Category Archives: Bus Projects

Posts related to maintenance, repair, and remodeling projects on our 1990/92 Prevost H3-40 VIP Royale Coach (Monaco) converted motorcoach .

2015/08/20 (R) On The Level

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/08/19 (W) If It’s Wednesday This Must Be Indiana

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As we did last Wednesday we were up earlier than usual to drive to Indiana.  We wanted to be at Bontrager’s Surplus when they opened at 9 AM to pick up some battery terminal covers for Butch, and possibly ourselves, so we pulled out of our driveway at 6:16 AM.

We took our usual route west on M-59 to I-96W to Lansing Road south.  Rather than get on I-69S we stayed on Lansing Road all the way to Charlotte where we stopped at the Biggby’s Coffee to use the restroom and get coffee and bagels.  From there we then took I-69S to Coldwater and headed west on US-12 since Bontrager’s Surplus is located on US-12 in White Pigeon, Michigan.

We arrived at Bontrager’s Surplus just after 9 AM.  We looked around briefly but did not spot the battery terminal covers so we asked one of the employees where they might be and he took us directly to them.  We bought 36 (18 red and 18 black), 10 of each for Butch and 8 of each for us.  Bontrager’s is probably the best stocked of the surplus and salvage stores in this area and I could have spent hours here, but we had other places to be and a long day ahead of us.

Our shopping done we continued on to Coach Supply Direct in Edwardsburg, Michigan where we found Josh Leach hard at work on some interior remodeling of a Fleetwood Revolution.  He removed the Notion Linen sample from his Lambright Comfort Chairs book and we chatted for a while.

I reflected on fact that one of the nicest Class A motorhomes we ever saw was a Fleetwood Revolution.  The interior was a (faux) cherry wood with satin finish nickel hardware.  It had modern, clean cabinetry and light grey wall treatments and a light tile floor with nickel colored inserts, as best I can recall.  We eventually toured the American Coach factory in Decatur, Indiana where the Revolution was made and after seeing some of the construction methods we were less enamored with it.  Like all of the American Coach products it was out of our price range as a new unit but it was very much to our taste.

Before continuing our Journey Linda pulled up Jarel’s address in our GPS.  I then texted Jarel to give him a revised, and more accurate ETA.  We headed southwest out of Edwardsburg on M-62 which becomes IN-23 through Granger.  We turned onto IN-331 which bypasses most of Mishawaka east of town and delivered us to US-20 where we headed west.  We stopped at the Meijer’s, which has a filling station, fueled the car, and switched drivers.  We exited US-20 just south of South Bend, Indiana and headed south on US-31.  We exited US-31 at Rochester and took IN-25 south to Logansport.  I texted Jarel an updated ETA enroute.

We arrived at Jarel Beatty Cabinetry at 11:45 AM and pulled around back.  I texted Jarel to let him know we were there and he came out of the shop to meet us.  We chatted for a while, loaded up the pantry, the slides, the three pieces for the built-in sofa that we forgot last week, a piece of walnut trim for the pantry face, and a leftover  piece of 1/4″ Baltic birch plywood.  Linda wrote a check for the balance we owed.  The only thing left for Jarel to build is the HVAC/wiring chase cover but he cannot do that until I give him the length, which I cannot do him until the desk is installed in the bus.

We left the cabinet shop at 1 PM and stopped at the Martin’s supermarket in Logansport for lunch.  This particular Martin’s did not have a salad bar but they did have pre-made salads.  We each had one along with a bread roll.  I called Butch to let them know we were on our way, and headed for Twelve Mile, Indiana.

I gave Butch the battery terminal covers.  He and I figured their cost ($1.25 each) covered the cost of the 12 fiberglass pole mast sections ($2.00 each) we took last week and called it even.

I brought the small window frame stop block from our bus to see if Butch could make one.  He had some aluminum bar stock that looked like it would work.  We decided to make it longer than the original to accommodate three machine screws and cut it to size using a band saw.  Butch then marked three points to drill holes using the old block as a template.  Two holes were drilled through and one end hike was blind.  The blind hole will fit over the shaft of the old screw that would not come out in case any of it is still protruding above the surface.  The middle hole will line up with other existing hole and I will have to drill and tap a hole in the frame to match the third hole.  But first I need to get some brown spray paint, put some sacrificial screws in the holes, and paint the piece.

While we were working on the stop block I noticed that Butch had a torque multiplier sitting out.  He commented that it was available to a good home for a good price; hint, hint.  These torque multipliers are used to break the lug nuts loose on bus and truck wheels and I have had one on my mental wish list since I first became aware of them five years ago.  I had not pursued getting one as they tend to be expensive even used on Ebay.  Butch wanted $75 for it so I wrote a check and put it in the car.  It has three different lug nut sockets so I hope one of them first the ones on our bus.  I also hoped they would fit the very large torque wrench I bought from Butch last fall but they are 1″ square drive sockets and the torque wrench has a 3/4″ square stud.  I’m not sure I have a correct socket for the torque wrench so that’s another thing I still need to get.

Butch and Fonda bought a compact stacked clothes washer/dryer for their bus and asked if we would help them get it into their rig.  Of course we said yes.  We got it on a dolly and wheeled it out to the entrance door and then pondered the situation.  We have some recent experience getting things out of and into a bus entrance door and this did not look promising.  Butch handed me a tape measure and I determined that the maximum width that would fit through the step well was 23.5 inches due to the door hinges.  The washer/dryer is 24″ wide and 28″ deep with a recessed back on the washer (lower unit).  It is also tall, being a stacked unit, and we all agreed that the only way it was going in was on its back, through a window, using a forklift.  It was Deja vu all over again; been there, done that, didn’t even get a T-shirt.  That approach required more preparation than Butch cared to tackle today, and more time than we had to spare, so we moved the unit back under the overhang and left it covered with a blanket.

We all went back in the house and visited for a while longer.  Butch had found his 4″ pneumatic body sander and loaned it to me along with three boxes of AA50 sanding discs.  While not quite as aggressive as the #36 ceramic grit belts I have been using on the 4″ portable belt sander, this tool will allow me to get under the cabinet toe kicks where the belt sander won’t reach.

As much as we would have liked to stay and go out to dinner again, we did not want to be getting home at midnight.  We wished them a safe journey, again, but this time it really is unlikely that we will see them again before they leave for Arizona.  We left for home at 4:45 PM with Linda at the wheel.  From SR-16W (CR-700N) we took CR-700 (Meridian) north to its northernmost point and headed west into Fulton on W750S where we picked up IN-25 and headed north.  At Rochester we left IN-25 and took US-31N to US-20W.  We exited US-20 at SR-19 and drove north through Elkhart, finally arriving at the Martin’s supermarket at CR-4 around 6:15 PM.  This Martin’s has an excellent salad bar and a nice dining area with an upstairs, which is where we chose to sit and eat our dinner.

Linda continued to drive after dinner.  There is an entrance to the Indiana Toll Road (I-80/90) on SR-19 just south of CR-4 so we got on going east.  The toll road is a few extra miles compared to US-12 through Michigan, but it is posted 70 MPH (max) with no stops, compared to 55 MPH with six towns that have reduced speed limits and stops.

We exited the toll road, paid our $2.90 toll, and headed north on I-69.  A few miles later we were back in Michigan.  We left the Interstate at M-60 (exit 25) to refuel at the Shell station, use the restrooms, and switch drivers.  It was about 8 PM and still light, but it was cloudy to the west and the light was fading.  I find night driving easier than Linda does and I had been able rest while she drove so I was good to go.

I followed our usual route, leaving I-69N and using the Lansing Road cutoff to get to I-96E.  We passed mile marker 100 on the south side of Lansing, which meant we had 33 miles to the M-59 exit.  From there it was 11 miles to Hacker Road and then the final 2.5 miles to our house.

We arrived home at 10 PM, five hours and 15 minutes after we left Twelve Mile and just over 16 hours from when we left home this morning.  The trip odometer indicated 534.8 miles traveled today.  We unloaded the camera, phones, wallets, etc. from the car but decided to wait until tomorrow to unload the cabinetry, tools, and parts.  We headed off to bed and watched part 3 of a PBS program The Mystery of Matter:  The Search for the Elements.  Interesting stuff.  We both find programs that inform and educate to be entertaining.

 

2015/08/18 (T) Walking Grind

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We were up at 8 AM and I made a pot of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe half-caff coffee while Linda got breakfast ready.  She made a batch of granola yesterday so we had some with fresh blueberries and unsweetened soy milk.  It’s our standard breakfast, but that’s because we like it so much.  She had an e-mail from Robin at the bakery and had to deal with some issues related to the bakery’s new account, The University of Michigan Ann Arbor.  As I do most mornings I sat in the living room working on my iPad, drinking my coffee, and paying attention to our two cats.

Being Tuesday Linda had a date with Diane to walk at 10 AM and left at 9:30 for Kensington Metropark.  I continued working on my iPad for a while and enjoying my coffee.  At 10:15 AM I called the Livingston County Sheriff and reported the mailbox incident from late Friday evening /early Saturday morning.  Shelby took the call, was very nice, said she was not aware of any other mailbox reports, but would pass the info along to the Desk Sargent.  I checked my e-mail and confirmed with Harvey for Friday at 10 AM to move the old bus refrigerator.  I finally went out to work on the floor of the bus at 11 AM, by which time the outside air temperature was already in the 80’s.

I leave three of the awning style windows in the bus open a few inches so it doesn’t get too hot inside.  I opened all three roof vents, turned on their ceiling fans, and set them to exhaust air rather than draw it in.  I also left the entrance door open to allow more air to flow through the inside of the coach.  I then sanded and vacuumed until about 1 PM.  When I came back in the house I had two missed calls from Michele Henry of Phoenix Paint so I called her back.  I was on the phone with her when Linda got back from her walk.

Once I wrapped up the call with Michele we had a light lunch of hummus with pita chips and both black and red grapes.  While we were eating we were entertained by a gray squirrel who had gotten onto the bird feeder and was hanging upside down by its hind legs.  It would curl its body to bring its mouth up to the bottom of the feeder, emancipate some seed, and then uncurl to the more relaxed stretched out position and eat it.  All of this was also being watched with both interest and considerable skepticism by three crows who were hanging around on the ground under the feeder.  They grabbed seeds that the squirrel dropped but seemed very wary of it, which surprised us.  I speculated that perhaps they had never seen a squirrel behave in this way and were, therefore, understandably and appropriately cautious; crows are very smart, after all.

After lunch we took the three wallpaper sample books to the bus to look at them with the woodwork.  Before we could do that, however, we discovered a small bird trapped in the coach and had to deal with it.  I say “trapped” because it was up on the dashboard and obviously confused by the windshields as it kept trying to fly out through them.  It did not realize it could get out the same way it came in, through the open door.

The bird seemed small and I think it was an immature sparrow but I’m not sure.  It was seeking safe shelter in the space between the dashboard cover and the lower driver side windshield.  I used a broom to try to gently encourage it to fly towards the door but it was understandably suspicious of my good intentions.  I put on a pair of canvas work gloves and it allowed me to gently pick it up.  I tried to release it at the door opening and it flew into the door causing Linda to make a comment about why we use the phrase “bird-brained.”  I caught it again, got outside the bus clear of the door, and tossed it gently away from the bus.  It immediately took flight and flew off to the southwest, apparently none the worse for its ordeal.  I can only image the story it told the other birds.

I got a piece of the Armstrong Alterna Luxury Vinyl floor tile from the garage.  Many of the wallpapers that we thought would look good with the floor tile turned out to be too yellow, and most of the ones with good color tone were too dark, but we found a few that we liked.  Those tended to be lighter without a lot of pattern and a neutral, off-white color.  We are, however, far from a final choice as we do not currently have a sample of the Lambright Notion Linen upholstery fabric or the MCD night shade material and the wallpaper has to work with all of these simultaneously.

We measured the areas that need to be repapered and in the process decided that we would leave the old wallpaper on the inner wall of the hallway, at least for now.  (The paper in the bathroom, which is different from the rest of the coach, is generally in good condition and we are not currently planning on replacing it as part of this project.)  The existing wallpaper in most of the coach is a string cloth with a beige base but distinct vertical threads that contain a noticeable amount of grey and a more subtle herringbone pattern.  It looks good with the walnut woodwork and worked well with the old white carpet, black ceramic floor tile, and bone leather upholstery, so we think it will continue to look good with the new floor tile.

If Josh is at his shop tomorrow we will try to stop and pick up the Lambright Notion Linen sample as whatever wallpaper we choose has to work well with the furniture fabric.  On Thursday we will revisit the papers in the three books we currently have with an eye towards something that has some grey in it.

It was another warm, humid day and I was done sanding so I closed up the roof vents, locked up the coach, and went inside.  Linda prepared a pizza using the gluten-free crust recipe she got from Mara.  Yum.

After dinner I went to Lowe’s and bought two bags of TEC Skill Set Universal Floor Patch and Skim Coat, a mixing bucket, two bags of tile spacers, and three 4’x8′ sheets of 1/4″ SurePly underlayment.  I meant to buy a folding metal sawhorse but left it somewhere in the store.  I was going to buy premixed floor leveling compound but they only had 1-quart containers for $10 each and the directions said it would only cover 1.5 square feet.  I have about 80 square feet of floor to patch and level, so that clearly was not a good solution.

The Universal Floor Patch is a powder that has to be mixed with water, but each bag will cover 20 – 25 square feet at 1/8″ thickness and costs $13; much better than the premixed stuff.  I have a few areas to patch that are deeper than 1/8″ but the material can be applied up to 1/2″ thick per coat, and most of the area just needs a much thinner skimcoat.  It can also be sanded within 24 hours which will allow me to make it very smooth and keep the work moving along.  My goal is to have the floor leveled and sanded smooth by bedtime on Saturday so I can install the 1/4″ underlayment on Sunday and start laying tile on Monday or Tuesday next week.

I stopped at Teeko’s Coffee and Teas to get some more of the Cafe Europe half-caff blend.  They had the regular blend but not the decaf blend so I had Roger use the Columbian decaf instead.  He roasted the beans for me while I waited and Jeff showed up along with his wife as I was leaving.  They were married last September and are expecting their first child late next month.  Jeff was wearing his Pepsi delivery shirt, confirming what the woman at the Kahuna Coffee Shop told us last Friday.

We turned in early as we will be getting up very early tomorrow to drive to Indiana again.  Linda watched an episode of NCIS after which I watched a PBS special on the origins and evolution of the Navy Seals.

 

2015/08/17 (M) Wallpaper Search

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We awoke this morning to find wild turkeys in the yard behind our bedroom.  The deer feed block and natural mineral rock initially attracted a doe and her faun but has been a much stronger attraction for the wild turkeys and crows.  Both the turkeys and crows also like to clean up the bird seed that falls to the ground under the seed block that Linda hung from a branch on one of our White Pine trees.  The turkeys eventually moved on and we sat down to a breakfast of fresh mixed berries, juice, and coffee, which we took to the living room while we used our iPads to read, write, or play a few games, as is our morning habit.

I had a text message exchange with Chuck regarding the moving of our old bus refrigerator out of his shop.  He and Barbara are headed off to Oscoda on Friday with their race car so I e-mailed Harvey (AC8NO) from our SLAARC ham radio club to see if he could help us move the refrigerator on Friday.

We had quite a few downed branches, and a couple of downed trees, scattered about the property as a result of winter snows, spring/summer storms, poor drainage, and age.  With Keith coming this morning to mow the grass I decided I should pick up as many of them as I could.  When I started at 9:30 AM it was already warm and muggy.  Keith showed up at 10 AM and got right to work but I managed to stay ahead of him and got everything of any size picked up except for one tree.  It was at least 8″ in diameter at the base and at least 30′ long so I will have to de-limb it, cut up the trunk with a chain saw, and haul the pieces away using the lawn tractor and utility dump trailer.  That, however, won’t happen anytime soon.

We skipped last week’s mowing because it had been dry and the grass had not grown noticeably, but we got rain during the past week and the grass responded accordingly.  The yard looked good when Keith was done and the timing of his visit was fortuitous as there is rain in the forecast for the next few days with slightly cooler temperatures.

We had a light lunch and then Linda settled in to work at her desk while I worked in the bus.  I spent a couple of hours using the belt sander to grind down the residual thinset and mastic on the floor.  I wear a dust mask, hearing protector, and safety glasses when sanding, which is even less comfortable than normal when the temperature and humidity are elevated.  But I needed to have the floor prep finished by the end of this week, and the new floor installed by the end of next week, or I risked not being ready for the installation of the new seating on September 14 and 15.

I suggested to Linda that we go to Ann Arbor to look at wallpaper, visit Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline and then pick up some things at the Whole Foods Market that we cannot get locally.  Linda researched wallpaper stores and made arrangements with our son while I took a shower and got dressed for visiting.

We left around 3:30 PM and drove down US-23 to the Washtenaw Road exit.  If we had put the address in the GPS sooner we would have taken M-14 west instead of staying on US-23 as the Delux Drapery and Shade Co. is on West Stadium Boulevard.  Still, we got there in a reasonable amount of time.  We told the sales associate that we were looking for something that would stand up to use in a motorhome, preferably something that could be wiped, washed, or scrubbed.  We wanted something light and neutral (off white) without a pattern that had to be matched, but with some texture.  She pulled out several sample books and we looked through them.  We ended up signing out three books each of which had one or two papers that we liked and thought might work well with our woodwork, floor tiles, and upholstery.

We drove back across town to our son and daughter-in-law’s house.  Our daughter’s car was also there but no one was around so Linda called Brendan.  As we suspected they were at Burns Park so we walked over there and found them.  Madeline was very excited to see her Grandma Linda and ran over to give her a hug.  As we were heading towards the park exit that most directly leads back to their house we spotted Madeline’s friend Maya and her dad Jason.  That unplanned encounter resulted in 20 minutes of child play and adult socializing before we finally resumed our homeward trek.

Back at the house we continued to visit until dinner time.  Meghan left to go fix dinner for herself and Chris.  Madeline had her dinner and then let her dad read a Curious George story.  Brendan and Shawna had packing to do for their flight tomorrow so we took our leave.  The three of them are flying to Denver to visit Shawna’s mom (Carol) and her husband (Cliff), who live nearby in Golden, Colorado.  Madeline is well-traveled for a 30 month old child.

We stopped at the Whole Foods Market on Washtenaw Avenue, which is close to their house and conveniently located on our route out of town.  The main item on our list was plain soy creamer.  We used to be able to get this at both the Meijer’s and Kroger stores near our house but they are only carrying the vanilla flavored version which I do not like.  We picked up a bag of sauerkraut to go with the vegan beer brats, six bottles of wine, because you get a 10% discount on six or more bottles (mix and match), two pieces of vegan cake, and some other stuff.  It’s probably a good thing that we do not have a Whole Foods closer to our house.

By the time we got home it was 7:45 PM.  Linda heated the sauerkraut and the vegan beer brats and served them open-faced on hot dog buns with mustard, of course.  Black grapes provided a sweet contrast to the savory main dish.  We sat for a while in the living room, playing iPad games and writing blog posts while we had some of the vegan cakes, before turning in.  I continued to write while we watched a TV program and then went to sleep.

 

2015/08/13 (R) Sanding Success

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Linda was scheduled to go into the bakery today but knew before we went to bed last night that the visit was postponed.  That was just as well; we were very tired from our long day yesterday and slept in this morning.

Before I even had a chance to make coffee I spotted wild turkeys by the road in our easternmost driveway entrance.  They walked past the east end of the house into our backyard.  They hung around by the deer block for quite a while so we had a good long look at them and I took a few pictures.  There was a big tom, a younger/smaller tom, and a half-dozen hens, one with a surprisingly small chick for this late in the season.  The turkeys eventually moved on and we got back to our normal routine.  While I made the coffee Linda made her own version of raisin, date, walnut oatmeal with some quick oats that she had in the pantry.  It was very good.

We read for a bit but I needed to finish the blog posts for the last several days and Linda needed to return some items to the Howell Library and run a couple other errands.  While working on the blog post for yesterday I realized that we had not loaded all of the pieces for the built-in sofa.  I checked the pieces we had against the drawings, which we should have done yesterday, and confirmed that we were missing the two top pieces (E) for the support boxes (HVAC plenums) and the top piece (H) for the return air plenum.  I texted Jarel and he replied quickly that he would try to take care of it in time for me to drive back down on Wednesday to pick up them up.  It’s a 12-17 hour, 550 mile day, for me and costs about $60 in gasoline, so hopefully he will have the pantry done by then as well.

Linda got word from our son via TXT message that Shawna’s father, Mick, had passed away.  He had an aggressive but non-cancerous brain tumor that did respond to two separate surgeries and was moved to hospice care about two weeks ago.  Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline are cutting their vacation short by a day to head to the Grand Rapids area but are still leaving Tuesday to fly to Denver to visit Shawna’s mother, Carol, and her husband, Cliff.  It appears that a memorial service may be in the works for the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd, in which case we will probably drive over.

My sister tried to call me today.  Linda was on the house phone quite a bit today with bakery-related business so Patty tried my cell phone but did not leave a message.  I was working in the bus at the time, did not have it with me, and Linda could not find it in time when it was ringing.  Being deaf in one ear she cannot locate where sounds are coming from.  She does a little better when she uses her BAHA, but rarely wears it around the house.  I called my sister back and left a message and she eventually called me back and we got to talk.

Our father, who is 90, had been admitted to a hospital near where he lives.  The staff said he appeared to have severe dementia, but he was fine (for his age) just a couple of weeks ago, so I suspected a stroke or some other sudden change.  Patty sent me a text latter that the CAT scan of his brain revealed two recent lesions (last few weeks), the telltale sign of two strokes.  She also said he was being transferred to Missouri Baptist Hospital, which is much closer to where she lives, for further care.

Those two pieces of news certainly put a damper on the day, and may cause an adjustment in my plans if I have to travel to St. Louis.  In the meantime there is stuff that has to get done, so even though it was warm today and I wasn’t really in the humor, I kept working in the bus, off and on.  I vacuumed up loose material, including inside the bases of cabinets, and then cleaned the wiring in the refrigerator alcove with Lysol.  I decided to make a template for the refrigerator alcove plywood base filler panels so I could cut them the right size/shape on the first try.  I then used one of the new ceramic sanding belts on the residual thin-set and mastic, and it worked!  My sense of hope was renewed that I will be able to install the new floor correctly.

By 7 PM I was feeling drained so I wrapped up my work and took a shower.  For dinner Linda made pan-grilled BBQ tofu with caramelized onions and served it open faced on a hamburger bun with a side of fresh steamed asparagus.  It was delicious.

After dinner I went to Lowe’s and The Home Depot in search of several items but only ended up buying another 36 grit sanding belt.  I needed floor leveling compound but was not prepared to choose between their limited options.  I also needed a self-centering drill bit but neither store had them.  Lowe’s and THD really are focused on the tools and materials one needs to work on a house and its surrounding property.  Things like self-centering drill bits, though useful for things like drilling holes for door hinges, are really cabinet-making tools.  As big as these stores are they can’t, and don’t, sell everything.

I talked to Butch on the drive home.  The self-centering drill bit that Jarel recommended for installing the pull-out pantry slides is a Vix and Butch suggested four places where I could buy it:  Rockler, Custom Service Hardware, McFeeley’s, and Grizzly’s.  Before ordering one I need to e-mail or text Jarel and ask him what size screw I need to mount the pull-out pantry extension slides.

Back home I thought of four other things I could have bought while I was out so I added them to my list.  I then went to my office and worked on blog posts, updated the BCM Group page on RVillage, e-mailed Gary Hatt at BCM, responded to an e-mail from Howard (PlayaDog) re: screens for sliding bus windows, and started downloading Adobe Creative Cloud 2015 updates.  Jack Conrad had responded to my earlier e-mail asking if he knew what was going on with the Arcadia rally and I sent him a reply.  By the time I dealt with all that I was ready to recline and rest.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jarel Beatty Cabinetry, Logansport, IN

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

Jarel Beatty Cabinetry, Logansport, IN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/08/11 (T) Sanding Prep

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Our day started with our usual morning routine.  We were out of Linda’s homemade granola, so she made Quaker brand Raisins, Dates, and Walnuts instant oatmeal.  This has long been my favorite oatmeal and I still like the taste and texture.

After breakfast we removed the containers of water from the bus fridge, rolled it out of the alcove, and unplugged it.  We then moved it farther up into the coach, behind the front passenger seat, so I could work in the alcove and on the floor.  We then got the Shop Vac up into the coach.

Linda left around 9:30 AM to meet Diane at Kensington Metropark.  They decided they want to get together and walk once a week and the Metropark, which is about half way between their houses, has as an extensive trail system.

While Linda was away I went to the FedEx Office store in Brighton and got a copy of the 11″ x 17″ sheet with the drawings of the seat and back cushions for the built-in sofa.  I stopped at the Shell station and filled the tank as we would be leaving very early in the morning for Indiana.

Back at the house I vacuumed up as much loose debris as I could inside the coach.  After checking my pantry drawings I decided I could stack at least two pieces of 3/4″ plywood, one atop the other, to get the base of the refrigerator high enough to allow the back to go over the bundle of wires that run along the junction of the floor and back wall without interfering with the pull-out pantry.  This will allow the refrigerator to go into the alcove far enough that we can open the kitchen cabinet drawers under the counter to the left of the sink.

Linda got back around 12:30 PM.  After lunch we were going to mask off the inside of the coach with painter’s plastic and tape.  Our goal was to upkeep the dust that resulted from sanding the thinset and mastic out of cabinets and off of counters and woodwork.  We planned to run the Shop Vac while sanding but knew, a priori, that it won’t suck up all of the dust.

After considering what would be involved in masking off the inside of the coach we decided instead to wrap the refrigerator in plastic to protect it and then tried using the belt sander on the residual thin-set from the old ceramic tiles.  The old aluminum oxide belts failed fairly quickly, which was discouraging, but the sanding did generate a lot of airborne dust, which was encouraging as it indicated the sanding was actually removing material.  Our Craftsman belt sander has a built-in dust collection bag and Linda was running the vacuum so both of those things helped.

Late afternoon we went to Lowe’s and bought a 4′ x 8′ sheet of 3/4″ (nominal) maple veneered plywood and a 4′ x 8′ sheet of 1/4″ SurePly underlayment plywood.  We also got two #36 (very coarse) 4″ x 24″ ceramic particle sanding belts and a box of 200 3/4″ self-drilling screws.

Back home we unloaded everything and I then called Josh to confirm that he could still meet us at the Martin’s supermarket in Elkhart in the morning.  I also called Butch to remind him that we were still coming down.  The rest of the evening is lost to me, as I did not record our activities soon enough, but they probably involved e-mails, computer updates, and iPads.

 

2015/08/10 (M) Keep on Buss’in

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We have a doe and her spotted faun that have been coming in the early morning to the deer block we set in our back yard the other day.  They were there again this morning and the block is close enough to the house that we got a good look at them through the bedroom doorwall.  They must be comfortable with the setting as the faun wandered off towards the western part of our property and the doe let it go while she continued to lick the block.  Eventually, however, the faun was out of sight and the doe headed off in that direction to find it.

We had cinnamon raisin toast and soy yogurt for breakfast, with orange-grapefruit juice to wash down the vitamins.  I used up the last of the Sweet Seattle Dreams half-caff coffee beans for our pot of morning coffee.  Keith usually mows our grass on Mondays and he came to the front door around 9:30 AM to ask if we wanted it cut this week.  That’s the first time he has done that this summer but it was an appropriate and timely question.  We have had very little rain the last couple of weeks so the grass had not gown much since last Monday and was a little brown in places.  We agreed to skip this week, which I think was what Keith was hoping I would say.  There was a high probability of rain starting around noon and I suspect he had another yard he wanted to cut before it started.

We have been very busy the last few days and I have not had time to do more than outline my blog posts.  Linda needed to work on an analysis for the bakery so I spent much of the day filling in the details of my recent posts.  Our days are very full and if I wait too long I cannot capture them accurately.

Linda looked up the information on the DTE Energy “Energy Efficiency” appliance recycling program.  I called the 866 number and was assisted by Reginald.  The earliest available pickup date was Friday, August 28 so I took that.  It took quite a while to arrange the pickup but Reginald appeared to get all the pertinent information and give me a confirmation code and a phone number to reach the truck on pickup day.

Once the refrigerator pickup was arranged I texted Chuck to let him know the details.  That prompted a return phone call and a conversation about refrigerators.  Having seen how our swap went on Saturday he and Barb are also thinking very seriously about replacing the refrigerator in their bus.  The rationale is the same as ours; the fridge is old, so it is noisier and less efficient than newer ones, and having it break on the road would be more than inconvenient.

Replacing a refrigerator in an RV, especially a residential unit in a bus conversion, is not like replacing one in a home.  Access is a major problem and there is not a lot of space to maneuver it or get more than two pairs of hands on it.  If they replace theirs here (in Michigan) their bus will be inside their garage/shop, the forklift will be available to do the heavy lifting, and trusted friends and family will be available to help.  And, most importantly, they won’t be living in it and dependent on the fridge for preserving their food.

Before the day got away from me I pulled up the PDF of the manual for the wireless keypad for the large garage door.  When I installed the new opener for the small garage door and reprogrammed the wireless remotes for our cars I inadvertently rendered the keypad inoperable.  Reprogramming it was simple enough once I had the procedure.  It’s the small, simple tasks like this one that become big burdens if not taken care of in a timely manner.

The predicted rain started around noon and was steady until 3 PM.  It was just the kind of rain we needed; gentle enough to give it a chance to soak in but hard enough to provide a useful quantity of moisture to the ground.  Six to 10 hours of this would have been even better but we were glad for what we got.

I had thought that we might mask off the inside of the coach today with painter’s plastic but with the rain and humidity, and plenty of other things to do, I decided to defer that until tomorrow.  During the afternoon Jarel texted me a couple of pictures and a brief status update on our custom woodworking projects.  Not surprisingly he is already well along on the construction of the pull-out pantry and has spray lacquered the pieces for the built-in sofa.

One of the photos showed one of the 1/8″ thick aluminum plates that will form the side rails for each shelf in the pantry.  He applied a brushed finish to the plate and countersunk the screw holes so the heads would not protrude beyond the surface.  Jarel did metal work at one time before he became a cabinet maker so he knows how to do this kind of stuff.  He is also meticulous and takes great pride in his work.  Given a choice I would always prefer to hire a craftsman who cares as much, or more, about the quality of their work as I do.

When I know I am going to have a long full day, such as this coming Wednesday, I will try to “write ahead” on my blog, basically outlining the plan for the day but obviously not filling in the details of things that have not yet happened.  Along the same lines, I often use future blog posts as a planning tool.  As things occur to me that I need to do I will note them in the draft of a future post.  If the thing actually gets done on that date I flesh out the details, and if not, I move it to a new date.

I think I did several loads of laundry today and spent some time editing and uploading blog posts during the evening, but as I am finishing this post later in the week I have lost the details and will just end here.

 

2015/08/09 (N) Sounds of Silence

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Sunday usually means a trip to the Howell Farmers Market if the weather is nice.  The weather was OK but Linda did some major grocery shopping last night and did not need anything from the market so we did not go.  We were both tired from yesterday’s refrigerator swap, physically and emotionally, and wanted to take it easy today.  I brewed a pot of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe half-caff coffee and we enjoyed that while reading in the living room.  We eventually ate breakfast and then got ready for the rest of our day.  For me that meant doing three loads of laundry.

I put the first load of laundry in the washer and then drove to The Home Depot to get two more drawer pulls.  We also wanted to look at wall paper but they do not stock any.  Lowe’s had a very limited selection of wallpapers, but we thought a couple of them might work if we could not find anything else.  One, in particular, was scrubable and another was paintable.  We also found one that we liked in a book of Allen-Roth samples.  This was not something we needed to decide on the spot but it is something we need to get settled sooner rather than later.

When we got home we pulled the new refrigerator out of its alcove and plugged it in.  I set the freezer and fresh food compartment controls to the “normal” mark.  Linda filled containers with water and placed them in both compartments.  I found the remote thermometer for the unit that is still mounted on the wall next to the alcove and set it in the fresh food compartment.  The two thermometers are off by a couple of degrees in opposite directions, but close enough for what I needed to do as it will allow me to monitor the temperature without opening the door.  The new refrigerator was much quieter than the old one, which was one of the improvements we were looking for in a new unit.

New fridge in alcove. Kitchen drawers removed. Floor being prepped.

New fridge in alcove. Kitchen drawers removed. Floor being prepped.

When we got home we had a phone message from Jim, N8KUE, regarding motorhomes.  Jim plans to retire from the Ford Research Labs in March.  He and Pam are seriously considering getting a motorhome and are starting to research the market.  We’ve said for a while that we would be glad to meet for coffee and talk motorhomes, bus conversions, and the RV lifestyle.  I called Jim back, suggested that we meet them at the Biggby’s Coffee in South Lyon at 4:30 PM, and they agreed.

Linda tried to pull up the Arcadia Bus Rally website to get the registration form but the domain name appeared to be for sale.  I e-mailed Brenda Phelan to find out what is going on.  She and her husband, Bill, operate the rally.  I then worked on the drawings for the built-in sofa cushions.

We had an early dinner at 3:30 PM and left for South Lyon at 4 PM and got to Biggby’s Coffee just after 4:30 PM.  Jim, Pam, and their son Adam, were already there.  We talked until after 6:30 PM and then drove the short distance to the Witch’s Hat Depot in the South Lyon Historic Village where our South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC) holds its monthly business meeting and program.  One of the members, John (NU8M), a materials science engineer who works for Bosch, gave a very interesting presentation on the various processes that affect electronics as they age and can ultimately cause them to fail.  It was a pleasant evening, weather-wise, and some of us lingered in conversation for a while after the meeting before heading home.

We arrived home hungry and had some hummus with sourdough pretzel nibblers and pita chips and a small piece of watermelon.  I checked the bus refrigerator and the fresh food compartment was down to 34.4 degrees F indicated.  The remote thermometer is off by about 2 degrees F but I don’t recall in which direction.  I turned the thermostat to a warmer setting and will check it again tomorrow.  We turned in for the night and Linda read while I wrote for a while before turning off the lights.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/08/07 (F) Arrangements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/08/06 (R) Three Quarters Framed

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As usual, we started the day with breakfast and then enjoyed our coffee while reading and writing.  Best Pest Control showed up mid-morning to apply the second treatment for hornets, wasps, etc. so we closed up all of the windows and doorwalls while they sprayed.

We located a Wayne-Dalton facility in Livonia so I called them.  As I suspected they were the factory distribution center and would not sell to us directly.  They did, however, give me the name of one of their customers, a business in Milford named The Door Doctor that had a retail store front.  I called them and they had a 12 foot length of the required D-channel bottom weather seal for our small (8′) garage door.  It turned out that they were not actually in downtown Milford but were more conveniently located near the Milford Road exit of I-96.  When the pest control guys were done and gone I drove over and bought the seal.

Back home Linda made quesadillas for lunch and set out some yummy black grapes.  We then made an errand run to Howell.  Our first stop was at Teeko’s Coffee and Tea where we ordered a pound each of fresh roasted Ethiopian Yirgacheffe half-caff and Costa Rican half-caff beans.  The Yirgacheffe is one of our favorites.  The Costa Rican is something new for us.

Our next stop was The Home Depot for a half sheet (4′ x 4′) of 3/4″ plywood.  They only had one type in a 4′ x 4′ size and I did not like it so we did not buy it.  They had nicer plywood in full sheets (4′ x 8′) but I did not need that much and did not want to fuss with something that size.  We did, however, find a drawer/cabinet pull that we liked and bought one to try out with our bus cabinets.  It’s a Rockefeller style from Liberty in an antique brass finish for a 3″ center-to-center hole spacing.  They also had a matching single screw knob in case we need it.

Our next stop was the Howell Art and Frame shop in downtown Howell to pick up three of our four pieces of artwork.  The owner, Rick, had ordered the fourth frame the wrong size and had to reorder it.  The three that were finished looked very nice and I would like to think that the artist, Ann Metzger, would have been pleased with our choices.  Ann was married to my mother’s cousin and took up painting as rehabilitation therapy for breast cancer surgery in her early 40’s.  She turned out to be quite good and was active in the St. Louis artist’s guild for many years.  We have collected many of her works over the last 44 years.

We stopped at Lowe’s to look at their drawer pulls but they did not have anything similar to the one we got at The Home Depot.  We stopped back at Teeko’s to pick up our coffee order and then headed home.

Back home we moved the paintings to the library and turned our attention to installing the seal on the 8 foot wide garage door.  With the door all the way up we were able to slide the old seal out towards the larger door.  I thought we could install the new one with the door in the same position without removing the track from the bottom of the door.  That was, indeed, the case but it did not go in easily.  I trimmed the ends and ran the door up and down a few times and made minor adjustments on each end until it worked properly.  We still need to redo the side and top seals for both doors.

I tried programming the garage door remote control in my car the day we installed the new opener on the small garage door but wasn’t able to.  At the suggestion of the woman at The Door Doctor, I Googled the model numbers of our various remotes and found the manuals.  I had forgotten that the four 3-button remotes we bought a couple of years ago had to be configured before they could be paired with the openers.  Once I knew how to do that I was able to program mine and Linda’s to work with both doors.  Each of our children also have one and I will have to re-program those the next time they are here.

I exchanged e-mails with Josh at Coach Supply Direct about picking up the extra fabric we ordered, perhaps next Tuesday.  I also e-mailed and texted with Jarel about picking up the desk pieces next Tuesday and possibly the pieces for the built-in sofa.  He did not, however, receive the mailing tube with the drawings and cut sheet today, so we will see if that works out.  I suggested he defer work on the pull-out pantry in favor of the sofa pieces as that will allow me to keep working while he is on vacation at the end of this month.  He still owes us a price estimate for the pantry but at this point it almost doesn’t matter as he will be the one building it regardless of the number.

I talked to Terry at A-1 Upholstery in Elkhart regarding the sofa cushions.  She and her mom, Lou, run the business.  I last talked to Terry in early June and she remembered the conversation.  I described once again what we were looking for and she gave me a rough estimate of the cost.  She said we could stop by Tuesday morning to drop off the fabric and discuss the job and thought they could have it finished by the end of August.  That would be great timing for us.  We are starting to feel like this whole project will come together nicely once we get the refrigerators swapped and can finely get back to work on the floor of the bus.

I installed the new Morgan M-302N I.C.E. style lightning arrestor and connected the radio and antenna cables.  I had a short QSO with Mike (W8XH) via the South Lyon 2m repeater and had no issues on transmit or receive.  I started working on a gallery post of 45 photos from the ARRL Field Day event at the end of June but only got half of it done before dinner.

Linda made a delicious zoodles dish for dinner.  Zoodles are zucchini noodles that she cuts with her SpiraLife slicer and uses in place of grain or rice pasta.  The dish had the usual garlic, onion, olive oil base but also had shallots, mushrooms, kale, and sun-dried tomatoes.  We had fresh watermelon later for dessert.

After dinner I finished the gallery post while monitoring the Novi and South Lyon repeaters.  I then had a long QSO with Mike (W8XH) and Steve (N8AR) that gave me a chance to test the M-302N lightning arrestor on both VHF and UHF at three different power levels.  We continued to have the minor problem with quick, apparently random, audio dropouts on our Yaesu FTM-400 dual band radios.  The apparent randomness has made it difficult to puzzle out what might be causing this and we all agreed that we need to set aside time to plan and execute a systematic test and record the results for analysis.

Butch called to chat about house (bus) battery cabling and other things.  I mentioned that we would be coming down on Tuesday and would try to arrange our timing so we can stop and visit over dinner.  We then watched The Princess Bride on DVD.  It’s our all-time favorite movie and I long ago lost count of how many times we have seen it.

 

2015/08/05 (W) No Mask Wednesday

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Linda was up at 6 AM and left for the bakery around 6:20 AM, I think. I was more asleep than awake and did not get up until later. I wanted to do a load of laundry but needed powdered detergent which I did not have. I also needed to make a run to Lowe’s so I left to take care of my errands without making coffee or having breakfast.

I picked up a couple of 2x4s at Lowe’s that I will use to cut a pair of support arms for propping open the fixed window in the bus while we exchange the refrigerators. I was going to buy a 4’x4′ (half sheet) of plywood to cut for the base of the refrigerator alcove but did not care for the selection. I also did want to wrestle with the size and weight by myself. I will have to go back to The Home Depot with Linda to get what I need. I got my laundry supplies across the street at Meijer’s and headed home.

After unloading the 2x4s I thought I would program the remote control in my car for the new garage door opener. The procedure is very simple but much to my dismay the remote would not connect with the opener. The remote is a 3-button model made by Chamberlin, and both garage door openers are identical Chamberlin models. We have four of these 3-button remotes, one for me, one for Linda, and one for each of our children. We got the 3-button model because we have two overhead doors on our garage and plan (hope) to have a barn someday with an overhead door. All four of the 3-button remotes programmed to the large garage door without a problem and the new door opener came with a single button remote that works just fine, as did the large garage door opener. I won’t know if the problem is the opener or my remote until I can try programming Linda’s remote. If her remote will program then I know it’s my remote, but if it won’t program I still won’t know where the problem lies.

I had originally planned to mask off the interior of the bus today so I could start sanding the floor tomorrow but decided to put it off. Not only would the painter’s plastic be difficult to manage by myself, I realized that it did not make a lot of sense to tape it up in advance of doing the refrigerator swap. I was on the phone with Chuck arranging to bring our bus to his shop this weekend to take care of the refrigerators when our USPS carrier, Michelle, came to the door bearing gifts. Well, OK, they were packages, but I did not expect them until tomorrow so that made them more like gifts in my mind. One was from Amateur Electronics Supply (AES) and the other was from Morgan Manufacturing, so it was all ham radio stuff.

I went to my ham shack/office and mounted the control head for the Yaesu FTM-400 on the stand that just arrived from AES. I e-mailed Steve (N8AR) to arrange a time to test the lightning arrestor before installing it in our cable entry box. I then e-mailed Jarel to start trying to arrange a day next week to drive to his shop in Logansport, Indiana to pick up the custom walnut desk. Finally, I e-mailed Josh at Coach Supply Direct to make sure he was going to be around. I was checking out the TVFool.com website, which Steve recommended, when the art frame shop in Howell called to let us know that three of our four paintings were ready to pick up. They would have all been done but he ordered the forth frame the wrong size and had to reorder it. Linda then called to let me know she was on her way home from the bakery. So much communication, so little time.

When Linda got home we discussed going out to dinner and researched a new place that had opened in Howell. As usually happens, however, there is almost no place that serves anything we choose to eat and we ended up staying home. Linda had a couple of Boca burgers in the freezer and we had those with corn-on-the-cob and fresh fruit (peaches, nectarines, and strawberries). We eat better food, and in smaller quantities, when we dine at home.

After dinner I caught Steve (N8AR) on the radio and we agreed that I would bring the lightning arrestor over to his QTH at 8 PM. I had an e-mail related to the draft of the July issue of Bus Conversion Magazine and checked to make sure a correction had been made correctly.

At Steve’s house my lightning arrestor tested better than the previous one, and should work OK in my system, but it was very clear that there is something wrong with the design and/or manufacturing of these VHF/UHF I.C.E. units. We also came to the conclusion that the quality control testing the manufacturer was doing (if any) was inadequate to reveal the problem. I expect, however, that this one will work when I install it so if it is typical of their units most hams would not have a reason to suspect that it was flawed. Someone would have a problem with it, however, as it is clearly not usable for all frequencies from 40 MHz to 1 GHz as stated on the label. My unit has a 0.31 dB loss at 445 MHz (it should be 0.01) but has an 11.59 dB loss around 635 MHz, which is a huge factor of 16 times loos of signal, and the loss from 500 MHz to 1 GHz is unacceptably large making it useless in that range of frequencies.

Steve captured all of the data and e-mailed it to me. He then tested one of his Polyphaser lightning arrestors and sent me that data file. He also sent me the link to the VNWA software from SDR-Kits.com that I needed to work with the data file. We spent a few minutes talking about the problem we are having at home with our ham radio transmissions interfering with our OTA TV signals. He sent me a link to the free student version of the ELSIE (“L”,”C”) filter design software.

I left about 9:45 PM and called my friend, John Rauch, to see if Saturday noon would work for him in terms of our refrigerator swap. He said it would and that he would check with his son (also John) to see if he could/would also help. I will let Chuck know tomorrow that it looks like Saturday is a “go.”

Linda was asleep by the time I got home so I worked in my office until after midnight. I captured the data attached to the e-mails from Steve and then downloaded and installed both the VNWA and the ELSIE software. I then uploaded my personal blog posts for June 28, 29, and 30. I logged in to the FMCA Freethinkers website, the FMCA GLCC website, and the SLAARC website and installed updates for the themes and numerous plug-ins. With that I came back upstairs and worked on this post in the living room so as not to disturb Linda and finally went to bed around 1 AM.

 

2015/08/04 (T) Back to Busics

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The weather finally turned cooler yesterday and the overnight lows dropped into the upper 50’s; perfect sleeping weather.  We had the house open all day and left windows open overnight.

After breakfast and coffee we worked in the bus for the rest of the morning.  I wanted to clean out all the remaining items from the drawers and cabinets before we start sanding the residual thinset and mastic.  Our first task was to get the refrigerator out of the way.  We laid it down on its face with cardboard under it and slid it forward and over to the passenger side behind the co-pilot seat.

We surveyed all of the storage areas and decided it would be easiest to remove all of the drawers from their slides with the stuff still in them.  The drawer boxes release from the two side-mounted slides at the front via a plastic clip.  The back edge of the part of the slide attached to the box then slides out from under a small tang, allowing the drawer to be lifted out.  An added benefit to removing the drawers is that it will be easier both to clean them and clean the face frames on the built-in cabinetry.

Linda decided to go through all of the stuff as it came into the house, sorting it initially according to whether we should keep it or and throw it away.  Of the things she thought we should keep the next step was to clean them if needed, or queue them up for cleaning.  That included almost everything related to the kitchen.  She reorganized the stuff that was already in the small bedroom, putting cardboard boxes in the recycle pile while I took some ham radio related stuff down to my office.

Linda emptying the inside of the bus.

Linda emptying the inside of the bus.

By noon we had the kitchen and part of the bathroom cleaned out.  I decided to take a break from bus work and install the new bottom weather seals on the garage doors.  I unscrewed the mounting track from the bottom of the 16 foot wide door and removed it.  It had years of accumulated dirt in it so I cleaned it out.  With Linda’s help we got the new seal installed, using soapy water as a lubricant, and reattached the track to the bottom of the door.

Our luck did not hold up with the 8 foot wide door.  Both doors are Wayne Dalton products but the 8 footer is not as thick.  The bottom track for the weather seal is only about an inch wide and the replacement seal, which is designed for a “T” channel would not fit.  Closer inspection suggested that the proper seal would have a cylindrical edge rather than a “T.”  We checked online and found a supplier through Amazon but held off ordering until we had a chance to check for local sources.

We had lunch, after which I went to The Home Depot to see if they had any garage door seals that were different from the one’s at Lowe’s.  They did not.  There is a branch of our bank adjacent to The Home Depot so I stopped there and then headed to Lowe’s where I returned the weather seal for the 8′ door.  I then bought a 400 foot long roll of 9 foot wide 0.31 mil painter’s plastic and four roles of 2″ painter’s tape.  We will use this to mask off the cabinetry before we start sanding the floor or taking on other parts of the interior remodeling project that might affect the woodwork or furniture.

Back home I continued emptying out the house portion of the bus.  (The basement bays are a whole other story.)  In order to remove one of the last three drawers in the bedroom we needed to remove the bed platform.  It is 3/4″ cabinet grade plywood sized to support a queen size mattress, definitely a two-person job.  It is hinged about 18″ from the head end, so we folded that piece over and secured it on both edges with tape, shortening the total length by that much.  It was still heavy and very awkward to handle, especially getting it through the cockpit and down the entrance stairs, but we managed to get it out.  I used a hand truck to move it to the garage for safe storage.  Linda commented that perhaps we should cut it down and switch to a full size mattress.  I think that is an idea worth considering as it would give use more aisle space.

The storage base for the bed with the plywood platform removed.

The storage base for the bed with the plywood platform removed.

The plywood platform is 80″ L by 58″ W so even after removing the 18” piece at the head end is 62” x 58”.  That means it was not cut from a 4’ x 8’ sheet of plywood and would be almost impossible to replicate.  Our mattress is approximately 78″ L by 60″ W whereas the foundation box (storage compartment) is 72″ L by 43″ W.  Our full size mattress in the middle bedroom is 72″ L by 52″ W.  Cutting the plywood platform down to full size (or building a new one) would gain us 8″ of isle space at the foot of the bed and 3″ on each side.  That may not sound like much, and would be irrelevant in most bedrooms, but it would be a significant difference in the aft cabin of our land yacht.  If we do this I would keep/store the existing plywood and build a replacement.

With the bed platform out of the bus I was able to remove the last three drawers across the back.  The one farthest to the driver side, in particular, could not be removed with the platform in place.  Another reason for building a new bed platform is that I can hinge it closer to the head end and use longer gas springs.  This would allow it to open far enough to provide easier access to things stored under the bed and be able to install and remove the three drawers whenever needed.

Linda heated up some frozen breaded mock fish fillets for dinner.  She made fresh vegan tartar sauce to go with them, boiled some corn-on-the-cob, and roasted some potatoes in the oven.  It was a simple but very satisfying meal.  After dinner I uploaded more blog posts, getting two of the three that cover the ARRL Field Day event done.  That means I am almost through the month of June!

 

2015/08/03 (M) Happy 37

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Today is our son’s 37th birthday anniversary.  Happy birthday Brendan.  Linda sent him a happy birthday text and his reply confirmed that they are at Tahquamenon Falls in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

My main task today was to finish the design of the built-in sofa for the bus and get the drawings in the mail to Jarel Beatty, the cabinet maker in Logansport, Indiana.  I dovetailed that work with breakfast, lunch, and a long chat with Pat Lintner from our FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches (GLCC) chapter, but by 2 PM the two 17″ x 22″ sheets were ready.

I was not satisfied with the quality of the copies I got from The FedEx Office store in Brighton so I drove to the store in Novi where their large sheet scanner/printer does a really nice job.  Copies in hand I drove to the post office in Brighton, bought a Ready Post mailing tube, addressed it, put the copies inside, and sent it on its way.  Back home I sent Jarel an e-mail letting him know the sofa drawings were on their way and explaining them a bit.  I then settled in to continue uploading blog posts to our website.

Later in the evening I got a text message from Jarel with three more photos of the custom walnut desk.  He had sprayed all of the pieces and was letting them dry.  He planned to work on something else tomorrow but thought he would have the drawer slides and drawers installed by the end of the week.  He will probably start on the pull-out pantry but wasn’t sure he would get it done before he leaves for a vacation trip on the 21st.  It is unlikely that the built-in sofa pieces will be done by then and the HVAC chase cover needs to wait until after the desk is installed in order to get a final, accurate measurement for its length.

I will probably drive down and get the various desk pieces from him before he goes on vacation so I can install them as soon as the new floor is installed.  I have to install the two fan-coil heat exchangers in the bases and redo the hoses before I can put the pedestals in place so it will be easier for me to do this at home.  As part of the same trip I will stop at Coach Supply Direct in Edwardsburg, Michigan and pick up the fabric we ordered for sofa cushions.  If we decide to use A-1 Upholstery in Elkhart I will drop the fabric off there along with drawings of the cushions we need made.

For my evening relaxation I read a little more of “Number Theory and Its History” by Oystein Ore and then went to bed.

 

2015/08/02 (N) No Swap Sunday

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The forecast for today was for warm, humid weather so we closed up the house and turned on the air-conditioners as soon as we got up.  We left around 9 AM for the Howell Farmers Market so I did not make coffee and we did not have breakfast.  At the market Linda bought a nice assortment of fresh vegetables.  I bought a bag of Kenya AA coffee beans from Teeko’s and some apricot and raspberry Rohlicky from the Czech Bakery.  It turns out they are not vegan so I won’t buy them again.

We decided to see if John and Diane were available for dinner.  We had no sooner made these arrangements when I got a text message from Chuck indicating that the coast was clear at his shop in Novi and we were good to go on the refrigerator swap.  I talked to him shortly thereafter and indicated that we had assumed it would not be today so I had not yet cut the support 2x4s or found the additional help that we would need and, in light of that, had made other plans.  That was fine with him and we agreed to aim for next weekend.

Linda surveyed her inventory of ingredients and decided that the warm Farro with dried cranberries and nuts would be a good dish to have Diane help make.  Diane retired at the end of the school year in June and had asked Linda if she would show her some of the ingredients and prep/cooking methods she uses.  Linda likes working with friends in the kitchen, sharing what she has learned and learning new things herself in the process.  Diane is her longest term, non-family friend.  As an English teacher she had lessons to prepare and papers to grade almost every evening.  As a result John, who has worked most of his adult life as a framing carpenter, took care of preparing their evening meals.  Now that Diane is free of her teaching obligations she would like to learn more about cooking.

Linda wanted some non-dairy ice cream for dessert so I was sent to get it.  I went to the Home Depot in Brighton first where I bought some thin (1/8th inch thick) rubber sheet material, a small tool pouch, and 2-person forearm lift strap.  The rubber material will be for the edges of the plywood in the new built-in sofa, cushioning the seat when it is closed.  The tool pouch is for working on the tower (my carpenter’s tool belt is too big) and the lift strap is to help with the refrigerators and anything else heavy we might need to move.

The only place within a seven mile radius of our house that consistently has the non-diary “ice cream” we like is the Kroger on M-59 at Old US-23, so that’s where I headed next.  In addition to the Coconut Bliss they had a cashew milk based product so I bought some of each.  I bought vanilla and salted caramel in the CB brand and snickerdoodle in the cashew product.  By the time I got home I only had a couple of hours left before John and Diane were due to arrive so I worked in my office and uploaded blog posts for June 16 – 20.

John and Diane arrived right on time at 4 PM.  I opened our bottle of Viva La Roja from Heart of the Desert Winery in Alamogordo, New Mexico and we settled in to easy conversation.  I found this red table wine particularly to my liking; very smooth with a hint of sweetness and no tannin.

Linda and Diane eventually started preparing dinner.  John and took that as an opportunity to go look at the bus project.  The ladies made a mixed greens salad with dried cranberries and other add-ins and put out a choice of dressings and sliced a loaf of Italian bread that they brought, along with a bottle of Pinot Grigio that we opened to have with the meal. The main dish was Farro with dried cranberries, almonds, onions, garlic, and kale.  It was all very tasty and well received.

By the end of the meal it had cooled off enough to sit on the deck comfortably.  Linda served the cashew milk snickerdoodle non-dairy ice cream with fresh sliced strawberries and it was very good.  I showed them what we had done with antennas on the tower and the cable entrance box and then we went back inside.  John still works full-time so they left around 9 PM as it takes at least 30 minutes to get back to their house in Farmington Hills which is about a mile from our old house.

 

2015/08/01 (S) Refrigerator Swapping (NOT)

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We had a good crowd for our weekly SLAARC breakfast.  We sat across from Mike (W8XH) and had a chance to discuss what to do about the ‘extra’ user accounts on our computers.  We also discussed the release of Windows 10 that occurred on the 29th of July and all came to the conclusion that we would not be upgrading anytime soon.

When we got home I talked to Chuck on the phone.  He said the sun room company was still moving out of the building in front of his shop and that there was still too much stuff in the way to be able to move our buses around.  Given the circumstances we agreed that we would not do the refrigerator swap today and probably not tomorrow.

At breakfast Mike suggested that we look in the Users folder on our computers to see what files were associated with each of these previously unknown users and then delete the User accounts.  It turned out that these users did not exist, or at least had no folders or files associated with them that we could find.  Linda’s computer did, however, have a couple more folders in the Users folder that did not have User accounts associated with them.  When we deleted each of the phantom accounts we were given the option of saving any associated files in a folder on the desktop.  We selected that option each time but no such folders ever got created, confirming (I suppose) that there were no files associated with that account.

Bill, who takes care of the computers and software for the bakery, installed software on our machines when we first got them and Linda speculated as to whether these phantom accounts might have been inadvertently created at that time.  At this point we will probably never know.  We have strong security systems in place and are reasonably careful in how we interact with the online world, but it was a bit unnerving to find these accounts on our machines.

We were on tap for another warm, humid day and I elected not to do any work on the bus or in the garage.  With the phantom User accounts taken care of I transferred the photos that I received of the custom walnut desk from Jarel from my SG3 phone to my laptop computer and edited them for use on our blog.  I copied recent photos from my DSLR camera to my computer and then settled in to copy blog post drafts from e-mails into Word and edit them.

In the course of the day I did a couple of loads of laundry, worked on the sofa design/drawings, chatted on the ham radio, and took time out to have lunch and dinner, which was the left over Pad Thai.  Having sat for a day or two the dish had absorbed the liquid and, although Linda thought the broccoli was now too soft, I liked it better than when it was freshly made.  I also got to add a generous amount of peanuts, which is how I remember Pad Thai being served in restaurants.  After dinner I started reading “Number Theory and Its History” by Oystein Ore.

 

20150730GP H3-40 Custom Desk Build

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Here are a few photos of the new desk for our bus in the process of being built.  All photos are courtesy of Jarel Beatty, Jarel Beatty Cabinetry, Logansport, Indiana.

2015/07/30 (R) Number Theory

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We awoke to a decidedly different air mass than we have been experiencing the last week or so; cool with noticeably lower humidity.  Linda turned off the air-conditioning and we opened up the house for the first time in a week.  We had a light breakfast of grapefruit and cinnamon raisin toast and then spent an hour enjoying our coffee.  I finished the little treatise on cryptology yesterday at Panera and started reading Oystein Ore’s “Invitation to Number Theory.”

Linda needed to make a quick grocery run for miso so I worked for a while on the sofa design, laying out the pieces that will be cut from a 48″ x 96″ sheet of 3/4″ plywood.  When she returned from her errand she went for her daily walk while it was still cool.  After her walk she made a cold black bean salad and then made roll up sandwiches using multigrain pita bread.  It was delicious and healthy; the bread alone had nine grams of protein.  After lunch Linda attended to some nutritional calculations related to the dinner she planned to fix and I gathered up the tools I thought we would need to take care of some things in the bus.  That included some small zip lock bags for small parts.

My first task was to remove the screws that secure the shorter head end of the bed platform to the foundation.  The platform is in two pieces joined by a piano (continuous) hinge.  After doing this I lifted the other end and was reminded that I had already disconnected the two gas springs that normally hold it open.  I also realized that the wires which supply 12VDC power to the two compartment lights on the underside of the platform were routed under a fixed cross member and cable-clamped to the other piece of the platform.  I already knew, or assumed, that they were hard-wired and had spade lug crimp connectors ready to go.

\With Linda’s help I was able to detach the wire loom at several points to create some slack.  The +12VDC wire was connected to a microswitch with a spade lug so it was easy to unplug.  I clipped the neutral wire, stripped both free ends, and attached an insulated male spade connector to one and an insulated female spade connector to the other.  With that the entire platform could now be removed from the bus to get it out of the way while we install the new floor tiles.

In the kitchen area of the bus we unscrewed and removed the walnut trim around the fixed window on the passenger side.  I reinstalled all of the screws so we would not misplace them while Linda took the trim to the garage to store it.  I removed the screws that held each of the three reading lights to underside of the upper cabinet in front of the fixed window.  They were wired with very clever little insulated terminal strips which made them easy to disconnect and will make them equally easy to reconnect.  Linda bagged each fixture and its parts separately in one gallon zip lock bags.

The AC light fixture was trickier to remove.  First I turned off the circuit breaker on the inverter sub-panel and verified that the light no longer came on.  By lifting the false bottom of the cabinet I could see that the fixture was installed onto a ceiling junction box.  That meant there was probably a post threaded into a cross bracket with the post protruding down through the center/mounting hole in the fixture and held in place by the decorative nut.

I was not able to turn the decorative nut by hand so I got the faucet wrench.    I have had this unique and specialized tool for a very long time.  It is designed to reach up behind a sink and grab the retaining nut on the underside of a faucet 12 inches away.  The head is spring loaded and flips over to allow the wrench to be used to tighten or loosen the nut.  Occasionally, like today, it finds an alternate use.  I like it when that happens.

\With the fixture loose I was able to color code the neutral wires with white tape, untwist the wire nuts, and then put the wire nuts back on the two supply wires.  Linda took the fixture to the garage and figured out way to store it safely using an unused waste basket.  We talked about the built-in sofa and some HVAC details for the passenger side of the cockpit before wrapping up our bus work for today.

While I put the tools away Linda started working on dinner.  Tonight’s special creation was vegan Pad Thai.  Regular Pad Thai was a favorite of ours for many years even after we switched to a vegetarian diet as we were still eating eggs.  The dish has a lot of ingredients, so it is a lot of work, and a good vegan version is a real challenge, but Linda executed the dish quite well.  We finished up the watermelon for dessert, which was sweet but light and refreshing.

I try to write every day while the sequence and details of the day’s events are still clear and my thoughts and feelings about them are somewhat “in the moment.”  But I don’t usually finish a post and upload it the same day.  I often finish it the next morning which means I have a chance to sleep on in it.  We have been so busy with the bus remodeling project that I have barely had time to write the drafts of my posts and I have not had the time to transfer them, edit them, select photos and post-process them, and upload everything to the blog.  I don’t like getting so far behind, but there are only so many hours in a day and I do need at least seven hours sleep a night.

After dinner I e-mailed Josh to see when we might get the extra fabric we ordered to make seat and back cushions for the sofa I am designing for the bus.  I then settled in to read about number theory before drifting off to sleep.

 

2015/07/28 (T) Mighty Dremel

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I got up at 8 AM.  I must have been sleeping soundly as I was unaware until then that had already gotten up.  She had gone for a walk and left me a note.  The high temperature today is forecast to hit 90 degrees F and she wanted to get her walk in early.  I fed the cats and checked the mouse trap in the pantry.  We caught another one overnight so I carried the trap back to the northeast corner of the yard and released it.

I made our morning coffee and had just settled in to work on my iPad while it brewed when Linda returned from her walk at 8:35 AM.  We enjoyed our first cup of coffee and then had breakfast.  She made a batch of her fabulous granola yesterday but we have to finish the previous batch first.

Today was the day to get back to work on the bus.  First I spray lubed the two overhead garage doors, both rollers and section hinges, and ran them up and down and back up.  I needed to open them anyway to get out the ladder and tools and sometimes it’s better to spend an extra minute while you are thinking about something and just take care of it.  Besides, I had no way of knowing if I would accomplish anything else today so at least the doors worked more smoothly.

This is where the "stop block" was located. The left screw came out but the right one did not. I had to grind it off.

This is where the “stop block” was located. The left screw came out but the right one did not. I had to grind it off.

In a very real sense our entire bus remodeling project hinges on getting the old refrigerator out and the new refrigerator in.  The refrigerator swap, in turn, hinges on being able to open the fixed window panel on the passenger side of the bus.  That panel is hinged at the top by a pair of rolled channels, one on the top back edge of the window frame and the other on the lower back side of a rail that runs almost the entire length of the bus.  Most of the upper body side panels are hung from these rails and secured at the bottom with latches or other fixed hardware.

The window frame in question has two latches that can be released allowing the frame to swing open and provide an emergency exit, except for the two “stop blocks” in the upper outside corners which are attached to the frame (with two screws) just below the rail.  As the name suggests, these blocks appear to stop the frame from opening more than about 10 inches. That would make emergency escape difficult but it makes it impossible to remove a refrigerator.  We know these frames will open farther as someone posted a photo of an H3 on one of the Prevost bus websites with this same frame open almost 90 degrees (horizontal).

As I have described here before I successfully removed the left block and the left screw from the right block a couple of weeks ago but have been unable to remove the right screw from the right block.  Early in my attempt to remove it I stripped the Philips head and things just got worse from there.  I borrowed an impact screwdriver from Chuck, which successfully extracted the left screw but the right screw would not budge.  I eventually bought and used three different screw extractor sets and broke two drill bits using one of them.

The Dremel with a cutoff wheel installed. The stop block was unusable by the time I got it of.

The Dremel with a cutoff wheel installed. The stop block was unusable by the time I got it of.

I borrowed a soldering gun and Dremel Kit from Chuck on Saturday and finally got around to using them today.  The idea of the soldering gun was to heat the screw causing it to expand and then contract when it cooled.  This will sometimes cause screw threads to separate from tapped holes.  In this case the block was already turning relative to the shaft of the screw but the screw was not turning so I hoped the heat might free it from the threaded hole in the frame.  To find out, however, I needed to create a slot in the shaft that would accept a flat blade screwdriver, in particular the large bit that is part of Chuck’s impact screwdriver kit.  Enter the Dremel.

In order to create a wide enough slot I put two cutoff wheels on the arbor.  The block is at the top of the window frame so standing at the highest safe step of our 8-foot step ladder I was at a comfortable height for holding the Dremel vertically and cutting a horizontal slot.  The cutoff wheels are about the size of a quarter so the slot extended well beyond the screw head, or what was left of it, into the block.  Using the Dremel was a last resort and I knew that once I made that decision the block was going to get destroyed.

The Dremel cutoff wheels cut through the block, which is aluminum, very easily and did not have any trouble with screw or the broken drill bits.  The drill bits eventually loosened to where I was able to extract them with pliers.  I tried several different screwdrivers in my newly created slot but to no avail.  I sprayed WD-40 around the block and screw using paper towels to catch the overspray and clean up any runs.  I kept cutting the block until I was able to pry it off of what remained of the screw.  With less than a quarter inch of the shaft left I cut a slot in the end and tried to unscrew it but the tangs just broke off.  I tried unscrewing it with pliers but it would not budge.  The protruding stub would interfere with opening the frame 90 degrees so I used the Dremel with a cutoff wheel to grind the shaft down flush with the frame.

All the "stuff" I used to attack 25 cents worth of aluminum because of corrosion.

Some of the “stuff” I used to attack 25 cents worth of aluminum because of corrosion.

Linda came out to help at this point.  I repositioned the ladder and then we unlatched the frame on the inside.  Linda pushed it out while I supported it from outside.  It opened farther than it had before but we did not try to raise it to a horizontal position.  The frame/glass is very heavy and we did not want to risk having it come loose at the hinge. We closed the frame and latched it.  I took a few pictures and then put all of the tools away.  The weather was very warm and humid and that was enough outside work for today.

We had hummus, pita chips, and black grapes for lunch.  After lunch I spent a few minutes in my office checking e-mail and then typed up the minutes from our July SLAARC meeting.  I then started working on the design/drawings for the built-in sofa.

I have a very long list of things to do but the furniture design remains a priority as I need to make sure Jarel has all the information he needs to keep moving forward on the custom cabinetry.  Although I will be assembling the sofa Jarel will be cutting all of the pieces.  I will be using a long rip of a full sheet of plywood and a long piece of 3/4 x 3/4 walnut hardwood as an edge band for the horizontal platform.  In order to give Jarel a cut sheet I needed to design the unit.  I also needed to design it so I knew it would fit when assembled.

I took an occasional break to chat with friends on the two local ham radio repeaters that we tend to use but otherwise stayed on task until late afternoon.  I had pulled a book on cryptology from our personal library and started reading it.  I took a nap before dinner and continued reading afterwards.  Fascinating stuff, cryptology.

 

2015/07/27 (M) Finish Drawings

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/07/26 (N) Rearranging

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I was up at 8 AM but did not make coffee as Linda was still asleep and the grinder is fairly noisy.  I put the last load of laundry in the washing machine, cleaned the litter tray (which we keep in the downstairs shower), and then worked in my office.  Jasper (the cat) came down to assist me but mostly ended up supervising.

All three monitors mounted in the ham shack using the ZioTek wall-mounted track system. The Dell is in the middle. There is a mount and room for one more monitor at the right end.

All three monitors mounted in the ham shack using the ZioTek wall-mounted track system. The Dell is in the middle. There is a mount and room for one more monitor at the right end.

I mounted the fourth (last) arm on the wall-mounted rail in our ham shack.  I swung it back against the wall to get it out of the way as I do not have a monitor that I want to install at that position at the moment.  I cleaned up the tools and staged them by the stairs and then moved the coiled coax out of the way and cleared a few things off of the desks so I could move the desks back into position.  I left them farther out from the wall than before so they were appropriately placed relative to the three wall-mounted monitors.  I then put various pieces of ham radio equipment back on the desks.

Monitors obviously need computers.  I removed the Dell Precision laptop from my computer desks, removed the computer from the combination docking station and monitor stand, cleaned all of the pieces, and reassembled it.  I set it at the left edge of the ham desks, slid it under the left monitor, and placed our old Icom IC-706 HF transceiver on the monitor platform, just for appearance sake.  We are not using thus radio at the moment but it fit nicely in that spot.

I placed the GoBox with the Icom IC-7000 HF/VHF/UHF transceiver and 12VDC power supply at the right edge of the desks, put the MFJ-998 Intelli-Tuner to its left (under the right monitor), and put the larger variable voltage DC power supply on top of it.  The time we spent yesterday determining where to mount the rail on the wall was time well spent.  The monitors are at a comfortable height for viewing when seated at the desk, tilted down slightly to avoid glare from the overhead down lights, and the bottom edges are high enough above the desk to permit sizeable equipment to slide under them.  The desks are also far enough out from the wall to make it easy to attach and manage cables.

I rearranged my primary ASUS laptop on my computer desks and checked my e-mail accounts.  I have had a discussion going on this past week with Gary at Bus Conversion Magazine about hats with the BCM logo and responded to a couple more of those communiques.  Around 10:15 AM I heard footsteps and knew that Linda was finally up so I wrapped up the work in my office, transferred the laundry to the dryer, and went upstairs.

Linda was working at her desk and was not hungry but wanted coffee.  She did not sleep well last night so I made a pot of Sumatra Manhelding which is NOT one of our half decaffeinated blends.  I got myself a bowl of granola and had a large glass of orange juice.  We spent the rest of the morning in the living room reading, writing, and menu planning.

The dinette area of our bus with the two fan-coil heat exchangers on the floor. They will go in the bases of the desk when it is installed in this corner.

The dinette area of our bus with the two fan-coil heat exchangers on the floor. They will go in the bases of the desk when it is installed in this corner.

I like to hear the grandfather clock strike 12.   Besides the charming Westminster chimes, it serves to announce that the part of the day has arrived where I am supposed to get some of the physical work on my to-do list accomplished.  Today, however, my #1 priority was to redesign the pull-out pantry so I limited my physical work to gathering up my tools from the basement and moving them to the garage, moving the bus back to its normal parking spot, and taking photos of cabinet details in the bus for Jarel.  I mixed in a little e-mail, a few computer updates, some ham radio, and time for meals, but basically I worked at my drafting board most of the day and evening.

For dinner Linda made a very tasty dish that we had not had before.  The base ingredient was rice and she used basmati even though the recipe called for brown.  I prefer basmati rice to brown rice so it was a good substitution as far as I was concerned.  The other ingredients were garlic, power greens, mushrooms, and blanched fresh green beans.  She sliced and caramelized a large onion and used it as a topping.  This was essentially a “1-pot” dish in that all of the ingredients ended up combined prior to serving.  Linda makes a lot of dishes like this and we both like them. This particular dish had the crunch of the green beans, the chewiness of the rice, and the soft earthy character of the mushrooms held together by the garlic and olive oil and topped with sweet earthiness of the caramelized onions.

At 8 PM local (EDT) I participated in the weekly SLAARC Info Net for the first time in a couple of years and did so from the comfort of our ham shack.  It was a pleasure using our new Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE dual band transceiver with our Diamond X-50N 2m/70cm antenna at a height of 40 feet and connected by good coaxial cables all the way through.  Club president Harvey (AC8NO) served as net control operator and did a nice job.

After the net wrapped up at 8:45 PM Steve (N8AR), Andy (N8DEV), and I chatted for another 20 minutes trying to find some rhyme or reason why our Yaesu FTM-400’s are experiencing random audio dropouts.  We did not get it figured out and wrapped up our QSO so Steve and I could check into the LARK (Livingston Amateur Radio Klub) net that started at 9 PM (EDT).  This was the first time I had checked in to this particular net even though LARK is based in Howell and the repeater is closer to us than the ones in South Lyon or Novi.

The LARK Net was much briefer than the SLAARC net and concluded at 9:16 EDT.  Steve and I went back to the South Lyon repeater where Paul (N8BHT) heard us and joined the conversation.  When we finally wrapped up our testing QSO I went back to work on my pull-out pantry drawings.  I was about to shut everything down at 10:45 PM EDT when Mike (W8XH) announced his presence on the South Lyon repeater.  He was mobile but full-quieting and I did not experience any dropouts during our 25 minute QSO.  I took a few minutes to e-mail Jarel and then called it a night.  I had a few almonds as a snack, got ready for bed, and worked on this bog post for a while.

 

2015/07/24 (F) Open and Shut

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I was up at 7:30 AM and made coffee but I did not see Mara or Linda until after 9 AM.  Around 9 AM I heard a knock at the front library doorwalls and heard someone saying “hello?,  hello?, David?”  I went out the front door and saw the front end of a red Ford Focus parked in front of our bus.  I had never met this guy but he was not unexpected and I knew he was looking for David LaVoisne, who lived here with his wife, Maria, until we bought the house from them in February 2013.  I knew this guy might stop by as he had once before when we were away and chatted briefly with our lawn care guy, Keith.  I also knew that he had worked with David at the Ford Wixom plant before they retired.

We introduced ourselves and had a nice chat.  I explained that David and Maria had sold the house and their Airstream motorhome, bought a newer motorhome, and were now full-time RVers.  (As I recall they bought a used Foretravel.)  Apparently they did not let all of their friends or former colleagues know what they were doing.  I also mentioned that they had moved the few possessions they did not get rid of to their son’s house somewhere in the region and that they probably visited there occasionally.

Mara emerged about the time our visitor left.  Unfortunately I do not recall his name.  We all had breakfast together after which Mara went about her final departure preparations.  She gave Linda a small fir tree and two small herbs.  Linda transferred the herbs to her herb pots and gave Mara’s small pots back.  She needed to top off her fresh water tank so I helped with that.  The lock on the water fill door stuck in the open position so Mara got her can of dry lube and I sprayed a little in the lock by holding the protective cover open with the tip of the key.  That did the trick, another quick fix to a small but potentially annoying problem.

When her rig was basically ready to go Mara made one last use of the shower, got dressed to travel, unplugged the power cord and stowed it away, and pulled in the slides.  After hugs all around she climbed into the pilot’s seat and fired up the engine and Sabra (one of her two cats) climbed up on the dash just in front of the steering wheel.  I guided her as she backed out onto our road.  She drove down to the court, did a three point turn, and a few minutes later drove past our house in the opposite direction, back on the road again after almost two weeks at our place.  It was noon, but she was only going as far as London, Ontario today.  Linda got a text message later letting us know that she had arrived at the Moose Lodge and the border crossing on the Blue Water Bridge from Port Huron, Michigan to Sarnia, Ontario had only taken 30 minutes.

After Mara was out of sight I gathered up the laundry, sorted it, and started a load of warm whites.  I wrote out a list of parts I needed to finish the garage door opener installation and the monitor mounting system in the ham shack and then drove to Lowe’s in Howell.

I was back home by 1:30 PM and we had hummus and chips along with black grapes for lunch.  We started working on the garage door opener installation when my phone signaled that I had a voice message.  It turned out that I had one on the house phone too.  Both messages were from Jarel.  He had a few questions about dimensions on one of desk drawings so I called him back and we sorted that out.  He retrieved the half sheet of walnut veneer plywood from Butch last night and bought 16 board feet of walnut.

In spite of the 85 degree temperature and what felt like high humidity, even though it was only 41%, we worked for about three hours and finished installing the opener on the small garage door.  It was quite an involved process but it worked when we were done.  The new opener has automatic reverse if it encounters an obstruction and an infrared sensor beam about 6″ off the floor.

At 5:30 PM we loaded the old garage door opener into the dump trailer.  We then loaded the old OTA TV antenna pieces.  Brad is picking up the trailer in the morning so we will not fill it but it we put the junk in it that we needed to get out of the garage and a few other things as well.

We took a break around 6 PM to have some water and get off our feet for a while.  At 6:45 PM Linda made salads and cooked up some vegan Italian sausages.  After dinner we planned to work for a while in the ham shack on the installation of the wall-mounted track system but we were too tired to start a project that was going to require decisions and careful attention to detail.  We sat in the living room instead and used our iPads for the usual things.  It was great having Mara here and we look forward to her return someday.  But for now she is off on the next leg of her open-ended adventure and we have a lot of work yet to do to get our bus ready for the 2015-16 winter season.

 

2015/07/23 (R) Wrapping Up Mara

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Mara’s plan was to make this the last full day of her visit.  Our day started without her as we had cinnamon raisin toast, juice, and coffee for breakfast.  I got a call from Jarel with clarifying questions and ideas about the desk and the pull-out pantry.  After a thorough discussion we had better ways to approach a few things.  He also had a better feeling for the estimated cost of the project and I agreed to send him 50% as a deposit.

I typed up a short letter and printed off the graph that Steve made of the return loss for the M-302N V/U lightning arrestor.  I packed the unit for shipping to Morgan Manufacturing and included the letter and graph.  Linda wrote out the check for Jarel and got it in an envelope to mail.  She then went to the library, Post Office, and Humane Society where she donated cat and dog paraphernalia that we had accumulated over the years.

While Linda was gone I worked in the bus for a while and Mara worked on travel preparations.  I started by removing the old 3/4″ plywood floor from the refrigerator alcove.  The original plywood bus floor appeared to mostly be in good condition but I will put a new secondary floor in the alcove to keep the refrigerator legs above the level of the new tile floor.  There are a LOT of wires running along the floor of the alcove at the back wall and I may fashion a cover for them and seal up the holes at either end.

I removed the AC dimmer for the living room lights and the DPDT momentary contact DC switch from the floor-mounted walnut box where they were installed.  The DC switch controlled the passenger side sofa footrest.  I had to remove the wires from both switches to get them out.  The AC dimmer was easy but the DC switch had four different color wires with spade connectors.  I made careful note of which terminal each color went to and then pulled the spade connectors off.  With the switches out I was able to remove the box and its mounting cleats from the floor and wall.  This area will be tiled and the box will not be reused.

Out of curiosity I tested the switch with an Ohm meter to see how the terminals were connected internally.  I also checked the wires with a DC volt meter to see how they were being used.  Two of the wires were +12VDC and DC ground and the other two went to a connector that was originally plugged into the footrest.  The switch applied 12VDC to the two load wires in one position and reversed the polarity in the other position, making the footrest go out or in respectively.

Last year I had removed two blank outlet covers on the walnut panel next to the co-pilot seat so I knew that these two switches were originally installed there and subsequently moved to the floor-mounted box.  I unscrewed the 1/4″ walnut veneered plywood panel from the wall to see what was behind it.  What I found was a LOT of wires and it was not a pretty sight.  I re-installed the two switches in their original locations and re-routed some other wires so they went up over the HVAC chase.

There was still a large bundle of wires running along the floor at the base of the HVAC chase that I needed to re-route but I decided not to mess with those today.  They are connected to four different switches and a doorbell and disconnecting everything was going to require careful attention to detail.  I pondered the refrigerator some more and decided there wasn’t anything else I could do with it for now and that I was done working in the bus for today.

There is too much to do at the moment to just sit around so I decided to install the new garage door opener for the small garage door.  New is relative; it has been sitting in the garage in its original packaging since we moved into the house, supplied by the previous owners.  The old one has not worked correctly since we moved in and the previous owners bought the new one but ran out of time to install it.  It turned out to be rather more complicated than I expected, with very comprehensive assembly and installation instructions.  It also turned out to be a two-person project so Linda worked on it with me.

We were working and Mara had started prepping dinner when a UPS truck showed up with four boxes.  The delivery included:  Mara’s refrigerator vent cover; the Cutco knives and scissors, and; the ZioTek track system for wall-mounting the monitors in the ham shack (2 boxes).  The vent cover was due for delivery today but the knives were not due until tomorrow, so we were really glad to see them as two of them were for Mara.  The monitor mounting system was also due for delivery today but I had temporarily forgotten about it.

The north wall of the ham shack/office. This is where the ZioTek wall-mounted monitor mounting system will go.

The north wall of the ham shack/office. This is where the ZioTek wall-mounted monitor mounting system will go.

Mara was understandably anxious to see if the vent cover fit her base properly.  It was a VentMate and appeared to be identical to the old one.  She climbed up the ladder on the back of her motorhome and I handed parts and tools up to her.  I then climbed up was well.  She removed the old cover and we set the new one in place.  It was a perfect fit!  We put a small amount of putty under each screw head and then ran them down snug and congratulated ourselves on another job completed and well done.

With Linda’s help we put Mara’s kayak back in its custom carrier which fits in the receiver on the back of her motorhome (she does not tow a car).  The carrier was built by a welding shop in Mesa, Arizona to Mara’s specifications and is made from 2″ square tubular steel and powder-coated black.  The carrier holds the kayak diagonally across the back of the motorhome from lower left (driver’s side) to upper right.  The nose of the kayak sits in a pocket near the driver side rear corner of the motorhome and the midpoint is nestled in a much larger cradle.  A strap runs from the nose pocket up to the midpoint on one side and across the kayak to the other side where it is attached to a ratchet and has a hook on the end.  With the hook engaged in a ring the strap is ratcheted tight and the kayak is secure for travel.  Mara runs an anti-theft cable through an eyelet near the nose and attaches a lock for safe keeping.  The tail sticks up higher than the top of the roof-mounted air-conditioner covers but does not extend beyond the passenger side wall.  The tip of the kayak is 13′ 2″ from the ground.

We made good progress on the garage door opener but had to stop at the point where we needed to attach the motor housing to the ceiling as I needed to get some parts (angle iron and lag screws) that did not come with the unit.  The front of the track was attached to the header above the door opening and we left the motor assembly resting on top of a 6 foot stepladder.

The pieces of the ZioTek monitor mounting system laid out on the floor of the ham shack/office.

The pieces of the ZioTek monitor mounting system laid out on the floor of the ham shack/office.

While Mara and Linda prepared dinner I unboxed all of the monitor mounting components.  I was curious to see the parts and wanted to make sure everything was there and undamaged, which was the case.

Dinner was Thai vegan spring rolls in rice flour wrappers.  The prep work was in the cutting of lots of veggies (carrots, zucchini, onions, red and yellow peppers, Chinese cabbage, and mushrooms).  Mara made two dipping sauces, one with ginger, hot peppers, and other things and one based on fish sauce (so we passed on that).  Linda selected our bottle of Malvasia Bianco wine from the Heart of the Desert winery in Alamogordo, NM.  It was white, which we thought would go well with the delicate spring rolls, but very sweet with a slightly thick mouthfeel, like a late harvest Riesling or a Sauternes.  Perhaps not the best choice, but we finished the whole bottle anyway.

We chatted for a while after dinner but like most of our evening meals dinner was a drawn out affair with lots of conversation.  Everyone was tired and the women turned in for the night.  I went to my office and answered e-mails from Gary at BCM that I had seen earlier in the day.  I then went to bed and tried to catch up on blog posts for the last few days but could not stay awake long enough to finish them.

 

2015/07/22 (W) Chucking Junk

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After our usual breakfast and coffee we sat for a while in the living room.  This is part of our morning routine and I often use the time to finish up my blog post from the previous day but the last couple of weeks we have been busy and I have not always had time.  We enjoyed the time until about 9 AM and then got serious about loading our “junk” into the Chuck It Junk Removal dump trailer.

Our bus refrigerator with the doors off in preparation for removing it from the coach.

Our bus refrigerator with the doors off in preparation for removing it from the coach.

Mara checked with Cummins Bridgeway and they told her to bring her motorhome in at 11 AM so she broke camp at 10 AM and backed out of the driveway at 10:15 AM.  Cummins Bridgeway put several technicians and mechanics to work on her rig to re-install the genset, install new shock absorbers, and service the transmission (filter and fluid).  She was out in a few hours and stopped at General RV to return the Camco refrigerator vent cover which did not fit her base on the roof.

The Chuck It Junk Removal dumpster trailer with some of our stuff in it.

The Chuck It Junk Removal dumpster trailer with some of our stuff in it.

We took a break from chucking junk and extracted the old refrigerator from its alcove in the bus, which was a 2-person job.  I got some scraps of 1/2″ plywood to set in front of the elevated alcove base as I did not want to walk or slide the unit across the bus sub-floor, especially with the residual thinset mortar.  First we had to walk it out a few inches which was hard because it only had 3/8″ clearance on each side.  Once it was out far enough we were able to open the doors enough to remove all of the shelves and bins, which Linda took into the house and garage.  I then disconnected the water and electric that ran up into the left (freezer) door at the bottom hinge corner for the ice/water dispenser and light.  With those disconnected and pulled out of the bottom of the case we unscrewed the bottom and top hinges and removed the two doors.  Linda collected all of the small loose parts as we went and put them in a plastic container as we knew we would have to reassemble the unit at some point.

The doors had 1/4″ walnut veneer plywood face panels and we wanted to salvage those to use with the new pull-out pantry.  Normally you just remove the handle trim from the edge of the door and slide the panel out.  The fridge door panel would not budge so we removed the trim from all four edges of the door.  The panel had been stuck in place with strips of double-sided tape so we carefully peeled it loose.  The freezer door had two smaller panels, above and below the ice/water dispenser, and they slide out easily after removing the handle trim.  We carried the doors, trim, and panels to the garage and then walked the case completely out of the alcove.

The shelf I built for one of the storage bays on Mara's Fleetwood Bounder.

The shelf I built for one of the storage bays on Mara’s Fleetwood Bounder.

I spent some time pondering what would be required to disassemble the refrigerator enough to get it out through the door of the bus but decided not to do anything until I had talked to Butch.  Just before dinner I had a long chat with Chuck about the refrigerator swap and he reminded me that DTE Energy (the electric power utility for this region) will pick up old refrigerators and freezers and pay you $50 for them.  Linda checked this out online and learned that they have to be plugged in and operating or they won’t take them, so we have a double incentive for getting it out in one, operating piece.

Our revised plan is still to get the case out in one functioning piece through the side window frame but it won’t be this weekend.  The guy with the sunroom business in the building in front of Chuck’s shop is still in the process of moving to his new place and has trucks, cars, people, and junk all over the place making ingress/egress to Chuck’s shop difficult to impossible.  The business is supposed to be gone by the end of the month so we will wait another week and plan for Saturday August 1st assuming I can get the window frame open.  In the meantime I need to get back to work on the bus floor, so I will have to spend part of next week sanding and start installing the 1/4″ underlayment for the new vinyl tile.

Mara in our home kitchen with her wonderful pizza. This thing was truly good eats.

Mara in our home kitchen with her wonderful pizza. This thing was truly good eats.

Mara and Linda made another pizza for dinner and it was every bit as good as the first one.  Mara has been a wonderful house guest.  We have left the house open to her and she has made herself comfortable in the kitchen and using the hall bathroom and laundry.  It helps that Linda is not possessive about the kitchen.  Whenever we have visitors who want to help in the kitchen Linda welcomes their participation.  It’s been fun for both of them and they have each learned a few knew things and deepened their friendship.

 

 

2015/07/21 (T) A Long Day

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I was awake at 6 AM, and up shortly thereafter, even though I did not set an alarm.  I packed a change of clothes and a few toiletries and then gathered up my cell phone and iPad chargers, my iPad, and my checkbook.  I loaded the desk/pantry drawings and travel bag into my car and then did a temporary installation of the weBoost cellular booster.  I put the outside magnetic base antenna in the center of the roof and experimented with the placement of the inside antenna, eventually setting it above the passenger side sun visor facing down.  I backed out of the driveway at 7:05 AM and headed for Indiana.

I took Hacker to Golf Club to Latson with some thought of stopping at Teeko’s for coffee but decided to get some miles behind me first and proceeded to I-96 westbound towards Lansing.  I should have looked up the frequency for the Lansing area repeater, where Don runs a net Monday through Friday from 7 AM until at least 11 AM, but I didn’t think of that ahead of time.  I would also have had to figure out how to switch Mike’s Icom IC-2820H radio from memory mode to VFO mode.  Eventually I will, but not today.  Today was not about ham radio, it was about bus projects.

I took the Lansing Road cutoff to I-69 south and about 20 miles later took the Lansing Road exit at Charlotte.  I stopped at the Biggby’s Coffee not far from the highway and resumed my trip around 8:30 AM.  When Linda and I drove to Edwardsburg, Michigan to visit Coach Supply Direct on July 1st we discovered that M-60 was closed at Minden (between I-69 and US-131) and had to take a long detour.  Rather than risk having that happen again I headed west on I-94.  I had been playing with the cell phone booster but unplugged it and plugged in the Garmin 465T GPS instead.  I eventually saw that M-40 came all the way north to I-94 and decided to take it instead of US-131.

I had never been on this stretch of M-40.  The road was a good 2-lane at 55 MPH except going through small towns.  I drove through miles and miles of vineyards and eventually got to the charming (looking) little town of Marcellus where I discovered a large Welch’s plant.  I knew that a lot of the grapes grown in southwest Michigan ended up as Welch’s grape juice but I did not know where their processing plants were located.  Now I know where they have at least one.

When I reached the intersection with M-60 in Jones I stopped at the Shell station for fuel.  Regular unleaded was $2.52 per gallon which was better than I had seen so far during the trip.  Instead of continuing down M-40 to US-12 I put the address for Coach Supply Direct into my GPS and headed west on M-60 towards Cassopolis.  The GPS had me bypass Cassopolis by heading south on Calvin Center Road to Brownsville Road and then west to M-62 where I headed south towards Edwardsburg.

When I arrived at Coach Supply Direct it was locked up with no sign of Josh.  I called his 800 number and he answered, which I appreciated.  He was in western Pennsylvania heading home from a customer service call and said he could meet me at the shop after 4 PM.  We agreed that I would call him when I had a clearer picture of what time I could get back to his shop.

I left Edwardsburg and drove back on US-12 to Cassopolis Road which merges briefly with Old-102 and then becomes IN-19 (SR-19) in Indiana.  I stopped at Factory RV Surplus in Elkhart, which is on SR-19, to buy a special two-piece bracket for mounting the edge of a table to a wall.  I saw it on their website and luckily they had it in the store as well.

I proceeded south on SR-19 to US-20, went west to US-31, and took that south to the SR-25 exit at Rochester.  From there it was 22 miles to Logansport and a few more blocks to Jarel Beatty Cabinetry.  Jarel is a cabinet maker and a mutual friend of Butch Williams.  I have been talking to Jarel about the custom desk we wanted for the bus for several years and, more recently, about the pull-out pantry and HVAC duct and wiring chase cover.  The purpose of my visit was to deliver the design drawings for the desk and pantry and go over them with Jarel.  I got there around 1:20 PM and left around 5:50 PM.  After discussing the projects at length we agreed that I would change the design of the pantry so I did not leave those drawings with Jarel.  The Fulterer pantry slide had been delivered to Jarel so I took that with me as it turned out to be too wide for this project.

I set my GPS destination for Edwardsburg and it indicated I would arrive around 7:45 PM.  I called Josh to see if that would work for him and he said it would.  I headed north on SR-25 and then called Butch to let him know that I would not be able to stop and visit or spend the night.  That was probably just as well as he was in the emergency room when I called.  He had nicked his thumb in his table saw and was having it tended to.  I stopped at the Kroger in Rochester to buy some snacks for dinner and got a return call from Butch.

The drive to Edwardsburg was pleasant and took me on some more roads I had not driven before.  US-31 north to US-20 east was familiar territory but I exited at Elm Street (US-331 north) which bypassed the west side of Mishawaka and eventually took me up through Granger and onto M-62 in Michigan.  A few miles later I was at Coach Supply Direct in Edwardsburg where Josh was waiting for me.

I returned the Lambright Comfort Chair fabric samples and the MCD shade material samples (the reason for my visit) and we chatted for about 45 minutes.  Our new MCD shades had already arrived but I asked Josh to hang on to them.  We tentatively agreed that we would bring the coach to his shop on Monday September 14 to have the new chairs and shades installed.  The GLCC Surplus and Salvage Rally starts on Wednesday the 16th in Elkhart and Josh offered to let us park at his shop the evenings of the 14th and 15th with 30A electric.

I left around 8:30 PM and started for home.  Again, the initial route was familiar as I took US-12 east to M-40 north, to M-60 and stopped at the Shell station in Jones for the second time today.  I then travelled east on M-60 to Three Rivers where I picked up US-131 northbound.  Rather than continue east on M-60, which I presumed was still closed at Minden, I stayed on US-131 all the way to I-94 between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek.  On I-94 east I encountered a major traffic jam due to construction.  The highway was down to one lane and traffic was barely moving as people merged down and then gawked as they went past the very busy construction site.

The rest of the drive was uneventful and familiar as I left I-94 for I-69 north, stopped at the McDonald’s in Charlotte for coffee, and got back on I-69.  I took the Lansing Road cutoff to I-96 and rolled along eastbound to the M-59 exit on the far west edge of Howell.  Eleven miles on M-59 put me at Hacker Road and a few miles later I pulled into the driveway.  It was just after midnight when I arrived, about 17 hours from when I left, and I had put over 550 miles on the car.  I unloaded a few things from the car and then went straight to bed.

 

2015/07/20 (M) Chuck It

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Our morning got busy right away.  We had breakfast and I made coffee while Linda entertained Madeline.  Brad, from Chuck It Junk Removal, dropped off the dumpster trailer at 9 AM.  Keith, from Kish Lawn Care, showed up at 9:30 to cut the grass.  Linda took Madeline to the Mill Pond to use the playscape and Mara started scrapping old caulk and putty from around the base of her refrigerator roof vent.  I tried using another set of tools for removing the stripped screw in the stop block on the bus to no avail.  I even managed to break off two drill bits in the hole I was drilling in the screw.  The more I work on this the worse it gets.

When Linda and Madeline got back Madeline had lunch and then laid down for her nap.  The three adults then had vegan hotdogs for lunch after which I put the finishing touches on my design drawings for the pull-out pantry.  Mara and I then went on an errand run.

Our first stop was the FedEx store in Novi where I made copies of all of the drawings for the desk and the pullout pantry.  We then stopped at General RV to return the refrigerator vent cover as it did not fit the base section on Mara’s roof.  They had a Camco cover that claimed it would work, and looked like it might fit, so she exchanged them and got a small credit.  When we got back at 3:15 PM Brendan and Shawna were already there.  They got Madeline up at 3:20 PM and stayed until about 4 PM.  After they left I got up on Mara’s roof to help with tasks there.

First we checked the refrigerator vent cover.  The mounting holes lined up but the flanges (shields) on the long sides were not wide enough to fit outside the base flanges.  The proper fit requires the upper flanges to be outside the lower flanges by at least 1/4″ so heat can escape and extend below the lower flanges to keep rain from getting into the refrigerator cavity.  I was going to install the 24″ x 24″ piece of thin sheet steel for the magnetic cell phone booster antenna when I discovered that the antenna would stick to the old satellite dish.  We experimented some more with the location of the inside antenna but could not improve on yesterday’s placement.  The performance was as good as with the metal sheet so I decided not to install the metal sheet.  Mara then caulked around the refrigerator vent base and touched up a few other spots around tank vent caps.

Linda grilled a variety of veggies for dinner.  I opened a bottle of Pinot Noir wine and we ate outside.  It was cloudy and 76 degrees F with light winds; very pleasant and bug free.  We had fresh strawberries with the meal and dark chocolate for dessert.  We eventually moved inside to chat but did not stay up late as I needed to be up early in the morning and on my way to Indiana.

 

2015/07/11 (S) Impactful Tools

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We had a small crowd for our SLAARC breakfast this morning but good conversation.  After breakfast we drove to Chuck’s house and picked up the manual impact screwdriver.  Barb was up in the thumb visiting her brother-in-law who recently lost his wife (Barb’s sister).  We lingered for a while and then left for home, stopping for gas on the way.

Back at the house I started a load of laundry and then went to work on the stop block screws.  Linda helped steady the ladder and pass tools and parts back and forth.  I got three of the four screws out of the two stop blocks but the head stripped on the forth one so I was only able to remove the aft stop block.  I tried different bits and even tried drilling a small hole in the center of the head to allow the bits to go in farther but it did not work.  The next approach will be a screw extractor, but first I have to go buy one.

We had soy yogurt for lunch with red grapes and I had a few pretzels with roasted red pepper hummus.  I kept trying to get to the basement to work on the desk design but kept getting detoured.  Once I finally reached my office I found that the mouse trap that I had placed under one of my desks was out in front of it.  The food was gone but there was no mouse, only mouse poop.  I realized that the trap was upside down which allowed the door to swing open.  Our best guess is that a mouse was trapped and the cats pulled the trap out from under the desk and accidentally turned it over while pawing at it trying to get the mouse.  Since there was no sign of a mouse having been caught by one of the cats my best guess is that it escaped, for now.

I checked e-mails and found the one with the credentials and instructions for the QTH.com web-hosting of SLAARC.com so I shared those with the other members of the SLAARC website team and then logged in to check out the log file I had created the other day as a test.

I decided to reconnect the Yaesu FTM-400 radio to the Diamond X-50 antenna on the tower so I could monitor the Novi and South Lyon repeaters while I worked in my office.  I had quite a mess on the ham shack desks and decided the best way to deal with it was to install Mike’s Icom IC-2820H in my car in place of our Icom V-8000 2m rig.  At least that would get the 2820 off the desk.  I checked that the mounting brackets and they were identical so I removed the V-8000 but left the mounting bracket installed in the car.

Mike had modified the power cord on his radio by cutting off the T-connector and replacing it with Andersen PowerPoles so I had to modify the power cable in my car to match as I could not modify Mike’s radio.  I removed the fuse from the positive (+12VDC) lead and then cut off the T-connector, leaving about 6″ of wire so I can add PowerPoles and make it into an adapter cable.  I brought my Hakko soldering station up from the basement, set it up on the floor behind the center console, ran an extension cord from the garage, and used it to solder PowerPole contacts to the two wires.  I then inserted them into the black/red housing pair and snapped them in place.

I mounted the IC-2820H, connected the power cable and connected the coax from the antenna.  I reinstalled the fuse in the positive lead, started the engine, and turned the radio on.  A couple of hams were chatting on the Novi repeater, one of whom I knew (Jim, KB8TAV).  When they finished I gave Jim a call and he came back to me, the first time I have been able to use the Novi 440 repeater from my car.  Jim signed off and I switched to the South Lyon 2m repeater and gave a general call.  Steve (N8AR) came back to me and we had a short QSO that verified the radio/antenna was also working on 2m.  As we were wrapping up Linda started fixing dinner.

Linda fixed a simple salad and Dr. Praeger’s vegan hamburgers with Daiya non-dairy cheese.  These patties were also squishy rather than firm and, like the ones at Zingerman’s Roadhouse the other night, where not very satisfying.  They tasted OK, and we ate them because we are not inclined to waste food, but there is a lot more to what makes food satisfying than just taste.  Sight, smell, and texture (mouth feel) are also important.

Linda had several TXT messages from Mara letting us know that she would be arriving tomorrow sometime before 2 PM as she wanted to watch the Wimbledon finals at that time.  Linda and I considered how best to accommodate Mara’s motorhome and finally decided to just pull our bus straight forward until the nose was at the edge of the concrete driveway.  That created more than enough space on the level part of the pull-through driveway for her to park and plug in to our 50 amp service.  The only loads we have in the bus at the moment are battery chargers so we used our 15 amp cord to plug it into a garage outlet.  Since I had to start it to move I switched it to high idle once I had it positioned, leveled it, turned on the OTR air-conditioning to put a load on the engine, and let it run for 30 minutes.

I returned to my office after dinner and work on the desk design for a while but by this point I was tired and not really in the mood.  The last time I updated the BCM page on our website was after the February 2015 issue came out.  I have had articles in the March, April, and May issues and will have articles in the June and July issues.  I captured the covers from March, April, and May and updated the page.

I exchanged e-mails with several people and spent some time looking at dual and triple monitor stands on EBay.  We rarely use EBay and the site made me change our password before it would let me log in.  There was a large selection of products but none of them were exactly what I am looking for.  There wasn’t any rush so I decided to revisit this tomorrow.

 

2015/07/10 (F) Eye of the Beholder

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I was up at 7 AM and made coffee.  This usually wakes Linda up, but not this morning.  After waiting a reasonable amount of time I went ahead and started drinking.  If someone tells you that 7:30 is too early in the morning to be drinking don’t believe it, and if someone tells you that you should never drink alone don’t believe that either.

Linda eventually got up but looked really tired.  Unbeknownst to me she had awoken in the middle of the night and not been able to get back to sleep.  Neither of us were hungry after the large meals we had last night for dinner so we just had a little juice to wash down our little pills (vitamins and an allergy pill for me).

I’ve been looking for a system to wall-mount multiple flat-panel LCD monitors above/behind the desks in the ham radio shack portion of the downstairs office.  Linda was helping search for products and found AFC Industries in New York.  Their website had a large variety of very serious looking products.  The ones that caught my eye were a 72″ wall mount track with four articulated monitor mounts and a 48″ track with three mounts.  They had an 800 number and the website said to call for pricing.  That’s usually a bad sign but they appeared to have exactly what I needed so I decided to call them later.

I had planned to work on the custom desk design all day but Linda had other ideas.  She had become frustrated with the clutter in the library and the inability to really clean that room and decided that today was the day to do something about it.  Point acknowledged.  Some of the clutter (but not all) is artwork and she thought the place for us to start was to get some of it hung on the walls.  Again, point well taken and agreed.  Doing this correctly is a slow process, however, so I knew my plans for the whole day had just changed.  Sometimes you have go along to get along.

We have artwork that is not currently displayed which ranges in size from 8″ x 10″ to 2′ x 5′.  Some of it is framed and ready for hanging and some of it is not.  It is mostly paintings but there is some photography, a few poster prints, and some textile pieces.  We went through every piece looking primarily for oil paintings that we liked and that would fit the spaces we had available to hang them.  Before we were finished with this project for the day we had hung eight paintings.  We also found four paintings that we liked but lacked frames, or ways to hang them, and set them aside for now.  Most of the paintings were done by Ann Metzger, my late great Aunt, but one was done by my late mother.  We had also moved a few items out of the library into the driveway to be donated to the Salvation Army.  I tend to use drywall screws with large fender washers as hangers as they are strong and very secure.  We ran out of stainless steel fender washers so that created a natural stopping point for our task.

For a change of pace I decided to climb the tower to measure the center sleeve inside diameter so I could determine what outside diameter mast to get.  I got out Mike’s climbing harness, set up the step ladder, put on the harness, climbed up onto the roof, connected the waist strap around the tower, and started climbing.  I alternately attached and detached the two safety cables and made good progress until I got to the DB8e OTA TV antenna.  To go higher I would have to move from the west face to the northeast face and then undo the waist strap and reconnect it above the mounting point for the OTA TV antenna.  I did not feel like doing that today.  I was, however, able to reach the bottom of the sleeve by extending my tape measure.  The tip of the tape fit inside the bottom of the sleeve with what appeared to be about a quarter inch to spare.  I then climbed down and got off the roof, got out of the climbing harness, and put it away.

Back in the house the tip of the tape measured approximately 1-1/8″ across thus it appears that the sleeve is sized for a 1-3/8″ outside diameter mast.  I checked Universal Towers website, since they are located in S. E. Michigan, but their selection of aluminum masts did not include this O.D.  OnlineMetals.com has 1-3/8″ O.D. 6061-T6 aluminum tube in five different wall thicknesses and a large variety of lengths so that may be the easiest way to get one.  But first I will check the usual ham radio places.

Next I called AFC Industries and was routed to Ewa who was very curious what I was going to use the multiple monitors for since I was not a company.  I tried to explain why I would need at least three monitors in an amateur (ham) radio shack but she had never heard of ham radio and I don’t think I did a very good job of explaining it.  She was paying attention to what I was describing, however, about where I wanted to position the monitors.  She could not give me pricing on the phone so I gave her my e-mail address to send a quote.  Ewa was prompt in the sending the quote but I did not see it until later as we had the leftover seitan stroganoff for lunch and then left to run errands.

Linda had loaded our donation items in the back of my car while I was on the phone.  I brought seven paintings to the car and we left.  Our first stop was the Salvation Army donation center between Brighton and Howell.  We then went to the Howell Art and Framing Center, a frame shop on the east end of downtown Howell.  The proprietor, Rick, worked with us quite a while as we selected frames for four of the seven pieces and played with his Jack Russell terrier, Rudy.  These four pieces will go in the library when they are done in about three weeks.  Our final stop was Meijer’s where we picked up fender washers, salad greens, and coffee filters.

Back at the house I went to my office to check e-mail and work on the desk design.  The quote was there from Ewa and she had already made a follow up phone call so I opened the e-mail and looked at the quote.  It was almost double what I expected which was already double what I wanted to spend.  I e-mailed her back and asked for a simpler configuration but politely explained that her numbers were way out of my price range.  The interesting thing about such experiences is that the Ziotek products I’ve been looking at on the CyberGuys website suddenly do not seem so expensive.  It’s funny how that works.

While I was working I got a TXT message from Chuck following up on the refrigerator installation.  I texted back that I had not yet checked whether we can open the fixed glass window frame but would do so immediately and call him back.  I moved the 7′ step ladder next to the bus and climbed up to inspect the stop blocks as Linda pushed the window open.  The two stop blocks on that frame were definitely contacting the drip rail immediately above them preventing the frame from opening more than about 8 to 10 inches at the bottom.  The good news was that the Zip Dee patio awning would not interfere with the opening of the window.  The bad news is that I was not able to remove the two Philips head screws that secured each block to the frame.

I called Butch to find out what the tool was that I used at his shop to work on my brakes.  He said it was a manual impact tool.  This nifty little device is a screwdriver that turns through a small angle when you strike the end of it with a hammer.  This has the unique benefit of driving the screwdriver bit into the screw head while turning.  Butch thought that any auto store would have these so I called the local O’Reilly’s but they did not have any in stock in the store.

While I was talking to Butch Linda was researching other places to buy such a tool.  It turned out that Sears would be a good choice but the closest one was at Twelve Oaks Mall over 20 miles away.  I was getting ready to drive there but called Chuck first.  It turned out that he has two of them so I will borrow one tomorrow after our ham radio club breakfast.  I spent the last couple hours of the evening working on the desk design.  I then went to bed and worked on this post.

 

2015/07/08 (W) Custom Desk Design

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Linda continued to research Florida RV parks this morning over coffee.  Riverside RV Resort which was fully booked but she found Big Tree RV Resort in Arcadia, Florida.  It is located in a similar part of the state and Arcadia is where the annual Arcadia Bus Rally is held between Christmas and New Year’s.  Big Tree is a Carefree Resort, which means they had a nice, professionally done video on their website.  We checked it out on Google Earth and it looked OK.  Hey, the entrance is right across the street from a Walmart, so the shopping is convenient.

Linda called Big Tree and talked to Pat.  They only had five openings for the 2015/16 winter season so we reserved a spot for January and February 2016 with the understanding that we can probably extend through March if needed.  First, however, we want to see if we can find someplace else to stay in another part of Florida for March and perhaps some of April.  We would like to spend some time in northeast Florida.  Our friends, Pat and Vicki, spend late February and early March at Jetty Park near Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral.  Besides their presence there is a lot to see and do in that area, so that is appealing to us.  However, the spring FMCA national rally will be in Perry, Georgia the third week of March, so we are being pulled in several directions.  Such is the RV life; so many places, so little time.

Breakfast was cinnamon raisin toast and fresh melon.  After breakfast I called Chuck It Junk Removal and left a message that we would like to rent their dumpster trailer for starting on Monday 20 July with pickup on Friday 24 July.  Brad called back and said those dates would work for him.

Linda continued to research RV parks in Florida for December and March.  She called Williston Crossings to ask about space for December but the lady on the phone said someone else would have to call us back.  As much as we liked Williston Crossings the winter before last we wanted to spend the heart of the winter farther south in the state.  A more southerly location would afford us a warmer climate and position us to explore a part of the state we did not see last time.  It would also put us closer to many of our friends who winter in southwest Florida.  We really enjoyed the southwest Arizona climate this past winter and have talked about trying a winter in southern Texas and/or southern New Mexico.  I have no doubt we will visit those areas in future years but this year we wanted to return to Florida.

I typed up a short letter to go with the defective Morgan M-302N coaxial cable lightning arrestor and boxed it up for shipping back to Morgan Manufacturing in Martinsville, Indiana.  Linda got a new 90-day prescription for me when she saw the dermatologist yesterday so we also got that ready to mail.  She then left for the library, post office, and grocery store.

My focus for the rest of the morning was on uploading posts to our personal blog but before I even got started I discovered a mouse at the entrance to the utility area in the basement.  It had not survived its encounter with one of our cats, probably Juniper, so I put it in a small zip lock bag and put it in the trash.  I know that food and shelter are powerful attractions for mice but I am surprised that the presence of two cats in the house is apparently not a deterrent for them.  Other than the one mouse we live trapped in the bathroom the mice are not taking the bait so far.  Indeed, it may be that we are luring them out of hiding and Juniper has figured out where to lie in waiting to ambush them.  From what we have seen she is a very skilled, and determined, mouser.

Linda went for a walk as soon as she got back from running her errands.  By the time she returned and prepared tofu hotdogs for lunch I had uploaded eight blog posts covering June 8 through 15.  After lunch I sent an e-mail to a dozen or so folks letting them know where we would be this winter.  I then got to work on the design for the custom desk.  Except for a dinner break I worked on it until 9 PM when I quit for the day and went upstairs to watch the final episode of The First Peoples on PBS.

Butch and Fonda are at the Crosley Automobile Club national gathering in Wauseon, Ohio this week and will be back home on Sunday.  I would like to have the design for the desk and other custom woodwork done by this Sunday so I can drive it down on Monday or Tuesday next week, give it to Jarel Beatty (the cabinet maker), and visit with Butch and Fonda before heading home.  The desk will take some time to build and I would like to take the bus to Butch and Fonda’s in August before they leave for Arizona so Jarel can bring it to their place and help me install it, assuming, of course, that I have the new floor installed by then.

The desk is proving to be quite challenging to design but after thinking about it for the last couple of weeks I had several “breakthrough” ideas today.  One was to turn the printer 90 degrees so it faces fore and aft rather than side-to-side.  Another was to leave the front of the printer box open and cover it with a swing up work surface.  But the basic difficulty I am having is figuring out how to draw it.  I finally decided to draw a plan view of the base which really helped me see where the Aqua-Hot fan-coil heat exchangers will go and how the coolant lines will run.  I still have a lot of work to do, and I really wish I had AutoCAD (and knew how to use it), but I went to bed feeling like Sunday was a realistic target date for this piece of the project.

 

2015/07/03 (F) 4th Anniversary

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Several SLAARC members were gathering at 10:30 AM this morning to unload the Field Day equipment from Steve’s trailer and store it in the South Lyon water tower.  I was going to join them but decided last night to stay home and work on the design for the desk and HVAC chase covers for our motorcoach.  Having played ham radio for much of the last week and a half I needed to refocus my time and attention on the interior remodeling of our bus.  Besides, Brendan was bringing Madeline to our house sometime mid-to-late morning and I wanted to be home when they arrived.  Today was Brendan and Shawna’s 4th wedding anniversary and they asked Linda if we would take care of Madeline for a couple of nights so they could have some time together without the constant demands of child care.  Of course Linda said ‘yes.’

I had a call last night from XPO Delivery Services letting me know the new refrigerator for the bus would be delivered to Chuck Spera’s shop in Novi today between 6 and 8 PM.  That meant I would have to be at the shop by 5 PM just in case they arrived early and could be there past 8 PM if they arrived late.  At 7:45 AM this morning I got a call from the Lowe’s in Howell asking if XPO could deliver the refrigerator in about an hour.  Sure, why not; I was still in bed but about to get up anyway and having the refrigerator delivered early would actually open up my entire day.  I hurried the process along, had Linda get the receipt, grabbed my iPad, and headed for Chuck’s shop in Novi.  Linda was getting ready to go for a walk as I left.

One never knows what the traffic will be like on I-96 headed into the Detroit metro area from the northwest but on this Friday, at the start of a major holiday weekend, the traffic was very light and I was able to get to Novi in the minimum legal time.  Traffic headed westbound actually appeared to be heavier than the inbound traffic.  I stopped at the Tim Horton’s on Beck Road just north of Grand River Avenue and got coffee which I had not taken the time to make at home before I left.

I texted Chuck to let him know that the refrigerator was being delivered this morning.  He called me back to clarify where to have them set it.  This would be a great weekend to do the swap as all of the other businesses around his shop building will be closed for the holiday, making it easy to get our bus in and out.  But his daughter arrived last night from New York and will be visiting for a week so the refrigerator replacement will have to wait, probably until at least next weekend.

By 9:30 AM XPO had not arrived so I called Lowe’s in Howell and talked to Erica in scheduling.  She said she would call the driver and see what was going on.  I texted a status update to Linda and continued to wait.  By 10 AM there was still no truck and no call back from Erica.  At 10:20 I was dialing Lowe’s again when an Enterprise rental truck drove past the building headed east and a few minutes later went by headed west and pulled into a parking lot.  Moments later my phone rang.  It was the XPO truck driver.  I explained where the driveway was and flagged them in.  When I ordered the fridge I gave detailed special instructions on how to find the building but the driver did not bother reading them and did not bother calling me until he had failed to find the delivery location for the second time.

They backed the truck into the area in front of Chuck’s garage door, lowered the refrigerator down on their lift gate, slid a pair of lift straps under it, picked it up, and carried it into the shop.  I looked it over as best I could and then signed for it.  Only later did I notice a small dent towards the bottom of the door.  I had an automated call later asking if I was satisfied with the delivery and indicated ‘no’, noting the arrival delay and the small ding.  The message said I would hear back from someone within an hour but no one ever called.  We do not plan to make an issue of the ding as we will be lucky to get it into the bus and into its alcove with no further damage.  Still, it should have arrived in perfect condition and did not.

I called Linda to let her know the refrigerator had arrived and that I was getting ready to head home.  She said Brendan had just arrived with Madeline.  As I started to back out of my parking spot Chuck arrived so I spent about 30 minutes talking with him about the timing and approach of the refrigerator swap.  I will almost certainly take our bus to his garage on a weekend.  Only later did I find out that Brendan will not be available to help for the next two or three weekends.  Ugh.  Chuck called a friend (golf buddy) who has narrow pallets (24″) to see if he could get a 5’ long section.  With the long forks set close together on his forklift we can slide the pallet over the forks and have a much more secure platform form for raising and lowering refrigerators, probably laying on their backs.

Linda called back and asked me to stop on the way home for some toddler toothpaste and a toddler toothbrush.  I did not know they made such things but I found them at the CVS in Brighton.  Not long after I got home Linda had lunch on the table.  She heated some veggie nuggets and set them out along with baby carrots, grapes, pretzels, hummus, vegan deli slices, bread, lettuce, and onion.  We all had a good lunch with lots of variety.  Brendan got Madeline down for her nap at 1 PM and hung around long enough to make sure she was asleep.  I took a few minutes to show him the new Yaesu radio before he headed back to Ann Arbor.

I was very tired and took a nap on the living room sofa which is especially comfortable for this purpose, better actually than for sitting on.  Madeline slept until almost 4 PM.  When she woke up she wanted her mommy and daddy and was a little weepy but Grandma Linda got her quickly engaged in doing things.  Linda took her for a walk to see the chickens while I went downstairs to check e-mails.  I responded to ones having to do with the transfer of the SLAARC website and domain name registration from GoDaddy.com to QTH.com and made mental note of others.  When they got back from their walk Linda brought Madeline downstairs to see Grandpa Bruce at work in his office and ham radio shack.  We told her we would help her become an amateur radio operator when she was older.

Linda decided that baking a vegan chocolate cake would be an excellent activity to do with Madeline and give us a nice treat for later.  Madeline helped pour and stir ingredients.  She ended up with chocolate cake batter on her face and clothes but it was worth it as she got to lick one of the spoons.  (Without any animal products, especially raw eggs, vegan cake batter is perfectly safe to eat.)  Linda had previously found a small baking set for Madeline that included a small bunt cake pan.  Some of the batter went in there to make a little cake just for Madeline and the rest was used to make 11 cupcakes.

After the cupcakes were cooked and taken out of the oven to cool Linda made dinner.  We had mock chicken strips (vegan), fresh sautéed green beans, vegan refried beans, and fresh berries leftover from earlier.  When the cakes were cool enough Linda got out the powdered sugar and sifter and we dusted them.  Madeline enjoyed the decorating but somehow ended up with powdered sugar in her hair, on her dress, and all over her face.  I took pictures and then Linda cleaned her up while I cleaned the floor.

After dinner and dessert we played and read a bit.  Linda had gotten three Sesame Street Workshop DVDs from the Howell Public Library so we all climbed up into the bed in our bedroom and watched one of them.  We played along with the various activities and games and encouraged Madeline to do the same.  The program ended at 8 PM which is Madeline’s bedtime.  Linda helped her in the bathroom, got her into her pajamas, and helped her brush her teeth.  She laid down without a fuss and drifted off to sleep. We stayed up until the last chime of the grandfather clock at 9:45 PM and then turned in for the night.  We are always satisfyingly tired after a full day of Madeline.