Category Archives: Family-Friends-Home

Post related to our family and close friends and projects around the house.

2015/11/24 (T) T Minus 3 (days)

My back was feeling much better last night when I went to bed but I still took two 200 mg Ibuprofen at 11 PM. By morning, however, it was bothering me again. I finally got up at 6:45 AM, put on my robe, and took three more pills. I will take two more every four hours throughout the day. I turned on the natural gas fireplace and settled in on the living room sofa with the electric heating pad on my lower right back.

Linda got up at 7:15 and made tea for us. We sat in the living room doodling on our iPads and talked about what we needed to get done today and tomorrow. Jasper sat next to me on the couch and Juniper climbed in to a large cardboard box. We like having cats as pets.

We had granola for breakfast at 8:30 AM and then got busy. We both worked all day and got a lot done. Linda got more things loaded into the house portion of the bus including food and her clothes. She also made reservations for Friday and Saturday nights and I e-mailed John Palmer to get his address for Sunday night. I got through all of the stuff in the library and repacked the things that will go in the front bay. I did not quite finish repacking the tool boxes but I should be able to do that first thing tomorrow. I also got two loads of laundry done.

I got most of the things in the garage that need to be loaded onto the bus moved near the door. I moved three trash cans full of long handle garden and yard tools to the other side of the garage (by the small door) and slid the box with the windshields into the space where the trash cans had been. I measured with my tape and once we get everything loaded in the bus and the Element and take the sawhorses apart there will be plenty of room for the Civic in the large garage bay.

In the process of going through tubs and deciding what to take and what to leave I found the SILVERLEAF Interface. I need to drill/cut a hole through the lower left console into the compartment with the diagnostic connector, but that will not happen before we leave.

Linda left at 5 PM for a 5:45 PM appointment with Renee at the J. C. Penney’s salon at Twelve Oaks Mall in Novi. It’s a long way to go for a haircut but Linda has been going to her for 24 years and has always liked the outcome. After her appointment she went to the Whole Foods Market in West Bloomfield to pick up some items that she cannot find at our local Meijer’s, Kroger, or Wal*Mart stores. For dinner she picked up a kale salad with almonds and dried cranberries and a basmati and wild rice dish which also had dried cranberries.

We watched our Tuesday evening TV shows and then went to bed. Tomorrow will be a long day but we should have the bus fully loaded by dinner time. I intend to replace the main engine air filter and check the chassis battery connections. I will also start the engine, air up the suspension, and turn on the auxiliary air compressor to maintain it at level. On Thursday morning we will connect the car to the back of the bus and I will check and adjust the pressures in all of the bus and car tires. That evening, after we get back from Thanksgiving Dinner at our daughter’s house, we will winterize the plumbing in the house and spend the night on the bus.

2015/11/23 (M) Elemental Errand Run

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I got up a little after 7 AM. Juniper was prowling around the bed which is her way of letting us know she wants to be fed. If one of us does not get up and put food in their dishes Juniper starts chewing on the charger cords on our night stands and/or pushing things off onto the floor. I needed to get up anyway. The Tylenol PM had worn off and I was having difficulty finding a comfortable position. To my surprise and consternation, my back was much worse than when I went to bed. I could not find a comfortable standing position and was barely able to walk. I managed to get my robe and slippers on and make it to the bathroom to get my bite guard out, clean it, and put it back in its case. I made my way to the kitchen where I took three Ibuprofen with some orange juice and had a couple of cherry strudel bites (vegan). I then sat in the living room with the heater pad against my lower right back and set on high.

Linda got up at 8:15 AM. At 9 we had fresh grapefruit and cherry mini-strudels (vegan) for breakfast with orange juice and the last of the Ethiopian Yiracheffe coffee. We drank most of the coffee in the living room where I lingered until 10 with the heater pad on my right lower back.

I called Brighton Honda and the service department confirmed that they rotated my tires at my last service visit so they did not need to be rotated today. I called Discount Tire in Howell and cancelled my 10 appointment. That took some pressure off of our morning.

A clean bus is a happy bus, or at least makes for a happy bus owner. Although we have kept it vacuumed as we worked it needed a good interior cleaning. The insides of the cabinets needed to be vacuumed, the wood work need to be dusted, and the counters and mirrors needed to be cleaned. Linda did most of that yesterday. We also wanted to wash the floor but decided to do that after everything was loaded on board.

I did not get all of the tool boxes repacked last night so I continued working on that today as best I could. I also needed to go through all of the tubs that we keep in the front bay, decide what really needed to travel with us, and repack the tubs. The situation with my back, however, made for slow and uncomfortable work.

We took a break at 12:30 PM to have lunch. Linda has been using up frozen food to clear out the refrigerator so she made vegan “hamburgers.” The packing and loading work was further interrupted by several things we had to do away from the house and bus.

I dropped off my Honda Element at Brighton Honda for a 1:30 PM oil change appointment. Linda followed me in her car and picked me up. We went to Staples in Brighton and bought a pack of 9x12x4 inch boxes. I needed three of them to hold the complete sets of BCM issues (37 magazines each) that will be given away as door prizes at the Arcadia Bus Rally. I called Teeko’s to see if our coffee order was ready to pick up. It was. I called Brighton Ford’s NAPA parts department to see if the air filter had arrived. It had, but the parts guy wasn’t sure where it was and thought it might take a little while to find. No problem.

We drove to Teeko’s first to pick up our coffee and visited for a while with Mary. We then drove to Brighton Ford, which is next door to Brighton Honda, to pick up the air filter. The Honda dealership called to let me know my car was ready to pick up, so the timing was really good. Linda dropped me off at the Honda dealer and went on to Meijer’s. I got my car and headed home. In total the errand run took about two hours.

There was a USPS Priority Mail package waiting for me on the porch when I got home. It was a set of the BCM issues I need to make a complete set to use as a door prize at the Arcadia Bus Rally at the end of December. In my correspondence with Gary (owner/publisher) he agreed to send three sets and to ship them next week to the RV resort in Williston, Florida. Sometimes I wonder why I bother spending time and effort communicating carefully and in detail.

I continued working in the garage and Linda started cleaning the house. We worked until 6 PM and called it a day. We did not accomplish as much today as we wanted to but we got a lot done and felt good about that. Our original plan was to have the bus loaded by the end of the day tomorrow. As things stand we plan to finish loading it on Wednesday. As of now we are still committed to leaving Friday morning and should be able to do that.

Linda picked up a couple of Amy’s frozen enchilada dinners which, along with some fresh black grapes, made for an easy but tasty meal. After dinner I integrated the magazines I received today with the issues I already had to make one compete set which I boxed up and labeled. At 8 PM we settled in to watch our Monday night TV shows before taking some more Tylenol PM and going to bed.

2015/11/22 (N) Repackaging

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My lower back bothered me all night, so I did not sleep well, but we both got up at 8:15 AM, took showers, and got dressed. My right lower back seemed to have gotten worse overnight. I pulled a muscle yesterday and they tend to take quite a while to heal. Not good.

The view of our rear deck from our dining room the morning after our major snowstorm. It’s pretty if you don’t have to go outside to pack a bus or drive in it.

According to the National Weather Service newsfeed on The Weather Channel iPad app Howell, Michigan got 16.5 inches of snow from yesterday’s winter storm, the highest in Michigan. The highest accumulation in the country was 18 inches somewhere in South Dakota, so we were very close to that. The official amount was no doubt recorded at the Livingston County Airport about 11 miles west of us on the west side of Howell, but based on what we see on our deck we got at least a foot of snow here at the house. It was sunny but only 25 degrees F when we got up. The high temperature was forecast to only reach 30 and the low tonight is forecast to be 18.

Linda made vegan pancakes for breakfast. She cooked blueberries into hers but I had mine on the side. I think the blueberries add additional liquid to the batter and keep the pancakes from cooking properly, but Linda likes the way they turn out. I made a pot of coffee with the last of our Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans. I took some Ibuprofen along with my usual morning pills. Linda got the heating pad out and I sat with it against my lower right back on the living room sofa while we drank our coffee. In spite of having a lot to do between now and Thanksgiving Day, we got a slow start to our day.

Linda cleared our front sidewalk so she could get to the front door of the bus. She also shoveled a path to my car, which I parked behind the bus yesterday, and cleared the snow off of it. She checked the snow depth with a ruler at several places on our rear deck. It was 13 inches. Not 16.5 inches, but it’s still a lot of snow, and it could certainly have been deeper out in the yard.

Her agenda for the day was to vacuum the inside of all the cabinets in the bus, dust the woodwork, and clean the counters and mirrors. I exchanged some text messages with Chuck including a couple of photos. I sent one of our bus buried in snow and he sent one of the palm trees and lush vegetation on the unoccupied lot next to theirs at Pelican Lake Motorcoach Resort. Chuck said it has been too warm to play golf. I did not know that was even possible but I did not feel too sorry for him. I sent an e-mail to Butch to let him know I had delivered the antique SUN Electric distributor tester to Bill a week ago Friday.

I resumed working in the garage and spent most of the day repacking my tool boxes. My objective was to reduce the number of boxes from five to four while maintaining some sort of reasonable logic to how they were organized. I took short breaks throughout the day to get off my feet and had a few pretzels with hummus for lunch.

Sometime during the afternoon Kerry showed up and plowed as much of the concrete driveway as he could. Linda must have been vacuuming in the back of the bus and I was working in the garage (with doors closed) so neither of us realized he was there until after he was gone.

I decided that I needed some additional storage boxes for organizing small parts so I drove to Lowe’s hoping to find the Stanley boxes I already have. They had similar boxes from a different manufacturer but not the exact ones. I tried The Home Depot but liked the boxes at Lowe’s better so I went back there and bought six, three with 10 deep bins and three with 17 medium bins. I stopped at Meijer’s for orange juice and picked up a few other things.

When Linda was done cleaning the bus she started loading the things onboard that she had ready. She got almost everything on board that was staged in the middle bedroom and the kitchen. She then made three more batches of granola. That made nine batches since Friday evening, eight of which are in the freezer. Linda thinks a batch will last at least two weeks if have granola every other day. If that proves to be true we should have enough granola with us in the bus to get through the end of March.

By 5:30 PM we were both ready to stop for the day. I changed into my robe and sat on the living room sofa with the heating pad on my lower right back. We spent 45 minutes considering possible waypoints between here and Williston, Florida. We did not come a decision but it is very likely we will stop at two of the same places we used two years ago, the Oh Kentucky campground in Berea, Kentucky and the KOA near Cartersville, Georgia.

The Oh Kentucky RV Park in Berea is just west of I-75 at an interchange. It wasn’t fancy but provided easy in/out access and would allow us to plug in for the night. Just east of the Interstate at the same exit is a Walmart where our friends, Chuck and Barbara, stayed on their way south a few weeks ago. The RV park options north of Atlanta, Georgia are surprisingly limited. The Cartersville Castle-White KOA is convenient to an exit off of I-75 and also provided easy in/out access. Staying there Saturday night means we can drive around Atlanta on I-285 on Sunday morning, our favorite time to bypass major cities.

Our final waypoint before going into Williston Crossings on Tuesday, December 1st will probably be Mayo, Florida where we can boondocks for two nights at John Palmer’s place. This itinerary would have us traveling about 400 miles on Friday, 300 miles on Saturday, 340 miles on Sunday, and 75 miles on Tuesday. Friday would be a longer drive by about 2 hours than we normally plan, but very doable. Also, this time of year we like to get as far south as quickly as possible.

Linda opened a bottle of Leelanau Cellars Mixed Berry Winter White wine to have before, during, and after dinner. For dinner Linda cooked a squash and heated up some frozen corn and mock chicken tenders (vegan). After dinner I tried to check my e-mail but our Internet connection had slowed to an unusably slow speed. At 8 PM I participated in the SLAARC Information Net and then came back upstairs and went to bed. We both took some Tylenol PM at 11:30 and then turned out the lights.

2015/11/21 (S) Not Quite As Planned

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The weather forecast for today had snow moving into the area starting at 4 AM, increasing in intensity by 8 AM, and continuing through the day and into the evening. The initial forecast was that we would get 4 – 6 inches of accumulation with temperatures hovering just below freezing. We overslept this morning and did not get up until 7:30 AM but decided to go to our weekly ham radio club breakfast in South Lyon anyway. I have had Mike’s (W8XH) climbing harness for a while and wanted to return it before we left for the winter.

There was already some accumulation on grassy areas when we left at 7:45 AM but the drive was not a problem and we arrived at 8:10. We were the last ones there, of course, but someone had to be. We had a nice chat with Harvey (AC8NO) and Diane, who are usually close to the last to arrive. I called Mike, who did not make it to breakfast, and let him know I was transferring the harness to Harvey.

On the drive home we stopped at Meijer’s in Brighton so Linda could get some additional ingredients to make more granola. By the time we got home at 10:30 the snow was starting to pile up. I had four text messages from Kristine Gullen in quick succession which turned out to be four parts of one message. She wanted to pin down our dinner plans for this evening. I texted her back once I got home and after a couple of exchanges we came to the mutual conclusion that the weather was going to interfere with our get-together. Sadly, that meant we would not see her and Jim again until May 2016 as they were probably headed to Frankenmuth for the Fall MERA conference and then on north to their cottage at Crystal Mountain for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Snow piling up around the bus less than a week before our planned departure for Florida.

Our original plan for today was to clean the inside of the motorcoach and then start cleaning up the garage/shop. With the snow piling up we decided to defer cleaning the rig and concentrate on cleaning up the garage and staging things that we will eventually load on board. I worked in the garage most of the day although that included moving things into the library and house. Linda concentrated on making granola, preparing a billing statement for the bakery, and organizing/staging kitchen-related things for the bus. She also came out and helped me when I needed assistance.

My objective for today was to get one of the temporary workbenches cleared off and disassembled. I also wanted to get all of unused plywood stored flat. By 5:30 PM we had accomplished those two goals, gotten most of the power tools put away, moved quite a few things to the library, and stored or thrown away quite a few other things. I had also managed to strain my lower right back. That is never a good thing, but it was especially bad given what we have to accomplish in the next three to four days. We will continue the process tomorrow and I will try to get my tool boxes reorganized before I quit working for the day. A critical piece of the cleanup will be getting everything that should be protected from freezing out of the garage and into the library as we do not heat the garage while we are away even though it has a furnace. From there some of it may get moved to the laundry room in the basement, or not; it just depends on time and energy.

We need to clean up the garage enough to get the Honda Civic inside and also the (non-functioning) lawn tractor. Optionally we can leave the tractor where it is and put a tarp over it or I can borrow Mike’s trailer and take it to Sloan’s in Linden to have it repaired and stored for the winter. I like the last option best but I doubt that I will have the time to take it there before we leave. It would have to be on Wednesday, assuming they are even open the day before Thanksgiving.

Snowstorm in progress. Lots of snow on the rear deck and still coming down.

For dinner, Linda sautéed an onion with some mushrooms and heated some frozen broccoli and peas. She used all of that as toppings for two baked potatoes. We watched the snow fall as we ate and estimated the accumulation on the railing of our rear deck to be at least a foot.

By 7 PM Howell had officially recorded 14.5 inches of snow and it was still coming down. I decided to text Kerry Fear, who does our snowplowing, to let him know that I staked the driveway yesterday but we still have a mower deck, wheelbarrow, paving blocks, and plastic conduit in the northwest corner of the drive that we have not yet had a chance to remove. He texted back that he was “up north” and would be back Sunday afternoon.

We went to bed before 9 PM, watched a few minutes of weather on TV, and caught a bit of a Cirque du Soleil holiday show on Detroit PBS. I was going to call Butch and text Chuck but it was after 10 PM so I went to sleep instead.

2015/11/20 (F) The End of Projects (for now)

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Linda was up at 5:45 AM again and off to the bakery at 6:15 but this was the last time until spring 2016. There is still more to do on both the software project and year-end accounting but she will do it remotely. We need the weekend and the first three days of next week to get the motorcoach, the house, and us ready to travel and prepare for our Thanksgiving Day family gathering. Also, unlike the last two winters, Linda does not plan to fly home in late February to take care of year-end accounting and tax work. She will handle all of that from Florida instead, so she has to make sure she has everything she needs with her in the bus when we leave.

This was likewise the last day for me to work on bus projects. The things I needed to do in the bus included:

Install metal edging to protect exposed tile edges.
Grease the steering column.
Install filter material over the HVAC holes under the bed.
Mount the West Mountain Radio RigRunner on the dashboard.
Pull the chassis battery tray out and check/clean/tighten the connections.

But I had a few other things to attend to first.

I was up and dressed at 7:45 and had an alarm set on my iPad for 8 AM to remind me to pick up our coffee bean order from Teeko’s. I had a bowl of granola for breakfast and then called Brighton Honda. My last oil change was at 99,280 miles and I now have over 105,000 on the odometer so I made an appointment for Monday afternoon to have the oil changed. I had a cup of tea in the living room where I spent some time with our cats. I then went to my office and replied to an e-mail from Gary at BCM. I called Teeko’s to make sure our coffee was ready to pick up. Mary did not have it packaged yet but said she would have it ready in an hour. I indicated that it would be longer than that before I got there. I called Discount Tire in Howell to see about having the tires on the Element rotated. They were running 2 – 3 hours so I made an appointment for Monday morning. I called Brighton Ford/NAPA to order an air filter for the bus.

I moved the brass colored stair edging into the bus and checked the temperature. It was 64 degrees F so I bumped the thermostats up just a bit. I also switched the remote temperature sensors so that #1 was in the freezer (top) and #2 was in the fresh food compartment (bottom). I removed the ham radio antenna from its magnetic mount and put it in the car. I finally left at 11:45 AM on my errand run.

My first stop was Wendy’s where I had an order of French fries for lunch. I then went to Lowe’s, which was just across the street, for carpet stain remover and looked at tarps while I was there but did not buy one. I don’t think we will be able to create enough space in the garage for the lawn tractor so I want to cover it for the winter. From there it was less than a mile east on Grand River Avenue to the car wash. I had taken the ham radio antenna off before I left the house but the car wash knocked the magnetic mount cellular booster antenna loose. I pulled into a parking spot, put the cellular antenna back in position, and reattached the ham radio antenna.

I backtracked that same mile and stopped at Teeko’s to pick up our coffee order. It seemed light but Mary already had it bagged and I was anxious to move along so I did not check it. I continued west on GRA to the Bank of America branch near The Home Depot (which I should have done after stopping at Wendy’s). With colder temperatures coming the next few days I decided to drive to the Shell station in Brighton and top off the tank. The sign said regular was $2.05⁹/gallon but the pump I used was set to $1.95⁹. Deal.

When I got home I checked the coffee order and realized something was not right. There were supposed to be 16 vacuum sealed 1/2 lb. bags, four each for four different coffees, for a total of eight pounds of beans, but there were only 10 bags. Some of them were definitely much less than a half pound but I did not have a scale and so I had no way to know for sure what the total weight was. Three bags were also unsealed and some of the beans had spilled into the larger bag. Two of those bags were the same bean but unfortunately the third one was different so I had no way of knowing which bag, or bags, the loose beans came out of. I dumped the loose beans into the bag that was the most open as that was the easiest one to get them in. I closed the three unsealed bags with spring clips, put everything back in the carry bag, and drove back to the coffee shop.

I was not pleased with the situation, especially the fact that I had to make this extra trip, but I worked through my frustration while driving and was friendly and courteous while I was there. Being upset and nasty to people never accomplishes anything good. Roger was there in addition to Mary and once I explained what we had ordered on Monday evening from Jeff it was obvious that something got lost in translation. They will make it right and we will pick it up late in the afternoon on Monday.

For some time now we have felt that we do not always have Jeff’s full attention when he is waiting on us. Teeko’s has had its challenges over the last couple of years, first with road construction making access to the strip mall more difficult, and now with the opening of a Panera on the opposite corner of the intersection. My sense is that they have struggled financially as evidenced by the fact that they never spent the money for a proper neon sign. As a result the shop is not as visible as it should be even though it is located at a major intersection. Jeff got married last year and they just had their first child in September. With those added responsibilities he went back to work driving a delivery truck for PepsiCo, which has a major plant on the south central side of Howell. His parents, Roger and Mary, have been left to run the coffee shop during the day, which I suspect is not what they intended to be doing in their retirement. Still, they are always very pleasant to deal with and I feel for their situation.

As much as we like Panera, when we still lived in Farmington Hills we tried to patronize a series of small, independent coffee shops but they all failed in the end. Some failed because of mis-management, but ultimately they could not compete with the Starbucks, Panera, and Einstein Brothers stores in the area. Sadly, I suspect this will also be the fate of Teeko’s even though it is a nicer coffee shop than the Biggby’s just down the street. And it’s too bad (for us at least) as we really enjoy being able to purchase a variety of green beans and have them roasted to order.

Back home I finally got to work on the bus around 3 PM. I got all of the old silver colored metal stair edging from the garage and determined where each piece had been installed. I realized that I did not have a good way to cut the new edging nor did I have the time to measure, cut, and install it before it got dark. I really wanted/needed the exposed edges of the tile protected so I decided to reinstall the old edging. Although it had obviously seen heavy use over the years it was still serviceable. Of equal importance was that it was already cut to approximately the correct length and angles. I checked that the holes on the new edging would fall in different places than holes in the old edging. That was the case, so I held each piece in place and drilled a small pilot hole at every third hole. I changed to a different bit to drill through the metal that secures the edge of the plywood bus floor and then screwed each strip of metal edging in place. The new edging will cover the holes from mounting the old edging.

This was the only work I was going to get done on/in/around the coach today. Linda had called by this point to let me know she was heading home and was going to stop at Meijer’s along the way. As soon as she got home she started making three batches of granola. She is going to make and freeze as many batches as she can fit in the freezer so we can enjoy this fabulous granola well into winter.

While Linda made granola I worked at my computer cleaning up old e-mail. Dinner was vegan Pad Thai; not like the real thing, of course, but it was easy, hot, and tasty enough. We had some small oranges for dessert. I worked at my desk for a while after dinner deleting old e-mails. I quit at 8 PM to watch a few TV shows and work on this post.

2015/11/19 (R) FTH Annual Meeting

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I was up at 7:45 AM and got dressed right away to work. I folded the towels and blankets I laundered yesterday and then made coffee and had a bowl of granola for breakfast. I sat in the living room for most of the morning finishing my blog post about yesterday, having decided that I would probably not work in the bus today. The only thing I really have left to do is install the metal edging where the floor tiles meet the top of the wall tiles in the front passenger platform and secure the old step on the platform.

I finally inventoried my issues of BCM and sent the list to Gary of the ones I need to make three complete sets for door prizes for the Arcadia Rally. We had some additional e-mails back and forth regarding the rally.

Part of getting ready to leave is getting the house ready for us to be gone. I shut the off the water to the three outside spigots and then opened them to let them drain. I added insulation around the top of the foundation in the sump pump closet and put the piece of insulation back in the window. I topped off the battery for the backup sump pump with distilled water. I left the light on to act as a heater and put a note on the outside of the door to that effect. I also noted the date the battery had been topped off. Once the cats are on board the bus we will leave the sump pump closet door open to let heat get in there.

At 3:15 PM I printed off the documents for the FMCA Freethinkers meeting. I got a bowl of nuts and made a cup of hot tea. Linda texted me at 3:30 that she was leaving the office. At 3:55 PM I dialed into the meeting. Bob, the chapter president and organizer of the teleconference, was already checked in. By 4:05 we had 11 F#’s represented, exceeding the eight we needed for a quorum, and he called the meeting to order.

The meeting was routine but necessary. I edited the minutes from last year as the meeting progressed. We approved the minutes of last year’s annual meeting, presented the financial statements, received the report of the nominating committee, and elected people to the offices of president, vice-president, and Treasurer. We also elected five members to serve on the nominations committee for the coming year. The meeting concluded with a discussion about how to let FMCA members know about our chapter, which resulted in a member volunteering to set up a public Facebook page for our chapter. Linda got home as the meeting was concluding.

We both got comfy in our robes and spent 45 minutes relaxing in the living room. For dinner Linda made green salads with dried cranberries and slivered almonds and heated up some mock (vegan) riblets in barbecue sauce and some vegan baked beans. We finished off the bottle of Barefoot Moscato wine for dessert.

I finished editing the minutes of this year’s meeting, converted them to a PDF, uploaded them to our Dropbox, and e-mailed the members. I got that done before 8 PM so I could relax and watch a few Thursday evening TV programs with Linda.

2015/11/18 (W) Fuel Run

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Linda was up at 5:45 AM and off to the bakery at 6:15. I was up at 7:45 AM and skipped breakfast and coffee. I put on Weather Nation and took stock of the forecast while I folded the clean laundry. I took a shower, got dressed, made a cup of tea, and had a small glass of orange juice to wash down my pills.

My main objective for today was to get the bus fueled which would also serve as a test run. The forecast had the chance of rain increasing through the morning and heading towards certainty by early afternoon, albeit intermittent and not very intense. I wanted to take care of the fueling before the rain settled in but wanted to wait long enough for the temperature to rise so I set 11 AM as my target departure time. Before I moved the bus, however, several things had to be done.

First on the list was turning on the electric block heater for the main engine. It wasn’t cold enough for this to be necessary but having the oil warmed up a bit never hurts, especially with the straight 40 weight oil. It helps the engine crank over and get oil to the bearings more quickly.

The living room and kitchen in the bus looking aft from the cockpit. New flooring, new seating, new desk, new refrigerator, new slide-out pantry, and new window shades (rolled up).

Next was simply cleaning up the interior so the coach could be safely moved and nothing would get broken. I gathered up all of the tools and materials that I no longer needed and moved them into the house and garage. I then installed the solid brass door stop on the bottom of the pull-out pantry. Finally I mounted the two aluminum angles to the inside of the refrigerator alcove, one by the freezer door and the other by the fresh food door.

The angles were 1/2″x3/4″ with holes drilled in the 3/4″ flange for #6 SR self-drilling wood screws. I had carefully countersunk (chamfered) each hole so the screw head would be close to flush with the surface of the flange. The aluminum was only 1/16″ thick so I had to be careful not to overdo it. With the freezer door open I set the 1/2″ flange against the face of the refrigerator case (on the side opposite the hinges) and held the 3/4″ flange square to the side of the alcove. I used a #5-6 self-centering VIX drill bit to drill three holes about 3/8″ deep and installed the 5/8″ #6 screws with a manual screwdriver so as not to over torque them. I repeated the procedure for the second angle which was longer and had five mounting holes.

The new floor in the cockpit of the bus.

I had a little spare time so I drove my car up and down the new driveway to compact the gravel. I won’t drive the bus on this new driveway until next year but it already supports the cars very nicely and the weight of the Honda Element was sufficient to knock down some of ridges and compact the surface.

I checked all of the tire pressures and they were OK so I did not have to get out an air compressor and adjust them. I will have to do this next week before we leave, however, as the temperatures will have cooled off significantly by then.

Around 11 AM I turned on the coach batteries and opened the auxiliary air supply valve for the engine accessories. I turned off all of the electric heating elements and made sure the inverter was turned on and then started the main engine. I let it run for one minute and then switched it go high idle. While the engine was warming up and the air pressure was building I shut off the shorepower, disconnected the power cord, and stowed it.

I pulled out at 11:15 AM and headed for the Mobile Truck Stop at exit 122 on I-96, approximately 22 miles from the house. While there are a couple of closer places I could get fuel this truck stop has very good egress and is fairly busy, which means the fuel is being turned over frequently and is thus relatively fresh. The drive is a mix of Interstate and Michigan Highways with a few stoplights and a couple of miles of dirt road, so the bus has to run up and down through its gears. It is also a long enough round trip to get the engine up to normal operating temperature under load.

I estimated that the tank would take on about 120 gallons of diesel fuel so I added two bottles of Stanadyne Performance Formula and one bottle of Stanadyne Lubricity Formula. The tank started whistling at 112 gallons, which meant it was getting full. I added the last few gallons by controlling the flow manually and stopped at 119.990 gallons, so my 120 gallon estimate was pretty good. I paid for the fuel and got a free beverage to go with it.

I had some occasional light rain on the drive out and on the drive back but the trip was otherwise uneventful. I was back at 12:45 PM, parked the coach, and started the auxiliary generator, which I had not done for several months. To load the generator I turned on all three electric toe-kick heaters, the engine block heater, the Aqua-Hot electric heating element, and front bay electric heater. I let it run for 90 minutes with an average current draw of 25 Amperes on each leg, which is about 35% of its full load capability.

I got the shorepower cord out and connected it but did not turn it on. As long as I had water and air pressure I flushed the toilet and then ran a little water through the various faucets in the coach. I set a rubber door mat under the drain for the fresh water tank to keep the water from drilling a hole in the driveway and then let the tank drain slowly. While it was draining I got the long fresh water hose out and connected it to the spigot on the front of the house and the water port for the coach. With the fresh water tank empty I checked that the outside water spigot was configured to provide filtered/softened water. I closed the drain valve, opened the fill valve, and opened the valve at the house. I then went in the house, set a timer, and had a bite of lunch.

I had a phone call while I was driving back from the truck stop but did not answer it. The caller left a message so I listened to it and then called him back. Kevin Stufflebeam, from the southwest part of Michigan, had a 1995 Marathon Prevost conversion with a non-functioning Webasto system. It turned out that he had the system worked on by a company in that area and the guy from the company had called me during the summer. They got my name and contact information from Josh Leach at Coach Supply Direct, with my permission.

The fresh water tank has an overflow tube so that is how I knew it was full. I closed the fill valve on the bus, closed the spigot valve at the house, and then opened the fill valve to relieve the pressure in the hose. Sure, it was a lot of back-n-forth, but it eliminated the spray that occurs when unscrewing a fitting on a pressurized hose. It also makes the fitting easier to unscrew. I removed the hose from the coach and then from the house. The spigot is about four feet higher than the driveway so I pulled the hose up towards the spigot, allowing it to drain as I coiled it up. Once it was coiled I connected the two ends together, put it back in its storage tub, and put the tub back in the front bay.

Linda called at 4:30 PM to say she was on her way home. It had been raining, off and on, all afternoon so I took about 45 minutes to drive on the new driveway with my Honda Element and compact it even more. But first I got the metal toothed rake and evened out the few remaining ridges and valleys. Besides going up and down the driveway I drove across it at various angles at both ends. Most of the driveway has fresh topsoil along both edges, which is soft and has grass seed and straw on top of it, so I stayed off of those areas as they definitely should not be compacted. The end of the new driveway by the house ties into our concrete driveway and some solid, undisturbed lawn with a flare. The far end, which ties into the street at our third culvert, is much wider (to allow the bus to make the turn), relatively flat, and ties in to solid, undisturbed lawn. The concrete, road, and undisturbed lawn allowed me to drive beyond the edges of the driveway in these areas and go across them at various angles.

Any kind of weather always slows commuter traffic and Linda did not get home until 6 PM. It had been a long day for both of us and she just wanted to relax for a while. She opened a bottle of Barefoot Moscato and poured each of us a glass. For dinner we had mock oriental orange chicken with reheated frozen broccoli and white rice with soy sauce. It was an easy but very tasty meal.

After dinner I finally settled in at my desk to finish updating the FMCA Freethinkers Chapter roster, financial statements, and minutes from the 2014 annual meeting. Linda reviewed the financial statements and helped me reconcile them to the bank statements. Once we were satisfied they were accurate I saved everything as PDFs, uploaded them to our Dropbox, and sent the folder link to the members via e-mail. We then headed to bed and watched the last episode of The Brain on Detroit PBS. Linda went to sleep and I wrote for a while, finally turning the light out at 11:30 PM.

2015/11/16 (M) Tiling the Cockpit, #3

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Linda planned to go to the bakery today but decided yesterday to stay home and help me instead. Based on the 10-day forecast this looks like our last decent weather day to work on the bus and we wanted/needed to make the most of it.

We had breakfast at 8 AM (granola with blueberries and a banana) and had a cup of Stash China Black tea. I had a text message from Kristine Gullen regarding getting together with her and Jim on Saturday and replied in the affirmative. We finished our tea by 8:30 and got to work.

I really wanted to finish tiling the cockpit of the bus, or at least as much of it as we could. That meant cutting and fitting tiles for the stair treads and risers and the two side walls of the entry steps, gluing them in place, and then grouting all of them. We needed to mount the table if possible and I also needed to build a new step for the platform. That was a lot to get done in one day and even before we started I doubted that we would get it all done.

When we opened the bus we were surprised to find that the tiles on the walls of the platform had slipped all the way down to the floor tiles. Obviously I should not have removed the spacers right after installing the tiles and should have to left them in place for any horizontal grout spaces on vertical surfaces. Oh well, not much to do about it now.

Keith called to see if he should come and mulch the leaves one last time. The weather the last few days had been very nice, unseasonably warm and dry. Today was also a beautiful day but the forecast going forward was for much cooler and wetter conditions, so this was an ideal day for our last lawn mowing of the 2015 season.

We measured and cut the tiles for the face of the platform and out to the door. At that point I evaluated what I needed to do to complete the job. Basically, I needed to cut all of the tiles for the entry steps and walls and then install them from the bottom up. Every piece of tile was going to be smaller than a full 16″x 16″ tile and custom cut so even though the square footage was not that much there would be more pieces than usual and it was obviously going to take quite a bit of time to get all of the pieces ready to install. I thought we could be ready for adhesive in two hours but Linda figured it would be at least three. It also meant working with the door open which would make it difficult to keep the interior as warm as we needed.

Phil showed up with his excavator and a dozen bales of straw. I knew the excavator was for a different job as he did not have anything left to do at our place that required it. He was here to finish covering the topsoil and grass seed with the straw. We took a break to go talk to him and confirmed that he was done with the driveway and French drain projects except for the straw. He staged the bales where he needed them but said he had to leave to dig a perk test hole at 1:30 PM and would be back mid-afternoon to finish spreading the straw around.

Linda suggested that we go ahead a grout all of the tile we had already installed. I was more emotionally invested in completing the tile work than Linda but had to agree that this was the prudent thing to do. Until the tile was grouted we could not reinstall the accelerator, the steering column shroud, the seat bases, and the seats, so grouting the tile was clearly a critical path item and that is what we did. It was after noon by the time we finished so we took a break for lunch. Phil had taken off by this time to go dig the test pit.

Lunch was grilled vegan Italian sausage on a bun with mustard and relish and black grapes on the side. Keith finished up mowing the yard while we were enjoying a cup of Rooibos tea. We paid him and chatted about next year. I gave him our approximate timeframe for returning home from Florida and asked him to go ahead and start mowing next spring whether or not we were here. We have had Keith take care of our lawn since we bought our house in the country and he has been very good about doing that when we are away and allowing us to catch up with him when we get back.

By the time we got back to work on the bus it was after 1 PM and I had to concede that we were done working on the tile until next spring except for cleaning them, which had to wait until tomorrow as the grout has to cure for 24 hours before final cleaning. With that decision made we considered what else needed to be done and in what order.

The first order of business was painting the two front seat bases black. We spread out painter’s plastic on the driveway and taped it down. We set the bases there and then masked off the top portion with the swivel bearings and mounting bolt. We wire brushed the bases to remove rust and then went over them with a sanding sponge. I used a cleaner/degreaser and water to clean them and then gave them a coat of black rubberized undercoating paint.

The next order of business was getting all of the tools and materials that we no longer needed out of the bus to give us room to work on other things. On Saturday I re-installed the bump out on the walnut cover for the passenger side HVAC duct. The duct needed to have two 4″ holes drilled in it to match the holes in the metal duct, so that was the next task. I measured very carefully and transferred the measurements to the face of the cover with equal care. Even so, I was off slightly and had to use the sheet metal nibbler to enlarge the bottom of each hole. At least I had a relatively straightforward way to fix this problem; I am not always so lucky.

With the holes enlarged we put the cover in place. The 4″ round plastic registers fit through the wood into the duct but not all the way due to two tabs. I trimmed the tabs off using the Porter-Cable oscillating saw and trimmed a little bit off of one of the outer mounting flanges to make it fit flush. I drilled holes through the two mounting holes on each register using the #5-6 self-centering drill bit and secured them with #6-5/8″ SR screws. We then removed the two temporary black plastic registers from the front of the built in sofa. I trimmed the tabs off of two new brown ones and installed them using the same procedure as the first two.

In the grand scheme of things getting the cover in place and the four registers installed was a small task but it needed to be done and stood in the way of other things. The cover has been stored on top of the two front seats, which have been lying on their backs on the kitchen floor of the bus for weeks. We plan to re-install the seats late tomorrow afternoon.

Two more small, but critical, tasks were securing the pull-out pantry and the refrigerator. I have assumed for quite a while that we would secure the pantry for travel with some form of sliding latch but had not thought about it in any detail. We also needed to secure the refrigerator but I had not thought about this in any detail either. As we pondered the pantry latch it slowly became obvious that we did not have enough wood for a strike plate to receive a pin and we did not have two unobstructed surfaces that were in the same plane, which would be required for the kind of latch I had been thinking about.

As for the refrigerator, one of our bus nut friends secured their unit by running mounting bolts (machine screws) through the floor of the cabinet above the fridge and threading them into the unused tapped holes provided for the upper door hinge (if it was reversed) . After looking at it for a while we realized that we could attach a section of small angle to the inside of the right alcove wall with the other side just against the face of the fridge case but not over so far as to interfere with the door gasket. My measurements indicated that a 1/2″x3/4″ angle would be just right. It looked to me like two 12″ pieces, one by the freezer door and one by the bottom of the fresh food compartment door, would be more than adequate to keep the refrigerator from rolling out as it cannot shift sideways or twist due to the aluminum angle on the left/hinge side at the floor.

About this time Phil returned in a red pickup truck. He finished distributing the straw and loaded three unused bales into the back of his truck. He pulled up in the main drive and we invited him into the bus to see what we had been working on all summer. It is always a pleasure working with Phil. If/when we build a barn we will have him do all of the site prep and finish grading. He will figure out the final cost for the driveway extension and French drain and send us an invoice.

Linda prepared an easy but tasty dinner consisting of a nice green salad, mixed frozen vegetables (corn, peas, and carrots) suitably reheated, and mac-n-cheese that was both dairy-free and gluten-free. After dinner we went to Lowe’s and The Home Depot. At Lowe’s we bought a 1/16″ thick 1/2″x 3/4″ aluminum angle and three 8 foot lengths of brass colored nose edging but did not find a latch that we liked. At The Home Depot we bought some screws for securing the handle on the front of the pull-out pantry and a solid brass door stop to keep the pantry in place. The door stop folds up when not in use and should work to keep the pantry closed while traveling.

Although the new Panera on the southwest corner of Grand River Avenue and Latson Road was finally open for business we stopped at Teeko’s Coffee and Tea on the northeast corner of that intersection. Jeff was there and took our order for eight pounds of coffee beans. We got two pounds each of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, regular and decaffeinated, the Seattle Blend (regular), and the Sweet Dreams blend (decaffeinated). They will roast the beans and then let them outgas for a few days before vacuum sealing them in half-pound portions. This allows us to take them with us in the bus and keep them very fresh until we are ready to use them and to change what we are drinking more often.

We got home just after 8 PM and took our iPads downstairs to use while we watched our Monday evening CBS TV programs. We caught the weather forecast and then headed to bed. It looks like we will have two more days with unseasonably high temperatures near 60 degrees F but with intermittent rain and then a serious cooling trend with highs this weekend barely above freezing. Our time for working on the bus and being in Michigan is definitely running out.

2015/11/14 (S) Tiling the Cockpit, #1

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I was up at 6:30 AM and got a shower. Linda got up closer to 7 and we were on our way to our ham radio club breakfast by 7:20; but not before I released two more mice. Either we have a significant colony living nearby or the same few animals are finding their way back into the house. We find it hard to believe, however, that if they are returning they would re-enter the trap.

We had a good showing for breakfast, minus a few regulars due to the ham fest in Ft. Wayne, Indiana today and tomorrow. We were the second two people to arrive so we got to sit across from the other Bruce and Linda. They are leaving for their new place in Florida before the next breakfast so the next time we see them will be in the Sunshine State. We had a lot of work to do on the bus this weekend so we did not linger over breakfast and were on our way home by 9:15 AM.

The seat cushions and spacer cushion for the built-in sofa in the bus.

By 10 AM we were working on the floor tile for the front of our motorcoach, which I often refer to here as the “cockpit” as a convenient shorthand. In a sense the cockpit consists of several sub-areas. I think of the “entry” as consisting of the stairs and the first landing. At the same level as the landing is the “driver’s area.” I sometimes refer to this as the pilot’s seat as most of the controls for operating the bus when it is in motion are located here. The dashboard, however, extends into the landing area and contains controls for some of the house systems.

One step up from the landing level is the “front passenger seat platform” which I often refer to as “the platform” as a convenient shorthand. The portion of the platform closest to the entry door side of the bus is where the front passenger seat is located, which I sometimes refer to as the co-pilot and/or navigator seat. It’s really not a co-pilot seat as you cannot operate the bus from there, so navigator is really the more appropriate term. In the center of the platform, and extending towards the driver’s side of the bus, is a step which gets you up to the main floor level.

Because the pilot and navigator seats are on different levels from the main floor those seats are not usable as part of the living room, making the front portion of the interior a distinct and dedicated space with its own character, much like a cockpit in an airplane or ship. Nonetheless, we used the same fabric on the these two seats as we did on all of the other living room furniture and we are using the same tile on the floors and walls as we used on the main floor.

Bruce uses the heat gun to soften a piece of the floor tile so he can cut it. (Photo by Linda. )

We worked from 10 AM until almost 4 PM measuring, cutting, and dry fitting the tiles for the landing and driver’s area. The driver’s area in particular took a lot of time as every tile had to have something special done to it. Intricate curves had to be cut to fit around the steering column, brake pedal, and the perimeter of the area and holes had to be drilled for the seat base bolts. All of this intricate trimming was done by heating the back side of the tiles with a heat gun (much hotter than a hair dryer) and cutting the softened tile with a razor knife.

We quit working for the day at 3:45 PM and changed clothes. By 4:15 we were on our way to meet John and Diane Rauch at the Livonia 20 Cineplex on Seven Mile Road just west of I-275 for a 5 PM movie. Ever since Daniel Craig started playing the role of James Bond in the 007 movies we have gone to see them with John and Diane not long after opening day. After the movie we went to the Macaroni Grill, which is walking distance from the theater on the northeast corner of the intersection of Seven Mile Road and Haggerty Road.

We had to wait awhile for a table but we had plenty to talk about and the time passed quickly enough. We were seated by 8:20 PM and finally left our table at 10:20. We started with bread, olive oil, and wine. We split a two liter bottle of the Chianti house red wine. It was priced the same as five glasses, but we each had more than two glasses, so it was a good deal. All four of us had a “make your own pasta” dish with a salad, and each one of us chose a different pasta and add-ins. I had linguine with a garlic olive oil sauce, mushrooms, tomatoes, and fresh spinach. Linda had farfalle (bow tie) pasta with arrabiata (spicy tomato) sauce, garlic, mushrooms, and spinach. Both dishes were well prepared and tasty, and they were vegan!

I stopped at our local Shell station to fill the fuel tank in Linda’s car and it was a little after 11 PM when we got home. We had another mouse in the trap so I took the trap to woods on the southwest part of our property and released it. Back inside I went straight to bed. It had been a long but productive and enjoyable day that ended with too much food and too much wine too late in the evening but we were glad to have had a wonderful conversation with our longest standing Michigan friends.

2015/11/13 (F) Road Trip

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I set my alarm for 5:30 AM and got up when it went off. I got dressed quietly, fed the cats, refilled their water fountain, and took my allergy pill and B-12 vitamin. I used a plastic bag to pack a change of underwear and socks, a basic oral hygiene kit, my iPad, my checkbook, and my phone charger cable. I loaded my travel bag and walnut pieces into the car and then checked the mousetraps in the pantry. One of them had two mice in it. It was still pitch dark outside so I drove to the end of the new driveway, parked with my headlights pointing across the road, took the trap to other side of the road, and released them. They went scurrying off into the thick undergrowth of the woods and I drove back to the house. I left the trap on the front porch and went inside to wash my hands.

I finally left on my road trip to Indiana at 6:20 AM. I needed fuel so I headed south on Hacker Road and stopped at the Shell Station on Grand River Avenue at I-96. There is a Dunkin Donuts co-located with the station so I got an extra-large coffee and was on my way. I decided to head east a couple of miles on I-96 and then south on US-23 to Ann Arbor where I picked up I-94 west. I took I-94 as far as I-69 and then headed south. Somewhere along this segment I realized I had forgotten the box with the two swivel ring bearings. That meant I would not be stopping at Coach Supply Direct in Edwardsburg, Michigan to return them, which would save me time but necessitate getting them back to Josh another time and/or another way.

The change in plans would loosen up my schedule a bit but I still had four stops to make and was anxious to make time. I stayed on I-69 south into Indiana and then took the Indiana Toll Road (I-80/90) west. Traveling west there is one travel plaza between I-69 and the SR-19 exit. I stopped there to use the restroom and get another cup of coffee. Back in my car I called Josh to let him know I would not be stopping by his shop today in Edwardsburg. I then called Linda to update her on my whereabouts and change in plans. She said she would take care of getting the box with the swivel ring bearings ready to mail.

The weather was overcast, drizzly, cool, and windy when I left this morning. The winds were out of the west so I had a crosswind or a headwind for the entire trip down. By the time I reached Indiana I had driven out from under the cloud cover. The temperature remained very cool but the sunshine was refreshing.

My first stop was A-1 Upholstery in Elkhart, Indiana. Much to my surprise Terry had used the exact same fabric for the filler cushion that we had her use for all of the other ones, so it was a perfect match! I got a call from Josh while I was there and called him back as soon as I left, but got his voice mail.

My next stop was at Pat and Vickie Lintners’ house, about three miles from A-1 Upholstery, to pick up a critical accessory piece for the built-in Nutone multi-function kitchen appliance. We have a functional power base built in to our kitchen counter in the bus but only had the blender attachment. Vickie gave us a number of other attachments at a rally back in September but many of them required a right angle tower adapter. She had found the adapter a few weeks after the rally.

From Pat and Vickie’s I backtracked to the main north-south road, went south back over the St. Joseph River, and headed west on Old US-33 (Lincolnway). I got a call back from Josh and he said to stay on my current road all the way to the Mishawaka bypass and then head south to US-20. From there I was on familiar road as I headed west to US-31 south. Michele Henry from Phoenix Paint had called while I was at Pat and Vickie’s and I let it go to voice mail. I called her back when I was done talking to Josh. They had both called me with some recent scuttlebutt about a service facility in Elkhart where friends of ours had some major remodeling work done on their vintage bus, but it was also a chance to catch up on things in general and helped pass the time as I drove.

I stopped in Argos for fuel and called Bill Tharpe with an ETA of 12:30 PM. I then called Jarel to let him know I would be there by 1:30 PM. Butch had driven me past Bill’s place once some time ago so I had a fairly good understanding of where it was and what it looked like; not that I needed it. Given the address my Garmin 465T GPS unit took me right to Bill’s place on Mexico Road south of Mexico and north of Peru. Sounds like I was in Central America.

Bill was outside waiting for me and we unloaded the antique SUN Electric Distributor Tester from my car and into Butch’s truck, which Bill had for the winter. He was headed to his building in Wabash, where he has a paint booth, to repaint the truck so we did not chat for very long. Besides, I still had one more stop and it would take at least a couple of hours.

A couple of miles on down Mexico Road I headed west on US-24 towards Logansport and arrived at Jarel Beatty’s cabinet shop at 1 PM. Jarel was not expecting me until 1:30 so he was in the middle of cutting dados in side panels for a tall cabinet. When he finished that task he switched to a regular blade in his table saw to work on my pieces.

We selected the most suitable pieces of walnut from among the ones I brought. He ripped two pieces, one 2″ wide and the other 2-1/16″ wide, and crosscut them to 19-11/16″ long. He then ran them through his shaper to round off the edges. He changed the blade on his table saw, reset the depth of cut, and set the fence to cut off the amount of material I had marked with blue painter’s tape on the bump out for the passenger side HVAC duct cover. With the sawing done he sanded the two new pieces and then sprayed them with a Sherwin-Williams pre-catalyzed lacquer. He let the first coat dry for 15 minutes and then lightly sanded it with 220 grit paper to knock down tiny bubbles and splatters. He then applied a second coat. It was remarkable to see how it changed the appearance of the wood. Jarel described it as being like “putting water on a rock” and I thought that was an apt description.

After another 15 minutes the pieces were dry enough to be transported without damaging them. I wrapped things up with Jarel, including finally remembering to get all of my drawings back, and was ready to leave at 3 PM. The GPS said I would be home by 7 PM, quite a bit earlier than I expected when I left this morning.

I had smooth sailing until I encountered a major traffic jam on I-96 eastbound just east of US-127 on the southeast corner of Lansing, Michigan. It took 45 minutes to go three miles and I was sitting at about 1/8 tank of fuel. Ugh. There turned out to be multi-car accidents in two separate locations about a mile apart plus a car stopped in the right lane that appeared to have run out of fuel. What a mess.

Once I was clear of the accident area it was clear sailing once again. I stopped at the Marathon station at the Fowlerville exit (#127) for fuel and checked out the truck pumps. Although there were lots of semi’s parked there for the night I was disappointed to find that the back lot was in as bad a shape as the Mobil Truck Stop at exit 117. Still, the round trip from our house would be 20 minutes shorter and it was an alternative place to get fuel. The closest place to our house where we can fuel the bus is actually the Marathon station on Grand River Avenue at I-96 in Brighton, which has truck pumps around back, but we have some low branches in the southbound lane of Hacker Road just before we get to Grand River Avenue, so we tend to avoid that route and that stretch of Grand River Avenue is often very busy and not someplace I want to be with the bus unless it is later at night.

I checked the mousetrap in the pantry when I got home and we had caught yet another mouse. I unloaded the car and then took the mouse trap to the end of the new driveway and released it across the road as I had done with the previous four. As I walked down the driveway it was obvious that Phil had been here with his bulldozer, which Linda confirmed over dinner.

The “parking pad” area is now presumably level but it was definitely not flat as it had deep marks from the bulldozer treads and ridges where the gravel had not been completely smoothed out. The top inch or so also seemed very loose. I don’t think Phil is done working on the project as he still needs to spread straw over all of the topsoil that he placed, graded, and seeded the other day. I suspect that he still needs to compact the gravel one last time with his track loader but I won’t know for sure until I can talk to him.

Dinner was chili and crackers; simple but delicious. It had been a long day but I had taken care of four things in one trip, three of which were directly related to the bus and two of those of a somewhat critical nature. We were both off to bed not long after dinner. Tomorrow was our weekly ham radio breakfast so we would have to be up early to get there on time.

2015/11/12 (R) Unforced Solutions

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When I got up at 7 AM Linda had already left for the bakery. I had granola for breakfast and made a cup of Stash China Black hot tea. I went to my office and processed the photo that Byron sent me of him and Betty and e-mailed it to Gary and Jorge at Bus Conversion Magazine. I then replied to an e-mail from Nancy (& Big Bill). We met them at Suncoast Designers in Hudson, Florida in April 2014. They are from Ontario but have a place near Ocala, Florida where they spend at least part of the winter. I also replied to an e-mail from the Mitch in Florida regarding good places for bus service and forwarded my reply to Chuck. I cleaned the kitty litter tray and finally got to work on the bus.

A piece of scrap SurePly underlayment used as a spacer/guide for the Porter-Cable oscillating saw to undercut he bottom edge of the side wall panel so it can be removed above the floor tile.

First up was to finish screwing the down the SurePly underlayment on the floor of the passenger seat platform. With that done I turned my attention to trimming the switch panel next to the passenger seat. This panel is just 1/4″ walnut veneered plywood but has both AC and DC switches mounted in a row across the entire top portion. The added thickness of the underlayment and tile on the floor and back wall of the platform required the bottom and back edges of the panel to be trimmed so it could be installed and removed in case I need to get to the wiring behind it. I used pieces of underlayment as spacers/guides and trimmed off the edges using the Porter-Cable oscillating saw. This was the perfect tool for this situation where I could not remove the panel and take it to the shop.

With the panel trimmed and the sawdust vacuumed up I turned my attention to the tile. After test fitting some pieces to see where the edges would land I decided to tidy up the front of the bus so it would be easier to work. While that was certainly true it was also a tactic of stepping away from the work and letting solutions float into consciousness rather than trying to force them out. After several trips to bring things inside the house and garage it was noon and time for lunch, which meant more time to relax and let my subconscious work on the tile layout. Hummus and sourdough pretzel nibblers made a quick, easy, tasty meal and a cup of Constant Comment decaffeinated tea helped wash it down and warm me up while I worked on this post.

Two scrap pieces of the Armstrong Alterna Luxury Vinyl tile used as feeler gauges to make sure the side wall switch panel will clear the floor and rear wall tiles.

As long as I was taking a break I called Pat/Vickie Lintner to let them know I would be coming through Elkhart tomorrow (Friday) and verify that they would be home in the morning. That sounded fine to Pat. I will be picking up an accessory for a Nutone power base unit from them. We have one of the power bases installed in the kitchen counter of the bus but the blender was the only accessory that came with the bus when we bought it. Pat and Vickie had a power base in their bus but it broke years ago. They never replaced it, and don’t plan to, so they no longer needed the accessories and were willing to give them to us. We got most of the pieces from them at the GLCC Surplus and Salvage Rally back in September but we were missing a critical piece which Vickie thought she still had and eventually found.

After my break I reinstalled the large front trim board on the driver side vertical wiring/plumbing chase that is located on the outside wall next to the back of the driver’s chair. I don’t recall how I got it out but I could not get it back in. I ended up trimming off a small protrusion on the lower end and then it went into position without any further difficulty. It was a small thing, but it needed to be done and it was good to get it checked off my (mental) “to do” list. When I cannot solve the problem I am trying to solve (tile layout) I try to keep moving and get other small tasks completed.

I took a few more minutes to carefully measure the adjustment needed to the bump out on the passenger side HVAC duct cover and the dimensions for the two new pieces of walnut that will go on either side of the sofa seat. I brought the old pieces in the house and found the leftover walnut in the garage as I have to take some of it with me tomorrow to Jarel’s cabinet shop in Logansport, Indiana. I think an hour of my day disappeared between these small, simple tasks.

I continued to ponder the tile layout for quite some time, taking and retaking measurements as I tried to figure out an arrangement that would allow the joints to fall in reasonable places while making sure I could notch around things that go through the floor and avoid having any small pieces. That is a lot of constraints. The arrangement I finally came up with had three full 16×16 tiles centered on the landing and into the driver area. There will be pieces about six inches wide along the fore and aft edges, and the first full tile will also be about six inches back from the edge of the landing (by the entry stairs). The joints (grout lines) resulting from this placement will continue up the front of the passenger seat platform and result in tile placements on the platform that should work out well.

Linda called at 4:15 PM to let me know she was on her way home from the bakery and was stopping at Kathi’s on the way. I was done working in the bus for the day so I adjusted the thermostats on the heaters and checked the house battery bank status. The battery bank voltage was at 25.0 VDC, just slightly down from the 25.2 V level of a fully charged and rested “24 V” lead acid battery (2.1 V per cell x 12 cells in series). The State Of Charge (SOC) was at 84% and I decided to leave the charger off until Saturday morning after breakfast. I did have the shorepower turned off for a few hours Wednesday so the refrigerator was running on the inverter for a while but there are no DC loads operating in the coach at the moment and the Magnum remote is showing zero current coming out of the battery bank. There must be some loads, however, as the battery SOC wound not drop that much that quickly due to self-discharge. I locked up the bus, went in the house for the evening, and turned on the outside lights for Linda. Given when she left the office I knew it would be dark by the time she got home.

I took a few pictures throughout the day so I went to my office and off-loaded them onto my computer. I had an e-mail from Gary at BCM with the latest markup of the PDF for the December 2015 issue. I proofread my article and highlighted a half dozen things that needed to be changed, using the sticky note feature for the first time to indicate the corrections, and e-mailed it back to Gary and Jorge.

Linda got home about the time I clicked ‘send’ so I wrapped up my desk work and went upstairs. She had not been grocery shopping this week and wasn’t sure what to fix for dinner so I suggested vegan pancakes. Fifteen minutes later we were enjoying flapjacks with real maple syrup and cups of hot tea. Breakfast for dinner is always a treat. We spent a little time in the living room by the fireplace and then went to the rec room to watch a few TV programs while we doodled on our iPads. We have been trying to break the habit of watching TV in bed but we finished watching the last show in bed and then turned out the lights. In a reversal of our recent usual morning routine I have to be up early and Linda does not, but she still fell asleep before I did.

2015/11/11 (W) Two for One

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We had late morning dentist/hygiene appointments today so Linda did not get up early to go to the bakery and we slept in and got up at 8:30 AM. We showered and dressed and finally had granola for breakfast at 9:15. She made this batch of granola yesterday and it was very yummy.

Since the mice have recently been defeating our simple live traps I cleaned our more complicated one yesterday and set it up last night with a broken open peanut butter pretzel for bait. When I checked the trap this morning it had two brown field mice inside. They were anxious to get out and I was glad to oblige. I set them free in the southwest part of our property on the other side of the road. The last I saw of them they were headed south into dense cover and away from the house.

Our appointments were at 11 AM in Dearborn. Linda left at 9:45 and I followed about five minutes later. We took separate cars since she had to go to the bakery following her appointment. Before I left I checked on the state of charge of the house batteries in the bus. There were at 95% SOC. I turned the charger off last night to let the battery bank drain down a little. I turned off the Broan cube heater and the three toe-kick heaters and then shutoff the AC power coming into the coach. I checked that the inverter was working, which it was, and left for my appointment.

We both had good checkups but Linda will need a crown in the spring. A tooth with an old filling had weakened and needs to be capped. The dental assistants/hygienists have started taking blood pressure readings as part of modern dentistry’s role in monitoring and promoting overall health. I don’t know how accurate the wrist cuff machines are but my blood pressure was 121/59 and Linda’s was 128/67, which are excellent readings if they are even close to being correct.

On the way home I stopped at the new Menard’s on Wixom Road just north of I-96. I was looking for 1/2×2″ fine thread carriage bolts but all they had were coarse thread in longer lengths. As long as I was there I picked up a 6-pack of work socks and two more of the good live traps like the one we already have.

Back at the house I called Terry at A-1 Upholstery to confirm that our spacer cushion for the bus sofa was ready and that she would be there Friday morning. Her response was affirmative on both counts. I then called Josh to verify that he would be at his shop on Friday morning and he said he would. I need to stop there on the way to A-1 Upholstery and return two swivel seat ring bearings.

The new gravel driveway extension and RV parking pad. Phil, on the left side of the driveway by the nearer utility pole, rakes out the topsoil he placed along both sides of the driveway.

Philip Jarrell from Precision Grading was here working on the driveway extension when I got home. After my phone calls I changed into my work clothes and went out to chat with him for a few minutes. Phil had brought another load of screened topsoil and was using his track loader to place it along the sides of the driveway extension and at the west end of the property where the French drain begins. He rough graded it with the track loader and then raked it out by hand and spread grass seed. He will bring straw bales with him on a subsequent trip to cover the soil/seed but he wanted to get the seed down before he left as we have rain and wind forecast starting late this evening and through tomorrow into Friday.

I finally got to work in the bus at 2 PM. My objective was to get the SurePly underlayment installed on the passenger seat platform floor. I lightly sanded the floor patch compound I spread around last night and vacuumed up the particles. I then mounted the head of each of the new carriage bolts to a thick plastic washer using 3M Heavy Duty (double-sided) Mounting Tape. I slid the heads into the two mounting channels with the washers under them so the washers held the bolts up off of the bottom of the channel and forced the square collars up in the open slot of the channel where they could not turn when a nut was tightened on them. This was a critical step because once the underlayment and tile are down I will not be able to get to the heads of these bolts.

With the bolts in position I got the piece of SurePly from the garage. I was starting to slip it into position when I remembered that I installed an angle bracket yesterday but had not cut out a small piece of the underlayment to fit around it. So I took the piece back to the garage, cut out the necessary space, and took it back to the coach. I am starting to wonder how many hours I would have saved by having a proper shop set up right outside the front door of the bus.

[ Photo 2 of 2 – HR – The SurePly underlayment on the co-pilot/navigator platform floor showing how it fits under the outside wall panel and over the four mounting bolts for the seat. ]

The SurePly underlayment on the co-pilot/navigator platform floor showing how it fits under the outside wall panel and over the four mounting bolts for the seat.

The underlayment slipped under the switch panel by the outside wall and dropped over the four mounting bolts just like I planned it, so taking most of yesterday to carefully cut and drill the piece paid off in the end. That felt good, especially in comparison to how yesterday felt.

The weather today was lovely, reaching a high of 58 degrees F with sunny skies and I am sure that added to by general sense of well-being. Our part of Michigan is under a high wind warning starting this evening, however, with maximum gusts of 55 to 60 MPH possible. It’s a good thing we have a whole house generator because those kinds of winds cause power outages.

I decided to screw the underlayment to the bus floor rather than use staples. Again, I did not want to get the big air-compressor and staple gun out, but I also wanted to use the screws to pull the underlayment down tight to the bus sub-floor. I was about 50% done when I saw that Phil was putting his track loader back on the trailer. I thought he was packing up to leave so I went out to talk to him briefly. I went back to the bus and got another 25% of the piece screwed down before I ran out of screws. I was using primarily 1″ #6-SR self-drilling screws with some 1-1/4″ of the same kind. Once again my work was halted short of completion by the lack of some small part.

Phil was finished and on his way at 4:15 PM and by 4:30 I was headed to Lowe’s. Linda texted me that she was leaving the bakery and I had a nice QSO with Tom (K8TAF) while running my errand. Lowe’s only had one pack of the 1″ screws, quantity 100, but I thought that might be enough to get me through tomorrow. I also bought a pack of 100 1-1/4″ screws.

For dinner Linda cooked a couple of yams, heated up a couple of vegan sausages with sautéed onions and red peppers, and steamed some fresh green beans. Yum, yum, yum. After dinner we sat in the living room for a while using our iPads. At 8 PM we watched a few nature and science programs on PBS. Jarel called to confirm when I was coming down to Logansport, Indiana and said that Friday would work. Linda is headed back to the bakery in the morning so she went right to sleep after we were done watching TV.

2015/11/10 (T) A Rainy Day

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I checked the TV weather station before I turned off the lights last night. Rain covered most of Indiana and Ohio and was moving northeast. We were going to get clipped by the western edge of the moisture but the heaviest rain was forecast to pass to our south and east.

Linda planned to go into the bakery today and had her alarm set for 5:45 AM. It went off and I woke her up enough to shut it off and go back to sleep. Around 6 AM we both received e-mails on our iPads and phones, a sure sign that we had lost power to the house. I was awake at this point but stayed in bed until 6:45. I was not falling back asleep, so I put on my robe and made coffee. I finished up the Kenya AA, which is not decaffeinated, figuring we could both use the boost this morning.

While the coffee was brewing I cleaned the cats’ litter tray and checked my e-mail. I had a reply from Bill Tharpe which decided for me that I would be going to Indiana on Friday. I also had replies from the two Mitch’s who had contacted me as about articles I wrote in Bus Conversion Magazine and replied to both of those. I edited the e-mail with the minutes of Sunday’s SLAARC meeting and forwarded it on to the club officers. An e-mail from Gary at BCM indicated that they still needed a photo of Byron and Betty Pigg for the December featured bus article, so I replied and cc:d Byron. Writing for BCM is sometimes a lot of work, but it’s a hobby for and I enjoy it so I do not mind.

It was wet outside and still raining lightly, a perfect day to sit by the fireplace in a robe and drink hot coffee. Phil was hoping to return today with a load of screened topsoil and get it placed and graded along the edges of the driveway but said it would depend on the weather. Once the topsoil is taken care of he will grade the driveway with his bulldozer and make sure the 40 foot long parking area is as flat and level as possible.

Linda finally got up at 8:30 and was starting to get dressed to go to the bakery when I suggested she stay home, rest, and get well. She was immediately OK with that idea, put on her robe, and took her iPad to the living room to enjoy the warmth of the fireplace and some hot coffee. I finished up my draft blog post for yesterday, e-mailed it to myself, and started this one. I really cannot afford to lose a whole day of work on the bus but this is the kind of day where we like to just sit and do quiet things, or even nothing at all. We finally finished our coffee, got dressed, and had a light breakfast at 10 AM.

Taking care of Madeline for three days and nights took a lot of Linda’s mental and physical energy and her cold took what was left. She headed back to bed and I got my thoughts organized relative to working in the bus. I talked to Jarel yesterday and found out that it would cost $50 to have a sheet of 1/4″ Baltic Birch plywood delivered to his shop because he did not have a regular delivery scheduled and the $50 cost of the 60″x 60″ sheet would not meet the minimum cost for free delivery. I did not need the piece of plywood badly enough to pay a 100% surcharge to get it so that idea was off the table until next year.

My goal for today was to get a piece of SurePly underlayment cut and installed on the passenger seat platform. Before I even started on the piece I had to resolve what to do about the four carriage bolts that are used to mount the base. One of the four bolts has some messed up threads but I have a tap and die set and might be able to clean them up. However, I am adding the thickness of the underlayment and floor tile plus a washer to what was there before so I wanted to use a longer bolt. I already knew that Lowe’s and O’Reilly’s did not have what I needed and I presumed that The Home Depot did not either.

I finally went to Howell Hardware and had a good QSO with Steve (N8AR) on the drive there. As I had been told they had a very good selection of hardware, by the piece, but they did not have fine thread carriage bolts in the 1/2″ size I needed. I bought four of the 2″ long coarse thread bolts, four flat washers, four lock washers, and four nuts. I also picked up a large washer to match the other three I already had for securing the central mounting stud along with two nylon washers. That trip took over an hour out of my day before I even got started on my main task.

It took me several hours and many trips back and forth between the bus and the shop (in the garage) to get the piece of underlayment to fit just right. I made one small mistake but the piece was large enough and complicated enough that I did not want to take the time or material to remake it. Before I could install it I needed to get the outside end of the floor patch secured. Yesterday I tried to screw that end to the material underneath it but the screw would not penetrate. I scratched my head for quite a while until it occurred to me that I could use a small angle bracket attached to the vertical wood wiring chase in the forward outside corner. I had limited access to that area, and it took me multiple attempts before I finally got the screw in, but I did. Securing the bracket to the floor patch was a lot easier.

After securing the end of the patch I realized that the area between the front mounting channel and vertical front of the platform was slightly concave. It was not a big dip but it was big enough that it needed to be patched. Floor patching compound was the last thing I wanted to deal with today but it turned out to be just that, because once I applied it it had to dry for hours. It was heavily overcast all day and my mood was correspondingly suppressed so I felt like I was doing everything in slow motion. Based on the fact that I did not even get the piece of underlayment installed perhaps I was.

I try to keep an eye on the “house” batteries in the bus. When I checked them this afternoon the reported voltage was higher than normal so I turned off the charger function on the Magnum 4024 to let the batteries rest and see where the voltage really was. The DC draws on the battery bank were minimal.

I am finishing this post a couple of days later and no longer recall what Linda fixed for dinner but whatever it was I’m sure it was good. After dinner we relaxed in the living room for a while, watched our Tuesday evening TV programs on the larger TV set in the basement recreation room, and then went to bed.

2015/11/09 (M) Clever Mouse

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Madeline coughed quite a bit last night and we were up several times to check on her, so we did not have the best possible night’s sleep. We got up to stay at 7:30 AM and Madeline got up about 15 minutes later. I made our morning coffee while Madeline helped her grandma wash blueberries and make vegan blueberry pancakes. We had a lovely breakfast with orange juice, pancakes with real maple syrup, and blueberries, raspberries, and bananas on the side.

I check the mouse traps in the pantry every morning. A couple of days ago I found one of them broken with the food gone and some mouse poop left in its place. The pantry doors had been left open overnight so I figured one of the cats had discovered the trap (we use live traps) and tossed it around until the door fell open and the mouse escaped. I threw it away since it was broken. This morning I discovered that the food in the other trap had been replaced by mouse poop but the trap was upright with the door closed and was not broken. The pantry had been closed all night so I knew the cats had nothing to do with it. Apparently we have a mouse that has figured out how to defeat the traps. We are not going to set kill traps so we will have to see what else we can find.

We lingered in the living room for a while enjoying our coffee by the fireplace, listening to Madeline play (with) the organ, and watching her play with some of her toys. She made her futon into a car and took her two “bunnies” for a ride. By 9:30 AM I had finished my coffee and changed into my work clothes. It was just below freezing when we got up this morning, but it was a bright, sunny day with no wind, so it would be a comfortable enough day for working on the bus once I turned up the thermostats and warmed up the interior a bit.

My focus today was to get the SurePly underlayment installed on the floor of the passenger seat platform and maybe the two walls. I also wanted to get the outside wall panel trimmed off so it will fit around the tile and needed to build a new step with an open front, but I did not expect to get to those tasks today. First up, however, was getting the small patch I worked on yesterday to fit better and be secure.

I trimmed both ends of the underside of the main patch and recut the side/support panel. I trimmed the side panel several times before I was satisfied with the fit. I used heavy-duty double-sided tape to hold the top patch and side panel to the metal structure underneath. I used a 1-1/2″ stainless steel self-drilling wood screw to secure the top to the vertical piece of 3/4″ plywood that forms the face of the passenger seat platform, and a shorter screw to secure the side panel to the same piece of plywood. I then attached a temporary plate of SurePly over the side panel to the edge of the top plate to hold the side in alignment with the top.

The metal under this patch is rounded leaving a small space between the top and side pieces where they meet. The vertical plywood front face is also beveled leaving a void. I used Door and Window Trim Spray Foam Insulation to fill these areas. This foam has a lower expansion than most spray foam insulation. I did not overfill the voids but put enough in that it expanded out past the edge. I will trim it off flush tomorrow when it is cured. The foam adheres to anything it touches and is rigid enough to be somewhat structural so it should stabilize and secure the patch. Once I trim it and cover it with underlayment it should be good as new.

Madeline’s Aunt Meghan, who is also her buddy, came to visit and play with her today. She arrived at noon and I took a break to visit and have lunch. After lunch Madeline, Meghan, and Linda went to the Brighton Mill Pond Playscape and I resumed working on the bus. They were gone for several hours.

Floor patching compound being applied to the co-pilot/navigator platform.

Before I could put a layer of underlayment on the passenger seat platform I needed to use floor patching compound to fill in some low spots and create a smooth taper from the plywood to some metal edging. But first I removed all of the screws that secure this edging and counter-bored the holes so the screw heads would be flush. As often seems to happen when I am working on something like this some of the screws were rusted and I did not have appropriate replacements. I then have to make a trip to Lowe’s, which is what I did, and bought a small quantity of three different size flathead wood screws. I stopped at O’Reilly’s Auto Parts to see if they had the large metal or nylon washers that are used with the swivel base for the front chairs. They didn’t, but once again suggested that I try Howell Hardware in downtown Howell. I have received that suggestion from people at several different stores so guess I need to check the place out.

When I got back home I finished installing the new screws. The floor patch compound takes a minimum of three to four hours to dry, sometimes much longer, but after two hours it was dry enough for me to use a sanding sponge to smooth out some ridges and feather some edges that needed it. It was clear, however, that I wasn’t going to be able to accomplish what I set out to do today. And so it goes; I need to do the work correctly which means doing all the things that need to be done in the order that they need to occur. Everything takes time and things that have to dry, set, or cure do so on their own schedule, not mine.

Phil had shown up around 3 PM so I went out to chat briefly with him and then went inside to change clothes. He had a partial load of topsoil left from a job earlier today and dumped it on the other side of the street by the 3rd driveway culvert. He used his front loader to place it along the south side of the new pull-through driveway extension and moved the small pile from the west end of the property to the north side of the driveway.

I still had plenty of daylight and wanted to make some good use of my time so I started thinking ahead to the layout of the tile in the cockpit. I measured various parts of the cockpit and although the number of square feet is small compared to the main floor the layout will be more difficult. As with all tile layouts it needs to be “balanced” while avoiding small pieces. Linda and I agreed that the pattern in the cockpit does not need to match the main floor, which is laid out diagonally, so that opens up options for how to lay out the tile.

The main landing is less than two tiles wide (front-to-back) so the best layout for that area is with a grout line dividing it in half, but that might not work well in the driver’s area. The driver’s area presents the additional problem of a steering column, brake pedal/valve, an accelerator pedal with its electrical cable that goes through the floor. The “holes” in the tile to accommodate these things have to be created using two notched pieces so they can be installed around the protrusions. I also need holes for the seat base mounting bolts and power cable for the 6-way power base. Those can be actual holes but I do not want grout lines to fall at the edges of the base. I also have to be cognizant of the walls, which are getting tiled. The distance along the face of the passenger seat platform is close to 65″. The tiles are 16″ squares so four tiles with three 1/8th” grout spaces is only 64-3/8″. See, it’s complicated.

The other thing I pondered and measured was the new step between the passenger seat platform and the main floor. Again there are several parameters: (1) We want the finished (tiled) height to split the distance from the tiled platform to the tiled main floor exactly in half; (2) we want the finished depth to be half the finished depth of the platform, and; (3) we want an open front so we can store shoes under the step. The total rise will be just under 14″ so the step rise will be a little less than 7″. Subtracting about an inch for wood and tile will leave a 6″ high space for shoes. The platform is 29″ deep so splitting that in half results in two treads of 14-1/2″, plenty deep for shoe storage. I considered having the step angle across the platform, being deeper by the driver seat and shallower by the passenger seat. While it would add an element of aesthetic interest it would greatly complicate the construction without adding any practical utility, so I rejected that idea.

As I considered the construction of the new step I was also thinking about the fact that there is a hole in the front end of the passenger side HVAC duct. The hole opens into the space behind the switch panel on the wall next to the passenger seat and just aft of the entry door but there is nowhere for the air to go from there. The hole is easy to see but not easy to reach so I estimated it to be three inches in diameter which is approximately seven square inches in area.

One possibility is to install a 4″ diameter circular louvered duct in the switch panel. It would be large enough in area, could be rotated to direct the flow in any desired direction, and has internal shutters that could be closed down to reduce or cut off the air flow. The main downside is lack of space behind the panel but I could cut off the tube behind the locking tabs. Another downside is that the cats sleep under the passenger chair while the bus is moving and the direct airflow might be uncomfortable and/or annoying for them.

Another possibility is to create a narrow duct along the back wall of the platform the same height as the new step and tie it in to the inside of the step, allowing the conditioned air to come out the open front. That will involve a bit more woodworking and complicate the tile installation, but could be added later, so I will probably opt for the round louvered register for now, if I do anything.

When I was done pondering the HVAC possibilities I put the seat pedestals back on the landing, locked up the bus, and went inside to change clothes. Meghan left while I was changing clothes so I did not get to say goodbye. Apparently Linda thought I was taking a shower and would be a while. Since we needed to get Madeline back to her house well before her bedtime we decided to head to Ann Arbor and have dinner there. I deflated and rolled up her portable toddler bed while Linda and Madeline gathered up her clothes, books, toys, and other things. I loaded the car while Linda got her dressed to travel. I checked in with Phil to get a status update and let him know we were leaving. We were on our way at 4:45 PM.

The drive down was OK as the really heavy traffic was headed north out of Ann Arbor. We tried to keep Madeline awake by reviewing all the fun things she had done since she got to our house late Friday afternoon but we were not successful. As I exited M-14 eastbound onto US-23 southbound I could see that traffic was stopped not far after the Plymouth Road exit so I left the highway and headed west on Plymouth Road to Huron Parkway. From there I headed south, paralleling US-23 to the west. At Washtenaw Avenue I turned east, and after a short distance turned left into the small shopping plaza where Elevation Burger was located.

I order a grilled cheese sandwich and Mandarin oranges for Madeline. Linda and I had vegan burgers and fries and Linda shared her fries with Ms. M. Madeline was slow to wake up but perked up when her food arrived. That girl likes to eat! 🙂 After dinner we made the short trip to Madeline’s house and arrived at 6:30 PM. Linda got Madeline into her pajamas while I brought all of the stuff in from the car and turned up the thermostat.

Madeline was wide awake and full of energy so she played with her kitchen toys and tools and had Grandma Linda read her four stories. I dozed off for a little while and then spent some quality time with Gus the cat. Gus loves people but tends to keep his distance from Madeline who is just a bit too energetic and enthusiastic for him.

Brendan and Shawna’s flight was due in to Metro Airport at 6:50 PM and he texted Linda at 6:51 that they had landed. They were home before 8 PM and got to spend time with their very awake, excited, and active daughter. We left at 8:30 and stopped at Biggby Coffee on Washtenaw Avenue. Rain was moving into our area from the south but had not yet arrived and the drive home was uneventful. We were home by 9:15 PM and headed straight to bed where we watched Scorpion and NCIS-LA. Linda came down with a cold while Madeline was here and went to sleep as soon as NCIS was over. I watched Travelscope on the Create channel and left the TV on while I worked on this post. It was another long, busy day during which I made forward progress on the bus.

2015/11/08 (N) SLAARC Elections

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Madeline was in bed last night at 8 PM and fell asleep quickly. We were in bed before 10 PM. Linda fell asleep right away and I put my iPad away and turned off the light at 10:30 PM. Good thing, too, as Madeline started coughing at 5:30 AM. Linda got up at 6 AM and brought her into our bed. I don’t know if she ever fell back asleep but we all stayed there quietly enjoying the warmth of the covers until 7:30 AM, by which time the house was warming up. Hurrah for programmable thermostats!

Being Sunday morning, and having Madeline here, we were in no hurry to get up, get dressed, or get busy. Not that we had nothing to do, we just were not in a hurry to do anything. Linda prepared baked French toast last night, with a little help from Madeline, and let it sit overnight in the refrigerator. She got up at 6:45 to pre-heat the oven and again at 7 to put the dish in to bake.

I got up at 7:30 and made coffee. The downlight over the end of the counter where I make the coffee burned out last night so I replaced the bulb. Linda set the table and took the French toast out of the oven at 8. When she cut into it and served out pieces for each of us it was obvious that something was very wrong. Instead of baked French toast we had inedible goo. Linda has had very few recipe failures since we switched to a whole-food plant-based (WFPB) vegan diet but this one took first place. She mentioned that it was a different recipe than she has used in the past and that she used an egg replacer she has not used before which did not seem to dissolve correctly last night.

Linda was willing to make vegan pancakes but I did not see any reason for her to go to that trouble. We still had plenty of granola, part of a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread, and fresh berries, all of which made for an easy but tasty breakfast.]

Madeline plays (at) the organ. It is one of her favorite “toys” at our house.

After breakfast I cleared the table and then read a book to Madeline while Linda cleaned off the dishes. I turned on the fireplace and we drank our coffee in the living room while Madeline found various things to play with, ultimately ending up at the organ.

By 9:30 AM we were feeling like getting dressed. I put in my work clothes and finally got to work in the bus at 10 after turning up the thermostats in the library, garage, and bus. The first thing I needed to do was screw down the last/top layer of SurePly underlayment in the landing and driver area. I used #6 SR (square recessed) self-drilling wood screws in three different lengths based on what was underneath the underlayment. I chose to use screws rather than staples for several reasons. The main one was that I needed the ability of the screws to pull things together. The other reason was that I did not want to get the air compressor and stapler out for this relatively small number of fasteners. (The SurePly underlayment for the main floor of the bus was stapled with approximately 350 staples per full 4’x8’ sheet.)

I pulled up the larger piece of SurePly one last time, measured the location of the boundary between the original bus floor and the new patch, marked the boundary on the top of the large piece, and put it back in place. I carefully aligned the smaller piece to the stair edge and along the front and made sure the larger piece also fit correctly. The smaller piece sits entirely on the new landing, which is 3/4″ plywood, so I secured it with 1″ screws, spacing them 2-to-3 inches apart along every edge and about 4 inches apart in the field.

The 1/2″ piece of plywood just forward of the driver’s seat was partially unscrewed and needed to be screwed back down. Since it was installed over the original 1″ thick plywood bus floor I replaced the existing screws with 1-1/4″ screws and added more, especially along the edges.

To secure the larger piece I used 1-1/2″ screws over the patch, which was already about 1-1/4″ thick. Over the original 1″ thick plywood bus floor I used the 1-1/4″ screws and over the 3/4″ thick landing I used 1″ screws. I ran out of the 1″ length before I got the larger piece secured. As much as I did not want to spend time driving around today I could not finish this task without the proper screws so around 11:15 AM I headed off to Lowe’s. As long as I had to make the trip I looked for washers to space up the mounting bolts for the passenger seat pedestal base and nylon washers to go under the nut on the main mounting stud for the two swivel bases. I found something that might work for the former but not the latter.

Linda and Madeline were getting ready to leave as I returned home just before noon. Madeline was upset because Linda made her wear a sweater under her coat and she did not want to. She is generally a cheerful and pleasant little girl but we never know when or why she is going to draw a line in the sand. She doesn’t always or even usually get her way but she is persistent. The tears, of course, are not the result of genuine injury and are usually quickly enough wiped away by focusing her attention on something else. They finally pulled out of the driveway at 12:15 PM for an outing at Kensington Metropark.

I finished securing the larger piece of SurePly over the landing and then started on the next task. I had decided to patch in an area at the end of the passenger platform where it drops down into the back of the driver area. The area to be patched was only 12-3/4″ long and less than 4″ wide but the underlying metal was rounded over in this area and there wasn’t much I could use to attach new wood. The area was also deep and not level. I ended up making a sandwich with two layers of SurePly, two wood shins on top of those, and a piece of 3/4″ plywood on top. I got all of the pieces cut and fitted and then marked them with pencil lines down the exposed edges to act as alignment marks.

I carefully assembled the sandwich upside down in the shop and screwed it together from the bottom. I then put it in place in the bus and measured for a vertical piece with an angled rear edge to catch the outside edge of the patch and hold it up. I secured the patch with one 1-1/2″ screw near the front and secured the vertical piece with one screw into the same piece of wood.

Building and installing this patch took a while and I was just finishing it when Linda and Madeline got home around 3:30 PM from their trip to Kensington Metropark. By this time it was too late to start working on the underlayment for the passenger seat platform as I needed to stop working at 4 PM and get cleaned up for our amateur radio club meeting this evening. With the little time remaining I unscrewed the top of the step and removed the two screws that held it to the rear and side walls of the co-pilot/navigator platform. I then removed a half dozen flat head wood screws that held a piece of metal trim to the front edge of the platform.

The screws were rusted but came out. The issue for my work was that the heads were not countersunk and stuck above the metal in a way that would interfere with installing the sheet of underlayment. I used a 7/16″ drill bit to create tapered holes and may go back tomorrow and use my countersink bit. I looked, but did have any appropriate screws to replace the ones I took out. That meant another trip to Lowe’s which I could do after dinner on my way to the ham radio club meeting.

I put the two swivel pedestal/bases back in the landing and locked the bus. I made sure everything was in the garage that needed to be and closed the overhead door. I showered and shaved and put on clean clothes. I then sat on the living room sofa with Madeline while Linda fixed dinner. I worked on this post while Ms. M played games on Linda’s iPad. It’s amazing to watch a 3-year old manipulate an iPad. Their use of the touch screen is intuitive, which is cool, and it holds their attention in a way that other activities do not, almost to the point of obsession or addiction, which can border on troubling. In spite of how much Madeline likes to eat, Grandma Linda had to gently take the iPad away and get her to come to the table for dinner.

As part of her food planning for this weekend Linda had picked up some mock turkey patties with gravy. She also picked up some vegan heat-n-serve mac-n-cheese. Those were the main course this evening along with a nice green salad and the rest of the fresh pineapple. Dessert was going to be cake but I had to leave before it was served.

I left at 5:30 PM and drove to Lowe’s in New Hudson. I monitored a QSO between Mike (W8XH) and Steve (N8AR) until Steve reached the meeting location in South Lyon. I then called for Mike and we chatted until I reached Lowe’s. I bought a box of 1-1/4′ long # 12 flathead wood screws and picked up three 40 W appliance light bulbs for the microwave in the house as the installed ones had burned out.

I got to the Witch’s Hat Depot at 6:35 PM so I had a chance to visit with my fellow hams before the meeting started at 7 PM. Steve (N8AR) had a display set up with several different DC power meters he ordered off of EBay. The business meeting was longer than usual because we had to elect officers for 2016. The process was very smooth, surprisingly so actually, but still took 10 minutes. The meeting was done by 7:20 after which the club president, Harvey (AC8NO), did a presentation on his Icom IC-7200 portable base station transceiver.

I was back home by 8:40 PM. Madeline had already gone to bed so Linda and I had some quiet adult time to enjoy a cup of hibiscus tea. We were both tired after long days of work and play but we did a lot today and felt good about the things we accomplished.

2015/11/07 (S) Measure One, Cut Twice

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We were all up at 7 AM. I got dressed and left at 7:25 AM for the SLAARC breakfast in South Lyon. Linda and Madeline had toaster waffles and fresh berries for breakfast at home. The main reason I went to breakfast was to talk with Larry (K8UT) about a plug-in for WordPress that he recently found and though I might want to use for the SLAARC website. He purchased a five site license for the full version of a survey plug-in and was willing to donate one use to the ham radio club.

When I got home at 9:30 AM the girls were getting ready to leave. Linda’s plan for the morning was to take Madeline to the Howell Public Library. The library has a very nice play area for younger children and a good selection of children’s books. Apparently they planned to be gone for a while because they had a bag packed with snacks and other things for an extended outing. I changed into my work close and when they left I resumed working on the bus.

My first objective was to cut the final piece of SurePly underlayment for the entry landing and area under the driver’s seat. It was a large and complex piece that took me a long time to lay out even using the piece that goes under the driver’s seat as a template. When I finally had it cut and drilled with the holes for the seat mounting bolts I took it to the bus to see how it fit. Unfortunately I could not get it in. It had to go under something on the front and back and also had to fit around curves and angles, and it just was not physically possible to get it in place in one piece. It was immediately obvious that I would have to cut the piece into two parts but not so obvious how best to do that.

Linda and Madeline returned about this time (12:30 PM) and I was ready for a break. They brought in their “haul” from the library—eight books and five videos—and laid it out on the living room coffee table. The play market that Madeline likes so much had been replaced by a play kitchen. The librarian told Linda they rotate the playsets every three months to keep it interesting for the children.

After going to the library Linda drove to the Brighton Mill Pond so Madeline could play at the Playscape. Linda reported that Madeline has figured out how to pump a swing and is able to keep it going once someone helps her get started. As a special treat they went to the ice cream shop nearby and Ms. M got a scoop of ice cream. She did not tell me what flavor, but she said it had sprinkles on it.

It was going on 1 PM and seemed like a good time to have lunch, so Linda made hummus sandwiches with sliced onion for us and hummus on bread for Madeline. She washed off a big bunch of grapes and we all enjoyed some of those too. After lunch I read one of the library books to Madeline and then Linda read her a different one. At that point I excused myself and went back to work on the bus.

I pondered the situation with the piece of underlayment and finally saw what appeared to be a natural cut line. After considering where the tile would go, however, I decided against it. Unlike the tile on the main floor of the bus, which is installed on the bias, the grouted joint lines in the cockpit/entry are going to run straight fore-and-aft and side-to-side. I was not sure, however, exactly where they would fall. I needed to avoid having a grout line fall on a joint between two pieces of underlayment so I ended up cutting the piece that covers the landing at an angle. This gave me a smaller piece that tucked under the center console on the dashboard and a larger piece that tucked under some metal trim behind the driver’s seat. I was now able to get both pieces in but they did not fit properly.

I had used my last large piece of SurePly to make the original single piece, and it had taken me hours to do, so I did not want to remake it. I made any trips between the bus and the garage/shop, trimming a little bit at a time and rechecking the fit, until I finally got the piece to fit correctly. In the process the piece had changed enough that the smaller piece was now too small and could not be trimmed to fit. I searched through my scrap pieces of SurePly and found one that was almost big enough to remake the smaller piece, but not quite.

It was now 3:30 PM, and I still had some good daylight to work by, so I secured the floor patch under the driver’s seat. The patch consisted of a 1/4″ thick layer of SurePly with a 3/4″ thick layer of oak veneered plywood on top of it to make a 1″ thick piece. The SurePly was screwed to the 3/4″ plywood from underneath. With the patch in place I installed another piece of 1/4″ SurePly that covered the patch and extended out over the old surrounding wood, which was still sound, and filled in the area once occupied by a 1/2″ thick piece of plywood. I used 1″ self-drilling screws to secure the top layer of SurePly to the underlying wood, slightly countersinking the heads and pulling the underlying patch up tight while pulling the SurePly down tight to the old wood. I walked on it and it felt secure. There will be one more layer of SurePly and a layer of tile before the seat base gets re-installed. Bolting down the base will obviously pull everything down tight to the structure of the bus if it isn’t already.

Linda and Madeline spent part of the afternoon baking vegan cupcakes. Linda usually makes chocolate ones but I requested white/vanilla ones this time. She found a recipe that looked promising and used it. They needed frosting to finish the cupcakes so they bundled up and went to Meijer’s. They got back a little before 4 PM, frosting and sprinkles in hand.

I needed more SurePly to continue working, not that I was eager to; I had spent most of the day trying to make one stupid piece of wood and still wasn’t finished. The temperature had been dropping all afternoon and it was down to 55 in the garage, which was open so I could go back-and-forth to the bus. I still had the antique SUN distributor tester in my car and determined that I could not get 4’x8′ sheets of material in the car with the machine in there. Linda and Madeline put on their shoes and coats and came outside so Linda could help me get the tester out of the car. I then went to Lowe’s.

I had a nice QSO with David (W8DRD) from our ham radio club on the way to Lowe’s. At the store I was struggling to get the SurePly off of the top of the stack, which was above my head at the limit of my reach. A customer stopped and helped me which I appreciated. I needed one sheet to finish the driver/landing area and get the piece I need for the passenger seat platform floor, but I bought two sheets just in case the various scraps I have are not large enough to do the walls of the passenger seat platform.

I was back home by 5 PM and unloaded the two sheets of SurePly. I put one on the 2x4s across the sawhorses and the other one in the small bay with the other sheet materials. Linda and Madeline put their shoes and coats on once again and came outside so Linda could help me load the distributor tester back into my car. Linda said we would eat dinner around 6 PM so I started working on remaking the small piece for the front portion of the landing.

I used the original piece as a pattern for the edges that fit properly but cut it larger than needed for the edge that needed to match the other piece where I cut it into two parts. After getting it trimmed to fit correctly on three sides I put the larger piece in place overlapping the smaller one and traced the edge on the smaller piece. I took it back to the garage and used the clamp-on saw guide to get a clean, straight cut. When I took it back to the bus and set it in place it fit. Success at last.

By now it was dark and getting close to dinner time. I decided to leave the securement of this last layer of SurePly until tomorrow when I was refreshed and had better light. I had hoped to get this landing/driver floor finished today, as well as the floor for the passenger seat platform, but given the difficulties and frustrations of today I felt like I had ended at a good place. I locked up the bus and closed the garage door on my way in. I expect tomorrow to be another good day, but then if I didn’t, why would I bother?

I changed out of my work clothes and put on my sweats. Dinner was vegan cheeseburgers with a vegetable medley on the side and fresh pineapple. Dessert was vanilla frosted white cupcakes with sprinkles. After clearing the table I interacted with Madeline while Linda cleaned up a few dishes. She and Madeline then prepared the baked French toast, which has to sit overnight. As promised, once all of the stuff was done we went to the basement and watched one of the Daniel Stripped Tiger videos. When we had seen enough episodes we turned off the TV set and went upstairs. Madeline got into her pajamas and went to bed. I put a load of laundry into the washing machine and then settled in to my usual evening routine. I pulled the laundry out of the dryer at 9:45 PM and we turned in for the night at 10 PM.

2015/11/06 (F) MEF3

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Rain was forecast for overnight with the highest probability between 4 and 7 AM. I think we had some light rain starting a little after midnight but around 6:45 AM a front moved through with intense thunderstorms. The heavy rain lasted at most 15 minutes, but while it was coming down I could not see past the railing on our deck. The winds were also very intense judging by the sound and movement of the Crimson King Maple Tree next to the deck.

When we finally got up Linda checked the weather. The storm front had already pushed into Ontario, Canada and it looked like we were done with the rain. Temperatures will drop during the day and we have some below freezing lows coming up the next few nights, but it’s November so we can’t claim to be surprised and have no basis to complain.

Linda left around 9:45 AM to go to the supermarket. While she was gone I worked on my iPad finishing my posts from Wednesday and yesterday. I made a few phone calls and sent several e-mails before getting to work on the bus.

One call was to SLOAN’s in Linden to see about having the lawn tractor repaired. The service tech said the normal turnaround this time of year is about two weeks depending what is needed and whether they have the parts on hand. He said that if I brought it in soon and they did not get it finished before Thanksgiving they would store it for us until spring. Given the limited space in our garage and the need to get Linda’s car in there for the winter having them store it would be a real bonus but would require the better part of day to borrow Mike’s trailer, haul the lawn tractor up there, and return the trailer to Mike.

The second call was to A-1 Upholstery in Elkhart, Indiana. Terry said the fabric was sewn for our spacer cushion and she was expecting the foam today or Monday. Once the foam was stuffed into the fabric she would have to stitch the seam closed. She figured it should be ready by Wednesday.

My last call was to Pat Lintner from our FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches (GLCC) chapter. He and Vickie live just outside of Elkhart, Indiana and found several pieces for an old Nutone kitchen counter mounted multi-function appliance. We have a Nutone power base in our bus that works and got a few accessories from Pat and Vickie at the GLCC Surplus and Salvage Rally back in September. They subsequently found more, and were going to bring them to Florida, but I let them know I would very likely be passing through Elkhart late next week and could pick them up. Pat offered me the use of the guest room, as he always does, and I may take him up on it this time. Given the number of places I have to stop it will likely be a very long day.

One of my e-mails was to our cabinet maker, Jarel Beatty, to update him on when I might be coming to Logansport and to see if he could/would get a 60″x60″ sheet of Baltic Birch plywood and cut it into four 30″x 30″ pieces for me. I then e-mailed Bill Tharpe to let him know I would be in his part of Indiana late next week and would drop off the antique SUN Distributor Tester at his place in Mexico, Indiana.

Bus floor under the driver’s seat. Black tray to rear (upper left) has been sprayed with rubber undercoating. Seat mounting rails (center) are visible. Open area is the bay below the driver’s seat.

Linda got back around 11 AM and we finally got to work on bus-related projects at 11:15. The POR-15 and black spray-on rubberized undercoating paint seemed to have dried adequately overnight but the wood I treated with Thompson’s Water Seal was still tacky. The directions said it took 48 hours to dry but we don’t have that kind of time to wait.

We removed all of the painter’s plastic and painter’s tape from the cockpit of the bus and put it in a trash bag. I then drilled a 1/4″ drain hole in the bottom of each tray area where water had accumulated. The one under the passenger seat opened into a dark space but I was fairly certain it was outside the body behind the plastic wheel well trim. I could see the driveway gravel through the driver side hole so I knew it was outside the body.

The next task was putting spray foam insulation in a few critical spots. We did not need much for the bus so I sealed two holes in the floor of the bedroom in our house (under a couple of the baseboard radiators) and then added some around the back door frame of the garage. Once I start using a can of this spray foam insulation I find it best to use it up.

Cutting and fitting the new plywood to patch the area under the driver’s seat in the bus.

Patching the floor under the passenger seat involved three pieces of wood. The tray area under the plywood floor between the seat mounting channels is slightly raised along the inside edges of the channels. I had cut a piece of 3/16″ SurePly to fit between the raised edges and slide under the existing floor towards the center of the bus. I set it in place and slid it under the old floor while Linda and I help it up slightly with pry bars. Because of the geometry of the situation I had to cut about six inches off of the end of this piece towards the outside of the bus. I had notched this piece to fit around the drain line for the front AC evaporator, so it slipped in behind the first piece just right. The third part of the patch was a piece of recycled 3/4″ plywood that I had cut yesterday to just fit between the mounting channels. With that in place I screwed through the old wood into SurePly and screwed through the 3/4″ plywood into the SurePly and pulled it up tight.

By this time it was 1:15 PM and I was ready for lunch. Linda made hummus and onion sandwiches and served them with tangerine halves. A simple but delicious mid-day meal.

After lunch we worked on the driver side floor patch. The driver side was trickier because the patch has to rest on and span structural members. As with the passenger side I am trying to replace 1″ thick plywood without having access to material of that thickness. The plywood sold as 3/4″ actually measures from 0.707″ to 0.717 inches in thickness. As it turned out the combination of so-called 3/4″ plywood with the SurePly underlayment plywood was just thick enough to match the old 1″ stuff.

Yet another layer of plywood to fill in and even up the floor under the driver’s seat in the bus.

I had to trim the piece of SurePly several times and drill holes for the seat mounting bolts. The holes were not quite in the right place but I was able to trim it to my satisfaction and it was generally a good fit. We then used it as a template for laying out the same shape on a piece of 3/4″ oak veneered plywood.

Hardwood veneered plywood is more expensive than regular fir plywood but it has more layers and is dimensionally more stable. I had a piece that was flat and big enough to cut out the part we needed so I used it. After some minor trimming it fit properly and lined up with the SurePly layer. I turned them upside down, aligned them carefully, and screwed the SurePly to the underside of the 3/4″ piece. I then installed them back into the open area.

We now needed another piece of SurePly, but it needed to be larger and a different shape. It would be one of two pieces that would replace the 1/2″ thick top layer of plywood. I removed the old piece from the bus after feeding two wires back through a hole. We used the old piece as a template to outline the new piece and mark the four holes for the mounting bolts and the one for the wires. I cut out the new piece and drilled the holes and then put it in place. I was surprised by how much it was off. It needed to be wider and longer and the holes were not as well aligned with the holes in the plywood below it as they needed to be.

All of the patch pieces in place in the driver’s compartment. The four holes are for the mounting bolts for the seat pedestal base.

SurePly is not expensive but it’s not free either. It is relatively easy to work with, however, so making a second piece was not a big deal. What was a big deal was the cloud cover, dropping temperature, wind, and diminishing light, all of which were making outside work more difficult and less enjoyable with each passing minute. But we took our time and got it cut, and after some minor trimming it fit very nicely. I did not, however, secure it, or the 1″ plywood sandwich under it, as I needed the top piece to use as a template for the final piece. This last piece will not only cover the area under the driver’s seat, it will extend out towards the door and cover the landing. Once I have that cut correctly I will secure the bottom sandwich and then use floor leveling compound to fill in gaps. I will then install the last two layers of SurePly. At that point I will need to go to Lowe’s for another sheet of SurePly to finish the passenger seat platform and will probably get two sheets just to make sure I have enough. As much as I like going to Lowe’s and The Home Depot, each trip takes time away from actually working on the bus.

We quit working at 4:30 PM to get the tools put away before Brendan and Madeline arrived. They got here at 5:15 PM and she was very excited to see us and be at our house. Linda and Brendan got all of Ms. M’s stuff from the car to the house and Brendan transferred the car seat to Linda’s car. Brendan entertained Madeline while Linda got the inflatable toddler bed set up. Madeline went immediately for the cabinet under the sink in the hall bathroom where we keep the bandages and found one to put on. She likes cartoon character bandages.

Brendan hung around until 6 PM and left just as Linda put dinner on the table. He and Shawna are headed to Ajo, Arizona this weekend for a wedding. Their flight to Phoenix leaves tomorrow morning so Madeline will be with us until Monday afternoon when Linda takes her back to her house in Ann Arbor. Her parents’ flight is due in at 7 PM so Linda won’t be home before 9 PM that evening.

For dinner Linda made roasted potatoes and mock chicken tenders. She and Ms. M had broccoli and peas but she was kind enough to only serve me broccoli. I don’t think I will ever develop a taste for green peas.

By the time we finished dinner Madeline was a little tired and had a brief crying episode when I told her she could not use our bed as a trampoline. Linda offered to let her watch an episode of Daniel Stripped Tiger and that seemed to ease her distress at having been told ‘no’ which is a very traumatic experience for her at this age. She wanted to put on her pajamas and brush her teeth first, so Linda helped her with that. The two of them climbed into our bed and watched the video on Shawna’s iPad while I stayed in the living room and wrote this blog post.

When the video was over Madeline wished me ‘good night’ and went quietly off to bed. Linda and I lingered in the living room and I texted Chuck to inquire about their travels yesterday and today. I then went to my office for a while where I updated our WordPress site, off-loaded photos from today’s work, logged in to RVillage and checked the forums of various groups, and dealt with a few e-mails. I came back upstairs at 9:45 PM and we were in bed by 10 PM where I finished the draft of this post.

2015/11/05 (R) POR-15

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Linda was back at the bakery today, so she was up early and gone before I even thought about getting out of bed. Having her homemade granola as our standard breakfast means I can feed myself under such circumstances with very little time spent on preparation and cleanup. I made a cup of Stash China Black tea instead of coffee; it’s quicker and cleaner. I like tea, and only started drinking coffee at age 50, but this morning the choice was motivated by ease and quickness of preparation and minimal cleanup as I was anxious to get busy working on the bus.

My focus today was getting the areas in the cockpit where I cut out the old water-damaged plywood ready for the installation of new wood. That meant getting POR-15 applied to the areas of rusted metal in the cockpit and spray painting over it with black rubberized undercoating paint. I also wanted to start cutting and fitting the wood pieces that I will use to patch the floor. I finished building a pair of sawhorses and set them up in the driveway just outside the large garage door so I could measure, mark, and cut wood at waist height. I was working on one of the pieces when the whole house generator came on at noon, ran its exercise cycle, and shut down 20 minutes later. Shortly thereafter I heard the rumble of a big truck coming down the road and a few seconds after that Phil’s truck and trailer drove past.

Phil drove to the west end of the property, turned around, and parked down there. He brought his Takeuchi front loader and used it to spread the large pile of topsoil around the part of our yard where the French drain starts. He filled in low spots and graded everything off to blend in nicely. He then worked his way up the drain line towards the culvert that goes under the road. When Phil was done moving dirt around he spread grass seed and loosely distributed three bales of straw. That gave him a good idea of how much more straw he would need.

I eventually took a break and walked down to chat with him in the middle of all that work. He finished moving some dirt and also took a break for lunch. He will have a load of screened topsoil delivered as soon as he can to use on both sides of the new gravel driveway. He also clarified that the 40 foot parking pad portion of the driveway is probably not flat/level as it is not finished yet. When he places and grades the topsoil his equipment will tear up the driveway a bit. He will then use his bulldozer to finish the driveway, making sure the pad is flat and level. That was a relief as I thought he was done and I was fairly certain the pad was not flat or level.

By 2:30 PM I finally had the areas of rusted metal prepared and masked off with painter’s plastic. I applied the POR-15 with a foam brush. In spite of being careful I got some on my hands and in retrospect should have worn disposable gloves. The only way to get this product off of things, including skin, is with the POR-15 solvent, which I had failed to purchase. Once dry it is permanent, so my right hand is going to look like I just changed the oil on the bus until the old skin gets replaced with new. The drying time for the POR-15 is 2 to 6 hours. The afternoon high temperature was 72 degrees F so I figured I would check at 4:30 PM. The directions said I could paint it while it was still tacky as long as it set enough not to transfer.

Linda got home around 3:30 PM and changed into her work clothes. Phil was still here working but we left him alone. The weather forecast for overnight and into tomorrow was for rain, possibly heavy, so we did not want to cause any delay in Phil’s work. I had cut and fit four pieces of wood earlier. We put painter’s plastic over the sawhorses and laid them out bottom sides up. Linda put 2×4 blocks under them to get the edges off of the plastic and I coated them with Thompson’s Water Seal. I am doing what I can to protect this new wood from water damage.

I needed to finish masking off the cockpit with painter’s plastic before spraying the black rubberized undercoating paint so Linda helped me with that. The plastic is very thin and much easier to handle with two people. While we were doing that Phil drove past. We took a break and walked down to west end of the property to see what Phil had accomplished today. Back in the bus we had the area masked off to my satisfaction by 4:45 PM.

The base of my thumbs were bothering me (arthritis) so Linda shook the paint can for the required three minutes. Although the light was fading due to the hour of the day and the cloud cover, I was still able to see well enough to spray the paint where needed. That was the end of our work for the day, except for cleaning up, and I was satisfied with what we had accomplished. We put some painter’s tape over three areas where we thought water might be getting in and then started putting everything away.

The wood pieces we treated with Thompson’s Water Seal were still wet so I picked them up from underneath and carried them into the back of the garage. Linda brought the blocks in and set them on the floor and I put the pieces back on top of the blocks. The directions said to allow at least 48 hours for drying but I plan to flip them over and coat the other side tomorrow if possible. We are running out of time and I cannot wait two days to seal the other side and then another two days for it to dry. We put the various tools away, removed the plastic from the sawhorses, and moved the 2×4 stringers and the sawhorses into the small garage bay. It was 5:45 PM when we closed up the garage and it was getting dark, a clear reminder that summer was behind us and winter was approaching.

We relaxed for a while before dinner. Linda made a nice salad and reheated the whole wheat linguini she made the other night. We opened the bottle of Frey Natural White wine to try it. I liked it even less than their Natural Red, if that’s possible. It was very dry and since I do not care for dry wines I was not able to judge its other qualities. Linda did not care for it either, and she tends to be OK with dry wines, so I suspect it is just not a very good wine. I suggested she find a recipe that calls for white wine and use the rest of it in the dish.

One of our favorite TV shows is The Big Bang Theory. It has moved to Thursday evenings this season, so we went downstairs to watch it. The problem is that once we are in front of the TV set we tend to stay there. I use the time to multi-task and work on my blog post for the day, so it’s not a complete waste of time. Besides, we do not consider being entertained a waste of our time. I am enjoying working on the bus, and although some aspects of the work appear humorous in retrospect, I am rarely laughing while in the middle of it. I like things that make me laugh, and The Big Bang Theory is a very cleverly written show that is well acted and very funny.

2015/11/04 (W) Southbound Liberty

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Linda decided last night to work at home today rather than driving into the bakery in Hamtramck. That meant she did not have to get up at 5:45 AM. She was up just before 7 and I was up just after that. I made a large pot of Sweet Seattle Dreams half-caffe coffee and Linda toasted slices of cinnamon raisin bread for breakfast. After breakfast she settled in to work at her desk while I tended to several chores.

I last changed our whole house water filter in May (of this year) and it looked like it was overdue for replacement. I had one filter element left so I used it. The process is simple enough: I turned off the well pump, shut off the valves on either side of the filter housing, released the pressure in the housing, and unscrew the removable bowl. When I unwrapped the filter and read the directions I was reminded that I am supposed to clean the bowl with warm, soapy water, rinse it clean, and then sanitize it with a bleach solution and rinse it out again. That requires water, of course, but I had the water shut off and the filter housing disassembled so I had n way to turn the water back on. The only way to accomplish this would be to stage the needed water before shutting off the water system but I never remember to open the new filter element are read the directions before I start. I mean, really, it’s not the sort of procedure that requires me to read the directions each time.

One of the old swivel bearings (L) and one of the new swivel bearings (R). The new one is obviously smaller than the old one and was not compatible with our pedestals and power bases.

Not having any running water I wiped out the bowl with paper towels as best I could. The directions called for lubricating the main O-ring with silicon grease. I knew I had some from the last time I changed the filter. It was hiding in plain sight but took me a while to find. After greasing the gasket and installing it back on the bowl, I put in the new filter element and screwed the bowl back into the filter head, tightening it with the filter wrench. I turned the well pump back on, opened the inlet and outlet valves for the filter, and let the trapped air out with the purge valve.

Our filter housing takes a larger than usual element. It is 10″ long, which is the most common length, but 5″ in diameter, which is much bigger than usual. It’s a dual density spun polypropylene material with a 50 micron nominal rating at the large outside surface and a 5 micron nominal rating towards the smaller core. These filter elements are not available at the local home stores so I get them from Adam’s Well Drilling and Water Treatment, who installed out current water treatment system.

I gathered up the laundry and put a load in the washer. I took the label from the new filter element and headed out on an errand run. My first stop was Adam’s where I bought four filter elements and two bottles of chlorine tablets for the taste and odor portion of our water treatment system. Wilson Marine is located next door to Adam’s so I stopped there to see if they sold marine grade plywood. They didn’t but I had a good chat with the associate. He suggested that for patching the floor in the bus I just use treated plywood or use Thompson’s Water Seal to treat whatever wood I use.

One of the new swivel bearings on top of one of the old swivel bearings clearly showing that the new bearing is small in diameter, inside and out, than the old one.

My last stop was O’Reilly’s Auto Parts. Their parking lot was finally open so I could park near the door. Ronald had me load the containers of used oil and the bag of filters into a shopping cart. The bag had leaked onto the paper towels I put under it in the back of my car so Ron gave me a cardboard box to put it in. He simply put the bag of filters in a container but he emptied the six containers of oil and gave them back to me. They recycle oil but not the containers.

When I got home Linda checked to see if we could take the plastic oil bottles to Recycle Livingston. Used motor oil is considered hazardous waste and anything that has had used motor oil in it is considered a hazardous material so we could not take the containers there. I helped Linda load all of the other recyclables into my car and she made a run to the recycling center, the first in a few weeks. After moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer and putting another load in the washer I got back to work on the bus floor.

The area behind the panel to the right of the co-pilot/navigator seat. The mouse nest is gone and the damaged wood has been removed from between the side-to-side seat mounting rails.

I spent most of the afternoon working on the floor under the front passenger seat. First I removed the blocking that provides support for the bottom edge of the switch panel but also spans the three floor boards. I cleaned out the mouse nest behind the switch panel and found the skeleton of a small mouse. I then got the piece of wood between the mounting channels out. The drain line for the front CruiseAir evaporator went through this floor near the outside edge but the floor was rotted enough that I was able to break out the wood on the back side and pull the board out. As I did this I was reminded, once again, about how much of this conversion was built with the idea that it would never have to be disassembled.

I took a break for lunch, which was leftover lentils and quinoa pilaf with some fresh fruit. After lunch I resumed working on the floor under the front passenger seat in the bus. I managed to remove most of the rusted metal filler plate. I made a lucky guess as to where my wire brush was stored and used it to clean the surface of the rusted metal that remained. I played with different combinations of wood thicknesses and pondered how I will rebuild this area. I then sprayed the rusted areas with POR-15 cleaner/degreaser and scrubbed them with a sponge soaked in hot water.

I moved to the driver’s seat area and repeated the process. There was one area with damaged wood that I still had to deal with. There was an edge about 10 inches long capped with two thin gage metal angles that were badly rusted. I removed as much of the angles as I could. I cut off a strip of wood about 2″ wide and 10″ long and removed the rest of the angles. I wire brushed the area but left the POR-15 cleaner/degreaser for tomorrow. In anticipation of applying the POR-15 tomorrow and coating it with black spray on rubberized undercoating paint I began masking off the area with painter’s plastic.

For dinner Linda made a salad, roasted eggplant with garlic and breadcrumbs, and mock fish with vegan tartar sauce. We finished the Frey Natural Red wine with our meal. I would love to support this company but this wine is too dry for my pallet.

PBS had an interesting lineup of shows this evening on continental formation, natural wonders, and the human brain. I dealt with e-mail before the shows and we turned in after the last one. Chuck and Barbara were planning on leaving this morning, southbound for Florida in their 1993 H3-40 Liberty motorcoach. I did not have any messages from Chuck today so I presume they got away as planned. They bought a lot at the Pelican Lake Luxury Motorcoach Resort in Naples where they have spent the last six winters and that is where they are headed. We will be staying about 90 minutes north of there in January and February and will get together with them as time and commitments permit. We are looking forward to seeing their lot; it has a coach house and they are doing some landscaping, including large palm trees.

2015/11/03 (T) The Penultimate Cut

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I heard noises in the kitchen at 7 AM and thought the cats might be up to something. I got up and discovered that Linda was just leaving the house. She is normally out the door between 6:15 and 6:30 AM but did not set her iPad alarm last night. I stuck my head out the door and said “good morning” as she was getting in the car.

I had my usual breakfast of granola with fresh blueberries and brewed a half pot of Sumatra Mandheling half-caffe coffee. I was enjoying my cup-a-joe by the fireplace when Linda called to let me know there was a story coming up on Michigan Radio (WUOM) at 8:30 AM about an underground landfill fire in Bridgeton, Missouri. Bridgeton is where my sister, niece, future nephew, and grand-niece live and I had just heard about this fire for the first time on Sunday evening while talking with my sister.

I got the leaf blower out at 10 AM and spent a couple of hours blowing as many leaves out from under bushes and away from the house into the yard as I could. Keith arrived at 10:30 AM and followed his usual mowing pattern starting with the west half of the property. The lawn in the immediate vicinity of the house is the last area he cuts which gave me enough time to get the leaves out into the yard where Keith could mulch them.

Most of our trees have dropped most of their leaves by now and Keith’s mower did a pretty good job of mulching most of them. Before he left we discussed having him come back one more time. The grass has quit growing so my preference is to wait two weeks but that will depend on the weather. Keith will check with us next Monday and we will decide what to do at that time.

Mike (W8XH) is planning to come over tomorrow after breakfast and help me work on the tower and our Hi-Q 6-80 antenna. I have been collecting materials that I need and took a little time to see if they would work with the tower. I also took the Diamond X-300N antenna down as I planned to put it on the tower in place of the X-50N that is currently up there. My materials were not working quite the way I had hoped they would so I headed to Lowe’s to see what else I could find. I also planned to drop off the used oil and filters from the bus at O’Reilly’s Auto Parts store.

At Lowe’s I found clamp sets designed for mounting antenna masts and bought a pair. O’Reilly’s parking lot was still closed off. It looked like it had been re-blacktopped and they were painting the stripes for the parking spaces. This was my second attempt to get rid of the waste from yesterday’s bus maintenance. I will try again tomorrow; with any luck the third time will be the charm.damage

The area beneath the co-pilot/navigator seat. Not a pretty sight, especially when racing against the clock to get the coach finished for the upcoming winter season.

I finally got back to work on the bus at 2:30 PM and removed the front passenger chair pedestal base. The entire area under the base, between the side-to-side seat mounting channels, was rotten so I cut out the water-damaged wood. Just below the wood I found rusted metal which appeared to be delaminating. Metal does not do that so I presume there was a layer of sheet metal on top of a metal housing. The main structure of the bus is welded stainless steel but mild steel was obviously used to create compartments. Ugh.

After cutting out the damaged wood the remaining piece towards the outside was loose but would not come out. I removed a couple of screws from the 1/4″ walnut veneer side panel and pried the top out with a small screwdriver. This panel has a lot of switches mounted in it and a lot of wires behind it so I could only pull it out about four inches. That was enough to see a 3/4″x3/4″ piece of blocking screwed to the floor to catch/secure the bottom edge of the panel. It also enough to see a very large nest made of tiny bits of shredded paper.

The cavity behind the panel to the right of the co-pilot/navigator seat was apparently a great place for a mouse to build a nest.

I left the nest alone for the moment and removed two screws from the block that went into the piece of wood I need to remove. It appeared that a drain line for the front air-conditioner went through the floor near the outside edge and possibly some wires. I left the nest for Linda to see and will resume working on this tomorrow.

Linda made vegan grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner and served them with some of the leftover broccoli soup and sliced fruit. We each had a small glass of the Frey Natural Red organic/vegan wine.

After dinner I called Phil to see what his plans were for this week vis-a-vis our driveway and French drain projects. I got his voice mail and left him a message. When we left on Saturday afternoon he was just finishing up placing and compacting the gravel in the driveway but said the west end of the yard needed to dry out (again) before he could finish working down there. Hopefully the new drain will help speed that process along.

The floor area under the driver’s seat in the bus with all of the rotten wood cut out.

Phil uses a self-leveling laser level system to measure elevations. Not only has he assured me that the new 40 foot parking area is level, he has demonstrated it with his system. Still, it does not look level, especially from certain points of view, and it does not feel level when driving in it, although that may also be an optical illusion. We have a transit level and I plan to use it to check the pad, but it requires two people, one to hold the measuring stick and one to look through the telescope and record the readings. That means I need Linda’s assistance, which means this will have to wait until the weekend. Perhaps by then I will have the cockpit in the bus repaired. It’s also possible that Phil will have returned and completed the job, I which case I may have him help me use the transit as a check on his laser system.

We watched our usual lineup of Tuesday evening TV shows while Linda checked in on her online word games and I worked on this post.

2015/11/02 (M) Driveway Joe

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Linda was up at 5:45 AM and off to the bakery at 6:15. I got up at 6:45 AM, got dressed, and went to the bus to turn on the block heater and Aqua-Hot engine pre-heat loop. I then made coffee and had breakfast, after which I e-mailed Mike (W8XH) to let him know Joe would be here all day today. I then reset the clocks in the two digital cameras.

Joe was at Chuck’s a little before 7 AM to change the engine oil and filter and figured it would take one hour. I started the main engine in our bus at 7:45 AM to warm up the oil and make it easier to drain. I let it run for 20 minutes on high idle, dropped it to low idle for a minute and shut it down. The block will hold heat for quite a while.

Chuck texted me at 8:15 AM to let me know that Joe was on his way to our place and Joe called about five minutes later. He was on our street but called because he wasn’t sure he was in the right place. He pulled in to our first driveway entrance just before 9 and pulled his van up behind the bus.

I had dumped the air in the suspension yesterday when I put the coach up on stands so Joe had me start the engine and air up the suspension as a safety backup should one of the stands fail. I raised it up off of all four stands and then set it back down but quit dumping the air as soon as it was on each stand.

The work for today was routine annual chassis and engine maintenance. Joe needed to have diesel fuel on hand so I drove to the Shell station and bought four gallons. While I was there I picked up a large coffee for him at the co-located Dunkin Donuts.

When I got back from my errand run Joe was already lubricating everything on the chassis and engine that had a grease fitting using the Mobil 1 synthetic grease I bought yesterday. He was starting to generate messy trash so I fetched a large plastic trash bag. He drained the engine oil, removed the old filter, filled the new filter with oil, and spun it on. He then added six gallons of Chevron Delo 100 SAE 40 Heavy Duty Engine Oil that I bought on Saturday. I added 2 to 3 more quarts from the reservoir to use up the oil that had been in there for a while. I then refilled the reservoir as it is very handy for topping up the oil.

Joe removed and replaced both coolant filters while I fetched a bottle of Detroit Diesel PowerCool engine coolant. He added coolant to the expansion reservoir while I watched the sight glass on the side of the tank and told him when to stop. He then had me help him with the secondary fuel filter, which we pre-filled with diesel fuel. Last, but not least, we replaced the filter element in the Racor fuel filter / water separator. Joe installed the new filter element and gaskets and topped off the fuel in the housing before putting the cover back on.

I started the main engine and let it run for 30 seconds to circulate the oil, coolant, and fuel. Joe added a little bit more oil to bring the level up to just over half way between the L and H marks on the dipstick. This is where the engine likes to run and if I fill it to the H mark it will get rid of the extra oil on its own.

With the maintenance on the bus completed we transferred all of the old oil from the drain pan into the one gallon plastic jugs that had contained the new oil and put them back in the 3-jug cardboard boxes for convenient transport. Our local O’Reilly’s Auto Parts store accepts waste oil and filters so I will take them there for disposal. Although I had my own bus work to do I hung with Joe until he was done. I stayed near the bus and trimmed trees when he did not me to assist with things.

Joe offered to come back next year to do our annual service and suggested that we take an extra day to replace as many grease fittings as possible either with better fittings or with small lines running back to one or more conveniently located manifolds. The manifolds would have an input for grease and a valve for each line allowing most of the chassis and engine to be greased without getting under the bus. I must say that I liked the sound of that. It would be a nice upgrade to the bus and would make a good article for Bus Conversion Magazine.

I did NOT have Joe remove driver side front tire so I could get the splash guard off and inspect the area under the tray behind the driver’s seat. I will have to deal with that on my own. I also noticed that the fuel tank was down to 3/8ths so I will have to take the bus out and refuel it at some point and may have to turn off the Aqua-Hot and use the electric toe-kick heaters instead until I can refuel.

Keith called at 1 PM to let me know he would not make it out to mow the grass today. He will be here tomorrow morning, probably for the last time this season. Joe was packed up and on his way at 1:45 PM. He was headed to Chicago where he has a house but has not been there in the last 18 months.

After Joe was done I went to Painter’s Supply and Equipment in Howell to buy POR-15 and the POR cleaner/degreaser. POR is a brand but stands for “Paint Over Rust.” It reacts chemically with rusted metal to stabilize the metal and prevent further rust. I bought a can of spray on rubber material to put over it. The POR-15 was pricey at $33 for a pint, but it is serious stuff and is used by the U. S. Navy.

My next stop was Lowe’s for a foam brush. I picked up a 4-foot length of angle, four U-bolts, two pulleys, some miscellaneous nuts and bolts, and a 100 foot length of 3/8″ polypropylene rope, all of which was in preparation for ham radio projects tomorrow on the small tower. After Lowe’s I stopped across the street at O’Reilly’s Auto Parts store to dispose of the oil and filters. Their parking lot was being seal-coated and I could not get to the disposal bins so I will have to try again tomorrow.

By the time I got home it was 4:30 PM. Rather than start working on the bus I did a little more trimming on the trees by the road in front of the house and then put the yard tools away.

For dinner Linda made a whole wheat linguini with mushrooms, onions, and sun-dried tomatoes lightly sautéed in EVOO. We opened the bottle of Frey Natural Red organic/vegan wine. It was very dry which made it difficult for me judge its other qualities as I do not care for dry wines or wines with noticeable tannins. Still, it went well with the dish and I finished my glass. I don’t think I will ever develop a taste, however, for dry wines and/or wines with a lot of tannins.

After dinner I worked on an article for Bus Conversion Magazine (BCM) about our experience on the Habitat for Humanity build we participated in back in July 2013. The article has been done for a while but the publisher (Gary) had someone (Teresa) proofread it a couple of days ago and she found some minor things that I needed to correct. Gary and I are also discussing whether to split the article into two parts and/or cut down a bit on the number of photos, which currently number about 60. I took a break from 8 to 11 PM to watch television with Linda and then returned to working on the article before going to bed.

2015/11/01 (N) Brunch with Kathi, Farewell to Uncle Bob

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We switched from Eastern Daylight Time back to Eastern Standard Time overnight. It was 11:30 PM when I turned off the lights and 7:30 AM when I got up, and since I had not reset my nightstand clock I got my eight hours of beauty rest. I put my robe on and started setting all of the clocks back one hour. We have a LOT of clocks.

My cell phone adjusts automatically, as do the computers and satellite linked thermometers. I reset the clocks in the microwave, range, and coffee maker, and stopped the grandfather clock, which is only supposed to be advanced, to let the time catch up to the setting. I reset the clock on our phone system, the clock on my night stand, and on two of our thermostats. The Wi-Fi thermostat already had the correct time so it may have adjusted automatically or perhaps was never changed to EDT last spring. We have three battery powered clocks that I did not reset as I wanted to change the batteries and the incorrect time would serve as a reminder that I had not yet done that. I still need to check the clocks in the two digital cameras, as I like to have correct time stamps on my photos, and there are five clocks in the motorcoach that need to be reset. We have a lot of clocks, but I quit wearing a wrist watch when I retired. I always have my phone with me anyway, and it usually knows what time it is in whatever time zone I happen to be in.

While I was in the basement I checked e-mail, replied to one from Gary at BCM, and then cleaned the cats’ litter tray. Linda was up by then so I made coffee. I turned on the fireplace and we settled in the living room to read, write, and savor our morning brew.

Kathi Slater, a long-time friend who Linda hired on at the bakery some years ago, came to our house today for brunch. I think it was only her second visit since we moved to this house but then most of our friends have been here at most once, if at all. Family members visit more often, of course, but that does not mean frequently. John/Dianne Rauch and Steve/Karen Limkemann have been here the most, along with Mike Sharpe (W8XH) from our SLAARC ham radio group. Philip Jarrell of Precision Grading, and Keith Kish of Kish Lawn Care, have been the most frequent people here on business, along with Kerry Fear, who does our snow plowing, and Darryl Mech of DMC Heating and Cooling, who did a lot of work for us when we converted from propane to natural gas. We do not, however, feel isolated here. We are getting to know a few of our neighbors and we are only minutes away from three communities full of people and shopping options. Both of our children and their families are only 30 to 45 minutes away as are the northwest suburbs of Detroit where some of our friends still live. But most days we live quiet, undisturbed lives at our home in the country, and we like it that way.

Linda and Kathi had “things” to discuss that did not involve or concern me, so after brunch I busied myself with other things. After checking e-mail I started downloading an update to Adobe Photoshop CC (2015). These downloads are huge and very slow so I left it to run. Chuck texted me and arranged to pick up his eight gallons of oil around noon. We chatted briefly when he arrived and he took a second look at our water intrusion problem. After he left I went to the O’Reilly’s Auto Parts store in Howell to buy grease. Joe told me to get two tubes of the best stuff I could find, synthetic if possible. O’Reilly’s had Mobil 1 synthetic grease for almost twice the price of anything else on the shelf so I bought three tubes and used my $5 off reward card. Lowe’s was right across the street so I popped in there and got three boxes of Scott blue paper shop towels. I use a lot of these when working on the bus.

When I got home I changed into my work clothes and got to work on the bus. I stayed on that task the rest of the afternoon except for a few short breaks. The first break was for linner. The second break was to start the bus engine, raise the body, put the stands under it, set the body on the stands, and dump the air from the suspension. The third break was to say “goodbye” to Kathi and the forth break was for another brief visit from Chuck to pick up a bus engine oil filter from me.

In the course of the afternoon I managed to cut out most the rotten water-damaged wood from the floor in the driver’s area of the bus cockpit. Cleaning up the metal and protecting it, providing a drain for the water, and then patching in the floor is going to take several days. Finding and plugging the entry point may not happen. It’s November 1^st and I only have about three (3) weeks to get the bus put back together to the point where we can use it this winter. The reservations are made, winter is coming, and we are out of here before the calendar turns to December.

When I wrapped up work in the bus around 5:30 PM I had been using a two-tube fluorescent work light for an hour. By the time I set the thermostats back, and changed the time on the microwave and the battery powered clock in the living room, it was approaching 6 PM and it was dark outside.

Linda made broccoli soup from scratch for dinner. It was a mild, subtle dish and we both had seconds along with a few crackers and strawberry preserves. I called Butch after dinner to update him on the floor situation in the bus and get his opinion on my idea of filling the “tray” with expanding foam. After talking it through I decided it might be the best idea I ever had.

While I was talking to Butch I got a call from Joe and handed the house phone off to Linda. Joe was northbound on I-275 in Michigan. He was at most an hour from our house but getting ready to stop for the night. He wanted to be close enough to Chuck’s house to get there easily by 7 AM and did not want to backtrack the 20 miles from our place. As we say in ham radio “QSL” (I understand).

I got the phone back from Linda and was continuing my conversation with Butch when I got a call from a 405 area code number that showed up as “unavailable.” I don’t usually answer those calls but they left a message and called back about 12 minutes later. I had not even checked the message yet but figured it was someone actually trying to reach me so I gave the house phone back to Linda and took the call. It was my nephew (by marriage), Philip Pelton, calling to let me know that my Uncle Bob had passed away a couple of hours earlier. He was also looking for a phone number for my dad.

Bob was my dad’s younger brother by two years, his only sibling and my only Uncle, my mother having been an only child. Bob was 88. Linda and I saw him in April on our way home from our winter in the desert southwest. Bob had Parkinson’s disease and was in a rehab center near his home fighting an infection. He did not look at all well to us at the time so I was not really surprised by Philip’s call. According to Philip, Bob had developed pneumonia in both lungs shortly after we were there and the doctors were never able to cure it. He was at home when his blood oxygen dropped, he lapsed into unconsciousness, and expired.

Uncle Bob was an interesting and unusual guy. He had a Ph.D. in micropaleontology and was a brilliant geologist. Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, he moved to Oklahoma and spent his entire career studying the geology of that state. He developed an interest in genealogy somewhere along the way, and did some significant research on the various branches of our family. He married Helen Pelton, second marriages for both, but never had children of his own. Helen had one son, Scott, who passed away some years ago, survived by his mother, ex-wife Linda, two children, Tiffany and Philip, Tiffany’s three daughters, and Philip’s son and daughter. He was known to all of them as Papa (PawPaw) and they obviously adored each other. We only had a few visits with him over the years but they were always very interesting.

We wrapped up the call with Butch and I called my sister. Philip had already reached her but we had a long chat. She reported that our father is doing better and has recovered somewhat from his stroke of a couple of months ago. My grand-niece, Lilly, is having short seizures again, which is concerning to say the least. The doctor has adjusted her medication but it will take a week to see if the higher dose is effective or they need to move to a different drug. Lilly is six weeks younger than Madeline and just the sweetest little girl you can imagine. It is most unfair to her, and her parents, to have to deal with these seizures.

I went to my office and downloaded e-mails (which were painfully slow). I had two in our general contact account, which I do not check every day. They were both from BCM readers letting me know that they enjoyed my articles and actually found them useful. I replied to both and answered their questions as best I could. I then logged into RVillage. We had one message, which I responded to, and 153 notifications. The vast majority were from the Comic Relief group and I think I will have to turn off notifications for that, and perhaps other, groups. In retrospect I should have created a separate e-mail account for RVillage, but I didn’t.

2015/10/31 (S) Boo!

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We overslept a bit this morning and did not get up until 7:20 AM. We dressed quickly and drove to breakfast separately as we had to go to separate places afterwards. We got there at 8 AM and had a nice chat with the folks at our end of the table. It was a big group this week, at least 24 people, maybe more.

Linda left breakfast at 9:15 AM to meet Diane at Kensington Metropark at 9:30 and go walking. I lingered at the restaurant until after 9:30. I drove back to I-96 and Grand River Avenue in Brighton, where I filled my fuel tank at the Shell station, and had a nice QSO with Mike (W8XH) while driving. I then drove across the street to Brighton Ford to pick up the four spin-on coolant filter/conditioners I ordered yesterday.

Brighton Ford’s parts department is a NAPA outlet but they do not have any signs to that effect as Ford Motor Company won’t allow it. My next stop was up Grand River Avenue towards Howell at the O’Reilly’s Auto Parts store where I picked up the nine (9) gallons of Chevron Delo 100 SAE 40 engine oil I ordered yesterday morning. I drove home and chatted a bit more with Mike on the way. I found out that he gets his Lawn tractor serviced at/by Sloan’s in Linden and is very pleased with them. He has a trailer for transporting his lawn tractor and is willing to let me borrow it to transport ours when I am ready.

When I got home I unloaded the oil and filters and then emptied the dishwasher, refilled it, and started it. I then went to my office to work. I had an e-mail reply from Byron Pigg with information I needed to finish the article for Bus Conversion Magazine (BCM) about his 1985 Model 15 Eagle bus conversion. I incorporated the new info into the Word docx and then called Byron on the phone. We spent at least an hour going over the article and chatting about bus conversions. After we wrapped up our conversation I worked a bit longer on the article making the last few edits and removing blemishes from two of photos. I uploaded the article (Word docs) and all of the photo files (jpgs) to my BCM Dropbox folder at 2:15 PM and then e-mailed Gary (publisher), Mike (editor), and Jorge (layout).

Shawna (back to camera) gets Madeline into her Bumblebee costume for Halloween Trick-or-Treat in their neighborhood.

While I was doing all of that Linda firmed up our Halloween plans with our son. We left the house at 2:45 PM and drove to Ann Arbor, arriving at their house around 3:30. Shawna got Madeline into her bumblebee costume and Linda gave her a Halloween gift bag with a rag doll, some candy, and a card. At 4:15 we walked over to a neighbor’s house for a gathering that included snacks/dinner. We talked to host Laurel’s parents, Tom and Kendra, who were there from San Diego, California. All of the kids and most of the adults left at 5:15 to go door-to-door trick-or-treating on Granger Street. Granger was closed off to vehicles for several blocks with policeman at each barricade and there were hundreds of people out and about. Many of the adults were in costume, some quite elaborate, and it was quite a sight.

Madeline caught on very quickly to her role in all of this and would often walk past other, larger children right to the front of the line to get her treat. She is just shy of three years old so it was cute. One of the houses had two large pumpkins out front, appropriately carved. They were real pumpkins and each weighed about 1,500 pounds when they were delivered by a truck. Madeline is above average height for her age but these pumpkins towered over her. The homeowners are well known in the neighborhood for having these giant pumpkins each year and bring in mind-boggling large quantities of candy in crates. You gotta love neighbors like that.

The rain held off for most of the prime trick-or-treat window from 5 – 6 PM but I was cold and went back to the house a little ahead of everyone else. It started to drizzle around the same time Madeline’s endurance was waning and they got back to the house at 6:30 with the umbrella deployed. Madeline was eager to take stock of her Halloween “loot”. We enjoyed watching her excitement at having different items to choose from and then “negotiating” with her parents over having to select just one item for this evening. Halloween trick-or-treat is perhaps best appreciated while watching a three year old experience it.

We left around 7 PM and stopped at the nearby Whole Foods Market for soy creamer. We picked up two bottles of Frey brand wine, a white and a red, and two pieces of vegan cake. Frey makes organic wines without the use of animal products and are a sponsor of “Cooking School” with Christina Perillo on the PBS Create channel.

I got a call from Joe as we were getting ready to leave Whole Foods. He was packed and ready to hit the road first thing in the morning. He wasn’t sure if he would make it all the way to our house on Sunday or finish the trip early Monday morning.

It rained on the drive home and I took the wheel as Linda has a hard time with dark/wet roads. We were reminded, once again, of the poor condition of Michigan’s roads, many of which need to be repainted and have reflectors installed such as the ones we saw in Florida the winter before last. (I suspect that the reason Michigan does not use them is because of snow plows, but they really make it safer to drive dark roads at night.) We got home sometime after 8 PM and had dessert. I checked the bus for leaks buy did not find any new water. I texted Joe our address, checked e-mail, and then opened the package from Rockler Woodworking that our postal carrier had delivered earlier in the day.

The maple veneer from Rockler was a bit darker than I had hoped, but it will still be a nice contrast to the walnut trim when suitably finished. The two shelf brackets were certainly substantial enough but it remains to be seen if the wall of our coach is adequate to support the table without a leg to the floor. The main issue will be the fasteners near the top which will be in tension and trying to pull out of the wall. Of secondary concern will be the lower tip of the brackets, which will be in compression, trying to push through the wall and possibly puncturing it. I may have to use expanding bolts or toggles rather than screws for the upper (tension) fasteners.

We had some hot tea and went to bed. Although I did not get to work on the bus today I got a lot accomplished and we had a great time watching our younger grand-daughter experience Halloween.

2015/10/29 (R) A Setback

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Linda turned off her alarm and slept a few extra minutes before getting up at 6 AM. I watched the weather on TV while she got ready to go to the bakery. She left at 6:25, about 10 minutes later than usual. I am always amazed at how quickly she can get showered, dressed, and out the door.

The temperature across our area was 37 degrees F, more or less, and the wind was blowing, which we could see just by looking at our trees. The winds were forecast at 15 – 25 MPH out of the SW gusting to 40 and strengthening into the morning hours as they shifted out of the west in advance of a second cold front.

Last night I shut off the color laser printer, the two NAS units, and the Linux box as a precaution against losing power but left my laptop on since it runs on its own internal battery. Even though all of our devices with hard disk drives are plugged into uninterruptible power supplies, and we have an auto-start whole house generator with an automatic transfer switch, I decided to leave all of these computing devices turned off until the wind subsided later today. Morning showers were forecast as likely, with the possibility of a few snowflakes, but never materialized. Overnight lows tonight are forecast in the mid-to-lower 30’s. The bus is not winterized, and I have been working in it almost every day, so I have had the heat turned on in the bus for most of October. I do, however, set the thermostats back to approximately 55 degrees F when I am done working for the day.

I got up, put on my robe, fed the cats, and made a half pot of coffee (Sweet Seattle Dreams). While the coffee was brewing I heated up a banana-nut muffin, poured a small glass of orange-grapefruit juice, washed the last of the blueberries, and fixed a bowl of granola. I was done with breakfast by 7:15, took my coffee to the living room, and enjoyed it by the warm glow of the fireplace as I worked on my iPad with Juniper on my lap and watched the night yield to the orange glow of sunrise.

New photo accessories from B&H Photo Video in New York, NY., photographed with the new Sony a99v-DSLT camera.

My main focus today was the cockpit of the bus, specifically the floor/wall tile, but first I got dressed, turned up the heat in the bus and the garage, and then opened the boxes that arrived yesterday from B&H Photo. I managed to do that at 8:30 AM; well ahead of my usual getting started time of 10 to 10:30 AM. Most of the items were in one large box but two small items were in a separate box that must have been shipped from a different location. The shipping boxes were in good shape and the B&H sealing tape was intact. I removed everything from the shipping boxes and then checked them off on the packing slip. Again, all of the individual product boxes and other packaging were undamaged. I opened each item, carefully removing all of the pieces and manuals/paperwork. I arranged everything on the dining room table and took a few photos to document what was there.

I had been pondering the damaged plywood under the driver’s seat ever since I removed the old vinyl tile. The exposed plywood was screwed down in lots of places so I figured it was not the original floor of the bus. I could also see many additional plywood layers in the holes for the seat mounting bolts. Closer inspection revealed that the top layer of plywood in the driver’s area was in two pieces, fore and aft, and that only the aft piece was damaged. Based on all of that information I decided to try removing the aft piece.

All of the screws came out except for two and they just spun in their holes so I figured the wood around them was bad. It took a little prying but the piece popped loose. I pushed the two power wires for the motorized seat back through a hole and the board was free. What I found made my heart sink.

First look at the water damage in the aft portion of the driver’s floor area.

The underside of the plywood was much more damaged than the top side and it was moist. The original bus floor was even worse. Part of it was missing and I was able to crumble much of what was still there from the rear mounting holes back. It was obvious that there had been considerable long-term exposure to water but it was not obvious how this had occurred and was, apparently, still occurring. I texted Linda and Chuck with a photo of the damage and heard back from both of them fairly quickly. This was clearly an unanticipated setback but long term it was better that I discovered it, and had a chance to fix it, rather than having covered it up.

Speaking of covering things up, the top layer of plywood must have already been damaged when we bought the coach in late 2009. One of the things we had Creative Mobile Interiors (CMI) do to the coach between September 2009 and April 2010 was pull the carpet out of the entry and cockpit and replace it with the gray vinyl tile that I just removed. The tile was under the swivel pedestal base of the driver’s seat so whoever installed the tile must have removed the base and must have seen the obvious signs of damage. They should have stopped right there and let someone know and CMI should have contacted us to discuss a course of action. The obvious course of action would have been to pull up the top layer of plywood and see what was going on. We would not have been happy about it at the time as we were already spending more money on fixing things than we anticipated, but we could have discovered and fixed this six years ago.

The floor directly under the base of the seat is the ceiling of the first bay on the driver’s side of the bus. It was very chilly outside so I put on my hooded sweatshirt and had a look from below. I could see that the four threaded holes for the seat mounting bolts were part of two large steel angles running fore and aft that were welded to two square tubular steel cross members. From that observation I decided on how to proceed.

My plan was to cut out the bad plywood by cutting between the centers of the holes. That would leave half of each angle to support a new piece of filler plywood. I got the Porter-Cable oscillating saw and started cutting out the really rotten wood aft of the rear seat mounting holes. I was not prepared for what I found when I finally got that piece out.

The damaged bus sub-floor cut away. I could see through into the bay below the driver’s seat. The blue to the left is paper shop towels soaking up the water and rotted plywood in a small tray area.

What I found was water; not dampness, but standing water. And debris, lots of mucky debris. We had a lot rain starting late Tuesday evening, all through the day yesterday, and overnight into early this morning so I suspected that this water might be “fresh” as in recently arrived in this location.

The cross member aft of the rear pair of seat mounting holes is the top of the rear wall of the compartment under the driver’s seat. All of the water was in the area aft of the cross member in what appeared to be a kind of tray about two inches deep below the level of the driver’s floor. It was almost full of disintegrated plywood, and other stuff, and obviously did not have a natural drain. I sent a second text message to Linda and Chuck with a photo of the water/debris-filled pan aft of the rear mounting holes for the driver seat pedestal. Some things you just have to share, and some things you just have to see to believe.

It took me a little longer to realize what was going on as my immediate concern was cleaning up the mess. I put on a disposable glove to pick up all the detritus in the tray and put it in a trash bag. The tray extended under the floor towards the outside of the coach so I reached back in there and just kept pulling out more and more wet junk. At this point I started to analyze what was in front of me.

It was now obvious to me that the damage to the floor under the driver’s seat was caused by water filling this tray and coming in contact with the bottom of the plywood bus floor. With nowhere for the water to drain it was able to stay in contact with the plywood for very long periods of time allowing it to penetrate the plies, soften them, and destroy the (water soluble) glue between them.

Clearly I needed to figure out where this water is coming from and stop it, but that was not going to happen today. I did, however, go back outside and check the front electrical bay. Sure enough, there was a little water on the floor of that compartment, so it was possible that the water might be coming from there somehow. If so, I need to find the breach and seal it. That, however, just pushes the problem down the road as I will still need to figure out how water is getting into the electrical bay in the first place and stop that.

The more I studied the way the bus was built the clearer it became that the original plywood bus floor extends under the left console into the first bay and separates the small upper compartment from the larger one below. But this tray-like area was below the floor and farther back which meant it was under the front electrical bay and above the driver side steer tire. I will have to check again but it appeared that this piece of plywood must be the floor of the electrical bay.

With a better, but still incomplete, understanding of the situation I resumed cutting out plywood. My oscillating saw went through the rotten wood like a hot knife through butter, but did not cut the undamaged plywood very well. I figured the blade was dull so I opened the Bosch replacement blade I had on hand only to discover that it did not fit my Porter-Cable tool. Arrrgh.

It was probably a good time for a break anyway, so I went to Lowe’s to get a couple of extra blades. I had good QSOs with Mike (W8XH) going to and from the store. The weather is supposed to be very pleasant all next week, with afternoon highs in the upper 60’s, so we are going to try to find a day to work on my antennas and the small tower next to the house. Bus or no bus, I also have to make time for our amateur radio hobby. When I got home I made popcorn for lunch and then got back to work. It’s a good thing I don’t have to fix most of my meals.

Linda called at 3:15 PM to see if she needed to come home and pick me up before going to Ann Arbor. Given what I was dealing with I was tempted to say ‘yes’ but I knew that this was a situation where I needed to stay on task until it was fixed. Brendan and Shawna both had work-related obligations this evening and asked Linda if she could watch Madeline for a while. Rather than have her cut her work day short to come home she left the bakery and drove directly to Ann Arbor while I continued to work on repairing the floor.

I called Chuck to see if he had time to consult with me about all of this. He called me back and we talked it through. He thinks the entry point for the water could be the frame on the large piece of fixed glass just aft of the driver’s position. I know we have a leak near the front of the large window assembly just aft of that one and the forward edge of the window panel may also be above the front electrical bay.

As soon as I was done talking with Chuck I removed the reading light on the vertical walnut chase by the driver’s left shoulder and then removed the nine screws that hold the cover in place and took it off. I have known for a long time that there was a lot of stuff running through that chase but I had never removed the cover to look inside. It is crammed full of AC and DC wires, coaxial cables, air lines, and residential air-conditioning refrigerant lines. My immediate interest was evidence of water, and I did find the same stains that were similar to ones we have found elsewhere in the coach, but I did not see anything that looked or felt wet.

With the new blade for my oscillating saw I managed to cut out the piece of plywood between the four mounting holes but it wasn’t easy. With that piece out, however, I could use my inspection mirror to see the underside of the floor and reach into the space below to determine distances to various structural members with my carpenter’s tape measure.

I still had more wood to cut out but by 4:15 PM I’d had enough for today. I set the top layer of plywood back in place and covered all of the larger holes with painter’s tape in a feeble effort to keep critters and cold air out of the coach overnight. I also used two pieces of felt and painter’s tape to seal the hole where the steering column goes through the floor. I took a few more photos, which I had been doing all along today. Tomorrow I think I will use the circular saw and/or the cutoff tool and try to make quicker work of this.

Before quitting for real I decided to unscrew the 3-sided bump out from the passenger side HVAC duct cover and measure the left desk base and pedestal to see what the correct distance needs to be. The bump out protrudes about four inches but it should only be three inches. As I suspected it is too big by the width of the wood, but I will take more careful measurements before I take it to Jarel to have it cut down. I also discovered, however, that the filter material we used to cover the hole where the heater hoses previously came out of the HVAC duct was interfering with the fit of the duct cover, including the bump out. While I was thinking about it I pulled out the two filler strips that go on either end of the plywood sofa seat. Jarel is going to remake them longer and out of solid walnut. Since we moved the seat board out almost five inches one side of each strip is now exposed and visible and the stained plywood edge is just not the look we want.

We had a heavy overcast most of the day and by 5 PM the light was fading. I dialed back the thermostats, grabbed the camera and the house phone, locked up the bus and went inside. I changed into my robe and then fixed dinner. I did not want to spend a lot of time preparing and eating a meal by myself so I had a can of Amy’s Chili with Vegetables. I added crackers, Smoked Tabasco Sauce, and shredded Daiya mozzarella vegan cheese. Some strawberry preserves on crackers added a touch of sweetness and Stash Raspberry Pomegranate Green Tea added its own warmth. Given a little more time I can make a better meal for myself but ever since Linda retired and took over preparing our whole-food plant-based (vegan) cuisine I am no longer as comfortable/confident in the kitchen as I once was. This way of eating involves ingredients and techniques with which I am simply not familiar.

After dinner I sat on the living room couch in the same spot, and in the same robe, as I did at the beginning of the day and worked on this post. I like the sense of things coming full circle, but mostly it is a comfortable place to sit and use my iPad. Linda and I texted for a while after she had put Madeline to bed. At 9:07 PM she indicated that she was leaving Ann Arbor and heading home. She got home a little before 10 and we sat in the living room for a while and finally turned in at 11. It had been a long day for both of us.

2015/10/28 (W) Inside Flash

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Linda’s iPad alarm went off at 5:45 AM but she did not get up until after 6. I got up at the same time she did but she was dressed and out the door by 6:15 while I was still stumbling around. I put on my warm robe, fed the cats, made coffee, and had a banana nut muffin. After enjoying my coffee by the fireplace I had my orange juice and granola with blueberries.

It started raining overnight and was still raining this morning as the remnants of hurricane Patricia pulled up from the lower Mississippi River and moved north between the river and the western side of the Appalachian Mountains towards the Great Lakes. The forecast was for the rain to continue through the day and then off and on into tomorrow. It was a good day to work in the house so that is mostly what I did. But first I gathered up the trash from the house and rolled the large container to the street for pickup.

The first thing on my self-imposed to-do list was finalizing an order with DX Engineering. I had already placed multi-packs of two different sized snap-on ferrite beads in my cart but needed to spend slightly more money to get free shipping. I am not, however, one of those people who is drawn into buying something I do not need just because it is a BOGO item.

I have been planning for quite some time to install a multi-outlet fused DC distribution panel in the front of the bus to provide Anderson PowerPole connections for the various 12V DC accessories such as the GPS. I had just never made it a priority, which is to say, never taken the time to figure out exactly which product to buy. I had to go out to the bus to assess the size and feasibility of available areas for mounting. After looking at all of the options I selected an 8-port unit from West Mountain Radio. I really wanted a unit with USB charging ports but the only such model they make only has four PowerPole connections, which is not enough.

My next task was to order a couple of items from the Rockler Woodworking and Hardware website. I have been considering their black, powder-coated shelf brackets for a while. I made another trip to the bus to determine how much space I had on the wall where the table will go. It looked like I will have 14 inches of wall space for mounting brackets so I selected the middle of three sizes, which is 12″ high by 18″ deep. The brackets will support 1,000 pounds each so a pair of them will certainly support the weight of the Corian-topped dining table. The table is 38″ long and fully supported by 3/4″ plywood underneath, but it remains to be seen if the wall is strong enough to support the table in a cantilevered installation. If not, we will have to add a leg or an angled support.

The other thing I needed was hardwood veneer to build the three panels that will replace the strip mirrors that were on the lower portion of the outside hallway wall. I decided to go with the Allwood 2-ply maple and put a 24″ wide by 96″ long roll in the cart. The three panels will have a finished size of about 22-1/2″ by 28″ so the 8′ long piece should work out just right. I placed the order and moved on the next thing which was entering account information into our password program.

Our password app is wonderful but frustrating at times as it tries to synchronize via the cloud every time you open it, edit an entry, or create a new one. By design it keeps our passwords up-to-date on multiple devices, which is why we have it, but it is slow to sync and sometimes appears to hang up. When it is trying to sync it won’t let me do anything else, so I sit and wait (or make another cup of tea).

Phil called around 12:15 PM, returning my phone message from yesterday, and we chatted for 20 minutes or so. With any luck he will have stone delivered here on Friday or Saturday and get the driveway put in before Joe gets here next week with his trailer. Phil, however, is at the mercy of Wayne County inspectors on another job and was not able to work anywhere today due to the rain. Most of his work is weather and bureaucrat dependent.

I had the leftover squash and quinoa/lentil pilaf for lunch at 12:45 PM. While I was eating a lone buck wandered through the back yard with what appeared to be a 6-point rack. It is the first buck (with antlers) that I have seen this year.

I worked on this post for a while and then went to my office. As much as I needed to work on getting posts uploaded to my blog there were other unfinished tasks weighing more heavily on my mind. At the top of the list was an article for Bus Conversion Magazine on a 1985 Model 15 Eagle bus conversion that I saw and photographed at the Eagles International converted coach rally in Quartzsite, Arizona back in January of this year. I met the owners at that time and subsequently interacted with them a bit but then got really busy with my own projects and had to set the article on the back burner.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the article was farther along than I remembered. I also had a short narrative and eight photos from the owners that I had not yet incorporated into the article so that gave me additional material to work with. With only a few short breaks to interrupt my work I pulled together a first complete draft by 6 PM and e-mailed it to the owners and the publisher of the magazine. Gary (at BCM) wants to run this article as the feature/cover story in the January 2016 issue so the editor needs it before the end of November. Personally, I need to be done with it at least a week before Thanksgiving.

While working on the article I had quite a few e-mails back and forth with Gary, one of which inquired about my article on The Desert Bar / Nellie E. Saloon outside of Parker, Arizona. A draft of that article also exists but it is not even a full page of text and I have not yet selected and processed any photos. I wrote a little bit on The Desert Bar in a March 2016 overview article about our time in Quartzsite. For a standalone article I will need to say something more/different than I said there. If the weather continues to be crummy tomorrow I may use that as an excuse to sequester myself in my office, hunker down at my computer, and crank this article out.

One of my afternoon breaks was in response to the doorbell. It was UPS delivering my order from B&H Photo. I did not open it right away as I wanted to stay on my BCM article task. Linda texted me at 3:30 PM to let me know she was leaving the bakery and arrived home about an hour later. Even though she left the house at 6:15 AM this morning it took her 90 minutes to get to the bakery in Hamtramck. Wet roads with poor lane markings in marginal early morning light will do that. Michigan does not do a good job of maintaining its roads.

For dinner Linda made a simple salad of power greens with Ken’s Sweet Vidalia Onion dressing, roasted the white asparagus we bought the other day, and reheated the leftover risotto. The risotto held up well to being served as leftovers but the white asparagus, which was fresh, was disappointing. It was tough and we ended up microwaving it. Linda thought it was bitter, and did not like it, but I think that is a characteristic of asparagus. We both agreed, however, that it did not taste like much of anything.

While we were relaxing in the living room after dinner I did a search on white asparagus. Asparagus is a spring vegetable so the stuff we bought probably came from a long way south of the border. It is grown “underground” by keeping dirt around the stalks; a process known as etiolation, or light deprivation. It is supposed to be milder than regular (green) asparagus but with a tough, bitter outer skin than needs to be removed before cooking. The classic German method of preparation is immersion in simmering water with salt and butter until tender. Now we know. Eating things out of season may be one of the “benefits” of being globally interconnected but there is a lot to be said for eating local in-season whenever possible.

The power flickered once during dinner and several more times during the evening. Winds were forecast at 15 – 25 MPH out of the SW gusting to 40 and strengthening into the morning hours as the wind shifted out of the W in advance of a second cold front. I shut off the color laser printer, the two NAS units, and the Linux box as a precaution but left my laptop on since it runs on its own internal battery.

2015/10/27 (T) The Pilot’s Seat

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My morning started at 8 AM in its usual fashion. I fed the cats, made coffee, started a load of laundry, made/ate breakfast (orange/grapefruit juice and granola with fresh blueberries), drank my coffee in the living room with the fireplace on and Jasper at my side, day-dreamed about high quality used Sony alpha lenses, and finally got to work on the bus a little after 10 AM. Rain is coming tonight and forecast to stick around into Thursday so today would be a good day to do some more trimming, felling, and cutting up of dead trees. The temperature this morning was still in the 40’s, however, and there is still much to be done in the bus.

A few days ago I installed a new AC outlet on the forward side of the cabinet behind the driver’s seat. I wired it into the outlet on the aft side of the cabinet and then discovered that the original outlet was cracked. I had also used an oversized cover plate on the new outlet and it interfered with the Corian cabinet top. I finally got around to replacing the cracked outlet this morning. I also switched the cover plates. The regular size one still interfered slightly with the Corian top so I cut 1/8″ off of the top edge and added strips of felt on the three edges of the cabinet to raise the Corian top slightly and cushion it. Everything fit nicely. I turned the circuit breaker on and checked for power. The outlets were good to go and I checked this mini-project off my (mental) project list.

I took a break and called the Escapees RV Club to register Linda and me as staff for the July 2016 Escapade. I then called Josh at Coach Supply Direct regarding extra brackets for our MCD shades/brackets, the wiring of the passenger seat switch, and the correct orientation of the swivel bearings. I learned that the flange, which wraps around the other piece on the inside of the ring, goes down. (I had puzzled out that it should go the other way so I am glad I asked.) When I was done with my phone calls I had a quick lunch of Sabra Roasted Red Pepper Hummus and Snyder sourdough pretzel nibblers.

My next task was unbolting the driver seat pedestal base from the floor. The pedestal is secured by four large carriage bolts that go through holes at the four corners of the base plate and thread into nuts that I presume are welded into the floor structure. The base had to be removed in order to remove the old vinyl floor tile which was installed under the base. To get the old tile out I also had to remove a plastic cover around the steering linkage and a floor mounted bracket that retained the bottom if it. Last, but not least, I had to unscrew the accelerator bracket from the floor by removing three small lag screws. The accelerator is electrical, with a cable that runs through the floor, but other than limited access it was easy to detach.

Removing the old vinyl tile from the driver’s area of the cockpit was relatively straightforward. It’s somewhat flexible and wasn’t glued down that tightly. When Creative Mobile Interiors installed the tile they laid it out in a way that allowed the pieces to be trimmed in reasonable ways to fit around the steering column and brake pedal. The brake pedal is mechanically linked to a complex multi-port air valve in the compartment under the floor and any finished floor has to be installed around it.

The plywood under the driver’s seat area was depressed directly under the base. It seemed unlikely that this was the result of the base being bolted down. It may indicate that this area also got wet like the area under the passenger side seat base. I plan to install SurePly underlayment on the floor under the passenger seat but not the under the driver’s seat so I will either have to replace this piece or use floor leveling compound to fill the depressed area. Replacing the plywood is probably the correct, but more involved, solution.

I started thinking about installing the new tile so I laid out all of the old tiles on the floor in the garage, kind of like putting a simple jigsaw puzzle back together. I plan to use them as a pattern to cut the new tiles. With a clear view of the whole driver’s area I became intrigued by the lower sidewall counsel next to the driver’s seat. The more I looked at it the clearer it became that Royale Coach had cut the top off of a bumped out area, removed the upper three inches of the wall of the bump out, replaced the top piece, and tried to fill in the three inch gap in the side wall. They had also cut out an access plate and then screwed it back in. It eventually became obvious to me that they had done this to create horizontal space for the wide Villa driver’s seat that was in the coach when we bought it. Had Royale Coach left the ISRI seat in place these modifications would not have been needed. They were originally hidden under carpet but once the carpet was removed the really poor quality of the workmanship in this area was all too apparent.

I probably should have applied adhesive remover to the stairs and walls around the cockpit but it has to sit for 1 to 3 hours and the timing wasn’t right. The weather was still decent and I needed to finish working on the trees at the west end of our property. The adhesive remover can be left on for up the 24 hours so applying it at 5 PM with the intent of removing it the next morning might be ideal. The weather forecast for overnight, through tomorrow, and into Thursday, however, is for rain and colder temperatures, so they will not be good mornings for working with the door of the bus open.

Around 3:30 PM I had a banana nut muffin and then called Phil at Precision Grading. I got his voice mail and left him a message. I was getting ready to use the chainsaw to cut down a small dead tree at the west end of the property when Linda texted that she was leaving the bakery. A few minutes later Chuck called. He had some carpet remnants for us and was nearby so he came over. He could not stay long but took the time to look at what I was working on in the bus before he left. It would still be awhile before Linda got home so I took the chainsaw to the west end of the yard, cut down the tree, de-limbed it, and cut it up into manageable size pieces. I then cut up another tree of similar size that has been on the ground for a while and cut up some of the larger branches that I trimmed off the trees yesterday.

Linda got home while I was finishing the tree work and started fixing squash and a lentil/quinoa pilaf for dinner, both of which would take some time. After cleaning the saw and putting it away I took one of the carriage boots from the bus driver’s seat and went to Lowe’s to see if I could find slightly longer replacements. The old ones were somewhat rusted and some of the threads were in less than ideal condition. The new Armstrong vinyl tiles are also a bit thicker than the old ones and I wanted to make sure I had bolts that were long enough to completely thread into the retained nuts. It turned out that the bolts are metric, specifically M12-1.75×80. Lowe’s had Grade 8 M12-1.75×90 bolts (10 mm longer than the 80s) so I bought four. I also bought some thick M12 fender washers that were larger than the old ones. While I was there I picked up a role of red electrical tape.

Dinner was excellent. The squash was baked without butter (vegan) or brown sugar but was very tasty. The pilaf had onions, garlic, and mixed greens and was very good. We finished the Witch’s Brew wine from Leelanau Cellars that Linda used to poach the pears on Saturday. The squash did not look that big, but neither of us was able to finish our half so we saved it for tomorrow’s lunch.

I checked e-mail after dinner and then we settled in to watch our Tuesday night TV programs. We caught the weather report at 11 PM and then turned off the television and lights. I turned down the brightness on my iPad display and worked for another 30 minutes before going to sleep. I did not hear back from Phil this evening but I already knew he would not be here on Wednesday if the rain came as forecast as he had another job to work on that was better suited to working in rainy conditions than ours.

2015/10/26 (M) More Tree Trimming

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Linda was up early and off to the bakery. I got up at 7:15, put on my robe, fed the cats, heated water for a cup of tea, and had a couple of vegan banana nut muffins. I turned on the fireplace and worked on my iPad with Juniper curled up in my lap. With Linda going to the bakery most days for the next few weeks this is how our days will start.

I have a lot of things to do, some of which require good weather. Today looked to be just such a day so I wanted to take full advantage of it. Keith called yesterday afternoon and we agreed that he would skip this week and mow the grass again on Monday, November 2nd. That may be the final cutting for this year and our hope is that most of the leaves will have fallen by then as Keith’s mower does a pretty good job of mulching them.

I left around 10 AM and went to the Tractor Supply Company store in Howell. They sell Cub Cadet lawn tractors and someone recently suggested to me that they might carry parts specifically for CC machines. They had a good selection of mower blades and drive belts but their fuel filters were generic and they did not sell starters, fuel pumps, or ignition coils. I think the “Tractor Supply” name is a misnomer. I bought a fuel filter but it turned out to be too big to fit in the clip that holds it on the side of the engine.

I got out one of our battery chargers, connected it to the battery on the lawn tractor, and let it sit for a while. It has a 60A start boost setting and I tried using that to start the tractor. It did not turn over fast enough but eventually gets a little fuel, putts, putts, putts for a few seconds, and stops. There could be any number of things wrong such as any/all of: a gummed up carburetor, a bad fuel pump, or a bad starter motor.

My main focus today was trimming trees at the west end of the property. Most (all) of them have branches that hang down low enough to bump your head when walking or knock you off a riding lawn mower if you are not paying attention. Some of the branches were in Phil’s way the last time he was here and I said I would trim them before he returned as he will be placing and grading topsoil all through this area. This will also make it possible for Keith to mow under these trees right up to the trunks, something he has not been able to do up to this point in time.

Except for a short break at 1 PM to have a quick lunch I worked until Linda texted me at 3:30 that she was leaving the bakery. I was basically done at that point, finished picking up some small branches, and carried my tools back to the garage. Linda got home at 4:30. After catching up on our days she made a batch of granola.

I worked for a few minutes in the bus starting to loosen the last few pieces of old vinyl floor tile in the cockpit while Linda pulled dinner together. We had the leftover dandelion greens risotto. She used the rest of the greens in a sauté with onions, garlic hot pepper flakes, and a little EVOO. We had an Asian Apple Pear for dessert; the first one of these either of us has ever had. It was definitely a pear but a bit crisp, like an apple, and with some apple taste. Monday night is TV night and we watched our usual shows before going to bed.

2015/10/25 (N) Bus Dinner

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It was 44 degrees outside when we got up this morning but cozy in the house. We were out of Linda’s homemade granola so we had oatmeal for breakfast. It’s a nice change of pace on occasion and was a hot, hardy start on a chilly day. I made a pot of Sweet Seattle Dreams coffee and we had a quiet morning in the living room. We talked about going to the Howell Farmers Market, as today is the last day of the 2015 outdoor season, but did not need anything and given the temperatures decided not to go. I changed into my work clothes at 10:30, went out to the bus, and turned up the thermostats to raise the interior temperature.

My focus in the bus today was tasks that I could not do alone. I got my 15/16ths closed-end ratcheting wrench and removed the main retaining nut from the driver’s seat and from the front passenger seat. Each of these nuts threads over a vertical stud that is fixed to the pedestal/riser which is in turn bolted to the floor. In between the top of the riser and the bottom of the 6-way power base is a ball-bearing swivel plate which is centered on the mounting stud. To get to these nuts I had to move the seats forward using the motorized bases and reach in from behind but I had good access and the nuts were not hard to loosen and remove. I bought this closed end ratcheting wrench specifically for removing/installing these seat mounting nuts and it was worth every penny I paid for it.

With the nuts removed I unplugged the 12V DC power supply wires to each seat. Linda and I were then able to lift the seats off of the pedestals without too much difficulty, carry them back into the kitchen (of the bus), and lay them down on their backs on the floor, which was protected with blankets.

The reason for removing the seats was two-fold:

We were going to hang wallpaper on the living room walls where they merged into the cockpit and needed better access to those areas, and
I plan to tile the floor and walls in the cockpit and entry this coming week and needed these seats out of the way in order to be able to do that.

Our next task, preparatory to hanging wallpaper, was to remove the walnut cover (half box) from the front eight feet of the passenger side OTR HVAC duct and wiring chase. We set it across the two seats we had just removed to get it out of the way.

Bruce marks a piece of wallpaper on the dining room table in the house before cutting it.

When we were finally ready to start wallpapering we needed three relatively short pieces; two to finish the driver side and one to finish the passenger side, at least as far as we intended to go. I made a sketch for the shape of each piece, took measurements, and added them to the sketches. The wallpaper is 26.5″ wide on the roll and the longest piece we needed was only 24″. I got the 3′ and 6′ rulers from the shop while Linda got the roll of wallpaper. We used the dining room table in the house to measure, mark, and cut each piece. Although relatively small these pieces took some additional, careful, attention because they had to fit over, under, and around cabinets and window trim. To make the installation easier I trimmed away as much of the waste material as possible before hanging the piece.

Linda partially filled two 5-gallon buckets with water, added soap to one of them, and brought them out to the bus while I retrieved the paint tray and liner and the 6″ pasting brush. We laid out all of the wallpaper tools, put a towel on the floor, and set the paint tray/liner on the towel. I poured the amount of wallpaper paste I thought we would need into the tray and started with the piece of wallpaper at the right end of the built-in sofa (towards the front of the bus).

As we had done previously everywhere else in the bus I applied the paste to the wall rather than to the back of the wallpaper. The wall behind the sofa had been primed but the small strip above/behind the end cabinet and around into the cockpit had not been, so I used more paste in the unprinted areas. This first piece required a lot of trimming so it took a while to hang but it looked good when we were done. As I got each piece installed, with Linda’s help, she rolled the seams and then washed off the excess paste with a large sponge using the soapy water followed by a second sponge with clean water.

We continued along that wall towards the front of the bus with the second piece. It did not require as much trimming as the first piece and went in a little faster and easier. I overlapped the thin strip above/behind the cabinet with the first piece and cut through both of them to create a clean, tight seam. When we hung wallpaper in our house many years ago all of the seams were done by overlapping adjacent panels and cutting through both pieces. The paper we are using in the bus, which is actually vinyl, is installed by butting the factory edges together. This certainly simplifies installation, and speeds it up a bit, but it is harder to get a perfect seam. Still, it was the right choice for our motorcoach as it is washable and scrubbable and goes very well with the interior.

On the passenger side of the coach I pasted up the last section of the living room wall and part of the small section of wall under the trim on the window next to the front passenger seat. I ended up cutting off a small part of this piece and installing in separately as the trimming required was intricate and awkward to do.

After installing the two parts of this third piece we decided to go ahead and paper a small triangular section of wall above the bottom window trim. I got a scrap of wallpaper from the house that was big enough to cover the right triangle shape and cut it approximately to size. I pasted the wall, set the bottom edge flush to the sill, pressed the back edge into its vertical corner, and trimmed off the excess. This little section of wall was capped by a piece of walnut that ran at an angle along the bottom edge of the glass. I trimmed off the paper at the bottom edge of the wood trimmed and tucked the paper in under the walnut.

The reason we did not wallpaper all of the small wall section below the window is that part of the plywood wall is severely water damaged and a piece of it rotted and is missing. There is no practical way to replace the plywood and the only practical way to repair this area is to panel over it. We could use thin plywood and wallpaper it but we have enough of the 1/4″ walnut veneered plywood that we salvaged from the old refrigerator to panel this area.

We were done with the wallpapering by 2:30 PM. Linda cleaned off most of the tools and then took the two buckets of water out of the bus to pour them out and clean them. I took the paint tray/liner, pasting brush, and some of the tools to the laundry room and cleaned them. There was very little paste left in the tray liner so I had estimated quite closely on the amount I needed for today’s work.

The swivel mechanisms for the two front seats consist of two rings separated by ball bearings and interlocked around the inside edge. They have an ‘A’ side and a ‘B’ side and one of them was installed ‘A’ side up and the other ‘B’ side up. They also have a large washer. The driver seat was installed with the washer between the swivel bearing and the power base. The passenger seat had the washer directly beneath the retaining nut inside the power base. Given these differences I could not tell the correct orientation and order of assembly by casual inspection of the pieces involved. It is possible that the swivel plates are, in fact, symmetrical and thus can go in either way, but one of the washers had to be in the wrong place.

My interest in all of this was motivated, in part, by the fact that both of these seats have always wobbled since we bought the coach. The new seats are firmly attached to the power bases which seem tight but may have some play. I was suspicious of the swivels, however, as the main source of the play. I studied the design for a while and came to some tentative conclusions.

When the swivel plates are installed the ring on the bottom (that sits on the pedestal) is not going to move as the pedestal is bolted to the floor. The top ring, which will be in contact with the power base, is going to move relative to the fixed bottom ring when the seat is tuned. I decided that the larger ring, which wraps around the inside edge of the smaller ring, should go on the bottom. With regards to the washer it seemed to me that it should go directly under the retaining nut, allowing the power base to swivel relative to the nut without loosening it. Further, placing it between the swivel plates and the power base would potentially prevent the base from fully resting on the swivel plate and allow the whole seat to wobble.

I will examine all of this again more carefully when we are ready to reinstall the seats. For now, I took the two swivel bearings to the garage to clean and lubricate them. After wiping them off I sprayed them with WD-40, worked them around, and wiped them off again. I then sprayed them with garage door lubricant, worked then around again, and wiped them off. Finally, I worked Red Tack ‘grease’ into the ball bearing race, spun the rings to distribute it evenly, and the wiped the outer surfaces clean. After cleaning the grease off of my hands I took the swivel plates back to the bus, wiped the pedestal plates clean, and set them back in place.

We quit working around 3 PM so Linda could cut my hair and beard. I then shaved, showered, and got dressed for dinner. Linda showered after me but was dressed and ready to go before I was. We made plans yesterday to meet Bruce (W8RA) and Linda (K4YL) at Carrabba’s in Novi at 5 PM for dinner. We left at 4:30 and arrived in Carrabba’s parking lot just after 5.

The parking lot was not full so we knew there would not be a wait for a table. Bruce and Linda were already there and had opted for a booth. The booths will seat six adults so they have more table space than a table for four. They also offer a bit more privacy for conversation in an otherwise not very private setting.

Carrabba’s had changed its menu since we were last here. The one dish they had before, Tag Pic Pak (seriously), was no longer on the menu. It was Linda’s favorite dish and one of only two that we could eat. They had something with a different name that the waitress said was the same but it included chicken. She said they could leave the chicken out but the price would still be $14.95. The Tag Pik Pak was $10.95 as I recall. We have come to resent paying for animal products that we don’t eat. Linda ended up getting whole grain spaghetti with Pomodoro sauce and I got whole grain spaghetti with olive oil and garlic. Linda said the sauce lacked flavor. My dish was “off menu” and was unimpressive. Our salads, dressed with vinegar and oil, were OK and the bread was very tasty. Linda had a glass of wine and I had blackberry sangria. Sangria is Spanish, not Italian, but it was good. The meal overall was disappointing but we had a great time chatting with Bruce and Linda over dinner. The manager stopped by to ask how our meal was (as a courtesy) and ended up having to talk to us for 20 minutes.

Back home Linda made vegan banana nut muffins. The organic bananas we bought at Meijer’s two days ago must have been bruised because they were going bad very quickly. Banana bread or muffins was a great way to salvage what we could. While she made the muffins I went to my office, checked e-mail, and off-loaded the photos we took today.

At 8 PM I turned on the Yaesu FTM-400 ham radio and participated in the SLAARC Info Net. When the net was over I came back upstairs, reviewed the items in my B&H Photo shopping cart, and placed the order. I then spent a little time researching DC distribution panels on the DX Engineering website and doing a Google search for cantilevered table supports and legs. We each had a muffin for dessert and went to bed at 10 PM. I put on the Detroit PBS Create channel, turned down the volume, and worked on this post for a while before finally going to sleep.

2015/10/24 (S) Meghan and Chris

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We drove separately to our SLAARC breakfast in South Lyon as Linda had plans to walk with Diane at Kensington Metropark after breakfast. We drove through some heavy rain after which I chatted a bit with Tom (W8TAF) and Mike (W8XH). As always, we enjoyed the breakfast conversation with our fellow amateur radio operators. Linda left at 9:15 and I lingered until 9:30 enjoying my last cup of coffee. I paid our check and had just headed for home when Mike (W8XH) called me on the radio. We had a good chat about my Hi-Q 6-80 mobile HF antenna and will try to find a time to test it using his newer VNWA. Mike has learned a lot about how to use it in the last couple of years and is always willing to put that knowledge to use to help his fellow ham. I would love to figure out a way to mount this antenna so we can take it with us this winter and use it, but I doubt that will happen. We just have too much else that has to get done in the next month that is more important than this.

At home I pulled up the DX Engineering website on my iPad. I found their Mix 31 snap-on ferrite chokes and put them in my cart. If I can find a few other small things to buy the order will qualify for free shipping. I suspect that will not be a problem.

Next I pulled up the Sony alpha app and researched the acronyms they use for various features of their cameras and lenses. The model numbers for their A-mount lenses all begin with SAL (Sony “A” Lens) and their E-mount lenses all begin with SEL (Sony “E” Lens) so that helps sort those out right up front. However, they make both 35mm full frame (36mm x 24mm) and APS-C (24mm x 16mm) lenses in both mounting systems. The FF lenses can be used on APS-C bodies, such as our Sony a100, but the APS-C lenses, which always include the letters “DT” in the product name, cannot generally be used on FF bodies. Our new Sony SLT-a99v DSLT camera body, however, can detect a DT lens and automatically limits the active portion of the sensor to an APS-C size area.

SAM stands for “Smooth Action Motor” and SSM stands for “SuperSonic wave Motor” both of which are used with certain lenses, especially large telephoto ones, that have their own internal focusing motor. OSS stands for “Optical Steady Shot.” Even though the alpha series cameras have image stabilization built into the body some Sony lenses also have image stabilization built into them.

One of the things I was trying to find out is which lenses have distance encoders so they will work with the ADI (Advanced Distance Integration) feature of the a99 body and compatible Sony flash units. The lens specification table in the alpha app was not really clear on this point. Some lenses were marked with a small circle for this feature and others with a dash. If their nomenclature is consistent with other entries the dash means “no”. Logically then the circle means “yes” but I did not pursue this further. I will have to experiment with the 18-70mm APS-C format lens that came with the a100 and see if it supports ADI.

I opened the B&H Photo Video app and revisited the reviews on the Sony HVL-60m flash. Although more expensive than the HVL-43m I added it to my cart. Besides being more powerful it has an available external battery pack which I found and also put in the cart. Finally, I added the Cotton Carrier dual camera harness to the cart. I found my Minolta electric shutter releases and checked to see if they worked with the alpha 99. They did!, so I did not need to order new ones. B&H was closed for online order processing until 7:30 PM this evening so I did not submit the order right away. The Cotton Carrier is on sale until the 26th so I will submit the order tomorrow while the sale price is still valid.

Linda got home at 12:30 PM and we had the last two vegan hotdogs for lunch. She then started preparing dinner and I went to my office. I did a load of laundry, dealt with e-mail, checked in with RVillage, and copied photos from both the Sony a100 and the Sony a99 to my computer. I updated my BCM article spreadsheet and then moved article folders to the proper directories and deleted them from my BCM Dropbox folder. I added 80 pounds of solar salt to the water softener and then brought the laundry upstairs and hung it up. By 4:30 PM I was feeling very tired and took a short nap until Meghan and Chris showed up at 5 PM.

We showed them the driveway and bus projects and then went inside the house just as it started to sprinkle. Everyone selected a beer and we were standing around the kitchen when a brief, but very intense, line of storms moved through our area with heavy rain and strong winds.

For dinner Linda made a salad of dark leafy greens with tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, and raisins dressed with a raspberry vinaigrette. The main course was a Farro pilaf with dried cranberries, onions, garlic, broccoli leaves, and slivered almonds. Yes, broccoli leaves. The whole broccoli plant is edible but until recently only the flowerets were available in stores. The side dish was Brussels sprouts cut in half and oven-roasted with salt, pepper, and a little olive oil. Dessert was pears in wine. She used the Witch’s Brew, a spiced red wine that was perfect for this dish and this time of year. After poaching the pears she reduced the wine to a sauce and chilled everything in the refrigerator for hours. (The pears were made ahead of time as was the Farro, with the main dish being finished just before serving.)

We sat in the living room with the fireplace on and chatted about houses, pets, travel, sports, and the upcoming holidays. Meghan and Chris stayed until 8:30 PM and then headed home. It was a nice visit during which both cats actually came out of hiding and allowed themselves to be petted, a rare treat in Jasper’s case.

We were both tired, partly the residual effect of our altered schedule on Wednesday and Thursday, so we finished clearing the table and went to bed. The Detroit PBS Create channel was featuring vegetarian (including vegan) episodes of various cooking shows so we watched a few of those before turning off the TV and going to sleep.

2015/10/23 (F) Fetching Antique

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Linda was back on schedule this morning; up at 5:45 AM and off to the bakery at 6:15. I got up around 7:30 AM, ground beans for a small pot of coffee and made breakfast. Breakfast was oatmeal that I made myself from quick cook oats with raisins, dried cranberries, and pecans. I forgot to add cinnamon and brown sugar but I did add a small amount of vegan butter, sugar, and non-dairy coffee creamer. I like to cook my oatmeal until it is very thick and then loosen it up slightly with these additions.

After breakfast I checked the thermometers in the bus refrigerator and recorded the temperatures. They seem to be all over the place and I am really starting to question the accuracy, and thus the usefulness, of these relatively inexpensive “consumer” devices.

Around 10 AM I was getting ready to drive to Canton when I got a call from Chuck. The pair of motorized MCD duo shades had arrived the other day and he was having difficulty installing them. I offered to stop by his shop after my errand and he said he would be there.

I called Clyde to make sure he would be home and then headed to Canton to pick up the antique Sun automotive distributor tester. Clyde’s house was easy to find; an old residential area tucked away behind what is now a heavily developed commercial strip along Ford Road either side of I-275. He helped me load the tester into my car and then we chatted for a while. He had a very rare and beautifully restored (customized) 1948 two-door Pontiac boat tail sport coup; all black with two chrome strips, one down each side. I am not a “car guy” but I appreciate a work of art when I see one.

I drove to Chuck’s shop in Novi to see how the windshield shade installation was progressing. The pocket between the upper windshields and the cabinets was too narrow on the outside ends to allow the shades to tilt enough to engage the clip in that end and then swing up and latch on the other side. After struggling with it for a while we went to lunch at the Panera nearby.

Back at his shop we pondered the installation problem until I finally had an insight. The upper windshields slope away from the overhead cabinets, creating more horizontal space at lower heights. I suggested that using a 2″x2″ board as a spacer might lower the mounting bracket just enough to allow it to tilt into place and have enough space to lock it in and release it if needed. Chuck had a scrap piece of 2×2 that we used to see if my idea might work. Chuck thought it would work so he locked up the shop and I headed for home while headed to The Home Depot.

Back home I checked the thermometers in the bus fridge. The readings just did not make sense so I brought the LaCrosse base unit and remote into the house to get them away from the TempMinder components. I researched methods and equipment for measuring temperature in freezers and refrigerators looking for something that would be more accurate and precise than our current technology but I did not find much.

The more accurate temperature measurement instruments that are available for under $100 all use wired probes rather than wireless remote sensors. The best ones have the probes sealed in small glass bottles filled with a liquid such as alcohol, oil, or glycerin. These remain liquid at normal freezer and refrigerator temperatures and surround the temperature probe with enough thermal mass to prevent it from responding too quickly to changes in air temperature such as occurs when the door is opened or the fridge compressor and fans are running. In effect the probes more accurately reflect the temperature of things stored in the refrigerator rather than the instantaneous temperature of the air near the sensor. The wires for the probes are typically relatively fine and do not prevent the door seals from closing completely, at least in the short term. A permanent installation, however, seems ill-advised.

I was researching flash units and other accessories for our new Sony alpha 99 camera when Phil showed up mid-afternoon. I set my research aside and went out to chat with him and watch what he was doing. He had a full truck load of sand from another job that he dumped at the west end of the property and then moved it into some of the low spots, of which there are many. He used his front loader to finish removing topsoil from the new driveway area by the third culvert and load it into his truck. He filled the truck and dumped it at the west end of the property. He then used his bulldozer to grade out the area of the driveway where he had just removed all of the topsoil. Finally, he used the front loader to compact the sand driveway base.

Phil was going to come back on Saturday but he is at the point where he needs stone (21AA road gravel) that he will not be able to get it until Monday. He is also finishing up other jobs that involve inspections and won’t be back here until at least Tuesday. I need to trim the lower branches on some of the trees to get them out of his way, and out of Keith’s way when he mows the grass, so I will probably do that on Monday, leaving Saturday and Sunday to work on the bus while Linda is available to help.

Phil was still working when Linda got home so I left Phil to finish up and went inside. I was tired and took a short nap while Linda fixed dinner. She made a nice salad and risotto with celery and dandelion greens; a first for us, and very tasty. We also did a taste test of the California Olive Ranch EVOO versus the Philippe Berio EVOO that Linda normally uses. We used Italian bread that she brought home from the bakery. I was able to detect a very subtle difference in the taste but had to not use the crust of the bread as the poppy seeds provided their own distinct taste. The COR product was the top choice of a tasting panel at Cook’s Illustrated magazine and reasonably priced at just under $10 a bottle but I did not find the taste superior to the PB product.

After dinner I went to my office and checked e-mail. I took care of some things related to the November 2015 issue of BCM. We had confirmation e-mails from Molly Pinner for our 56th Escapade Volunteer assignments. I also had one from Kate with links to camera harnesses at B&H Photo and a second with links to a recent interview on AM1700 with the organizer of the Pop-X art exhibit in Liberty Plaza and photos she has taken of guests at the station and musical groups at SxSW and other venues.

I talked briefly with Mike (W8XH) via the South Lyon 2m repeater using the Yaesu FTM-400 radio. Our ham shack was working just fine so apparently there was no Info Net this past Sunday. I called Butch to let him know I had the distributor tester and chatted with him about the refrigerator temperature monitoring problems I am having. It was then off to bed, as we have to be up by 7 AM to get to our weekly ham radio breakfast in South Lyon.

2015/10/22 (R) Another Routine Exam

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Linda got up at 2:30 AM and started drinking the second half gallon of GoLightly at 3 AM. She was done with it by 5 AM, as required, and got me up at 5:45 AM. We were going to leave for the HFHS Columbus Center in Novi at 6:15 but actually left closer to 6:30.

The traffic inbound to the Detroit Metro Area from the northwest at that hour of the morning is heavy and the slowdowns are ridiculous in the sense that there is no apparent reason for them. And yet, according to Linda, the traffic comes to a complete stop at approximately the same places every day. Part of the problem seems to be that people do not know how to merge. This might be a driving specific manifestation of the more general problems in or society of people thinking they should always come first and being unable/unwilling to compromise. Another problem is that people speed and tailgate, which means they are frequently on their brakes, the implication being that the rest of us should somehow get out of their way. Brake lights, in turn, seem to cause a chain reaction and far enough back in the chain traffic can come to a complete halt. Whatever the causes, we do not drive the highways at rush hour if we do not have to.

We got to the Columbus Center with a few minutes to spare, got a nice parking spot, and went inside. We found the colonoscopy clinic on the second floor and Linda checked in. She was the first patient on the schedule for her doctor and did not have to wait very long before being taken in. The Columbus Center has guest Wi-Fi for their customers and a small self-serve cafe so I went there and had some coffee while I researched flash units and lenses for the Sony SLT-a99v camera that I recently acquired.

Linda’s colonoscopy took less than an hour. She had come out of the anesthesia, gotten the preliminary results (good), and been discharged by 9:15 AM. She got dressed and we were on our way by 9:30. She was hungry, of course, so we went to the Panera on Novi Road just south of Grand River Avenue and had coffee and bagels. On the way home we stopped at the new Menard’s on Wixom Road just north of I-96. They had the Eaton RV electrical outlet boxes for the same price as Lowe’s but had a better selection of conduit adapters. I bought three pieces that together would allow me to connect the bottom of the RV outlet box to the conduit I already had.

We got home at 11 AM and it did not take long for Linda to go to bed. While she slept I installed the RV outlet box on the post by the new driveway extension and level parking pad. The first step was to cement a 1-1/2″ to 1-1/4″ reducer into a 2″ to 1-1/2″ reducer which I did in the garage. The weather was on the cool side of perfect but a nice enough day for working outside with appropriate clothing. The next step was to determine where to cut off the vertical piece of 2″ PVC conduit so the bottom of the outlet box would be 24″ above the ground. The pair of reducers would take up about two inches so I marked the pipe at 22″.

The conduit was tight to a 4″x 4″ post and secured by two plastic conduit brackets. I removed the upper bracket but could not use my Rigid tubing cutter to go completely around it so I used a hacksaw. I could not just cut all the way through the pipe, however, because of the rope that was inside to be used later to pull wires through the conduit. I cut a large “V” notch on the side opposite the post, like I would when felling a tree, and pulled the free end of the rope out through the opening. The notch was horizontal on the bottom and came in at about 45 degrees from higher up. With the rope out of the way, and secured so it could not fall into the pipe, I continued the horizontal cut and finished cutting through the conduit.

I loosened the clamp holding the bottom of the pipe so I could move the top of it far enough from the post to get some PVC cement most of the way around the riser. I then pushed and twisted the 2-piece adapter assembly over the 2″ conduit. Using a short level I plumbed the riser pipe while eyeing its relationship to the post. Holding the upper clamp over the pipe I secured the clamp with two screws but did not tighten the clamp all the way down.

RV electrical outlet box on top of riser post with level on top.

I set the outlet box on top of the adapters and dropped the third piece through the hole from the inside but did not cement it in. I used the level to plumb the box, checking it visually in relationship to the post and pipe, and then marked the three mounting holes with a marking pen. I removed the adapter collar and box and then center-punched and drilled holes for three pan head wood screws. I put the box and collar back on/in the pipe and secured it to the post with three pan head wood screws. I then installed the removable panel with the outlet mounted in it. I coiled up the extra rope, closed the cover, and was done except for getting all of the tools and materials back into the garage.

I checked on the thermometers in the bus refrigerator and recorded the readings. I then decided to add a duplex AC outlet in the cabinet behind the driver’s seat. I found a deep plastic single gang remodeling box, a brown duplex outlet, a brown oversized cover plate, and a 30″ length of 14-2+G cable. I used the box to outline the opening and then completed the lines with a small square. I drilled out the four corners of the opening with a 1/2″ drill. I then cut out the opening using a saber saw, finishing some of the inside corners with a hacksaw. I made quite a bit of sawdust and wood chips so I vacuumed up the mess before continuing with the installation.

The new AC outlet box (blue) installed in the front of the A/V cabinet behind the driver’s chair.

I turned off the breaker in the inverter subpanel for the driver side AC outlets circuit and verified that the existing outlet was not energized. I removed the cover plate, unscrewed the duplex outlet, and pulled it out. I opened a second access hole on top of the outlet box and then prepared the cable by removing about 4″ of the sheath and stripping about 3/4″ of insulation off of the wires. I fed the cable through the hole and connected the wires to the appropriate screw terminals. I turned the outlet over so the round ground pins were at the top rather than the bottom, screwed the outlet back into the box, and put the cover plate back on. I had hoped to finish the whole job before dinner but dinner was ready so I went inside to eat.

For dinner Linda made a salad and Garbanzo beans with onions and Swiss chard lightly sautéed in olive oil. It probably had a little garlic and might have had a few hot pepper flakes as Linda often uses these ingredients, but I don’t know for sure as I am wrote this post two days later.

After dinner I finished installing the new outlet. When I put the oversized cover plate on it appeared to be close enough to the top edge of the cabinet that it would interfere with the Corian top. No big deal, I would just swap it with the regular size plate on the original outlet. When I went to take the first cover plate off I noticed that one of the outlets was cracked in half horizontally. I will have to replace it but did not feel like getting into that this evening with the light and my energy fading.

It had been a long day, and I was admittedly tired and contemplating an earlier than usual bedtime, so I locked up the bus and went into the house for the evening. We turned in at 9 PM and were asleep by 10.

The Phase Place

Welcome to the next phase (hosted by QTH.com)

Category Archives: Family-Friends-Home

2015/11/24 (T) T Minus 3 (days)

2015/11/23 (M) Elemental Errand Run

2015/11/22 (N) Repackaging

2015/11/21 (S) Not Quite As Planned

2015/11/20 (F) The End of Projects (for now)

2015/11/19 (R) FTH Annual Meeting

2015/11/18 (W) Fuel Run

2015/11/16 (M) Tiling the Cockpit, #3

2015/11/14 (S) Tiling the Cockpit, #1

2015/11/13 (F) Road Trip

2015/11/12 (R) Unforced Solutions

2015/11/11 (W) Two for One

2015/11/10 (T) A Rainy Day

2015/11/09 (M) Clever Mouse

2015/11/08 (N) SLAARC Elections

2015/11/07 (S) Measure One, Cut Twice

2015/11/06 (F) MEF3

2015/11/05 (R) POR-15

2015/11/04 (W) Southbound Liberty

2015/11/03 (T) The Penultimate Cut

2015/11/02 (M) Driveway Joe

2015/11/01 (N) Brunch with Kathi, Farewell to Uncle Bob

2015/10/31 (S) Boo!

2015/10/29 (R) A Setback

2015/10/28 (W) Inside Flash

2015/10/27 (T) The Pilot’s Seat

2015/10/26 (M) More Tree Trimming

2015/10/25 (N) Bus Dinner

2015/10/24 (S) Meghan and Chris

2015/10/23 (F) Fetching Antique

2015/10/22 (R) Another Routine Exam