog post for 17-23 Nov 2014 and did that until I could not stand to sit any longer. The antidote for was go outside and work on cleaning and waxing the rear cap of the bus.

Butch and Fonda left around 9 AM and drove to Parker to go shopping at Wal-Mart. Back home they shop at the Wal-Mart in Logansport and are familiar with the items there. Not long after they left Linda drove to Blythe, California to do our grocery shopping for the week. Of the supermarkets available to us we prefer the Albertson’s in Blythe, followed by the Smart & Final Extra at the same intersection.

Butch and Fonda returned from shopping and so did Jim and Barb. Butch asked if I had ordered the coil for the MAC solenoid air valve that controls the a-c shutters behind the front bumper. I hadn’t, so I took a break from cleaning and waxing the outside of the bus and called MAC Valve to order a replacement coil for the 111B601BAAA solenoid valve. (I still have the old valve but I do not think I have it with us in the bus.)

Jim L. stopped by with some very fresh grapefruit and we got to talking about automotive detailing. He recommended Finesse from 3M for polishing paint without leaving marks. He said it works so well that the paint looks “wet” when you are done. Butch had also suggested that I look at the Cyclo 5 dual head orbiting buffer/polisher. Apparently this machine can finish paint with no swirl marks.

The FMCA Freethinker website /WP-admin/ panel was back up and running. I logged in and checked the plugins. They were all there but they had ALL been deactivated. Tech support at ipower.com had indicated that they were going to disable the Wordfence plugin. I re-activated most of them, but not all, and specifically did not re-activate the Jetpack plugin. It is a large, feature rich plugin and the only thing I use is the Carousel feature to manage native WordPress image galleries. Unfortunately I need that feature and have not found another plugin that does what I need.

I worked for most of the evening on the consolidated blog post. By the time I finished it was too late to start selecting and editing photos, so I will do that tomorrow if I have time.

2015/03/03 (T) Wax On, Wax Off

I knew there was something else I was supposed to do yesterday, but I could not remember what it was. I sometimes put “tasks” on my calendar, but that does not help if do not check it. I remembered this morning what it was; I needed to call Sunset Sportswear in South Lyon, Michigan and follow up on an e-mail I sent last Thursday regarding our order for personalized SLAARC jackets. I made that call and Pam took our credit card information. Barb handles sales but had not made it in yet due to the snow. Sunset Sportswear was closed yesterday because of the storm so if I had remembered to call them it would have been for naught. Things often work out like that.

I also got an e-mail from the Escapees RV Club regarding the upcoming Escapade rally. It indicated we could extend our stay until Sunday noon. I called Lou Petkus, the head staff photographer for the Escapade, to let him know. The rally ends on Thursday with normal departure on Friday and staff departure on Saturday. Lou is trying to arrange a photography field trip for Saturday so the fact that anyone can stay until Sunday should help with participation. I called the SKP headquarters and booked the extra night.

I confirmed which RV Park Lou and Val will be in on March 5th and I think we will try to get in there as well. That location will position us close to the rally venue and allow us to caravan in together and park together. (We have to be in by 11AM on the 6th.) That, in turn, should make our staff photography work more convenient. We plan to hang out (dry camp) with RVillage founder Curtis Coleman for a couple of nights before this at his rental home near Casa Grande, which will put us a lot closer to Tucson than we are here in Quartzsite.

We had also mentioned to Lou and Val at Quartzfest that we were thinking of heading to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument after the Escapade. They had been discussing it and decided they would like to go there as well so we will probably caravan there with them. After OPCNM we plan to head to Big Bend NP (BBNP) in Texas and Lou and Val would also like to go there. That is a three day drive for us, and we may take six or seven days to get there depending on where we might stop and what there is to see long the way. Whether we travel together or separate will be determined later. Our friend, Mara, and another women from the WINs are also headed to BBNP sometime in March and we have tentatively agreed to meet up with them if we can work out the timing.

I checked my e-mail and had a reply from Jetpack tech support at WordPress.com. “Happiness Engineer” Jeremy said that Wordfence has been known to cause issues with the Jetpack plugin. He acknowledged that Wordfence is a powerful and important plugin but can be very aggressive in protecting websites. Given that Wordfence appears to have caused the crash of the FMCAA Freethinkers WordPress /WP-admin/ Jeremy said I probably did not need to reinstall the Jetpack plugin. I filled out a support ticket yesterday for this issue on the Wordfence website as I have a premium (paid) membership. They acknowledged the support ticket right away but an actual response will likely take longer.

I had all of these communications chores done by 11 AM and decided to continue cleaning and waxing the outside of the bus. I started with the rear, as it was still in the shade, and finished the lower half. It was tedious as that is the engine hatch and it has numerous horizontal indentations that run the full width. These indentations are open on the inside top for airflow and have screens to keep things from getting in (like fingers).

Another view of the sunset from our campsite in Quartzsite, AZ.

I continued on around to the driver side of the bus which faces north. The temperature this afternoon got up to 80 degrees F, and it was very hot in the sun, but it was pleasantly cool in the shade of the bus. It was near perfect conditions for the work I was doing. I worked most of the afternoon and did not quite get the back half of the bus cleaned and waxed. A couple of bay doors and I will be past the half way point on that side.

I am going to try to work on this at least a few hours every day, otherwise it will never get done and this is an ideal place to work on it as long as I am not working in the sun. The south facing passenger side is going to be more of a challenge and I will have to limit my work to the morning before the body panels heat up.

UPS showed up today with my coil for the MAC valve which turned out to be an entire new valve. Rather than try to remove the solenoid coil I may just install the whole valve. UPS also brought Fonda’s new sewing machine. It only weighs 13 pounds.

Butch got back from a rock hunting field trip late in the afternoon and we stood around chatting as an amazing sunset developed around us. As I have mentioned before, sunsets here are often 360 degree events and this one surrounded us with color before finally fading into another starry night.

Linda made a wonderful dish for dinner last night and we had it again this evening. She pan-grilled polenta and served it on a bed of dark leafy greens topped with puttanesca sauce made from scratch.

After dinner I selected photographs for my November 17 – 23, 2014 blog post and processed them. I uploaded the text to our WordPress site and then uploaded, captioned, and integrated each photo in turn. I also had to enter all of the tags, which I figure out as I read through the post. If there is one thing I would like to have at this point it is the ability to highlight key words and phrases in my Word document and have them automatically become tags when the text is uploaded.

By the time I published the post and went to bed to finish this one it was midnight. At eight minutes after midnight MST I was one hour into my 63rd year as I was born on this date at 00:08 in the Central Time Zone, where eight minutes past midnight happened an hour ago.

2015/02/04 (W) 63 and Counting

I finished my blog post for yesterday late last night and e-mailed it to myself at eight minutes after midnight, the hour and minute of my birth, or so I have always been told. Linda and the cats were all asleep and I observed the moment in quiet solitude. As I noted at the end of yesterday’s post I was actually an hour late in my observance as we are currently in the Mountain Time Zone and I was born in the Central Time Zone. But it was the thought that counted.

Sixty-three is not a milestone birthday anniversary, other than making it that far. On my 60th birthday I became eligible to retire, and did so four months later. On my 62nd birthday I became eligible to start drawing social security, but didn’t. On my 65th birthday I will become eligible for Medicare. The year I turn 66 Linda will apply for Social Security benefits and immediately suspend them. I will be eligible for my full Social Security benefit but will not apply for it. I will apply for the spousal benefit instead. Our monthly Social Security benefits continue to increase by 8% per year until age 70, a solid and guaranteed return, so Linda will start taking her benefits then and I will file for, and take, my benefits when I turn 70.

Having thought through the complexities of birthdays, we had breakfast and then I got to work cleaning and waxing the outside of the bus. My plan was to finish the driver side but not spend all day at it. As it turned out, I spent most of the day at it, taking breaks to check e-mail. It is just slow work, especially since so much of it has to be done on a step ladder. I have no idea how many trips I made up and down that ladder, but it was a lot. It is only a seven foot step ladder so I have to stand near the top to reach the top of the sides which are over 12 feet from the ground. I cannot reach very far to the side either, so I work from one side of the ladder then climb down and climb up the other side and work from there. I then climb down and move the ladder about three feet and do it all again; over, and over, and over. But as Long as I keep going it eventually gets done. I am, however, seriously considering getting a Cyclo 5 dual head orbiting buffer/polisher. There is simply too much bus to do this by hand. I am also considering getting a platform to put between two ladders and/or a four-wheel elevated work platform to use in the barn if/when we get it built.

I got a call from our daughter wishing me a happy birthday and had a nice chat with her. I asked if Katie had made a final college selection but she is not done with interviews yet. Perhaps we will know in a few weeks where she is headed in the fall.

Yesterday Linda invited all of our camping neighbors to come over today at 4 PM for happy hour to celebrate my birthday. In preparation she spent part of the day making cupcakes with chocolate frosting. When she wasn’t cooking she did accounting and tax return work for Butch and Fonda. Around 3 PM she prepared bruschetta using what was left of a loaf of Barry’s Basic Bread and the puttanesca sauce she made a couple of nights ago. Larry/Sandy, Jim/Barb, and Butch/Fonda all brought chairs and beverages of their choice. Butch and Fonda brought chips, salsa, and hummus and the peanut and dried fruit mix they make. We sat around talking until the sun set at which point the air temperature cooled off and we all retreated to our rigs.

I got a call from our son during our happy hour and excused myself for a few minutes to chat with him. It was 7:40 PM back in Ann Arbor and Madeline was getting ready for bed. I got to “chat” with her and she wished me a happy birthday. With encouragement from her mom she asked me “How is Arizona?” I told her it was very nice here.

We skipped lunch today and did not have dinner because we filled up on happy hour snacks. Linda played online word games while I started assembling the consolidated blog post for November 24 – 30. She turned on the MiFi and trundled off to bed to watch an episode of Downton Abby on her iPad. I finished editing the post and selected two photos to go with it. When I checked I found that I did not have photos for most of the days covered by the post. I thought about uploading it but decided against it as it still takes time to upload the text, upload and insert the pictures, and create all of the tags and I was too tired to maintain the needed concentration. Somewhere in there I read through a reply from Chuck Spera and sent him the next volley in our e-mail conversation.

Overall it was a good 63rd birthday. Given our winter travel lifestyle I face the interesting prospect of celebrating my birthday somewhere different every year for many years to come.

Our fellow campers gathered by our bus for my 63rd birthday happy hour. L-2-R: Sandy, Larry, Barb, Jim, Butch, Fonda, me. Photo by Linda (not shown).

2015/02/05 (R) A Screwy Tire

The overnight lows are now dropping into the upper 40’s at night and the coach cools off just enough that I turn the heat on in the front of the bus while I make coffee in the morning. Soon enough the sun starts heating up the coach and we are pulling the accordion shades down to keep it out and opening windows and turning on ceiling exhaust fans to draw cool air in. A couple of days ago we finally put the awnings out on the south facing passenger side of the coach. Between the patio awning and the bedroom awning they shade more than half of the upper portion of the coach and help keep the interior temperatures in check. We have not had them out much, however, because of the somewhat persistent winds in the La Paz Valley.

After breakfast I wanted to setup the TireTraker TT-400C TPMS. Once I started I would need to install the sensors on all 13 tires. In order to install the sensor on the spare tire in the car I had to empty out the back so I could get to the tire. Linda was helping me and noticed a screw in the passenger side rear tire. It was right at the edge of the tread but not technically in the side wall. The tire was holding pressure but when I started to back the screw out it started to hiss so I screwed it back in. Nuts.

Linda got online to look for tire repair shops in Quartzsite. The first three numbers we tried were out of service and the Love’s Truck Stop only repaired big tires, not small ones, so I called Jim Liebherr to see if he knew of some place in town. Flo answered the phone and could not locate Jim so I asked for a return phone call. Butch then offered to drive me downtown where he thought he remembered seeing a tire shop. As we were pulling out of our camp it occurred to Butch that the RV Pit Stop, just south of us on Central Avenue, might do tire repairs. Before we even got that far we saw the sign for Best Auto and Tires. We have walked or driven past this place dozens of times but never paid any attention to the fact they sold and serviced tires. At the time we did not care.

They said they would have to see the tire so we drove back to camp and I drove back in the car. They said they could repair it properly with an internal patch and they would get right on it if I wanted to wait for it. $14. Deal. I could easily have walked back to camp from there but I was back with the car within an hour. If the tire had not been repairable we would have had to take it off the car and use Butch’s Chevy Suburban to drive it to Yuma or Lake Havasu City where there are Discount Tire Locations.

Jim L. returned my earlier phone call while I was waiting for the tire. He and Flo use a dentist in Los Algodones, Mexico and are very satisfied with the service and price. I have a tooth that is bothering me just a bit and was giving some serious consideration to making an appointment with someone in Los Algodones.

I installed the batteries in our new TT-400C sensors and programmed the baseline pressures into the monitor (receiver). I then installed the sensors on the bus and car tires, linking each one to the monitor as I went. Programming the baseline pressures first is the easier way to install the system. In setup mode the monitor displays each tire position in turn. While the position is displayed a sensor is screwed onto the valve stem. The application of pressure to the sensor “wakes it up.” When the sensor starts transmitting the monitor associates it with the displayed tire position. After exiting setup mode only the programmed tire positions display on the monitor.

In addition to the overall setup procedure there are several things I like better about the TT-400C system compared to the PressurePro system we have had since the 2008 FMCA national rally in St. Paul, Minnesota. A major one is that the baseline pressures are programmed into the monitor. On the PP-TPMS the baseline pressures are determined by the pressure in the tire at the time the sensor is put on. Another thing I like is that the TT-TPMS monitor is powered by rechargeable batteries and is not plugged in when in use. That makes it much more convenient to move it between the bus and the car, but especially to carry it around while installing and associating the sensors to wheel positions. Finally, I like the sensors, which are much smaller and only weigh 0.4 ounces each.

Linda helped me reload the back of the Element and sort through all of the “stuff” that was “stuffed” in the glove box and the passenger side dashboard trays. (When was the last time someone actually stored gloves in an automotive glove box?). With everything sorted out and repackaged in ZipLock bags I stored it back in the glove box and locked up the car.

Linda spent part the morning working on accounting and tax returns for Butch and Fonda and talking on the phone to Dave, the controller at Metropolitan Baking. I got a call later from Jim Ammenheiser and then did a final proofreading of our Education Committee recommendation to FMCA staff for how to restructure the categorization and listing of seminars and activities in the national rally programs.

We took a break and had the last two cupcakes from yesterday with some vegan Mocha Almond Fudge coconut “ice cream.” We were supposed to have these last night for my birthday but we were not hungry after snacking at the happy hour birthday gathering. Linda then went for a walk. Linda got me a birthday card and a towel with an elastic edged hole for my head. I tend to get food on my shirts when I eat and the towel is basically an adult bib that can be easily laundered.

Our fresh water tank was a bottle cap shy of empty so I filled it. It usually takes about 50 minutes to fill the tank starting from empty so I set the timer on my smartphone for 40 minutes. When it signaled me to check on the progress the tank was already overflowing. (It has a vent tube on top of the tank that runs through the floor of the bay.) I don’t think I wasted more than a few gallons of soft water so it should not throw my water usage and softening calculations off by much. The good news was that the post-fill hardness test showed the water coming out of the softener at 0.0 to 0.5 gpg total hardness (0 to 10 ppm.) That was better than the reading I got right after I recharged the softener, so perhaps it still had some residual salt in it initially.

At 4 PM I was getting ready to upload a blog post when the UPS truck showed up and dropped off two boxes for me. It was the Chemical Guys microfiber products I had ordered recently, including two microfiber auto detailing aprons. Butch returned a few minutes later with a small package for me. It was the lens hood I had ordered for my Sony zoom lens and it had been mailed USPS. He also had eight (8) Full River 6V L16 AGM batteries. I helped him unload them from the Suburban onto the concrete pad on the driver side of their bus. Fonda emptied out the driver’s side of their battery bay and she and I then moved the batteries to the bay where Butch positioned them. He left them in their boxes and will install them when they get back to Twelve Mile.

At 5:15 PM I finally got around to uploading the consolidated blog post for the last week of November (2014). I then started thinking about what to do with my December 2014 posts. As of today I am still 67 posts behind and putting up daily posts is not realistic. In looking through my photos I was surprised to find that I took very few from the time we left the house until we arrived in Quartzsite. I decided to do consolidated posts for Dec 1 – 4 (Twelve Mike, IN to Alvarado, TX), 5 – 8 (visit with Donn Barnes), and 9 – 12 (travel from Alvarado to Quartzsite, AZ). I have more pictures for the rest of the month, so I will have to figure out what makes sense. I compiled the posts for December 1 – 4, selected and processed one photo, uploaded it, selected the categories, and entered all of the tags. I posted it and then realized I wanted to edit the URLs slightly so I logged back in and found that I was unable to type anything.

It took me a while to figure out that the problem was the built-in keyboard on my ASUS G750JM ROG notebook computer. I got it at the end of April last year, so I have only had it for eight months. I decided to run a full scan using ESET Smart Security since I could do that with just a mouse and the Bluetooth mouse was working just fine. It found 18 threats and dealt with 16 of them. I then ran CCleaner, after which I enabled the onscreen keyboard. Although intended for use on touchscreen computers, at least I could type things into a search box using my mouse.

I found some references to similar problems on answers.microsoft.com with the suggestion to examine the keyboard device properties. If it indicated the device was installed and working correctly it was probably not a Windows 8.1 problem. The other suggestion was to try an external keyboard. If that worked it would confirm a keyboard hardware problem. I had already gotten my Gigaware wireless keyboard out so I plugged in the USB dongle, turned on the keyboard, and voilà, I could type again!

Another post on the Windows forum listed website links for ASUS support so I started following those. One ASUS website wanted the serial number of my computer, which I had to get off of a tag on the bottom of the case with really small type. Once I had that entered correctly I was able to go to a download page with 81 files available, including bios and chipset code. There were two files that seemed to have something to do with the keyboard. By 1:15 AM I had a half dozen tabs open in two different browsers with no definitive understanding of what had happened or what to do to fix it. I then realized that the Shift Lock key on the keyboard was illuminated and I could toggle it on and off. I could also toggle the Number Lock, so I tried typing and the keyboard was working once again. That, however, did not give me any confidence that it would continue to do so. I decided I was not going to shut the computer down for fear of not being able to log back in on startup. I was not about to start downloading and installing anything at that hour so I went to bed tired, annoyed, and, frankly, a bit discouraged by this unwelcomed turn of events.

2015/01/27-31 (T-S) Q 2015 W5

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2015/01/27 (T) Ahhh, Mexico

We packed quite a bit into today. After having toast and coffee for breakfast we drove to Yuma through heavy cloud cover and fog. It made for an interesting and beautiful drive, but we did not pull off the road to take pictures. There is often a tension between the need to get somewhere and the desire to stop and take photographs. Today the destination took precedence.

When we got to Yuma we drove around looking for the Main Street that led to the heart of downtown and Yuma Territorial Prison. This was only the second time we had been in Yuma and the first time I had driven here and I did not quite remember how the streets ran, which is unusual for me. Yuma is not that big of a town and I was able to get oriented fairly easily with the help of the GPS map. I missed a turn, however, and we ended up driving over the single lane bridge on the Ocean to Ocean Highway. We stopped at a Casino just short of the California border, turned around, and went back over the bridge. Being single lane the traffic is controlled by stop lights on each end.

Main cell block, 1875 Yuma Territorial Prison. Yuma, AZ.

I made the correct turns this time and got us to the parking lot for the 1875 Yuma Territorial Prison State Park. Very little of the original prison remains, but there is enough of it to give a feeling for what it was like. The small museum does a good job of telling the story, but a tour guide (from Canada) helped fill in details and answer questions. Although part of the Arizona State Parks system, it is operated by a local organization staffed by volunteers.

The prison and the Quartermaster State Park are the two main tourist attractions in Yuma. Beyond those two things it is the closest city to Quartzsite with a good selection of major retailers. Yuma is also home to Marine Corps Air Station Yuma and the U. S. Army Yuma Proving Grounds are just 20 miles north of town. But the thing that interested us is that Yuma is the wintertime lettuce bowl of North America. The flat topography and rich soil, watered by an extensive irrigation system fed by the Colorado River and worked by Mexican laborers, spreads as far as the eye can see and supports a vast crop of a large variety of leafy green vegetables.

From the prison I drove west on I-8, almost immediately crossing the Colorado River into the extreme southeast corner of California. Eight miles later we exited onto CA-186 and headed south through the Quechan Indian Reservation to the U.S./Mexican border crossing at Los Algodones. We parked in the Indian owned/operated lot and walked across the border into Mexico; our first ever visit to our southern neighbor. We found it interesting that no one checked us on entry.

Los Algodones is an interesting and unusual little town. It exists because of tourists from north of the border and has been developed to serve some specific needs of those visitors. It has the highest concentration (and number) of dentists and optical shops of any place on earth and quite a few pharmacies too. Many American and Canadian RVers come to this area during the winter months not only for the warm, dry climate, but for annual dental work, eye exams, glasses, and both prescription and over-the-counter drugs. The vast majority of them park on the U. S. side and walk across the border.

We walked the streets of Los Algodones for an hour or more and finally settled at the Pueblo Viejo restaurant for lunch. Linda and Marilyn had bean burritos and bottled mineral water. I made the riskier choice and had a green salad and deep fried peppers. The peppers were thinly sliced jalapeños mixed with sliced onions. Linda and Marilyn had some too, but between the three of us we did not finish them; too hot. At least they were authentic! Puerto Viejo was the #2 rated restaurant on Trip Advisor and everything we read said the town was safe, including the food. (The #1 rated restaurant was a sushi bar.)

The restaurant was just across the street from the port of entry so we walked over there and got in line behind a couple of hundred other people. It took 30 – 40 minutes to reach the customs agent, but the sidewalk was shaded by an overhanging sunscreen and lined with benches so it was comfortable enough. When it was finally our turn we each cleared customs in less than a minute and were finally back the U.S.A. We got to use our credit card size passport cards for the first time.

We drove back to Yuma and found the major outdoor shopping mall where I stopped at Best Buy to look for a lens hood and cap for my Sony alpha kit/zoom lens (DT 3.5-5.6/18-70mm) but they did not have any compatible products.

The drive home up US-95 was very different than the drive down. The clouds and fog were gone and we had a clear view of the mountains to either side of the valley. Once we were north of the U. S. Army Proving Grounds the land to the east of the highway was part of the KOFA a National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest in the country at over 650,000 acres. (KOFA stands for “King OF Arizona, a large mine that once operated in this area.) Between the Proving Grounds and the BLM land south of Quartzsite there are four roads that lead east into the refuge. Overnight camping is permitted within 100 feet of the roads unless otherwise posted, but we saw very little evidence of anyone out there. It is, however, a large, remote, area without any services so it only appeals to a certain kind of boondocker, such as those seeking solitude and a semi-wilderness experience. I say “semi-” because if you can drive there in a 40′ motor home, or a pickup truck pulling a 35′ 5th wheel trailer, it is not wilderness by definition.

About 20 miles south of Q we turned off onto the KOFA NWR road leading to the Palm Canyon trailhead. The canyon is a huge crevice in the 5,000 foot tall mountain and is home to the only indigenous Palm trees in Arizona. The trailhead was another seven (7) miles in from the highway and the trail into the canyon was a half mile hike from there, so we will come back another time earlier in the day and do that. The sun was getting lower in the western sky and the top of the very large mountain to our east was obscured by clouds so the situation was setting up for the possibility of good photographs. We drove in about 3 miles (at 10 – 15 MPH) and then pulled off the road at a good vantage point to take photos. We were rewarded for our decision as the sun bathed the mountains in glorious, warm light.

Although the road was generally good gravel and clearly defined we wanted to leave the refuge and get back to the coach while it was still daylight. As often happens the sunset lingered and the colors deepened as we drove. One of the challenges with shooting sunsets is that if you hang in there until it is over, you have to pack up your gear and extract yourself from the location in the dark. Unless, of course, you are backpacking and have already pitched your tent right there. The same goes for sunrise photography, only in reverse.

Back at the coach we had various snacks for dinner. Butch brought the mail over and we chatted for a few minutes. I worked on several e-mails from Gary at BCM, and Bob from our FMCA Freethinkers chapter. I transferred photos from my camera to my computer and backed them up to the NAS. I then used MS-ICE to create a couple of panoramas from today’s trip and used FIV to post-process them along with a photo of the mountain at sunset. By the time I was done it had been a very long, but interesting, productive, and satisfying day.

View looking north from the 1875 Yuma Terriorial Prison State Park, Yuma, AZ.

2014/01/28 (W) Boomerville

After a light breakfast Linda and Marilyn drove to the local Farmers Market and also spent a little time looking around Desert Gardens. Linda bought some asparagus and a Romanesco brocciflower, which is a cross between broccoli and cauliflower. It grows in a fractal manor based on a Fibonacci number sequence which makes it visually very interesting.

While they were gone I worked on survey items for the FMCA NEC member education survey and suggested a minor change to the seminar categorization spreadsheet that Jim A. had prepared. I had planned to work on my blog posts for the third week of October (2014) but did not get to those before lunch.

After lunch Linda and I drove out to the BLM Scaddam 14-day area east of town and found the site where Boomerville was set up all last week. Most of the rigs had pulled out. Many of them were also geocachers and moved to the Roadrunner area south of town. We were looking for Bill Stewart and Lynn Pearlmutter from our FMCA Freethinkers chapter and finally spotted their Tiffin Phaeton. We sat and chatted for over an hour and then headed back to camp where Marilyn had been re-treating in our absence. I think it has been a good visit for her.

I worked on consolidating seven blog posts from the third week of October while Linda started preparing dinner. For Marilyn’s final dinner meal (dare I say ‘last supper’) Linda made her mock stroganoff. No, she did make Marilyn mock her stroganoff, she made a vegan version of stroganoff and served it over white rice, the way I like it. She also steamed the Romanesco brocciflower. The taste and texture was mostly cauliflower-like so I seasoned my pieces with a little white vinegar, which is the way I like my cauliflower.

While the ladies played Scrabble online I worked on the blog post and got the pictures selected and edited. I was up very late again but I got it posted before I went to bed. I was also having trouble logging in to RVillage using the Google Chrome browser. I tried Firefox and got in without difficulty and was able to navigate the site. Remembering that Butch had a similar problem a couple of weeks ago with a different website, I cleared the browsing history (cache) for the last week and tried again. That resolved the problem, at least for now. RVillage support had indicated that they were having login issues with the site, so my browser may have cached a bad page. I primarily use Chrome to browse, so the bad page had probably not been cached in Firefox.

I spent some time on e-mails dealing with an issue we have in our FMCA Freethinkers chapter. I updated Piriform CCleaner on my computer and ran it. I then opened Piriform Defraggler, checked for updates, and started it. It said the remaining time was “> 1 day” so I let it run and went to bed.

Although it was late I worked on the draft of my blog post for yesterday as I had only had time to outline it on my iPad. I then worked on this post. Even though I am still way behind in uploading posts to our WordPress website I have to write them each day or I lose the details. It also takes a fair amount of time, and if I get behind I risk not being able to catch up. I don’t have to do this at all, of course, but it’s something I want to do and enjoy doing. I just don’t like being so far behind.

One of the many covered sidewalk market areas in Los Algodones, Mexico.

2015/01/29 (R) The Flying Nun

We have had an excellent visit with Marilyn since she arrived on the 22nd with a nice mix of local activities, distant sight-seeing, and quiet time at home to visit and allow her to read, rest, and contemplate. She flew back to St. Louis, Missouri this afternoon but before she left Linda made vegan blueberry pancakes for brunch.

Marilyn’s flight home was at 4 PM MST from the Phoenix airport, which is over 130 miles east of Quartzsite, so they left at noon to get her there in plenty of time. I stayed home to work and decided to reconcile the financial statements for our FMCA Freethinkers chapter with the copies of the bank statements I received yesterday from the Treasurer, who lives in Chico, California. While I was at it I updated my financial statements and dues analysis worksheets and the master roster. Linda called at 2:30 PM to say she was starting back to Q but that traffic was very heavy and she might not be back until after 5 PM. That proved to be a very accurate estimate.

We had an early dinner that that consisted of a large salad and an equally large glass of Sangria. I continued to work after dinner dealing with e-mails and then editing together the blog posts for October 23 through 29 into a single post. I got the post compiled but it was too late (I was too tired) to select and process photos, much less upload the whole thing to WordPress, so I went to bed.

2015/01/30 (F) Regen Aggravation

Rain was forecast for last night and into today and that forecast turned out to be accurate. It started raining around 11 PM and rained through the night and into mid-late morning. The precipitation rate was never very high but the rain was persistent. Even after it quit raining heavy clouds filled the valley and obscured the mountain tops in all directions. There was a lower chance of showers for this evening after which the system is then supposed to start clearing out.

Marilyn does care for breakfast cereals or things that look, taste, or feel like milk, so we tended to have toast for breakfast while she was here (except when we had vegan cinnamon rolls and vegan blueberry pancakes). This morning we returned to our normal breakfast of granola, fruit juice, and coffee. After breakfast we both had work to do and set both of our laptops up on the dinette table.

Linda got a package yesterday from the bakery via UPS with work papers related to the 12th accounting period of the 2014 fiscal year. This was also the first accounting period in which the bakery was running only on the new software. Linda did the software configuration and conversion in September, October, and November of 2014 and the 12th accounting period corresponds approximately to the month of November.

My “work” was completing my blog post for October 23 – 29, 2014. I selected 10 photographs for the post that were representative of the work described in the narrative, visually interesting, and technically OK. I uploaded the text to WordPress and then uploaded, captioned, and inserted each image. I got finished about the same time Linda got tired of staring at numbers and made pocket pita sandwiches for lunch. She went for a long walk afterwards and I turned my attention to our fresh water system.

I knew we were below 1/3rd of a tank of fresh water based on the monitor in the house systems panel. I checked after lunch and we were at ~1/6th of a tank (~20 gallons). The last time I filled the tank I checked the hardness afterwards and it was higher (3.0 grains per gallon, or gpg) than it had been. After the last regeneration (recharge) it measured 1.5 gpg and continued to give that reading after each of the next few fill ups. (It should have measured 0 gpg but I was not able to get it recharged to that extent.) We have been keeping a log of the dates, gallons, and hardness but I had not yet analyzed the data so I added 100 gallons to the tank. Afterwards I checked the hardness of the water coming out of the softener and it measured 25 gpg, which is the low end of the very hard water range. Oops.

Although Los Algodones, Mexico was crowded and bustling with tourists from north of the border there were many quiet places like this.

I did not want to leave that water in the tank and run it through our plumbing and fixtures, but I had to regenerate the water softener before I could do anything else. I removed the filter from the housing on the input of the water softener. It was brown all the way through from the outer surface to the inside, so it needed to be replaced even though I had just installed it when I did the last regeneration. Quartzsite city water is safe to drink but in addition to being very hard it has a lot of sediment in it. Butch also thinks it is over-chlorinated and Jim L., who qualifies as a local, just doesn’t think it tastes good. The water we drink and cook with in the coach goes through three filters and a softener before it reaches our lips so we do not have any issues with it.

I put the special recharge tube into the filter housing and filled the bottom half of the housing around the outside of the tube with solar salt. I then poured half of a container of Morton table salt (non-iodized) on top of the solar salt. I aligned the center tube with the center of the head and threaded the housing onto the head. I ran water through the filter housing and then through the softener until I got a strong salty taste out of the softener. The instructions that came with the unit say to run water through the filter housing and out the softener until the saltiness is gone, but it gives no indication of how strong or weak the flow should be or how long it should take.

[When salt (NaCl) dissolves in water (H2O) sodium ions become available. The special media in a water softener has an affinity for dissolved ions. Recharging the softener dislodges the calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg) ions from the media and replaces them with sodium (Na) ions as a result of the supersaturated saltwater brine. During normal operation the sodium (Na) ions in the softener are exchanged for the calcium (Ca) and Magnesium (Mg) ions in the water. “Soft” water is not demineralized water, but the sodium (Na) ions do not cause the scale and build up in plumbing systems that the harder calcium and magnesium ions do.]

This is where we ate lunch in Los Algodones, Mexico.

When the water coming out of the softener was very salty I reduced the flow to a small amount and let run. I lost track of exact time, but I eventually shut the flow off, shut off the incoming water, and unscrewed the housing. It still had salt in it; not as much as when I started, but too much to be done.

[It takes a certain quantity of salt to produce enough sodium ions (Na) to completely recharge a softener of some given capacity. Softeners do not treat a certain number of gallons of water before needing to be regenerated; they remove a certain number of grains of hardness based on the design. The harder the water coming in the fewer gallons that can be processed. Softer water in, more gallons processed. When you understand the science involved, it is really quite simple.]

I stirred the salt in an attempt to dissolve it and put the housing and tube back on the head and ran more water through it. One of the problems with this arrangement is that I am starting with very hard water while trying to regenerate a water softener, but there is no easy way around that. The other problems is that I do not have a sediment filter ahead of the softener. If particulates are allowed to enter the softener and accumulate they will reduce and eventually destroy the effectiveness of the ion exchange media. This is a design flaw that is easily remedied by adding another filter housing between the sediment filter and the inlet of the softener. I will probably rig up something like this when I redo the water bay and use a clear housing so I can see when the salt is gone. Assuming, of course, that I do not replace the entire system with one like Butch’s.

After fooling around with this for a while I tested the water coming out of the softener and it was still up around 15 gpg. It appeared that nothing I had done for the last two hours had made any difference. I removed the housing yet again and added an entire 26 oz. container of Morton non-iodized table salt. I ran the water until it came out of the softener very salty and then shut it off.

I set the timer on my phone for one hour and drove down to the Tyson Wells market area on Kuehn Street to buy a T40 GAC (granulated activated carbon) filter from the Water Filter guy. While I was down there I stopped and bought a loaf of Barry’s Basic Bread. When I got back to the coach I ran the water for 30 seconds, shut it off, and set my timer for 20 minutes. I repeated this cycle for another hour and then set an outlet valve on the softener to emit a slow stream and let it continue to run. I periodically tasted the water coming out and eventually it did not have any saltiness. I checked it with a test strip, my third of the day, and it finally tested at 1.5 gpg. Evening was approaching and I once again found myself in the position of having to finish this process in the dark, so I abandoned any hope of getting it fully recharged to zero (0) gpg, if the unit is even capable of that.

I opened the drain valve on the fresh water tank part way and let the entire 120 gallons drain out. I did not like wasting that water, but I did not want it in our system. I also do not like the amount of time and water it seems to take to regenerate our softener, but it’s what we have for now. At least we are parked on gravel so all of the salty water can just soak in without harming anything. In an RV resort with landscaping we would have to be careful not to discharge the brine onto the grass or plants. The salt water is also not great for septic systems, but in sticks-n-bricks homes it usually ends up in one of those two places.

I installed a new 5 micron melt-blown polypropylene sediment filter in the pre-softener housing and screwed it back on to the head. I let filtered water run through the softener and onto the ground to flush any remaining brine out of the tank. While that process was taking place I turned my attention to the post-softener filter.

We have a filter housing built into the water bay of the coach. Water enters the coach through a garden hose connection then (presumably) passes through a check valve before going through the filter. From there it runs throughout the coach to all of the fixtures and the Aqua-Hot. One of the fixtures is the fill valve for the fresh water tank. When the onboard 12VDC water pump is used it simply takes water out of the fresh water tank and pressurizes the entire system the same way the shore line does. The pump has a check valve to prevent the pressure from an external connection from forcing water backwards through the pump.

The filter housing is hidden behind a beauty panel that makes it awkward to access and service but I managed to get the housing loose and to remove it without spilling too much water. The installed filter was just a pleated sediment cartridge but it was basically clean so either sediment was not getting this far or was small enough to pass through. I installed the T40 GAC cartridge and put the housing back on the head. I then turned off the water coming into the softener and connected the output to the hose from the fresh water inlet on the coach. The directions said to flush out the T40 with at least five gallons of tap water before using the water so I filled the kitchen sink half full while running off of the shore line.

I started this process at 1 PM. It was now 6PM and I was finally ready to fill the fresh water tank. The T40 filter cartridge does not have a micron rating but it was a rather snug fit in the housing and the design looks like it could constrain flow rates. I opened the fill valve for the fresh water tank and set my phone timer to 40 minutes.

While the tank was filling I started putting the dump and fill data we have been logging into a spreadsheet. Our softener tank is the same size as Butch and Fonda’s, which is labeled as having a 10,000 grain capacity. Our data indicated that the last 100 gallons we added took our total from 515 to 615 gallons. We knew we had obviously run too much water through the softener based on the first hardness test today, but this data was confirming that we had, at most, a 10,000 grain capacity tank. Given the 25 gpg city water coming out of the tap we will need to regenerate the softener somewhere between 400 and 500 gallons. Given the aggravation involved in trying to recharge our unit I doubt that it will be a long-term solution for us. It simply should not take that much time to do something so simple, especially when it has to be done so often.

At the end of 40 minutes the fresh water tank was 3/4s full so I set the timer for another 10 minutes. With the current filter setup the flow rate into the tank appears to be about 2.5 gallons per minute. The Shur-Flo 4048 pump has a 4 GPM maximum flow rate, so that is another reason we run off the tank rather than the shore line.

By the time the tank was full it was too late to actually cook dinner so Linda heated up an Amy’s Barley Vegetable soup and put out some crackers and peanut butter; easy but delicious.

I worked on this blog post after dinner, spent a little more time with my water usage spreadsheet, dealt with some critical e-mail, and went to bed way too late. But then, I did not have to be up by any certain time and I can take a nap tomorrow if needed.

Palm Canyon at sunset. KOFA National Wildlife Refuge about 20 miles south of Quartzsite, AZ.

2015/01/31 (S) January LTT

The last day of January dawned under cloudy skies. We are well past the midpoint of our first winter in Quartzsite and continuing to enjoy our time here. The “Big Tent” RV Show has been over for a week and the BLM STVAs (free, 14-day limit) have thinned out as the visitors who were here for two weeks surrounding the ‘show’ have moved on. There are still lots of RVs in the BLM LTVAs (fee-based, up to 180 days) but those are longer-term visitors who, like us, are here for ‘the season.’ The commercial RV Parks in town still have healthy occupancy, but the ‘vacancy’ signs are out once again. There are still plenty of vendors set up in the various markets along Kuehn Street and the flea markets along west Main Street are still operating. There is still traffic but not the parade of RVs and gridlock of the previous couple of weeks. There is still lots of activity but the frenzy appears to be over. Experienced visitors have told us that we will notice a gradual slow down as we move through February into March. We will also notice a general warming of temperatures.

A small bird of prey has been active around our campsite for the last few weeks, probably longer, and was finally successful in catching something to eat this morning; at least this was the first time that were aware of it. It took a small bird down by the seed block that attracts various birds and rabbits to our ‘front yard’ and sat where we could see it while it ate. WE identified it as an American Kestrel (Sparrow Hawk) and the small bird it caught was indeed a sparrow. The American Kestrel ranges from 4 to 10 ounces in weight and has a wingspan up to 24 inches with the larger birds being the mature females. It is the only Kestrel native to North America and is the first one we have had a good look at in the wild. It normally eats large insects, small mammals, and lizards, but will take smaller birds if it can, thus the name. They also have the unusual ability to hover given a very slight amount of wind.

We planned to stick around camp this weekend and work on various tasks so after breakfast Linda started a load of laundry. I like laundry day because I get to stay in my sweat clothes while my regular ones get laundered. Between loads Linda continued working on accounting for Butch and Fonda and for the bakery. I prepared a 4-day and a 7-day consolidated blog post and then worked on reformatting and expanding some more survey items for the FMCA national education committee. I received a draft report/recommendation from Jim A. for the seminar classification work we have been doing so I went through it, made minor corrections, and added several comments for his consideration.

Linda can only sit for so long so around 2 PM she made mock deli meat sandwiches for lunch with vegan cheese slices, lettuce, vegan mayo, and honey mustard on Barry’s Basic Bread. She then went for a long walk while I continued to work at computer-based tasks. She made it to the market area at Kuehn Street and Central Avenue and bought another loaf of Barry’s Basic Bread as we worked our way through the one we bought yesterday fairly quickly.

Butch installed his new TireTraker TPMS sensors yesterday. (I still need to install ours.) In the process he discovered that his Chevy Suburban spare tire only had 14 PSI of air pressure in it. Worse yet the valve stem on his bus spare was too damaged to get the sensor on. But the real problem was that one of the two attachments for the front bus bumper broke off. Four bolts had rusted through and snapped. This morning he looked at what would be involved it drilling out the pieces that were stuck in the threaded holes and decided that was not a job he could do on the road. He bought some metal strap and fashioned two loops around the front of the bumper and behind the mounting plate and bolted the ends of each to draw them in tight. When he was done the bumper closed and opened just fine and aligned well with the body when closed. I joked that this might be another “Long-Term Temporary” repair, or “LTT” for short, and suggested that we should coin the phrase.

Linda made a new dish for dinner, Savory Orange Roasted Tofu and Asparagus. As the name indicates, it consisted of tofu cubes roasted in a mixture of miso, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil to which asparagus was added while roasting continued. A sauce is made from miso, balsamic vinegar, orange juice, and orange zest and mixed in to the roasted ingredients just before serving. She also made Farro with a little oil, salt, and pepper and served it as a side. It may be the first time we have had Farro all by itself rather than as an ingredient in a dish. It really is a wonderful grain. Clementine orange sections and Franzia Fruity Red Sangria completed the meal.

A Romanesco Boccliflower.

Towards the end of dinner I had a call from Neal Sunderland wanting to know if we knew of anyplace in Q where he and Nora could get prime rib (of beef) for dinner. An odd request to make of a vegan, perhaps, but we only just met during the Eagles International bus rally and he did not remember how we eat. Linda got on an iPad and did her best to find out what was in town. The problem with Q is that a lot of the restaurants close at 8 PM, or sooner if they run out of food. They were already driving when Neal called and he spotted a sign at the Stagecoach Restaurant on Main Street (B-10) for a prime rib special so they pulled in to the parking lot. I heard the hostess in the background tell Neal that they were out of the special. They had 37 of them available for dinner and they were all sold. Yeah, Q is like that.

I have been reading up on the WordPress.com Jetpack: Site Administration feature. It sounds very cool as it would allow me to manage multiple WordPress websites via my WordPress.com account. This includes self-hosted sites, which all four of mine are, plus WordPress.com hosted sites. I have the Jetpack installed on all four Websites but I have never activated the Site Management feature, which must be done from within the admin panel. I decided to activate it tonight on the FMCA Freethinkers website, hosted by iPower.com. The activation failed and took down the /WP-admin/control panel. The site is still there (structure/functionality/content) but I cannot get to the dashboard to do anything. I sent a support request to iPower and cc:d Bob Pelc, the President of the FMCA Freethinkers, who is the owner of the clubs iPower account. I also sent a support request to Jetpack and an e-mail to Larry (K8UT) seeking his thoughts on the situation. This was not how I wanted to end my day but there was little more I could do late on a Saturday evening, so I went to bed.

2015/01/22-26 (R-M) Q 2015 W4

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2015/01/22 (R) Sister Marilyn

Marilyn & Linda in front of Beer Belly’s “adult day care” outdoor bar.

The temperature dropped into the low 40’s last night in the wake of the cold front that brought strong winds to Quartzsite yesterday. We were up at 6:30 AM to give us time to eat breakfast and enjoy our coffee before Linda left at 8 AM for the Phoenix airport to pick up her sister. Marilyn was scheduled to arrive at 11 AM MST and the airport is a 2 to 2-1/2 hour drive from Quartzsite but Linda wanted to take her time getting there and be in the cell phone lot before the flight got in. The plan was to go to lunch and then drive back to Q so she was going to be gone most of the day.

I had turned off the diesel burner on the Aqua-Hot last night so this morning I turned on the three electric toe-kick heaters and the Broan cube heater to take the chill off of the interior. With the coffee pot also turned on we were drawing 26 A at 115 VAC on leg 1 and 15 A at 118 VAC on leg 2. That was more current than we were able to draw before Jim L. changed the shorepower connection from 30 A (120VAC) to 50 A (240VAC) and the first time we have had reasonable voltage levels since we arrived here.

I rode over to the RV show with Butch at 9 AM to look at tire pressure monitoring systems and we both ended up buying TireTraker TPM Systems from Darryl Lawrence. We have both done business with Darryl in the past and trust him as a vendor. I also bought three products from the Carnu-B booth.

Back at the coach I checked the coolant level in the Aqua-Hot expansion reservoir. It was right at the maximum cold level so there was nothing else to do for the moment. I needed to redo the overflow hose, but not today. I then used two of the Carnu-B products on the driver-side side window and surrounding painted body surfaces. It removed the hard water stains and polished everything up very nicely. I then did a test patch on the front of Butch and Fonda’s bus and it appeared to clean the stainless steel nicely. They later cleaned an adjacent patch with straight food-grade vinegar and it seemed to work just as well although it did not provide a wax finish.

While I was fiddling with the Aqua-Hot and the cleaning/waxing process Butch started reading the manual for the TT-TPMS and found information that indicated the system did not work the way we thought it did and needed it to. The manual more than implied that the sensors were activated by motion and stated that readings would appear “… within 20 minutes of starting to drive.” Say what?! We both want to use the system to check our tire pressures BEFORE we start to drive, as would most RVers.

Although there are things we do not like about our current Pressure Pro TPM systems they certainly give us the current pressure in the tires without having to drive the vehicle. They also allow us to monitor just the bus, just the car, or both. Most systems do this, including the TireTraker, but the Truck Systems Technology (TST) does not. That was Butch’s first choice system until he found that out.

At 12:45 PM I rode over to the Quartzsite Senior Center with Butch and Fonda for a 1 PM meet and greet with Chuck Woodbury of RV Travel and the Geeks On Tour. It ran until 4 PM but we were anxious to get back to the RV Show tent and talk to Darryl. We took our TT-TPMS units with us with the intent of returning them but Darryl assured us that they do work the way we need them to so we decided to keep them for another day or so to test them.

Fonda had not been to the RV Show yet so we walked the entire tent. I spent a little time talking to the guy at John Carrillo Hydronic Heating. He had a brand new, never been fired, Webasto DBW2010 burner (with the controller) for $1,800 (cash). I have seen them online for $3,300, so I knew that was a good price. I wish I needed one, but we already have a spare. He also had a new combustion chamber for $200 and I may go back and get one of those. They wanted $450 for an ignition coil, which I also need, but I can get one from Sure Marine Service for $303. We spent a long time looking at flag poles at the Flag Pole Buddy booth and Butch bought a 22′ model with an extra set of mounts.

Linda was texting me her status on a regular basis and by the time we got back to camp she and Marilyn were already there and relaxing on the porch of Joe and Connie’s park model trailer. We sat outside until the sun kissed the tops of the southwestern mountains and then moved inside to escape the chill. While we were sitting in the coach visiting and cooking Butch installed one of the TT-TPMS sensors on the driver-side front tire of their Suburban, programmed it into the monitor, noted the readings, and went for a test drive. He noted the readings when they got back and plans to check it again in the morning before moving the car. That will be the real test.

For dinner Linda made a nice green salad and a lovely mushroom kale risotto with Arborio rice. We then went to the apartment so I could light the pilot flame on the wall-mounted propane heater. I visited for a bit and then went back to the coach and Linda followed a bit later. We were both tired and turned in early.

240 degree panorama from atop 'Q' Mountain, Quartzsite, AZ.

200 degree panorama from atop ‘Q’ Mountain, Quartzsite, AZ. Left edge is N, right edge is SSW.

2015/01/23 (F) Q Mountain

We were up by 7:30 AM and Marilyn eventually arose and joined us for coffee and toast. The only bread we had was a package of whole wheat pitas, but they toasted just fine and were very good with orange marmalade. I am not, however, thrilled with the Soy Delicious Almond milk coffee creamer. It is not as ‘creamy’ as Silk soy creamer and it tends to separate into tiny bubbles in the coffee. I do, however, like the Almond milk that we sometimes buy, especially on granola type cereals.

Butch called just after breakfast to let me know that the TireTraker TPMS works the way Darryl said it does. That was welcome news as we both like the system, including the small sensors and the rechargeable monitor, and we both like Darryl. He and Fonda had things to do today so I borrowed his hose crimper pliers before they left.

Linda and Marilyn left shortly after Butch and Fonda and drove to Blythe, California to do some grocery shopping and sight-seeing. That left me with some alone time to concentrate on getting some things done that I have needed to work on for a week, such as categorizing FMCA seminars, and have just not found (made) the time. I value and enjoy my work with the FMCA National Education Committee but we have a significant personal investment in our presence here in Quartzsite, and although we will likely return here again in the years to come that is not guaranteed, and this could turn out to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The FMCA work took about an hour to complete and e-mail too Jim A., with who has been the lead person on this.

I also needed to make a minor change to the Aqua-Hot expansion tank plumbing and turn the burner back on. I removed the overflow hose, shortened it, re-routed it, and re-connected it to the drain tube on the tank. I also tried to tighten the clamp on the middle zone pump hose. I noted that the coolant level was at the ‘minimum cold’ mark on the expansion tank. I will check everything again tomorrow.

With the Aqua-Hot project done I decided to replace the old Sentry turbo boost gauge with the new VDO gauge. I removed the dashboard cover, disconnected the lightbulb connectors, removed the retaining bracket, and pulled the gauge out the front of the dashboard. I removed the lightbulb socket to give me better access to the main air fitting and undid that, completely freeing the unit from the dashboard. I pulled the light socket out of the new gauge to give me more room to put the air fitting on and to check the bulb type. It was a miniature glass wedge base 12VDC 3W and will need to be replaced with a 24V, 3W bulb. I then slipped the gauge into the dashboard from the front and secured it with the supplied bracket on the back side. Linda and Marilyn returned at this point so I quit working on the gauge, put the cover back on the dashboard, and helped bring in the groceries. I will have to get the 24V bulb and also rewire the leads to match the harness connectors.

We had a light lunch and then drove down to the market area and wandered through the big tent RV show. We got new Ballisti-Tech screen protectors for our Samsung Galaxy S III smartphones. We also strolled through a small part of the Tyson Wells and Prospectors Panorama areas. When we left the RV show we headed south on US-95 to the BLM Roadrunner STVA so Marilyn could see the Quartzfest RVs in the desert. We found Lou and Val Petkus at their 5th wheel and visited briefly before heading back to town. The light was good and the sun was still high enough that I made an impromptu decision to climb Q Mountain and try to get pictures of the RVs spread across the desert around Quartzsite.

I got my pictures, and got off the mountain before it got dark, but missed the best color, which we saw while driving back to camp to close up the rig before going to dinner. The Geeks were out viewing and photographing the sunset before walking to the Grubstake restaurant for dinner so and we chatted with them briefly and then drove to Crazy Jerry’s for our evening meal. The very thin crust mushroom, onion, and tomato no-cheese pizza was excellent and the French fries were also good. When we got back to our coach Linda prepared some fresh strawberries for desert.

After visiting with Jim and Chris on Wednesday we decided that we would join the Quartzsite Yacht Club, which claims to have the largest membership of any yacht club in the country (world?, universe?) at over 7,500., although we later heard that it was more than 9,000. Membership is $30 which gets you a hat, T-shirt, membership card and certificate. Apparently the membership is good at other (real) yacht clubs that honor reciprocal arrangements. We had planned to join today but did not fit it in. It may be Sunday or even a day next week at this point.

I spent some time transferring photos from my camera to my laptop computer and our NAS unit. I processed three panoramas and three individual images taken on Q Mountain, checked my e-mail, and went to bed.

Sunset glow looking NE from ‘Q’ Mountain.

2015/01/24 (S) Lake Havasu City

We were up at 7:15 AM and I brewed a pot of coffee while Linda showered. I took my turn and also trimmed up my beard a bit. Marilyn came over around 8:25 AM and we all had coffee followed by breakfast. Linda and I had granola while Marilyn had toast and jam. She is not that found of breakfast and does not care for milk or milk substitutes.

I removed some of the parts boxes from the back of the Element to eliminate the rattling just in case we decided to drive in to the Desert Bar on the way back from Lake Havasu City (LHC). We left around 9:15 AM and headed up AZ-95 towards Parker. It was a cool morning with clear skies and the sun lit up the mountains to the west and north. When we got to Parker we decided to cross the Colorado River into California and take the Parker Dam Road 17 miles up to Parker Dam, drive across back into Arizona, re-connect with AZ-95, and continue north to LHC.

We knew that the stretch of the River from the dam downstream to Parker had quite a few RV Parks, campgrounds, and mobile home communities because we caught glimpses of some of them from AZ-95, or saw signs for them, the last time we were in LHC. The drive from Parker to LHC is very scenic but you do not have a view of the river most of the time. Much of the drive from Parker to the dam on the California side, however, was close to water level so we were able to see the resorts on both sides of the river. We had also heard that there were wild burros along the California route and indeed there were. We saw five total, two of them just before the dam. They appear to be docile animals, but they are wild, and you are not allowed to feed or harass them.

Once we got to LHC we followed the signs for the London Bridge and found the parking lot and visitor center. We watched a video on the history of the London Bridge, which was actually the second most recent in a long succession of bridges across the River Thames dating back before Roman Times. The Bridge was purchased, disassembled, moved, and reconstructed in LHC. It was placed at the entrance to a peninsula and then a channel was dug out under it and connected to the Colorado River on either end, turning the peninsula into an island. There is an “English Village” at the base of the bridge on the mainland side, which was not very special, but a wonderful pedestrian path winds along the channel all the way down to Rotary Park. The air was cool and the wind was very strong, but the sun was very warm and we had a lovely stroll.

After walking the path we drove over the bridge and around the island, stopping at one of the reproduction 1/8 scale lighthouses. The LHC Lighthouse Association has erected some two dozen scale replicas of U. S. Lighthouses. The ones on the island are all replicas of lighthouses from the Great Lakes while the ones on the Arizona shore are east coast replicas and the ones on the California shore are west coast replicas. While we were driving Linda researched places we might be able to eat lunch and settled on The Black Bear Diner. She and Marilyn had garden burgers with French fries and I had the Sweet Garden Harvest Salad. All of the food was very good, and I was particularly pleased with the salad, which had raisins, dried cranberries, nuts, fresh strawberries, and shredded coconut with a honey Dijon dressing.

The restaurant was in a corner of the parking lot for the Albertson’s grocery store so we went in looking for regular Silk soy creamer. They did not have any so we started back to Quartzsite and stopped at the Basha’s market on the south end of town. They had the Silk Vanilla Soy Creamer, not the regular, but I got some anyway. They also had a nice selection of Daiya cheeses and vegan sausages. We picked up some sourdough bread and preserves on our way to the checkout. Of all the food stores we have been in Basha’s was the nicest so far.

By the time we got to Parker I was getting tired so I pulled into the casino parking lot. I switched places with Linda and she drove the rest of the way to Q. Back at camp she and Marilyn went to the apartment and started assembling a 500 piece puzzle on the dining table. As I do on any day that I have taken a lot of pictures I transferred them from my camera to my computer and backed them up to the NAS unit. I used the Microsoft Image Composite Editor to create two panoramic images of the California mountains just south of LHC.

None of us were hungry enough to warrant fixing dinner so we snacked on hummus and chips (vegan junk food). Marilyn went back to the apartment at 9 PM and we went to bed shortly thereafter. A long day of fresh air and sunshine had once again worn us out.

2025/01/25 (N) Visitors

Linda& Marilyn at the London Bridge English village. It’s a real London phone booth, but no phone.

Today was basically a stay at home day. Marilyn is officially “on retreat” and spent part of the day by herself reading and contemplating. I made coffee for breakfast, as usual, and Linda made her amazing vegan cinnamon rolls for brunch. They were brunch because they take hours to make and she did not feel like getting up early enough to have them ready by breakfast and we did not expect her to.

Butch dropped Fonda at church and then came back to get me on his way to the Big Tent RV Show. Today was the last day of the show so I bought a 2″ wide roll of rescue tape and got three smaller rolls in the deal. I bought more of the Carnu-B wax but the vendor was out of the Metal Shine cleaner. That’s the risk one takes waiting until the end of a rally or show. I also bought two small LEDs that looked like the might work in our spotter/downlights. We then stopped by Mac McCoy’s booth to chat. He was busy with customers but Charles Martin was there so we chatted with him instead.

We got back to camp just after 11 AM as Linda was putting the finishing touches on the cinnamon rolls and Marilyn joined us for brunch. I tried one of the new LED bulbs but it would not fit in our fixtures. I dealt with some e-mail and thought about spending the rest of the day writing but decided to work outside instead. My outside task today was cleaning some of the bus windows using the Carnu-B Metal Shine to remove hard water stains.

Chris and Jim of Geeks On Tour did their weekly live broadcast from their rig and then started making preparations to leave. We had two cinnamon rolls left so Linda took them over as a going away gift. Charles and Connie Martin dropped in and a short time later Mara and her friend Michael arrived. Marilyn came over followed by Butch and Fonda so we circled the chairs and had quite a gabfest.

Eventually everyone left and I returned to my window cleaning while Linda and her sister started preparing dinner. Linda made her wonderful warm Farro dish with kale and dried cranberries while Marilyn made a shredded Brussels sprout dish with pistachios and dried cranberries. Both dishes were excellent and the use of dried cranberries in each one tied them together nicely.

Linda and Marilyn went to the apartment to watch Downton Abbey but the satellite receiver was not activated so they worked on the jigsaw puzzle instead. I stayed in the coach and took a call from Lou Petkus who had questions about RVillage. I then consolidated my blog posts from the first seven days of October (2014) into a single post, selected five photos to go with it, and uploaded it to our WordPress site, the first post I have done since September 30, 2014. If I do one consolidated post each evening I should be caught up to our arrival in Quartzite on December 12, 2014 in about two weeks. After that I may go back to daily posts or continue to consolidate three or four days at a time. I would like to be caught up and making current/daily posts by the time we pull out of here on March 1st.

London Bridge in Lake Havasu City (LHC), AZ.

2015/01/26 (M) A Plethora of Jims

We had toast and jam (strawberry preserves and orange marmalade) for breakfast along with our usual coffee and juice. Jim A. called just after breakfast to update me on work we are doing for FMCA HQ. Jim G. (& Chris) pulled out yesterday. Jim B. (& Barb) are here for the winter. Jim L. (The brother of owner Joe L.) manages this place and stops by almost every day. I think we have met several other Jims along the way. When we meet someone new I just assume their name is Jim until I learn otherwise. This winter has truly seen a plethora of Jims.

Jim and Barb let me know they were headed to Blythe, California to go grocery shopping and offered to pick up anything we might need. Butch and Fonda also left but Larry and Sandy did not, which was unusual for them. Linda and Marilyn wanted to walk around Tyson Wells so I drove them down to Kuehn Street and Central Avenue, stopping at the Post Office on the way. I stopped on the way back at Herb’s Hardware store to get some 000 steel wool and then topped off my fuel tank at the Union 76 station.

Connie Martin visiting us at the Camp Liebherrvile / Brocker.

Back at our coach I started assembling my blog posts from October 8 through 15 into a single post and selecting photos to go with it. I do not like to sit and do this kind of work for long stretches of time so I got out my cleaning supplies and worked on the outside of some of the bus windows. I tried using straight vinegar to clean them followed by rubbing with the steel wool, and tried it in the opposite order. I decided to stick with steel wool first figuring the vinegar would help clean it off. I did not apply wax to the outsides of the windows as I want them as clean as possible before I wax them. Rain was forecast for today and it eventually started so I moved indoors and cleaned the insides of several windows on the passenger side of the coach. These were clean enough that I used the Carnu-B spay wax that I bought yesterday on them. The rain let up so I moved back outside and worked on the upper windshields. I got both of them steel wooled and wiped down with vinegar and got a coat of wax on the driver side glass before it started drizzling again. I put my supplies away again and headed back inside. Linda called and asked to be retrieved so I drove back down to Kuehn and Central to pick them up.

Linda put out some hummus, chips, and grapes for lunch and we heated up the leftover Farro dish and divided it up between us. Marilyn went back to the apartment to take a nap and Linda laid down to read and snooze while I continued working on e-mails and blog posts. Gary Hatt, publisher of Bus Conversion Magazine, sent me several photos of himself standing in front of his Eagle. I selected the one I thought would work best to go with his “Publisher’s Letter” in the January 2015 issue, post-processed it several different ways, and sent it back with an explanation of what did and why. I also got the blog post for the second seven days of October completed and uploaded before dinner.

Mara Culp and Charles Martin visiting us at Camp Liebherrville / Brockner.

As the afternoon progressed the rain settled in. Although not heavy, like a thunderstorm, it was steady well into the evening. Jim and Barb returned and Marilyn eventually came back over to the coach. That got Linda out of bed and working on dinner. She made a dish that has become a standard; pasta with onions, garlic, mushrooms, and sun-dried tomatoes lightly sautéed in olive oil. Instead of wheat noodles, however, she used “zoodles.” Zoodles are long slender pieces of zucchini made with a hand operated SpiraLife spiral slicer. They get added to the sauté just before serving and are simply heated rather than cooked. We had a green salad with Ken’s Steak House Asian Sesame dressing, dried cranberries and pistachios. We had slices of a sourdough baguette with pepper spiced olive oil for dipping and Linda and I had a glass of Franzia sangria. Fresh strawberries for desert completed a nice meal.

Marilyn helped with the dishes after which she and Linda checked on the developing storm out east and then played Scrabble and other games while I stayed out of their way and worked on this post. Hey, it’s a small kitchen.

The rain stopped at 7:38 PM but started again in earnest around 8:30 PM. It was still raining at 9:15 PM when Marilyn went back to the apartment and the forecast said we could have rain overnight until 5 AM tomorrow. We have had very little rain here this winter so I am sure this is welcomed. It will be interesting to see if the precipitation triggers any sort of desert bloom tomorrow on our drive to Yuma or perhaps the following day.

Linda’s iPad battery was down to about 10% at 9:45 PM so she retired to the bedroom, where the charger is located, and continued to read for a bit longer. I am usually very sleepy an hour after dinner but get my second wind a couple of hours after that. I had an e-mail from Gary at Bus Conversion Magazine regarding the use of soft water in the Webasto-based Aqua-Hot in his Eagle and sent him a reply. I then went through the article on Butch’s main engine air-compressor failure, finalized all of the changes, and uploaded it to our Dropbox along with the photo files. I updated my BCM Article Status Sheet and uploaded it to the BCM folder in our Dropbox. I then e-mailed Gary and editor Mike Sullivan to let them know that the new material was ready and available. By the time I finished it was going on midnight.

The Phase Place

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Tag Archives: TireTraker TPMS (Daryl Lawrence)

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

2015/03/24-25 (T-W) RVillage WHQ Redux

2015/02/24-28 (T-S) Bus Projects

2015/02/14-18 (S-W) Busy Times in Q

2015/02/07-11 (S-W) In and Around Q

2015/02/06 (F) KOFA NWR Palm Canyon

2015/02/01-05 (N-R) Another Month in Q

2015/01/27-31 (T-S) Q 2015 W5

2015/01/22-26 (R-M) Q 2015 W4