Tag Archives: Prevost Community

2015/12/02 (W) Settling In

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.

 

2015/11/29 (N) Cartersville to Mayo

I got up at 6 AM, fed the cats, turned on the engine block heater and the Aqua-Hot electric heating element, and then sat on the sofa with the heater pad on my back until 7:20 when I got dressed.  Linda was awake at 6 but fell back asleep and did not get up until after 7:30 AM.  We had toast and bananas for breakfast but no coffee or tea.

We had 342 miles to travel today to get to John Palmer’s place northeast of Mayo, Florida.  He operates Palmer Energy Systems (http://palmerenergysystems.com).  We had already driven almost 700 miles, not all of it due south, of course, so we estimated that we were at least 600 miles farther south than our house.  It may not seem like that much on a planet with a 24,000 mile circumference but it’s enough to make a big difference in the climate and weather.  I was going to check/adjust all of the tires before we left this morning but the temperature was only slightly warmer than when we left home.  The TireTraker TPMS seemed to indicate that the tires were OK (although I do not trust the readings I am getting) so I just inspected them visually.

Once again we targeted an 8:30 AM departure time and actually pulled out of our site at 8:35.  As soon as we pulled onto I-75 southbound we were in heavier traffic than I expected and it only got worse the farther south we went.  It was reasonably smooth sailing all things considered, those things being:  construction zones, dense traffic, sunshine (we were driving south, more or less), and drivers who didn’t know how to use an entrance ramp to merge onto a freeway.  The last one is one of the banes of my bus driving experience.

We only stopped twice.  The first stop was around 11 AM at the rest area near MM179 (south of Atlanta) to use the bathroom and give the cats a chance to do the same.  The second stop was at the rest area near MM59 around 12:30 PM.  We stopped long enough to have a snack of sliced apples, have something to drink, and use the bathroom.  It also gave the cats a chance to eat, drink, and use the litter tray.  I called John to get final instructions on how to get into his place.  That turned out to be a useful call; he confirmed that we would not have any problem with US-129/FL-51 traffic circle in Live Oak, Florida.  He also gave a specific tip to “pull off the road into the ditch (on the right) to swing wide enough to make the turn (to the left) onto his street from the county road.”

Because we were stopping for more than a few minutes I shut off the engine.  The Battery Balance light came on as I was pulling into the rest stop.  This light does not come on very often and usually only stays on for a few seconds and then goes off and stays off.  When I first turned the ignition switch on in Berea it came on and stayed on for several minutes but then turned off and stayed off.  It did not come on this morning when I first turned the ignition switch on in Cartersville, so I thought we might be OK (although I did not really believe that).  With the engine off (alternator not running), but the ignition switch on, the 24V and 12V gauges indicated less than full charge voltages.  I did not recall having ever seen that condition before.

We were back on the road by 1 PM with the OTR A-C turned on.  As always the A-C Low Pressure warning light came on occasionally but it always went off after a relatively short time.  Of more concern was the Battery Balance light, which went on and off for the next 40 miles.  Sometimes it would flicker but other times it would stay on for a long time.  Not good.

Caution and warning lights always add an element of stress to driving the bus, but Linda experiences it too from the co-pilot/navigator seat.  She knows that it stresses me and she can see the lights from her seat, so she knows what is going on at the same time I do.  In spite of the warning light the rest of the trip was smooth and uneventful.  We had much less traffic as soon as we exited I-75 onto US-129 in Florida.  We encountered a bit more traffic and had a slow roll through Live Oak, Florida.  Once we were on FL-51 headed south towards Mayo, Florida we had almost no traffic.  We crossed the Suwannee River twice, the second time just north of Mayo, and shortly thereafter made our turn onto CR-354 and headed east parallel to the river.

We found John’s street and followed his advice on how to get the bus in.  The problem was that the County Road was not that wide and John’s street was even narrower.  It also had signs on posts on each side right at the shoulder of the County Road.  That geometry meant that a long vehicle could not cut the corners and had to pass fairly straight between the sign posts.  The grassy shoulder was wide enough, before dropping off slightly into a drainage ditch, that I was able to get the passenger side tires well off the road and the driver side tires to the edge of the pavement.  It was also firm enough that I was not concerned about the passenger side tires getting stuck in soft soil.  I stopped and lifted the tag axles, to shorten the turning radius, and then pulled forward until I was looking down the road out my side window.  I then turned the front wheels to the left all the way to the stops and slowly made the turn.  I judged it just right, something I have gotten better at doing with experience, and we made it in without difficulty.  That was good because we had the car in tow behind the bus and could not back up.  If I had not made the turn we would have blocked the County Road for at least 10 minutes while we unhooked the car.  We slowly worked our way up to the buildings at the end of the road and I left the bus running while I went to find John.

John was in his trailer but heard me calling and came out.  He drove me through the parking approach in his Kubota utility cart and dropped me back at the coach.  I got it parked in a spot that had afternoon shade, leveled it, and shut the engine off while Linda opened a couple of windows and a roof vent.  John wanted to give us a tour of the property so I did not turn off the chassis batteries or close the air valves the way I normally would on arrival, but took care of that when we got back from our tour.

John is the caretaker for 400 acres of plantation pine woodland with a 25 year lease on 70 of the acres.  The owners still live on the property but are in their 80’s and one of their three children has a house on some of the acres.  John’s son, Pat, also has a trailer here and works with his dad.  There is a third guy here named Terry who works with John and also has a trailer.

Besides taking care of the property John has a solar energy business and a canopy business, all operated out of trailers that can be moved if/when needed.  He has been here for six years.  In that time he has created over six miles of trails through the woods and along the high south bank of the Suwannee River and cleared small areas for tents and a couple larger areas for RVs.  He does not run a campground or charge fees; the space is for friends and customers to use while they are here.  It’s a pretty neat place, kind of like a private state park, with access to the Suwannee River.

Back at the coach we talked about a solar installation for the bus and then John gave me a tour of his workshop and inventory trailers.  We probably won’t do anything relative to solar while we are here but I wanted to get John’s opinion on some things, which I did.  John knows what he knows and doesn’t pull any punches.  He has lived an off-grid, solar lifestyle for over a quarter century and he thinks solar systems on bus conversions are a waste of money as buses require substantial AC electrical power from a shoreline or Genset to really function fully and properly.  I concede that he is basically correct (unless you spend a lot of time in the southwest) but his utilitarian logic does not place any value on the “I want it because it’s cool” factor.

When I was done talking to John about solar stuff I opened the tray with the battery disconnect switches and the Vanner Equalizers (the coach has two of them operating in parallel) and checked to make sure the circuit breakers had not popped.  I had no way of knowing if they were operating correctly but I ruled out their shutting off as the cause of the chassis battery balance situation.  There was some corrosion on the terminals but not enough to cause a problem.  When I finally started the generator at 4:30 PM the maintenance charger for the upper 12V strand of the 24V chassis battery bank showed 25% SOC.  That was definitely not good and suggested that one or both of the upper 12V batteries had failed.  They are 5-to-6 years old so that would not come as a surprise.

I texted Chuck, described what I had found, and indicated that I planned to go buy four batteries tomorrow.  He asked if I still had my American Independent Trucker Association (AITA) NAPA Discount Card that we got through Prevost Community.  I did, and it did not expire until the end of the month, so tomorrow I will see if there is a NAPA store nearby with batteries I need in stock.

I set up the Amped Wireless router, the NAS, and my computer AC power adapter and connected the NAS and computer to the router with network cables.  I powered all of them up, turned on the Verizon Mi-Fi, and got the WiFiRanger connected to the Mi-Fi.  The Amped Wireless router connected to the WiFiRanger and everything worked as intended.  We were online so I checked e-mail.

Linda heated up a can of Amy’s chili for dinner, which we had with Saltine crackers and a little vegan “butter.”  I sliced up an apple later for dessert.

I tried calling Butch but did not reach him so I tuned in a TV station and worked on this post.  I tried Butch again later and finally got through to him.  We had not talked in several weeks so we had a nice chat.  Butch thought our batteries should have lasted seven years, given the way I use and maintain them, but conceded that five years is a typical lifespan.  He also mentioned that Nick Russell had used the picture I sent of our bus covered in snow in his blog.  I have not had a chance to check Nick’s blog in a while so I found the post when I was done talking to Butch.

By now it was 10:30 PM and I needed to get to bed.  John was leaving for breakfast at 7:15 AM and I had indicated that I would go with him so I did not want to be up too late and risk oversleeping.

 

2014/12/21-25 (N-R) The Holidays Arrive

2014/12/21 (N) Winter Solstice

Linda was reading an interesting tidbit online this morning about the winter solstice, which occurs today in the northern hemisphere.  It usually occurs on the 21st, like today, but occasionally slips into the 22nd.  While it is the day of the year with the least hours of sunlight (between sun up to sun down) it is not the day with the latest sunrise (which occurred a couple of weeks ago) or the earliest sunset (which does not occur for a couple of more weeks).  Why is that?  Axial tilt, elliptical orbits, and a “day” that is not exactly 24 hours.  Science is fun.

Today was a stay-at-home / stay-in-town day for us.  Linda vacuumed the coach and mopped the floor tiles.  She says she likes to do this once a week to keep the cat hair under control.  By “likes” I think she means “needs.”  She also decided to do the laundry.  When we are at our house the laundry is usually my chore but for some reason, to which I am not privy, she takes over this chore when we are living in the RV, at least initially.  The same thing happened last year at Williston Crossings RV Resort, although we eventually both did laundry until I was able to win back my rightful chore.  So far again this year it has been her self-selected task here at Quartzsite and I have not gone out of my way to reclaim my rightful place as master of the laundry.

What I did instead of laundry was spend the morning finishing our 2014 Year-in-Review holiday letter.  Linda proof read it and then I converted it to PDF and did a final check of the layout to make sure the text and photos had not shifted or been clipped.  I copied it to a flash drive so we can take it someplace in Blythe tomorrow and have it printed.

The other day I noticed that the manifold pressure sensor (turbo boost) on Butch and Fonda’s 6v92 was mounted vertically on the front passenger side of the ECM.  I could not see exactly how it was mounted, however, so today I finally looked it up in the DD 92 Series manual.  I did not attempt to reattach our sensor module today but I was curious to see what would be involved.  I also continued to interact with other Prevost owners on the Prevost Community forum regarding the turbo boost issues and the dashboard gauge, which does not have the correct scale for our engine.  That thread has led to a dialogue about the SilverLeaf systems, including the VMSpc that we have, and an alternative system from RV Tech Tools that uses an iPad app named “RV Dash” and a wireless (WiFi) interface named “CANpod” from Cubix Labs.

With our various chores done we had a light lunch of chickpea salad on a bed of mixed greens and then went for a long walk.  The walk took us down Washington Ave. and then over to Kitsap Ave. to see a gorgeous Adobe house that Linda had discovered on a previous walk.  That led us to the backside of the west-central “vendor” (flea market) area on the north side of Main St.  We are not collectors, and we are not into antiques, guns, rocks, jewelry, or junk, so we saw very little that interested us.  We did see a few pieces of Pyrex, which our daughter and son-in-law were collecting at one time, and I am always on the lookout for a good deal on a tool I can’t live without, but mostly we saw endless quantities of stuff that we could not fathom anyone buying.

We crossed Main Street and visited the Tyson’s Well Stagecoach Stop Museum.  The grounds and building were open, admission was free, and it was unattended.  There were items for sale and if we had wanted something we would have put the money in the collection box.  That’s small town.

We headed east on Main Street and crossed back to the north side using the crosswalk at AZ-95 (Central Ave.).  We then continued east and stopped at the Road Runner Market.  We were pleased to find that they had a small but good selection of fresh produce.  On our way out the door the florist gave Linda a red and white carnation.  We will definitely be doing some of our local grocery shopping there.  We knew there was a restaurant/bakery on the far east end of Main Street so we kept on walking.  Sweet Darlene’s looked like a nice local place for a home-cooked style meal, but did not have anything on the menu we could eat.  The bakery turned out to be a small display case with pies and sweet rolls, but they did not make their own bread, so we won’t have any reason to come back.

By this time it was getting to be late afternoon, the cloud layer had thickened, and it was getting a bit chilly so we headed back towards Central Avenue.  We counted laundromats along the way, and passed at least four before getting back to our coach.  Not that we need a laundromat—we have a laundry where we are staying—but with all of the boondockers in and around Q it is a matter of some curiosity to us how/where they take care of things like this.  By the time we got back to our coach we had walked just over five miles.

Sunset over the Dome Rock Mountains due west of our encampment.

Sunset over the Dome Rock Mountains due west of our encampment.

By 5:15 PM the sun had slipped just below the mountains to our southwest and the sky started to glow pink for 360 degrees around us.  The sunset went on for over 30 minutes, the pinks deepening to reds.  And then, just like that, the color was gone and darkness enveloped the valley.

For dinner Linda made a simple green salad with raisins and peanuts.  She then heated up some vegan re-fried beans, pan-grilled a package of fajita vegetables she got from Connie before they left, and then heated two tortillas.  We each made a tasty roll up, adding some salsa and vegan sour cream.  She washed some black seedless grapes and set them out for desert.  They were very refreshing after the somewhat heavier and spicy main course.

2024/12/22 (M) Compressed

We had planned on driving to Blythe, California today but those plans changed fairly early in the morning.  Butch got an update that his air-compressor was on a UPS truck in Blythe and scheduled for delivery today.  I had promised to help him with the installation and provide a few tools he did not have with him so we decided to stick around camp.  We were also waiting for Connie’s realtor, Carolyn, to come by and pick up two yellow Post Office slips.

Linda took her morning walk after breakfast while I downloaded the October and November issues of Bus Conversion Magazine in both standard- and high-definition.  I was really glad to finally see these issues.  The October issue included my article on our T. F. Hudgins Spinner II Centrifugal By-pass Oil Cleaner project.  That was my one remaining article waiting to be published.  I have at least a half dozen in process, at least that many more for which I have taken photos (and written blog posts), and a very long list of future projects, so it’s time to get the next batch of articles ready to submit.

When Linda got back I drove to the print/copy/fax/pack/ship/etc. store on east Main Street to see if they could print our holiday letter.  They had plain 8.5×14 white paper, and the photos looked OK, but it was going to cost $4 per letter ($2/side) so I paid for the one copy and left.  They suggested that I try Weeks Printing in Blythe (20 miles west) or Staples in Lake Havasu City (70+ miles north).  Since we will likely head to Blythe tomorrow we will check out Weeks first.

As long as I was out I stopped at Barry’s Breads and bought a couple of fresh “rolls” which were really small loaves of bread.  Barry runs a little seasonal bakery out of a temporary vendor stand on the northeast corner of Central Avenue (US-95) and Kuehn Street.  Most of his products have butter or cream cheese as ingredients—his Danish pastries are as big around as a dinner plate—but he does make just plain bread and everything is made fresh daily.  Back in camp Linda called Weeks Printing and they quoted $1.25 for each 2-sided letter.  Much better.  We will check them out when we make it to Blythe; probably tomorrow.

For lunch Linda made a batch of her scrumptious chickpea salad/spread and served it on one of the rolls I bought at Barry’s.  After a week of cloudy skies, cool temperatures, and a little rain we finally had a day with clear, sunny skies and the high temperature up into the 70s.  Butch decided to remove his defective air-compressor and there wasn’t anything we could do to help (or stop him) so we decided to clean some more of our coach exterior.  I wanted to work from the top down, which meant starting with the roof.  That, in turn, meant getting out the Little Giant convertible extension/step ladder and setting it up as a 14 foot extension ladder.  In this configuration it extends beyond the top edge of the roof at the front, making it safer for me to get up on the lower roof area from the driver’s side.

Rinsing down the roof of the coach (photo by Linda).

Rinsing down the roof of the coach (photo by Linda).

The roof was very dirty and it appeared that we might have more than just embedded dirt to deal with.  The roof has a sprayed-on ceramic-infused white coating with a surface akin to medium grit sandpaper.  It reflects sunlight and provides a nice nap for walking on, but also traps dirt.  The last time the roof was cleaned was in early April, just before we left Williston Crossings RV Resort.  I had been on the roof subsequent to that, in our pull-through driveway at home, using it as a platform for trimming tree limbs.  I do not recall it being unusually dirty at that time, but I was focused on other things.  If it had been, I probably would have washed it, but maybe not; I was focused on other things.

I used a little bit of Dawn dish soap in several gallons of water and our soft, long handle, brush to try and scrub it clean and then rinsed it with softened water.  It was better by the time I was done but far from 100% clean.  I also scrubbed all of the metal awning covers and then hosed them off and rinsed the awning fabric.  When I was done on the roof I sprayed off all four sides of the bus, but even with the softened water it left spots and streaks.  Another unfortunate side effect of this work is that it frightened our male cat, Jasper, who ended up hiding behind the steering column in an attempt to escape the sights and sounds of a ‘monster’ on the roof.

We would like to get the body clean but there’s no point doing anything until I get the roof finished (Linda does not climb ladders and she does not get on the roof of the bus.)  At a minimum I am going to have to use a stiff scrub brush and a stronger solution of Dawn dish soap, or perhaps a commercial cleaner that can treat mold/mildew along with just plain dirt.  We will then have to do the vertical surfaces in small sections, scrubbing, rinsing, and drying as we go.  We have a sprayer for our hose that has a small bottle for additives and one of the reasons I bought it was to try using a dishwasher rinse aid, like Jet Dry, to see if it would eliminate spotting.  To-date, however, I have not tried that.

The old Bendix Tu-Flo 700 air-compressor out of Butch & Fonda's MC-9.

The old Bendix Tu-Flo 700 air-compressor out of Butch & Fonda’s MC-9.  The governor is the silver thing on the left.  The open port on top is the air discharge where the unloader valves are located.

Once Butch had the old air-compressor out of their bus he turned the input shaft and noted that the pistons were not pumping air.  This confirmed that something had failed internally and ordering a replacement was the right thing to do.  There wasn’t much else to do so we all sat around in the warm sun and waited for the UPS truck to show up, which it finally did around 3:45 PM.  We (me, Linda, and Fonda) suggested that Butch wait until tomorrow to start installing it, but we knew that was not going to happen.  The compressor was a significant road failure that had bugged him since it happened and he was anxious to get it fixed.

 

The new (re-built) Bendix Tu-Flo 700 air-compressor with the old spline and new port plugs.

The new (re-built) Bendix Tu-Flo 700 air-compressor with the old spline and new port plugs.

The Bendix Tu-Flo 700 he received is designed specifically for mounting on Detroit Diesel 92 series 2-stroke engines but has more ports on it than are typically used in this application.  Making sure to match the configuration of the old compressor, Butch installed new plugs in the unneeded ports.  He then removed the fittings from the old unit one at a time and installed them in the new one, being careful to line them up exactly the same way.  I helped by holding the compressor on a work table while Butch tightened the pipe threads.  This was the easy part of the project as we were standing at a tall bench with plenty of room to work and good light.

 

The new air-compressor with fittings.  Note the alignment marks for orienting the fittings correctly.

The new air-compressor with fittings. Note the alignment marks for orienting the fittings correctly.  The spline is in the upper left of the photo.

The hard part was getting the air-compressor re-installed.  Butch eventually got it onto two of the four mounting studs, which then took the weight.  We discovered a clearance issue with one of the port plugs and he had to pull the compressor back out.  He removed a plug from the old compressor, which did not stick out as far, and reused it in the new compressor.  With the compressor back on the studs it now lined up better but the spline would not engage the drive gear on the end of the engine camshaft.  He put a wrench on the crankshaft pulley nut and turned the engine slightly by standing on the end of it while I jiggled the air-compressor.

The "governor" mounted on the new compressor.

The “governor” mounted on the new compressor.

The spline eventually engaged the engine gear and the air-compressor gear enough that Butch was able to fully seat the flange and insert/tighten the four mounting studs, lock washers, and nuts.  Per the instructions, he reconnected all of the lines except for the air discharge and called it a night.  The coolant goes back in tomorrow and Butch will then start the main engine to make sure the compressor works, check for leaks, and let any contaminants get blown out the discharge fitting.  If everything looks good he will attach the discharge line, which connects the outlet port of the air-compressor to the coach air system, and air up the bus.

The new air-compressor (blue) mounted on the rear of the engine block (towards the front of the bus).

The new air-compressor (blue) mounted on the rear of the DD6V92TA engine block (towards the front of the bus) in Butch and Fonda’s MCI MC-9B NJT.

At least we were successful in convincing Butch to wait until tomorrow to put the coolant back in the engine.  By the time we finished working, put our tools away, and got cleaned up it was 7:30 PM and had been dark for two hours.  Linda reheated the leftover fajita fixings and we had open-faced tortillas with Fritos corn chips, salsa, black grapes, and Sangria.  We were both tired so we relaxed for a while after dinner and then went to bed.

2024/12/23 (T) Blythe, CA

We got a call from Connie right after breakfast letting us know that the two packages Carolyn picked up yesterday were for us and Butch.  We needed to pick them up before 11AM as Carolyn had an appointment at that time.  Linda was headed out for her morning walk anyway so she walked to Rock Reality, near the post office and uptown drugs, to get the packages from Carolyn.  (Carolyn is Joe and Connie’s realtor.)  She dropped off the two P. O. Box – Mail Pickup Notice cards at the post office while she was there.

Our package was from Madeline (Brendan and Shawna), to be opened on Christmas Day.  Butch’s package was the unloader valve kits for our Bendix Tu-Flo 700 air-compressors.  He ordered them while we were in Forest City, Arkansas for delivery to Amarillo, Texas but they did not arrive in time so his friend forwarded them to our Quartzsite location.

Butch and Fonda used most of the morning to put the coolant back into the engine.  Our buses, which still have their over-the-road heating systems, hold a lot of coolant.  Ours requires 34 gallons.  The buses are not identical, but I suspect theirs requires at least 30 gallons.  And it is very important that the cooling system is filled to capacity and has had all of the air purged out of it.  It’s a big, messy job.

They got as much in as they could by standing on a ladder and pouring it through a funnel into the filler tube for the surge tank.  The radiators on the MCI MC-9 are located above the engine, one on each side wall at the rear of the bus, and the surge tank is located above them, so the filler tube is approximately 9 feet from the ground.  Butch started the engine to warm it up enough for the thermostat to open and to circulate the coolant and opened a couple of bleeder valves to let air out.  He also checked the outlet fitting on the new air-compressor to verify that it was pumping air.  It was (hurray!), so he shut the engine off, attached the air line to the outlet fitting, and started it back up.  The chassis air system (suspension and brakes) came up to pressure and the air-dryer “sneezed” (momentarily opened its purge valve) so the system was fully operational.

We planned to go to Blythe, California today and Butch and Fonda wanted to go too, so he shut off the engine and they cleaned up their campsite.  We were sitting in our coach when the winds came up rather strong.  Linda checked the weather and the winds were out of the north at 20 MPH and forecast at 22-25 MPH until 6 PM.  That was strong enough for us to retract our awnings, close our roof vents, collapse our folding chairs, and stow our patio mat.  Butch and Fonda also retracted their patio awning and stored all of their outdoor equipment and furniture.  We had the old patio awning on our Itasca Sunrise torn off by strong (thunderstorm) winds while we were away from the motorhome and have been extra careful about awnings and wind ever since.

With all of that done we headed to Blythe in their Chevy Suburban.  From 879 feet ASL in Q we climbed to about 1200 feet ASL over the low mountain range that separates the two valleys, and then descended to 240 feet ASL as we crossed the Colorado River and entered California.  A few miles later we took the 7th Street exit and we were there.  The 20 mile drive was only five more miles than the trip we made from Williston Crossings RV Resort to the Publix grocery store (at the southwest corner of Gainesville, Florida) last winter, so it did not feel like a long way to go for groceries.  At home we have supermarkets about five miles away in three different directions.  Butch and Fonda typically drive into Logansport for their groceries, a distance of 12 miles, so we are all used to traveling some distance to purchase our food.

The Smart & Final Extra and the Albertson’s were on the NW and SE corners of 7th and Hobsonway, just north of I-10, making them especially convenient for us, so this is where we will likely shop every other week or so.  But our first destination was a few blocks farther west on S. Main St. where we found Weeks Printing.  They were eventually able to access our flash drive and open the PDF of our holiday letter.  They had a high quality paper in 8.5”x14” size, and were able to print our letter 2-sided on a good quality color laser printer for a very reasonable price of $1.25 per letter ($0.625 per side).  They did not take credit cards so we paid cash, but it saved us a 73 mile trip (one way) to Staples in Lake Havasu City.

Self-portrait of the blogger.  I am merely a reflection of my former self.

Self-portrait of the blogger. I am merely a reflection of my former self.

At the Smart & Final Extra we bought fresh produce, soy milk, and some bulk, canned, and packaged items.  They did not carry the Silk brand soy coffee creamer that I like, and there were a few items Butch and Fonda needed that the store did not have, so we drove across the street to Albertson’s and got those items.  I stayed in the car with the groceries, but I already knew that the Albertson’s would be a nice store based on our experience with the chain in Sheridan, Wyoming during summer 2013.  With our shopping done we returned to Quartzsite.

I carried the groceries from the car to the bus and Linda stored them, discovering that she had an empty tub available in the cabinet above the refrigerator.  By the time she was done it was approaching 4 PM so she prepared chickpea salad sandwiches as a quick, light lunch and then announced that we should go for a walk before it got dark.  She let me chose the route so we crossed Central Avenue (AZ-95) and walked to the city park, which has a very nice baseball field with lights and the only grass we have seen in Quartzsite.  There was also a skateboard facility, a football field, and two F4 Phantom jets (minus the engines and other equipment).  The Quartzsite Metal Detecting Club (QMDC) has a practice field adjacent to the park.  The park is located near the following municipal facilities:  Community Center and Library, County Court, Police Station, and Post Office Annex (where most of the P. O. Boxes are located).  The Fire Department is a little farther north on Tyson Wells Street just east of Central Avenue.

The sun was getting near the tops of the mountains to our southwest so we headed pack to our coach and settled in for the evening.  For dinner Linda made a barley risotto with garlic, shallots, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, vegetable both, and seasonings.  While she was cooking I got a call from my dad and got him caught up on our whereabouts and activities.  The risotto was excellent and we each enjoyed a glass of sangria with our meal.

I don’t know if we are just relaxed, or really tired after a hard summer and fall, but we have both been going to bed earlier and waking up later than usual.  Or perhaps it is just the effect of fresh air and sunshine.  Whatever the reason, it’s nice to be able to just sleep when that is what we feel like doing and get up when we are read.

We have an excellent Verizon signal here in Q.  Linda often likes to pace up and down Lollipop Lane while talking on the phone.  If you lived on Lollipop Lane you would too.

We have an excellent Verizon signal here in Q. Linda often likes to pace up and down Lollipop Lane while talking on the phone. If you lived on Lollipop Lane you would too.

2014/12/24 (W) Christmas Eve

It’s Christmas Eve and we woke to a temperature of 37 degrees, clear skies, light winds, and no snow.  The forecast high for today was 66, with no snow.  Do I miss snow at the holidays?  Not really.  At one time (high school) I considered myself something of a “romantic” in the sense that I liked the classical music of the romantic era, but I am not particularly nostalgia.  If I was, we would own a restored 1957 Chevy; red, of course.  No, we had snow at home before we left and as a harbinger of things to come we took it as a sign that our departure was overdue.  Christmas in the desert will be a new experience for us, but so far it looks very agreeable.  We will miss being with family, of course, but we are not alone here and technology keeps all of us much more connected than it once did.

Having been to Blythe yesterday we did not have any last minute shopping to do today.  The desert was there yesterday and will be there tomorrow (I presume) so we did not have to see it today.  With the holidays upon us I did not feel like working on bus projects.  Linda started addressing the envelopes for our Year-In-Review Holiday Letter and then worked on food preparations for tomorrow’s dinner with Butch and Fonda.  It seemed like a good day for me to finally start catching up on some things that I have not had time for in a while.  For instance, I need to work on articles for Bus Conversions Magazine, update our bus project list/status, update our website, upload some blog posts (OK, a LOT of blog posts), and catch up on the blogs I follow using the Feedly app on my iPad.  I am way behind on all of these tasks and starting to feel some pressure about it, albeit self-imposed.  I do not have to do any of these things if I don’t want to, of course, but they are activities that I enjoy and want to do.  Still, being way behind takes some of the fun out of it and makes it a bit more like work.  I won’t get caught up in one day or one week or even one month; it will take many weeks of persistent effort.

After checking e-mail, I settled in to work on my article about the exterior renovation of our motorcoach.  Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint helped me finish the article in early October but I still needed to select and caption all of the photos.  While I worked on that Linda walked to the Road Runner Market and managed to snag the last 3-pack of yeast.  When she got back she made her orange cranberry relish for tomorrow’s dinner.

We took a break for lunch and then Linda headed out for her daily power walk.  When she got back she continued addressing envelopes for our holiday letter.  Just as I was feeling like I needed a break, Butch knocked on the door to let me know he was working on a small project that might interest me.  He had already burped the coolant lines that supply heat to the living area of their bus when driving and gotten the last of the coolant into the system.  His new project was getting an alternator driven tachometer connected and calibrated.

It turned out that he needed positive DC power to the tachometer in addition to the ground and RPM signal.  He was able to temporarily pick up 24VDC from the positive terminal of the starter, found a convenient ground point, and picked up the rotational speed from the stator terminal on the back of the alternator.  With the engine running at low idle he measured the RPM of the main crankshaft pulley using an optical sensor instrument.  It was just over 600 RPMs so he adjusted the tach via a set screw on the rear to match the reading.  He kicked it into high idle and measured the rotational speed as 950 RPM.  That is what the tach displayed within the precision of the markings.  He already has a signal wire run from the engine compartment to the cockpit but needs to mount the tachometer in a separate bullet housing, connect the wire on both ends, and provide positive and negative (ground) DC to the instrument.  He decided not to take on that project today.

(Note:  RPM is universally understood to be an abbreviation for “Revolutions Per Minute” but that is not necessarily correct.  An object such as the pulley on the end of an engine crankshaft rotates about its own axis, just as the earth does, and has angular velocity which is properly measured in rotations per some unit of time or angular displacement per some unit of time.  The abbreviation is, of course, still RPM.  In the case of the pulley, however, Butch put a small piece of white tape on the face of the pulley at the outside edge to act as a target for his optical sensor.  If we consider the piece of tape as a separate object then it does, indeed, revolve around the center axis of the pulley, just as the earth revolves around the sun.  Viewed thus way, revolutions per minute is technically correct.  As with many things in physics, it depends on your frame of reference.  So much for today’s physics lesson.)

This building houses (L-2-R) the laundry room, the apartment, and a small workshop.

This building houses (L-2-R) the laundry room, the apartment, and a small workshop at our compound.

As long as I was outside I borrowed Butch’s metal detector and went in search of a couple of tie downs that Joe told us were buried somewhere near the outer edge of our patio awning.  I knew they were lined up with a reference mark on one of the concrete patio slabs and it did not take long to locate and uncover them.  We put a couple of medium-sized rocks on top of them so we could relocate them easily.

We got several multimedia messages from our son today with pictures of our grand-daughter at our daughter’s house helping make cookies.  Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline are spending the night and Katie is joining them tomorrow.  Butch and Fonda will spend most of the day at the local church Fonda selected, including a carry-in (pot luck) luncheon, but will have dinner with us around 6:30 PM.

I finally returned to our coach and worked on my article about the Zena power generating system I installed to charge our house batteries while driving.  Again, the article was mostly finished a long time ago, but I could not submit it until I completed the installation, got the system operational, and took a few more photos.  All of that happened in October and November but I was too busy with other projects and preparations to pull it all together at that time.  I had a couple of e-mails today from Gary, the publisher of Bus Conversion Magazine, indicating that the December 2014 issue might not be out until early January 2015, and wondering if I might have a finished article they could use.

For dinner Linda made a salad of dark mixed greens with raisins, nuts, and pear slices drizzled with raspberry walnut vinaigrette dressing followed by pan-seared tofu slices with caramelized onions and bar-b-que sauce served open-faced on hamburger buns.  We split a Sam Adams Pumpkin Spice Ale.  I am not a big fan of ales or pumpkin but beer seemed like the right beverage for this dish.  It was OK, but I would have enjoyed a Yingling or Shiner Bock more.

I made good progress on both articles today.  I got an e-mail from Mike, the editor of BCM, wondering if I had a finished article.  The ZENA article was close enough that I decided to finish it and upload it to our Dropbox before going to bed.  I e-mailed Mike back to let him known it was there and offered to finish the other one by the end of the weekend.

Earlier in the day I updated our personal WordPress site to the just released version 4.1 and updated several plug-ins and themes.  My last task before turning in for the night was to replicate the update process on the other three sites I manage.  By the time I got to bed it was Christmas Day.

2014/12/25 (R) Christmas in Q

The wind came up strongly overnight and we were awakened by the rattling of the vent fan domes.  From our north facing bedroom window we could see flags and the tops of trees blowing briskly in the wind.  We could also hear and see the awnings on the south/passenger side of the coach flapping.  Linda checked the weather channel app on her iPad and it reported winds at 20 MPH.  We were not expecting winds that strong until the daytime and they were strong enough for us to be concerned about our awnings.  By that point we were wide awake so we put on our sweatpants and shirts, slipped on some shoes, found a set of keys, got the step-stool out of the front bay and the awning rod out of the folding chair bay, retracted the two awnings, returned the rod and step-stool to their respective storage compartments, and finally went back to bed.

Linda got up at 6:30 AM in order to start making cinnamon rolls from scratch.  I usually get up first and make a pot of coffee but I was up past midnight working, so I slept in for another hour.  The yeast she bought yesterday wasn’t cooperating so we turned on one of the Broan ceramic cube heaters to try and create a warmer and more consistent environment to get the dough to rise.

We borrowed Butch and Fonda’s Verizon MiFi (unlimited data plan) so we could Facetime with our children and their families, who were gathered at our daughter and son-in-law’s house.  We got to watch all of them open the presents we left for them when we were there on Thanksgiving and they got to watch us open the gifts they sent with us or shipped to us here in Quartzsite.

Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline (son, daughter-in-law, and grand-daughter) sent a 2015 Shutterfly Calendar with photographs of all the different family members placed on the dates for birthdays, anniversaries, and such.  We do not need much at this point in our lives, but a collection of photographs that also reminds us of the people and dates that are most important to us is something we appreciate and treasure.  Meghan and Chris (daughter and son-in-law) bought us each a genuine Tilley hat.  I have known about these hats for a while but never bought one.  Given our outdoor oriented RV lifestyle, these were excellent gifts.

After we were done with our Facetime session Linda took the cinnamon rolls over to the apartment to bake since it has a range with an oven.  She will finish cooking dinner there later and the four of us will eat there this evening as it has a table that will seat four people.

The apartment bedroom.

The apartment bedroom.

In spite of early indications to the contrary the cinnamon rolls rose and baked just fine. The dough used flour, salt, vegan butter, yeast, and flax meal with water (egg substitute) and a little sugar.  The filling was made with brown sugar, vegan butter, cinnamon, and maple syrup.  The topping was a glaze of sugar, water, and vanilla with raisins and chopped walnuts.  Linda took two of them over to Butch and Fonda and we had some for breakfast still warm from the oven.  It’s a good thing that these are as much work to make as they are or I might want them for breakfast every day.   🙂

Linda had a call and TXT message from her sister (Marilyn) and sent a reply.  She was on her way to her housemate’s family gathering and they agreed they would talk later today.  She also sent merry Christmas TXT messages to her sister-in-law, Mary, and good friend, Diane.  At noon our time (1 PM CST, UTC-6) I called my sister to wish her a happy holiday.  Her daughter, grand-daughter, and future son-in-law had already been there in the morning as Ryan had to work that afternoon.

I made a second pot of coffee, which is unusual for us, but we planned to spend the day lounging around the coach cooking (Linda) and working on the computer (me).  Linda cleaned up the breakfast cookware, poured another cup of coffee, and started working on the chocolate cake for tonight’s dessert.  With the cake prepared and in the apartment oven she turned her attention to making the candied yams.  Once those were done the only thing left to do was bake the Tofurkey, roast the asparagus, and heat the gravy.  It was a lot work for her but it was spread out over two days and she enjoyed, and did it, willingly.  We could have gone out for dinner if she wanted, even though we would not have found much we could eat, but I am glad she preferred to cook.

Once I wrapped up the conversation with my sister I got back to work on the Outside Makeover (Exterior Renovation) article.  Although I thought I was done writing I made a few more edits and selected additional photos.  By 5 PM I had 74 photos selected and placed in sequence to match the flow of the article.  I had also done as much of that work as I cared to for the day.

We were down to 1/4 tank of fresh water so I decided to refill it.  About that same time Linda decided it was chilly enough in the apartment that she wanted the propane space heater turned on so I shut off the water and took care of that.  The heater had a hose that went through the wall at floor level to the outside with a regulator and POL fitting on the end of it.  I found a couple of 20 lb. propane tanks in the workshop and connected one of them to the regulator.  It took a while but I eventually got the pilot flame to light and then got the heater to ignite.  I then went back and finished filling our water tank.

The little apartment is very cute with three rooms: a bathroom on the east end, a bedroom on the west end, and a kitchen/dining/living room in the middle.  It has a shower, a 4-burner electric range with an oven, a refrigerator/freezer, a small microwave oven, the aforementioned space heater, a small window air-conditioner, a small TV/monitor with a satellite receiver, two easy chairs, a small dining table with four chairs, and a queen sized bed.  Marilyn is seriously considering coming for a visit the last week of January and if she does she will stay in the apartment and get to experience Quartzsite.

Linda starting to set the table in the apartment for Christmas dinner.  No pictures of Butch & Fonda (they are camera shy).

Linda starting to set the table in the apartment for Christmas dinner. No pictures of Butch & Fonda (they are camera shy).

We bought a bottle of Sternthaler Nurnberger Christkindles Gluhwein spiced red holiday wine at Central Market in Fort Worth, Texas to serve with our Christmas dinner.  It is a mulled wine that is supposed to be gently heated before serving, but we found it quite agreeable straight from the refrigerator.  About 20 minutes before dinner time we set it out on the counter to warm up slightly, the space heater doing a very effective job heating the small apartment even on its lowest setting.

Linda and Fonda both contributed dishes to the meal and Fonda made a couple of things that we could eat.  They brought chicken and traditional mashed potatoes for themselves but also tried some of the Tofurkey roast.  Linda made a vegan chocolate cake for dessert and whipped refrigerated coconut milk solids to use as a whipped cream substitute.  Our daughter did this for the Thanksgiving meal and we really liked it.

We sat in the apartment for a long time after dinner and just talked until we were all tired.  Linda and Fonda had already cleaned the dishes so we turned off the propane space heater and carried all of our stuff back to our coaches.  Linda put the leftovers away while I did a final check of my e-mail for the night.  I then shut my computer off and we headed to bed.  Like so many things in our retirement RV lifestyle, this Christmas holiday was a new and good experience.

 

2014/12/17-20 (W-S) Second Winter Birthday

2014/12/17 (W) Clammy Q

The first rain came last night at 11 PM as forecast.  It then rained off and on through noon today and we had little pools of standing water in low-lying areas, an unusual site here in Quartzsite.  The cloud cover remained complete into the early afternoon, keeping the coach slightly chilly, but we just dressed accordingly.

Linda went for a morning walk and then spent part of the morning making broccoli, cauliflower, carrot soup.  She served some for lunch along with vegan grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches (on sourdough bread) and fresh grapes.  She went for another walk after lunch.  Butch and Fonda left around 9 AM for her women’s bible study group and did not return until 2:30 PM.

Kuehn Street market area looking west towards Central Avenue (US-95).  Quartzsite, AZ.

Kuehn Street market area looking west towards Central Avenue (US-95). Quartzsite, AZ.

I spent the morning and the early part of the afternoon researching products for testing water hardness, checking-in to a few social media websites, updating our calendar, and continuing to clean up my e-mail accounts.  Getting all of my accounts cleaned up is going to take weeks as I can only spend so many hours a day on this task before I need to do something else.  Mid-afternoon I got our sewer hose out and connected it.  I unscrewed the pressure gauge on our Valterra water pressure regulator, which has been stuck on 60 PSI for quite some time, and took it with me to Big Market to make sure the threads were the same before I bought a replacement.

When I got back I put a couple of wraps of Teflon tape around the threads, screwed it in by hand, and snugged it down with a pair of adjustable pliers.  I turned on the water supply and the gauge registered ~35 PSI with no leaks.  I adjusted the regulator pressure up to 45 PSI and called it good.  It is an inexpensive gauge, not liquid filled, but it will do for now.  I doubt that the old gauge can be repaired, but I will let Butch look at it before I throw it away.  When we eventually redo the water bay I plan to install better gauges as part of a coach-mounted plumbing system.  The reason to have one at the spigot, however, is to protect everything downstream from excessively high water pressure, including the hoses.

The name says it all.  Located in Tyson Wells near Prospectors Panorama and the "Big Tent".

The name says it all. Located in Tyson Wells near Prospectors Panorama and the “Big Tent”.

Linda was outside reading when I left to go to Big Market but thicker clouds moved in from the west and it got too chilly to sit outside comfortably.  We spent a quiet afternoon on the sofa with our cats and watched the skies darken as the afternoon advanced towards sunset.  By 4:30 PM it was raining lightly again and a beautiful mist hung over the mountains to the southwest and west.  Even though we are in the desert the humidity has been quite high on these cool, cloudy, rainy days.  The conditions have not been uncomfortable, just unexpected.

Connie returned home with Joe at 5:15 PM but we did get to meet him because of the rain.  He has been in a care facility in Blythe, California recovering from a scorpion sting so this was the first time he has been back in Q since we arrived.

Linda made a slightly fancier salad for dinner and served it along with the soup she made earlier in the day.  Both were delicious and the soup really hit the spot on a cool and unusually clammy day in Q.  Hot tea was also much appreciated.  After dinner we had a quiet evening at home.  Linda read while I worked at my computer.  The seating in the coach seems less comfortable this year compared to last winter, or at least we are more aware of it, and we finally went to bed when we could no longer sit comfortably.

Some of the vendor tents in the Tyson Wells market area on the south side of Kuehn Street.

Some of the vendor tents in the Tyson Wells market area on the south side of Kuehn Street.

2014/12/18 (R) Schmoo Is Two

Today was grand-daughter Madeline’s 2nd birthday.  It’s the first birthday where she is aware that it is a special day and the specialness has something to do with her.  Of course at her age every day is a special day and has something to do with her, but this one is more specialer.

I shut my computer off last night before I went to bed.  I don’t always do that, but I do occasionally.  It’s a habit leftover from my Windows XP Pro days when I’ll-behaved programs that did not conform to Microsoft’s programming rules would fail to release memory and eventually the machine would run out and stop working correctly.  The fix was to do a full power off shutdown and restart it.  When I started it this morning it installed updates, although it did not indicate last night that there were any to install.

One of the things I did yesterday morning was get us registered as staff for the Escapees RV Club Escapade rally in March.  After leaving messages on Monday and Tuesday for Kim, as instructed in an e-mail I received, Tamika (who answers the phone) indicated that she could handle the registration.  I then got online and placed our Escapade clothing order.  Hopefully it gets shipped to the rally venue, and not to our house in Michigan, as again the website did not match the instructions we received.  I was glad to have these taken care of and checked off of my list as I find it a bit frustrating (irritating?) when I decide to do something and then cannot get it done.  Just because we are retired does not mean we have nothing to do or all the time in the world to not do it.

View looking west of our coach and site in the late afternoon sun.

View looking west of our coach and site in the late afternoon sun.

Breakfast was homemade granola with fresh blueberries and bananas, spicy V8, and coffee.  Even though it was overcast and cool Linda went for her morning power walk.  Besides the exercise (10,000+ steps per day) she enjoys having the time to herself and it helps her get familiar with the layout of a new place.

We did not interact at all with Butch and Fonda yesterday.  Not that we needed to; by the time we pull out of Q in early March we will have been traveling/camping together for over three months.  Add to that the fact that I was living at their house for much of October and November working on our bus, and theirs, and I can understand why they might want some time to themselves.  They left early in the morning yesterday, so Fonda could attend a women’s bible study group, and did not return until mid-afternoon.  They looked at something in their engine bay, presumably the air-compressor, and then retreated to their coach and we did not see or hear them the rest of the day.

Joe was out this morning on his power chair picking up after their miniature schnauzer Otis so we went outside and introduced ourselves.  Butch came out soon after that, followed by Fonda and the dogs.  We all stood (or sat) around and had a nice long chat.  Connie eventually came out on her power chair with a basket of laundry.  I carried that over to the laundry room for her and after she loaded it in the washing machine she joined the conversation.

Joe wanted to run some errands and Butch offered to drive him around so we took our car and went on an ‘explore.’  We found the Post Office annex on Plymouth Avenue, which is just a couple of trailers with P. O. Boxes but no counter service.  I did not even notice a place to drop off outgoing mail.  Quartzsite has two ZIP codes and there is some confusion regarding which one to use when.  We do not expect to receive much mail while we are here, nor do we expect to receive a lot of UPS shipments, but we will probably need to receive a little bit of each and they need to be addressed correctly in order to get to us.  We may end up using General Delivery for mail, as the Quartzsite Post Office does not have rural delivery (they do not deliver mail to street addresses), whereas UPS does deliver to street addresses, but they have to be correct.  We plan to go to the main post office “downtown” tomorrow and clarify the situation.

Partial view of our winter compound looking north.  Our bus is to the left and Butch & Fonda's MC-9 is to the right.  Look carefully and you will see someone napping.  And why not.

Partial view of our winter compound looking north. Our bus is to the left and Butch & Fonda’s MC-9 is to the right. Look carefully and you will see someone napping. And why not.

We drove south on Riggles Avenue across I-10 at exit 19 to Kuehn Road and headed east in search of the location where the SKP gathering will be held.  Kuehn becomes Dome Rock Road (east and west) as you head out of town into the desert.  The 4-mile mark coincided with the end of the pavement and one of the BLM STVAs.  We turned south and drove another mile into the desert on a freshly graded dirt road before turning around.  The dirt road was actually better than the crumbling pavement, which is clearly not being maintained.  We then headed back to the area of Kuehn Street, to either side of AZ-95, where most of the seasonal vendors are (will be) located.

We had some Indian Fry Bread for lunch and it was both tasty and filling.  Linda had cinnamon and granulated sugar while I had honey and powdered sugar.  We walked the whole area and at least peaked in each tent while spending a bit more time with a few vendors.  We were going to walk past the Beef Jerky shop but the lady proprietor started chatting with us.  As it turned out she was a vegetarian and had a nice selection of non-animal products.  Which just goes to prove the old adage “you never know.”

Linda got a TXT message from our son letting us know that our grand-daughter was home from day care so we headed back to the coach.  We borrowed Butch and Fonda’s Verizon Jetpack MiFi and used it to Facetime with our son, daughter-in-law, and grand-daughter.  (Their MiFi has an unlimited data plan; ours does not.)  We got to wish Madeline a happy birthday and watch her open her present from us.

View looking south on Lollipop Ln from the entrance to our compound.

View looking south on Lollipop Ln from the entrance to our compound.

When Linda returned the MiFi device on her way to her second walk of the day Butch let her know that Joe and Connie wanted the six of us to go out to dinner, so she planned her walk to be back in plenty of time.  Joe suggested we try the Main Street Eatery as they have a garden burger on the menu that he likes.  It turned out to have cheese mixed in with the patty so we did not get one but Linda had a brown rice and veggies dish and I had French fries with ketchup and Tabasco sauce.

In a reversal of our normal routine, I was tired and went to bed early while Linda stayed up reading and playing her online spelling games.

2014/12/19 (F) Hasta La Vista

When we were at the Walmart in Parker last weekend we looked for holiday cards but all they had was a limited selection of Christmas cards.  The last few years we have done a “year in review” letter with captioned photos and short blurbs about each month.  We did not bring a printer with us so Linda searched for places that could print this for us and found one in Blythe, California.

Quartzsite is in the Sonoran Desert and many of the properties have Sugauro Cactus.  Palo Verde and Greasewood bushes are also common with some smaller cactus, but no lawn grass.

Quartzsite is in the Sonoran Desert and many of the properties have Sagauro Cactus. Palo Verde and Greasewood bushes are also common with some smaller cactus, but no lawn grass.

Breakfast was spicy V8 juice, cinnamon raisin toast, sourdough toast with orange marmalade, and coffee.  At dinner last night at the Main Street Eatery the waitress/owner, Michelle, mentioned that a Smart & Final (Extra) store had opened in Blythe and she was excited to have one so close to Quartzsite.  Blythe is only 20 miles away; about half the distance to Parker and a quarter of the distance to Yuma.  Although it is a non-membership warehouse store she said they also have a lot of good quality fresh produce.  We were prepared for Quartzsite to be challenging for us food wise, but so far it has been OK and is looking up.

Linda went for her morning walk and while she was out I strolled down to Herb’s Hardware in search of a piece of plastic pipe with an appropriate inside diameter for fabricating the insert I need for recharging our water softener.  Although Big Market is a good place for this kind of general purpose hardware I went to Herb’s because it is on Central Avenue (AZ-95) not far from where we are staying.  It was small but well-stocked.  I did not find exactly what I needed, of course, but I found something that might work.  It was worth $2.50 to find out.  The problem is that I am looking for a part that does not exist so I have to repurpose/fabricate something using whatever tools I have with me, can borrow from Butch, or buy in town.

When I got back to the coach I spent much of the rest of the day working on our holiday letter with breaks for food and a little socializing.  During an afternoon break Butch and I disassembled my old, non-functioning, water pressure gauge so I could see how it works.  For lunch Linda served the leftover fajita veggies and seitan over basmati rice, which was yummy.  For dinner she made a tomato, mushroom, onion ragu with a little broccoli thrown in and served it over half of a baked potato.  It was very satisfying on a cool evening.

'Q' is criss-crossed with "washes" (drainage ditches) that are usually dry and used by ATVs.  This is one of the smaller ones, but is big enough for a full-size SUV.  When the flash floods come (springtime) these washes fill and flow fast and a dangerous.

‘Q’ is criss-crossed with “washes” (drainage ditches) that are usually dry and used by ATVs. This is one of the smaller ones, but is big enough for a full-size SUV. When the flash floods come (springtime) these washes fill and flow fast and a dangerous.

Joe and Connie’s son, Dale, and other family members drove down from Nevada after work today and were expected to arrive sometime after midnight.  The plan was to pick up Joe and Connie, load their minivan into the “toter,” and head back; a nine hour trip each way.  Given that plan we did not get to meet Dale, et al, and said “farewell, see you later” to Joe and Connie before we all turned in for the evening.

2014/12/20 (S) Yuma, AZ

Yesterday Butch suggested we that we drive to Yuma today so that is what we did.  Quartzfest, the RV/ARO gathering, takes place the last full week of January at the BLM Road Runner STVA near mile marker 99 on US-95 south of Quartzsite.  We wanted to find that location and just see the desert south of town.  Joe had also suggested that we take the Old Yuma Road down to La Paz.  Linda had found the road on her iPad yesterday and what looked like a small community about four miles out, but the community was not named on the map.  From Kuehn and Central it looked to be a five mile hike, if we were inclined to walk it.

I tried logging in to the Prevost Community (PC) website last night but our login did not work.  I contacted the site administrators and had two e-mails waiting for me this morning with the info I needed.  I logged in and posted some information and a question about our turbo boost and dashboard gauge and searched the site for posts about the Level Low system.  I also checked the Prevost Owners Group (POG) website but there seemed to be more information on PC about older H3s and 92 series Detroit Diesel engines.

Map of the Yuma, AZ downtown / historic area.

Map of the Yuma, AZ downtown / historic area.

Connie called around 8:30 AM and asked me to take care of a couple of things at the site, which I did.  We left for Yuma at 10:15 AM and drove south on US-95 through 85 miles of mostly scrubby desert surrounded by mostly barren mountains until we got near Yuma.  Much of the drive was through BLM administered land and part of it was through the U. S. Army Yuma Proving Grounds.  The area around Yuma was unexpectedly green but we learned that the area grows more leafy greens during the winter months than anyplace else on the planet

By the time we got into town and got our bearings it was time for lunch.  We spotted a Golden Corral and Butch assured us they had a nice salad bar, and probably other things we could eat, so we went there.  We all ate too much, which is one of the reasons we rarely go to buffets of any kind, but the food was OK and we did have quite a variety to choose from.

Butch was feeling a bit sleepy after lunch so I drove us down to the Quartermasters Depot Historic Park on the Colorado River.  The other side of the river was California, the closest we have been on this trip, but we did not cross over the bridge.  We spent some time in the visitor information center reading about the depot and picking up literature for various area attractions and activities but did not pay the $4 per person admission and go in.  We then drove around to the parking lot for the Yuma Territorial Prison Historic Park but did not park the vehicle and get out.  Admission is $6 per person and we will come back another day (and leave earlier in the morning) so we have time to visit these and other sites.

Historic Quartermaster Depot State Park.  Note that the cover of the wagon says "AT" (Arizona Territory).

Historic Quartermaster Depot State Park. Note that the cover of the wagon says “AT” (Arizona Territory).

While we were driving back to Q we both got messages on our smartphones from our son with pictures and video of our grand-daughter Madeline’s birthday party.  All of her aunts and uncles and cousins were there and she was having a wonderful time.  While we would like to be present on such occasions there are choices to be made.  We have discussed celebrating Madeline’s “half birthday” each year on June 18th as we will likely be home at that time of year.

Scenic travels notwithstanding, chores still have to be done.  When we got back to camp I dumped the waste tanks, which were near full, and topped up the fresh water tank which was at approximately 40%.  The last time we dumped was a week ago Thursday at the SKP Dream Catcher RV Park in Deming, New Mexico so we went nine days without being conservative in our use of water.  We did top up the fresh water tank shortly after we arrived in Q with approximately 50 gallons of softened water and today I added approximately 75 gallons (60% of capacity).  Although it is not essential, I like to fill the fresh tank whenever I empty the waste tanks.  Our waste tank level gauges do not work but the fresh water tank gauge does, so it gives us an approximate idea of the state of the waste tanks.

As long as I was doing water chores I borrowed another Hach SofChek test strip from Butch and checked the hardness of the water coming out of the water softener.  It registered between 1.5 and 3 grains per gallon (gpg).  The water coming out of the spigot is testing at 25 gpg, the highest amount the test strips can register, so the softener now appears to be doing its job after having been recharged.  Linda recorded the details in the notepad we are using to log these things.

Butch did a minor upgrade on their ITR Oasis Combi hydronic heating system that should make a big difference in their comfort.  He cut out 15″ sections from the rigid metal supply and return fuel lines and replaced them with rubber fuel lines.  The rubber lines will isolate the unit, which is mounted to the floor of the bay, from the plywood ceiling of the bay to which the metal fuel lines are clamped coming back from the fuel tank.  The plywood ceiling is also the house subfloor and the pulsing of the fuel pump was being telegraphed throughout their coach.  The rubber lines greatly reduced the noise.

A view of the Quartermaster Depot SP.

A view of the Quartermaster Depot SP.

Linda called Brendan back and we got a chance to sing “happy birthday” to Madeline.  She also got to call her sister (Sister Marilyn) and chat for a bit.  Marilyn is considering flying down for a visit and staying in the guest apartment but we are unsure yet of the timing.  Speaking of flying, Linda booked her flight home and back yesterday.  She will fly home from Phoenix on February 17 to take care of various tax returns and bakery accounting details and fly back on March 1st.

We had a quiet evening at home.  Because we had such a big lunch we did not have dinner, as such, just a little hummus with some chips and a small glass of Leelanau Cellars Winter White wine.  Linda read and I worked on selecting/editing photos for our 2014 year in review holiday letter.

 

2013_11_01-07 (F-R)A Busy Week

The first week of November was very busy, enough so that I was unable (unwilling) to do daily blog posts.  Covering the whole week in one post makes for a longer post, but probably shorter than seven separate ones.

2013-11-01 (F)

We were supposed to get our bus back from the shop on Friday, November 1.  We didn’t.  That meant I could not take it to Phoenix Paint in Edwardsburg, Michigan on Monday the 4th.  I was reminded yet again that a true traveler has no fixed plan.  With that off the table temporarily, we turned out attention to other things; Ham Radio Breakfast on Saturday, for instance.  It was good conversation, as usual, and we finally arranged to have one couple over for dinner in a few weeks.

2013_11_02 (S)

Saturday afternoon Steve and Karen came over to visit and have dinner.  They were not able to attend our open house/warming because they were in Arizona where Steve had made arrangements to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon from the south rim and back up to the north rim.  Alas, the park was closed and they had to adjust their plans and find other things to do; which they did (true travelers have no fixed plan).  We don’t see them very often, so when we do we have a great, long visit.  We had a wonderful dinner of enchiladas and Mexican rice, finished off by chocolate cake with raspberry topping made from raspberries that Linda and I picked ourselves at the Middleton Berry Farm back in September.  All vegan, of course.

After dinner we looked at some of their photographs (digital) and they looked at some of ours (also digital).  Steve brought along a Raspberry Pi computer.  It was slightly larger than a deck of cards and had a 16 GB SD Card that served as its solid state hard drive.  It had a couple of USB ports, an HDMI port, and some other connections.  Steve had a wireless network adapter in one of the USB ports and a wireless keyboard transceiver (Bluetooth, I presume) in the other.  We already had an HDMI cable on the TV so he hooked up to that and voila, pictures.  He was even able to control the Raspberry Pi using our TV remote!  Now you have to admit, that’s pretty cool.  We were also delighted to find out that they have spent part of the last few winters in the Venice, Florida area and are returning again this year.  We shared our Florida plans and agreed that we would get together.

2013_11_03 (N)

Sunday we worked around the house and on our computers until late in the afternoon when Chuck and Barbara, our friends and fellow Prevost H3-40 converted coach owners, showed up to visit and have dinner.  Although they did make it to our open house/warming we did not get to visit with them very much that day.  We talked buses, of course, but we discussed a lot of other things too, including Florida, where they have spent the last six or seven winters, most recently in the Naples area.  Again, plans were made to meet while there.

As long as I am on the subject of Florida, we started thinking about extending our stay for at least another month because of potential problems with “seasonal weight restrictions” on the roads around our house.  I found out from Phil (of the pull-though driveway) that the restrictions usually go up March 1 and stay up until April 15.  Most of the roads in our county, and all of the roads we would have to use to get to our house, are subject to these seasonal weight restrictions but the signs never say what that means.  As it turns out, it means a weight limit of 8,400 pounds per axle.  Our drive axle (four tires) weighs 20,000 pounds and we have over 7,000 pounds on each of the front/steer tires, so there’s actually no legal way for us to get the bus to our house during that 45-day window.  What to do?  Stay in Florida for another month!  Problem solved.  New problem: where to stay?  New solution: the same place we are already staying, if they will let us extend our reservation.

2013_11_04 (M)

Monday came and went without the bus being ready.  While this delayed my plans yet again, it also provided more time to work on WordPress projects.  I checked on the WordPress Backup To Dropbox (wpb2d) plug-in and it appeared to be correctly backing up all four of the sites I am working on to our personal Dropbox account.  That was good to see.  I also started soliciting “beta testers” for each of the sites.  I continued working with the WP-Members plug-in and it appeared to be functioning correctly to block access to selected pages/posts behind a user login.  Given that, I started generating user lists for each of the sites to generate usernames and passwords and keep track of when I have created those in WP and provided them to each user.

2013_11_05 (T)

On Tuesday Linda was able to extend our stay at Williston Crossings RV Resort until April 1st (no fooling).  We will figure out later how to manage our trip back to Michigan so that we do not arrive before April 16.  Sometime during the week I received an e-mail from the Prevost Owners Group, to which we belong, that the Prevost Motorcoach Show would take place in Tampa, Florida on January 13 and 14, with a reception hosted by Prevost Car Inc. the evening of the 13th.  That sounded like an opportunity to finally meet some folks from Prevost in person, and to admire brand new conversions (that we will never buy) from the likes of Marathon, Millennium, Liberty, Parliament, and Vantare.  Sometime during the week it also came to our attention that the Prevost Community group we belong to is planning a rally for the first week of April 2014 at LazyDays RV Dealership in Seffner, Florida!  Well Bob’s your uncle.  It looks like delaying our return until at least April 16 won’t be that difficult at all.

I needed to make an appointment for my annual physical, so I got on the Henry Ford Health System website.  They have a new “feature” called MyChart.  When fully functional, which it is not yet, you are supposed to be able to directly book an appointment, and see all of your lab results.  But first you have to set up your account.  I called the number and got an activation code which I then used to create a Username and Password, and was finally able to log in.  The direct scheduling feature wasn’t available for my primary care physician, but there was a “Request An Appointment” page.  So I did.  I asked for an Adult Physical on Mon., Tue., Wed., or Thu. afternoon between Monday November 25, 2013 and Friday December 6, 2013.  Less than 24 hours later I received an e-mail informing me that I had been scheduled for a 1:00 PM appointment for an Office Visit on January 15, 2014.  Huh???

I used to program computers for a living, and I used to do systems engineering, and I used to do sales and marketing of these things, and I ended my career as a consultant.  This didn’t strike me as bad programming; it struck me as bad policy that got translated into a bad systems specification.  So I wrote back to HFHS customer service and told them, as politely as I could, that their system was stupid, that is to say, the policies behind the implementation of their system were not “customer-centric.”  If I had wanted an appointment in mid-January I would have requested one.  So as of now, I do not have said appointment.

The bus was ready to pick up on Tuesday, so Chuck drove me down to W. W. Williams to get it.  I took care of the paperwork and left with Chuck following me in his truck.  I no sooner hit the highway than I got a Check Engine Light.  It came on and stayed on, so I phoned Chuck and let him know that I needed to turn around and take it back if he was willing to follow me and take me back home.  He was, so this we did; my plans further delayed.  There are worse things that can happen on this bus; the Stop Engine Light, for instance.  This light means exactly what it says, the engine is going to stop and you need to get to the side of the road, now, before it does.  I’ve only seen that once, shortly after we bought it.  We took care of some key maintenance issues and have never seen it again (and I hope that we never do).  I figured I wouldn’t get the bus back from W. W. Williams until Wednesday afternoon at best, so any trip to Edwardsburg was now delayed until Thursday.  I called Michele to let her know.  She had Pato and Tommy lined up to look at it on Friday, so I was getting anxious to get it down there.  But there’s nothing you can do until the mechanics (they are now called technicians) are ready to give it back to you.  And frankly, you really don’t want it back until they are sure it is fixed.

While I was gone dealing with the bus, we got a call from Steve (mentioned earlier) wondering if he had left his Raspberry Pi computer here on Saturday.  We checked.  Yup, it was here.  Rather than meet him somewhere, we agreed that he would come back to the house on Wednesday to get it and do some work on our computers while he was here.

2013_11_06 (W)

Steve arrived late Wednesday morning, Linux “tools” in hand.  The principle target of the work was to install Linux on one of our machines and then install/configure the Apache web-server program.  This would allow us to have a “virtual web-server” that I could use to build duplicate installations of my WordPress sites, allowing me to develop and test them before making the same changes to the live sites.  That sounded cool.  Steve has been trying to get me interested in Linux for 10 years but I never saw a real need for it until now.  It turned in to an all-day project (of course, don’t they all?) due to the age of the machine we decided to use, but that was the machine I wasn’t using for much of anything else, so that’s where it needed to go.  Steve got Linux installed and then installed Apache2.  We ran out of time to configure the Apache2 program, but that was OK as it will give Steve a reason to come back.

While we were working on the computers we talked some more about Florida.  It turns out that the Capitol Steps are scheduled to appear at the Venice Stage Theater in Venice, Florida at the end of January.  Our annual get-together with Steve and Karen has often involved dinner and a performance by this group, which specializes in political satire, much of it musical.  They said we could stay overnight at the place they rent for winter in Venice if we wanted to go to the performance, which is at 8:00 PM on a Monday evening.  The nice thing about traveling with cats is that you can leave them for 24 hours and they are fine.  They sleep for 20 of those anyway.

I checked Wednesday afternoon and the bus was reported as “ready to go.”  I decided to pick it up early Thursday morning and head directly to Edwardsburg.  That meant towing the car so I had a way home, but it also meant that Linda did not have to drive me to W. W. Williams.  That worked out well as she had to head in to the bakery on Thursday anyway.

I sometimes get a bit anxious the night before I am going to drive the bus as I don’t drive it every day and we are still finding a fixing “issues.”  I used to experience the same thing when we would book one of the Southgate Flying Club airplanes and go flying.  Again, I didn’t fly every day.  Does this ever happen to you?  As I was drifting off to sleep I suddenly remembered that I had planned to fill the fuel tank at the Mobil Truck Stop on I-96 between Howell and Lansing.  But that was based on leaving from home.  Now wide awake, I got my iPad, pulled up the map application, and zoomed in on the I-94 Baker Road interchange west of Ann Arbor.  There are three truck stops there, two Pilots and one Travel America.  I was able to examine each one carefully, checking in/out access and pump locations.  I decided the Pilot station on the north side of the highway was my best option.  I knew I had enough fuel in the tank to get that far easily, so I was then able to go back to bed and finally fall asleep.

2013_11_07 (R)

I must have been sleeping lightly because around 4 AM I was awakened by the faint sound of running water.  That’s another one of those sounds that will jolt you awake once you become aware of it.  The new flapper in the master bedroom toilet wasn’t quite sealed and the water was running ever so slowly trying to keep the tank full.  I was finally able to adjust the flapper a couple of days later and get it to seal, but between the truck stop research and the running water, it turned out to be a short, fitful night’s sleep.  Not good preparation for a long day of driving.

I would like to say that the trip from W. W. Williams to Phoenix Paint was uneventful, but Check Engine Lights are definitely an event, and I saw ours come on four times.  It eventually went off each time, finally staying off after the 4th time; once it’s come on I tend to be a bit on edge wondering when I will see it again (or worse).

I stopped for fuel at the aforementioned Pilot truck stop on the north side of I-94 at Baker Road and pulled in behind a truck at the last pump, or so I thought.  I sat there for a while until the driver came out and moved it, at which point I pulled up only to discover that there wasn’t a pump at that position.  So I pulled out of the truck stop onto Baker Road, came back in the entrance, and got in line behind a truck that was putting fuel in its tanks.  That truck finally moved and I was able to pull up to the pump.

Getting fuel at a truck stop isn’t like putting fuel in your car.  The gallons and dollars involved are usually an order of magnitude larger and you usually cannot run a credit card at the pump.  I went inside, waited in line, and was finally waited on by a nice woman.  I told her I probably needed 150 gallons and I failed to recognize that she ran my credit card for $150.  I was only half done washing the windshields (the bus has four) when the pump shut off.  It had put in 37.9 gallons for exactly $150.  So I went back inside, stood in line again, and had her run the card for another $350.  Back outside, I restarted the pump, waited for it to finish, then went back inside, got back in line, and got not one, but two, receipts with the dollars and gallons on them.  By the time I got back on the highway the fuel stop had taken about one hour.  More delay.

No sooner was I on the road then I got a call from Chuck checking on how my trip was going.  That was both thoughtful and reassuring; it’s comforting to know folks are aware of you and concerned for your well-being.  In some ways, owning a converted coach makes you part of a “fraternity”, if you care to join.  While we were on the phone the Check Engine Light came on for the 3rd time since I had left W. W. Williams.  It went off and came on again.  I discussed it with Chuck and decided to pull off at MY FAVORITE REST AREA to check the coolant level in the overflow reservoir.  (I talked about this rest area in my article in the February 2013 issue of Bus Conversions Magazine.  This is the same rest area where I was stranded while Linda and I repaired the patio awning that came loose a few miles earlier on westbound I-94.  Ironically, I was on my way to Phoenix Paint at that time as well.  I’m not superstitious, but I don’t like unlikely coincidences.)

The rest stop in question is near Grass Lake, Michigan, about 12 miles east of Jackson, Michigan.  It’s a very nice rest stop; I just seem to end up stopping here for less than nice reasons.  I popped the rear engine hatch, improvised a dip stick, and checked the level in the overflow reservoir.  It was up to the bottom edge of the filler tube, so no obvious problem there.  I looked around the engine bay for any sign of a coolant leak, but everything looked dry.  I took some comfort in the fact that Bob, the service manager at W. W. Williams (Dearborn) had told me that he and the technicians were very impressed with the condition of our engine; that it sounded good and ran well.  They’re real experts, so that’s no small thing.

The rest of the trip really was uneventful.  The Check Engine Light did not come on again, the transmission shifted well, the cruise control worked properly (as it always has), the engine coolant and oil temperatures ran normal, and the speedometer suddenly decided to work again!  I took I-94 W to I-69 S to M-60 W to M-40 S to US-12 W to M-205 W and pulled into Phoenix Paint just a mile north of the Indiana border around 1:00 PM.  I’ve done this trip many times, but it was a very pleasant drive with fall colors still in evidence, light traffic, and nice weather.

Michele got me into the building and parked and had me air up the suspension so they could have easier access to the inside of the wheel wells.  She and Pato got right to work removing the damaged panels while I hooked up the electrical shoreline, got the house battery charger turned back on, and activated some circuits for the inside of the bus including the auxiliary air compressor.  I stopped to look at things and answer questions as I unloaded some items from the car, and then moved stuff from the bus to car that had to return home with me.  What started out as a trip to have paint scratches buffed out had become a trip to also find and seal roof leaks and repair/repaint damaged body panels, so Michele and I looked the coach over and discussed the work to be done. I was there about 90 minutes—a really short visit for me and Michele—and got back on the road for home around 2:30 PM.

I had originally planned to spend a few days at her shop working on some small projects of my own, but that was based on a Monday arrival.  We had plans to meet up with our friend Kate in Ypsilanti on Thursday evening to see Roy Blount, Jr. at Eastern Michigan University’s Pease Auditorium.  I made it home with just enough time to change clothes, but not to eat, and we headed off to Ypsi.  We got there just as Kate and her friend Teresa were arriving and got four seats together.  RBJr was very interesting to listen too when we could hear him and understand what he was saying.  He speaks somewhat softly, and the PA system for the auditorium was not adjusted properly to compensate for that.

After the event we headed over to the Sweetwater Café, just a short walk from the auditorium, for coffee.  They had some nice looking veggie rollup sandwiches, so Linda and I had a late/light dinner.  We finally got home around 11 PM, a long day for me.

Although my health is better than it has been for the last couple of decades, I do not pretend that I am not in my 6th decade.  I can still do the all-day-drive thing, but I am much more tired at the end of it, and it takes me multiple days to recover from it.