Tag Archives: website/blog

2015/12/19 (S) A Gypsy Journal Milestone

We were up a bit later than usual last night and did not get out of bed until 8:15 AM this morning. The temperature outside had dropped to 36 degrees F overnight and it was cool in the coach which was one of the reasons we slept well and lingered under the covers (where I had my heater pad turned on). I put my sweatpants and sweatshirt under the covers to warm them up before getting up and putting them on. Linda just braved the chill and put on her sweats without warming them first. She’s tougher than I am.

We like to keep track of the weather back home and in other places where we have friends, like Quartzsite, AZ, and the weather apps on our iPads and smartphones make that very easy to do. At 10 AM EST it was 25 at home going up to 28 with an overnight low of 23. Here in Williston it was 48 going up to 62 with an overnight low of 39. Arcadia, where we will be in January and February, was presently 58 going up to 73 and dropping to 55 overnight. Four hours farther south actually matters in Florida, which has four somewhat distinct climate zones. Quartzsite, 2,000 miles west of us, was 38 (at 8 AM local time) going up to 67 and dropping back to 39 overnight. All things considered Williston was a pretty nice place to be this time of year.

Once I was up I fed the cats, who always insist that their needs are met first, and then turned on the three thermostats for the Aqua-Hot hydronic heating system, set the temperature controls, and turned on the diesel burner. I made a pot of coffee and Linda started cooking oatmeal for our breakfast.

A view of our coach looking north at Williston Crossings RV Resort.

We were done with breakfast by 9:30 and Linda had the dishes cleaned shortly thereafter. We doodled on our iPads while we enjoyed the rest of our coffee. Nick Russell sent out the link for the January-February 2016 issue of The Gypsy Journal yesterday. I forwarded it on to our iPads last night and we downloaded it to our devices this morning. It is the 100th issue that Nick has published and the last one he will produce on newsprint. Starting with the March-April 2016 issue the Journal will only be available in digital form. That will not be a problem for us as we switched to the digital version only several years ago, but it is sad that smaller specialty publications cannot survive in printed form. I think it is inevitable that Bus Conversion Magazine will also go digital only, if it survives long enough to make that switch and then survives the transition.

Nick has had a small army of friends take bundles of newspapers and leave them in RV park offices on their travels and has picked up new subscribers that way, but the newspaper is well enough positioned at this point, with a large enough subscriber base, that he should continue to do very well. Even if the number of subscribers levels off, or even shrinks slightly, his profitability should increase nicely now that he is rid of the printing and mailing costs.

Nick and Terry will also have what we called “found time” at the education agency when some task, meeting, or other commitment on our time evaporated and we suddenly, and unexpectedly, “found” time to work on other things. As highly mobile full-timers Nick and Terry were always arranging for printers in different parts of the country, picking up the newspapers, folding and stuffing them in envelopes, printing address labels and putting them on the envelopes, and taking them to a post office, as well as carting around the extras and leaving them in campground offices or giving them to friends to distribute. All of that took a lot of time; time they can now use for other things.

Williston Crossings RV Resort has lovely, mature landscaping including large, majestic Live Oak trees draped in Spanish moss.

Yesterday Linda was looking at the website for Big Tree RV Resort in Arcadia, Florida where we will be in January, February, and early March. She ended up looking at the AllStays Camp and RV listing for the resort and discovered a photo of OUR bus that I took two years ago in our site here at Williston Crossings RV Resort! The information attached to the image pointed back to our website as the source and said “…the image may be copyrighted.” I have looked at ways to add a copyright notice to all of the images on our website/blog but never implemented one. I guess I really should.

After breakfast we opened the packet of felt chair leg caps and put four of them on the folding card table chair we use at the desk. It looked like they would do just what we needed them to do so we removed the towel we had been using to protect the floor. My focus today was working on our blog but first I spent a little time updating my spreadsheet for our spring/summer 2016 water bay project. I uploaded seven blog posts a few days ago but have been concentrating on selecting and processing photos since then. This morning I decided to resume working on posts. My goal was to finish editing the posts for the remainder of August (2015), select the spots to insert the selected photos, clean up the writing, and start uploading them to the server.

We took a lunch break at 12:45 PM and had mock deli slice sandwiches on flatbread and split a fresh apple. Linda started to work on her counted cross-stitch project for grand-daughter Katie but realized the larger grid base material she bought was too small. She found something on Amazon that would work and ordered it for delivery on Tuesday. She then searched online for someplace in the area to buy a Tofurkey vegan mock turkey roll. It looked like Earth Origins in Gainesville sold them so she decided to drive into town and get one rather than wait until next week and risk not having any available. I stayed behind and continued working on my blog posts.

Some of the grass on the other side of the road from our site was spectacular. Ahhh, December in north central Florida. This is why people come here in the winter.

With the outside temperature only rising into the low 60’s we kept the motorcoach closed up today. By 2 PM the temperature in the front half of the coach was a very pleasant 76 degrees F. It was cooler in the back as most of the window area is in the front half of the bus, including the large southwest facing windshields.

Linda returned from her trip to Gainesville with more than just a vegan mock turkey roll. Besides the Tofurkey brand products Earth Origins also had Gardeine brand products. We have had other Gardeine products that were very good so she decided to try their mock stuffed turkey roll. As long as she was there she picked up a half dozen other frozen entrees to try.

I had just finished editing the posts for August when Linda suggested we go for a walk. It was 4 PM and the late afternoon light was nice so I took the camera. We only made it a couple of sites up the road and stopped to talk to the new arrivals from Alaska. We had no sooner resumed our walk when Linda got a call from Diane. John had surgery recently, and will be off work until after the holidays, but is recovering nicely. We strolled along slowly while they talked and I took a few pictures. I wore my sweater but the sun was already behind the trees and I was pretty quickly uncomfortably cool in the shade.

We crossed paths with John and Ali and stopped to chat for a while. We learned last night at the campfire that Jeff and Kathy’s dog Teddy had succumbed to his lymphoma this past Sunday. Teddy was very sweet and we know how difficult it is when a pet dies. We also learned that Jeff had been taken to the hospital in Ocala and was scheduled to have a colonoscopy earlier today. The report back from Kathy was that he might have colitis.

When we got back to our rig Linda made hot hibiscus tea. I had planned to upload some blog posts today but I had spent enough time in front of my computer for one day and sat on the couch with my iPad for a while instead. I rarely take naps but I am not opposed to the idea. I laid down at 5:15 PM and dozed until Linda got me up at 6 for dinner.

Linda on the phone with Diane Rauch as we head into the older south section of the resort. That’s one happy girl.

After dinner we both changed into warmer clothes and Linda packed our wine to take to the fire circle. We got there a little before 7 PM, later than usual, but the only people there were John, Big Mike, Jim (Sonny Fox), and Tom (from Hilton Head, SC). Another couple, who have the site just east of John and Ali, showed up just after us but that was it for the evening and John did not get his guitar and perform. Besides the much cooler weather there was a dinner/dance at the clubhouse this evening, so John had anticipated a smaller than usual crowd. That was nice in a way, both for him and us, as we got to talk more than usual.

The temperature had already dropped into the lower 50’s at 7 PM. In spite of our best efforts we were not able to get the fire really hot, and did want to build it too large, so by 9 PM it had dropped into the mid-40’s and everyone had left except for me and John. I spread out the fire and put the implements in the shed and John locked it. He joined Ali at Jeff at Kathy’s fifth wheel trailer, where Ali was visiting with Kathy, and I walked back to our rig.

Linda was in her sweats with her blanket over her legs reading her latest e-book with a cat on her lap. I changed into my sweats but did not feel like doing much of anything. I flipped through TV channels but did not find anything that caught my interest. PBS was running a Peter, Paul, and Mary 50th anniversary special, which would normally have been very interesting to me, but it was a fund raiser made up of old clips, interviews, and pleas for money and I just was not in the humor.

The temperature in the coach had dropped to 68 but we both felt a little chilled so I turned on the front thermostat and Aqua-Hot diesel burner. I made a cup of hot decaf chai tea, played a few games on my iPad, and worked on this post before finally going to bed at 11:30 PM and going to sleep.

2015/12/18 (F) MEF3 @ 3

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It rained off and on all night with a heavy downpour around 5:30 AM. Once again we did not close up the coach and run the air-conditioners so the bedding was a bit damp, but we slept through the night and did not get up until after 8 AM.

I took care of the cat chores and then made a full pot of coffee. We used our iPads, as we do almost every morning, while we enjoyed our morning brew and finally had half of a grapefruit (each) for breakfast around 9:30. It was in the upper 60’s when I got up but was forecast to drop to 55 degrees F by dinner time and into the upper 30’s overnight. Burrr.

I took a few pictures yesterday at the Breezy Oaks Music Jam so my first task today was to copy those to my computer and back them up to the NAS. I then continued working on selecting and processing photos for blog posts and spent most of the rest of the day doing just that except for some time out for lunch, a mid-afternoon stroll, and dinner.

Today was our younger grand-daughter’s third birthday. Our daughter and son-in-law went to our son and daughter-in-law’s house this evening for Madeline’s birthday and Linda arranged for us to Facetime while they were all there. We initiated the call at 6:35 PM and Facetimed for almost 30 minutes. We got to see Madeline open the gifts we bought for her and interact with her and everyone else.

We had closed up the windows and changed into warmer clothes for the fire circle before we made the Facetime call so as soon as we were done with “happy birthday” we got our sweatshirts and wine supplies and headed for the firepit. There were already folks there but there were also empty seats, the cooler weather keeping some folks away (which made no sense to us; it’s a FIREpit after all). John was tending the fire but Ali was not there yet. Tom and Cindy were there and I took the open chair next to Tom.

We were at the campfire until 10 PM when John had to go lock up and Ali was ready to go in for the night. I spread out the remaining fire logs and then we walked back to our bus in the cool night air. The temperature in the coach was 74 when we left and had dropped to 70 by the time we returned. We both changed into our warmer lounging clothes (sweats), turned on the TV, and nibbled on pretzels and hummus. Linda trundled off to bed around 11:30 PM but I stayed up a bit longer.

I checked e-mail and had one from Technomadia about their latest Mobile Internet Aficionados report on mobile cellular boosters. I logged in to read it and discovered that our MIA membership had expired in August so I renewed it online. I read the report and then went to bed where I wrote briefly on my iPad.

The outside temperature had already dropped to 45 degrees F but Linda had turned on the electric heater pad on my side of the bed before going to sleep so it was nice and toasty. The overnight low was forecast to drop to 36 degrees which meant the inside temperature would drop to around 60; not freezing cold, but chilly enough that we would need the furnace for a while in the morning. I went to sleep around 12:30 AM.

2015/12/16 (W) More Blog Stuff

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I was awake before 7 AM but did not get up until 7:15. I removed and cleaned my nighttime bite guard, as I do every morning. I then cleaned the cats’ food bowls and filled them with fresh food. Linda was still sound asleep so I worked at my computer for a while selecting and processing photographs for blog posts. I finished my selections for August and was part way through September when Linda got up so I put that work aside and made our morning coffee.

We both worked on our iPads for an hour doing our usual morning things. Linda texted John (Smitty) regarding going to Satchel’s this evening for dinner and I messaged our daughter regarding Facetiming with everyone on Friday, which is grand-daughter Madeline’s 3rd birthday. Linda proofread our 2015 Year in Review holiday letter and found a few things that needed to be corrected.

For breakfast we had granola with fresh blueberries, orange/grapefruit juice, and split a banana. After breakfast Linda got dressed and I took a quick shower (she took one yesterday.) I was going to use the bathhouse but decided to shower in our coach to use up more of the remaining fresh water and get it into our gray tank. The fresh water level dropped below 1/3rd yesterday which meant we still had 40 gallons, easily enough for two more days with a little reserve. I got dressed and we dealt with a few chores. Linda vacuumed the inside of the coach, which she had not done since we left Michigan. I dumped our holding tanks and filled our fresh water tank and updated our water usage spreadsheet.

I calculated our fresh water usage and waste water generation for this past winter. Over 128 days we averaged just over 13 gallons of fresh water per day and over 120 days generated an average of just over 15 gallons per day of waste. Those numbers suggest that a 130 gallon fresh water tank and a single 150 gallon waste tank would be well balanced and allow us to boondock for 10 days with some reserve. That’s only 280 gallons total, 40 gallons less than the 320 gallons (approximately) of the three tanks currently in the bus, so tanks that size would create the space I need in the bay for a water softener, filters, and fresh hose reel, and possibly a shorepower cord reel. When we pay more careful attention to water management and conservation we can reduce our fresh water usage to 10 gallons per day with a corresponding reduction in waste generation. That would allow us to boondock for 13 days. With slightly larger tanks we could stay out 14 days and still have room for the things I want to get into the bay. Final decisions will depend on more precise calculations and the actual dimensions of possible equipment.

With the chores done (for now) Linda started addressing envelopes and putting postage on them while I made final changes to our holiday letter and started printing copies. She folded the letters, stuffed them into the envelopes, and sealed them. It took about two hours to get 34 letters ready to mail. We skipped lunch and just had a few pretzels. We wanted to stop at Walmart on our way to Satchel’s so we left at 2:45 PM and drove to the Williston post office, sent the letters on their way, and headed to Gainesville. John and Ali followed later in their own car.

At Walmart we found Christmas cards for mailing checks to immediate family members. I got two pairs of shorts, as I forgot to pack mine when we left home, and we picked up two bags of Snyder`s sourdough pretzel nibblers. I also got a call from Pat Lintner. We chatted briefly and I said I would call him back when we got hone after dinner.

We were at Satchel’s by 5 PM and sat inside. We had the same selections as last time: small salad and medium pizza with Daiya mozzarella cheese, onions, mushrooms, and sun-dried tomatoes. We only ate half the pizza and brought the rest home. This pizza is soooo good. It’s one of the best we have ever had, including all of the non-vegan pizzas we have eaten over our lifetime. Only the original Luigi’s Pizza from St. Louis in the 1960’s stands taller in our memories, although the current Imo’s chain makes a similar and very good pizza.

We were back at our coach by 6:45 PM and went for an evening stroll to help settle our dinner. It was cool but humid and the clouds had cleared out so a pleasant enough evening for a walk. When we got back to our coach I called Pat and we talked for about 40 minutes with Vickie occasionally joining in on the other end of the call. They are not leaving Indiana until after Christmas and will spend New Year’s Eve at an RV park near Ocala, Florida as they have every year for many years. They will be less than 40 miles from Williston at that point but we will already be in Arcadia by then. Timing is everything.

Some nights I just do not feel like working at my computer, or iPad, or reading, and tonight was one of those nights. Unfortunately Wednesday evening is a bit of a TV wasteland, even on PBS, which is to say there wasn’t anything on that interested me. The best thing on was a Big Band retrospective on PBS but it was also part of the 24/7 fundraising that has become the network’s defining characteristic. Whatever the reason, the music did not grab me the way it normally would. CBS had a 3-hour Survivor finale. Nope, not going to watch that. Linda read and I scrolled through channels hoping something interesting would pop up but eventually I zoned out. Even Ask This Old House (AskTOH) was less interesting than usual. I guess I just wasn’t in the mood. It happens sometimes.

2015/12/15 (T) Blog Uploads (finally)

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The temperature at midnight was a little warmer than we like for sleeping but still OK. The humidity was high, however, and everything felt slightly damp. There was a high likelihood of rain before sunrise but we left the windows and roof vents open and all three exhaust fans running. We have air conditioners but they are noisy and use a lot of electricity so we do not use them unless we have to. Mostly, however, we like fresh air and tend to resist closing up the coach.

We were both asleep by 11:30 PM last night and I was up a 6:50 AM this morning. I fed the cats and then watched a TV program on WUFT’s Create channel called Florida Crossroads. It was on Florida’s Black Heritage Trail and featured some of the off-the-beaten-path museums and historically black communities in the state. As the program pointed out at the beginning “If you head down I-75 to Disney World and other Florida attractions you won’t see these places.” We do not have any plans to follow this trail but the show reminded me that every state has a history that is preserved in out-of-the-way places and it takes time and desire to seek them out.

Linda got up about half way through the programs so I watched the last 15 minutes of the show and then turned off the TV. The rain increased from a light drizzle to a light rain and Linda pulled up the weather radar on her iPad. Moisture was streaming northeast from the Gulf in our general direction so I closed the ceiling vent/fan in the bedroom. It is over the foot of the bed so if water gets in the bedding gets wet. I left the other two vent/fans open and exhausting on medium speed as no water seemed to be coming in. They are both directly above vinyl tile flooring so if water did get in it would be easy to clean up.

I made a very full pot of coffee, using up the last of our first batch of Sweet Seattle Dreams beans (Seattle Blend and Sweet Dreams decaf blend, both from Teeko’s Coffee and Tea back home). The Kindle edition of Dr. Michael Greger’s new book, How Not to Die, was available so Linda initiated downloading it to our various devices. We both opened the Kindle apps on our iPads and finished downloading it to our devices.

We had English muffins and split a grapefruit for breakfast. Once we were dressed and the kitchen was cleaned up Linda packed up Madeline’s Christmas stocking, took it to the Post Office, and mailed it. While she was there she bought holiday stamps including the postage needed to get our Year in Review holiday letter to friends in Ontario.

With the Habitat For Humanity and Webasto Burner Service articles wrapped up (for now) I felt like taking a break from computer-based work but there was too much that still needed to be done. At the top of the list was finalizing plans to get together with Bruce and Linda, John and Marian, and Al this week or next. That was all being done by e-mail so it was spread out through the day but I eventually got the visits planned.

I need to work on the FMCA FTH and GLCC websites, and at some point I need to start writing, or at least outlining, new articles based on the work we did to the interior of our motorcoach this past summer and fall. But the task rising to the top of my list is the blog, now over four months behind. First, however, I installed the Twenty Sixteen WordPress Theme on our personal site (this one) just to have a look. It’s a nice, clean, blog oriented theme, with features that make it more responsive with respect to sizing images on different devices but I did not switch the site over at this time.

I spent the rest of the morning copying blog post drafts from e-mails to Word docs and then editing the ones from August to get them ready to upload. I was able to upload posts for August 3 through 8, including a gallery post of the refrigerator swap at Chuck’s shop on the 8th. I spent the rest of the day selecting and processing photos for the rest of August.

Our storage ottoman was scheduled for delivery by 8 PM last night but the office closed at 5 PM and it wasn’t here by then. Amazon notified us that it was delivered today so Linda retrieved it from the office when she made a quick trip to the Grocery Depot for ingredients to make polenta for dinner.

With more light rain forecast for this evening we went for a late afternoon walk. We got to the northwest corner of the resort and were hailed by Elliot and Jamie who we met at the campfire on Saturday evening. This is their first winter at Williston Crossings and they are enjoying it, especially the variety and frequency of available activities. We started to get a few raindrops while we were chatting with them and headed back to the rig at a quick pace. It was misting by the time we got there but we did not get very wet.

Linda started working on dinner by making the polenta and putting it in the refrigerator to firm up. I turned on the TV for background noise and doodled on my iPad. Linda set out our salads and then we had a 20 minute break before the polenta was ready. She served it with Puttanesca sauce that included cayenne pepper and had a nice kick. After dinner we watched our usual Tuesday evening TV programs, all of them season finales, and then went to bed.

2015/12/13 (N) Test Print

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We were up at 7:45 AM this morning. We were still unable to acquire the Internet via the resort Wi-Fi system so I turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi and got our Wi-Fi Ranger connected to it. I made the coffee and fed the cats while Linda cleaned the litter tray.

Sunday is pancakes-for-breakfast day but we had some coffee first. Linda played word games while I put the finishing touches on yesterday’s blog post and started today’s post. The pancakes were yummy if a bit too much quantity wise. Linda said I complain if she makes a smaller batch, which is probably true. I suggested that we should have grapefruit with our pancakes to make up the difference.

At the fire circle last night we met Tom and Cindy. We have seen them there the last three times but not had a chance to introduce ourselves. Tom sat down next to me so we finally had a chance to chat. They are newly retired and less than one year into their RVing adventure. Like us, they are only here for the month but expressed an interest in getting together to discuss motorhomes and RVing. Absolutely!

My main focus today was finishing our 2015 Year in Review holiday letter, which is actually a photo essay. I spent some time looking for a few additional photos that met my criteria and constraints and found one to fill available spaces. I also replaced several images with better (sharper) versions. By noon I was finally ready to print a test copy but had to mess around with printer settings for half an hour to get it to print. It finally did, and looked good, so I should not have to make any further adjustments unless Linda finds something when she proofreads it. Linda won’t have time to address envelopes until the middle of next week so there was no need to print them at this time. We will print, fold, address, stamp, and stuff them in one continuous process and then get them out of the rig and to the post office the same day. Space is at a premium in an RV, even a 40 foot converted highway coach.

With the holiday letter done I decided to make some minor updates to our website having to do with Bus Conversion Magazine. WordPress 4.4 was available so I installed it. There were eight updates—three plugins and five themes—so I installed those too. I did not take the time to update the other three WordPress sites but I need to do that and thought I might get to it after dinner.

We were both focused on our work and decided to skip lunch save for a few pretzels dipped in hummus. At 1 PM I decided to it was finally time to install the window. It was a warm, sunny day, which was fine for a short, light-duty maintenance task. Linda informed me that the weather forecast for the upcoming week had a significant chance of rain, so getting the window reinstalled today was probably a good thing.

It was a simple enough thing to install but I had to get out the Little Giant stepladder and a tool box for a pair of needle-nose pliers. I cleaned the hinge part of the frame and sprayed it with a dry lube. With me outside on the ladder and Linda inside I got the window hung and she got the lever mechanism adjusted so we could get the lever pins inserted in the correct direction. I then installed the E-clips on the ends of the pins. I noticed that the front pin on the other driver side living room window was missing its E-clip so we installed one there. At that point we checked the other six windows for missing clips. They were all good. I was going to change the pins around on the other three windows that had them in backwards but it was warm with a hot sun on the driver’s side of the bus so I deferred this minor project to another time.

Not having the window in place was starting to bug me so it was good to have it done. With that minor weight off my shoulders I returned to working on the Habitat For Humanity article for Bus Conversion Magazine. Although Part 1 will run in February and Part 2 in March I really want to put it to bed in the next 48 hours. As with Part 1, I reformatted Part 2 in two columns and started selecting and inserting photos in-line with the text for the print edition. With Jorge doing the magazine layout, and not being a bus person, placing the photos approximately where I think they should go seems to streamline the process.

By 4 PM we were both ready to go for a walk. We were back before 5 PM and sat outside for 45 minutes using our iPads until we felt a few rain drops and then a few more. The day had started with fog which gave way to mostly sunny skies that were gradually replaced with clouds and became a dense overcast by the time we went for our walk. The winds were out of the SSE and darker ones moved in just ahead of the rain drops. I put our outdoor chairs away and went inside just in case we had an unexpected downpour.

For dinner Linda heated up a couple of cans of Amy’s vegan chili with saltine crackers on the side and the last of the broccoli Cole slaw. After dinner we tuned in PBS and watched the 1981 Simon and Garfunkel Central Park reunion concert followed by a documentary on The Carpenters. The resort Wi-Fi was still not providing Internet access so I turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi and spent the better part of the evening copying blog posts from e-mails into Word docs. Linda played word games and eventually went to bed to read. I switched to my iPad to finish up this post and turned in for the evening at midnight.

2015/12/02 (W) Settling In

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I was up at 7 AM, fed the cats, and settled in on the sofa with the heater pad on my lower right back to work on my iPad. I finished my blog post for yesterday and e-mailed the last three days to myself. I updated seven apps and then checked out the latest issue of the SKP Photographers BoF newsletter. Linda finally got up at 9:15 AM. I made a pot of coffee and we had toast for breakfast.

My first priority after breakfast was responding to a half-dozen e-mails from Gary at BCM, one of which required me to proofread an article he had written about a recent rally. Next I selected four photos I took with our new Sony a99v DSLT camera and uploaded them to a Dropbox folder for Lou to see. Somewhere in there I got a call from Joe (our mobile mechanic) about Globus cork flooring products. As long as he was on the line I asked his opinion about the chassis battery / Vanner equalizer issue. He reminded me, as he often does, that I already knew how to check if the Vanners were working. When we concluded the call I went outside and did the checks.

With the Vanners connected to the batteries and working correctly the voltage at the “12V” terminal should be exactly 1/2 the voltage at the “24V” terminal. Equivalently, the voltage from +24 to +12 should be the same as the voltage from +12 to Ground. I unplugged the two maintenance chargers to let the surface charge bleed off and used the time to trace the wiring behind the two battery disconnect switches. As I somewhat expected the two Vanner equalizers, which are wired in parallel, are NOT connected to the batteries when they are disconnected from the coach electrical panels. (The one Vanner whose label I could see is a Voltmaster 60-50M rated at 50 Amps maximum so I presume the other one is the same model.)

With the battery bank connected the relative voltage measurements were as expected, indicating that the Vanners were probably working correctly while the absolute measurements of +25.6 and +12.8 (to the nearest 0.1 VDC) indicated that the batteries were fully charged.

I put the disconnect switches back in the disconnected position and plugged the maintenance chargers back in. I checked the voltage on the upper and lower battery strands and they were close to the same but not identical. That was reasonable given that the chargers were independent (electrically isolated) and the upper and lower strands were bridged by Vanner equalizers just minutes before. Based on my testing it appeared that everything was OK except that I lacked a plausible explanation for why the engine alternator apparently did not fully charge the batteries yesterday on the drive down from Mayo. I wrote all this up in an e-mail and sent it to Joe, Butch, and Chuck, all of whom have had conversations with me about this over the last few days.

Linda made a humus and onion on rye sandwich and we split it for lunch along with some grapes. It rained hard while we were eating but the rain did not last long. After lunch I completed the certification paperwork for our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter. It was 4:15 PM by the time I was done. I will get copies made tomorrow and get it in the mail to the headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio.

I logged in to the Prevost Community website to renew our AITA NAPA discount card but wasn’t sure what to do, so I called Chuck. He and Barbara were at a wine and cheese gathering and he said he would call me back when he was free. Linda wanted to go for a walk around the Resort so at 4:30 we headed towards the north end. This part of the Resort has had a lot of development since we were last here and now has a lot of new park models and large pads for RVs.

We looped around to John and Ali’s 5th wheel but did not see any sign of them so we headed down the main road towards Jeff and Kathy’s site. Sure enough, John and Ali were there enjoying a glass of wine with Jeff and Kathy. They offered us some and we accepted and pulled up a couple of open chairs. We sat and visited until 6:30 PM when we started to get some persistent rain drops. John drove us back to our coach in his golf cart.

For dinner Linda made a nice green salad and pan-seared tofu with a balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar glaze with chives. It was very good and I could easily have eaten twice as much. After dinner I worked on an article about replacing the bearings in our Aqua-Hot Webasto burner this past winter while we were on Quartzsite. I got the text finished and inserted/captioned the photos that had been post-processed. There are more photos to be processed and I plan to finish the article tomorrow and upload it to the Dropbox for proofreading.

I need, and have been looking forward to, a stretch of quiet days with time to work at my computer as I have a lot to do. I need to update our website and blog, which is almost four months behind, and get back to work on the SLAARC, FMCA Freethinkers, and FMCA GLCC websites. I also need to finish some articles for BCM that have been “in process” for quite a while, and I need/want to write some new ones. Along the same lines I need to clean up my BCM folders on my hard drive and in our Dropbox. That is not all going to happen by the time we leave for Arcadia, but I will do as much as I can. Once we get to Arcadia we will be spending more time away from the coach exploring southern Florida and visiting with friends. That means I will be creating lots of new photos and posts but have less time to process them. Ahhhh, retirement.

2015/07/06 (M) Arrested

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Our morning started with coffee, once we got up, and then granola for breakfast. We are both in better health, generally, than we were in our 30s, 40s, and early 50s, but having Madeline here requires a different kind of constant energy and attention and we are somewhat tired by the time her parents take her home. It’s a good tired, of course, but we were still tired this morning and slept in for a while.

I had hoped to get back to work on the bus today but the afternoon highs were forecast for the mid-80’s which would make for less than comfortable working conditions. The forecast for the rest of the week was for highs in the 70’s so I decided to wait another day. I really needed to get back to work on the bus but I also had other things to take care of that seemed at least as pressing.

At the top of my list was the SLAARC website. Scott Neader had successfully copied the SLAARC WordPress website from GoDaddy.com to QTH.com and changed the domain pointers to point to the QTH servers. He needed me to check that everything was working correctly. He was also preparing to transfer the domain name registration and needed my involvement for that process.

Part of our home ham radio shack with the new Yaesu FTM-400 2m/70cm mobile radio shown lower left.

Continuing with the ham radio theme, I needed to resolve how I was going to mount the new Diamond X-300NA 2m/70cm antenna and possibly remount the outside omnidirectional antenna for the cellular booster system. That meant doing some minor engineering and possibly ordering parts. I was also preoccupied with the fact that I was unable to participate in the SLAARC info net last night, apparently due to some malfunction in our ham radio system, and it was going to bug me until I figured it out.

Last, but not least, was the fact that I was now one month behind on uploading posts to our blog. The farther behind I get the more of a chore it is to get caught up. Like cleaning up my e-mail inboxes, which I also need to do, it finally becomes “the” thing I “have” to take care of before I can concentrate on any other work. I hate it when that happens, but it is a recurring problem and I have no one to blame except myself.

I often seem to spend the first part of each morning finishing up my blog post (draft) for the previous day and outlining the one for the current day or making notes for future days. It’s my way of reflecting on what I have done and thinking ahead to what I need/want to do next. By the time I actually got to work this morning it was after 10 AM and Keith showed up to cut the grass. It did not rain this past week and he was finally able to cut the grass at the west end of the property, which is low and often wet.

Before going to my office I checked the rebate paperwork which Linda had assembled for the new Yaesu ham radio and got it ready to mail. I also started filling out the prescription form to send in to Catamaran Home Delivery when I realized the doctor had written the Rx for 30 days instead of 90. I called the clinic and they said it would (probably) be OK to have Linda bring it to her appointment tomorrow and have the doctor rewrite it.

Our coaxial cable adapter kit.

When I finally got to my office I looked at the SLAARC WordPress website on my computer to make sure everything was working. The only thing that was not working was an online tool for logging check-ins for the Sunday evening info net. I e-mailed Scott about that and then logged in as an administrator and updated several plugins. I logged in to the FMCA-GLCC website and updated it and then did the same for our personal website. I then created a support ticket at iPower.com regarding the broken FMCA Freethinkers website. I dealt with SLAARC related e-mails throughout the day.

I spent the rest of the morning editing blog posts for the second half of June and early July and then started selecting and processing photos to use with blog posts, and processed those further. By the time I quit working I had photos ready for everything except the three days of the ARRL Field Day event.

It was a nice day, if a bit warm, and we had the house opened up including the basement doorwall. Other than a short break for lunch by 2 PM I had sat long enough and decided to setup the new Diamond X-300 2m/70cm antenna on a temporary pole. I rummaged around the garage and found the four section pole I had used at the old house. The pieces were buried under a pile of GLCC related PVC flag pole sections but I was able to slide them out. I cleaned up the swaged connections and used a light coating of anti-seize compound before assembling them. I stood it upright on the ground at the NE corner of the deck and zip tied it to the corner post at three points. I then set up the 7-foot step ladder on the deck and removed the upper two sections.

The new Diamond X-300NA VHF/UHF ham radio antenna is visible atop the pole at the corner of the deck.

I unbolted the X-300 antenna from its storage place on the side of the 40-foot tower and set the base on the east deck railing. I then got one of the 35-foot heliac coax cables from the basement and attached it to the feed point of the antenna. With Linda’s assistance I mounted the antenna to the top of the topmost mast section and zip tied the coax to the mast. Back up on the ladder I was able to slip the upper mast sections into the lower mast sections and add a couple more zip ties to secure the coax.

I routed the coax over to the cable entry box (CEB) so that it was not visible. The antenna is shielded from view by our Norway Crimson King Maple tree and the mast is very inconspicuous; not bad for a temporary installation. I disconnected the X-50 antenna coax from the Morgan UHF/VHF Lightning Arrestor in the CEB and attached the coax from the X-300 in its place. I went back to the ham shack, turned on the Yaesu radio, and listened. Nothing. I tried calling the South Lyon 2m repeater but nothing came back. I tied the Novi 440 MHz repeater…nothing. I turned the radio off and moved the coax to our Icom IC-7000 radio and repeated the tests. Same results. Something was clearly wrong so I called Mike (W8XH) to see if he could help me figure it out.

Mike was out but on his way back home and called me when he was back at his base station. We verified the transmit and receive squelch settings on my radios and then tested both antennas on both radios. Using our cell phones we confirmed that he was not hearing my transmissions and I was not hearing his, either direct (simplex) or through the repeaters. It was now clear that RF signals were not making it into or out of my system and there was one component that was common to all configurations; the Morgan M-302N VHF/UHF Lightning Arrestor.

I have a coaxial cable adapter kit that allows me to temporarily interconnect most of the connectors used in amateur radio coaxial cables. At Mike’s suggestion I used the kit to assemble an adapter (barrel connector) with N-female connections on both ends. I then disconnected the antenna and radio coaxial cables from the lightning arrestor and connected the radio coax directly to the X-300 antenna coax. Back in the ham shack I tested this configuration with both radios on both repeaters. I was receiving both repeaters with S7 to S9 signal strength, which is good, and very little noise, which is also good. Mike reported that my signal was very strong into both repeaters and that he was receiving me full-quieting. I shut the radios off and then switched the connection in the cable entry box to the X-50 antenna. We repeated the tests with the same results, confirming that the problem as the lightning arrestor and only the lightning arrestor.

The current status of the cable entry box.

Although I was disappointed that the M-302N was defective I was overjoyed, or at least relieved, that everything else was working perfectly. Although the new X-300 antenna turned out not to be “necessary” having it on a mast above the tower will give us an even better transmit and receive capability than the current X-50 installation. I even have some hope of being able to reach repeaters farther away in the Detroit metro area as well as in the Lansing, Flint, Ann Arbor, and Ypsilanti areas, and perhaps much farther beyond. Windsor (Canada) and Kalamazoo are possible when atmospheric conditions are right for longer range propagation, and the Saginaw, Mt. Pleasant, Fort Wayne (Indiana), and even Cleveland (Ohio) areas are not out of the question. Once, at the old house, I was on the Spirit of 76 repeater atop the Renaissance Center in Detroit when it picked up a 2m station from Iowa.

Relieved of my concerns, especially about the operation of our new radio, I returned to my computer-based tasks. The first thing I did was e-mail Chris Perri at KF7P Metalwerks regarding the lightning arrestor, which I purchased from him as part of the cable entry box. He apparently forwarded my e-mail to Morgan Manufacturing Inc., or at least e-mailed them, as I got an e-mail from Bob at Morgan with instructions on where to return the unit. It has a lifetime warranty and he indicated they would repair or replace it as needed.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening, except for dinner, working on photos. Dinner was chickpea salad on a bed of greens with steamed baby bok choy dressed in rice vinegar. It was a perfect meal for a warm summer evening.

The humidity had been up all day and rose as the temperatures dropped at sunset, although they did not drop much. Linda was watching an episode of Scorpion when I finally came upstairs. We watched an episode of NCIS Los Angeles after that and then an episode of Two and a Half Men, which I have always enjoyed. We turned on a small fan but it was a warm, uncomfortable evening for sleeping. For whatever reason we did not turn on the air-conditioner although in hindsight we should have.

2015/05/28 (R) Ice Cold Internet

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I was up until after 1 AM last night fussing with my computer but the OS was updated and was running better (I think) when I finally went to bed. I need my beauty rest so I did not get up until 9 AM this morning. Linda had already made coffee so I checked the temperature of the refrigerator (41.4 degrees F) and then got out the soy creamer. 41 is better than 45 but given where the thermostat was set the temperature in the fresh food compartment should have been 35 degrees or lower. We had a very late breakfast of homemade granola and small glasses of orange juice to wash down our vitamins.

Because I did not get to upload any blog posts last night I switched up my routine and spent the morning working at my desk. The weather was very nice so Linda went for a long walk. My computer was back to normal and I managed to upload nine posts to my blog (May 10 through 18) by 1 PM.

I had an e-mail back from Ken Schramm yesterday letting me know that his “last day at Wayne RESA” gathering would get underway around 3:30 PM at Ashley’s Beer & a Grill at Westland Mall. Brendan and Shawna’s celebration is from 5 to 8 PM in Ann Arbor so we will be able to attend both events although we might not make it to Ann Arbor until 6 PM.

Today was our friends’ 44^th wedding anniversary. Butch and Fonda were married the same year we were one day before us. We did not know each other then but are now friends through our mutual passion for converted highway buses.

Brendan called and talked to Linda. It turns out that tomorrow is grandparents/special friends Shabbat at Madeline’s daycare center and Brendan thought we might want to attend. It starts at 10:30 AM and includes lunch. The food at the daycare center is vegetarian but not vegan so we will see how that works out. Brendan is going to take care of Linda’s plants so we will take these with us and go to his house when we are done at the daycare center. I will pick up our electric pressure washer while we are there so I can wash the bus on Saturday. We were going to buy cards today for Ken, Brendan, and Shawna but decided we would do that tomorrow on our way to Ken’s gathering.

Linda made large green salads with chickpeas for lunch. We both put on a few pounds over the winter and really want/need to take them off. After lunch I worked in the bus. I removed the wood trim along the top of the beveled strip mirrors on the wall in hallway. The strips were glued directly to the wall so I put the trim back on. If we do not want to see these mirrors we will have to figure out some way to cover them.

There was a triangular horizontal panel between the upper edges of the J-lounge and the dinette with four switches mounted in it. Two of those switches no longer control anything but the other two still do. I secured the panel above the passenger side HVAC chase and blocked it in so it could not move. I dressed all of the loose wires with cable ties and cable clamps and secured them to the floor. I cut two grates from a piece of expanded metal and secured them over the two holes in the driver side HVAC chase where the sleeper-sofa was installed. That sealed up the last of the holes that the cats might get into. If one of them got into the HVAC system we would have disassemble half the bus to get them out.

I removed all of my tools and miscellaneous parts from the bus and set them on steps leading to the house. I had put one of our folding chairs inside the bus to sit on and moved it to the location of the passenger chair as a safety barrier after I moved the trash can out yesterday. I folded it up and put it back in the bay where it is stored. While Linda vacuumed the inside of the coach with our Shop-Vac I put tools and parts in the garage or back into the appropriate tool boxes. When she was done we got the Shop-Vac out of the bus and put it in the garage.

There is a maple grab handle on the right side of the entrance stairs (as you enter the bus) attached to a piece of maple trim from the back side. The finish is worn and the handle is loose. I wanted to tighten it, which required access to the back of the trim board. Linda recalled that we had Creative Mobile Interiors (CMI) tighten this handle when we first got the coach so we figured there had to be a way to get to the back of the trim board.

We removed the cockpit HVAC access panel just below the trim board but it did not appear to provide access to the back of the trim board. I removed the only two screws I could see (at the right end of the trim) but it still would not come loose. I figured the trim board had to be screwed on somewhere else and the only possible place was under a piece of inset brass finish trim. This brass trim is used throughout the bus, including around the edges of the Corian counters, and has an adhesive backing. I have found screws under it in other places so I pried the end up and peeled it out, revealing three screws.

I thought I was on the verge of success until I removed the three screws but still could not get the trim board loose. I tried prying it at various points with a screwdriver but it would not budge and we finally came to the unhappy conclusion that it was glued on. Perhaps it is secured from underneath in some manner that we did not see but I will have to return to this when I have more time. Linda suggested that we cut the handle off and install a new one that can be screwed on from the front. She’s a clever girl. As long as the access panel was off we vacuumed out the cockpit HVAC system and then replaced the panel.

About this time a UPS truck went by headed deeper into our neighborhood. Since we live on a dead end street I knew the truck would be coming back so I waited for it and flagged down the driver. I explained to the young man that we had two packages delivered to the wrong house in the same week about a month ago and that I had called the 800 number and talked to customer service but I would appreciate it if he would mention it to his colleagues as we will be ordering a lot of stuff starting in the second week of June. He was very nice and said he would.

Our last bus task for today was the hard one. We moved the passenger chair from the garage back to the bus using a hand truck so we did not have to carry it. It is very heavy but with Linda guiding the top and me supporting the base we got it inside and set in position. We tilted it fore and aft so I could slide the mounting studs into position and line them up with the holes in the base. I then bolted it down to the support rails by tightening the four nuts.

This was all trickier than it sounds. The bolts have square flanges that have to engage in the open slot of the channel to keep them from turning while being tightened or loosened. But that required me to pull up on the studs as the nuts were not going on that easily. As when I took the nuts off, I had to wedge one of them up with a screwdriver while I got the nut tight enough that the bolt would not spin. I reconnected the power to the chair and we checked that all of the adjustments still worked, especially the footrest.

With the installation of the passenger seat we were done working on the bus until after GLAMARAMA and have two seats with seatbelts so we can tow the car rather than drive it separately. This will be much nicer for us and the cats, although I expect the modified interior will freak them out initially. We will be gone most of Friday but have Saturday to prepare food, reload the coach for the week, and wash the exterior. Oh the joys of owning a converted coach.

For dinner Linda served the last of the whole wheat capellini with Portobello mushrooms and asparagus and steamed some broccoli. A piece of whole wheat bread and a small glass of Leelanau Cellars Winter White wine completed the meal. We had watermelon for dessert later.

I returned to my office after dinner and updated our Rand-McNally RVND 7710 GPS. I then continued uploading blog posts. By the time I quit working around 10 PM I had uploaded nine more posts and was caught up! I think 18 posts in one day may be my all time record. I did not get to work on articles for BCM, or copy files between our NAS units, but I was satisfied with what we had accomplished today.

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.

2014/08/28 (R) This And That

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I put in a full day working on our garage project while Linda put in a full day working on this and that. She baked vegan muffins, made vegan rice pudding, worked at her computer on bills, banking, and RV club financial records, and helped me in the garage with drywall installation.

My first task was sanding down drywall compound from yesterday and then adding more in certain places. I then measured, marked, and cut the drywall for the inside of the new utility closet. Linda helped me install it. We had to cut one piece in half lengthwise in order to get it into position. I also had to drill a hole for the garage furnace thermostat cable and push it out through the utility closet wall. Once all of the pieces were secured with drywall screws I applied self-adhesive fiberglass tape to the seams and then applied drywall compound to the seams and screw dimples.

Jasper doing his cat thing.

Since I could not sand, prime, or paint until the drywall compound was dry I worked on some loose electrical ends. I installed a saddle connector in the side of the library HVAC for the armored AC power cable and a cable strain relief for the thermostat cable and A-C compressor control wires. Darryll had already installed these cables through the gas pipe hole, so I made a diagram of how they were connected, uninstalled them, re-routed them through the strain relief, and reconnected them. I prepped the AC power cable, partially installed the switch in the surface mount electrical box, and connected the armored cable to the saddle connector. The final AC power connections for the library HVAC unit will have to wait until the drywall is finished and the surface mount junction/switch box is installed.

I mounted the library thermostat on the wall above the air return but did not connect the wires. The color coding of the wires in the thermostat cable does not exactly match the labeling of the terminals and the instructions were less than clear, so I thought it best to leave this for Darryll. I removed the side panel from the Reznor garage furnace and made the AC power connections. I did not, however, connect the thermostat wires and I left the documentation packet inside the unit.

After dinner I checked e-mail and edited a half dozen blog pages before turning in for the night.

20140711 (F) Nice Weather Lately

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Steven’s nephew, Spencer, was here a little after 8 AM and spent some time cleaning up the driveway. He was joined by Tommy, who was only available for the morning. Tommy got instructions from Steve by phone and they tried working on the retaining walls, but I’m not sure what they accomplished. One of the large boulders Steve positioned yesterday on the lower west wall had dropped 6 inches and they were unable to re-position it.

It was another pleasant day, so I decided to work outside during the morning. I cut up some previously trimmed tree limbs and then started pruning our apple tree. I tried to cut all of the dead limbs and branches I could reach from the ground using our new Fiskar’s ratcheting lopper. With that material removed I was able to use the pole saw and compound lopper to remove some larger and/or higher limbs. By noon it was getting warm and I knocked off for the day and had lunch. Linda made the chickpea (garbanzo bean) salad that we both like so much and served it on a bed of greens with red grapes and sweet Bing cherries on the side.

Tommy had to take off for the afternoon and left Spencer to start moving smaller rocks onto the slope of the east retaining wall. We would occasionally hear one thud against the foundation and I decided I should check on his progress. He was doing a fine job of tossing rocks into place, but I did not like the way the earth was pitched as it appeared to slope back towards the house. I examined the west wall and it appeared to have the same problem.

Since the whole reason for this project was to get water to flow away from the house, I asked Spencer to take a break while I called Steve. I told him that something just did not look right to me and that I could not see any evidence of a drain tile behind the upper wall on the west side. He was running the excavator at another job site and wasn’t able to come look at our job so he sent Kyle over to pick up Spencer, who did not have a car. With a chance of rain in the forecast for Saturday through Monday it is looking more and more like this job will not be done until the end of July.

In the afternoon I continued working on configuring my Windows 8.1 laptop. My challenge today was getting Outlook 2013 to preview PDF files. I used the search feature on the Start screen to locate information, some of which indicated I would have to create and/or edit the registry. In the end the solution only required two steps: installing Adobe Reader 11 and then setting it as the default program for PDFs.

With that problem solved I edited my blog posts for July 1 through 9 and started uploading them. I managed to get the posts for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd uploaded before dinner. I also got a return call from Darryll at DCM Heating and Cooling and we agreed he would come to the house tomorrow at 10:30 AM to finalize the work we need done and pin down a start date to prep the house for natural gas and install a small HVAC unit for the library and a furnace for the garage. We also need the main air-conditioner serviced. Luckily it has been a cool summer so far. The conversion of appliances will have to wait until the natural gas line is connected to the meter and turned on, which could be as late as early October.

I got a call from Gary at GM Construction sometime in the last few days. He finally had all of his supplier quotes for our pole barn / bus garage project and had a price for us. It was higher than I would have liked, but less than the quote from Morton Buildings, which was for a much smaller barn. Last night I called Phil from Precision Grading to update him on the status of the project and to see if he would swing by and look at the pull-through driveway which the landscapers have torn up more than I expected. My best guess is that we will get a barn up somehow, but I’m not sure when or how.

For dinner Linda made pan-grilled sliced tofu with onions and Bar-B-Que sauce served on a toasted sandwich bun with a side of lightly oiled and baked potato wedges and a few fresh strawberries. Of course, that meant ketchup with Tabasco sauce. We split a can of cold Yuengling beer which was the perfect beverage for this meal. Sometime in the last two days Linda made a raspberry sauce from frozen raspberries we picked last year. Earlier today she made a vegan chocolate cake and this evening the cake and raspberry sauce came together for dessert.

2014/07/09 (W) vCard Magic And Adult Tonka Toy

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This morning when I turned my computers on there was an update available for Adobe Creative Cloud so I let it download while we had breakfast using our new Corelle dinnerware. Adobe updates are either very large or their servers are very slow or both. Whatever the reason, their updates seem to take a very long time to download and install.

A couple of the landscapers arrived at 8:00 AM and resumed work on the front stairs. It was overcast at dawn but the clouds were forecast to clear by the afternoon with temperatures in the low 70’s and zero chance of rain. That would normally be a perfect day to work outside, if the ground wasn’t saturated with water from the recent rains. They worked on the front stairs until lunch time, took a short lunch break, and then worked a little longer. When they quit for the day they had all nine of the large precast steps installed and the crushed limestone base built for the brick paver sidewalk. I think they left because there wasn’t anything else for them to do at our site until they either had some additional materials (slag and paver bricks), more crew members (for moving dirt in wheelbarrows or digging trenches by hand), or dry enough conditions to get the excavator around back ( to trench and set boulders in the retaining walls).

Linda decided not open more boxes today and focused instead on deep cleaning the kitchen, including the freezer/refrigerator, stove, and microwave and getting things ready to go to the recycling center and the Salvation Army donation center and resale store. While all of that was going on I put a load of laundry in the washing machine and got to work on my computer tasks. I checked my e-mail using my new ASUS laptop computer. Everything looked OK, so I started reading and replying to e-mails on the new laptop. That was a major milestone in that I am now committed to using the new machine as my primary computer.

With that transition in mind I spent much of the morning copying files from my old laptop to both the old and new NAS units. I then copied critical files having to do with my websites and photographs from one of the NAS units to my new laptop. Getting the new laptop setup with everything I need will take quite a while, but that’s OK as it also affords me the opportunity to move over only those things that I absolutely need when I need them.

I installed the vCard Wizard (vCard4Outlook) add-in without difficulty but the installation of the Duplicate Killer add-in failed. I checked the 4Team.biz website and then e-mailed their support address. My ASUS is running Windows 8.1 / 64-bit and apparently my Outlook 2013 is also 64-bit. According to their website the vCard Wizard add-in supports the 64-bit version of Outlook 2013, but the Duplicate Killer add-in only supports the 32-bit version. One of my reasons for buying vCard Wizard was that I figured the companion Duplicate Killer program from the same company would work better with it than it would with a vCard converter from another company. If I had realized it wasn’t compatible with my configuration I could have pursued other options.

I sync’d my Palm Tungsten T3 to my old Dell laptop and then did a vCard export of all my contacts and moved it to the ASUS laptop via one of the NAS units. From there I was able to import all of my old Palm contacts into the Contacts folder in my Personal Folder, creating duplicates if/as needed. The Personal Folder is a carryover from my previous conversion from MS Outlook Express to MS Outlook 2007. I am a bit unclear about the distinction between the “address book” and “contacts” within the context of MS Outlook and I am not sure I have accomplished what I intended to accomplish with vCard Wizard. I have accomplished something for sure–my Palm contacts are now clearly in my Outlook 2013–but I thought they would be added to my address book, which does not appear to be the case. Perhaps I chose the wrong destination folder? More research is needed.

By 4:30 PM it was obvious the landscapers were not coming back today so that gave me the opportunity to practice using the Kobelco 35sr excavator again. I worked for about 90 minutes digging more junk out of the woods just southwest of our house and adding it to the pile I started on Monday. Think bricks, cinder blocks, railroad ties, landscape timbers, dimensional lumber, cut up tree trunks and large downed tree limbs and you will have the picture. In addition to the bucket for digging and transferring material, the excavator has a claw “thumb” that can be closed to hold things in the bucket, like tree limbs, or pick things up, like boulders and cinder blocks. It turned out that the bucket/claw combination are much stronger than a cinder block; I broke several trying to pick them up.

By the time I parked the machine and turned it off Linda had dinner ready. She made a salad of dark greens with almonds and grapes and a barley, split pea, lentil risotto with carrot, red onion, celery, garlic, and a few chopped up greens. We finished the bottle of Merlot we bought at Whole Foods on Saturday. At $3 per bottle (750 ml) it was competitive with box wines like Franzia, and of comparable quality. Although slightly dry for my taste, it was a good accompaniment to the somewhat savory dishes Linda has made this week. I would be tempted to stock up at that price if I liked a bit more than I do.

After dinner I edited photographs on my new computer for the first time. They will appear in the various blog entries starting with July 1st, which I will also edit and upload using the new machine. Although the transition to a new computing platform always feels awkward for a while, and there is desire to return to the comfort of the old familiar one, from here on out I will be focused on making the ASUS my primary computing platform.

2014/01/22 (W) Old & New

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I spent most of the day catching up on our blog postings for the previous two days. Our trip to Cedar Key on Monday was a full day of interesting sights and people and I took quite a few photographs. The weather and light were very nice and most of the photos were usable but required the usual post-processing which would take several hours. Our trip to Paynes Prairie State Preserve on Tuesday preempted image processing work and resulted in even more photos to review, select, and process.

David and Marie Ross from our FMCA Freethinkers chapter were scheduled to arrive at Williston Crossings RV Resort today so we did not plan any activities away from the resort. That gave me the time to work on the blog posts and Linda to work on her cross stitch project. We took a break around noon to go for a walk and bundled up against the chill, which seemed sharper than usual. It was below freezing again last night and only made it up to about 50 by mid-afternoon. We had some Amy’s Thai Coconut Soup when we got back which helped warm us up. Amy’s products are all vegan and we try to keep some on hand for a quick, easy, delicious meal. A selection of Amy’s products is often available at regular supermarkets including Publix here in Florida, the best selection is usually found at Whole Foods or specialty markets.

While we were walking I got a call from Pat Lintner letting me know that he and Vickie were back at Fort Wilderness and we arranged to drive over to visit them late next week. We made plans yesterday to visit Al Hesselbart on Saturday at Breezy Oaks RV Park near Bushnell, Florida. We will probably drive through “The Villages” enroute to Breezy Oaks and stop for a visit with Joe Cannarozzi (our bus mechanic) who is staying at The Villager RV Park in Wildwood just south of The Villages. While we are down that way we will also check out the Escapees Park in Bushnell which is only a few miles from Breezy Oaks.

David and Marie came in the back entrance of Williston Crossings so we did not see them arrive. A knock on our door around 4 PM announced that they were here. We visited with David briefly and discussed dinner options. They invited us over to their motorhome, a very nice 2000 Safari Sahara, for drinks and we enjoyed a glass of white wine and good conversation. By 7:00 PM we were all hungry and headed over to the Driftwood.

The Driftwood is a small diner that is walking distance from the front entrance of the resort and the closest place to dine out. David drove us over as it was dark and cold and would be darker and colder by the end of our meal. The place looked like it was closed, but the illuminated “open” sign in the window suggested otherwise so we went there for dinner as planned. This was our first trip to the Driftwood since we arrived in Williston. Linda and I had salads and potatoes, hers baked and mine French fried (with lots of ketchup and Tabasco sauce). The food was OK but our waitress was friendly and efficient. We were all drinking coffee or tea and she was very attentive to keeping our cups refilled, which I appreciate and use as a marker of good waitservice.

By the time we finished dinner and returned to the resort clear skies revealed bright stars and radiational cooling had already lowered the temperature in to the upper 30’s. With yet another sub-freezing night ahead we set the thermostats on the toe-kick heaters and settled in to watch the final episode of Shackleton on PBS, a documentary on the recreation of Ernest Shackleton’s epic journey in 1916 from Antarctica to South Georgia Island to reach the whaling station at Stromness and arrange the rescue of the 22 men left behind. It was somehow fitting given the weather this January.

2013_09_23-27 (M-F) Getting Ready

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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