Category Archives: Culture & Entertainment

2015/09/04 (F) 100 Pounds

We set our alarm for 6 AM, got up, had granola for breakfast, and then went to The Home Depot to rent a 100 pound floor roller. The roller consists of three steel rollers, each about 4″ wide and 6″ in diameter, on a common axle. A three foot long handle attaches to the axle between the middle and outside rollers. A pair of small wheels attach to the crossbar at the base of the handle for transport and can be swung up out of the way or removed. We rolled the roller out to our car and loaded it into the back. We then went back inside and purchased up a hard edge grout float, a small offset float, sponges, a bucket, and a bottle of Armstrong Once and Done floor cleaning concentrate.

Bruce rolls the floor tiles in the kitchen with the 100 lb. roller.

Once we got home we got right to work on the bus. We had a few pieces of vinyl tile that still needed to be cut and installed at the front of the bus and that took us over an hour. Once that was done it was time to glue the tiles down. I got the Armstrong S-288 adhesive and the trowel. We read the directions on the adhesive bucket and finally figured out that I should probably not spread more adhesive than could apply in about 20 minutes as the product is time sensitive. The adhesive would then have to set until it was tacky but did not transfer to my finger when touched, which would be 10 to 30 minutes, but we would need to have the tiles set within an hour of when I started spreading the adhesive. The tiles then needed to be rolled with the 100 pound roller.

We started in the center of the coach and installed the tiles as follows: 1) Remove selected tiles; 2) Spread adhesive; 3) Clean up tools while adhesive cured; 4) Lay tiles carefully back in place; and 5) Roll the freshly set tiles. It sounds easy and straightforward enough, but each step had its own issues.

For Step 1) we had to agree on how to remove and stack the tiles so they were in the correct order for installation and to remove them so as not to disturb the surrounding tiles. At Step 2) I had to be careful not get adhesive on anything except the area of the floor I was working on. I also had to make sure the working area was completely covered but also completely troweled off correctly. In Step 3) the tools needed to be cleaned before the adhesive set so we could use warm soapy water to clean them. Once set, the adhesive would have to be cleaned off with mineral spirits. Step 4) was the most critical. The tiles get installed once the adhesive has set to the touch, i.e. still pliable but no transfer when touched. The adhesive effectively acts like a contact cement–it is not possible to slide a tile once it is down–so getting each tile correctly positioned on the first try was critical. Step 5) was the easiest, once we got the 100 pound floor roller out of the car and into the bus. The tiles needed to be rolled as soon as they were installed, which was easy except for the limited confines of the bus interior.

We ended up doing this six times in the following order:

Kitchen;
Built-in sofa portion of the living room;
Front passenger side of living room’
Hallway;
Foot and front side of bed;
Rear side of bed; and
Bathroom.

This corresponded roughly to the order in which we had done the dry fit and it was critical that the central tiles get installed in exactly the right locations. We used plastic spacers at all tile intersections and between tile edges where needed. (The spacers were 2-sided. One side was an X for use where four tile corners meet. The other side had three tabs in line for use between the edges of two adjacent tiles.) These spacers were removed when we pulled the tiles out and replaced when we installed them. We also divided the job up to keep the number of tiles being set to a small enough number that we could meet the time requirements of the adhesive and to make sure we did not get trapped in the back of the coach. We finally installed the last piece (for now) at 9 PM. We had short breaks for lunch and dinner but each cycle of this process took about 90 minutes.

Bruce spreads Armstrong vinyl floor adhesive in the hallway.

My knees were sore by the time we quit. They have never done well with kneeling due to the boney lumps that resulted from Osgood-Slaughter’s disease in my late pre-teens. Occasionally kneeling down on one of the spacers, which had pointy centers on one side, did not help. I probably got down and up at least 100 times throughout the day, maybe more, which was hard enough all by itself. Although I am in better health and physical shape than I was in my 30’s and 40’s at 63 I am certainly not in the prime of my youth. At one time Linda and I had a hundred pounds or more to lose between us. Time, use, and the abuse of being overweight have inevitably taken their toll on our joints. At the end of the day I was left thinking that flooring work is a young person’s game. Whether hardwood, carpet, tile, or even continuous sheet vinyl, much of the work is done on your hands and knees, or bent over, and it is tough work.

I took a long, hot shower and then Linda took her shower while I checked e-mail. We had some Coconut Bliss ice cream with fresh strawberries and then turned in. We watched an episode of Joseph Rosendo’s Travelscope, set the alarm for 7 AM, and went to sleep.

2015/08/23 The West Side

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Today was not an ordinary day for us in the sense of our usual routines of chores and projects. We were up at 7:45 AM, got dressed up more than usual, and had our usual granola breakfast but I did not make coffee. We left at 8:45 AM and drove to our daughter’s house near Dexter. We arrived at 9:30 and Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline pulled in right behind us. We visited for about 20 minutes which gave Madeline time to get into the flow of being at Aunt Meghan and Uncle Chris’s house. She was sitting on the couch with Meghan watching an animated video on Shawna’s iPad when we left.

We rode with Brendan and Shawna in their Subaru Outback. Our destination was the Waldorf Pub Ballroom in Hastings, Michigan. The reason for our trip was a Celebration of Life for Shawna’s father, Michael (Mick) James Lee, who passed away a little over a week ago from a non-cancerous but malignant brain tumor.

The quickest route to Hastings from Dexter is south to I-94 and then west to M-37, which runs northwest up to Hastings. We stopped at the Panera in Jackson where Linda and I both got coffee and I got an “everything” bagel to go. We arrived at the Waldorf at noon.

The gathering did not start until 2 PM but Shawna had agreed to come early to help with setup. That left us with some time so we went for a walk up and down the main street before returning to the ballroom. Shawna’s sister, Tracy, brother Rob, their mom, Carol, and Mick’s wife, Carol were there and we had a chance to visit briefly with them before everyone else started showing up. I did not try to do a head count but there were at least 100 people there, and possibly 150. Mick was a teamster and a lot of his social life involved his fellow truck drivers and was centered on their union local. I think a lot of them were there.

Tracy had assembled a slide show with 180 images and put together a mix of Mick and Carol’s favorite tunes. At 2 PM she read an honest, heartfelt, and warm remembrance of Mick. Mick’s lifelong friend gave a similar reflection, followed by Mary Kay, the sister of Mick’s wife Carol. A nice buffet was set out that included fresh fruit, vegetables, and small slices of toasted bread, so we had plenty to eat. There was a full bar available but hot coffee (regular and decaf) and cold lemonade met our needs.

Heavy rains moved in just after 2 PM but moved through before we left at 4:30. We went back down M-37 to I-94 and headed east. Shawna and Linda were following our progress using the GPS feature of their phones. There was an accident at the interchange with US-127 so Brendan exited at Airport Road and Linda navigated him through Jackson and back on to I-94 at Copper Road. Shawna noticed a rainbow ahead of us and then Linda spotted a second, fainter one, with a larger diameter than the first. We were able to see at least the main one, and usually both of them, all the way to the Dexter Road exit and part of the way to Dexter. It was quite a sight.

We got back to Meghan and Chris’s house around 6:30 PM. Madeline had a great day with her buddy Aunt Meghan but was keeping watch for our return and was excited to see her mom and dad and her Grandma Linda and Grandpa Bruce. We left at 6:50 and on the way home decided to go the Los Tres Amigos restaurant on Grand River Avenue just east of Latson Road, arriving at 7:30 PM. We had the vegetarian fajitas, and they were OK, but dining out allowed us to eat a little sooner without Linda having to cook.

After dinner we drove to the Shell station in Brighton and topped off the tank in Linda’s Honda Civic so she would not have to stop in the morning on her way to walk with Diane. At home we watched an episode of Sherlock on PBS and then an episode of Rick Steve’s Europe.

2015/08/20 (R) On The Level

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We awoke around 7 AM and noticed that it had rained overnight. We had Linda’s homemade granola with fresh blueberries for breakfast, followed by a pot of coffee brewed from the Cafe Europe / Columbian Decaf blend I got from Teeko’s on Tuesday. As we do most mornings we enjoyed our coffee while using our iPads to check in on the world (Linda) and write about our day yesterday (me).

While Linda went for a walk I checked e-mail and responded to several from Gary Hatt at Bus Conversion Magazine. I then unloaded all of the boards, slides, battery terminal covers, and the pneumatic disc sander and discs from the car. I set up our 15 gallon portable air compressor by the entrance door of the bus, got the long air hose out of its storage bay, and connected the air sander.

When Linda got back from her walk we unloaded the pull-out pantry from the car and stored it on top of some of the bookcases in the library. We had a light lunch after which Linda settled in to work at her desk and I busied myself with sanding the floor in the bus with the air sander.

Floor prep tools: 4” belt sander, hammer and chisel, 4” rotary pneumatic body sander.

I was eager (anxious) to get the initial sanding done so I could apply the floor leveling compound. Like drywall compound it will be a multi-day process. I needed to fill any deep gouges and voids, let the compound dry, and then lightly sand it with an orbital pad sander and finer grit sandpaper to make sure it is smooth. I then needed to fill the shallow grooves that exist between the ridges of thinset and mastic that I could not sand off completely. Once that dried I would again sand it off lightly and then apply a final, very thin, skim coat to the entire area, feathering it into the areas where tile was never installed. Finally I would go over the entire area gently with the pad sander one last time to make sure the surface is as smooth and flat as possible before installing the 1/4″ underlayment. The tile will be installed directly on the underlayment.

I considered using self-leveling instead of troweled-on floor leveling compounded but decided against it. Self-leveling is thin, like water, and flows. As such it seeks its on level and forms a smooth flat surface that is “level” as determined by gravity. Although it offers the possibility of a single step process with no sanding, it also offers the potential to go wrong and not be repairable. The bus subfloor would have to be dead level side-to-side and front-to-rear. There would also have to be a border to contain the liquid and there could not be any holes or cracks that it could leak through. In particular it seemed I’ll-suited for feathering into the adjacent areas of the subfloor that were never tiled. And so I decided to fill in and “level” the floor the slower and more labor intensive, but more controlled, way.

For dinner we had the other half of the gluten free pizza Linda made on Tuesday. We had peaches, strawberries, bananas, and an orange melon that were all ripe so she made a fruit salad. We finished the bottle of Cupcake Black Forest Decadent Red Wine.

We decided to turn in early and watch a little TV. Part 2 of The Mystery of Matter: The Search for the Elements was on PBS at 8 PM. We saw Part 3 last night and did not realize until 7:45 PM that Part 1 was on this evening at 7 PM, so we still have not seen it.

2015/08/12 (W) Back to Indiana (Again)

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Today was early arrival day for the annual Back-to-the-Bricks converted bus rally in Clio, Michigan. This joint rally of the Converted Coach Owners (CCO) and the FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches (GLCC) chapter has become an annual event that typically draws 20 to 30 rigs. Most of them are converted highway buses and many of those were converted or re-modeled by the owners. Many of them are works in progress but such is the nature of the bus conversion hobby and the true bus nut. But that is not where we were headed today. Our bus is unusable at the moment as the toilet is disconnected, the bed platform has been removed, and all of the cabinet drawers have been taken out. But the main reason was that we had multiple commitments in Indiana today.

Our first appointment was with Josh Leach of Coach Supply Direct. Although CSD is located in Edwardsburg, Michigan we had arranged to meet him in the parking lot of the Martin’s Supermarket at SR-19 (IN) and CR-4 on the north side of Elkhart, Indiana at 9:30 AM to take delivery of 15 yards of upholstery fabric. We picked that location, rather than his shop in Edwardsburg, for several reasons. He had to be at the Forest River Owners Group (FROG) rally at the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds at 10 AM so that location got him half way to his destination at a good time of day. For us, Elkhart is a 3-1/2 hour drive. That meant we had to be up at 5:00 AM and on the road not later than 5:45 AM to be there on time, allowing for coffee, fuel, and bathroom stops. Had we met him at his shop we would have had to be there by 9 AM requiring us to get up even earlier. You have to draw a line somewhere.

I took the wheel for the start of the trip. It was still dark but the faint glow of the impending sunrise was visible as we pulled out onto Hacker Road facing a rising crescent moon. At M-59 we headed west to I-96. I reset one of the trip odometers before we left and verified that it was 13 miles from our driveway to the end of the entrance ramp from M-59 onto I-96W. We skirted the southern edge of Lansing on I-96 and took Lansing Road to I-69 south.

Nineteen miles south of Lansing, and about an hour into our trip, we stopped at the Biggby’s Coffee in Charlotte for coffee and bagels. Biggby’s is not my favorite coffee but this particular store is in just the right location. Linda checked the M-DOT website and it appeared that the bridge work on M-60 in Mendon was completed, so we exited I-69S and headed west on M-60. Unfortunately the bridge was still closed so we had to follow the detour to the south toward Sturgis. Unlike our previous trip in early July, when we continued on to Sturgis, we followed the complete detour through Nottawa and Centreville and back to M-60 in Three Rivers. We had never driven through Nottawa or Centreville before so that provided some new scenery for the trip.

As we have done many times before we continued our trip on M-60 as far as Jones where we stopped at the Shell station for fuel. We then took M-40 south to US-12. This seven mile stretch of M-40 traverses steeply rolling hills and is both beautiful and fun to drive. We took US-12, running west just north of the Michigan-Indiana border, and eventually exited onto Old 205 (M-205?) which turns 90 degrees to the left a mile later and drops straight south into Indiana where it becomes SR-19. A few miles later we arrived at the Martin’s Supermarket at CR-4 just after 9 AM.

Josh was not there yet so we went inside to use the restrooms and get some coffee. This particular Martin’s has a nice salad bar with a beverage station, a Starbucks Coffee outlet, and a seating area with Wi-Fi. Josh showed up right on time and parked next to us. I met him outside and we transferred the roll of upholstery fabric from his car to ours and then went inside to visit for a few minutes before he had to leave for Goshen.

When we left Linda took over the driving. Our next planned stop was A1-Upholstery in Elkhart to order the cushions for our built-in sofa. Continuing south on SR-19 we stopped at Factory RV Surplus to look for battery cable end covers but the ones they had were too expensive. I think they now sell more retail-packaged merchandise than they do true surplus material, and even less salvaged parts.

Lou (mom) and Terry (daughter) own and operate A-1 Upholstery and were recommended to us by Josh. We discussed the project with Terry, who I had previously spoken to on the phone. We reviewed my dimensioned scale drawings, which were on one sheet of 11″x17″ 1/4″ grid-square paper, and agreed on how the cushions would be made. Terry thought she would have them done by the end of the month but noted on the order form that we needed them by September 14th. We noticed that she had a lot of sample books from which we could have selected a fabric but we like the Lambright Notion Linen, and Terry thought it was a very good fabric that should look good and wear well in our application. We left the fabric and drawing with her and wrote a check for the deposit.

All of our stops were important today, but our primary reason for the trip was to pick up the pieces of the custom desk and built-in sofa for our bus from Jarel Beatty Cabinetry in Logansport, Indiana. We continued our trip south on SR-19 to US-20, took that west to US-31, and went south, exiting at Rochester onto IN-25 for the final 22 miles to Logansport. This is a route I have driven many times but Linda had the wheel this time so I provided some occasional guidance. I called Jarel to let him know we were making better time than we had anticipated and would be there between noon and 12:25 PM. I then called Butch to give him a status update.

This was the first time Linda and Jarel had met and so it was also the first time Linda had met Mya, Jarel and Georgette’s sweet little dog. Mya came up to me, sat, stared up at me like we were long lost friends, and waited patiently for me to give her the attention she was seeking. I was happy to oblige.

Jarel Beatty Cabinetry, Logansport, IN. Panorama taken from the entrance door.

Jarel Beatty Cabinetry, Logansport, IN. Panorama from the center of the shop. Entrance door is far left.

As I have previously described in this blog, the desk consists of nine pieces (if you count the four drawers as separate parts): two pedestals with separate bases, a cover that goes between them, and four drawers. The left pedestal has a fold up work surface with two support wings, and a fold down fake drawer front, so technically those are four more pieces, but they are attached to the pedestal with hinges so I am not counting them as separate parts. The bottoms of each pedestal have been cut out to provide access to the fan-coil heat exchangers that will be installed in the bases, so those are really two separate pieces now, put I am not counting them as such. I am also ignoring screws, drawer slides, blocking, and other assembly items in my parts count as they are all “installed components.” With the drawers installed we only had five major pieces to load plus the two access plates. Jarel also had the pieces ready for the built-in sofa so we loaded those as well. I took pictures of his shop and the pull-out pantry, which was mostly assembled but not quite finished.

The installed desk will have more pieces than just described but these are the pieces that Jarel made. The finished desk will have five grills that we have to cut and install, at least four drawer pulls that we have to install, a plywood top that will span the two pedestals and leg space, and a Sandstone Corian countertop that will go on top of the plywood. While not actually part of the desk there will also be a large cover for the passenger-side living room HVAC duct and wiring chase and a small hose cover at the desk end both of which align with the left end of the desk and will look like they are part of it. Jarel will make the chase cover later after the desk is installed and we can get a final, accurate measurement for its length.

As long as we were in the neighborhood we naturally stopped to visit with our friends, Butch and Fonda, in Twelve Mile, Indiana. While we were at their house we loaded a dozen 4-foot army surplus fiberglass mast sections in the car. Butch had bought these at a swap for me some time ago. We will use them for ham radio antenna projects. Butch gave me his old, non-functioning, Vanner battery equalizer to see if I can figure out how it does what it does. He also lent me his air-powered brad nailer which can also drive 1/4″ crown staples and gave me a box of 5,000 staples to go with it. Fonda found a scrap piece of resilient underlayment designed for free-floating wood floors. Butch though it might work well under the 1/4″ plywood underlayment to fill in the gaps and irregularities so we took it with us.

When we were done loading stuff into our car we went to see their new property on SR-25. They have already had a new roof put on the barn and new doors put in the house. They have bought themselves a BIG project, but it will be a much more appropriate and manageable place for them going forward than the building complex in Twelve Mile that has housed their business operations for the last 20 years. It’s an old GM dealership from the 1940s and they have approximately 11,000 feet under roof including a 2-bay service garage with a functioning in-ground lift.

We drove to Rochester and had dinner at Pizza Hut. Linda and I split a medium specialty veggie pizza and had the salad bar with it. We might have had a few more restaurant choices in Logansport, but Rochester was 22 miles closer to home. With the 19 hours we were gone today, and over 525 miles we had to travel, 22 miles and 30 minutes was significant for us.

We got back on the road at 6:30 PM with Linda at the wheel and headed back up US-31N to US-20 and headed east. We decided to stay on US-20 all the way to I-69, stopping in Lagrange to use the restroom at the Marathon complex. We stopped again at the Shell station on M-60 in Michigan for fuel. It was getting dark and I had been able to rest while Linda drove, so I took over the driving duties. From this point on we were just reversing our route from this morning. We got home at 10:30 PM, unloaded everything from the car, and then went straight to bed.

2015/08/08 (S) A New Bus Fridge (Finally)

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We overslept and did not get up until 7:15 AM. The weather has been very pleasant all this past week but we awoke to light rain. We left for our SLAARC breakfast at 7:25 AM and took a different route than usual to see how it would be for the bus. I headed north on Hacker to M-59, east to US-23, and south to I-96 east. The ramp from US-23 south to I-96 east is a left exit, left entrance, with a very short merge lane in the middle of a major construction project. I decided that was not our best option for the bus.

We arrived at breakfast at 8 AM to find a dozen people already there but at least 10 more showed up after us. We enjoyed the conversation, as we usually do, but did not linger and were on our way back home by 9:15 AM. As soon as we arrived we changed into our work clothes and got busy with the final preparations to move the bus to Chuck’s bus garage in Novi.

I pulled the bus out at 10:30 AM and Linda followed in the Element, which had all of the pieces we had removed from the old refrigerator along with tools, blankets, and some 2x4s. The bus roof was brushed by a few small, low branches getting from our house to N. Hacker Road, reminding me that I need to covertly trim trees and bushes along our street. I say covertly because they are not on our property. The last time I took the bus out we went south on Hacker to Grand River Avenue. This would have been our preferred route today except that the trees are not trimmed up in a few places and one of them, just before Bendix Drive, clunked the stuff on our roof pretty hard last time. I did not care to repeat that so I went north as we had this morning in the car.

At M-59 I headed west to Latson Road, a trip of some four to five miles in the wrong direction. The reason is that Latson Road going south has a relatively new, and easy to navigate, intersection with I-96. From there we had an easy run to the Beck Road exit, a short jog south to Grand River Avenue, an easy left turn, and the final mile to Chuck’s shop where we arrived at 11 AM.

Chuck had already pulled his bus out of the building and parked it out of the way but there were several trucks and a dumpster trailer blocking access to his door. They belonged to a motley crew that the owner of the building in front of Chuck’s shop had hired to clean up some of the mess left behind by the sunroom company that just moved out of the building. He had me pull up to the right and position myself to back up and then negotiated with the workers to move their vehicles. I pulled up the tag axles and waited. The workers were not happy about it but they did it.

To get our bus into Chuck’s shop nose first he had me back parallel to the building and then bring it around to the passenger side into a space adjacent to the front building until I was perpendicular to his door. I was then able to pull straight in but I did not pull in all the way. Chuck had me stop with the fixed window frame opposite his forklift which he had already positioned for use. The on again, off again light rain was not a factor as the window frame we needed to open was well inside his shop.

Linda and I unloaded all of the stuff from the car and brought it inside the shop. We realized that we forgot to bring the camera so Linda tried to capture the progress of the work with her cell phone camera. I have put those images in a separate gallery post for this date.

Randy, the owner of the Printology business in the suite adjacent to Chuck’s, came over to see what we were up to and stuck around to help. With me working from an 8 foot step ladder outside the bus, while Chuck and Linda worked inside, we opened the window frame about 24 inches and propped it with a piece of 2×4. I then carefully lifted the window higher while Linda sighted along the bottom of the upper cabinet. When I had the frame high enough to be clear of the cabinet Chuck measured the length of 2×4 we would need to prop it open.

It looked like 52 inches would do the trick. I had a 56″ piece of 2×4 so I cut it down to 52″ with my 7-1/4″ Rockwell circular saw. I used the first piece to mark a second piece on an 8 foot 2×4 and cut that. Linda took both pieces inside the bus where she handled one and Chuck handled the other. As I lifted the bottom edge of the window from outside the bus the window hinge (at the top) made some unpleasant (and a bit unnerving) sounds but I got it high enough that they could put the two braces in place and the frame did not come unhinged. We had just finished this task when John Rauch and his son, John, arrived at noon to help move the refrigerators.

The old refrigerator was lying face down in the bus. The two Johns lifted it as a test and determined that they would not have any difficulty moving it. Linda fetched one of the blankets and dropped it over the sill of the open window to protect it and the side of the coach. Chuck had placed the long forks on his forklift about two feet apart and slid a narrow pallet over them. He raised the forks and brought the forklift forward towards the bus. We got him to position the top of the pallet even with the top of the sill and about 3″ away from the side of the coach.

John and John are very strong and were able to lift the old refrigerator case and pass it through the window onto the pallet. With a person on ladders on either side of the pallet we slid the refrigerator all the way out. Chuck then tilted the forks slightly, slowly backed away, and lowered it down. John and John got the old refrigerator off the pallet, carried it out of the way, and stood it upright on its base. They then lifted the new refrigerator onto its back, picked it up, and placed it on the pallet. They went back inside the bus while Chuck brought the forklift up to the coach and raised the forks until the pallet was at window sill level. John and John slid it into the bus, stood it up, and rolled it into the alcove. I then secured it in place with a piece of 1×3 wood screwed to the floor across the front to keep it from rolling out while driving. There is approximately three inches of space above the fridge but it cannot tilt out very far before the upper back edge catches the ceiling of the alcove.

John, John, and Chuck raised the window frame slightly to remove the 2x4s and close the frame when the top hinge started coming apart. Linda yelled for me and I scrambled over to get another pair of hands on the frame. With me and Chuck holding the outside (free) edge and the two Johns holding the hinge edge I was able to see where the hinge was out and direct folks as to what to do. It took several tries and a few minutes (that seemed like hours) but we got the hinge re-engaged and then closed the window frame. We took a few minutes to rest and chat and Chuck showed John (the father) his race car. The heavy lifting was all done so John, John, and Randy took off, but before they did Linda gave John (the son) a gift for their new baby girl, Lucy Violet.

Linda and I put all the shelves and bins in the new refrigerator and then reattached the two doors. That was a bit of extra work as it came with the hinges on the right side but we needed the door to open on the right side. With the doors on we took a moment to consider our choice of size and color (black) and felt we had made the right decision. We started to reassemble the old refrigerator but we were all hungry and decided to go to lunch first. I started the bus and pulled it all the way into the shop so we could close up. Chuck then drove us down the street to Panera for lunch. We took our time and had a nice meal and a nice chat.

Back at the shop we decided to switch the buses around so Chuck would be free to leave. He wanted a picture of the two buses together so I backed ours out of his shop, swung around to the passenger side, got parallel to his bus, and then backed up so the nose of our bus was about 10 feet behind the nose of his. He and Linda then both took photos with their cell phones. When the photo shoot was done I pulled forward to the left and then backed in parallel to the building about four feet from the curb. That gave Chuck plenty of room to pull up next to me on my passenger side and then back around next to the front building and get lined up to pull straight into his bay just as I had done earlier.

Back in the shop Linda wiped out the inside of the old refrigerator and then we reattached the two doors. As she cleaned each rack, shelf, and bin I placed it back into the refrigerator. When it was fully reassembled we plugged it in. It came on, ran for about 60 seconds and then shut off. It obviously was not cold yet, and might have been cause for alarm if I had not dealt with this “problem” before.

I knew from prior experience that the defrost timer had probably disconnected the compressor and connected the evaporator defroster. Chuck pulled out three of his lawn chairs and we sat around waiting for the refrigerator to restart. The only thing missing was three cold beers. We knew the unit still had power as the lights were working. There was an outside chance that the overload protector (fuse?) might have blown, but I did not consider that to be likely. Our patience was rewarded about 25 minutes later when the compressor came back on. While we were waiting we gathered up our tools and various materials and loaded everything back into the Honda Element.

Chuck had a message from his wife, Barbara, with her ETA so we decided to settle back into the lawn chairs and kibbutz until Barb arrived. She showed up a little while later and Chuck got out a fourth chair and we sat in the shop listening to the sound of the functioning refrigerator and debriefing the events of the day. As a result of the window frame hinge coming loose I am now of the opinion that I did not need to remove the two stop blocks. I suspect they are there to “stop” the hinge from coming apart and I should not have removed them. Chuck is also thinking about replacing the refrigerator in their bus and is going to check with Prevost regarding these blocks. As much as anything I was annoyed with myself for the amount of time I wasted removing these blocks but what is done is done and I now need to reinstall the one block that came off undamaged and get a replacement for the other one, even though I can only attach it with one machine screw. Butch thinks he can make one for me, otherwise I will have to get one from Prevost.

Our local electrical utility, DTE Energy, will pick up used appliances. In the case of a refrigerator it has to be plugged in and running, which I presume means it is functioning and cooling the interior. If so, they will take it away and send us a check for $50. From our end that’s a good deal as we don’t have to pay someone to haul it away. Because of the R-12 Freon there are very few places that will deal with it. My guess is that DTE has a sub-contractor who will recover, clean, and recycle the R-12, which is no longer being made and has become very expensive. They may also recycle the copper tubing and electrical wire, and possibly the metal case and other materials. Even with the labor to do this work the unit must be worth more than $50 to them.

We all needed to get some dinner so we wrapped up our visit and started up our bus. I pulled out onto westbound Grand River Avenue followed by Linda in the car. At Beck Road we turned north and then got on I-96 westbound. The bus was at 3/8ths of a tank of fuel so I decided to stay on I-96 and go to the Mobil truck stop at M-52, a run of about 30 miles that would allow the engine and transmission to come up to normal operating temperature. Linda exited at Latson Road and stopped at Meijer’s to do some grocery shopping.

The Mobil truck stop is run down with a very poor, pot-holed apron and parking area, but there are usually several tractor-trailers fueling here when we pull in as it is one of only two places that a semi can refuel between Detroit and Lansing. There weren’t any trucks getting fuel when I pulled in but it was 7:30 PM on a Saturday evening and there were a half dozen tractor-trailers settled in the parking area for the night. I poured two bottles of Stanadyne diesel fuel additive into the fuel tank followed by two ounces of Racor Biocide. I then added 125 gallons of diesel fuel to the tank, which took about 11 minutes. By the time I paid for the fuel and was ready to pull out it was 8 PM.

I called Linda to let her know I was on my way and then reset the trip odometer. I drove east on I-96 for 10 miles to the M-59 / Burkhardt Road exit and got on M-59, which only goes east from there. Eleven miles later I made the turn south onto N. Hacker Road and completed the drive to our house. Linda heard me idling in the street, where I stopped to lift the tag axles before making the tight right turn into our pull-through driveway, and came out to help get me parked. Once I was positioned correctly I put the tag axle back down, let the engine low idle for a minute to let the turbo spin down and let the heads cool off and the temperature to equalize, switched the Level Low system out of drive mode, and shut off the engine. I shut off the air supply to the engine accessories, shut off the chassis batteries, connected the shore power cord, locked everything up, and went in for the evening.

It had been a long day and we were glad to have it behind us. I had been anticipating the refrigerator exchange, with some dread, for well over a month. The concern was that we would not be able to move the units out/in through the window frame, requiring us to remove and replace the lower passenger-side windshield, or that something would go wrong, like the hinge, and turn out to be an expensive and difficult problem to fix. With each passing day it was also becoming a bottleneck in our remodeling project, at least psychologically if not physically. But it was finally done and ended well. We will plug in the new refrigerator tomorrow to make sure it works. We tested it in Chuck’s shop when it was delivered so we expect it to work now. There is a lot of work to do but now we can get on with it and I expect it to go well.

In spite of being tired we stayed up and watched the PBS broadcast of the Simon and Garfunkel reunion concert they did live in New York City’s Central Park 10 years after they split up as a duo. Their music remains among my most favorite from my youth and it has lost nothing with the passing of many years.

2015/08/07 (F) Arrangements

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We had our usual, but never boring, homemade granola with fresh blueberries for breakfast. I brewed a pot of the Costa Rican half-caff coffee we bought yesterday without tasting it first. We found it to be somewhat bitter, which is not our taste in coffee, so we probably will not buy more after this batch is gone.

We spent a good part of the morning researching cabinet pulls on the Cabinet Service Hardware (CSH) website. We found a pull on the CSH website that appeared to be identical to the one from The Home Depot, which is a Rockefeller Antique Brass from Liberty Hardware. The one from CSH was a Belwith Keeler HH.P135-AB for $2.47 each. The one from The Home Depot was $2.48 plus tax but no S&H. Since we have the one from THD in hand and like how it looks we will probably buy them locally.

Many of the drawers in the bus have the pulls attached to the walnut face and then the face attached to the front of the drawer box. Thus, the only way to remove the pulls is to first unscrew the box from the face. I took the face off of one drawer and installed the new pull. It fit perfectly, confirming that the mounting hole spacing is 3″ center-to-center. The one from THD comes with 1″ and 1.5″ #8-32 machine screws but it looks like we will need something shorter than 1″ for the framed drawers and shorter than 1.5″ for the solid drawers. The cabinet doors have 3/4″ thick frames so the 1″ machine screws may work for those. Thus we should be able to use some of the machine screws that come with the pulls from THD but will have to buy some as well. The pulls from CSH do not come with screws so we would have to buy those anyway.

Linda left around noon to meet Diane in Livonia to see a movie (Ricki and the Flash) starring Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Rick Springfield. I went on an errand run while she was away. At The Home Depot in Howell I found 10 packs of the drawer pull we like so the price came out to under $2 per pull compared to $2.48 when purchased individually. We need 58 to replace all the ones in the coach plus at least four for the new desk drawers so I bought six 10-packs. We have not decided if we will replace the single screw round pulls on the two TV cabinet doors with the double screw pulls. If we do we will need a couple more pulls. If not, we will need two round pulls in the same style and finish, which THD also carries. I bought small packs of #8-32×3/4″ and #8-32×1-1/4″ lengths so I can figure out what lengths work best in each location.

Jarel called while at was THD. The plans for the built-in sofa had arrived in today’s mail and he had a few questions. We talked through the issues and came to the conclusion that it would be better for us to come down on Wednesday instead of Tuesday to pick up the desk. That will give him time to cut the sofa pieces and do some minor assembly and finishing. The plywood seat and side pieces need to be stained to resemble the walnut hardwood and a 3/4″x3/4″ piece of walnut hardwood needs to be attached to the front edge. He also needs to cut the piece of walnut veneered plywood for the front and then spray everything with the same lacquer he has used on all of the walnut desk pieces.

As I was finishing up at THD I also got a call from Chuck letting me know that everything was on track for the refrigerator swap tomorrow. My next stop was at the Howell Lowe’s for a 4′ x 4′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood but I did not like their selection any better than THD. I ended up buying two quarter sheets (24″ x 48″) of birch plywood. This plywood has a lot of thin layers, so it is very flat and dimensionally stable, with defect free surfaces that are sanded smooth and very clean edges. These sheets will go on the bottom of the refrigerator alcove in the bus to elevate the new refrigerator above the new vinyl tile floor.

Back home I texted Josh at Coach Supply Direct, called Terry at A-1 Upholstery, and called Butch regarding the change in our visit date for next week. Linda got home shortly thereafter and helped me reattach the edge trim to the two doors of the old refrigerator and load them into the back of my car. We covered everything with blankets and then loaded all of the drawers, shelves, racks, and bins. Once the old fridge is out of the bus we will clean it, reassemble it, plug it in, and make sure it is cooling. We will then call DTE Energy to arrange pick up through their recycling program.

Loading pieces of the old refrigerator into the back of the Element to take to Chuck’s shop.

Linda bought an Amy’s Roasted Vegetable Pizza while she was out and cooked it for dinner. It is our favorite store bought pizza, and much better (for us) than what we can usually get at restaurants and pizzerias (with the exception of Satchel’s in Gainesville, Florida), but not as good as the pizza we had while Mara was here. That pizza was memorable.

After dinner I got a shower and then worked on the design/drawings for the seat and back cushions for the built-in sofa for the bus. I started editing blog posts for July but did feel like uploading them. We went to bed earlier than usual as we had to up at 7 AM tomorrow to go to our weekly ham radio club breakfast.

2015/07/29 (W) Drive Shaft

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I had had a 9:30 AM appointment at Brighton Honda to have a drive shaft replaced and suggested that we just continue on to the Brighton Panera a half mile down the road for bagels and coffee. Linda never refuses to go to Panera so that is what we did. The Wi-Fi was out of service but we both bought things to read so we did not care. We sat in the two comfy armchairs by the fireplace, which was turned on, because the temperature inside was very cool, a frequent problem with this particular Panera store. We each had a bagel and many refills of our coffee cups and stayed long enough that Brighton Honda called to let me know my car was ready to be picked up. We left at 12:30 PM and Linda dropped me off to retrieve the ca.

Back home we had the leftover couscous with caramelized onions and the rest of the kiwis for lunch. Linda finalized her grocery list and headed off in search of food. I spent the rest of the day and most of the evening working on the design/drawings for the built-in sofa.

Through the course of the day I had QSOs with Jim (N8KUE) on the Novi 440 repeater and with Chris (K8VJ), Steve (N8AR), and Mike (W8XH) on the South Lyon 2m repeater. I also installed an updated driver for the NVIDIA GPU in my ASUS laptop, installed updates on the older Sony VAIO workstation (which still has Windows XP Pro), installed updates on the Linux box, and took time out for dinner (a delicious red lentil potato curry) and dessert (very sweet watermelon).

I went back to work in my office and sent an e-mail to Mike (W8XH) concerning Windows 10. He replied via the South Lyon 2m repeater. We had a long chat from 10:10 PM to just after 11 PM that was joined briefly by Steve (N8AR). There was also a group QSO taking place on the Novi 440 repeater that I listened to in the background. After I turned the radio off and came upstairs Linda said it appeared that my ham radio transmissions were interfering with our OTA TV signals. The antennas are on the same tower but the OTA TV antenna is mounted below the Diamond X-50N 2m/70cm vertical ham antenna so I was a little surprised that it would be causing interference. The vertical antenna has an omnidirectional radiation pattern which resembles a donut sitting on a horizontal surface, so the location directly under the base of the antenna should be a region with very little signal. Apparently that is not the case and I will eventually have to do something to remedy the situation. For now, however, the solution will be to not use the radio when someone s watching television.

2015/07/27 (M) Finish Drawings

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I got up at 7:25 AM and fed the cats. There was a very large tom turkey feeding in the back yard by the basement walkout and just far enough out from the house that I could see him from the dining room doorwall where we keep the cats’ food dishes. He walked up the west slope and then cautiously headed for our lower deck. I kept an unseen eye on him from the kitchen corner window as he headed east towards the main deck. I thought he might have spotted Linda’s tomato and herb planters but he kept on going. Perhaps he caught sight of Jasper, or me, or his own reflection but something spooked him and he trotted to the east end of the deck. He had Jasper’s full, undivided attention by this point and just walked around until he decided to walk down the stairs into the east yard and around the east end of the house. I lost sight of him after that but we have seen turkeys feeding on that end of the house before and they have ready access to dense, protective cover from there. I suspect this is the same lone tom that we have seen feeding in Cory’s yard across the street.

I sat and played games for a while and then started working on this post at 8:15 AM. At 8:30 I caught a glimpse of a deer crossing the road into our yard by the main driveway but could not get up to get a better view as Juniper had settled in in my lap. Linda got up around that same time having finally gotten a good night’s sleep. I got dressed and made coffee. We finally had breakfast at 10 AM.

My initial focus for today was to finish the drawings for the pull-out pantry, design/draw the cover for the front half of the passenger side HVAC duct and wiring chase, and design/draw the small cover that will connect the chase cover to the left side of the left desk pedestal base and hide the heater hoses. I took occasional breaks to chat with friends on the South Lyon 2m repeater and finished my drawings at 4:30 PM.

Linda located a FedEx Office location in Brighton so I drove there instead of to the one in Novi to make copies and buy a mailing tube. The copies did not come out as well as at the other office so I rolled up the originals and put them in the tube. I checked to see what it would cost to have FedEx deliver the tube. Their cheapest method was going to cost $28 and take three days to get there so I went across the street to the post office and mailed them to Jarel in Logansport, Indiana it for $2.94. It will be there by Thursday and may get there by Wednesday.

When I got home I e-mailed Jarel to let him know the drawings were on the way. Linda then reheated various leftovers for dinner. I had started the day with an ambitious list of things I wanted to accomplish but by the time we were done with dinner I decided I had accomplished enough for the day and took an uncharacteristic nap. I had just woken up when Butch called and we chatted about buses for a bit. We turned in earlier than usual and watched Antiques Roadshow and the concluding episode of Ken Burn’s “The Dust Bowl” on the Detroit PBS station.

2015/07/15 (W) Prime Wednesday

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It was brisk when we got up this morning, with the temperature in the upper 40’s (F), light breezes, lower humidity, and clear, blue skies. When the weather in Michigan is at its best it is near perfect.

After our usual coffee and granola we spent a little time browsing Amazon.com looking at their “Prime Wednesday” sale. Neither of us are compulsive shoppers or impulse buyers and scrolling through thousands of items on a slow Internet connection looking for something we can’t live without at a price we can’t pass up is not our idea of fun. I have things I need to order, like the multiple monitor mounting system for the ham shack, but it quickly became obvious that I was not going to find those items for sale as part of Amazon’s special July 15 Prime Sale.

Mara was up and took her garbage to our trash to can and returned to her rig. Linda then took our garbage out and moved the can to the street. By 10:30 AM Mara had not yet emerged from her rig, so I went to my basement office and resumed work on the custom desk design for our bus. I still need to design the pull-out pantry but I finally ordered the Fulterer top/bottom slide mount from Rockler and had it shipped directly to Jarel in Logansport, Indiana. It is a serious piece of hardware that will support 450 pounds, so it should be more than adequate for the task.

Mara eventually emerged from her rig and the ladies left for 12 Oaks Mall and Mara’s first ever appointment with Renee in the J. C. Penney’s Salon. They were gone quite a while, tacking on several stops at pet and food stores before returning home.

I received a second quote for a wall-mounted monitor mounting system from AFC Industries. It included itemized pricing and an offer of a 15% discount but was still way too expensive. Though more expensive than a desk-mounted pole system I decided I to order the ZioTek wall-mounted monitor mounting system from CyberGuys. Being wall-mounted it will get my monitors completely off the desks, leaving room for ham radio equipment to slide underneath and all the way to the back edge of the desk (and beyond). It will also isolate the monitors from the desk so they won’t move if the desks are bumped. Another bonus is that I can move the desks to get to the cables at the back of the radios without having to move the monitors.

The monitor mounting system is a significant purchase so I wanted to make sure the components would work the way I need them to. I measured the three monitors that will initially be mounted using the system and then made a scale drawing to see how they would fit. I added all of the items to the shopping cart and was getting ready to complete the purchase when I noticed that a 5% discount was available if I joined their e-mail club. I signed up, received an e-mail, and confirmed my intention to join but the 5% discount did not show up in my shopping cart. I called the 800 number and was told it would take 24 hours for the discount to be available so I cleared all of the items out of the cart and will re-enter them tomorrow.

I finally settled in to my design work but took several breaks to talk to friends on the Novi and South Lyon repeaters. The Morgan Manufacturing VHF/UHF lightning arrestor was once again degrading my signal to an unusable level/quality so I once again disconnected the antenna and radio coax and joined them together with an N-female to N-female barrel adapter. Once I did that I was able to transmit and receive to/from both repeaters full-quieting.

I exchanged a couple of e-mail updates with Jarel Beatty, the cabinet maker in Logansport, and finally quit working around 5 PM. I came upstairs and found that the weBoost cellular booster systems had arrived from Amazon so I unpacked the shipping box and opened them. I had not realized when we ordered them that they were designed for use in a car with an inside antenna that requires the phone or other cellular device to be 18 – 36 inches away. That is not very far and it is a fairly small range. As the name implies, however, it is designed for use while in motion which is what both we and Mara need/want. I decided to temporarily install one of them in Linda’s car to test it.

Sitting in the driveway in a relatively bad location my phone was in 3G mode with a weak, but usable, signal that hovered around -115 to -118 dBm. With the booster turned on my phone switched to 4G-LTE and the signal strength improved to anywhere between -103 to -94 dBm. (The less negative the signal strength in dBm the stronger the signal.) That may not appear impressive on the surface, and it was certainly not the 50 dBm gain that is claimed for this device, but it was actually a significant improvement.

“dB” is the abbreviation for “decibels” which is a logarithmic scale. Logarithmic scales are useful for representing quantities that vary over a large range, like cellular signal strengths. A change of 3 dB represents a factor of two, i.e., a doubling or halving of the quantity. Thus a change from -118 dBm to -115 dBm (decibels to a millivolt) represents a doubling of the received power. It is still a weak signal, but it is twice as strong. Going from -118 to -103 is a change of +15 dBm and is five doublings (-118 to -115 to -112 to -109 to -106 to -103) which is an increase of 2x2x2x2x2 = 32 times. Continuing from -103 to -94 is another +9 dB change representing three more doublings (-103 to -100 to -97 to -94) for a total gain of 32x2x2x2 = 32×8 = 256 times. Starting from a signal in the -118 to -127 dBm range that is potentially the difference between useable and not useable. (BTW: a change of 10 dB is a factor of 10, so going from -115 dBm to -105 dBm and then to -95 dBm represents an increase of 100 times.)

We had decided at dinner last night that we wanted to go to The Blue Nile restaurant while Mara was here. The best time to go turned out to be this evening, so Linda made an online reservation for 7:30 PM at the Ann Arbor location (there is also one in Ferndale). We tested the weBoost Drive 4G-X cellular booster on the drive to/from Ann Arbor and it definitely made a difference in the signal strength we saw on our phones.

It wasn’t until we got part way down Main Street that we realized that today was the opening day of the Ann Arbor Art Fair. The last place I wanted to be driving, parking, or walking was at the Ann Arbor Art Fair, not because I dislike art (we love art), and not because I dislike art fairs, but because I dislike congested traffic and crowds, which the AAAF has in abundance. Surprisingly, we were able to park in one of the parking structures a couple of blocks from the restaurant. After fighting our way through the pedestrian traffic I was even more surprised to find the restaurant essentially empty. The Blue Nile is slightly outside the portion of Main Street where the AAAF takes place and streets to either side that are closed off to vehicles during the AAAF. All of the restaurants and the beer/burger joints in and around the AAAF venue were doing a brisk business, especially if they had outside seating (it was a very pleasant evening), but the restaurant was open and the host was very gracious.

The Blue Nile serves Ethiopian cuisine. Some of the tables are upside down rope baskets with four chairs and two side tables. We always ask to be seated at one of these because we always order the Vegetarian Feast which is, in fact, vegan. The Feast comes on a large round tray covered with a layer of Ethiopian sponge bread (made from teff flour) with small piles of the seven different vegetable-based dishes on the menu surrounding a pile of (optional) salad in the center. Beverages and platters of rolled up sponge bread are placed on the two side tables (we had water and Ethiopian spiced tea). The meal is eaten by tearing off suitable sized pieces of sponge bread and picking up the eight different selections from the tray. Before the food was brought to the table we were given hot, moist towels to wash our hands. Nice touch.

The food was amazing and the experience somewhat more communal than sitting at a standard American table and eating with utensils. The waitstaff was gracious and attentive and it was a wonderful experience for all three of us. Mara asked one of the waitstaff to take a picture of the three of us, which they gladly did. She then uploaded it to her Facebook page along with a brief description of her visit and meal. One the drive home she already had 12 “likes.” This is the side of Facebook, and other social media, that is fun.

It was getting dark by the time we got back to the house but we took the time to unload Mara’s kayak from its special mount on the rear of her motorhome that is installed in the tow receiver. The kayak mounts diagonally from the lower driver side up past the roof on the passenger side and the tip is about 13′ 2″ above the ground. She was leaving at 6:30 AM the next morning to drive to Cummins Bridgeway to have her main engine and genset serviced and would be traveling south on Hacker Road to Grand River Avenue. The last time we did this we clipped a branch in the southbound lane on Hacker just north of Bendix Drive not far from Grand River Avenue. I was concerned that she would catch the same branch and damage her kayak which is why we took it off the rig.

Once the kayak was off the back of her rig and sitting in our yard we said a quick “good night” and all trundled off to bed as 6 AM would come all too soon. I wrote for a while in bed but was too tired, and full of food, to stay awake.

2015/07/09 (R) Graduation Celebration

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My main focus this morning was my dentist appointment at 10:30 AM. I wanted to leave the house at 9 AM so I had plenty of time to get there and actually left at 9:15. Once I was on I-96 eastbound and clear of the construction at US-23 I called the South Lyon 2m repeater and Steve (N8AR) came back to my call. I-96 was very slow as I approached Wixom Road so I exited at Beck Road and dropped down onto Grand River Avenue (GRA). I got off GRA at M-5 in Farmington Hills and took that to where it ended and rejoined GRA. I continued to Telegraph Road and headed south. My QSO with Steve lasted until there by which point there was too much noise and not enough signal for a pleasant conversation. In spite of the change from my intended route I was still at the dentist’s office by 10:10 AM and they were able to take me in early.

On the way home I called the South Lyon 2m repeater and Mike (W8XH) responded to the call. As a result of differing weekend plans I decided to head to his QTH and pick up his climbing harness. While I was there I took a few minutes to look at his reconfigured ham shack and his Canon EOS D7 Mark II DSLR. To say that I am unhappy about Sony’s failure to release the alpha 99 II FF DSLT would be a gross understatement and I am not alone in the sentiment.

Back at the house we had a light lunch of sourdough pretzel nibblers and roasted red pepper hummus. I then went to my office to continue working on the custom desk design for our bus. But first I was taking care of e-mails when Williston Crossings RV Resort called back and said they had a spot for us for December. We had not heard back from Suncoast Designers regarding an appointment to have a fogged window repaired so I called them. They said they had replied to my e-mail letting us know that we were scheduled for December 7 but the e-mail had not come through, so I need to check the spam filter.

Linda called back and accepted the spot at Williston starting December 1st. We will have to leave for one to three days to have the window taken care of and we will depart on the 26th for the Arcadia Bus Rally but the monthly rate will still be cheaper than paying for three weeks at the weekly rate. Besides, they did not have a two or three week opening.

I did get a couple of hours of work done on the desk design and then had to quit. A month ago our elder grand-daughter, Katie, missed her high school graduation due to a sudden illness. Meghan and Chris (Katie’s dad) made reservations at Zingerman’s Roadhouse for 5:45 PM today and we gathered to celebrate this milestone in Katie’s life. Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline also joined us and we all enjoyed quizzing (and teasing) Katie about her upcoming college experience at Northern Michigan University where she plans to major in Wildlife and Fisheries within the larger biology program.

Linda and I had the black bean burger with fresh, hand-cut fries. Although it was tasty, and vegan, it did not have any binders and completely fell apart when I tried to assemble it as a sandwich. We ordered them on sourdough bread as the buns had an egg wash. Zingerman’s has excellent bread, but it is the rustic style with crusts that are so tough you cannot cut them with a knife (or a chainsaw). Thus the “burger” was difficult to eat even as an open faced sandwich and was basically a messy pile of “stuff” on my plate. Linda seemed to enjoy hers but I regretted ordering it even though I ate the whole thing. I did, however, have a glass of Schramm’s Raspberry Mead made by my friend, and former colleague, Ken Schramm. It was excellent. The hand-cut fries were also good and the waitress was delightful, which is always a plus.

Back home I worked for a couple more hours in my office and then worked on this post. I put my new N.T.I. dental appliance on my lower front teeth just before going to bed. It obviously felt a little strange but did not keep me from falling asleep.

2015/06/24 (W) Up The Tower

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Today was the day to finally climb the tower to remove an old TV antenna, reposition an amateur radio antenna, and install two new antennas, one for OTA TV and the other for a cellular booster system. But there were other things to do before I was ready to climb.

I was up at 7 AM and on my way to Lowe’s in Howell by 7:20 AM in search of a solution to the problem of how to mount the outdoor cellular booster antenna. I ended up buying two 2-1/2 inch U-bolts. Although the tower legs are 1-5/8″ in diameter the angle bracket attached to the bottom of the antenna is 2-1/4 inches wide. Thus I needed the 2-1/2 inch spacing for the threaded ends of the U-bolt to clear the bracket.

Back at the house Linda was up and had the coffee made. We had a quick breakfast of homemade granola. I removed the tire pressure sensors and GPS from my car and headed to Brighton Honda to drop it off for its 100,000 mile service appointment. Linda arrived at the dealership about 10 minutes later. We then headed to Adams Electronics in Wixom. While Adams Electronics primarily serves the public and business communications markets owner Scott Adams, AC8IL, is a long-time ham and a member of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club and Novi Amateur Radio Club. Well known in the local amateur radio community, Scotty is the local go-to guy for certain kinds of equipment. I ordered two coaxial cables from him the other day and we were here to pick them up.

We left to return home at 10 AM so I called Mike (W8XH) to let him know we were running a little behind. So was he, but thought he could be at our house by 11 AM. That gave me time to drill a hole in each of the two U-bolt retaining plates and cut a short piece of 1″ square aluminum tube to use as a spacer. That was the last fabricating I needed to do and we got busy staging all of the materials we were going to need to get the tower work done efficiently.

Mike (W8XH) setting up the tools and parts outside the “drop zone” of the 40-foot tower on the east end of the house. (Photo by Linda)

Linda set out a sheet near the tower but not in the “drop zone.” We spread out materials and tools on the sheet and used it to make sure we could find things quickly and keep them from getting lost in the grass. I also brought all of my tool boxes to the tower area. With everything assembled it was time to climb. I set up our 7 foot step ladder on the east end of our rear deck to provide access to the roof near the tower. Mike helped me into his climbing harness and got it adjusted. Once on the roof I took the harness off temporarily as my first task was to remove the 2m/70cm base station antenna. After clipping the plastic cable ties I lowered it down to Mike while Linda took photographs. (She helped with many aspects of the work today but was the only photographer.)

Starting up the tower from the roof of the house. (Photo by Linda)

I put the harness back on and Mike tossed me one of the 100 foot ropes which would eventually be used to haul materials and tools up and down the tower. I secured the haul rope to one of the unused seat clip rings and Mike instructed me on how to secure the harness while climbing. I put the waist strap around the tower and clipped it in. I then put one of the two fall cables, attached to the ring at my upper back, around one of the legs above one of the cross bars above my head and clipped it into the ring at my chest. The tower is adjacent to the east end of the house and is attached to it by two pipe assemblies just below the soffit (the house has hip roofs) so it was easy to step onto it. After that things got tougher.

The horizontal trussing on the tower is two feet apart vertically. That spacing was right at the limit of how high I could lift my right foot and required me to pull myself up part way until I could push with my right leg. Once up on the next rung I attached the other fall cable, moved the first one higher, and slide the waist strap up to position myself for the next step. I repeated this pattern with the two fall cables and the waist strap as I worked my way slowly up the tower, clipping old plastic cable (zip) ties as I went. The tower definitely had some give but I was quickly acclimated to the amount of sway and found it to be acceptable so we decided not to guy the tower with the other three ropes, which would have slowed my ascent even more.

When I finally reached the top of the tower I untied the haul rope, looped it over one of the southeast facing horizontal bars and hauled it up allowing the free end to lower down to the ground. Mike then tied the rope to the standoff pulley I had fabricated and hauled it up to me. I already had cable ties, a diagonal cutter, and a pair of slip pliers with me. I set the threaded rod on the northeast and southeast cross bars, inside and against the two legs that were parallel to the side of the house, and secured it with cable ties. This was a three-handed job that I had to do with two hands but I got it done while only dropping one cable tie. With the pulley rod secured I undid the rope and then undid the knot tying the two loose ends together. I fed one end through the pulley and retied it to the other end. We now had a way to haul materials and tools (in a bucket) up to me at any needed height while keeping it 18 inches away from the tower.

Three-quarters of the way up ad working with the haul rope. (Photo by Linda)

The next task at the top of the tower was to remove the old TV antenna, mast, and rotor. When I finally had a close up view of these old components it became apparent that my best course of action was to try and unclamp the base of the mast from the rotator, lift it off of the rotator, and toss it to the ground.

The mast clamp parts were all very rusty so Linda got the WD-40 and Mike sent it up in the bucket. I sprayed the nuts on the mast mounts and also the rotator leg clamps. I tried undoing the mast clamps with a slip pliers but it was no good, so Mike sent up three open/closed end wrenches. One of them was the right size and to my surprise the rusted nuts broke loose and started backing off. One of them did not want to come off but unscrewed the entire bolt instead. Fine. The bolt had a screwdriver slot in the top and was threaded into the rotor housing and I did not care how it came out as long as it did. I got the mast clamps loose enough that I could work the bottom of the mast free from the top of the rotor. There was a lot of rust there too. After clipping some coax cables, rotor control wires, and plastic cable clamps I repositioned myself up one rung on the tower so I could get enough leverage to the lift the mast clear of the rotator collar and control it well enough to make sure the antenna fell to the ENE away from the house and my helpers down below. And that is exactly what happened.

The first antenna to get mounted was the outdoor antenna for the cellular booster system. Mike sent the antenna up in the bucket along with the various pieces I needed to secure it to the short top/center mast support tube so the entire antenna, which is omnidirectional, was above all parts of the tower. What would have been an awkward assembly on the ground took on added difficulty 40 feet in the air but I got it secured with good access to the N-female connector on the bottom.

At the top with the pulley in place and using it to haul up a bucket with tools and parts. Mike is controlling the haul rope on the ground. (Photo by Linda)

We decided to run the coax on the outside of one of the tower legs rather than down the inside of the tower. Mike tied the LMR-400 coax to the rope and hauled it up to me. In addition to the haul rope Mike tied a second control line to the bucket to keep it from swinging all over the place. I connected the coax to the antenna feed point and then wrapped the connection with coax seal tape. I then routed the coax down the east leg of the tower and zip tied it to take the weight off of the antenna connection.

Next up was the 2m/70cm amateur radio base station antenna, often referred to as a 2m/440 dual band antenna. (In this nomenclature the “2m” refers to a range of wavelengths for one of the VHF ham bands and the “440” refers to a range of frequencies for one of the UHF ham radio bands, so it is a mixed units designation.). The antenna is about five feet long with three short counterpoise (ground plane) rods near the base. It had an LMR-400 style cable connected to it but with PL-259 male connectors on each end. The antenna feed point is an N-female connector so I had an adapter installed to make everything compatible. Mike removed the coax and the adapter, zip tied the antenna to the haul cable at three points, put the 10mm wrench in the bucket, and hauled it up to me.

The ham radio antenna was also tricky to get mounted. I installed it at the top of the northwest leg so that most of the antenna was above the tower and two of the three short counterpoise were parallel to the west (N-S) and northeast (NW-SE) crossbars. The antenna by itself is light in weight but it is five feet long and mounts at the bottom nine inches, so most if it was above me with a tendency to wave around in mid-air. With the coax connected, however, it weighed quite a bit more. I temporarily zip tied the coax to take the weight. I then had to hold the antenna with its base against the northwest post at my head level, push a U-bolt through the mounting bracket and past the tower leg, slip the mating clamp over the two ends of the U-bolt, and then get a small lock washer and nut on each threaded bolt end. I then had to repeat this for the second U-bolt. Again, a three-handed job that I had to do with only two hands.

The old OTA TV antenna and mast on the ground. It came down by the gravity method. (Photo by Linda)

The bonus to this work at the top of the tower was a commanding view of the surrounding countryside, which was mostly trees in every direction. I even saw two towers far to the north and was kept company by a soaring vulture just to the NNE. I was also able to determine that the tops of the large white pine trees behind the east end of our house are about 10 feet higher than the top of our tower, putting their overall height at about 55 feet as their bases are lower than the base of the tower. We plan to put the 70 foot tower at a spot that is surrounded by these trees on three sides (W, S, and E) so the top of the tower, and any antennas mounted there, will be well above the tree tops. That is especially important as we plan to eventually put an HF beam antenna up there on a mast attached to a rotator and it will need to be able to rotate freely for 360 degrees.

The final antenna was the hardest. The Antennas Direct DB8e OTA UHF/digital TV antenna was very large and heavy by comparison to the other two. In this case ‘heavy’ meant a few pounds. It is actually two UHF antennas mounted at the end of a dual support arm structure. The support arm mounts to a vertical pole, such as a tower leg, at its midpoint and there is a combiner box located there as part of the mount. A short length of RG-59 (75 ohm) coax connects each antenna to the combiner box and the main coax connects there as well.

How tall the tower appears (and feels) depends on where you are standing. (Photo by Linda)

How tall the tower appears (and feels) depends on where you are standing. Pulley and haul rope in the upper right. Lots of coaxial cables to be dressed (secured) on the way down. (Photo by Linda)

RG-59 is a different kind of coaxial cable from the LMR-400 used for the first two antennas. LMR-400 has a 50 ohm characteristic impedance and is used for receiving and transmitting RF energy with considerable power if needed. RG-59 is much smaller in diameter, more flexible, has a 75 ohm characteristic impedance, and uses F-connectors that are the standard for OTA TV, video, and satellite cables. But I have gotten ahead of myself. I had to come down a few feet on the tower to install the TV antenna but before doing that I had to start securing the transmission lines to the tower legs with cable ties.

Mike rigged up the haul rope in a ‘Y’ to lift the antenna from its center of gravity while actually attaching the rope to its ends. That allowed the haul rope to both support the weight of the antenna and keep it oriented correctly while I positioned and clamped it to the southwest tower leg with the dual support arms pointing in an east-west direction. Because of where I had the pulley mounted, and the length of the ‘Y’ in the support rope, I had to mount the antenna a few feet lower on the tower. Fortunately the slightly lower height was not going to affect its performance.

Like the ham radio antenna, the OTA TV antenna mounted to the tower leg at two points. The upper assembly was a U-bolt with a retaining bracket on the back side. The lower assembly was a pair of straight bolts that went through the combiner box past the tower leg and had a retaining bracket on the back side. The antenna came with wing nuts instead of washers and regular nuts, which helped a little, but I really needed three hands to get the antenna into position and tighten the mounting brackets.

Mike ties off the DB8e OTA TV antenna with an inverted “Y” so it will haul up in the proper orientation. (Photo by Linda)

Once I had the antenna sufficiently attached to the tower I was able to position the support arm close to the southeast facing side of the tower. I then pointed the antenna on the east end of the arm ESE towards the Detroit area TV towers and tightened the two nuts on the mounting studs. (The horizontal dual support arms are about 3 feet long so I was able to reach through the tower to get to the mounting studs and nuts.) I left the antenna on the west end of the support beam loose and turned it out of my way so I could complete other tasks.

Mike attached the end of the main RG-59 coax to the haul rope, put the amplifier and a 2-foot length of RG-59 coax in the bucket along with lots of zip ties, and pulled them up to me. The amplifier is about 3″ wide by 2″ high and 1.5″ thick including the concave plastic backplate. The backplate accepts two zip ties for mounting to a pole. I positioned the amplifier about 8 inches below the antenna combiner box and cinched up the two zip ties. I then connected the short coax to the combiner box output and put the combiner back it its protective, weather-gasketed plastic box. I connected the other end of the short coax to the amplifier input and wrapped the connection with coax seal weatherproofing tape.

Installing the DB8e OTA TV antenna required three hands. Note that I am installing it at the highest point possible when suspended from the pulley with the haul rope in an inverted "Y" attachment. (Photo by Linda)

Installing the DB8e OTA TV antenna required three hands. Note that I am installing it at the highest point possible when it is suspended from the pulley with the haul rope in an inverted “Y” attachment. The yellow waist strap allowed me to lean back and work while the two red security straps would catch me if something broke. (Photo by Linda)

I attached the main RG-59 coax to the output of the amplifier, which is also the DC power input, and wrapped the connection in coax weather seal tape. I then dressed the cable and secured it to the tower leg. I aimed the antenna on the west end of the support arm WNW towards the East Lansing TV towers and tightened the nuts to lock it in position.

At this point I was finally done working on the antennas but had three coaxial transmission line running down the outside of the tower, one by each leg. As I descended the tower, reversing the protocol I used going up, I secured all three cables every few feet. I finally had my feet back on the roof at 2:20 PM, almost exactly 2 hours and 30 minutes from when I started climbing. Projects usually take me twice as long as I think they will but this was about half as long as I thought it would take, so we were all pleased that the work had gone smoothly and relatively quickly. My main objective was to get the old TV antenna down and the three antennas up but my secondary objective was to only climb and descend the tower once. Mission accomplished, at least for now.

By now we were all hungry and thirsty so Linda made chickpea salad sandwiches and set out fresh sweet peppers, sliced apples, baby carrots, and cold water. After a suitable lunch break we returned to the next phase of the work which was routing the coax cables into the cable entry box (CEB) and making the connections.

We started with the RG-59 coax from the OTA TV antenna. I coiled the extra cable and hung it on the tower (with zip ties, of course), routed it into the CEB and connected it to the power inserter / lightning arrestor. We purchased this cable from a Radio Shack store in Florida two winters ago to hook up our bus to the RV resort cable TV system. Besides the coax it had a separate ground wire. The amplifier and the power inserter both had connections for a separate ground wire so I connected it on both ends.

Routing coaxial cable into the cable entry box from the tower and the basement and making the connections. (Photo by Linda)

We had already routed a 75 ohm video cable from our bedroom TV to the sump pump room in the basement. I selected a suitable length of this same type of cable from our existing inventory, connected it to the other side of the power inserter, and routed it through the back of the CEB into the sump pump room where Linda guided it. Conveniently, I had a double-ended F-female barrel connector designed to connect together two cables with F-male connectors. I plugged in the AC power adapter for the power inserter, which was already in the sump pump room, and we went upstairs to see if we were receiving any TV stations.

We set the ‘Source’ on the TV to ‘Antenna’ and did an ‘Auto Scan’ for digital channels only. There are very few analog TV signals still in use and the ones that are reside in the old VHF TV spectrum which our new antenna cannot even receive. The scan found 58 signals, which obviously included the sub-channels. Besides the main Detroit stations and the East Lansing PBS station we got other Lansing area stations and even a station from Flint. The nice thing about digital TV is that if you get a picture at all it is very good.

There is a large TV tower at I-96 and US-127 on the southeast corner of Lansing so we were probably picking it up. There are several TV towers SSW of Lansing about 35 miles that serve Battle Creek and may serve Lansing and Kalamazoo. They are 50+ miles from us and I did not have the west antenna pointed in exactly that direction but it may have been close enough to pick them up. Flint is at least 35 miles away straight north off the sides of both antennas so theoretically we should not have received any stations from that direction. We will have to check the AntennaPoint.com website and confirm by station identifier what stations we are actually receiving.

Feeling good about our success so far we routed the coax for the cellular booster across one of the support arms that brace the tower to the house just under the east soffit. We dropped it down next to the wall and brought it into the bottom of the CEB, replacing the hole plug with a rubber grommet. Routing it this way kept it out of the way of future foot traffic, or lawn and garden work, in the space around/between the tower and the CEB. I connected the cable to the lightning arrestor and coaxed it unto position inside the CEB. LMR-400 is stiff and bending it sharply will damage it.

I connected one end of the 15-foot LMR-400 cable to the other side of the antenna arrestor and routed it into the sump pump room where Linda guided it into position. I secured it to the ceiling, brought it down the opposite wall, put a large 180 degree bend in it, and attached it to the connector on the bottom of the cellular booster. I turned it on and watched the lights blink for a while. All three of us then started checking signal strength throughout both floors of the house. All five of the ‘Alert’ lights went from blinking yellow, which means the unit is adjusting the gain on that band, to solid yellow, which is not described in the manual. Since we had not yet registered the device with Verizon Wireless I turned off the booster.

Back out at the CEB I removed one of the hole plugs directly below the input of the Morgan VHF lightning arrestor. We routed the coax for the 2m/440 ham antenna across the tower brace, down the wall, and around through the bottom of the box where I attached it to the lightning arrestor input. I had an old piece of 50 ohm coax with an N-male connector on one end and a PL-259 (male) connector on the other end. I attached the N-connector to the output of the VHF lightning arrestor and fed the other end through one of the 2″ conduits into the sump pump room where Linda routed it out into the ham shack.

We set our “Go Box” on the desk, plugged the PL-259 into the SO-239 socket on the back of the case, plugged it in to AC power, turned on the power supply, and turned on the radio. The radio, an Icom IC-7000, came up tuned to the South Lyon (K8VJ) repeater. I transmitted and successfully triggered the repeater, which is currently at a secondary site about 20 miles from our tower. Mike went out to his car and used his mobile radio to verify that we could transmit to and receive from the repeater. I had a lot of background static (white noise) so Mike switched modes and transmitted directly to our antenna. The signal was full scale and full quieting. I have a ground lug in the Go Box but did not have it connected. I vaguely recalled that I had to ground the box at the previous house to eliminate a noise issue. (The radio and power supply are grounded to the box.)

I switched the radio to UHF and it was set for the Novi repeater. I listened but did not hear anyone transmitting so I transmitted, giving my call sign and a brief message, and then listened. I did not get a reply even though Mike was also monitoring the Novi repeater so I switched back to the South Lyon repeater. Mike indicated that I had, indeed, triggered the repeater and that a couple of other hams acknowledged hearing me in addition to him. It thus appeared that I did not have something set up correctly on the receive side of the radio for the Novi repeater but the system (radio, cables, arrestor, antenna) was clearly working.

That was enough work for one day so we gathered up all of the tools and unused materials and put them away. We offered to take Mike to dinner as a ‘Thank You’ for his assistance. It was more than helpful to have someone on the ground who was familiar with tower operations. We considered several dining options but opted for Olga’s in Brighton. Linda and I had small salads, sans the Feta cheese, veggie Olga’s that were excellent, and curly fries without Tabasco sauce for the ketchup. Warning: As inconceivable as it may sound, Olga’s does not have any kind of hot sauce in its restaurants. Mike had a dish with chicken in that he said was very good.

Mike headed home from the restaurant as did we. We were tired but very pleased with what we had accomplished in the course of the day. We celebrated our accomplishments by watching several programs on Detroit PBS, something we have not been able to do for more than two years.

2015/06/23 (T) Grounded

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As I wrote in yesterday’s post we did not turn off the lights last night until almost 1 AM because we were keeping a close eye on the weather moving across the lower portion of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Although strong to severe storms were still forecast from 1 AM to 5 AM they either did materialize at our exact location or we slept through them. We had the house closed up and the air-conditioning on, so that cut down the sound level of outside noises.

A cold front had pushed through by sun up and we woke to a cool morning with blue skies and noticeably lower humidity. We did not have any trees, or even big limbs, come down and there was no damage to our brand new roof. The forecast yesterday was threatening enough, however, that in the morning we took the potted plants, and as much of our outside lawn furniture as we could find room for, inside including our sun umbrella and trash cans. I planned to be gone most of the day, and Linda was leaving mid-afternoon to go to dinner and a movie with Diane Rauch, so our first chore was to put all the lawn furniture, plants, and other outdoor stuff back outdoors.

This week is mostly being devoted to ham radio with the ARRL Field Day as the crowning event this weekend. My specific focus for most of the week, however, has been the “communications tower” adjacent to the east wall of our house. As described in previous posts we installed a cable entry box (CEB), mounted the cellular booster in the basement, mounted the inside cellular antenna, and ran coax cables. The antennas will (hopefully) be mounted on the existing 40 foot tower tomorrow, cabled into the CEB, and cables run from there to devices inside the house. With any luck by the end of the day tomorrow we will have decent cellular service inside the whole house, the ability to watch OTA TV programs on two different TV sets, and finally be able to connect one of our radios in the ham shack to an antenna. Today, however, was planned to mostly address other things.

I had an appointment with our dentist at 10:20 this morning and left at 9 AM. I planned to stop at Chuck’s bus garage and check that the key he lent me worked, but I needed gas for my car. I did not have time for both and did not really have a choice; I would have to check the key some other time. I ordered two cables yesterday from Scott (AC8IL) at Adams Electronics. Later in the evening I was unsure if I had specified the connectors correctly so I called and left a message. I called again this morning to make sure the message got through. It did, and my original connector specifications were correct.

I arrived at the dentist’s office about 10 minutes before my appointment time. I called Rick Short at Isringhausen USA to make sure he was going to be in before I drove two hours to Galesburg, Michigan after my dentist appointment. I got his voice mail a left a message. “ISRI” makes very high tech air suspension driver’s seats that are used as original equipment in motorcoaches, semi-tractors, heavy equipment, and locomotives. I would really like one for our bus, but it is not proving easy to get.

Dr. Steve and his assistant, Leslie, made molds of my upper and lower teeth and a bite impression. The molds will be used to make a mouth guard that I can wear while I sleep. Dr. Steve has a strong suspicion that I am clenching my teeth and the mouth guard will reduce or eliminate the irritation it causes. I will have to ask if I can wear it during the day too as I am occasionally aware of clenching my teeth while I awake.

I had not heard back from Rick by the end of my appointment so I called the main number at ISRI and talked to the receptionist. It turned out that Rick was not in today and she transferred me to Jeff Woodworth. Jeff was willing to meet with me but thought it would be a better use of my time to wait until Rick was available. My next opportunity to drive to Galesburg will be Thursday and I will likely go as the ISRI seat is holding up our ordering of Flexsteel seats through Coach Supply Direct.

I stopped for coffee and then re-routed for Chuck’s bus garage in Novi. The key to the garage worked perfectly. I called Linda to let her know about the change in plans and headed for home. There is too much to do at the moment to waste much time so I installed the #4 AWG bare copper ground wire I bought yesterday at Lowe’s. I mounted an offset copper wire lug using the center support stud for the copper back plane in the CEB. I replaced one of the plastic hole plugs with a rubber plug with a small hole in the center. The hole I chose in the bottom of the CEB allowed the ground wire to come straight up into the lug.

Another view of the cable entry box on the east end of the house by the 40-foot tower showing the bare copper ground wire that runs to the ground rod and then to one of the tower legs.

Outside the CEB I routed the ground wire around to the existing ground rod and secured it using the new clamp I bought yesterday. There was an old ground wire connected from a clamp on the tower to the ground rod. I removed that wire along with some coax and control wires that I had clipped when we removed the old satellite dish. I then attached the new ground wire to the clamp on the tower. While we were at it Linda trimmed back a small bush that was growing between the tower legs and I pulled leaves, grass and other stuff out from around the Day Lilies that we transplanted last year around the tower base.

With the CEB grounded we looked at how we might get a video cable up to the TV/monitor in our bedroom. The wall where the TV is mounted has a hot water baseboard radiator that comes almost to the trim on the door wall. That end of the radiator has a copper pipe that goes through the floor into the basement and it was easy to locate the pipe in the basement. I determined that there was enough space behind the pipe to safely drill a hole but I had to drill it from the top side at an angle. A 5/8″ wood boring drill bit created a hole just big enough for the molded F-connector on the end of the cable to pass through.

We fed the video coax cable above the suspended ceiling in the ham shack area to the location of the hole. I then fed the cable up from the basement as Linda pulled it up into the bedroom. We adjusted the amount of cable in the bedroom to allow the wall mounted TV set to move through its entire range of motion. The other end of the cable was then routed into the sump pump room.

By the time we finished pulling this cable it was 3:30 PM and time for Linda to leave to pick up Diane. They were headed to Royal Oak for dinner and a movie as the movie they wanted to see was only showing at the Royal Oak Main Theater.

While I was out during the morning Lynch Carpet had called to let us know our Armstrong vinyl tile was available for pickup so after Linda left I closed up the house and went to get it. The 12 boxes of tiles, container of vinyl adhesive, and container of vinyl grout were all neatly arranged on a small pallet and tightly wrapped in shipping plastic. Rather than break this down and load each thing individually they used a fork lift to set the pallet in the back of my Honda Element. The rear suspension settled at least two inches when they transferred the full weight of the pallet to the floor of my car.

When I got back to the house I backed the car up to the garage. I cut the shipping plastic loose and unloaded the tubs and boxes of tiles. I put the pallet on the garage floor and then neatly stacked the boxes of tiles on it to keep them off the floor. Each box contained 14 tiles measuring 16″ by 16″ for a total area of 24.89 square feet. The Armstrong Alterna tiles are a “luxury vinyl” product, and are about 1/8″ thick. Even so, the boxes were heavier than I expected so I decided to weigh one. It tipped the scale at just under 42 pounds. That meant the entire pallet weighed close to 500 pounds, and, ignoring the weight of the cardboard box, that is about 3 pounds per tile.

When I drew out the design I determined that I would need 158 tiles, some of which would be partial. Figuring conservatively at 150 full tiles equivalent, and ignoring the weight of the underlayment, adhesive, and grout, the floor tiles will weigh about 450 pounds. I have no idea what the carpet and ceramic tile that I have removed weighed but the tiles were heavy. I also have no idea what the furniture weighed that we have removed but also have no idea what the new furniture will weigh. The intent was that the new floor and furniture would weigh less than old stuff but we will see.

I traded phone calls with my dad and we finally got to talk for a half hour starting at 4:30 PM. He turned 90 this past Sunday. Mike Fearer from Bid-Rite Concrete called at 6 PM and arrived about 10 minutes later to discuss the foundation for our 70 foot ham radio tower. I had printed off a page from the Universal Tower website showing their tower base. I also downloaded and printed their base and tower installation instructions. I had a set of these to give to Mike so he would have some idea of what the project is about. We looked at the proposed location for the tower and access for his dump cart. We also talked about the base, a rebar cage, a form around the top of the hole to allow the concrete to be slightly above ground, and a jig to make sure the base is level and the tower is plumb.

He said he was interested in the job and would work with me and Phil Jarrell (the excavator) to get it done. Rather than bid the job he would just do it for time and materials. He also said the current price of concrete was about $100 per cubic yard. We will need about six (6) cubic yards to fill the required 5′ x 5′ x 6′ (deep) hole. He thought he might be available the middle of next week but I don’t think I could have everything pulled together that quickly.

After Mike left I went to Lowe’s and picked up five 40 pound bags of topsoil, a 1-in/2-out signal splitter (rated for 5 MHz to 2.4 GHz), and a plastic snap cover channel for hiding the video cable we ran up into the bedroom from the basement for the TV set. I then went to the Meijer’s supermarket just across Grand River Avenue for soy creamer but they did not have what I was looking for. As long as I was there I had a salad for dinner at the in-store Subway.

While I was sitting there I called Mike Sharpe (W8XH) to confirm that he was available tomorrow to help with the antenna installations on our 40 foot tower. I mentioned that the only thing I lacked was a standoff with a pulley at the end of it for hoisting stuff up to me. He suggested that something like that was essential and I agreed, so I headed back to Lowe’s to see what I could figure out. What I ended up with was a three foot long 7/16-14 threaded rod, a pulley that had a closed eyelet on top (and was big enough for the 3/8ths rope I bought), some 7/16ths washers, and some 7/16-14 nuts.

When I got back to the house I unloaded the topsoil near the part of the east yard that needs to be filled in, took the other stuff inside, and then assembled the threaded rod pulley system. I secured the pulley on one end of the rod using two of the nuts, one on either side of the eyelet. I threaded a nut onto the other end, put on two washers, two nuts, two more washers, and another nut. I ran the first two nuts, with two washers between them, part way down the rod. I left the second pair of nuts, with washers between them, near the end of the rod.

I took the assembly out to the tower and adjusted the position and spacing of the two pairs of nuts and washers so they would bracket two of the horizontal tower members. In use I will secure the rod to the tower at each pair of nuts/washers using plastic cable ties. This arrangement will put the pulley at least 18″ from the tower which should be far enough out that we can hoist the DB8e OTA TV antenna to the top of the tower without it banging into the tower or hanging up on something. This antenna is the largest thing we need to hoist up. The old TV antenna is considerably larger and heavier, but it is coming down via gravity.

There was a message on our answering machine from Linda’s sister, Sr. Marilyn, who lives in St. Louis. She was listening to the news earlier today about the storms that went through our part of Michigan and wanted to make sure we were all OK. By the time we finished talking it was dark and I was done working for the day. Linda called shortly thereafter to let me know she was on her way home and I mentioned the call with Marilyn.

I finally opened the box with the vertical omnidirectional outside antenna for the cellular booster system and discovered that I should have opened it sooner. The mounting bracket was designed to be mounted to a vertical surface, such as the side of a house, not a tube, such as a tower leg. I did not want to postpone tomorrow’s tower work so I will have to get up early and figure out a way to adapt the existing bracket so I can mount the antenna to the top of the tower.

My initial thought was that an aluminum U-channel of the correct size might solve the problem very nicely. I could drill two holes in the bottom of the “U” to match the two holes in the bracket. I could then drill three pairs of holes through the sides of the channel. The antenna would be bolted to the bottom of the channel. With the open part of the channel held against a vertical tube I could secure it with three long plastic cable (zip) ties. Conceptually it should work and be easy to fabricate, but will take time which I won’t have a lot of in the morning. We have to get the two coax cables from Scotty (AC8IL), drop off my car at Brighton Honda for its 100,000 mile service, and be back in time to have the mount fabricated and all of the antennas and tools ready to go by 10:30 AM when Mike shows up.

Linda got home at 9:45 PM, earlier than she thought she would when she left. She and Diane ate at Luigi’s and had a very nice meal. They also enjoyed the movie. We had a big day on tap for tomorrow and we asleep by 10:30 PM.

2015/06/18 (R) Chiseled Bikinis

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The light rain that started late yesterday afternoon continued off-and-on through the overnight hours. We awoke to heavily overcast skies but a forecast that called for dry conditions until the early afternoon. We were up at 7:15 AM and had our usual granola breakfast. I took some more Ibuprofen in advance of working in the bus. We were just getting ready to have our morning coffee when I noticed several cars in the driveway. It was 7:45 AM and the roofers were arriving. Pat Davidson was among them so I went outside to chat briefly with him.

We had our morning coffee and then got to work, Linda at her desk and me in the bus. I spent another two hours using the Makita 11 pound power chisel. By 11 AM I had removed as much material from the floor as I felt was worth the effort. Linda brought the camera out and took a few photographs of me at work after which I packed up the equipment, closed up the bus, and went to Home Depot in Howell to return it to their rental department.

I stopped at Lowe’s on the way home and ordered the new Frigidaire refrigerator for the bus, an FFHT1621QB (16.3 cu. ft., top freezer, black, no ice maker or water). I scheduled delivery for Friday July 3rd to Chuck’s shop in Novi. I will arrange with Chuck to take the bus their sometime after that when he is available to operate his fork lift and I can get Brendan or some friends to give us a hand.

Me using the Makita 11 lb power chisel to remove thinset and mastic from the floor of our H3-40. (Photo by Linda)

Work continued on the roof through the morning and then the crew tarped off the roof and left in a few of their vehicles for a long lunch. As forecast it started to sprinkle around 2 PM as they returned from their lunch break. It never rained hard and they kept on working but always with the tarps at the ready in case they were suddenly needed. One of the guys finished installing our two Velux Sun Tunnel skylights which required a tall step ladder in our living room. They looked very nice when he was done.

I had a chat with Jarel Beatty in Logansport, Indiana about the custom desk he is going to build for the bus. I sent him a follow-up e-mail describing the pullout pantry we also need him to build. I then spent an hour working on drawings before I had to quit and change clothes.

Kate had secured tickets through her cousin, Michaela, for this evening’s performance of The Bikinis at the Meadow Brooke Theatre at Oakland University in Rochester Hills. Kate suggested O’Conner’s Public House (Irish Pub) in Rochester for dinner. The roofers had been working in the living room installing the Velux Sun Tunnel skylights but were done by 3:45 PM. That allowed us to get cleaned up, dressed for the theatre, and out the door at 4:30 PM even though the roofers were still working up on the roof.

We got to the pub at 6 PM. Kate got there shortly before us and had ordered a soft pretzel appetizer before the happy hour prices expired at 6 PM. Conveniently there were three large sticks so we each got one. Kate got the cheesy dipping sauce and we split the spicy horseradish mustard, which really had a kick to it. Linda and Kate each had a Smithwicks ale and I had a pineapple ale. To paraphrase “the world’s most interesting man”: I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer a fruit beer. Not as mysterious as Dos Equis, or as authentic as Guinness, but it’s what I like. Kate had a regular (beef) burger and we both had black bean burgers on soft pretzel buns with fresh hand-cut French fries. The burgers and fries were both really good and the pretzel buns, which had been toasted on a grill, did not get soggy.

The musical was a lot of fun with a wonderful performance by the cast of four women. All four of them were on stage singing and dancing with a lot of energy for most of the performance. Their singing was excellent, each voice having its own unique quality but blending well, and they carried 4-part harmonies in tune with one another and the small 4-pieces band. Two of them, Bambi Jones and Jeanne Tinker, were also in the Meshuggah Nuns musical we saw a month or so ago at the Meadow Brooke Theatre.

The Bikinis is the last production that Kate’s cousin Michaela will work on at the MBT. The production run ends on Sunday and one week later she leaves for a summer stock gig in New England. Meadow Brooke Theatre is a wonderful venue but not convenient to where we live, even less convenient to where Kate works, and very inconvenient to where she lives. All of which is to say, I doubt that the three of us will be going there very often now that Michaela is moving on. That is too bad in a way as we have all enjoyed the shows we have seen. The fact that Michaela, as a cast/crew member, was able to get us tickets did not hurt.

Michaela met us in the lobby where Kate gave her a nice assortment of flowers. She then gave us a behind the scenes tour of the wardrobe area where she has spent the past year working on costuming. We walked out to our cars and by the time we all drove off it was 11 PM. Even with light traffic it took us almost an hour to get home but we arrived while it was still Thursday, albeit just barely.

2015/06/17 (W) Bakery Scraper

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Linda was up at 5:45 AM and out the door by 6:15 AM to beat the morning rush hour traffic headed into the northwest corner of the Detroit metroplex. I got up about an hour later, tended to my morning cat chores, made coffee, had some granola for breakfast, gathered up the trash, and took the big trash can to the street.

The Apex roofing crew started showing up just before 8 AM. After everything was squared away with Apex I went to The Home Depot in Howell to rent the small power floor scraper. The scraper took some of the thinset off but was not as effective as I had hoped it would be. The tool is designed for stripping linoleum floors, so I had no reason to complain that it did not do what I needed it to do. I returned it within four hours and paid the 4-hour rental fee rather than the day (24-hour) fee. The guy in the tool rental department suggested I try a different machine which they had not mentioned to me previously. It was a Makita 11 pound power chisel. I rented it with three chisels.

The roofers were at the point where they needed to install the two Velux Sun Tunnel skylights in the roof of the living room. I showed them where I wanted them installed, if possible, and they tarped off the furniture and floor in the living room. Apex is very good about protecting the yard from damage and capturing the mess that is associated with a roof project. That same care and attention carried over to the inside work, which I appreciated.

Our bus looking forward from the the hallway by the refrigerator and pantry.

After a break for lunch I spent most of the afternoon using the power chisel to strip the area of the floor in the bus where the ceramic tile was installed. I was not able to strip it down to the plywood subfloor, but I was able to knock down most of the ridges of thinset and adhesive that remained after I chiseled out the tiles.

I had a brief chat with Chuck around lunchtime regarding the refrigerator. Butch called mid-afternoon to fill me in on why he was not able to answer the phone last night. Linda called around 2:30 PM to let me know she was leaving the bakery. She pulled in the driveway an hour later and came in the bus to see what I was up to and let me know it was starting to rain. I had made good progress but was not done and decided I would keep the power chisel until tomorrow and pay the 1-day (24-hour) rate.

The roofers were aware of the rain, which was very light though increasing steadily, but were in the middle of replacing plywood and installing the skylights. Some of them finished that up as quickly as they could, cleaned up the roof, and spread out the tarps while the others picked up the debris from the yard and got it in the trash trailer. The trailer was full so they took it with them when the left at 4:40 PM.

We had a snack of pretzels, green grapes and a small glass of Moscato wine. My thumbs were both bothering me (arthritis) so I took some Ibuprofen and then went back to work in the bus. I had to close the roof vents because of the rain so it was warmer inside and a bit stuffy as the humidity had come way up. I worked as long as I could and quit for the day at 6 PM.

For dinner Linda made a simple green salad and then cooked some whole wheat capellini and tossed it with the homemade tomato-based Marinara sauce she made the other day. After dinner I worked in my office for a while. I thought I would upload some blog posts but I had an e-mail from Bus Conversion Magazine with the draft of the May 2015 issue. I proofread part 2 of my 4-part article on the Exterior Makeover of our bus by Phoenix Paint. I found one thing that needed to be corrected and e-mailed it to the editor.

Linda got a DVD of Wild from the Howell Library the other day but we were too tired to watch it and just went to bed. I turned my light out at 9:58 PM, the first time since I can’t remember when that I have done that before 10 o’clock in the evening.

2015/06/13 (S) On to Illinois

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It has turned out to be a wet June so far and we had more heavy rain last night. In spite of waking up during the night I was up at 7:30 AM and made coffee. Everyone else got up as suited their level of rest and we sat around chatting for a while. Ron put a load of laundry in the washing machine and then we sat down to a light breakfast.

Ron and Mary spent most of the rest of the morning repacking all of their stuff for the drive to northwest Illinois and their week-long bicycle ride. FedEx Home Delivery delivered the Cyclo 5-Pro Mark II Dual Head Orbital Polisher I ordered along with all of the foam pads and detailing chemicals.

Ron retrieved their laundry from the dryer and after they finished packing we had a light lunch. By 1 PM they were ready to load up the car so we helped get their bags out. After a brief “farewell and safe travels” they were on their way. They had a five hour drive but would gain an hour as they entered the Central Time Zone so they would be at their motel by 5 PM local time with plenty of daylight and time to eat dinner.

Linda took a short nap and then went for a walk. I read through the manual for our SureCall Fusion5s cell phone booster and was part way through the manual for the Cyclo 5 when I decided to take a nap. Linda returned from her walk and a little while later a USPS mail carrier delivered the OTA TV antenna I ordered from Antennas Direct. All I am waiting for now is the cable entrance box I ordered from KF7P Metalwerks.

Once the cable entrance box arrives I will have a bit of a project. First I will need to drill two 2″ holes through the east wall of the house and into the sump pump closet in the northeast corner of the basement, mount the box to the wall, and ground it to the outside ground rod by the tower. I may also need to install additional ground rods. I will then need to climb the tower by the house and do the following:

take down the old OTA TV antenna and rotator;
mount the new OTA TV antenna and aim it;
mount the amplifier for the OTA TV antenna;
attach a short piece of 75 Ohm co-ax from the antenna output to the amplifier input and weatherproof the connections;
attach a longer piece of 75 Ohm co-ax to the output of the amplifier and weatherproof the connection;
mount the outside antenna for the cell phone booster system;
attach one end of a 50′ piece of LMR-400 or RG-213 co-ax to the cell phone antenna and weatherproof it;
unmount our Diamond SG7900 2m/70cm ham radio base station antenna and remount it at the top of the tower;
attach a 50-to-60 foot length of LMR-400 or RG-213 co-ax to the ham radio antenna;
dress and secure all of the coaxial cables with plastic cable ties (zip ties).

Once I am done with tower work I will need to do the following to complete the installation:

install the lightning arrestors in the cable entrance box for the cell phone booster and OTA TV (?) co-ax cables;
route each of the co-ax cables into the bottom of the cable entrance box and attach them to appropriate lighting arrestors;
attach additional co-ax cables to the lightning arrestors and feed them through the 2″ holes into the basement;
mount the Surecall Fusion5s in the sump pump room and connect the co-ax for the outside antenna and the power supply;
run a 50′ length of LMR-400 from the sump pump room across the basement ceiling and up through an old vertical furnace exhaust chase to the attic;
drill a hole in the ceiling of the main floor hallway near the chase;
mount the inside done antenna for the cell phone booster system to the ceiling with the co-ax dongle in the attic;
connect the antenna dongle to the co-ax coming up from the basement;
run additional co-ax from the sump pump room to the ham shack;
run additional co-ax from the sump pump room to the video distribution point in the laundry room (or directly to the locations of the two TV sets);
turn on the Fusion5s booster (transceiver), adjust the gain (if needed) and test it with our phones and Mi-Fi;
test the TV sets (and hopefully not have to go back up the tower to reposition the antenna);
connect our Icom IC-7000 amateur radio and test the antenna connection.

As I wrote out this list it occurred to me that I need to make a list of all of the co-ax types/lengths/connectors I need and that, at a minimum, I probably need to order a length of LMR-400 orRG-213 co-ax cable and the proper N-connectors to complete the ham radio antenna connections. It also occurred to me that I might be able to do some of the inside wiring while I am waiting for the cable entrance box to arrive. Also, once the TVs are connected Linda can scan for channels and communicate with me with our HT ham radios if I need to change the aim of the antennas on the tower.

All of this reminded me that I need to follow-up with a Bratcher Electric on running a new 100 Amp main feed from the transfer switch to the panel in the furnace room in the garage. I also need to order some new split foam fillers from Critter-Guard and new electrical hardware for connecting the bus to the toad from EZ-Connector in California.

I must have been sleeping lightly and dreamed all of these details because I got up from my nap around 5:30 PM, finished reading the manual for the Cyclo 5, and then took a shower and got dressed for dinner. Barb Spera had called Linda yesterday to see if we were available for dinner this evening. They had really enjoyed our meal at La Marsa in Brighton a couple of weeks ago and wanted to go again so we agreed to meet them there at 7 PM. We did not have to wait for a table and our waiter, Najheem (Naa-gheem), was delightful. Barbara had the Koshary again, and Chuck had the Chicken Shwarma with tabbouleh salad, while we split an order of spicy vegetarian ghallabah with rice and a salad. I had a mango smoothie and we all enjoyed the swarm pocket bread and garlic spread.

It was after 9 PM when we got home and we headed off to bed at 10. We knew Ron and Mary had arrived at their destination because Ron played a Scrabble word. Linda had also checked that our daughter and son-in-law were on their way back from Las Vegas.

2015/06/11 (R) Absent 34

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Ron and Mary had a long drive yesterday, and an exhausting 10 days prior to that, so they went to bed tired. Consequently they did not get up early and I did not make coffee right away. I was up at 7:30 AM and went to my office instead. Chris at KF7P Metalwerks accepted my change to the cable entrance box late last night and sent me a PayPal invoice. I paid that this morning and e-mailed him back to clarify and confirm a couple points about the box. Once everyone was up we had coffee (us) and tea (them) on the back deck and enjoyed a beautiful early summer morning. We eventually went back inside and had the granola for breakfast that Linda made yesterday. So good.

After breakfast we gave them a tour of our partially disassembled motorcoach and explained what we are trying to do. I mentioned that the motorized windshield roller shades were not winding up straight and that the driver side was binding part way up. One of the MCD vendors at the rally last week told me to put a piece of tape on one end (lengthwise) to force the shade to not run (in that direction). Ron, who is a retired mechanical engineer, suggested that I create a tapered roller by putting tape around the roller tube at 5 to 7 places. The tape cannot go all the way around the roller tube because of the shade but it can go most of the way around. Ron’s suggestion was one layer towards the outside, two layers next, then three layers and finally four layers in the center. These tapered rollers are commonly used in industry to keep conveyor belts centered.

We had just exited the bus when a minivan that I did not recognize pulled in our driveway. It was the electric power company meter reader. We chatted briefly, and she was very nice but was obviously on a tight schedule.

Ron and Mary needed a duffle bag and some batteries so we drove to the Dick’s sporting goods store at US-23 and Lee Road. They found a nice duffle bag but not the batteries so we stopped at Meijer’s on the way back to the house and they found what the needed there. We also picked up a card for our daughter, Meghan, whose 34th birthday was today.

Back at the house we called Meghan and wished her a happy birthday via voice message. We got a text message later saying thank you. We also had a voice message on our home phone from Pat Davidson at Apex Roofing indicating that the shingles for our new roof would be delivered on Monday. For lunch we had pretzels and pita chips with hummus and some grapes. I slipped off into the small bedroom and opened the box from Cellular Solutions to make sure everything was there. It was.

Although Ron and Mary slept well last night they were still tired and decided to take naps. That left Linda free to go for a walk and me to work in my office. I transferred rough drafts of blog posts from my e-mail to MS Word and then started editing them but did not have time to upload them to WordPress before we had to leave to go to dinner.

We left around 5:15 PM for La Marsa. They were in the second of two days of their 4th year celebration for the Brighton location and everything was 34% off. They were backed up 90 minutes for carry out orders but we got a table after only a short wait. We had Koshary and they had kabobs. After dinner we went for a walk around the Brighton Mill Pond where we saw two gigantic snapping turtles in the pond. One of them almost caught a muskrat and they eventually bumped into one another and seemed to be fighting. It was quite the show. Snapping turtles are nothing to mess around with and the shells on these two were about 2 feet long, front to back. Gigantic.

When we got back to the house we played 13 rounds of Mexican Train. By the time we finished it was midnight and we all got to bed around 12:15 AM.

2015/05/30 (S) Chuck and Barbara

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There were thunderstorms west of Lansing just before midnight last night but they did not reach our house during the overnight hours and we slept OK. We were up at 7 AM and off to our weekly SLAARC breakfast. Linda had a phone message yesterday from Nancy at FirstMerit Bank indicating that there was still a problem with the SLAARC bank account so we stopped there after breakfast but Nancy wasn’t in. They have frozen the account while we sort out the paperwork, causing our annual insurance check to not clear. Linda has been in touch with the insurance company, so they are aware of what is going on. When we got back to the house she wrote a personal check for the insurance premium and put it in the mail.

I gathered up the laundry, sorted it according to color (light/dark) and temperature (cold/warm), and started the first load. I downloaded and installed updates last night for my ASUS laptop computer so they finished installing when I started it this morning. I developed the habit a long time ago of checking for additional updates any time I install some and sure enough there were 11 more optional ones available. I did not install Skype for Windows Desktop 7.3 since I have Windows 8.1 and I did not install the update for a Ricoh printer as we do not have one.

There was an 80% chance of rain starting at 11 AM but the rain did not wait until then to start. Around 10:45 AM the skies opened up and the rain came down as if poured from buckets. By noon it was partly sunny, but steamy. I checked the national radar on my Wundermap iPad app and it looked like we would have more rain as the day went along.

Linda loaded a few things on the bus before the rain started and then busied herself with food preparation. Larger RV rallies have multiple activities going on every day and evening and Linda does not have the time to prepare meals from scratch. Being as we will only be gone for a week she prepared enough food to see us through and will only require reheating in the microwave. It’s a good approach; we still eat well and she has the time to fully participate in the rally.

In spite of the threat of rain I decided to wash the exterior of the bus. It was already wet anyway and the conditions were otherwise good with a heavy overcast, no direct sun, and moderate temperatures. I got the outside water turned on, got out some hoses, and connected the pressure washer. A bucket of McGuire’s Deep Crystal automotive soap (purple bottle) and the long, adjustable handle brush completed my bus cleaning arsenal. The water softener only had 137 gallons remaining when I started and I ran it down to zero by the time I had cleaned the bus and the Honda Element, so I do not know exactly how much water I used cleaning the vehicles but I’m guessing it was 150 gallons. That sounds like a lot of water but it is surprising how much water we go through in a typical day, especially if we are doing laundry or running the dishwasher.

I was finishing up washing the bus around 3:30 PM when Linda let me know that around 3:20 PM Chuck Spera had texted me and left a voice message letting us know that he and Barbara were in our general part of town and asking if they could stop by. Linda replied to the text message and said “sure” and Chuck replied that they would be here around 4:30 PM. I started the regeneration cycle on the water softener, got all of my equipment put away, and changed clothes. I uploaded my blog post for May 28th and was sitting in the living room using my iPad when they arrived.

The reason for their visit was to see what we were up to with the remodeling of the interior of our bus. I had extended an open invitation to Chuck a week ago and today worked for them. We showed them the bus and explained what we planned to do. Linda and Barbara went inside to sit and chat while Chuck and I continued the bus conversation in the bus.

Chuck and I finally came in the house and I showed him the ham shack/office which he somehow missed seeing on previous visits including our open house. By 6:30 PM we were all hungry and Linda suggested La Marsa in Brighton. It had started raining again and that, combined with the slightly later dinnertime, resulted in available parking spaces and immediate seating. After studying the menu we suggested the Koshary and salad. They accepted the recommendation so we each had lentil soup and split an order of Koshary. The only difference was that we had ours’ spicy and they had theirs’ regular. They also liked the garlic spread and warm pocket bread. We finished the meal with coffee and Barbara sweet talked the manager, Gordon, out of complimentary baklava, this being their first visit to a La Marsa restaurant.

We got home around 9:30 PM. The water softener finished regenerating around 8 PM so I put the next load of clothes in the washing machine. Driving on our street we noticed that a branch on the south side about 0.2 miles in from the main road was hanging out farther and lower than usual to the point where we would not be able to navigate past it in the morning without scraping (scratching?) the side of the bus. I located a small saw and Linda drove me back down there to try to cut it off. At the point where I could reach the branch it was over 2″ in diameter and my little saw was not up to the task of cutting through it. I did make enough of a cut, however, that I was able to bend it and get it to crack. That allowed me to pull it down and tuck it into some other low branches and keep it off the road. Not the nicest pruning job, but it was raining steadily and it was dark and I was standing in a ditch.

Linda transferred the laundry to the dryer and then started the dishwasher. We finally got to bed at 11 PM where Linda read while I worked on this post and played a few games on my iPad. We still have quite a bit to do to get ready to leave but should be able to pull out of here tomorrow around noon.

2015/05/07 (R) Meshuggah Nuns

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We spent part of last night researching a new refrigerator for the bus. Possibilities included models from 13.5 cubic feet to 17 cubic feet from various manufacturers. We found one that was a close match to the dimensions of our current unit, but we are thinking about downsizing to create space for a slide out pantry.

One huge disappointment is that all of the SunFrost models, including their 16 cubic foot unit, are 34.5″ wide. Our refrigerator cubby is only 33-3/4″ wide and there is no easy/practical way to modify it to make it wider. Although very expensive, the SunFrost units are super insulated and use 1/5th the energy of comparable capacity energy efficient refrigerators. They are also available with 12 VDC or 24 VDC compressors, thus avoiding the inefficiencies associated with using the inverter when boondocking.

I spent some time measuring the floor and wall surfaces in the bus that are currently tiled or carpeted but did not calculate the area. I need to do a drawing and put together an Excel spreadsheet as the bus has a lot of odd shaped spaces.

We drove to ABC Supply Co. in New Hudson to pick up samples of Certainteed Landmark Pro shingles. We had narrowed down the possibilities to three choices but needed to see them next to our brick, siding, and trim.

On the way home we stopped at Lynch Carpet in Howell to return the Armstrong tile samples and determine delivery time, which was 2-3 weeks worst case. We did not get a quote since I did not have the square footage figured out yet, but Clint made a note of the tile and vinyl grout we like.

We left the house around 4:15 PM and drove across M-59 to Rochester. The Rochester Mills Beer Company restaurant was in downtown, about five miles east of the Oakland University campus and the theatre. It was after 5:30 PM when we got to the parking lot. We did not expect Kate before 6:30 PM so we ordered a hummus appetizer plate and two beers. The hummus platter featured three different flavored hummus that were very good. Linda had a chocolate coffee tasting dark brew and I had a Framboise. Framboise is a raspberry beer that originated in Holland and tastes more like raspberries than beer. Perfect!

Kate left work at 5 PM. The drive from that part of town to this part of town is one of the worst in the Detroit area, and that is a terrible time of day to do it, but that is what she did because she did not have a choice. She stopped for flowers and a card but made it to the Rochester Mills Beer Company in time to enjoy a pizza and some beer. We had a no cheese veggie pizza with a whole wheat crust that was pretty good. Linda had a different but still dark beer for her second serving while Kate and I both had the Wit’s Belgian style beer with orange and coriander. Although much more beer-like than the Framboise, it was agreeable. Except for some “guest beers” everything at the Rochester Mills Beer Company is brewed by them. It is very local, very fresh, and very good as far as beer goes. They also feature Michigan wines, which we always appreciate seeing in a Michigan restaurant, but we were not having wine this evening.

We made it to the theatre with only a few minutes to spare. Kate got the tickets from will call as they were under her cousin’s name. We had great seats in row D just left of center. Meadow Book is not a large theatre and sitting this close to the stage made for a very intimate experience. The playbill was the musical “Meshuggah Nuns.” We were not familiar with this musical but it was delightful. The 5-member cast were all professionals, including Cindy Williams (Shirley from the Laverne and Shirley TV show) and Eddie Mekka (Carmine Ragusa from the same TV program). They all gave excellent performances but Jeanne Tinker, who played Sister Amnesia, was our favorite. When dressed in a habit one really has to act with their face and hers was very expressive. She also had the “comic” part in the cast and was very funny.

The show ended at 10 PM after which we visited briefly with Kate’s cousin, Mikeala, who is part of the theatre crew working with costuming. We chatted with Kate a while longer in the parking lot and did not get home until close to midnight.

The Phase Place

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Category Archives: Culture & Entertainment

2015/09/04 (F) 100 Pounds

2015/08/23 The West Side

2015/08/20 (R) On The Level

2015/08/12 (W) Back to Indiana (Again)

2015/08/08 (S) A New Bus Fridge (Finally)

2015/08/07 (F) Arrangements

2015/07/29 (W) Drive Shaft

2015/07/27 (M) Finish Drawings

2015/07/15 (W) Prime Wednesday

2015/07/09 (R) Graduation Celebration

2015/06/24 (W) Up The Tower

2015/06/23 (T) Grounded

2015/06/18 (R) Chiseled Bikinis

2015/06/17 (W) Bakery Scraper

2015/06/13 (S) On to Illinois

2015/06/11 (R) Absent 34

2015/05/30 (S) Chuck and Barbara

2015/05/07 (R) Meshuggah Nuns