Category Archives: WC-RV-Resort

Posts related to our extended stay at Williston Crossings RV Resort in Williston, Florida.

2016/04/11–15 (M–F) Water Pumps on the Road Again

2016/04/11 (M) Parts Run

I was up at 7:30 AM, so I slept over seven hours last night, and felt like I had slept well enough to take on the day I had ahead of me.  I fed the cars, put fresh water in their bowl, and cleaned their litter tray.  I also cleaned part of the shower as one of them has developed loose stools in the last couple of days and has not always made it to the tray in time.  I moved the SunPass transponder, Garmin GPS, and my sunglasses to the car in preparation for my trip today.  By the time I had done all those chores Linda was up and both used our iPads for a while.  I was not going to make coffee this morning since I had a long drive ahead of me sometime today, but Linda wanted some so I made it and had some myself.  We eventually had bagels for breakfast.

I called Action Mobile around 9 AM and talked to Service Manager John Provo.  He expected my three brake calipers to be delivered between 10 AM and noon but that was just a guess on his part.  Rather than make an issue of getting a more accurate ETA I decided I would leave at 10 AM for the two hour drive from Williston to Orlando.  I went out after breakfast and unloaded most of the stuff in the back of the car and stored it on the picnic table.  I then walked to the resort office to let them know we were expecting a package from Amazon today.

Just before 10 AM I wrote out a short grocery list as I planned to stop on my way back from Orlando at The Publix supermarket on US-27 by the Ocala exit (#354) of I-75.  I took my iPad in case I needed to kill some time at Action Mobile, and actually left a little after 10 AM.

The trip down was smooth, with no traffic issues, and it was uneventful except for a text message from my sister asking me to call our broker and transfer funds for our dad.  Based on when I received it the best I could do was pull into one the Florida Turnpike Service Areas closest to Orlando’s northwest corner and call the brokerage.  The person I needed to speak to (Maggie) was on another call and I did not want to deal with a return call while driving so I left a message that I would call again when I got to my destination, which was still 20 minutes away barring any unforeseen traffic problems.

Traffic was thicker and a little slower as I neared Orlando but it moved along well enough and I reached Action Mobile just after noon.  I called Maggie again and got her this time as she is in the Central Time Zone.  Maggie is our broker’s office manager and is also a registered agent.  We have an extremely good relationship with her and our broker, John, so we chatted briefly before I gave her the transaction details.  I then texted my sister back to let her know I had taken care of her request.

I went inside and found John P. (the Service Manager).  The parts were not there yet so he called Rex at Rush Trucking to check on them.  Rex said they should have been there and made a call.  Not too long after that a white can showed up and the driver unloaded three Meritor boxes of the right size, shape, and apparent weight, and took off.

It occurred to me that I should check the parts before paying the balance and taking off myself so I opened all three boxes.  I was expecting one of the castings to have an “L” in the casting number and the other two to have an “R” in the casting number, but all three had “L”s and that caused me some concern.  I also noticed that one of the calipers had both grease fittings broken.  John P. called Rex back and Rex explained the Left and Right calipers used the same (“L”) casting.  The difference was in the helical drive shaft and gear inside, and difference was reflected in the part number on the box label.  The left side caliper part number began with “A 1” while the right side caliper began with “A 2.”   (The shaft for the calipers on the left side of the bus rotate clockwise, as viewed from the end where the slack adjuster attaches, while the calipers for the right side rotate counterclockwise.)

Rather than have Action Mobile remove and replace the damaged grease fittings Rex had a different left caliper sent over as he did not want to risk a small piece of debris falling inside the mechanism.  When the driver dropped it off I checked the label and the grease fittings.  There were OK, so he put the damaged one in his van and left.

While I was waiting I called Butch and gave him the information on how the left and right calipers were labeled.  He is working with someone at ABC Bus in Muncie, Indiana, who is working with someone at Rockwell-Meritor, who says we can still get these parts with a 45 to 60 day lead time.  I’m guessing that these are also rebuilt/remanufactured calipers, not new ones, but at this point in time we don’t really know.  He was quoted a price that was $200 less per caliper than I paid, but I have mine now, not two months from now; if in fact I could get them.

Bill, the mechanic who fixed our left tag axle brake last week, was taking his lunch break so we got to chat a bit.  John D. (the owner) was also around so we also got to chat for a little while.  I was running behind the schedule I had hoped to keep, so I loaded the three boxes into my car and went inside to pay the balance of the bill.  A quick chat with the billing clerk, Lisa, and I was on my way back to Williston.  It was 1:30 PM and I figured I would be back by 4 PM, including my stop at Publix.

I stopped at the Florida’s Turnpike Turkey Lake Service Area for some lunch but just ended up getting a frozen coffee thing at Dunkin Donuts.  Traffic moved along nicely all the way onto northbound I-75.  I had just passed exit 341 and was just 13 miles short of exit 354, when traffic came to a complete standstill.  The backup stretched as far as I could see in front of me and the flurry of emergency response vehicles driving up both shoulders meant there had been a serious accident somewhere up ahead.

It took at least an hour to reach the accident scene, where police had closed all three lanes of the highway.  All of that of traffic, which included two lanes of nose-to-tail tractor-trailers, had to funnel onto the right shoulder to get around the blockage.  The accident looked really bad and appeared to have involved at least a motorcycle, a large Suburban-like vehicle, and a utility trailer.  There may have been other vehicles involved that I did not see as I drove past or that had already been moved, although I doubted that.  There was no sign of the people involved and I presume they had already been transported from the scene by ambulances or helicopters.

Once I was past the accident I had clear sailing the rest of the way, but from the accident scene north the southbound lanes of I-75 were also completely stopped.  There were also emergency vehicles on the southbound side of the highway, but it did not appear that any of the accident was over there.  I exited I-75 at exit 354 (Ocala, Williston), made a left onto US-27, and pulled into the strip mall on the right where the Publix supermarket is located.

I took my short list of grocery items and went in.  In an unusual move for me I found everything on my list except for one item and did not buy anything that wasn’t on my list.  The only thing I could not get was fresh blueberries, which is odd because just today I had seen billboards advertising the Florida Blueberry Festival as running from April 11 – 16 in a town nearby.  Maybe all of the available blueberries were being routed to the festival?

I was back at our rig around 5:10 PM.  After getting the groceries inside, I turned my attention to reloading the car.  My first task was to transfer the new (to me) A1/Left caliper to the box the DS tag axle caliper came in last week as the box the new caliper came in was in very bad condition.  Linda found our roll of bubble wrap under the bed and I used pieces to protect the grease fittings on the top of each of the three new (to me) calipers.  (I say “new (to me)” because I believe the four calipers I have purchased are all rebuilt, and possibly even remanufactured.)

With that taken care of, I moved a couple of low boxes from the picnic table to the car and put them on the floor behind the two calipers that were behind the driver’s seat.  I then moved the tire covers from the front passenger seat and put them on top of the boxes.  The covers are a soft nylon mesh material which I figured would provide additional protection for the grease fittings.

We disassembled the damaged box to get flat cardboard pieces to use as a cushioning layer on top of the two caliper boxes that I had put inside the wooden storage structure.  The reason for all of this was that I had to store other boxes on top of the caliper boxes and, having received one that had damaged grease fittings, wanted to make sure I was not responsible for causing similar damage.  I had already taken the precaution yesterday of moving heavier items to the front bay of the bus, leaving lighter items for the car.

With the car repacked I opened the box from Amazon, which Linda said arrived around 10:30 AM, to verify that it was the correct Shur-Flo 4048 fresh water pump.  It was the correct box so I left it at that and we went for a long, slow walk around the resort.  When we concluded our walk we sat outside for a while and doodled on our iPads.  John and Ali returned around 6:30 PM.  As we suspected, they had gone out to dinner.  We presumed they had gone to The Blue Highway, but they had gone to The Olive Garden in Gainesville instead.

For dinner Linda made sandwiches with vegan deli slices and lots of greens, kind of like a salad on a bun, and sliced up a Honey Crisp apple.  It was a simple, easy meal, but it was all good.  As the hour approached 8 PM and the light faded we went next door to visit with John and Ali.  Earlier in the day John had taken one of his propane tanks over to be refilled but the person responsible for that task had not taken care of it.  When he tried to light the propane firepit it would not ignite.  We could smell the gas, and hear the spark, but if the tank was near empty it probably did not have enough pressure to make it work.  No problem; the conversation, if not the “mood,” was just as good without the fire.

It was a warm, still evening and there were more bugs out than the last few nights.  Everyone was tired by 10 PM and we all retired to our own rigs.  We watched the end of NCIS-LA and the beginning of the news and then went to bed.  I watched the beginning of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to see Steve Martin and Edie Brickel, and then went to sleep.  Although I had not really done very much it had been another long, and somewhat stressful, day.

2016/04/12 (T) Water Pump Up

I got up at 7:30 AM and quietly took care of the cats’ food, water, and litter tray.  I measured out the beans for our morning coffee but waited to grind them until Linda was up.  I updated my spreadsheet for GLCC parking at the upcoming FMCA GLAMARAMA16 rally in June and then continued working on my blog post for yesterday.  When Linda got up at 8 AM I finished making the coffee.  We then spent a couple of hours engaged in our usual morning routine of using our iPads while enjoying our coffee and having granola with fresh strawberries for breakfast.

By 10 AM we were dressed and I got to work replacing the fresh water pump.  The pump is a Shur-Flo 4048-153-E75.  It is a 4 GPM (max), 55 PSI (max), self-priming, 12 VDC pump with thermal overload protection and the ability to run dry without damage (although our friends, Butch and Fonda, discovered that it cannot do this for an extended period of time).  Shurflo also makes this pump in 24 VDC and 120 VAC versions.  I am seriously considering adding a 120 VAC pump to the water system when I redo the utility bay, but I would like something a bit more robust.  I seem to recall that Chuck has a Paragon AC powered pump in their Liberty conversion and it impressed me as a very serious piece of equipment.

Since the new water pump was an exact replacement for the failed one installation was very straightforward.  I shut off the incoming fresh water line as a precaution and had Linda make sure the pump power was switched off.  I then disconnected the two power leads which I had wired using mating insulated spade connectors.  There are two fresh water supply lines, each of which gas a 1/4 turn shutoff valve, so I closed those.  (The conversion had two domestic water pumps plumbed in parallel when we first bought it.  I replaced them with a single 4048 and removed the surge tank at that time as Shur-Flo recommended not using one with the 4048 pump.)  The threaded water line connections to the pump are plastic and only hand tightened, so were dealt with easily.  Before removing them I got a towel to absorb the water that was inevitably going to drain out of the lines.  Once the lines were off I removed the four screws that secured the unit to the floor through the rubber shock mounts.  The unit was now completely disconnected and I was able to remove it.

The new and old water pumps along with tool boxes and other stuff needed to make the repair.

Installing the new unit was basically a matter of reversing the steps just described, more or less.  I  needed to attach the proper insulated spade connectors to the power wires on the new pump.  I found my spade lug kit and even though I had a variety of connectors I did not have the ones I needed.  Fortunately there is a NAPA Auto Parts Store very close to Williston Crossings RV Resort and auto parts stores are an excellent place to find a large variety of spade connectors.  It’s walking distance to the store, but I drove there to save time.  I bought several different packs to make sure I had what I needed.

Back at the bus I prepared the power leads and set the new unit in place.  I connected the water lines first as it was easier with the unit loose.  I connected the power leads and then screwed the unit to the floor.  The new pump came with a strainer and adapter fittings.  I used the new strainer bowl to replace the old one, in which I found little curly queues of plastic.  I opened the two shutoff valves and then had Linda turn on the power to the pump and open the kitchen faucet so that both the hot and cold lines were open.  The unit came to life and water flowed, albeit with a sputter until all of the air was out of the lines.  With that, the water pump problem was fixed and I cleaned up the work area and put my tools away.

Next on my task list was checking tire pressures.  I really did not want to check all 12 tires with the digital gauge so I turned on the TireTraker TT-400 TPMS and waited 20 minutes for the readings to update.  Although the sensors are not “dead on” accurate they are close enough to let me know if a tire has lost enough air to require topping up.  They all appeared to be OK so I did not have to get out the air-compressor and air hose.

Barring any further unforeseen circumstances this was our last planned night in Florida for the 2015-16 winter season.  We wanted to go to Satchel’s in Gainesville for pizza one last time.  We decided to have an early dinner and take care of a couple of errands so we left at 2 PM.  Our first stop was at the Kangaroo filling station for gasoline.  Our next stop was Pet Supplies Plus in the Archer Road mega strip mall shopping complex.  We also stopped at the CVS pharmacy in the same complex and then drove to Satchel’s on the east side of town.

Although it was a lovely afternoon, weather wise, we chose to sit inside.  At Satchel’s we had our usual meal; an excellent salad and a pizza with mushroom, onion, sun-dried tomato, and Daiya non-dairy cheese.  It is, quite simply, one of the three or four best pizzas we have ever had, and it is vegan!  We got their largest pie and brought most of it home.

When we got back to Williston Crossings John and Ali were not around and we figured they had gone out to dinner again.  Happy hour usually takes place at Jeff and Kathy’s 5th wheel so we walked down there to visit for a while.  John and Ali eventually returned and as evening fell over the resort we went next door to sit around their propane campfire and visit.  Smitty made a large bowl of popcorn popped in peanut oil and lightly salted with Hawaiian sea salt.  Yum. Note for T 20160412 blog post.  Jim and Janet Rawley came over to John and Ali’s site to visit and John played his guitar and sang for a while.  Jim’s professional name is “Sonny Fox” and he was a big time rock ‘n roll D. J. during the ear when radio stations started playing “album rock.”  Jim quizzed me about my musical background and the first record (45 or LP) that I bought but I had no recollection of that.

We returned to our rig just before 10 PM and were in bed, with the lights out, by 10:30 as we planned to pull out of our site around 7 AM in the morning.  Tomorrow we head north and leave Florida.

2016/04/13 (W) Unbalanced Travel

I set an alarm for 6:20 AM and we got up at 6:30 and got dressed.  Today was a travel day so we did not have coffee or breakfast.  While we prepared the interior of the coach for travel I encountered a problem with the 12 VDC charging plug for the Rand McNally TripMaker RVND 7710 GPS unit.  A small threaded plastic insert, which holds the spring-loaded +12V center contact, had broken and could not be repaired on short notice (if at all).  The two lower 12 VDC “cigarette lighter” outlets were dead again and it occurred to me that the failed plug might have been responsible for shorting the outlet and blowing the supply fuse last Wednesday.  Not realizing this at the time, and desperate to get the GPS back into service, I vaguely recall having plugged it into one of the upper outlets and probably shorted it out too.  I replaced all of the blown fuses last Wednesday but did not realize at that time what the root cause was and was rather perplexed by the failure, which reoccurred on the lower pair of outlets.

I removed the R-M GPS from its usual mounting position (on the driver side lower windshield next to the center pillar and resting on the top of the dashboard cover) and set it aside and I installed the Garmin 465T GPS unit in its place.  I took care of the remaining outside tasks of disconnecting/storing the shorepower cord, connecting the chassis batteries, and opening the auxiliary air supply valve for the engine accessories.  Linda moved the car to another site so it was out of the way as I started the bus motor and aired up the chassis (brakes and suspension).  She then spotted for clearance from obstructions as I slowly and carefully pulled out of our site.

We wanted to be on the road at 7 AM but it was about 10 minutes past the hour when I finally pulled out of the site.  Our friend and neighbor, John (Smitty) Smith, was up and outside to wave goodbye, which was nice.  I proceeded north through the resort on Covered Bridge Road and Linda followed in the car.  We drove through the covered bridge, for which the road is named, and stopped just short of the north bath/laundry building to hook up the car for towing.  There are no park model trailers or RV sites close to this location, so we knew we could hookup here without bothering anyone.  With the car attached we double checked the settings and then did our light check.  Everything was OK so Linda got into the coach and we set our destination in the Garmin GPS unit.

We finished our slow roll through the RV resort, out the back/northwest gate, and pulled out onto FL-121 headed northeast towards Gainesville.  About two miles from I-75 we encountered stop-n-go traffic.  The morning rush hour in Gainesville was underway and was something we had not previously experienced.

Linda kept a close eye on our tire pressures and temperatures, especially the driver side tag axle, as we rolled along.  We stopped at the Pilot station at Exit 460 and took on 60 gallons of diesel fuel.  That was our last stop until we got to the end of our trip for the day.  I would have liked to note here that the trip was uneventful but, alas, that was not the case.

The drive up I-75 through northern Florida and southern Georgia is generally an easy one, without any serious grades to climb or descend, attractive enough scenery, and reasonable traffic volumes except during the April 1st northward snowboard migration.  As we got to the Macon, Georgia area and then on up to Atlanta, traffic was heavier but moved along.  Somewhere along the way the Battery Balance (BAL) light came on, flickering at first but then staying on.  Not good.

The Battery Balance light is controlled by a Vanner Battery Monitor Module and is supposed to indicate that the “12V” center tap on the battery bank is not within +/- 0.75 VDC of 1/2 of the voltage between the “24V” terminal and ground.  The relationship of these voltages is supposed to be regulated by a pair of Vanner Voltmaster Battery Equalizers.  It is normal for this light to come on occasionally, especially when starting the motor, but it is not normal for it to come on and stay on.  Assuming the monitor module is not defective, it means the 12V center tap is out of tolerance with respect to the 24V terminal and implies that the Vanner equalizers are not doing their job.  Ugh.

Having the yellow Battery Balance (caution) light come on immediately added stress to the trip but when the red Hi/Low Battery (warning) light came on the stress level went way up.  This light is also controlled by the Vanner Battery Monitor Module and is (supposed to be) activated if the voltage at the “24V” terminal (relative to ground) is less than 24V or more than 30V.  Voltages outside the 24 – 30 VDC range could indicate a malfunction of the voltage regulator and/or engine-mounted alternator.  Either one would be a problem that could put the bus on the side of the road as the engine is controlled by a computer that is powered by the chassis battery 12 V center tap.

The normal full-charge resting voltage of a “24V” lead-acid battery is 25.2 VDC (12 cells in series at 2.1 volts per cell) and the normal voltage at the 24V terminal with the motor running is around 28 VDC, so the 24 – 30 VDC range is a reasonable one. I also have 24V and 12V analog battery voltage gauges in the dashboard that are connected to the batteries independent of the Vanner Battery Voltage Monitor Module.  While they would also show high or low voltage conditions, and, by comparison, a battery imbalance condition, it is appropriate to have warning lights to get your immediate attention as you might not notice the gauges for a while.  What was odd about this situation was that the 24V gauge was sitting at about the 29V position and the 12V gauge was sitting at about the 14V position.  I knew these gauges worked because they do not always show these readings, but I did not know if the readings were accurate.  They are, however, close to what I normally see, and they do not usually result in caution or warning lights.

We left I-75 (GA) at exit 296, Cassville-White Road, drove 0.2 miles east to the Pilot truck stop, and got in a long to wait for a pump.  When it was finally our turn I added 92 gallons of diesel fuel.  From the truck stop we drove west back towards I-75 and continued 0.5 miles on the other side of the highway before turning left into the Cartersville Castle-White KOA.  Linda was hearing and speaking well enough by now to be able to register us, which is normally her job.  We were escorted to a water/electric pull-through site in the center of the park with less than ideal access but I was able to get in and park the bus.  We leveled as best we could, shut off the engine, batteries, and air and then plugged in the shorepower and turned it on.

Linda made a really good salad for dinner and we each had a piece of leftover pizza, slightly warmed.  Yum.  After dinner I made calls to Joe Cannarozzi, Ed Roelle, and Butch Williams and sent a text to Pat and Vickie Lintner.  Joe was working on a coach in Williamston, Michigan and was looking for a local facility that could service the over-the-road air-conditioning system.  Ed has been around converted buses in Michigan for a long time so I contacted him to see if he had any suggestions for Joe.  We went for a long walk around the campground during which I had a long chat with my sister.  When we got back to our coach I exchanged text messages with Smitty back at Willison Crossings RV Resort.

Our TV options were limited but we were able to get PBS, so we watched whatever was on.  We planned to pullout out of our site at 7 AM, which meant we had to be up around 6:15.  Not that we have that much to do, but we do not like to rush through our morning routine.  We were in bed with the lights out by 11 PM.

2016/04/14 (R) A Relatively Smooth Run

There was a possibility of rain last night so we closed all of the roof vents and narrowed the window openings before we went to bed.  I set the alarm on my phone last night for 6:15 AM this morning, but I was aware of the rain, and woke up around 4 AM when I heard one of the cats making a strange noise.  I wanted to turn on the electric engine block heater anyway so I got up and did that, checked on the cats (they were fine), and went back to bed.  I tried to go back to sleep without complete success.

We finally got up to stay at 6:30 AM and got dressed.  I had an e-mail from Gary at BCM that needed a reply and cc:d Dave Aungier.  I also texted Dave as he was who Gary needed to contact.  I shut down all of the technology and packed up my computer while Linda cleaned off counters and secured windows.  The car was already connected for towing so we just had to go through the towing procedure and double check it.  I disconnected and stowed the shorepower cable, connected the chassis batteries, and opened the air valves in the engine bay.  I started the engine and we did the light check while the chassis aired up.  Since it was 7 AM we tried to avoid idling any longer than necessary before pulling out.

We were in an angled water/electric site in the middle of the campground with fairly tight ingress and egress.  I raised the tag axle so shorten the turning radius and pulled out while Linda kept an eye on the driver side front corner.  I had to get the driver side nose of our coach fairly close the passenger side rear corner of the 5th wheel trailer directly in front of our site in order to get our passenger side rear end and toad to clear a tree on our site and a post near the road on the next site to our passenger side.  I also had to avoid the rear end of the next 5th wheel trailer and the picnic table in-between them.  Fun.

Without being over-confident, I think I have gotten a lot better at maneuvering the bus in tight situations.  That skill has come with some good teaching, some practice, and at the expense of two mistakes that caused some damage, but it certainly paid off this morning.  Once I was cleanly out of our site and into the road I stopped and put the tag axle down.  Linda got on board and we rolled slowly out of the center of the campground and headed for the exit.  We stopped before exiting so Linda could find Juniper.  We knew she was onboard, but we wanted visual confirmation before pulling out.  Linda found her under one of the living room captain’s chairs, and we were on our way.

We recharged the Rand-McNally GPS last night using a 12 V car outlet splitter with USB ports and a compatible USB cable that I borrowed from the Sony a99v DSLT camera.  Linda turned it on and entered the address of today’s destination to verify that the unit was working.  It was, so I set it up on the dashboard by the windshield center pillar so it was ready to go this morning.

Our route took us north on the final 70 miles of I-75 in Georgia to Chattanooga, Tennessee where we headed northwest on I-24.  I-24 was mostly in Tennessee, but dipped back into Georgia briefly as it swung around the southern side of a mountain.  Unless you head far to the west on I-10 before turning north, there isn’t a practical way to get back to Michigan from Florida without crossing mountains.

As you head north from Florida on I-75 the ground rises steadily.  As you approach Atlanta it starts to get hilly, and that continues north of town all the way to Tennessee.  As soon as you head west on I-24 you are perpendicular to mountain ridges running SW to NE.  The highway winds around these ranges, sticking to valleys as much as possible, but inevitably there comes a point where it simply has to go over the top.  And so it did.  I think the grade was at least five miles long, perhaps seven, with lots of turns but nothing I would call a switchback.  The road surface was excellent with wide lanes and truck lanes.  The grade was just steep enough that I had to climb it in 4th gear doing around 50 MPH at 2000 RPM with 14 to 15 PSI of turbo boost.  With cool outside air the engine coolant temperature never rose above 195 degrees F, which is its normal operating temperature (on the gauge) and I was very pleased with the way the bus ran.  Replacing the turbo boost sensor tube last year was no doubt partly responsible for this performance.

The temperature was in the low 50’s when we left the Cartersville Castle-White KOA around 7:15 AM and we ran through cool temperatures under overcast skies, with intermittent drizzle and fog, all the way over the mountains in southwest Tennessee.  Once we were on the northwest side of the mountains the cloud cover started to break up and reveal patches of blue sky.  Somewhere southeast of Nashville we encountered our last raindrops and by the time we merged onto northbound I-65 we had clear, blue skies.  Traveling “north” from late morning to early afternoon we had the sun at our backs, making for a comfortable cockpit without using the air-conditioning.

I was concerned about the issue we had yesterday with the Battery Balance (BAL) telltale caution light and the Hi/Low Battery (Voltage) telltale warning light and presumed it would reoccur today.  In order to reduce the chance of that happening again today I tried to minimize the power draw from the +12 VDC center tap of the chassis batteries and perhaps cause an imbalance between the upper and lower halves of the battery bank.   To that end I did not use the cockpit HVAC fan and kept the headlights off as much as possible.

We had a pretty smooth run all the way to and through Nashville.  Pat and Vickie had alerted us to “construction on I-65” but were not more specific.  North of Nashville we encountered a major construction project that lasted for at least 20 miles.  Traffic flow, however, was very smooth if a bit slower than normal posted speeds.  As we approached Louisville we saw signs announcing major construction ahead and advising I-283W as an alternate route.  We were less than 15 miles from our destination and needed to take the second exit just after the bridge so we rejected the alternate route suggestion and stayed on I-65.  The construction was, indeed, major—the reconstruction of a bridge over the Ohio River—but we made it through without having to stop.  The campground website had very specific and detailed directions on how to exit I-65 and we followed them instead of the GPS.  We were momentarily confused after exiting, never a good thing when driving a bus in an urban area, but we were in the right place and made the last couple of turns to get to the Clarksville KOA campground without difficulty.

Linda checked in at the office and the woman at the desk lead us to a pull-through site that was very easy to get into but might be challenging to exit in the morning.  We were sitting level without having to adjust anything so I shut off the engine and we went through our usual arrival routines.  Linda then walked over to the office and finished registering us.

We walked the park, which was not large, and scoped out our departure route and any possible problems.  The sites here are closely spaced, the roads are a little narrow, and some campers are parked with their vehicles sticking part way out into the road.  Some of the people camped here appeared to be younger men who were itinerant workers.  As such, we suspected they might be gone in their cars before we pulled out in the morning.  If so, we will probably get out OK without having to unhook the car, but I doubt that we will ever return here.  While the location is convenient to I-65 and Louisville, the park itself is not worth the $50 a night they charge.  If not for the location, it wouldn’t be worth half of that.

We did not plan to unhook the car to explore the area and there did not appear to be anywhere to walk although Vickie had texted us that we were only a half mile from the river and there was, in fact, a nice walk down to there.  Even so, we were tired and perfectly content to retire to our coach, have dinner, and watch our favorite Thursday evening CBS comedy shows.  We went to bed at 11 PM as we planned to be on the road at 7 AM so we could be at Butch and Fonda’s home in Twelve Mile, Indiana before noon.

2016/04/15 (F) Back In Twelve Mile Again

I set the alarm on my smartphone last night for 6:30 AM this morning.  Like last night, I woke up around 4 AM, turned on the engine block heater (electrical), and tried to go back to sleep.  I was awake again before 6:30 and the alarm was just my signal to actually get out of bed and get dressed.  Linda woke up with the alarm and was also up and dressed fairly quickly.

As usual for a travel day, we did not make coffee or have breakfast and instead set about preparing the coach for travel.  I had turned off my computer last night so all I had to do was pack it up.   We also left the car and bus connected together, so all we had do was check the connections and go through the towing procedure.  I turned the block heater and Aqua-Hot electric heating element off, disconnected the shorepower cord and stowed it, opened the auxiliary air supply valves, and started the main engine.  We did a light check while the chassis aired up and then Linda climbed aboard.

I was concerned about getting our rig out of the small, tight site and through the narrow interior gravel roads of the campground, but our neighbor’s to the left moved their truck before they went to bed last night and the guy directly in front of us on the other side of the street left in his car just before 7 AM, presumably to go to work.  That meant I had plenty of space to pull forward and to turn to the left, which is the direction the site was angled.  By 7:25 AM we were exiting the park and on our way to Twelve Mile, Indiana.

Although we had less than 200 miles to travel today, I-65 continued to be one long construction zone with lots of very rough surfaces which made for more difficult and tiring driving.  In-between Clarksville and Twelve Mile was Indianapolis, so that meant major urban traffic.  “Indy” is a major shipping hub with a good, but extensive highway system.  I-465 circles the metro area while I-65, I-69, I-70, and I-74 all tie into it, along with several U.S. highways.  The speed limit is 55 MPH and most drivers seemed to obey it, which made for easier urban driving, but there was still a LOT of traffic.

As we got on the north side of town headed west we were looking to exit onto US-31 north.  The GPS told me to exit at Keystone Avenue and turn right onto the relatively new Keystone Parkway, which bypasses the initial stretch of US-31 before joining it some miles farther north.  Fortunately I spotted a sign before exiting the highway that said vehicles over 19,000 pounds GVW were not allowed on the Parkway.  Also fortunate was that I knew the exit for US-31 was only a couple of more miles ahead and was a perfectly acceptable place for us to get off of I-465.  I had not been this way in a while and discovered, to our pleasant surprise, that it is a completely new, limited-access highway heading northbound.  Sweet.

We handled the situation smoothly and without too much consternation, but it was concerning that our GPS tried to direct us onto a road for which we were too heavy by more than double.  That had us wondering if the RV characteristics parameters were not set correctly, and perhaps got reset when I updated the unit while we were at Florida Grande Motor Coach Resort, but now was not the time to check all of that.  This is a relatively recently rebuilt roadway, and it was been my experience with both GPS units that the map updates do not include these newer roads.

Another possibility was that the Indiana Highway Department has not updated the state road database as that is where Rand-McNally (and other mapping companies) get the information for their road maps.  I encountered this a while back when traveling US-24 from Peru, Indiana to Defiance, Ohio.  Even though my GPS database was up to date, it had no knowledge of the new construction between Ft. Wayne, Indiana and Defiance.  The same us still true of the new stretch of US-31 running south from US-20 for many miles even though it has been open for quite a while.  The State highway departments are responsible for updating the database that the GPS/mapping companies use.  If they do not update the database there isn’t much the GPS/mapping companies can do.

Indiana has made major improvements to US-31 over the last 3 to 4 years, building whole new limited access sections.  Besides the section coming south from US-20 and the section going north out of Indianapolis, there is one that now bypasses Kokomo.  The older sections are four lane divided but have grade crossings and occasional traffic signals.  They are posted at 60 MPH and traffic is usually light and moves along well.

All-in-all we had an easy final leg from Indy up to State Road 16 and west into Twelve Mile.  At 11 AM, just 3-1/2 hours after we pulled out of the Clarksville KOA we were back in Twelve Mile again.  We pulled into the gravel driveway for the grain elevator, which is not in use this time of year, to unhook the car.  The driveway is exactly opposite where I park the bus when it is here and positions me to basically back across SR-16 into our spot next to Butch and Fonda’s bus.  Linda spotted for me as I backed across SR-16 and into our spot.  I leveled the coach, shut off the engine, and took care of the exterior arrival tasks while Linda took care of the interior ones.

Butch and Fonda did not come out of the house and we were not sure they were home.  We usually have a very poor Verizon signal when the bus is parked in this spot, and today was no exception, but I was able to get our Verizon Mi-Fi online.  About that time Butch and Fonda came out to check on us and we visited for a while.  We had not knocked on the door because we knew there was a possibility they might not be home when we arrived.

Butch needed to be at a local county fairgrounds at 5 PM to help set up a large room for a hamfest tomorrow.  Fonda was reviewing for the General Class license exam, so Linda studied her Amateur Extra Class flash cards with Fonda while Butch and I went to the do the set up.  The hamfest was an annual joint event put on by four county amateur radio clubs.  After the tables were all set I helped Butch carry in all of the stuff from his truck and arrange it on three adjacent tables.  When we were done, and there was nothing else to do, we returned to Twelve Mile.

It was 6:30 PM by the time we got back and we decided to go out for dinner even though the options for us are very limited.  We drove to Rochester hoping to eat at a Mexican restaurant but it was closed (permanently).  We ended up at Tweedle Dee’s instead, mostly because they have a salad bar.  We were the last diners to leave and only then because they needed to run the vacuum cleaner which cut off any chance of Linda hearing any further conversation.  We stopped at Butch and Fonda’s new (to them) house on IN-25 in Metea but Butch did not have the key with him so we did not get to go inside.

By the time we got back to Twelve Mile we were all tired.  Butch and Fonda had to be up very early to go to the hamfest so they signed their tax returns, got them ready to mail, and brought them to our bus for Linda to mail in the morning.  I planned to go to the hamfest too, but not first thing in the morning.  I also wanted to take our car so I could come back to Twelve Mile before the hamfest ended at 1 PM.

Our series of equipment failures seems to be continuing as I was unable to get the Amped|Wireless SR20000G router/network-extender to recognize any hard wired devices.  I tried plugging in both my computer and our NAS to all five of the ports but none of them responded to either device.  It’s unlikely that the wired networking had failed on both the computer and the NAS so the failure of the SR20000G is the more likely cause.  The SR20000G’s wireless networks are still working but the loss of the wired ports means I cannot access the NAS.  Fortunately we will be home in a few days and I can try to sort this out in the comfort of my office.

Being tired, and with no TV reception, we were in bed by 10:30 PM and I was asleep by 11 with no alarm set for the morning.

 

2016/04/06-10 (W-N) Close Call All’s Well

2016/04/06 (W) Near Disaster

We were up by 7 AM, anticipating our departure from Jetty Park and the Cape Canaveral / Cocoa Beach area of Florida.  Around 9:30 AM we started straightening up the interior of our motorcoach.  At 10:15 I moved the car over by the office and walked back to our site.  Around 10:30 I disconnected the shorepower cord and stored it for travel.  With the chassis batteries connected, and the engine compartment accessory air supply open, the engine started right up.  After the chassis aired up I raised the tag axle and Linda served as spotter while I eased out of site #357.  I thought I might need to back up to get clear of vehicles and trees but I was able to exit the site in one smooth forward motion.  Linda got onboard and we drove clockwise around Red Knot Circle and over to the dump station by the office.  There is a large paved area around the dump station with room to temporarily park the bus, without blocking any of the vehicles parked there, while we connected the car for towing.  We checked the lights, which were OK, and Linda got onboard.  We pulled out of the campground just after 11 AM and once I cleared the turn out of the campground exit I lowered the tag axle.  I felt a sudden jerk but thought the transmission had shifted.

We headed west on George J. King Blvd. and merged onto FL-A1A westbound.  FL-A1A quickly crossed the Banana River, leaving Cape Canaveral for Merritt Island.  We eventually crossed the Indian River and were back on the mainland.  Somewhere along the way FL-A1A became FL-528 which eventually became FL-528 Toll Road.  Linda was keeping tabs on the temperatures and pressures of all the wheels/tires.  The driver side tag seemed to be running consistent with the others and we settled in for our trip.

FL-528 traverses a large swath of undeveloped land with lots of water and birds.  Traffic was light and the driving was easy so it came as quite a jolt when we got a high temperature alarm on the driver side tag axle tire sensor.  The temperature was in the 160’s and climbing and I started looking for a safe place to pull off the road.  Before I could do that I checked the driver side rear view mirror, and saw smoke coming from the tag axle wheel well.  NOT GOOD!  I pulled off at an entrance ramp to get farther away from the traffic lanes.  I told Linda to get our cats into their carriers and grab our computers from the bed in case we had to abandon ship. While she did that I grabbed the fire extinguisher from behind the driver’s seat and ran back to the smoking tag axle.  I discharged the extinguisher through the small holes in the wheel in an attempt to cool off the disc brake caliper and rotor.  I got the wheel to quit smoking and went back inside to get the other fire extinguisher, just in case.

I left the engine running and started trying to figure out what to do.  My first call was to the Prevost Service Center in Jacksonville, Florida.  They could not help me directly, and their mobile service guy was off today, but the service manager gave me the name of someone to call in the Orlando area.  Long-story-short, I ended up getting passed off to a whole string of people, none of whom could help me but each of whom tried to connect me to someone who could.  No one could provide assistance in-situ and most places would not be able to help us for 1 to 2 weeks, if at all.

I talked to a guy in Cocoa, about 20 miles back the wrong way, who sounded like he could help in a week if we could get the bus there.  I eventually talked to our mobile mechanic, Joe Cannarozzi, who was in Michigan working on a coach near Lansing about 30 miles from our house.  I also called the Prevost Action Service System (PASS).  The Jacksonville service manager was not willing to tell me it was OK to lift the tag axle and drive on six tires but the P.A.S.S. technician thought it would OK as long as I did not drive too far and kept my speed down.  I eventually talked to Barry at JOSAM in Orlando, who could not help us directly but seemed genuinely concerned about our situation.  Barry ultimately put me in touch with John at Action Mobile Service on the south side of Orlando.  Both business were located near the intersection of the FL-528 Toll Road and FL-91 (Florida’s Turnpike).  That intersection was about 15 miles from where we were sitting on the side of the road.  The consensus opinion was that I should be able to complete the relatively short trip of 15 miles by lifting the tag axle and limiting my speed.  By the time I pulled back into the flow of traffic we had been on the side of the road for two hours and were more than a little bit rattled and frustrated.

Limiting my speed on a limited access highway posted at 70 MPH was not without its own risks, but it was (apparently) our only alternative unless we wanted to be put on a “low boy” and towed.  The sooner we got off FL-528 and into someone’s service yard the better.  Traffic was now thicker as it was 1:30 PM but I finally had an opening that was long enough to allow me to get up to 45 MPH without cutting someone off and give other vehicles plenty of time and distance to move over and go around me.  I kept my speed at 45 to 50 MPH, except where posted lower in a construction zone, of course, and kept my emergency flashers on the whole way.

We exited FL-528 at Exit 4.  When I started driving I was headed for JOSAM and Barry had given me a ‘heads up’ about how to navigate Exit 4 as this exit serves a dual purpose.  Staying to the right it immediately becomes an entrance ramp to FL-91 (Florida’s Turnpike) whereas staying left and going straight to the stop sign gets you to a side street that leads to FL-441 / Orange Blossom Trail to the right or to JOSAM to the left.  We were nearing Exit 4 when Barry called back and told us to go to Action Mobile Service.  Exit 4 was also the correct exit for Action Mobile but in the opposite direction from JOSAM.  It was at this point that we had a bit of confusion.

We were both already pretty frazzled by the events of the last few hours and the last minute change in directions did not make things better, especially with Linda handling the phone call and unable to hear well.  We had JOSAM’s address programmed into the Rand-McNally TripMaker RVND 7710 GPS, but that was no longer our destination.  Linda tried to enter the address of Action Mobile Service into the unit but it had become non-responsive.  I checked the power adapter and saw that the light was out so I knew the unit was not getting 12 VDC power and the battery had probably run down.  The adapter often works loose so I plugged it back in but it did not restore the power.  The two bottom outlets share a circuit and the two upper outlets share a different circuit so I plugged the adapter into one of the upper outlets.  I quickly determined that all four of the 12 VDC accessory outlets appeared to be dead and told Linda to stop trying to use the GPS.  She put the address in her phone instead but was having trouble with that as well and was slightly disoriented by this point.

I knew we had turn right at the stop sign because Action Mobile was “in the opposite direction from JOSAM.”  I also knew I needed to get onto Orange Blossom Trail, but was unclear as to just where that was or which way we needed to turn when I found it.  As it turned out I could see a street sign that indicated OBT was the cross street at the traffic signal immediately after we turned right at the stop sign.  We were where we needed to be, but now which way to go?  On a hunch, when the light turned green, I turned right and headed south.  Linda got oriented relative to the GPS/mapping information on her phone and eventually confirmed that we were closing the distance between our current location and destination and thus going in the correct direction on the correct road.  I turned left onto the Central Florida Parkway and then a short distance later turned right onto Satellite Blvd.  Action Mobile was the second business on the right but I pulled up along the curb, making sure I did block any driveways, and walked in to confirm that we were in the right place and find out where they wanted me to put the bus.

We were met by the Service Manager, John Provo, who pointed me to an open area where I could back the bus in and be out of the way.  We unhooked the car and Linda drove it into the yard and parked it near where the bus would end up.  I then swung the bus out into the oncoming traffic lane and made a hard right turn through the gate and into the yard.  (The tag axle was already up, of course.)  I pulled forward and then backed in towards the passenger side with Linda spotting for me.  I put the tag axle down so the drive axle would not have to support the entire weight of the rear end and checked for level.  We were level enough for comfort so I did not bother with leveling.  Once we were parked I went in to talk to John (the service manager, the owner’s name is also John).  He and I looked at the driver side tag wheel/tire and I described what had happened.  Other than the yellow powder from the fire extinguisher there was no visible evidence of what had transpired.

Owner John Douglass was outside talking to someone and Linda ended up talking to him.  In the course of their conversation she found out that his parents owned a house on Runnymeade in the same subdivision where we lived for 35 years.  Not only that, they were there when we were, and John lived with them for a while after trade school (diesel mechanics).  He eventually bought the house from them, again, all while we were there but we did not recall ever meeting.  It really is a small world, after all!

John D. (the owner) introduced us to Bill (the mechanic) who would be handling our repair first thing tomorrow morning.  There wasn’t much else to do at that point except to get comfortable, have a late lunch snack, and check in with “Smitty” (John Smith) at Williston Crossings, Pat/Vickie, Butch, and Chuck while Linda updated our children on the status of our situation.

The last employees left around 5 PM and closed/chained the gate.  We had the code for the lock but the lock was on the outside of the fence.  An employee returned around 6 PM so when he left I went out and put the lock on the inside.  It did not occur to me at the time that employees might have to get in at all hours for emergency road service calls, but I was willing to get up and unlock at whatever hour if needed.

It would be a while until our evening TV programs came on, and we still had plenty of daylight, so I got out my multi-meter to try and diagnose what had happened with the power supply to the four 12 VDC accessory outlets I wired up for powering portable accessories in the cockpit.  The 12 VDC distribution/fuse panel seemed like the obvious place to start.

The 12 VDC distribution/fuse panel is above the entry stairs from the cockpit landing up to the main floor.  It’s an enclosure that is installed against the ceiling and is about 10″ high.  It is in-between the TV box (DS) and the front A-C box (PS) and is about 28″ wide.  It has a door that is 7″ tall by 24″ wide and hinged at the top, opening out from the bottom.  When the door is open the actual opening is, of course, a bit smaller.  The hinges on the door do not hold the door open against the ceiling, so one of the challenges working in this space is keeping the door up and out of the way.  When working alone I usually prop it open but with Linda helping me she was able to hold it open with one hand and hold the multi-meter with the other hand while I handled the probes.  The other challenge is that it is above the stairs and just high enough that I cannot reach it easily without standing on a stool, which is what I did while Linda stood with her right foot on the navigator seat and her left foot on the main floor.  It was probably a strange sight if anyone noticed.

Each circuit has have a number tag on the wire where it connects to the fuse block terminal.  We are fortunate that one of the pieces of documentation we got with the coach lists all of these circuits in numerical order with a description of what it feeds.  I recalled (vaguely?) that I had disabled and/removed some devices a while ago and repurposed the circuits to supply power to the auxiliary outlets.  I found the circuit numbers and checked those and they did not have power.  I traced the problem back to a relay that did not seem to be operating correctly.

I carry spare relays and was going to replace it but discovered, after great difficulty removing the relay from its socket, that my spare relays were slightly different (4-pin instead of 5-pin).  I spent some time considering whether I could use a 4-pin relay, or perhaps just install a jumper wire to bypass it, when I realized that there were a few duplicate wire numbers, and that those duplicates were the very numbers with which I was working.  I checked for 12 VDC on those duplicate circuits and guess what?  No voltage there either.  I pulled one of the automotive style blade fuses and it was open.

I got the parts box with the spare fuses from the car and found a correct replacement.    I checked the other two fuses and they were also open.  They were very small, 2 and 3 A respectively, and I replaced them with 5 A fuses.  After reconnecting a wire (that I had already forgotten I disconnected at the beginning of this process) we finally had power restored to all four outlets, which, as I mentioned earlier, get their power from two different circuits, one for the upper pair and a different one for the lower pair.

We spent the night in Action Mobile’s yard.  Located in a light industrial area just off a major commercial thoroughfare, it was certainly not an RV park, but it was fenced, with barbed wire on top, had a locked gate (for which we had the code), and lots of security cameras.  Satellite Blvd. was surprisingly busy for a side street, with lots of trucks of all sizes and some hot rodders with booming car audio systems.  There was a large food processing plant directly across the street that was brightly illuminated and obviously in production 24 hours a day as there were lots of cars/trucks that left around 7 PM and a larger number that showed up at the same time and parked all along the building.

We had been running on inverters all day and I wanted to make sure the batteries were close to fully charged before we went to bed so I turned on the genset around 7 PM while we watched TV and tried to relax.  I used TVFool.com to locate OTA TV transmitter antennas.  Given that we were on the south edge of Orlando the towers were, not surprisingly, in all directions.  Most of the strongest stations, however, were lined up to our northeast so I pointed the front TV antenna in that direction.  We were able to pick up one of the PBS affiliates and watched a fascinating program of the Vikings; their journeys and reach, and the use of satellite imaging technology to identify possible archeological sites in what is now the Canadian Maritimes.

We had to be up at 5 AM so we were dressed and ready to go at 6 AM which is the time I was told Bill would be arriving.  I set two alarms and we went to bed around 11 PM.

2016/04/07 (R) Crisis Averted

It rained overnight and continued, off and on, this morning.  We were up around 5:15 AM, got dressed, and had bagels and orange juice for breakfast but I did not make any coffee.  Bill (our mechanic) was the first to show up at 6:45 AM.  Since the lock was on the inside of the gate I walked over to make sure he could get it open.  Just before 7 AM an ALSCO truck pulled in.  There were two other ALSCO trucks in service bays and the driver walked over there, came back a short time later, and then drove away.  Bill unlocked the office and then settled in at the outside picnic table.  I realized pretty quickly that nothing was going to happen with our bus until John P. (Service Manager) showed up, but that was OK.  It was a great comfort to be off the road in a safe place where we could sit for quite a while if needed and to know that there was a guy who had the skills and resources to fix our bus sitting were I could see him.  We also had a good feeling about John D. (the owner).

At 7:45 AM I received clearance to move the bus to the last service bay (farthest from the street) and by 8 AM had the engine running and the tag axle up.  Action Mobile Service has seven service bays, only one of which (#1) is inside.  The other six are under a large roof with open sides.  (It’s a Florida thing; you won’t see that in Michigan.)  They wanted me to back into the bay so I had to reposition the bus toward the passenger side, swing the nose to the left and into the entrance gate, straighten out, back down to the bay, and then swing the back end in on the passenger side.  Linda spotted for me, as she always does, and Bill signaled the final positioning.

Our coach at Action Mobile Service in Orlando, FL. awaiting the start of the driver side tag axle brake repair.

We were told yesterday that we would not be able to stay in the coach while Bill worked on it, but Bill said we could.  The difference was that because the tag axle can be lifted they did not need to jack up the bus.  That made for a more comfortable day, both for us and for the cats, and allowed us to be more productive than if we had been confined to the customer lounge.  I spent part of the morning in the customer lounge anyway as I was on the phone with Prevost Parts US in Elgin, Illinois.  I spent most of the rest of the day interacting with Bill and the two Johns.  Linda, however, was able to use her computer in the bus and work on tax returns.

The brake was locked up to where Bill could not turn it by hand but he got the caliper off somehow and then removed the hub and rotor.  I am always interested in how these things are done but figured that Bill, who did not know me, did not need me staring over his shoulder while he worked.  When he finally got everything apart he determined that the brake pads and rotor needed to be replaced, as did the wheel bearings, races, and seals.  The major problem, however, was going to be the disc brake caliper.

This is what a Prevost H3-40 tag axle looks like when it is completely disassembled.

Action Mobile called in Rex from Rush Trucking, a huge national trucking company.  Rex had a heavy duty truck parts business at one time but sold it and went to work for Rush.  He had been in the heavy truck industry for over 30 years and had a lot of expertise and contacts.  He looked at the situation and determined the part numbers for all of the parts Bill needed.  A couple of hours later he showed up with everything, including a rebuilt/remanufactured caliper.  The only thing he could not get was a new torque plate (spider).

We could not determine if a new torque plate was needed but it was a possible cause of brake misalignment.  If we were going to replace it, now was the time as it was completely accessible with the brake and axle hub removed.  Gary at Prevost Parts had spent a lot of time with me during the morning and been especially helpful but I ended up talking to Wes to order the spider.  It’s a phone bank and you usually have to take who you get as you cannot dial a specific person.  You can leave a message and request a callback, but that can take a lot longer than waiting on hold for “…the next available representative.”  They had a left hand spider in New Jersey and I ordered it for overnight delivery to Action Mobile.  It is supposed to be here by 10:30 AM tomorrow morning.

Without the spider Bill could not wrap up the job but he was able to spend the afternoon putting new seals and bearings into the axle hub and mounting the rotor to the hub.  Once the spider arrives, and assuming it is the correct part, he figured it would take 90 minutes to put everything back together.

The new rotor mounted on the hub (just behind the red stool, and the new caliper (upper right behind the cardboard box).

John D. (the owner) said we could leave the bus in the bay overnight.  We got to chatting and I gave him a tour of the inside.  He noticed that we were not running a generator and asked if we were on an inverter.  I confirmed that we were and he offered us the use of a 50 Amp RV outlet that was located by the passenger side rear of the service bay.  It turned out that there was also potable water available if we needed it.

I waited until Bill was done working at 3:30 PM, so as not to interfere with his work, and then got out the shorepower cord and plugged it in.  We do OK on the inverter, and can use everything with the genset running, but the coach is definitely most comfortable and useful when plugged in to shorepower, especially “50 Amp” (240/120 VAC) service.  Although it was warm today, the coach was partly shaded by the bay and we decided not to run the air-conditioners.  With the windows and roof vents open, and the exhaust fans on, our small Duracraft portable fan was sufficient to keep Linda comfortable.

By 5 PM everyone was done for the day and left, locking the gates on the way out.  We had the lock code in case we needed to get out, or let emergency services in, but decided when we first arrived that we would not come and go unless absolutely necessary.

I had a lengthy conversation with Chuck about the status of our brake repair and what I was finding out about Prevost and parts availability in the process.  I also texted some part numbers to Butch so he could pursue possible sources in northern Indiana and southern Michigan.  While I took care of those communications, Linda made salads and a potato lentil curry for dinner.  After dinner I talked to Pat and Vickie for a while and then called Butch and had a long chat with him.  Linda was watching (reading, CC)  our Thursday evening CBS TV programs and when I concluded my call with Butch I settled in to watch TV with her and work on my blog posts for the last several days.

2016/04/08 (F) Brake Away to WCRVR

I set alarms last night for 6:45 AM since Bill starts work at 7 AM and I told him yesterday we would be up and dressed by then and to not hesitate to work in/around our coach.  I made a small pot of coffee and we had orange juice and bagels for breakfast which was made easier by the 50A RV electrical service that John D. had offered us late yesterday.  There wasn’t much of anything Bill could do on our coach until the torque plate (disc brake caliper mounting spider) showed up.  Linda worked at her computer while I worked on blog posts on my iPad.

I eventually put aside my blog work and gathered up some of the boxes the new caliper and other parts were in.  I texted Butch with various part numbers I had been given by Prevost, gotten off of used parts, or copied from labels on boxes.  He called me just before 10 AM to let me know the number on the box label appeared to be the one we needed.  He was in contact with someone at ABC Bus Parts in Muncie, Indiana who was in contact with someone at Meritor.  The information he was getting was that the caliper was not available in stock but I could get it for $1,200 with a 45 – 60 day lead time.  While I was glad to hear that might be the case, it certainly contradicted everything I had been told by Prevost, which I found a bit disturbing.

The UPS truck showed up at 10 AM so I walked up to the office, retrieved the box, and took it back and set it by the driver side tag axle.  I had just talked to Bill at little earlier but he wasn’t around at the moment.  He still wasn’t around at 11 AM so I went to the office to see what was going on.  As I suspected, Bill had to go out on a mobile service call.  John D. (the owner) called Bill and then let me know that he would be back in about 10 minutes.  I made sure everyone knew that I wasn’t trying to create an unnecessary since of urgency or priority for our coach, I just wanted to know what the status was.

The new torque plate (spider) installed on the driver side tag axle. The new caliper is visible lower right. Action Mobile Service, Orlando, FL.

When Bill returned he got right to work and in short order had the new spider mounted.  He then installed the hub, the outer bearing, and axle seal.  The hub gasket and cap were last, after which he added hub oil through the hole in the sight glass portion of the hub.  It takes time for the oil to penetrate the bearings and settle so some patience is required to get the correct oil level.

With the hub installed Bill now had to get the caliper in place.  It’s both heavy and awkward to handle.  It has to be lifted into place, lowered around the rotor, and secured with a pair of large steel slide pins.  The problem is how to hold the caliper in place while getting the upper pin in place.  In order to accomplish that he had another mechanic help him.  He then adjusted the automatic slack adjuster and finally reconnected the air line to the brake “can” (actuator).

I left him alone until he was done and it was a relief to finally see that everything appeared to fit together.  The hub spun with the minimum required drag, but we still had to test the installation.   (The brake pads are always in contact with the rotor.)   To do that I needed to apply and release the brakes but the tag axle was up (lifted) which cuts off the air supply to the brake chambers.

Lowering the tag axle releases the air from the brake chamber that powers the lifting mechanism and at the same time allows air into the air springs that support the weight of the coach on the axle.  It also changes one of the air valves so that application of the brake pedal allows air into the tag axle brake chambers.  I could lower the tag axle, and probably apply the brakes once or twice, with the air stored in the system, but raising the axle back up, and/or additional application of the brakes, would require me to start the engine.  That required a few minutes of my time so Bill decided to take his lunch break.

The hub and rotor reinstalled along with the new caliper, ready for testing. Action Mobile Service, Orland, FL.

While Bill was eating lunch I checked with the two Johns to see if Rex could supply me with another left (DS) caliper and two right (PS) calipers.  They checked with him and he said he could have two of them this afternoon but could not get the third one until Monday.

When Bill was done with lunch I started the engine and lowered the tag axle which caused the driver side rear to drop as the tag wheel/tire was not yet on the hub.  When I applied the brakes Bill was not able to turn the hub and when I released the brake pedal he was able to turn the hub once again.  That was the best test we could do with the bus sitting still and Bill was satisfied that the problem was properly repaired.  Before Bill put the wheel/tire back on he climbed under the bus and greased the passenger side tag axle disc brake caliper.  When he went to put the wheel back on the hub was too low.  With the engine running I tried to raise the driver side rear using the Level Low system but it would not come up high enough.  I tried lowering the front to pivot the tag higher but that did not work either.

Bill found a length of 4″x4″ timber, put it in front of the outside driver side drive tire and had me move the bus forward just enough to roll the tire up onto it.  That raised the tag axle hub enough that he could get the wheel onto the studs and secure it.  As soon as it was on I moved the bus forward a little more until the drive tire was off of the 4×4.  The tag axle brake problem was fixed.  Bill greased the two front/steer disc brake calipers and then checked the oil level in both of those hubs and the passenger side tag axle hub.

Now that I knew the disc brake caliper and spider fit and worked properly I let John D. know that I wanted the three additional calipers.  He let Rex (Rush Trucking) know.  We did not want to hang around Action Mobile in the bus until Monday and given that I would have to come back Monday in the car anyway I indicated that I would pick all three of them up then.

I settled the bill for the repair work.  The amount was substantial but I knew what it was going to be so it wasn’t a surprise.  I also considered it fair and had no problem paying it.  A little over 48 hours before we come dangerously close to having our bus catch on fire and if it had it would have been completely consumed.  In the hours that followed we were faced with the very real prospect that we might not be able to get our bus repaired, effectively rendering it useless as a motorhome.  We even half joked about buying a lot in an RV resort, moving the bus there (towing it if necessary), and becoming Florida residents.  It was a real low point from which Action Mobile restored our plans and dream for a long, adventurous retirement using our motorcoach.

As a separate transaction I paid a 50% deposit on the three brake calipers.  At that point there was nothing left to do except say ‘thank you,’ hook up the car for towing, and leave, but not before calling Williston Crossings and making a reservation.

Linda usually handles the reservation/registration process but with her hearing and voice issues that has become my job, at least temporarily, but hopefully not long-term.  Sometimes we have to Ieave a message and get a callback, but Joann answered the phone this time.  We had decided that we wanted to stay through Tuesday evening and depart on Wednesday morning April 13.  To our surprise there was no pull-through site available for that set of dates.  Site #439 was available, however, and was actually our 1st choice anyway as it is next door to our friends, John (Smiity) and Ali, and is the same site we were on for our entire winter here in 2014.  I made the reservation, which was very easy as the resort still had our information on file.

With our camping arrangements made Linda texted Smitty to let him know we were getting ready to head his way.  I started the bus and pulled it out of the bay and around to the passenger side while Linda spotted for clearance to obstructions.  I pulled up by the office, lined up with the gate, and shut off the engine.  Meanwhile Linda brought the car up behind the bus and we connected it for towing.  We checked that all the lights were working and were ready to go.  We worked our way back the short distance to US-441 / Orange Blossom Trail via Satellite Blvd and the Central Florida Parkway.  From there it was only a little over a mile north to get back to the entrance to FL-91 (Florida’s Turnpike).  We had already studied the route on our iPad Maps app so we knew it was an easy interchange, with all turns to the right.  As long as we stayed to the right we would end up northbound on the Turnpike towards I-75 and Ocala.

Because I wanted to make sure I stayed to the right I ended up going through a manned tollbooth rather than the usual SunPass Only lanes.  The staffed lane was also marked for wide vehicles and was also a SunPass Lane, so it was not a problem.  It only caused a brief moment of confusion as the attendant started counting axles.  I pointed to our transponder but he did not see me and I pulled on through as soon as the electronic sign said “SunPass Accepted.”

Traffic on the Turnpike was not too bad but we did see an electronic information sign shortly after getting on advising of traffic congestion between the FL-301 exit and the I-75 merge.  No surprise there, especially on a Friday afternoon.  I rolled along initially at 62 MPH while Linda kept a close eye on the temperatures of the four wheels/tires that have disc brakes (steer and tag axles).  The DS tag was running hotter than the other wheels by at least 10 degrees F, including the PS tag; not enough to indicate a problem, but given our recent experience and with no meaningful miles on the repair work, we were understandably nervous.  I decided to error on the side of caution and travel at 55 MPH.

Linda checked the temperatures every few minutes for the entire trip.  The steer tires/wheels and the drive tires/wheels eventually settled in to temperatures in the mid-90 degree F range, plus or minus, while the tag tires settled in around 105 degrees F while free-wheeling and got as high as 120 after braking.  The temperatures came back down, however, which was important, and the passenger side was sometimes higher than the driver side, which either meant the driver side was working or the passenger side was starting to fail.  I preferred the former possibility to the later but it wasn’t like I had a choice.

As we were warned, the traffic on the Turnpike slowed to stop-n-go conditions starting at the exit for FL-301.  It remained congested, very slow, and often completely stopped all the way to the merge with I-75 northbound, where it got even worse (if that was possible).  The volume of traffic trying to move north was as astounding as its lack of movement and remained heavy all the way to exit 354 at Ocala where we finally left I-75 and headed northwest on US-27 towards Williston.

Linda had texted several status updates to Smitty and at 5:05 PM texted him again as we turned off of US-27 / Main Street onto NE 5th Street.  I stopped at the turn into the resort and lifted the tag axle before proceeding around the corner.  As I came around and pulled up to the gate Smitty was coming the other way in his golf cart.  We said a quick ‘hello’ and he opened the gate.  I pulled up by the office, which had closed just minutes before, so our bus/car combination was not blocking the incoming traffic lane and shut off the engine.  We unhooked the car and Linda moved it to a temporary parking spot.  John and I discussed how best to get me into the site.  I expressed my preferred approach and he agreed to try it.  I then followed him to the site where Linda was waiting for us.

I learned a lot about how to maneuver this bus two years ago from ‘Big Bill’ Cowick when we were parked next to him and Nancy  at Suncoast Designers in Hudson, Florida.  Smitty got me positioned correctly to start backing up and watched the front end while Linda watched the rear end.  I was able to back it up around the corner of an intersection and angle it towards the site, coming very close to a recently added street sign on the passenger side without hitting it.  Once the right front corner was able to clear the sign I turned the steer tires to the left, tightening the turn as I went, while watching John, Linda, and the concrete pad in my mirrors and rearview camera.  I backed the bus around smoothly onto the pad and then pulled forward once to make sure I was straight and the distance I wanted to be from the driver side edge of the pad.  I then backed up to where the tag axle tires were still fully on the concrete pad with only a foot or so to spare.  That positioned the bus conveniently for utility hookups while leaving plenty of space to open bay doors and lots of room on the passenger side where the patio area is located.  It also created plenty of space in front of the bus for the car, getting it well clear of the road.

Ali and John were already at Jeff and Kathy’s when John drove up to let us in.  With the engine still running and the tag axles still up I checked that both tag axle tires spun freely.  They did, which was very good news, so I lowered the tag axle, leveled the coach, and shut off the engine.  I disconnected the chassis batteries, turned off the auxiliary air to the engine accessories, plugged in the shorepower cord, and made sure the auxiliary air-compressor was turned on.  While I was taking care of all that Linda prepared a few things on the interior, opened windows and ceiling vents, and got a Yuengling lager out of the refrigerator and put it in an insulated cozy for me.  It was time to relax and go be sociable at Jeff and Kathy’s 5th wheel.

Everyone wanted to hear about our recent “adventure,” of course, and the telling of the tale fell to me.  At some point my beer was gone so I walked back to our coach and opened our bottle of Nutura Carmenere, a red wine I picked up at Publix in Cocoa Beach along with a Nutura Merlot.  It was not a brand we had tried before, and I had never heard of a Carmenere, but they were $11.99 per bottle wines on sale 2 for 1.  We are always on the lookout for red wines that I like (not dry, no tannins) and are willing to risk $5 to $8 to try one.  Not surprisingly, the Carmenere was drier than I like, but I was able to drink it and I got to show everyone one of our polycarbonate wine glasses.

We stayed and chatted until 7 PM when everyone was finally hungry and we all returned to our coaches to have dinner.  After dinner I sent a brief text message to four people just to let them know that we made it to Williston without any difficulties and that I would fill them in on details tomorrow.  We were planning to go next door to John and Ali’s 5th wheel after dinner and sit around a campfire but we did not see them outside and we were very tired.  I aimed the front TV antenna towards Gainesville and we found something to watch.  Linda was off to bed before 10 PM and I was in bed by 11.   It had been a long day and we were glad to have it behind us and be back at WCRVR.

2016/04/09 (S) Water Pump Down

In spite of being very tired I stayed up late last night watching back-to-back episodes of Ken Burns’ JAZZ.  Linda went to bed around 10 PM and I turned in at 12:45 AM.  She was up at 7 AM and walked to the bath/laundry building to take a shower while I slept in until 8:30 AM.  I was going to walk over and get a shower as well but Linda informed me that the water never got more than lukewarm.  No thanks.  I decided to hang out in my sweats for a while, made a pot of coffee, and worked on my blog posts for the past week.  With all that has happened I have had quite a bit to write about.

I plugged our WiFiRanger in last night and it did not have any difficulty connecting to the resort Wi-Fi system.  The problem we seemed to be having this morning was that our devices will not stay connected to the WiFiRanger.  Nuts.

Linda needed to continue working on taxes and set her computer up on the desk.  I have not taken my computer out of its case since I packed it up on Wednesday morning but I will have to get it out sometime soon.  Our fresh water level finally dropped below 1/3 tank so I will need to hook up the water softener fairly soon but decided I would do the laundry and get a shower first.  I gathered up all of the soiled clothes, towels, and some of the bedding, along with the tote bag of laundry supplies and the tote bag of shower supplies.  I loaded everything into the car and drove to the north laundry/shower building, which is better equipped than the one near our site.  It was noon.

No one else was using the laundry so I used three of the washing machines closest to the dryers.  These washing machines take about 25 minutes to run through their cycle so it was just over half an hour before all three loads were done.  The dryers run for about 45 minutes, so once I had the laundry transferred to the dryers I took a shower.  I then drove back to our coach, dropped off the shower supply bag, and we stripped the bed.  I returned to the laundry building, washed the sheets, and transferred them to a dryer.  As each dryer load finished I moved it to a large table and folded or hung it up.  By 3 PM I had everything neatly packed back into the nylon mesh laundry bags and returned to our bus.

Linda helped me get the laundry inside and put away.  I then turned my attention to refilling our fresh water tank.  That is a bit of a process as I have to get out the pre-filter, with hoses and pressure regulator attached, and the water softener, again with hoses attached.  Heavy, bulky, awkward, etc.; it’s my second least favorite RV chore, right behind checking tire pressures. I got everything connected and turned on the water supply.  The connection at the supply faucet and the connection at the coach inlet both leaked badly.  I snugged up the coach inlet connection so it didn’t spray water.  It was still dripping quite a bit but it was good enough for filling the tank.  I opened the fill valve, heard the water flowing into the tank, and opened the door to have a look.

The remote gauge had dropped below the 1/3 tank level a day or so ago so all we could tell from the house systems panel was that we had less than 40 gallons in the tank.  I had noticed this morning that we were not getting the usual flow of water to the toilet and Linda tried to use the kitchen faucet late this morning and got no water.  Although I did not think we had used that much water we both made the (naïve) presumption that we had run the tank dry.  To my surprise (not really), the tank was at the 1/4 level, which meant it still glad about 30 gallons of water in it.  That seemed to suggest rather strongly that the problem was something connected to the water pump.  Not good.

I shut off the water and started grousing, because I find that it makes me feel better and is part of my problem-solving process.  So does swearing a bit, so I did some of that too.  Not like a sailor, of course; I was a USAF ROTC cadet years ago, after all.  There were a few obvious things to check, after which I figured I would call Butch if they didn’t pan out.

I got out my multi-meter and then looked up the circuit numbers for the water pump and switch circuits.  I checked those circuits in the 12 VDC distribution panel and they all had +12.7 VDC which meant the fuses were OK.  The power to the pump is switched through a relay so that the pump can be turned on/off from multiple locations using momentary contact switches.  The easiest way to check the proper operation of the relay and confirm/deny the presence of power at the pump, was to disconnect the + 12 VDC and return wires from the pump and check for voltage on the supply wires.  With the relay “off” there was no voltage present (a very small mV reading).  With the relay “on” I had 12.7 VDC.  Relay off, no voltage.  That pretty much meant the water pump was down.

While not a crisis situation, this failure, at this time, and on the heels of all of our other recent problems, was certainly unwelcome news (not that any failure at any time is ever welcomed).  The only upside was that we were at a nice RV resort with full hookups, in a familiar location with relatively convenient access to resources, and in the company of friends.  We had city water available, so we could use all of the systems on the coach that required fresh water, and we were scheduled to be here for four more nights, which meant I had time to deal with the problem, including getting parts shipped here if needed.

My first instinct, however, was to try to get this fixed RIGHT NOW!  I called Smitty to see if there was any place in town that sold RV parts.  As I expected, he directed me to the local ACE Hardware store.  I knew from previous visits that they carried some RV parts but were unlikely to have 12 VDC water pumps, and even less likely to have the exact model I wanted/needed.

Linda did a Google search and located a Camping World store in Summerfield, Florida south of Ocala.  Not that I was eager to go to Camping World, the home is “list price plus,” but if they had the right pump (or any pump) in stock I was feeling like it would be worth paying the premium to get it and have the problem resolved quickly.  Unfortunately (or fortunately), it was already 4 PM and the store closed at 5 PM.  There was no way I would make it in time, so I returned my attention to making the coach usable from the city water supply.

In order to operate off of the city water supply we would need to leave the water turned on, and in order to do that I needed to get the connections to not leak.  While I probably had replacement washers in one of my parts boxes, I decided to go to ACE Hardware for washers just on the chance that they might have an appropriate water pump.

The only pump at ACE that would have worked was a 120 VAC unit and I was tempted to buy it.  In fact, when I redo the water bay I will install redundant water pumps and I am seriously considering keeping the 12 VDC pump and making the second one a 120 VAC model.  For now though, replacing the DC pump with an AC pump would involve more work than I wanted to get involved in.  I did find what I was really looking for, however; garden hose washers.  I bought two different kinds of flat washers, vinyl and rubber, and a pack of vinyl strainer washers.  I should have also bought a roll of Teflon tape, but I did not think of it at the time.  Back at our rig I realized that I was probably going to need Teflon tape.  I was sure that I had some but it was not in any of my four tool boxes.  Linda helped me empty out the car until we finally found the correct parts box.

I replaced the strainer washer in the pressure regulator fitting that attaches to the water supply as the existing one was damaged and badly deformed.  I also wrapped the supply faucet threads with Teflon tape before attaching the regulator to the faucet.  With the output of the regulator valved off I turned on the water supply.  Voilà; no leaks!

The strainer is the first line of defense against particulate matter getting into the regulator and clogging it.  When I redo the water bay, plan to set up the plumbing so that the supply water goes through a particle filter before going through a backflow preventer (check valve), an adjustable regulator, a water softener, and additional filters, all of which will be installed in the bay but easily accessed and serviced.  I might even install an inline UV sanitizer.  The only thing I will need to do to connect the coach to a water supply will be to connect a hose at both ends.  Priceless.

The other leak was at the fitting in the bay where the hose gets connected.  These garden hose fittings are cheap, easily deformed, and prone to leak, and I think they are one of the other “weak links” in the materials and systems used to make RVs.  (Sewer hoses and connectors are probably the worst, but that problem has been solved by Lippert Systems and I will be using their technology when I redo the utility bay.)  Replacing the flat washer periodically is necessary routine maintenance but easily overlooked until a problem develops.

I replaced the existing flat washer with one of the vinyl ones and then taped the threads on the (male) end of the hose with Teflon tape.  I carefully threaded the two pieces together finger tight and then just a little tighter with a pair of slip pliers.  (Over tightening actually deforms the washer and causes it to eventually leak.)  I opened all of the intermediate shutoff valves and Voilà; again, no leaks!  Our coach was now usable and we could leave the water on unless we were both going to be away from the coach for an extended time, when even a small leak could quickly become a big disaster.

Time to relax.  John and Ali were already down at Jeff and Kathy’s and Linda already had a Yuengling lager in an insulated cozy ready for me.  We took some peanuts along and walked the short distance to their site to sit a spell and visit.  Earlier in the day Jeff and Kathy had gotten a new dog and Kathy was out walking it.  They lost their Yorkie, Teddy, to cancer back in December and were not really planning on getting another dog so soon but an elderly gentleman, who lives alone in the resort, had a 3-year old dog that he was no longer able to car for and needed to find a home for it.  The dog’s name is “Mandy” and she is an 8 pound Dachshund / Miniature Poodle mix.  She has a Dachshund body size/shape and face but a silver gray, slightly wiry coat unlike any Dachshund I have ever seen.  She was friendly and sweet tempered and from all appearances she will settle in with Jeff and Kathy very easily.  While dogs get strongly attached to their owners, they also respond quickly to the kindness of strangers.

I think we were there for at least 90 minutes, perhaps two hours, before everyone got hungry and returned to their rigs for dinner.  By that time it was already 7 PM and we were headed to John and Ali’s 5th wheel once we ate, so Linda made a quick, easy dinner consisting of a nice greens salad and Amy’s Asian Noodle frozen/microwaved entrées.

After dinner I called Butch and brought him up to speed on our disc brake situation and told him about the water pump.  He and I shared the opinion that it seemed like something might have happened with the +12 VDC power supply to the coach.  Most of the house DC power circuits and systems, however, appeared to still be OK.  He reminded me that we have an Amazon Prime account and could probably get a new pump delivered to the resort by Tuesday for a much better price than at Camping World.  Roger that.  I let him know that our current plan was to leave WCRVR Wednesday morning and arrive at their place in Twelve Mile, Indiana on Friday.  He said we should go ahead and park and plug into the electrical power if they were not there as they would be setting up for a local hamfest that evening over at the county fairgrounds across the road from Bill Tharpe’s place in Mexico, Indiana.  Been there, know how to find it.

We walked next door to John and Ali’s around 8 PM and I took another Yuengling with me.  It’s been that kind of week, I guess.  They have an elevated propane firepit, conveniently located under their patio awning, and had chairs arranged around it in a conversational grouping.  We sat and talked until 10 PM, when John had to make the rounds to close up certain buildings and check the gates.  We continued to chat with Ali while John took care of his chores and he was back within 30 minutes.  By 11 PM Linda was finally too tired to be sociable, went back to our coach, and went to bed.  I stayed until almost midnight and finally left when I was yawning more than talking.  I went to bed fairly directly and went right to sleep.

2016/04/10 (N) Water Pump Prime

We got up this morning when we were ready and not a minute sooner.  I made coffee using the two new bags we bought at the Sunseed Co-op in Cocoa Beach.  I requested pancakes for breakfast and Linda obliged by making some very good ones.

Last night I was thinking about driving to Camping World in Summerfield, south of Ocala, today to buy a new water pump.  The store opened at 11 AM and I figured I would find a pet supply store and buy some cat food while I was out.  After Butch suggested last night that I could probably find the exact pump I needed through Amazon, I searched for it and he was right.  I ordered it with four hours to spare to qualify for next day delivery with an $8 upcharge so I would have it on Monday.  Standard Amazon Prime 2-day free delivery would have had it here on Tuesday, but I did not want to risk having it show up late in the day or worse, having the delivery truck get here after the office closed or not get here at all.

I had hoped to spend some time at my computer working on the blog but the best I was able to do was get it turned on, connect it to the Internet, and download my e-mail, which I had not done since Wednesday morning.  I was more than a bit surprised that I had over 80 MB of attachments!  The bulk of that was several very large photo files from our daughter having to do with some recent projects our grand-daughter Katie was involved in.

I called Chuck around 1 PM and caught him standing in line at a Cracker Barrel restaurant.  We chatted briefly while he and Barb waited to be seated and I filled him in on the latest developments in the Prevost air disc brake saga.

We had an early dinner after which we emptied out the car and the passenger side of the front bus bay to rearrange where things were stored and make room for the three new air disc brake calipers and the old one.  Linda brought the bathroom scale out and we weighed the old one as best we could.  I would have sworn it was 100 pounds but the scale said it was only 63 pounds.  That was good as four of them would only put 250 pounds in the car instead of 300 to 400 pounds.

We were able to repack the bus bay better and more quickly than I expected.  We put smaller, lighter boxes back in the car, got our beverages, and walked down to Jeff and Kathy’s 5th wheel for happy hour.  Jeff’s brother, Mark, was there and we learned that he lives in an apartment over by the Williston airport.  Jeff made hamburgers for everyone (except us, of course) and we stuck around while they ate dinner.  Jean showed up not long after everyone was done eating and joined the conversation.

Smitty had to lock all of the gates at 5 PM so I rode along while he made his rounds.  Linda and I left around 7:30 PM, as the light was just starting to fade, and went back to our coach.  We had a light dinner/snack of pretzels and hummus and shared a very delicious orange.  I called Butch and chatted briefly with him about the water pump and brakes and our revised travel plans.  As things now stand we plan to leave here Wednesday morning and get to their place in Twelve Mile, Indiana sometime on Friday.

At 8:15 PM we walked next door to John and Ali’s 5th wheel and sat around their propane firepit.  Smitty had made popcorn with peanut oil and Hawaiian sea salt.  Yum.  John had to lock up the resort buildings at 10 PM.  Linda and Ali were both tired and ready to go in for the night so I rode along with John.  Once we were back we retired to our respective rigs for the evening.  Linda was watching Elementary on TV so I picked up the story line in progress.  When it was over at 11 PM we went to bed and went right to sleep.

 

2015/12/28 (M) On to Arcadia

Even though we were pulling out this morning we did not set an alarm to get up at some particular time.  We were up by 7:30 AM anyway. I did not make coffee or have breakfast and started preparing for departure.  We packed up our computers and put them on the bed, put away remote controls, and turned off the laser printer and NAS.  While Linda cleared off counters and secured drawers I took care of some outside things.

I pulled the tow bar parts bags out, set them aside, got out the tow bar adapters for the car, and inserted them.  I folded up the two bag chairs and put them in the car and folded up the plastic table and stowed it in the front bay.  I checked the pressure in the two front/steer tires on the bus and they were fine so I did not have to get the air compressor and hose out.  I put up all of the awnings and opened the air valve for the engine accessories and toad braking system.

When everything else was ready Linda pulled the car out while I turned on the bus chassis batteries and started the bus engine.  I let the chassis air up, pulled up the tag axle, pulled out of our site, and then backed up until I was parallel with, and close to, the edge of the road on the passenger side and not blocking anyone’s driveway.  Linda pulled the car up behind the bus and we connected it for towing.  The breakaway cable finally broke so I got the spare cable out of the glove box but I could not get the key out of the disconnect.  Rather than risk breaking it and thereby disabling the car, we decided to travel without it.

We had a final, quick chat with our neighbor’s, Danny and Dorothy, and with Ken on the other side, and pulled away around 9:10 AM.  We were out of the resort and headed southeast on US-27 at 9:26.  At Ocala we headed south on I-75 as far as exit 301 (Cortez Blvd) at Brooksville, and headed east on FL-700 as far as US-98 and headed south.  Most of this segment was also co-terminus with US-35.  The drive was mostly rural and very pretty.  It was warm outside but patchy clouds kept the temperature inside the coach from getting too warm, at least for a while.  Eventually I turned on the OTR HVAC system and it worked well.

We passed through several smaller towns but eventually got to Lakeland which was much larger, with lots of stop lights and traffic, so it took longer to get through.  Still, it was an attractive community and something to see besides an Interstate highway.  The Detroit Tigers spring training camp is in Lakeland and we will likely drive up for some games while we are in this part of Florida.

US-17 joined up with US-98 as we were leaving Lakeland.  Somewhere south of Lakeland (Fort Meade?) US-98 turned east towards Sebring and we continued south on US-17 to Arcadia.  A few miles before reaching US-70 west of Arcadia we turned onto NE Turner Road which ran due south towards the Turner Agri-Civic Center and bypassed downtown Arcadia.  We pulled into the Civic Center, which was the rally venue, at 1:15 PM.

Linda checked in with rally organizers/hosts Bill and Brenda Phelan.  Linda stayed with the coach while Bill drove me over to check out sites.  I selected site #9 which would have us facing west with our passenger side facing north.  Although this orientation put the afternoon sun on our windshields, it also provided shade in conjunction with the patio awning.  Dan (?) led us over to the site and then left us to unhook the car and back the bus in.  We leveled the coach (we thought) and I shut it down and went through our arrival preparations.

The inside of the coach was cool from the OTR HVAC and I wanted to keep it that way, so we left the windows and roof vents closed and put the insulated foil panels in the three large skylights.  We also found the snap covers for the side windows next to the driver seat and installed those.  We were able to position the coach which generous space to our passenger side and far enough back that the 25 foot shorepower cord just reached the outlet box.  After plugging in we turned on all three of the residential air-conditioners.  We deployed all of the awnings, including the patio awning, to shade the windows and provide a shady place to sit outdoors.  We also have a fresh water and sewer connection but may not use them while we are here.  We are only here until Friday or Saturday and came in with a mostly full fresh water tank and mostly empty waste tanks.

Although it was very warm (86 degrees F) and humid the clouds had thickened and filled in during the second half of our drive and there was a good, steady breeze.  The bus ran well today including the OTR HVAC.  The low pressure light only came on briefly one time while I was idling at a stop light.  Apparently it works a lot better when it is relatively warm outside.

Once we were set up we had a light lunch of roasted red pepper hummus and sourdough pretzel nibblers with fresh apple slices and orange segments.  We then drove to Walmart to pick up some anti-itch cream and bought a few grocery items while we were there.  We checked out the filling station on the property and decided it was not a good choice for our bus.  We also found the entrance to Big Tree RV Resort which was, literally, across the street from the Walmart.  We drove back towards downtown and stopped at the Winn-Dixie to see if they had a better selection of boxed wines than the Walmart.  They did, and we bought a Franzia Crisp White.  We drove the rest of the way into downtown in search of a filling station with diesel fuel, and access for large vehicles, before returning to the rally site.

Linda wanted to go for a walk so we strolled past the buses and other RVs that were already here.  We ran into Scott Crosby working on Dan’s windshield.  We met Dan, Kathy, and their son James at the FMCA GLCC Surplus and Salvage Rally back in September.  Apparently the windshield on their GM PD4106 started coming out of its gasket along the top and caving into the cockpit on their trip to Arcadia.  Scott was up on a ladder getting the gasket reseated around the frame and glass.

We continued our walk and discovered that Paul and Claudine Elbisser, also from our FMCA GLCC chapter, were here.  We visited with them for quite a while before finishing our stroll around the rally and returning to our rig for dinner.  Linda microwaved a sweet potato and served the last of the Gardein stuffed mock turkey roll and broccoli that we had for dinner on Christmas day.

After dinner I tried tuning in OTA TV stations, orienting the antenna both WNW towards Tampa St. Petersburg, and due south towards Port Charlotte, Punta Gorda, and Ft. Meyers.  When I scanned for stations I found about 60 in each direction although many of them were the same stations.  So much for digital TV signals bring highly directional.  We watched reruns of our Monday evening TV shows on CBS.  We also turned on the Verizon Mi-Fi so we could get online long enough to check TV tower locations and network affiliations, check our e-mail, and change our location in RVillage.

I got an e-mail from Gary at BCM with the draft of the February 2016 issue and a request that I proofread Part 1 of my 2-part article on our Habitat For Humanity RV Care-A-Vanner build in July 2013.  I was a little tired from our day’s activities and was not in the humor to review articles, edit old blog posts, or write new ones so I just watched TV and fiddled with the thermostats and fan speeds on our air-conditioners.  I was puzzled by the fact that it felt humid in the rig in spite of the air-conditioners having been on all day.  The front and rear ones seem to be cooling better than the middle one, but the front one was the only one that we seaw water dripping from the drain line outside the bus.  I admit to having some level of concern about where the condensed water from the evaporators is going, assuming they are condensing any moisture.

The overnight low was forecast to be about 70 with morning fog, i.e., 100% relative humidity so in spite of the fan noise we left the bus closed up and the A-Cs running.  I adjusted the thermostats down to make sure the condensers would run, and lowered the fan speed in the bedroom to reduce the noise level.  I plugged the power in for the rear OTA TV antenna, but it was not functioning correctly and was clearly not going to fix itself.  It needs to be replaced but I am reluctant to buy another one of the same model as the failure rate so far has been 50%.  Linda read, and I played a few games, on our iPads and then went to sleep.

 

2015/12/27 (N) An Easy Last Day

I was up before 7:30 AM, got dressed, and gathered up the clothes that I forgot to launder yesterday.  Linda got up too so I prepared a pot of coffee and while it brewed I took the laundry to the laundry room and put it in a washing machine.  I returned to the coach and enjoyed my first cup of coffee before returning to the laundry room to transfer it to a dryer.  The dryers run for 45 minutes so I returned to our coach and had breakfast.

This was our last full day at Williston Crossings RV Resort, at least for now, but you would not have guessed it by observing us unless you saw one of the park volunteers reading our electric meter.  Other than checking and adjusting some tire pressures right after breakfast our day was spent doing the same things we have been doing since we arrived on December 1st; Linda read and walked while I edited and uploaded blog posts.

Linda made hummus sandwiches with onions and greens for lunch and washed off some sweet cherries.  It was another warm/humid day and we finally closed up the coach and turned on the air-conditioners during the afternoon.  Dinner was left over potato curry.

Linda watched Downton Abbey reruns after dinner and I edited/uploaded a few more blog posts.  It had cooled off outside so we turned the air-conditioning off and opened up the coach.  By the time I quit working at 10 PM I had uploaded 12 posts covering September 14 through 25.  Since Linda was still watching TV I took my phone outside and called Butch.  We chatted for over an hour before calling it a night.

 

2015/12/26 (S) Departure Preparations

In spite of overnight lows in the upper 60s and plenty of humidity we left the windows open, the exhaust fans on, and the air-conditioners off last night and did not get up until 8:30 this morning.  I made our pot of morning coffee and Linda eventually warmed up the remaining cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  I finished up yesterday’s blog post while she played word games on her iPad.  I got a text message from John letting us know that he took Ali to the hospital early this morning but he did not elaborate.

Although we are not leaving until Monday morning, we wanted to start some of our departure preparations today.  For me that meant:

  • dumping the waste tanks;
  • filling the fresh water tank;
  • putting away the hoses and water softener;
  • airing up the tires; and,
  • doing the laundry, including the bedding.

Linda walked up to get a shower and I started working on these chores in roughly that order  I dumped the black tank and then checked the tank level monitor in the house systems panel.  The indicator for Tank #2 no longer showed full but still showed 2/3rds.  The indicator for Tank #1 did not change, showing 2/3rds before and after.  I back flushed the black water tank which helped clean off the floor of the tank but did not do anything for the level sensors.  I then dumped the grey water tank.  Once it was empty I checked the monitor again and the Tank #1 indicator had dropped from 2/3rds to 1/3rd.  All of this seemed to confirm that Tank #2 was plumbed into the toilet and corresponded to the bodily function of the same number.  I was reminded that I really should mark the display with ‘B’ and ‘G’.

When Linda returned from her shower I took a load of whites to the laundry room and put them in a washing machine.  When I returned to our coach I tapped on the side of the fresh water tank to determine the water level.  It was very low, below 1/6th (20 gallons) and perhaps more like 1/8 (15 gallons).  At our water usage rate we might have been able to go one more day but there wasn’t any reason to cut it that close.  Besides, the lines coming out of the tank are on the side near the bottom but are not at the very bottom so there are a few gallons in there that are not usable.  My reason for wanting to know was so I could enter the gallons in my water usage tracking spreadsheet.  I also wanted to get the tank filled so I could put the hoses and water softener away.

While the tank was filling I got out the air-compressor, air hose, air chuck, and air pressure gauge and started checking the tires.  The tires on the sunny south-facing driver’s side of the bus were a bit higher than I wanted so I adjusted them as follows (in PSI): DST=87.5, DSOD=DSID=97.5, DSS=117.5.  The passenger side tires were in the shade so I figured they were not as inflated as the driver side tires and the pressures would not drop as much overnight.  I set them as follows (in PSI): PST=86, PSOD=PSID=96.  When I checked the PSS tire it was 70 PSI.  It was supposed to be 115.  Yikes!

This tire has always had a slow leak but it sat most of the summer without losing much air.  I checked/adjusted the pressures on November 25 (the day before Thanksgiving) but did not check them again until today.  In retrospect that was probably a mistake but it is my second least favorite chore, right behind recharging the water softener.  The tire had lost 45 PSI in about 30 days, an average of 1.5 PSI per day.  That is not a fast enough leak to pose a problem for driving as long as I check it every day while driving and don’t go more than a few days while parked, but it was troubling nonetheless as it was a change in the behavior of the tire.

The small pancake air compressor we carry has a 150 PSI maximum tank pressure and will provide a regulated output almost that high, but not for very long as it does not have a lot of volume.  It’s designed to run low volume air tools, such as nailers and staplers, not high volume air tools, like sanders or impact wrenches.  It works fine for topping up a tire but is not designed to inflate a bus tire from 70 to 115 PSI.

It took a lot of cycles to finally get the pressure to 115.5 PSI and before it did the compressor stopped coming on to re-pressurize the tank.  It was warm and I thought a thermal overload protector might have opened.  Another possibility is that once the tire gets up to about 110 PSI the compressor only supplies a small amount of additional air at 130 to 140 PSI until the tank pressure drops to match what is in the tire.  At that point the compressor cannot push more air into the tire but the tank pressure is not low enough to cause the compressor to turn on.  At this point I was really regretting that we did not bring the 15 gallon DeWalt air compressor with the 200 PSI tank and 150 PSI regulated output.  Yeah, it’s big; but it works.

The front of the car was parked facing the front of the bus so the passenger side tires were in the sun.  I adjusted the PSF=33.5 PSI (32 is normal) and the PSR=35.5 PSI (34 is normal).  I set the DSF=32.5 and the DSR=34.5.  I really need to check all of the tires first thing in the morning while it is cool, and before the sun heats up one side of the vehicles, but I am usually enjoying my morning coffee and not fully dressed.  I also do not want to run the air compressor too early in the day, as it is noisy, so I have to write down the pressure adjustment needed for each tire and do it later.  All things considered it’s a slightly obnoxious process.

With the waste tanks drained and the water tank filled I tested the water coming out of the softener and it was still indicating 1.5 gpg (25 ppm).  I disconnected the water hoses from the coach, the supply faucet, and the water softener but left them connected to both sides of the separate pre-filter.  After draining them as best I could I coiled the pre-filter hoses around the filter housing and connected the ends together to prevent leaks and put it on top of a tub in the front bay on the driver’s side.  I removed the cover from the filter housing attached to the softener, which does not have a filter element in it, and dumped the water out to get rid of the weight.  I then stored the softener in the passenger side of the front bay.

With the fresh water apparatuses taken care of I disconnected the waste hose from the angle adapter, flushed it out, collapsed it, and coiled it in the tub where we store all of the waste tank related accessories.  I disconnected the backflush angle adapter, removed the backflush water hose, capped the discharge fitting, and added all of that to the waste accessories tub.

I put the air compressor back in the passenger side of the front bay, coiled up the air hose, and stored it in the driver side tray over the drive tires.  Back inside I reattached the air inlet screen for the middle air-conditioner, put the drill and driver buts away with the other tools, and closed up all the bays.  Other than rechecking the passenger side front tire all I have left to do to get the bus ready to travel is stow the bag chairs and fold up table, stow the awnings, and disconnect and stow the shorepower cord.  After that it’s the usual departure procedure.  Once we are out of our site I will back the bus up so as not to block anyone’s driveway and Linda will pull the car around behind it so we can hook it up for towing.  We will then exit the resort via the covered bridge to the main gate and out to US-27.

I sat outside for the later part of the afternoon working on this post.  Linda was out too for a while, but went in to lie down.  She said she felt OK but was very tired.  I put the second load of laundry in a washing machine around 2 PM and went back at 3 to transfer it to a dryer.  John stopped by on the way back to his rig and said the hospital was probably going to admit Ali but as of when he left she was still in the ER.  He took her in this morning because of severe abdominal pain.

I was getting ready to go back at 3:45 PM to retrieve the laundry when I got involved in a conversation with our neighbors to the south, Danny and Dorothy.  We had previously exchanged salutations and had brief chats but this was our first real conversation.  Pam, who is in the rig to our north with her husband Ken, stopped to chat briefly as she headed out for a walk.  It was also the first time we have talked.  It seems that this often happens.  Two years ago it was March before we got to be friends with more than just John and Ali and by the time we left in early April we were being sociable with a dozen people.

At 4:15 PM Linda decided we should go for an easy walk.  The sun had just dropped below the trees so the air temperature was pleasant but the humidity had not yet risen.  We strolled up to the office and checked for mail.  The holiday card from Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline was there but not the Christmas card from Marilyn.  We will be gone before the mail arrives on Monday so we will have to ask in the office tomorrow about having stuff forwarded.  We also have to let them know we are pulling out early Monday and need to have someone read the meter so we can settle the electric bill.

We had partly cloudy skies for our walk which thinned out as the evening progressed and allowed some radiational cooling.  Basically we have been going from 83 degrees and 63% relative humidity during the day to 68 degrees and 83% relative humidity overnight.  Comfortable enough in the day but muggy at night.

Back at the rig we sat outside with our iPads until Linda went in at 5:30 to prepare leftovers for dinner and I went inside at 5:45 to eat them.  We had crossed paths with John while we were walking and he said there would be a fire in the firepit tonight.  At 6:30 Linda filled our flip top insulated coffee mugs with wine and packed them in our carry bag, along with our two plastic wine glasses, and we walked up to the campfire.  There were already a half dozen people there and more showed up after us so that we almost filled the available seats.

Big Mike had built the fire and had it going.  John was there to tend to things but did not play his guitar and sing.  He is still recovering from whatever made him ill overnight Wednesday and with the high heat/humidity, and Ali in the hospital, he probably did not feel much like performing.  As much as we enjoy the entertainment we also enjoy the conversation, and there was plenty of that to go around.  We ended up talking to Peter and Giselle from Ontario, whom we had not met before.  They are not retired yet but are arranging some extended vacation time to try out the RV lifestyle.  That is really smart in our opinion if your employment situation permits it.

Peter, John, Linda, and I were the last to leave.  At 10 PM I spread out the remaining fire logs and John locked up the shed.  He took off on his golf cart to lock up the various buildings in the park and we walked back to our coach.  The skies were partly cloudy and there was a large, bright, full moon.  The temperature was pleasant and the park was still and quiet save for one person we saw walking their dog off in the distance.  This was our last campfire at WCRVR this season unless we return briefly in March on our way north.  We missed seeing Ali but even with her absence, and without music, we enjoyed it our evening sitting around the campfire.

Back at our coach we had the last of the apple strudel with Coconut Bliss non-dairy ice cream for dessert.  I flipped channels on the TV while Linda read and I played games.  We caught the tail end of a vegan cooking show that we had never seen or even heard of and caught the news/weather at 11 PM.  We were interested in the storm system moving into the Midwest but otherwise there wasn’t much on that grabbed our interest.

As we were getting ready for bed I put soiled clothes in the hamper and realized that I had not taken the clothes from there yesterday and laundered them with the second/dark load.  That meant I would be doing an unexpected load of laundry in the morning.  In spite of a forecast of possibly early morning light fog we left the windows open and two of the three exhaust fans running all night.  We do better (up to a point) with fresh, moving air, even if it is humid, than we do with the coach closed up and the noise of the air-conditioners.  Linda fell asleep quickly but I played games on my iPad and watched Cook’s Country on the PBS Create channel before turning off the lights at 12:30 AM.

 

2015/12/25 (F) Christmas Day 2015

We were tired of listening to the air-conditioning last night but it was warm in the bedroom so I turned on the third A-C to cool it down before we went to bed.  Before turning in for the night I turned the fan to a slower speed and tried adjusting the thermostat, as it had gotten rather chilly, but must have set it too high.  It was a little warmer than we wanted and the unit does not remove moisture unless the compressor is running.  When combined with the noise of the fan it just did not make for a good night’s sleep.

Jasper (our male cat) was aware that I was awake at 4:30 AM and came up between our pillows to look out the window and get stroked.  I tried to fall back asleep without success and finally got up at 5 AM.  I turned on some dim lights and sat in the living room working on yesterday’s blog post for an hour until Linda also got up.  She rearranged the kitchen so she could make vegan cinnamon rolls and I brewed a pot of coffee.

The cinnamon rolls took quite a while to make as the dough had to rise, get punched down and rolled out, “buttered” and spread with cinnamon and sugar, rolled up, cut, and allowed to rise a second time, topped with raisins and walnuts, and then baked.  After baking they had to cool and then got drizzled with a glaze made from confectioner’s sugar and unsweetened vanilla flavored almond milk.  A lot of work, but worth it.

We turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi and used Linda’s iPad to initiate a FaceTime session with our family members who were gathered at Meghan and Chris’ house.  Katie was not there yet so this was just a “good morning” call.  I brewed a second pot of coffee and we finally had our cinnamon rolls around 10 AM.  Brendan initiated a Facetime session with us around 11 AM and we got to see Madeline open some of her presents.  She just turned three years old and it was all very exciting for her.  The armoire her aunt Meghan built was full of dress up clothes, some new (from us) and some hand-me-down from when Meghan was a little girl.  She wanted to try on every costume, of course, so we watched for a while and then wished everyone “Merry Christmas” and signed off.

We had not opened our gifts yet so we did that next.  Santa brought us chocolate covered pistachios (vegan, of course) and dark chocolate bars and left them in our stockings, which Linda had hung from the two light fixtures on each end of the sofa after we got to WCRVR.  We had a box from Meghan and Chris that contained a pair of nice hiking socks and an insect repellent neck warmer for each of us.  The REI box that was left on our entry step-stool Christmas Eve was from Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline.  We each got a pair of hiking socks and a Columbia zip front polar fleece vest.  Our children have done very well getting us gifts that we can wear, eat, or drink.

I had not planned on working today but the motorcoach had other ideas.  I needed to investigate the drip that had developed yesterday from the air intake of the middle air-conditioner.  Since I had to get tools out to do that I decided to also fix a couple of other things.

The gasket on the aft vertical edge of the awning style window in the entry door had come out again at the top and was preventing the window from closing properly.  It was a simple enough matter to work the channels on either edge back around the metal edges of the window frame with a small flat blade screwdriver but I had to get the three-step folding stool out of the front bay and use it to position myself where I could do the work.

One of the end pieces that retains the spring-loaded toilet paper holder has been loose for a while.  I thought I needed a small Allen wrench to tighten it but a small flat blade screwdriver turned out to be the correct tool.

With those two tasks taken care of I got my small drill and a #2 square bit and removed the air intake filter for the middle A-C from the underside of the upper cabinet.  I also removed the louvered air discharge cover from the front of the cabinet.  Not being sure what I was dealing with I emptied the right and middle cabinets so I could remove the floor from the middle section and slide the floor from the right section to the left and remove the right end wall, allowing me access to the evaporator from the side.

My working hypothesis was that the drain from the drip pan was plugged and the pan had overflowed.  To test my hypothesis I located the drain line at the front outside corner of the house electrical bay where it goes through the bay floor, and had Linda watch it while I poured water into the drip pan at the front edge by the cooling coils.  The water flowed right out of the drain onto the ground so either that was not the problem or pouring the water into the drip pan had cleared the obstruction.  I was not able to see into the drip pan so I could not confirm visually what was happening.

I put the louvered air discharge cover back on the cabinet, reassembled the inside of the cabinet, and put the food items back.  I left the air intake filter off, however, so that I might see where the drip was coming from if it reoccurred.  I arranged paper towels on the desk top under the unit and turned it on.  I put the tools away, except for the drill and square bit, and then settled in to work at my computer with all three A-Cs running while Linda went for a walk.

It did not get quite as hot today as originally forecast, reaching 83 degrees instead of 86.  The humidity was in the low 60% range, so the conditions were tolerable when the sun was obscured by clouds.  Direct sunlight heats the coach up beyond the outside ambient air temperature, however, especially if we get the afternoon sun on the front of the bus.  Linda was hot and sweaty by the time she finished her walk.

I worked all afternoon on blog posts.  I edited the ones for September 9 through 18 and uploaded the 9th through the 14th before dinner.

For our holiday dinner meal Linda prepared a baked Gardein stuffed mock turkey roll, vegan gravy, baked sweet potatoes, steamed broccoli, Mama Stanberg’s Cranberry Relish, and bread with non-dairy “butter.”  We do not feel left out at the holidays, foodwise.  With the heat from the convection oven we decided to turn off the A-Cs, open the windows and roof vents, and turn all three exhaust fans on high.  We ate at 5 PM.  The Friday night campfire did not officially start until 7 PM so I had time to finish uploading the blog posts for September 15 to 18.

A little before 6:30 PM Linda filled our flip top insulated coffee cups with red and white wine and we took them in our carry bag, along with our plastic wine glasses, to the fire pit.  John was there and had a nice, small fire going.  Jim and Carol showed up and then Tom and Cindy.  Tom and Cindy did not stay long and after they left one of John’s neighbors came over.  He and his wife lived on a 44 foot fishing trawler that was converted into a full-time residence and plied the waters of the Atlantic, Bahamas, and Caribbean for 10 years.  Ali was not feeling well and stayed home.  Jim and Carol were from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where they still have a house, and were both retired educators.  Jim taught high school biology and Carol was an elementary teacher.

At 10 PM John took his golf cart to make his rounds and lock up.  We had a nice small fire going and stuck around to chat with Jim and Carol.  John eventually returned and rejoined the conversation.  It was almost 11 PM when I spread out the remnants of the fire and we walked back to our rig.  We had apple strudel with Coconut Bliss non-dairy ice cream for dessert, watched a couple of travel programs on the Create channel, and finally went to bed at midnight after a long but satisfying Christmas day.

 

2015/12/24 (R) Christmas Eve 2015

Neither of us slept as well as we would have liked last night.  The outside temperature only dropped into the upper 60’s with high humidity and the interior of the coach stayed a bit warmer than that.  Linda woke up and read from 2:30 to 3:30 AM; at least that’s what she told me this morning as I was unaware of it at the time.  We both got up at 8 AM and enjoyed our first cup of coffee while iPadding and listening to Christmas music CDs.  We bought an apple strudel at Publix last night that appeared to be vegan and had some of it for breakfast with our second cup of coffee.  It wasn’t great strudel, but it was still a treat.  All-in-all it was not a bad way to start Christmas Eve day.

Williston Crossings RV Resort, and many of its residents and temporary guests, have been in the holiday spirit since we arrived here on the 1st of the month.  Red and green laser “starlight” projectors are in widespread use at night and many sites have decorated their street light and/or RV with lights while some have put up more substantial decorations.  Most notable, however, are the golf carts, many of which are decorated for the season.  Most folks here wave as they pass whether driving their car or golf cart, riding a bike, or just walking, but based on our prior experience this is normal so I cannot say that folks are in a friendlier spirit than usual for the holiday.  There is, however, a fair amount of “Merry Christmas” being passed around and I think it reflects the fact that most folks are glad to be here even with the record heat.

I had an unfinished chore list from yesterday but wasn’t really in the humor to work on those items on Christmas Eve and do not intend to work on them tomorrow either.  One of the side gaskets I our entry door window came out again yesterday, however, so I will have to fix that again and do so soon, certainly before we leave for Arcadia.

Linda went for her solo morning walk at 10:15 AM and I settled in to work at my computer.  I was determined to make headway with uploading blog posts but first I wanted to dispatch the article for Bus Conversion Magazine on the installation of the ITR Oasis Combi diesel-fueled hydronic heating system in Butch and Fonda Williams’ MCI MC-9 NJT.

Butch had made a number of good edits that filled in missing details so I incorporated all of them and rewrote a few sentences in my own voice.  I then moved all of the photos for the print version of the article “in line” with the text and changed the format to 2-column.  I even figured out how to get the text to wrap around the vertical photos to get a better idea of how many pages the article will take.  I completed this work around 12:30 PM and uploaded it to the BCM proofreading folder in my Dropbox.  I also updated my article status tracking spreadsheet and uploaded that to the Dropbox.  I moved the files on my computer from the Out-For-Review folder to the Proofreading folder and mirrored that on the NAS.  I then e-mailed BCM publisher Gary Hatt to let him know the article was there and ready for review.

Linda got back from her walk and made sandwiches for lunch with mock deli slices (vegan), Daiya non-dairy cheese slices, and lots of greens.  We ate outside as the temperature in the coach was 89.something degrees F.  She stayed outside in the shade and read but I went back inside to work on blog posts.  I was not really uncomfortable, as I was not exerting myself physically, but knew we would have an uncomfortable night if we did not cool off the coach.  When Linda came back inside we closed up the coach and turned on two of the three air-conditioners.  I worked the rest of the afternoon on my blog, editing and then uploading seven posts covering September 1 through 7.

For dinner we had the leftover pizza from last night’s visit to Satchel’s.  We managed to get six dinner meals out of our three visits which is 25% of our dinners for the first 24 days of December.  At dinner last night we suggested to John that it might be nice to have a special campfire on Christmas Eve.  He liked the idea and said he would check with Bob (the resort manager) and take care of it if he got the green light.  Linda packed some wine and we walked down to the firepit at 6:30 PM.

Long before we got to the firepit we could see there was no fire.  In fact, there wasn’t anyone there.  We noticed golf carts at Jeff and Kathy’s site nearby, including John and Ali’s, so we walked over there.  We found Ali, along with three other folks, but not John.  It turned out that John was ill with some sort of gastrointestinal ailment and there was not going to be a special Christmas Eve fire.  There were enough empty chairs for us to have a seat so we stuck around for a while to chat and enjoy a small glass of wine.

Kathy got a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite for her grandson Spencer and asked me if I would get it set up for him.  I did this two years ago and agreed to try again.  Spencer is arriving tomorrow afternoon with his family and Kathy was hoping to have the tablet set up so he can use it right away.

I got a pair of text messages from my long-time friend, J. C. Armbruster, wishing me a happy Christmas Eve and inquiring as to our whereabouts.  I did not have my glasses or stylus with me so I deferred replying until we got back to our rig.

When we returned we found a large box sitting on our entry stepstool.  Linda checked the label and it was definitely addressed to us.  The office closed at 1 PM today and there wasn’t anything there for us when Linda checked around noon, so it must have arrived later.  Someone in the office must have figured it was Christmas gifts and brought it to our site, which they do not normally do.  Linda opened it enough to confirm that it was, indeed, gifts from Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline and then set it aside for tomorrow.

I replied to the text message from J. C. (which sounds a little bizarre on Christmas Eve).  I then spent an hour trying to configure the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 without success.  I thought the problem was Wi-Fi related as the tablet did not have any difficulty connecting to the resort Wi-Fi system and obtaining an IP address but it never opened a browser window where I could enter the username and password to get through the resort’s filter and out to the Internet.

I turned on the guest network on our WiFi Ranger without a password and tried connecting to that as the WFR was already logged in, but it still did not work.  I tried creating a Samsung account but the screen just said “…processing” and the little icon just kept spinning.  I also tried entering Spencer’s Gmail address and password(s) that Kathy gave me but the device could not connect to Google.  It’s possible that the problem was simply an incorrect e-mail address and/or password but the error message I kept getting said the tablet could not establish a connection to the remote server.  That sounded like an Internet access issue to me.

I also tried resetting the device to factory defaults but the instructions for doing that apparently assumed (required?) that the device had already been set up correctly and activated.  I cleaned the screen and packed everything back into the box.  I will return it to Kathy in the morning.  Perhaps John will be feeling better and can get it to work.

When I picked up the screen cleaner it was wet.  It was sitting on the desk under the air intake for the middle air-conditioner which is on the bottom of the cabinet.  I shut that A-C off, moved the electronics and paper that were sitting there, and wiped up the small amount of water.  Apparently the drain line for the drip pan is clogged so I will have to add that to my list of bus chores.

We were tired of listening to the air-conditioning but it was warm in the bedroom so I turned on the third A-C to cool it down.  Before turning in for the night I turned the fan to a slower speed and tried adjusting the thermostat, as it had gotten rather chilly.

 

2015/12/23 (W) Satchel’s Trifecta

We were up by 8 AM and sat around drinking our coffee until 9 AM.  For breakfast we had fresh blueberries, bananas, oranges, and toast along with orange/grapefruit juice.  I had apricot preserves on my toast.  I like all kinds of fruit preserves, but apricot is my favorite.

We are here at Williston Crossings until the 28th but that means we only have five more days and are starting to think about leaving and what we have to do to be ready.  Today’s chores potentially included:

  • Recharging the water softener;
  • Tightening the toilet paper holder in the bathroom;
  • Adjusting the pressure in the tires;
  • Removing and reinstalling the screen material for the entry door awning window.

It’s always something.

Fixing the toilet paper holder requires an Allen wrench which means I would have to get out my tool boxes.  Fixing the screen requires a special tool for inserting the retaining rib, which I do not have, and thus requires a trip to the local ACE Hardware store.  Adjusting tire pressures requires me to get out the air compressor and air hose, which is a nuisance.  And recharging the water softener requires the installation of the plastic flow restriction tube in the pre-filter housing and the addition of table salt plus a couple of hours of fooling around with the whole setup.  All of which suggests that I was probably not in the mood to do chores today.

On my personal “to do” list was uploading more blog posts, editing the ITR Oasis Combi Installation article for Bus Conversion Magazine, and uploading it to my BCM Dropbox folder for proofreading.  Linda wanted to organize and store the music CDs we brought with us, and I wanted to get out the various accessories for my Sony a99v DSLT camera and get them working.  Those things were under the bed.

I want to refill our fresh water tank as close to our departure as possible so even though we still had over 1/3rd of a tank (40+ gallons) we decided to take showers at the laundry/bathroom building which includes shower stalls.  Linda walked down at 10:15 AM and I walked down at 10:40 AM when she got back.

The only bus chore I got done today was recharging the water softener, but that was an important one to get out of the way.  I started at 11:15 AM by fitting the filter holder with the flow restrictor tube and partially filling it with 26 oz. of table salt.  I connected a short hose to the output of the softener to direct the discharge water, ran a strong flow of water for 15 seconds to stir up and saturate the salt, and then reduced it to a trickle.  I tested it for saltiness and it seemed salty so I let it run for 90 minutes.

We had baby carrot slices, orange pepper slices, and apple slices with hummus for lunch around 12:45 PM.  At 1 PM I again ran a strong flow of water through the softener for 15 seconds and then returned it to a trickle for another 90 minutes.  At the end of that time I ran a strong flow for 30 seconds and then let it trickle for one more hour.  By 3:30 PM the discharge was no longer salty so I tested it and it indicated 1.5 grains per gallon, which is as low as I can usually get it.  (Only once did I get it down to zero.)  I probably let the water run longer than necessary but the only sure way to know the salt is used up is to remove the filter housing and check.  A clear housing would make it much easier to do this, and I intend to get one.

In the time it took to recharge the water softener I uploaded 13 blog posts for August 19th through August 31st, 2015.  That meant I had finally gained some small ground, having uploaded more posts (29) in December than I had written (22) up through yesterday.  I also spent a few minutes going through Butch’s edits of the draft BCM article on the installation of an ITR Oasis Combi diesel-fired hydronic heating system in their MCI MC-9 NJT motorcoach and incorporating changes.  I did not, however, have/take the time to move the photos inline with text and reformat it in two columns.  I plan to do that tomorrow and then upload it to my BCM Dropbox folder for proofreading.

We arranged to go to Satchel’s with John and Ali for dinner this evening and meet them there at 5 PM.  We left at 4 PM for the drive into Gainesville and stopped at the Walmart near the restaurant.  Linda needed a rolling pin and pastry mat and found both.  On the way back to our car we crossed paths with John and Ali in the parking lot.  It’s just far enough into town from the RV resort that we all try to be efficient by making trips multi-purpose.

It was our third visit to Satchel’s since we arrived in Williston and probably our final one for this winter unless we decide to return to this area for a while in March.  Ali does not care for Satchel’s pizza, specifically their sauce, but agreed to go anyway for our sake.  We had the same meal we always get; small salad, medium hand-tossed pizza with Daiya non-dairy mozzarella cheese, mushrooms, onions, and sun-dried tomatoes, and a vegan oatmeal raisin cookie for dessert plus a ginger soda for me, made in-house.

For our money it is one of the three or four best pizzas we have ever had, vegan or not, and clearly the best vegan pizza we have ever tasted.  We lingered and talked but eventually paid the bill and left.  In our case we needed to stop at the Publix supermarket on the way back to Williston for an assortment of things Linda needed for our Christmas day meals.

It was almost 8 PM when we got home.  We put the groceries away, turned on the TV, and watched several programs on PBS before going to bed.

 

2015/12/22 (T) Blog Chores

Linda was up at 7 AM again this morning but I did not get up until sometime between 7:30 and 8.  I made our coffee, as I do almost every morning, and we worked on our iPads, as we do almost every morning.  We had granola with fresh blueberries around 9 AM, as we do on many mornings, and then extended our leisurely morning until 10, which is also common for us.

Heavy cloud cover had moved in starting yesterday afternoon bringing higher humidity and some chance of rain.  It also minimized radiational cooling overnight and the temperature barely dropped into the upper 60’s.  All things considered it was not the kind of day that made us want to get up and go, but eventually we did as today was chore day.

First up on my list was doing laundry.  While Linda went for her solo morning walk I gathered up our laundry and sorted it on the bed.  I had what looked like three loads but we only have one collapsible laundry basket so I ended up making three trips to the laundry room.  I found an unused tote bag to carry the two containers of laundry detergent, the dryer sheets, and a large quantity of quarters, so that helped.  The laundry building is not that far from our site but the laundry and supplies are bulky and heavy so I used the car.  If I had a wheeled laundry cart I would have walked.  Depending on the situation at Big Tree RV Resort we might order one after we get there.

The washing machines run a 25 minute cycle but it takes over an hour from when I start to get to the point where I can transfer the laundry to the dryers.  During that time there isn’t much else I can do.  Once the dryers are going I have about 45 minutes before I have to empty them and fold/hang the clothes.  That’s good iPad time.

Linda got a call from our daughter (Meghan) with pictures of the armoire she is building for her niece (our grand-daughter) Madeline to hold “dress up” clothes, some of which she is getting for Christmas.  Meghan still has quite a collection of clothes from her childhood and is passing them on to Madeline, so the armoire will be fully stocked.  That will be a very nice gift for a fashion conscious three year old.

Linda went with me to the laundry room at 12:30 PM and helped sort/fold/hang our clothes and put it all away when we got back to our coach.  We will do another batch of laundry on Saturday or Sunday including all of the bedding.

For lunch, Linda made folded flat bread hummus sandwiches with onions and greens and sliced up an apple.  It was slightly cooler outside with an occasionally gusty breeze so we sat out there and used our iPads.  I finished up yesterday’s post, started on today’s, and moved a few chores to future dates.  I was reading a back issue of The Gypsy Journal when a few rain drops fell on my screen.  We immediately decided to move back inside but the full on rain came quickly.  Linda took our iPads in while I put the two bag chairs away and then scurried inside.  It rained hard for a while but eventually passed and the outside air temperature dropped 10 degrees, which was refreshing.

Inside I directed my efforts towards my blog.  When I uploaded seven posts early last week I forgot to “tag” them with keywords so my next task was to edit those posts and take care of that.  Once that was done I started uploading posts beginning with August 9th, 2016.  I worked until 5 PM and managed to upload 10 posts through August 18th.  So far I have uploaded 17 posts in the first 22 days of December which means I am still generating new ones faster than I am uploading old ones!  The flow of time is relentless that way.

Linda made a salad and a potato lentil curry for dinner.  She has been reading Dr. Michael Greger’s newest book in which he describes how he personally eats and why.  Based on his guidelines she added turmeric to the curry, which was appropriate given the Indian nature of the dish, but mostly because she is trying to figure out how to incorporate it into her menu planning on a daily basis.  Daily consumption of turmeric has been shown to have a number of health promoting effects but most notably a carcinogen blocking effect with only a teaspoon per day.

We watched our usual Tuesday evening TV shows, even though they were repeats, after which I stayed up for the 11 PM news.  Gainesville got 0.5″ of rain this afternoon and I suspect we got at least that much at the RV resort.

 

2015/12/21 (M) John and Marian

Linda was up at 7 AM this morning and I got up at 7:30.  It was 66 degrees F in the coach so I turned on the Aqua-Hot diesel burner and turned up the thermostats.  I made our morning coffee and got to work finishing yesterday’s blog post.

John and Marian Hagan would be visiting this afternoon and staying for dinner.  Given the large meal we had for dinner last night we wanted to take it easy today so a little after 9 AM we had a light breakfast of grapefruit and English muffin with apricot preserves.  So good.

After breakfast Linda did some light cleaning.  I was going to do a load of laundry and recharge the water softener but Linda reminded me that I had decided to do all of those chores tomorrow.  Deal.  I started working on this post but eventually got dressed and settled in at my computer.  I spent the rest of the morning updating my BCM article status tracking Excel spreadsheet and uploaded it to our Dropbox.  I also cleaned up the organization of the files to match the status sheet and backed them up to the NAS.

As planned, we skipped lunch.  John had indicated they would arrive around 2 PM.  I asked him to call when they got to the office and he did.  I was going to drive up and escort him in but getting to our site is very straight forward so I just gave him the directions.  A few minutes later they pulled up and I got them parked next to our car, which Linda moved to one edge of the pad when she returned from Winn-Dixie this morning.

After giving John and Marian and tour of the interior remodeling project we spent most of the afternoon sitting outside.  Linda thought about using the induction cooker to make dinner outside and remain in the conversation but realized she needed two burners.  When it was time to prepare dinner Linda went inside and Marian went with her to help.

For dinner Linda made a salad and risotto with olive oil, garlic, mushrooms, and dark greens.  She bought a frozen vegan cheesecake at Earth Origins the other day and served that for dessert.  John and Marian brought a bottle of Barefoot Riesling wine and between Marian, Linda, and me we finished it.  That’s only 250 mL per person, so not really that much.

We eventually moved inside and continued our conversation over coffee.  John and Marian were members of our FMCA Freethinkers associate chapter until they bought a house in Dunnellon and sold their motorhome.  Since we saw them two years ago they have gotten more involved in the humanist group that meets at The Top of the World (an adult planned community) and joined the Unitarian Universalist church just south of Dunnellon, both of which have given them the opportunity to make new friends in the area.  They had a half hour drive to get home and left at 6:30 PM.

After cleaning up the dishes we watched TV and doodled on our iPads.  I probably should have worked at my computer but did not feel like it.  I did check my e-mail and had a reply from Butch with his edits for the BCM article on the ITR Oasis Combi Installation he did last fall (2014) in their MCI MC-9 NJT motorcoach.  I also looked at, and commented on, several posts/comments on RVillage.  Linda was off to bed at 11 PM and I was tucked in with the lights off by 11:30.

 

2015/12/20 (N) Brooksville Hams

I was up at 7:15 AM and Linda was up shortly thereafter.  I left all three thermostats on last night but had them dialed back so I turned them up to approximately 70 degrees F.  I say approximately because the dials are marked in Celsius every five degrees.  I fed the cats, washed a few dishes, and made our morning coffee.  We lingered with our iPads longer than normal and delayed breakfast as we would be leaving before noon, skipping lunch, and having an early dinner.  Breakfast was granola with fresh blueberries and orange/grapefruit juice.

After breakfast we both took showers and got dressed.  Linda went for a long walk with her iPod (she listens to audiobooks).  I worked at my computer, taking a break to empty the catch bowl in the utility bay and spread some more Spectracide Fire Ant Killer on mounds around our coach.  Linda got back from her walk at 11:15 and we got ready to leave.

We left at 11:30 AM for Bruce and Linda Whitney’s new place southeast of Brooksville, Florida.  We drove down US-41 through Dunnellon, Hernando, and Inverness, stopping at a Publix in Inverness for house warming flowers and the adjacent Panera for a bagel and coffee.  We continued on US-41 to Brooksville at which point we let the GPS take over and route us through a series of back roads to their place.  We got there a little after 1:30 PM.

Bruce (W8RA) and Linda (K4YL) are fellow “hams” (amateur radio operators) from our South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC) back home.  Linda retired around the same time I did and although Bruce is still working they have, like many of us, grown weary of winter in the north.  They found a 24 acre place southeast of Brooksville with five good size towers already in place—a dream location for a serious ham—and decided to buy it.  (Three of the towers are 200 feet tall.)  Bruce successfully got his employer to agree to let him change his work location to Florida and work from home.  That’s a good deal if your employer considers you valuable enough to let you do it.  Bruce has deep knowledge of power transmission technology along with his equally deep knowledge of RF phenomena.  He also has a deep understanding of the power utility industry, and his employer (ITC) clearly recognizes that unique combination of knowledge sets.

We got a tour of the house and property and I got a thorough tour of the antenna farm and ham shack.  Bruce has plans to add on to the ham shack at the southeast corner of the house and to add a covered pool to the east side of the house.  He also plans to build a barn and put in an RV pad next to it with a 50 Amp electrical service.

The house was very nice and located in the center of the property, which is rectangular but close to being a square.  Except for the house, which is surrounded with plants, there are no trees or other plants, just a grass that can be harvested for hay.  Bruce has arranged with a neighbor to harvest the grass.  The neighbor will maintain the field in exchange for the harvested material.  It will be a good deal for both of them; Bruce won’t have to mow it and neighbor will clear at least $7K from each harvest, typically getting at least two per year.

We sat in the living room and chatted for a while.  Linda (K8LMF) wanted to see the various plants around the house so the ladies went outside to look at them.  Bruce (W8RA) and I went to the ham shack, which is a far cry from the setup he has back in Michigan, to operate.  Using his spotting software he noticed a station operating from Swaziland and decided to try contacting them.  He turned the stacked 40 M beam to 104 degrees and tuned in the station.  There was a huge pileup trying to work this guy and we noticed in his QRZ.com listing that he was one of only four licensed amateur radio operators in Swaziland.  That does not automatically mean that Swaziland is a rare contact—it depends on how active these four hams are—but it does mean that opportunities are more limited than with most countries where thousands of hams are active and dozens to hundreds might be on the air at any one time.

We wrapped up what we were doing at 4 PM and drove to Papa Joe’s for dinner.  Papa Joe’s was six miles NNE of their house, closer to I-75 and Williston, so we drove separately.  That worked out well as we left from there after dinner and headed back via Cortez Blvd to I-75 and they had to drive to the grocery store at Cortez and I-75.

We took our time with dinner and left the restaurant at 6:30 PM.  We arrived back at our rig about 7:45 PM, completing the 76 mile trip in 75 minutes.  We did not turn on the TV and spent the rest of the evening reading.  I did not feel like working on this post so I read the January-February 2016 issue of The Gypsy Journal.  Linda headed off to bed around 11 PM and I turned in at 11:15.  I went right to sleep while she continued to read, a reversal of our normal pattern, but she was deeply engaged in a book.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/12/18 (F) MEF3 @ 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/12/17 (R) Breezy Oaks

Today must be upside down day.  Linda got up first this morning, before 7 AM, and I slept until almost 8:30.  Yesterday I used up the last of our first batch of coffee beans so before I could make coffee this morning I opened four 1/2 pound packs and refilled our four coffee canisters.

We had breakfast of English muffins and grapefruit around 9:30.  I had still not heard back from Al regarding a visit to his campground in Bushnell today.  We checked the Breezy Oaks website and the Music Jam was scheduled from 2 – 4 PM today.  Our plan was to take our folding chairs, get there around 1 PM, visit with Al for an hour, take our chairs to the jam session and continue visiting there until it ended, and then go to dinner.  When we visited Al two years ago we did not come on a Thursday for the music went to a Chinese Buffet in Brooksville.  Linda found a Mexican Restaurant in Bushnell with some vegetarian items and 4.5 stars based on 49 reviews, so we wanted to try it.

I called Al at 10 AM and got his voice mail.  I left him a message and asked for a return call and/or a reply to my e-mail to confirm his availability before we drove to Breezy Oaks as it is over an hour away from us.  I worked at my computer selecting and processing photos for my September blog posts and had just about decided that we were not going to visit Al today when he called just before noon.  Linda had walked up to the recycling bins but as soon as she returned we made quick preparations to leave.  We took our two “bag chairs” (they fold up like a tent and go in carry bags) and the good camera.

We pulled out of our site at 12:24 PM and worked our way slowly out of the RV resort via the front entrance.  We headed southeast on US-27 towards Ocala past its familiar ranches and equestrian centers; our first time this season traveling down this road that we used frequently two years ago.  We took I-75 south to exit 309, headed east on CR-673 a short distance, and then turned north on CR-671 and followed it for about a mile until it ended at the entrance to Breezy Oaks RV Park.

Per Al’s suggestion we followed the signs to the office building and parked there as the music pavilion is adjacent to the office.  Al was already there with his chair set up so we got our chairs out of the car and set them next to his.  We chatted for about 15 minutes before the Music Jam started at 2 PM.

Linda and Al waiting for the music jam to start at Breezy Oaks RV Park.

Linda and Al waiting for the music jam to start at Breezy Oaks RV Park.

About 18 people participated in the jam session and about two dozen more, including us, provided an audience.  Each participant got to lead two songs of their choice and pick the key while everyone else backed them up.  Country and bluegrass seemed to be what most of them knew.  They played and sang for an hour and then took a 30 minute break during which ice cream was available in the office, three scoops for $1.25.  That’s a good price, if you eat ice cream.  The jam session resumed at 3:30 and went for another hour.

The musicians gather on stage for the Thursday afternoon jam session.

The musicians gather on stage for the Thursday afternoon jam session.

When the jam session was done we went back to Al’s motorhome and decided to go to Coyote Rojo Mexican Restaurant in Bushnell for dinner.  It was on FL-48 just east of I-75 right off exit 316 which put us that much closer to home after dinner.  We talked about going to the Chinese buffet near Brooksville, where we went two years ago, but it was 20 miles away to the west of the RV park and would not have positioned as well for the drive home.

Al Hesselbart takes the stage as part of a duet.  Al mostly does musical recitations as opposed to singing.

Al Hesselbart takes the stage as part of a duet. Al mostly does musical recitations as opposed to singing.

We had a tasty meal that included a salad and a veggie burrito, both of which we shared, and Al had shrimp fajitas.  We lingered at the restaurant way past the end of our meal chatting about what we had been up to since we had last crossed paths.  Al will be running a booth at the Tampa RV Supershow for the Florida RV Dealers Association so we might see him again at the show.  We did not go to the show two years ago but from our base in Arcadia it will be a reasonable distance away.

Al and his “singing” partner front and center at the jam session.

Al and his “singing” partner front and center at the jam session.

We returned to Williston via the same route we came and encountered intermittent light rain the farther north we drove.  About half way up US-27 we finally drove into a heavy, steady rain.  By the time we got to Williston the rain had abated, at least temporarily, but it had obviously rained before we got there.  We stopped at the Kangaroo/Citgo Station and I filled the gas tank.

We were back at our rig by 7:30 PM.  Linda checked the weather on her iPad and showed me the radar.  A long narrow line of thunderstorms was stretching from far out in the Gulf of Mexico to the northeast into Florida west of Williston.  The storms were moving along the line as it drifted slowly east and the forecast said we might get an inch of rain.  I closed the roof vents in the bathroom and kitchen and closed the awning-style windows to where they were only open an inch or so at the bottom.  We turned on the TV and settled in to watch our Thursday evening programs.

The heavy rain eventually started and around 9:10 PM the lights in the RV resort flickered several times and then the electricity failed.  Our inverter immediately switched over to batteries and kept everything running, which was comforting.  For as much money and time as we’ve spent upgrading these systems it nice when they actually work as intended.  I turned off a few lights and the laser printer to conserve energy just in case it turned out to be a long outage.  The Amped Wireless router and the NAS are both plugged into a backup power supply so they will not suffer any loss of power even if the inverter does not come on.  The Wi-Fi Ranger, however, is not on the UPS and this event reminded me that I need to do something about that.  From one point of view it didn’t matter, as the resort Wi-Fi went out with the loss of power, but the WFR is also the main router for the coach and as such is the DHCP server for our private network.

We continued watching our TV programs and I turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi and connected the WFR to it so we could continue doodling on our iPads.  Linda felt she had eaten too much for dinner and was a bit uncomfortable so she went to bed a little after 10 PM.  I stayed up and watched the local evening news at 11 PM, something I almost never do, and then went to bed.

 

2015/12/16 (W) More Blog Stuff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/12/14 (M) Christmas Stocking

I was up just before 7 AM to feed the cats, who were crying rather than using their usual technique of circling the mattress, and decided to just stay up.  I tried connecting my iPad to one of the nearby RV resort Wi-Fi access points but was still unable to connect to the Internet.  I tried to connect our WiFi Ranger to the access point but it was unable to acquire an IP address.  I turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi, connected the Wi-Fi Ranger to it, and started up my computer.  Linda was also up by this time and played a few word games on her iPad while I made coffee.

It was heavily overcast, but not foggy, and the sky glowed briefly with the rising sun before turning to a muted gray.  It was 71 degrees F outside, as dense cloud cover had prevented the temperature from dropping overnight, and 78 inside.  We left windows and the roof vents open last night with the bathroom exhaust fan on, so we had airflow but the humidity was higher than we like.  Still, we slept OK.

We had granola for breakfast.  After breakfast Linda drove to the Publix at the southwest corner of Gainesville to buy groceries.  I updated the other three WordPress websites that I manage and then got back to work on the HFH article for BCM which I did not finish yesterday.

I finished selecting and inserting photos for Part 2 of the article.  I then selected and organized the remaining photos for the digital edition Bonus Content sections for Part 1 and Part 2.  The penultimate step was to upload all of this to our Dropbox in a way that reflected the two-part organization of the article.  The final step was to e-mail Gary and let him know it was done.  Unfortunately this is at least the third time I have been “done” with this article so I won’t know if I am really, finally done until I see it in print.

We had a mock turkey sandwich for lunch and split an apple.  After lunch I sent e-mails to three friends who live south of our RV resort to try and arrange get-togethers before we leave at the end of the month.  I heard back from Bruce and Linda Whitney (really) right away.  They are members of our ham radio club back home and are in the process of relocating to their new home near Brooksville, Florida.  We agreed to get together this coming Sunday.  I eventually heard back from John and Marian Hogan and they were also interested in getting together.  By dinner time I had not heard back from Al Hesselbart, but I will.

Linda finished the needlepoint part of her project and walked to the sewing room by the office where she was able to use one of the sewing machines to attach the needlepoint matrix to a piece of white felt to make Madeline’s holiday stocking.  Our Verizon Mi-Fi had shut down when the battery drained so I plugged it in to recharge it.  I tried connecting our WiFi Ranger to the RV resort Wi-Fi and this time it worked.  There was obviously a problem with the system and it took until this afternoon for the office to get a technician out to fix it.

Gary Hatt at BCM had Kathy proofread the draft of my article on servicing the Webasto burner in our Aqua-Hot and sent it back to me.  I accepted all of her edits except one and then reformatted the article in two columns with the photos for the print edition inserted in-line.  I uploaded it to our Dropbox and e-mailed Gary.

We had both spent a long day mostly sitting so we went for a long stroll around the RV resort.  When we got back to the coach Linda started preparing dinner.  She added Halo orange slices to the salad, which included dried cranberries, walnuts, and sun-dried tomato dressing.  Yum.  The main course was couscous and black beans with corn, onion, and garlic.  Double yum.  We went for another walk after dinner.

When we got back we settled in to watch our usual Monday night TV programs and had a small glass of wine.

 

2015/12/13 (N) Test Print

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/12/12 (S) 8 Panel Paper

We slept in this morning and did not get up until almost 8:30.  Yesterday was not an unusually physical or stressful day but we were tired and slept well overnight.  I have noticed over the last 10 years that some RVers continue their routines into retirement with almost military precision, getting up at a certain time each day, usually Oh Dark Thirty, walking their dog(s), and cleaning the entire outside of their rig before breakfast.  Not us.  We have a window in the evening during which we usually go to bed, and Linda is more regular in her sleep pattern than I am, but bedtime is governed by what we are doing (or what is on TV), how tired we are, and whether we have to get up the next morning.  We usually get up when we feel like it unless we have to be up at a certain time, such as for my trip to Suncoast Designers in Hudson’ Florida this past Monday.

I made our morning coffee and Linda prepared our cereal and juice for breakfast.  After breakfast she pulled the litter tray out of the shower and cleaned out the residual litter, which we do not want in the waste tank, so we could take showers.  She got her shower, got dressed, and got back to work on her counter cross-stitch project.

I finished up yesterday’s post, e-mailed it off to myself, and started working on this one.  After letting the hot water tank recover I took my shower and trimmed up my beard, which was starting to bother me.  Not enough to shave it off—that would freak out the cats—but enough to need some attention.  I got dressed and settled in to work on our holiday letter.  Now that I have the special paper I can finalize the layout to fit the panels.

Except for a quick lunch break and a walk around the resort I worked until 4 PM on the layout.  I placed four of the panoramas on the last two panels by turning them 90 degrees, and enlarged them to fit the space.  That part was easy but getting captions on them required the use of text boxes which are a pain to work with in Word.  I used the space that was freed up by moving these images to rearrange others and enlarge some of them.  When I was done I had space for four more photos, if I can find ones that are:  a) technically good, b) interesting, c) from the needed time period, d) of something that is not already represented, and e) in the correct orientation (portrait vs landscape).  If not I will just enlarge a couple more that are already there.

Microsoft Word is really not the right tool for this kind of project.  Everything flows and every time I changed something everything after it would move.  That would just be annoying if it moved in a way that made sense but sometimes things would jump around or completely disappear, which is aggravating.  I think the addition of the four text boxes was responsible for that behavior but I wouldn’t bet on it.  The correct tool for this project would be something like Microsoft Publisher but I only do this once a year and never feel like going through the learning curve until I already have too much time into the project and are too close to being done.  Maybe next year.  Or maybe I will work on this throughout the year, adding one or more photos at the end of each month.  Yeah, right.

Linda made Spicy Broccoli Cole slaw and put it in the refrigerator to chill.  We then sat outside for an hour enjoying the cooler tail end of another gorgeous day.  Linda made Spicy Potato Curry for our main dish and we ate at 6 PM.  Like last night we changed into warmer clothes after dinner.  Even with the high temperature in the low 80’s it cools off quickly once the sun sets.  We left around 6:30 and walked to the firepit with our well-provisioned wine tote.  John had the fire going and there were already eight people there so we were not able to claim our usual seats.  John had switched his and Ali’s seats and I ended up sitting next to John and Linda sat next to Ali so we could chat.

By 10 PM everyone had left except the four of us.  I had restacked what was left of the fire logs and they were still burning nicely but John had to go close up so he and I spread them out and we walked back to our coaches.  Linda made a bowl of popcorn (at my request) and we put on the TV for background noise while we used our iPads.  Our Wi-Fi Ranger had lost its connection to the Internet.  It was able to connect to the resort Wi-Fi signal but could not reacquire Internet access.  We tried connecting directly to the resort Wi-Fi with our iPads but still could not acquire the Internet.  I finally gave up and turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi so we could do a few things before going to bed.

 

2015/12/11 (F) Naked Grape

We were both up at 7:45 AM but the cats were active long before that.  Besides their usual jumping on and off the bed they were unusually frisky and spent quite some time chasing each other back and forth the full length of the coach, often taking flying leaps onto the bed.  I fed them and Linda cleaned their litter tray after which I made coffee and she made oatmeal for our breakfast.  While we finished our coffee Linda played word games on her iPad and I put the finishing touches on yesterday’s post, e-mailed it to myself, and started working on today’s post.

My sister called at 9:30 AM and we talked for about 30 minutes.  When we were done I got dressed and gathered up the first load of laundry, drove it down to the laundry room, loaded the washing machine, and started it.  I then drove to the NAPA store to get the E-clips for the awning window lever pins.  This time they had them.  I ordered 12 but they came in bags of 20 and were cheaper per piece in that quantity.  There are 16 of these clips securing the lever arms for the eight awning style windows, so I bought the whole bag.  I also bought some J-B Weld that I plan to use to repair the broken weld on one of the passenger side living room window latches.

When I got back to the coach I gathered up the second load of laundry, which included the bed sheets and pillow cases, and drove it down to the laundry room.  The first load was done so I loaded it in the dryer and then put the second load in the washer.  I returned to the coach for 25 minutes and then went back to put the second load in the dryer.  It took several more trips to get all of the laundry in/out of washers and dryers, put in on hangers or fold it, and get it back to the coach.

For lunch we split a mock turkey sandwich with lots of greens, a tangerine, and a pear.  It was like a salad on a bun.  I had a text from my sister asking me to call a social worker at a different medical center and let her know that Patty would call her back later in the afternoon.  After lunch I called Amy and left a message.  Amy called me back and we chatted briefly.  Presumably she also talked to Patty later in the day.

Linda resumed work on her counted cross-stitch project and suggested that I select a bottle of wine for this evening and put it in the refrigerator.  None of the wines we had struck my fancy so I drove to the Grocery Depot and bought a 3L box of Naked Grape Moscato.  We received notifications from Amazon that two packages had been delivered so I stopped in the office on the way back and picked them up.  One was the two bath mats for the bathroom and the other one was our 8.5×14 brochure paper for our holiday letter. I put the box of wine in the fridge when I got back to the coach.

I finished the 2-column formatting of Part 1 of my 2-part BCM article titled What To Do With Your Bus:  Building with Habitat For Humanity and e-mailed it off to Gary, the publisher of Bus Conversion Magazine.  By the time I finished going through e-mails it was 3 PM and had gotten warm in the coach, even with the windows open and the roof vent fans running.  I laid down on the sofa and took a nap for a couple of hours.

When I finally got up from my nap the sun was low in the southwest sky and it had cooled off just a bit so we both sat outside with our iPads for a while.  It was a beautiful day today with clear skies and a warm sun and highs in the mid-70s.  Today is Friday, which means we gather at the fire circle at 7 PM for fellowship and music, so we had dinner at 6 PM, earlier than usual.  Linda made a nice green salad, as she does most evenings, with walnuts, raisins, and dried cranberries.  She reheated the leftover seitan stroganoff and heated some frozen broccoli.  She rarely uses frozen ingredients, but they are always handy to have around for a quicker, easier to prepare, meal.

Linda opened the box of Naked Grape Moscato wine and filled a small coffee thermos.  She put the thermos and our two plastic wine gasses in our wine tote and we walked down to the firepit.  We took the recyclables with us as the bins are just beyond the firepit.  When we got there at 6:40 PM John already had the fire going but no one else had arrived.  We like to get there early so we can sit near John and Ali.

As was the case two years ago I ended up tending the fire.  Not that I mind; I am actually pretty good at it, but the available firewood at the moment is not good.  It is very heavy for its size and I suspect it is not very dry.  I convinced John that we should leave the natural gas on under the logs.  Normally the gas is only used to start the fire but leaving it on, even on low flame, seemed to help reduce the amount of smoke.  I also used some of the scrap construction lumber which was very dry and burned hot and clean.

We stayed at the fire until 10 PM and enjoyed John’s guitar playing, singing along, and conversation.  Around 9:30 he got a call from a couple who had just arrived at the gate and he had to leave to escort them to their site.  They had been delayed by a traffic jam that resulted from an accident.  Every RVer who has been on the road for more than a few months has experienced this.  As was the case last weekend it was just the two of us with John and Ali at the end.  We would have stayed longer, as I had a small but nice fire burning, but John had to close up the resort buildings and check the gates and Ali was starting to get cold.  I turned off the gas, spread out the logs, and we headed home.

When we got back to our coach we turned on the TV and doodled on our iPads for a while before going to bed.  Linda inadvertently locked Juniper in the bathroom closet but after hearing an unusual thumping sound several times, and not seeing her anywhere, I investigated and found her.  She likes to climb in the closets and get behind things, and was actually reluctant to come out, but she finally did and ended up in bed with us and the other cat, as is the case almost every night.

 

2015/12/10 (R) Reworking Articles

I got up at 8 AM this morning, fed the cats, and made a pot of coffee.  Linda was up by the time the coffee was brewed and we enjoyed our first cup before having breakfast.

Linda has been in holiday shopping mode and ordered a 250 sheet pack of 8.5×14 brochure paper for our holiday letter.  The paper is 38# double-sided coated color laser printer.  It is made for quad-panel (three folds) brochures and is scored every 3.5 inches so it folds into an 8.5”x3.5” finished size.  Using the front and back it has eight panels.  The current layout of our letter takes two full 8.5×14 sheets so it should use all eight panels.

At 9:30 AM we had granola with fresh berries for breakfast.  Linda opened a new bag, transferred it to the plastic container, and put a piece of Frog a Tape on it so she can tally the servings.  She wants to know how many servings we get from each batch so she can better estimate how much to make to take with us next winter.  The real limitation is the size of the new freezer.

After breakfast Linda settled in to work on Madeline’s holiday stocking and I walked to the NAPA store to get the E-clips for the window lever pins.  The local NAPA store ordered them yesterday from two different places but neither order came in.  They reordered them from Jacksonville and said they would be in in the morning.

When I got back to the coach I revisited our holiday letter and adjusted the layout so the photos and captions would fit on the 3.5″ panels and not fall on the folds.  I had to shrink the photos slightly to get two of them side by side and I had to shrink the panoramas even more.  I also modified the captions to make better use of the space, moving the location to the top line with the date and leaving more room for the description underneath.  As a result of those changes the layout only used six of the eight panels so I will have to add photos or figure out how to enlarge some of the existing ones to fill out the space.

Somewhere in the middle of all this we took a lunch break at 1 PM.  Linda made vegan grilled cheese sandwiches and sliced an apple in half.  Simple but delicious.

I had a call from my sister and spoke with her for a while about our dad.  Later I called the social worker at the hospital and she called me back a short time later.  I then called our attorney’s office but did not get an answer, so I contacted him by e-mail.  I got a call back from him not long after and was able to expand on the reason for my call.

I e-mailed Brenda Phelan about the Arcadia Rally at the end of the month and dealt with e-mail correspondence from Gary at BCM.  He wanted to pull Part 1 of my 2-part article on Habitat for Humanity (HFH) up to the January 2016 issue to plug an unexpected hole and needed me to do some urgent last minute work on it to get it ready for Jorge to lay out.  This sort of thing happens all too often, but I agreed to work on it this evening.  Truth be told it wasn’t as big a request as he thought it was and I don’t mind helping him out if I can.

The temperature got up to 77 degrees F today with partly cloudy skies but by 4 PM the sun was low in the southwest sky and it was starting to cool off.  We both needed to get off our butts and move around so we went for a walk through the resort.  We ran into John using his electric motor bicycle to escort someone to their site.  As he passed by he said we had a package in the office so we altered our walking route to go there and retrieve it.

It was one of several packages we are expecting from Amazon and had supplies Linda needed to continue working on her counted cross-stitch project.  We stopped and talked to Jeff and Kathy briefly, dropped the package back at our rig, and walked part of the newer/north end of the resort.  It was still pleasant outside when we got back to the rig so we sat outside with our iPads and had a few peanut butter pretzels as a snack.

By 5 PM the sun was below our horizon, which consists of RVs to our southwest.  There was still plenty of daylight but by 5:30 it was fading and cooling off fast.  I finally went inside and started working on the HFH article for BCM.

For dinner Linda made a nice green salad and reheated the leftover pizza from last night’s dinner.  It was just as good as last night, maybe better.  I continued working on the article after dinner and watched our Thursday evening TV programs out of the corner of my eye.  By 9:30 PM I had spent all the time I cared to in front of my computer but was not done with the article.  Moving photos around is time consuming and a bit tedious.  I like to stay productive, so I switched to my iPad to work on this post.  Yeah, it’s still a screen, but I interact with it differently and have more options as to where and how I sit.  We were up until 11 PM but fell asleep quickly once we got to bed.

 

2015/12/09 (W) Return to Satchel’s

I was up at 7 AM.  It was 66 in the coach; cool but tolerable.  I put on my sweats, fed the cats, and cleaned their litter tray, but did not turn on the heaters.  Linda was up by 7:15.  I made coffee and we delayed breakfast until later.  We are going to Satchel’s for dinner with John and Ali this evening so we decided to have brunch instead of breakfast and lunch.  Satchel’s has some of the best vegan pizza we have ever had, including a choice of vegan cheeses, so it will be a big meal for us.

Linda used her iPad to do some holiday shopping.  I checked my e-mail and was then going to play a few games on my iPad but the iOS 9.2 update was available so I started the installation process and set it aside.  Once the updated OS was installed I had five app updates available so I initiated those, one at a time, and started working on this post.  The updates downloaded fast enough to be reasonable.  Either the Resort has made significant improvements in the Wi-Fi and Internet connection bandwidths or very few people are using the system at the moment, or both.

I got the BCM boxes out from under the bed and integrated in the issues I received on Monday.  Everything was there so the three sets of issues are ready to give out as door prizes in at the Arcadia Rally 2016.  I worked on the photo tips article for BCM for a while and then decided to do some more work on the BCM page on our website.  I had a detailed e-mail from Gary at BCM with suggestions, and I find it easier to use that kind of information when it is printed out, but when I tried to print it my computer said the printer was offline.  The printer display said it was “Ready” so I had a problem to investigate and resolve.

This was the first time we tried to use the HP Color LaserJet 3600 printer since we put it on board the bus and it was the first time we had connected it via the Amped|Wireless SR20000G network extender / router.  I had expected it to plug-and-play as this trip was also the first time we have used the newer/larger NAS on the bus with this particular router and it worked without me having to do anything to configure it.

I downloaded an updated version of Advanced IP Scanner and ran it.  It could not find the printer and claimed that both of our computers and the NAS were “dead” connections, even though they were communicating with each other and the Internet.  All of the evidence suggested that the problem was somehow related to network addresses.  I went into the printer configuration menu via the front panel and changed two settings, turning on IP Release and IP Renew.  I turned the printer off and back on but that did not cause it to connect.

I went in and out of the control panel in my computer looking at the various screens related to devices and drivers, specifically printers.  I also went into the web interface for the SR20000G where some settings and context dependent help screens caught my attention.  In particular, the SR20000G appeared to be set up as a DHCP client rather than a server and the help screen suggested that it was getting IP addresses from the primary router, i.e., the one connecting our “home” network to the Internet.  In our motorcoach, that is our Wi-Fi Ranger, and the Wi-Fi Ranger operates on a different range of locally routed IP addresses (10.139.1.nnn) than most home networks (192.168.17.nnn).  I opened the Advanced IP Scanner again and figured out how to get it to scan the local address range served by the Wi-Fi Ranger and voilà, there was the printer, the NAS, our computers, and the SR2000G.

The final step was to revisit something that caught my eye earlier.  In the printer driver configuration there is a Port screen and the printer was configured with a Standard TCP/IP Port in the 192.168.1.nnn range.  I created one in the 10.139.17.nnn range to match the address that Advanced IP Scanner indicated had been assigned to the printer.  I tried printing a printer test page and voilà (again) I heard the familiar sound of the printer indexing a sheet of paper and shortly thereafter had the test page in my hands.  I went into my e-mail and printed the one from Gary.  This was not what I expected to be doing today but it was satisfying to get it resolved and not have it take any longer than I did to get it done.

One of our tasks for today was reinstalling the awning style window in the living room.  I happened to notice this morning that one of the lever pins on the other driver side window was coming out, indicating that the C-clip was missing.  Closer examination revealed that the lever pins on the four windows we had repaired in April 2014 were all reinstalled with pins put in backwards.

I took a break from my other work at 1 PM and drove to the local NAPA store to buy new C-clips.  The clerk at the store had a kit of clips and a paper template for matching style and sizes.  He said our existing clips are actually E-clips, not C-clips, and the size I needed was a 1007.  He did not have any in stock but ordered them from another store and said they would be in at 4 PM.  We would be on our way to dinner by then so I indicated I would pick them up in the morning.

Back at the motorcoach John stopped by to let us know that he and Ali were going to do some shopping before dinner and to figure out a time to meet us at the restaurant.  We agreed on 5 PM.  As long as he was here I gave him the bag of Fire Ant Killer I bought for him on Monday.

We decided that we would also do some shopping before dinner.  We left at 3:15 PM and headed up FL-121 towards Gainesville.  When we got to I-75 we headed north to the next exit at Archer Road (FL-24) and made our way slowly through the traffic, into the outdoor mega-mall, and to Walmart.  We needed a small hassock (that would double as a storage cube), a small table (that we could put between the two captains chairs), a non-slip shelf liner (to put under the printer), a seat cushion (for the card table chair at the desk), a small mat (to put on the floor outside the shower to catch cat litter), batteries (for our bathroom scale), and high quality 8.5×14 paper (to print our holiday letter).  We found all of those items except the last one, but did not buy the hassock as the store only had them in gray.  We then worked our way to the Office Max store at the center of the mall.  They only had one (open) ream of 8.5×14 paper and it was regular copy paper.  Useless for our needs.

We put the address of Satchel’s pizzeria/restaurant into the GPS and worked our way over to the east side of town through rush hour traffic.  We pulled into the restaurant parking lot at 4:41 PM just as John and Ali were stepping out of their Tahoe two spots down.  Satchel’s is a very popular place but at quarter to five it was mostly empty.  It was a lovely late afternoon but the sun was already setting and the air would being cooling off quickly so we asked for an inside booth, which also happen to have padded seats.

We started with a small salad that was still big enough to share with Ali and John.  They had pizza slices but we ordered a medium (13″) pizza with Daiya mozzarella cheese, onions, mushrooms, and sun-dried tomatoes.  Soooo good.  John and Ali split a bottle of Cabernet, Linda had water, and I had ginger ale.  Satchel’s makes their own soda pop and it is very tasty (but contains sugar).

By the time we left the restaurant at 6 PM it was full of people, inside and out, and the noise level had risen to where Linda and Ali were starting to have difficulty with conversation.  We settled our bill and went on our way.  John and Ali had more shopping to do but we headed straight for Williston.  As we were approaching the intersection at I-75 I noticed that I was getting low on fuel.  I probably could have made it to Williston, but why chance running out of gas.  There are five filling stations near this intersection but the Mobil station was the first one on the right so I pulled in.  A few minutes later we were on our way again and we arrived back at our motorcoach at 7 PM.

I put the cushion on the desk chair while Linda put the placemat in the bathroom.  We opened the folding table and adjusted the height so the cats’ scratching post just fit under it and put it in place between the two captains chairs.  Having a table in that spot has been the plan from the beginning of the remodeling.  Although the folding table is temporary, it immediately increased the functionality of the interior.  It also allowed us to better visualize how the living room will look/feel when we finally install the permanent table.

Linda spent much of the rest of the evening shopping for holiday gifts and domestic necessities on Amazon.  She got presents ordered for everyone except her sister, with all of them being drop shipped directly to the recipients.  She also ordered a 15″x15″ brown storage hassock and a pair of washable floor towels (for the bathroom).  We definitely get our money’s worth out of Amazon Prime.

 

2015/12/08 (T) Hudson and Back

The outside air temperature dropped into the 40’s last night.  I closed the roof vents before turning in but we left the windows open a bit.  It was 61 degrees F in the kitchen when I got up at 8 AM so I turned on the Aqua-Hot, turned up all three thermostats, and turned on the front electric toekick heater.  I fed the cats and then made our morning coffee.  Linda got up around 8:20.  After our first cup of coffee we had granola for breakfast.  When the temperature in the coach reached 70 I turned off the thermostats and the electric heater and shut off the Aqua-Hot diesel burner.  (The electric heating element in the Aqua-Hot stays on whenever we are plugged in and living in the coach.)

I called Suncoast Designers and talked to Donna.  She talked to the technician and reported back that the bus window would be ready for pickup at 3 PM.  The office closes at 3:45 PM, so I would need to be there close to 3 to get it and settle the bill.

I found my water usage spreadsheet, which I last updated on April 19 of this year, and edited it to include the dump and fill activity since then.  I had to go back to my blog posts from late April to confirm just what I had done and when I had done it.  I checked my most recent post drafts and discovered that I had not made mention of dumping here at WCRVR.  Linda and I agreed that it was not the day we got here and not the following day so I recorded it as the 3rd.  Since there had been large time gaps in our use of the coach, and I had dumped the fresh water tank and refilled it the day before Thanksgiving, I had to reset the spreadsheet to known starting points.

After entering the missing data I determined that, with two people living in the coach, we continue to use fresh water at the rate of approximately 12 gallons per day and fill the waste tanks at the rate of approximately 12 gallons per day; five for the black tank and seven for the gray tank.  With 120 gallons of fresh water that means we can boondock for about 10 days, during which time we would use up the 120 gallons of fresh water and add roughly the same number of gallons to the two waste tanks, 50 to the 80 gallon black tank, and 70 to the 120 gallon gray tank.  I also determined that we have used about half the capacity of the water softener.

The numbers for the waste tanks are very rough as our tank level monitors do not work and I cannot see the levels in the tanks, even though they are translucent white plastic, as they are hidden behind “beauty panels.”  Still, I think my estimates are reasonable.  Given the 3:4 ratio of fresh:waste tank capacity I am inclined to redo the water bay next spring as a 300 gallon, 2-tank, system replacing the current 330 gallons of combined tank capacity (125 fresh, 125 gray, 80 black).  I could reuse the current 125 gallon fresh tank but I would probably replace it with one of a different shape to make room for the water softener and filters to be built in and to relocate the fresh water pump to the driver side floor at the level of the bottom of the fresh water tank.

At current usage rates a 125 gallon fresh water tank and a single 175 gallon waste tank would, hypothetically, allow us to boondock for 13 days, running out of fresh water just as our waste tank reached capacity.  We might be able to stay out longer if we could reduce fresh water usage and waste generation proportionally.  In practice, however, we would probably not go more than 13 to 14 days and only then if the new tank monitors worked accurately.  Still, that would allow us to stay out two full weeks before we had to dump and fill, which seems like a good amount of time.

The other benefits of reconfiguring the tanks in the utility bay include slightly different tank shapes that would create some space for the water softener and filters and provide access to the tanks for servicing and monitoring.  It would also allow me to install rotating spray heads for the waste tank and drain it through the macerator pump, allowing use to “dump” our tanks at our house or anywhere we could get a garden hose into a waste drain.  We might even gain space, or access to space that is already there, to store drain hoses, and other utilities-related things, in the bay.  I would, for instance, love to have a shorepower reel but I do not think I can create that kind of space without making the tanks too small.

What we would lose in the redo is a separate gray tank that could, hypothetically, be drained onto the ground in some places.  The number of places where that is legal, however, is too small (in my opinion) to justify keeping that capability.  The other main argument for keeping separate black and gray waste water tanks is that the contents of the gray tank can be used to flush the drain hose out after first dumping the contents of the black tank.  Indeed, some bus converters set up their waste tanks with the gray tank above the black tank and plumb them so that the gray tank can be drained into the black tank to help flush it out, or drained directly (which leaves open the option of draining it in on the ground).

We heard another interesting take on water management for boondocking at a seminar in August 2012 at the FMCA national rally in Madison, WI.  The presenter described his system, which involved three tanks, fresh, gray, and black.  His twist on this was that he ran the gray water through a filter (or set of filters) and then used it to flush the toilet.  The advantage is that all of the fresh water becomes available for gray water use, i.e., cooking and cleaning.  As an example, consider a setup (such as we might have in our bus conversion) with a 150 gallon fresh water tank, a 100 gallon gray tank, and a 50 gallon black tank. Since the first 50 gallons that go into the gray tank will potentially end up in the black tank the entire 150 gallons of fresh water can ultimately end up in the 100 gallon gray tank.  With careful management of water usage, that could really extend the amount of time the rig can be used without hookups.  These tanks could be sized differently, larger waste and smaller fresh, if you had a fresh water bladder that could be used to retrieve additional fresh water and refill the tank without moving the RV.  Lot’s of interesting possibilities, all of which involve engineering design tradeoffs.

I opened the box of BCM back issues that arrived yesterday and went through them.  There were two of each issue but I won’t know if they are all there until I can integrate them into the partial sets I brought from home.  Those sets were under the bed and there was a cat on the bed so retrieving them would have to wait until later.  I worked on this post for a while instead and stopped at noon to have lunch.  Linda made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and sliced an apple.  Simple but delicious.

I looked through the articles in my BCM “in process” folder and opened the one on tips for taking photographs to see how complete it was.  While not finished, the article was much more than an outline.  I spent about 20 minutes reviewing what I already had and doing some additional editing but did not feel like digging into in it.

I left at 1 PM for Hudson, taking the same route I took yesterday, and arrived at 2:45 PM.  I was 15 minutes early but the window was done.  There was no charge for the repair, which I appreciated, as the seal failed not long after the window was originally fixed in April 2014.  The technician wanted the window to stay horizontal for at least another day, supported by its frame, before being reinstalled in the bus.  Because the back of the car was full and could not be rearranged I moved the passenger seat all the way forward and leaned the seat back as far as it would go.  I used the blanket to plug the gap between the front edge of the seat and dashboard and set the window in place, outside up, with one short edge on the blanket and the other one on the seatback.  It traveled very well that way on the drive home and I decided it was safer to leave it there than setting it out on the picnic table overnight.  I got back to the rig around 5 PM even though I stopped twice, once for popcorn at Rural King, and then at McDonald’s for a diet pop.

Linda made seitan vegan stroganoff for dinner which we enjoyed with a glass of Mimbres Red table wine from St. Clair Winery in Deming, New Mexico.  In retrospect we should have bought more bottles while we were there.  Every wine we bought from them was a red and very much to our liking, especially mine, which is unusual.

We had both spent most of the day sitting on our butts (not our hands) and went for a brisk stroll after dinner.  We watched a few TV programs, went to bed at 10:30, and finished watching Rick Steves’ Europe before turning out the lights.

 

2015/12/07 (M) Not on Vacation

I set my iPad alarm clock last night for 5:30 AM.  As soon as the alarm went off Jasper got up next to me on the outside edge of my side of the bed, snuggled in by chest, and wanted to be petted at great length.  I obliged him for as long as I could and was rewarded with his loud, resonant purring, which I could feel as much as hear.  I still managed to get out of bed by 5:45, feed the cats, get dressed, and be on my way by 6:08.

It’s only 75 miles from Williston to Suncoast Designers in Hudson, but the first few miles were a slow roll through the RV resort to the front gate followed by the short trip through downtown with a 35 MPH speed limit and several stop lights.  After a short distance on US-41 south I picked up FL-115 heading west.  A few miles past the airport it made a large sweeping turn to the south and continued on that heading for about 17 miles at 60 MPH until it joined up with to US-19.  I continued south on US-19 at 65 MPH for another 20 miles.  At that point it felt like I was making good time but I knew what was ahead as I had driven this route several times when we were here in 2014.

US-19 gets closer to the Gulf of Mexico the farther south you go, and with that closeness comes an increasing presence of people.  The first population center I came to was the charming little “Suncoast” town of Crystal River, followed by Ingless, Homosassa Springs, Weeki Wachi, and then finally Hudson.  These towns all have much lower speed limits and stop lights, and they get larger and closer together the farther south you go.  The side of the road changes from forest and farm to intermittent small businesses, then continuous shall businesses, and then suburban commerce that extends back from the main road until you reach Hudson which is a far northern suburb in the greater Tampa / St. Petersburg metropolitan area.  From Weeki Wachi on south US-19 is six lanes with a median, is lined with commercial properties, and has lots of traffic.

I arrived at Suncoast Designers a little before 8 AM so the trip took about an hour and 45 minutes.  I checked in at the office and they had someone meet me at the factory door to take the window and label it with my name.  We had this thermopane window repaired in April 2014 but the new seal did not hold.  Getting it repaired was one of our reasons for returning to Florida this winter.  Not the main reason, of course, but a factor in our decision.  I was back in my car and on the way home by 8:20 AM.  I will have to come back tomorrow to pick it up.

On the drive down I spotted a Dunkin Donuts about 10 miles north of Hudson on the west side of US-19 so I stopped there on the way back for a large coffee.  I had also seen quite a few filling stations between Crystal River and Hudson, many of them Shell stations, so I picked one that had easy access and regular gasoline (10% Ethanol) for $2.03 per gallon, cash or credit.

I remembered seeing an Office Max and pulled in when I spotted it.  By now it was well after 9 AM and businesses were open.  They had several different weights of expensive color laser photo paper but nothing like that in 8.5×14 (legal) size.  I did not need to have the paper today so I did not buy any.  I really do not want to redo our Holiday Letter for 8.5×11 paper so I will check online and see what I can get.  There was a Rural King at the same mall complex as the Office Max so I bought two bags of Spectracide Fire Ant Killer.  I also got a bag of free popcorn, which is available at all Rural King stores.  More places should do that, I think.

It was going on 11 AM by the time I got back to the coach.  Linda had been up since 7 AM and was ready to set her cross-stitch project aside and go for a walk.  I had been sitting for the better part of five hours so that sounded good to me.  We went for a vigorous stroll through the resort and arrived back at our coach ready for lunch.  Linda heated up a couple of vegan hot dogs and served them on the large whole wheat buns with mustard and relish.

After lunch I installed updates on the FMCA Freethinkers chapter website, the FMCA GLCC chapter website, and our personal website.  I then took snapshots in Adobe Reader CC of the covers of the BCM issues for July through December 2015, post-processed the covers, and uploaded them to the BCM page on our website along with brief descriptions of my articles that appeared in each issue.  I finished inserting photos into the OASIS Combi article I’ve been working on for BCM and will upload it to our Dropbox and e-mail Butch this evening.

It was a gorgeous day so we sat outside for a while and I worked on this post.  That is one of the things I really like about my iPad.  An earlier e-mail from Gary indicated that my package was out for delivery today.  I was about to get in my car and drive to the office when Joe and Teresa from Brighton, Michigan stopped in their golf cart to chat.  When they went on their way I dropped off the recyclables on my way to the office, picked up the box of magazines (which was heavy), and returned to the coach.

I worked some more on this post on my iPad but by 5:30 PM I had been up for 12 hours on too little sleep so I took a nap until 6:15 PM when Linda woke me up to have dinner.  For dinner Linda made a green salad with fresh blueberries and strawberries and made black bean smothered sweet potatoes.  Besides the black beans, the topping had tomatoes, scallions, cumin, and coriander and was finished off with a dollop of vegan sour cream.  Yum, yum, yum.

We watched the PBS NewsHour, another thing we typically never do, but then we do a lot of things differently when we are away from home.  We then watched our usual Monday night TV programs on CBS.  Even when we are away some things don’t change.  We are not “on vacation” after all.  We don’t go on vacation to get bus windows repaired.  In fact, we no longer go on vacation, we simply blend new experiences into our everyday lives.  Such is the nature of retirement as extended-time RVers in a converted bus.

 

2015/12/06 (N) Multiple Threads

I got out of bed at 8 AM, fed the cats, refreshed their water, and cleaned their litter tray.  I made some hot soapy water for dishes and then measured out and ground our morning coffee beans.  Once I had the coffee brewing I cleaned the grinder, which I had not done in a while.

Linda got up around 8:30 and we both sat with our iPads and enjoyed our first cup of coffee.  I had a reply to the e-mail I sent our son last night and replied back.  I also sent the photo I created on Thursday to him and our daughter.  It is a 3-image panorama looking north out of our passenger side living room window of our motorcoach.

At 9:30 Linda started making pancakes, which has become something of a regular treat for our Sunday breakfast.  I got a call from my sister at 10 letting me know she was heading to the hospital where our dad is in the ICU.  We finished our coffee around 10:30 and got dressed.  Linda settled in to work on her counted cross-stitch project and I checked our fresh water tank.  The level was finally below 1/3 on the monitor so I decided to test the park water.  As I expected, based on our previous time here, the hardness was at the maximum on the test strip so I got the water softener out and connected it to the supply valve.  The quick disconnect, while a nice idea, is made of plastic.  It was finally worn to the point where it would not seal so I unthreaded it from the pressure regulator and put it back in the fresh water tub where it joined a dozen other components that I should throw away.  Someday.

I have read in multiple publications and blogs that the RV sewer hose, and especially the bayonet connectors used on RV sewer hoses, is the weakest component on an RV, both by design and manufacture.  While these components may be in contention for that status, I submit that the garden hose fittings that are universally used for the fresh water connections may actually be the worst.  My fresh water connections always leak even when I tighten them (gently) with a wrench.  My sewer connections do not generally leak.

But I have digressed once again.  When I had the softener connected I tested the output and it appeared to be fully charged so I connected it to the inlet of the coach and refilled the fresh water tank.  In Quartzsite, Arizona this past winter I kept track of the details of when I dumped and filled tanks, including the hardness was of the water coming out of the softener before and after each fill.  This data served two purposes.

One purpose was to compensate for our waste tank level monitors, which do not work.  We were trying to determine the rate at which we were filling them so we could calibrate how long we could reasonably boondock before we had to dump them.  That turned out to be about nine days, conservatively, which is how long we went before hooked up here and dumped.

 

Because the water softener can only remove a certain number of grains of hardness before it is exhausted the number of gallons it can soften before it has to be recharged depends on the hardness of the water coming in.  At 25 grains of hardness per gallon, which is what we had in Q and what we have here in Williston, the softener, which has a capacity of about 10,000 grains, can process about 400 gallons.  If the hardness is higher than 25 gpg we will not be able to process that many gallons.  400 gallons is about four refills if I refill it when the level is down to 1/6 (20 gallons).  Our usage data from Q indicated that we used about 9 gallons per person per day on average (18 gallons per day) and that I was filling the tank every 5 to 6 days and recharging it every three weeks.

While setting up the water softener I noticed an active nest of red ants.  I saw John drive by and a few minutes later saw him headed back our way and flagged him down.  He did not have the ant poison on his cart but offered to get it and come back, which he did.  He also brought a rake.  It turned out that he buys this product at his own expense and uses it to treat sites before folks check in, so I will buy a bag for ourselves and one to replenish his stock as part of my trip to Hudson tomorrow.

With the refill underway I resumed working on the photos for the BCM article on the International Thermal Research (ITR) OASIS Combi hydronic heating system in Butch and Fonda Willams’ 1987 MCI MC-9 NJT bus conversion.  The hospital tried to reach me at 12:14 PM but the call went directly to my voice mail.  After a few text messages back and forth with my sister and niece I received a phone number for the doctor and was able to get her on the phone.

Brendan texted me at 1 PM to let me know he was headed to our house.  He called when he got there and I called him back on our house phone.  He spent about half an hour searching through brief cases looking for certain papers and telling me what he was finding.  He found the case I needed and took it back to his house where he can go through it more comfortably and ship it to me if needed.

I had resumed working on the BCM article when John and Ali showed up.  We invited them into the coach to see the remodeling work we have done and they stayed long enough to chat awhile and have a small glass of wine.  I opened the bottle of Viva La Rojo from the Heart Of The Desert winery in Alamogordo, New Mexico and we all agreed it was very nice.  It is at such moments that I am left to wonder why we did not buy more than one bottle.

After they left I continued working on the article until I was too tired to concentrate.  It was well into the second half of the afternoon so we both put our projects aside and removed the fogged living room awning style window/frame, wrapped it in a blanket, and put it in the car.  I need to leave early in the morning and drive to Suncoast Designers in Hudson to have the window repaired and did not want to be messing around with it at 6 AM in the morning.

Getting the window out required the step ladder and a small screwdriver to remove two C-clips so it was a bit more involved than it sounds.  Linda put the screen back in place, covered it with a piece of the silvered bubble insulation, and taped it around the edges.  The RV resort is very safe so someone getting into our rig was not our concern.  Rather, the low temperature overnight Monday into Tuesday is forecast to be in the 40’s so we really cannot have an uninsulated opening in the side of the coach.  The chance for rain is low to zero, and we have the awning out over most of that window, so we are hopeful we will not have to seal the outside with plastic.  Our other concern was our cats.  The screens do not fit as tight as we would like and if this one fell out the cats could jump to their “freedom” with potentially dire consequences.

Linda made stuffed Poblano peppers for dinner.  The preparation took a while so I laid down on the sofa and watched Martha Bakes and Ask This Old House on the Create channel from the University of Florida, Gainesville PBS station.  What can I say?  I find TV that teaches me things entertaining, even if I can’t eat anything Martha bakes.  At home Linda would normally cook the peppers on our outdoor or indoor grill but tonight she pan-seared them.  The peppers were stuffed with a mixture of rice, black beans, tomatoes, scallions, vegan cheddar cheese, and vegan sour cream.  The peppers brought just enough heat to the dish and we finished the bottle of Viva La Rojo, which smoothed everything out.  We had a nice salad with sun-dried tomato vinaigrette as a first course.  We had sliced fresh strawberries for dessert.  It was a really good meal.

We watched President Obama’s address to the nation from the Oval Office, an interesting episode of 60 Minutes (which I have not seen in years), and the Sinatra 100 Grammy tribute.  It was an unusual evening of television for us but very enjoyable and a nice conclusion to a day that was broken up into multiple threads.

 

2015/12/05 (S) Saturday Night Fire Circle

I was awake at 6:30 AM and finally got up at 7:15.  I fed the cats and cleaned their litter tray, both of which are chores but I don’t mind doing them.  I sat on the sofa with the heater pad on my lower right back and finished yesterday’s blog post draft.  Linda got up at 8 AM having been awake since I got up.  At 8:20 I was going to make coffee but Juniper climbed in my lap so Linda took care of that chore, which is certainly one of our more pleasurable.

Linda worked on her counted cross-stitch project and I worked on our Holiday Letter all morning.  I had a finished draft by lunch time and Linda read through it.  I have it set up for 8.5×14 inch legal size paper, but printing it that way will depend on whether we can get high quality glossy color laser paper in that size.

Linda reheated the last of the red beans and rice for lunch after which I washed some grapes.  After lunch Linda continued to work on her project and I turned my attention to another article for Bus Conversion Magazine.

I had some correspondence with the publisher, Gary, yesterday regarding my article on servicing the Webasto burner bearings and decided to finish my article on Butch Williams’ installation of an International Thermal Research OASIS Combi in their MCI MC-9 NJT bus conversion.  The work was done in October and November 2014 and the article was basically written in January 2015 but I had not selected or processed any of the photos.

I read through the article, highlighted several places with missing information, and rewrote some things.  I then selected 36 photos and started processing them.  The processing involved various adjustments such as alignment, lighting, and color followed by resizing and sharpening in two different sizes.  The larger size is typically 1900 x 1272 pixels as that will fill the screen of a 17 inch monitor and I don’t feel a larger size is needed or supported by the level of detail in the images.  The smaller size is typically 300×200 pixels.  I embed the smaller images at the end of the Word document with the image number and a caption.  I used to embed them into the article but the editor and layout person need the ability to fit them into the layout and I ultimately developed enough confidence in them to do that.  This is always subject to change, however, as is everything connected with this magazine.

We had dinner at 5 PM, earlier than usual.  Linda made a nice green salad, sautéed and lightly glazed some baby carrots, and heated some Amy’s vegan macaroni and cheese.  The reason for the early dinner was the holiday parade down Main Street in Williston at 6 PM.  We left at 5:30 and walked to the corner of NE 5th Street and Main Street.  NE 5th Street is the street that leads back to the front entrance of the resort and is towards the end of the parade route, which comes down Main Street from west to east.  There were already people there, all from the RV Resort as near as we could tell, but we were early enough to get seats on the low brick wall that borders the parking lot for the funeral home.

Main Street is also US-27 but the police closed it down at 5:45 PM.  The parade started at the west end of Main Street by the high school so the lead police motorcycles did not reach us until 6:20 and the front of the main parade did not get to us until 6:30.  There were cars with beauty queens, simple floats with seasonal themes, Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops, politicians, fire trucks, horses, and an elephant with Santa Claus riding on top.  It was a classic small town holiday parade.  It was all over by 7 PM and we walked briskly back to the firepit.

The firepit at WCRVR is about eight feet in diameter, surrounded by a concrete floor ring about six feet wide and covered by an inverted conical roof about 24 feet wide at the lower eaves.  A massive 8 foot diameter inverted conical hood is suspended over the firepit and the 12″ diameter flue pipe runs out the center top of the roof.  The outside perimeter of the floor has large wooden rocking chairs (think Cracker Barrel restaurant), a bench, and a few other chairs and there is a little bit of lighting up in the ceiling.  It’s a wonderful place to sit and enjoy the fire, visit, and listen to people play their guitars and sing.  The flue does not draft correctly so it tends to be smokey, but that is the only downside.  If not for that it would be perfect.

John was there with a couple of other people and had a nice fire going.  Even though it was in the mid-to-upper 60s there was a strong north breeze and the fire felt good.  Lots of other people eventually showed up and filled almost all of the seats so John got his guitar and started playing and singing.  Linda walked back to our rig to fetch our plastic wine glasses and opened a bottle of Egri Merlot.  It’s a good life.

I got a call from my sister and stepped away from the firepit.  She called to let me know that our dad was back in the hospital.  When I returned to the fire circle John was busy playing and singing and some folks had left so I tended the fire.  By 9 PM everyone had left except for John, Ali, and us.  I continued to tend the fire while the four of us talked.  Just before 10 PM I spread out the last embers of the fire and we all returned to our rigs for the night except John, who does the closing rounds on weekends.

Back at our motorcoach Linda put on the Michigan State vs Iowa Big 10 Championship football game.  Though not particularly interested in football I was too tired to work so after sending an e-mail to our son I laid down on the sofa; the first time I have done that since we built it into the coach.  By the time the game was over it was 11:45 PM.  We watched a few minutes of Cook’s Country on Create and went to bed.  I turned the TV on in the bedroom then turned it off.  I turned down the brightness of my iPad display and with only the dim light of the ceiling vista, and whatever light could get in around the window shades, worked on my blog post until 1 AM.

 

2015/12/04 (F) The Chores of Life

The overnight low was forecast to be in the mid-50s so before going to bed I closed the roof vents and we only left the windows open about half an inch.  I was up at 7:12 AM this morning and put on my sweats.  I fed the cats (they insisted), took out my nighttime bite guard, washed it, and put it away.  I then sat on the sofa with the heater pad on my lower right back and Juniper on my lap while I worked on my iPad.

Linda stayed in bed until 9:15 AM.  She is having trouble shaking the congestion and cough but the nighttime medication seems to control it and allow her to get plenty of much needed sleep.  Once she was up I made a pot of coffee and she fixed bowls of granola for breakfast.

My main focus today was working on our 2015 Year-in-Review Holiday Letter but we had other things to do as well.  At the top of my list was mailing the FMCA Freethinkers Chapter certification paperwork to FMCA HQ.  I also needed to do a load of laundry, our first since we left home a week ago.  Linda planned to work on her counted cross-stitch project but also needed to make a run to the Publix grocery store on the southwest corner of Gainesville.

The word “chore” is often used pejoratively, and that is an appropriate use according to the definition, but the first meaning is “…everyday tasks of running a household or farm.”  The definition goes on to include “…. difficult or unpleasant tasks …” and some chores are certainly more (or less) pleasant than others.  Linda likes to cook and I don’t mind doing the laundry but neither of us particularly enjoy cleaning.  I don’t mind dumping our holding tanks, a chore that many RVers apparently find onerous, but I do not like adjusting the pressure in our tires.

I gathered up the soiled laundry and laundry supplies and loaded them in the car.  The north bathroom/laundry building is in plain sight of our coach, and not that far away, but I had more stuff than I could carry in one trip and it was heavier than I cared to schlep around.  If we had an appropriate wheeled cart I might have used that, but we don’t.  I got two loads started but held off on the third until I had taken a shower.  The bathhouses are in the same building as the laundry.  I added my towel to the third load and started it.

In the middle of doing the laundry I was back at the coach, got the FMCA chapter certification paperwork in an envelope, addressed it, and added stamps.  I was going to walk to the Post Office but in the interest of time I drove to the Resort office instead.  That little task had been nagging me for quite a while so I had a sense of relief, as much as accomplishment, when I put the envelope in the outgoing mailbox.  Linda walked down and used the shower facility.

As soon as I got back to the coach with the clean laundry/supplies and brought them inside I put the 2m/70cm ham radio antenna back on the roof of the car.  Linda then took the car and headed for the Publix supermarket at the southwest corner of Gainesville.  I did not want to unload the car, and had work to do at the coach, so Linda went to Publix by herself so there would be room for the groceries.  I put the laundry away and then settled in to work at my computer.

I realized this morning that I do not have SPSS installed on my ASUS laptop so I will not be able to analyze the data from the FMCA education surveys myself, at least not until I get home.  That is unfortunate as I do not know at this point if HQ has the ability or willingness to do the analysis we need done.  I sent an e-mail to the committee chair and executive director to let them know.  Mea culpa.  I replied to a few e-mails and then resumed working on our Holiday Letter.

I realized last night that some of the images which had already been post-processed had dates in the file names that were different from the dates when they were taken.  As I was trying to arrange them in chronological order I went back and found the originals and corrected the dates.  I then continued placing and captioning the photos.

When Linda returned with the groceries I helped get them into the coach while she put them away.  She finally found the Snyder sourdough pretzel nibblers we like and we finished an open container of hummus and had some fruit for a light lunch.

For dinner Linda made a salad and sautéed mushrooms, onions, and broccoli as a topping for a baked potato, which we split.  I had a little vegan sour cream on my half.  After dinner we changed into warmer clothes and packed a bottle of wine and our two plastic wine glasses and walked to the firepit.

Friday and Saturday nights during the winter folks at the Resort gather at the firepit to enjoy the warmth of the fire, have a glass of wine, talk to one another, and listen to live music provided by volunteer residents.  Our friend, John Smith, is the main entertainer, doing mostly folk/rock/country-crossover.  He is also responsible for the fire since Kevin and Sharon sold their park model and moved to The Villages.  (We are still having a hard time comprehending that move.)  John performed solo in clubs and bars for a living many years ago before he and Ali got married.  Jeff sometimes brings his guitar and performs as well, his specialty being old time country music (such as Merle Haggard).  Other musicians occasionally show up, or at least they did two years ago.

We were the first to arrive (besides John) and chatted with him for quite a while before anyone else showed up.  Other folks drifted in and John eventually fetched his guitar and played.  Ali was visiting with Jeff and Kathy and was one of the last to show up.  Jeff and Kathy’s dog, Teddy, has lymphoma so they stayed at their 5th wheel with him.  We stayed to the end, said “good night” to John and Ali, and walked back to our rig.  We watched an hour of Create TV and went to bed.

 

2015/12/03 (R) 2015 Year in Review 

It cooled off overnight and was 60 degrees F outside when I got up at 8 AM.  We left the windows open a bit when we went to bed last night but it only dropped to 71 in the coach.  The forecast high for today was only 73 with partly to mostly cloudy skies, so the coach was going to be comfortable all day with just fresh air and perhaps the bathroom exhaust fan running.  I made a pot of coffee and then Linda got up and made oatmeal for our breakfast.

Linda’s goal for the next couple of weeks is to finish the counted cross-stitch needlepoint Christmas stocking she is making for grand-daughter Madeline.  She has to keep very careful count of her stitches, so I am not allowed to talk to her, or myself, while she is working.  It should be a very quiet two weeks.

The new pull-out pantry shown in nice light.

The new pull-out pantry shown in nice light.

My first goal today was to finish the BCM article on servicing the Webasto WDB2010 burner in our Aqua-Hot diesel-fired hydronic heating system.  This was work I did back in January while we were in Quartzsite, AZ.  I post-processed the last 10 photos, inserted them into the Word docx, added captions, and then rearranged them according to print edition and digital edition bonus content section.

I had an e-mail back from Chuck about the Prevost Community AITA NAPA discount card.  I followed his directions and completed the online application.  He called mid-morning and we talked about the chassis batteries.

I finished the Webasto article but did not upload it right away.  I had an e-mail from Gaye Young, FMCA National Secretary and chair of the Education Committee, with the preliminary results of the survey that went out this fall.  After looking through the data I wrote an e-mail to the committee with some observations.

Today was pretty much a stay-at-home day except for an early afternoon walk.  We had black bean soup and vegan grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch and then walked up to the office to make copies of the chapter certification paperwork for our FMCA Freethinkers group.  I will mail the forms to FMCA HA in Cincinnati, Ohio tomorrow.

We talked briefly with Janet Rawley in the office and checked out the activities center across the street.  They have moved the library and game tables from the office to the AC and are going to redo at least part of the space as offices.  Given the number of additional park models and RV sites they should expand the mailboxes as well.  There was a basket of tomatoes at the AC, free for the taking, so Linda selected a few.  On our way back to our rig we stopped to chat with Jim Rawley (Sonny Fox on XM) at their 5th wheel.  Jim and Janet were part of our circle of friends two years ago and their rig is just a few sites down from John and Ali’s.  We dropped off the tomatoes and paperwork and continued on our walk around the newer section of the park.

A panoramic view looking north into part of Williston Crossings RV Resort from the passenger side living room window of our motorcoach.

A panoramic view looking north into part of Williston Crossings RV Resort from the passenger side living room window of our motorcoach.

Back at our coach I started working on our 2015 Year-in-Review Holiday Letter.  I was working on my ASUS laptop when the file manager suddenly would not respond to mouse clicks or let me close it.  I tried clicking a few other things and windows popped open that I could not then close.  This was strange behavior indeed, and something I had not seen before.  I was able to click the shutdown icon in the tray and forced the machine to close programs and turn off.  I restarted my computer and ran a complete scan with the ESET Smart Security program.  Complete scans take quite a while so I used my iPad to play a few games and work on this post.  When the scan was finally done I reviewed the findings and got back to work.

I uploaded the Webasto service article to Gary at BCM and then got back to work on our 2015 Year-in-Review Holiday Letter.  Linda can only count so many cross stitches per day before she gets cross-eyed.  She also needs very strong light, so when the sun gets low in the afternoon sky she quits for the day.

Dinner was salad and reheated red beans and rice, a dish that holds up well over multiple servings.  After dinner I got back to work on our holiday letter and worked on it until bedtime.  I selected about 50 photos and will try to do captioned pictures instead of extensive narrative.  The local CBS affiliate had the Lions–Packers game on instead of our usual Thursday evening programs so Linda flipped between the game and whatever was on PBS.  My computer worked fine for the rest of the evening.

 

2015/12/02 (W) Settling In

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2015/12/01 (T) Home Again

I got up at 7:45 AM, got dressed, and fed the cats.  The Magnum BMK was showing the house battery pack at 24.2 VDC and 47% SOC with the refrigerator and other significant loads not drawing any power.  I worked on my iPad for a while until I heard muffled voices from the compound around 8 AM and saw Pat (John’s son) working on the roof of one of the trailers.  Linda got up at 8:30 and we had granola for breakfast and had a leisurely morning.

Check-in time at Williston Crossings RV Resort WCRVR) was noon.  We only had 75 miles to travel to get there and did not need to be there right at noon.  Around 10:45 we started getting the inside of the coach ready to travel and by 11:15 we were taking care of the outside stuff.  Paul and Eugenia were already hooking up their car and obviously preparing to leave as well.  We walked around the coach and checked that the bay doors were closed and locked.  On the way around we got the tow bar off the ground and secured it.  I then switched on the chassis batteries, opened the engine accessories air valve, and returned to the cockpit.

The chassis battery gauges read lower than normal for a fully charged condition but had plenty of energy stored in them to crank the engine quickly.  With Linda spotting from outside I did a three point turn to get the bus pointed towards the exit.  John came over in his Kubota utility cart and chatted with Linda while I moved the car behind the bus and we continued to chat with John as we hooked up the car.  We thanked him for his hospitality and assured him that we would be back; both for a solar system and to just hang out for a longer time in the woods by the Suwannee River.  I started the engine and Linda checked the lights.  Everything was good and when she was back on board we started the slow roll back to the county road.

We pulled out of John Palmer’s place around 11:30 AM and slowly made our way back to CR-354.  I stopped there (to check for traffic, of course) and raised the tag axle to shorten the turning radius.  I did not have a sign post at the edge of the road on the left, as I did when turning in, but the ditch on the other side was deeper closer to the road so I did not to get the passenger side steer tire very far off the pavement.  I completed the left turn cleanly and put the tag back down before continuing.

It was closer to 11:45 by the time we passed the east boundary of the property and saw the sign for the River Rendezvous RV Park.  We took CR-354 to US-27 and headed east to US-129.  Just south of Trenton we vectored off onto SE CR-339 and then picked up NE US-27 Alternate which eventually became Main Street in Williston.  The trip took about an hour and 40 minutes and we arrived at the main entrance to Williston Crossings around 1:25 PM.

It’s usually nice to return to a place you have been to before and liked.  We enjoyed our time here during winter 2013/14 and it felt a little bit like being home again in that the place, and some of the people, were familiar to us and pleasant to be around.  One of the most familiar people was John, our next door neighbor of two years ago.  He was doing site escort duty and led us to our site after Linda got us registered.  We pulled up in front of site #233 and disconnected the car while John read the electric meter.  John then helped me back onto the concrete pad.  We were in place and level at 2 PM and visited briefly with John, giving him a quick tour of our interior remodel.  After John left we hooked up the shorepower cord and put power to the coach.

I checked the chassis battery voltage on the dashboard gauges with the engine off and they were 28+ and 14.  We went through our usual arrival routine with the addition of checking the reading on the electric meter.  We pay for our electricity here so checking the meter on arrival is prudent.  I checked the maintenance chargers and they showed the charge level on the upper and lower 12V portions of the chassis batteries as 75% each.  They should have been fully charged after almost two hours of engine operation so something was still not right.  The house batteries were down to 24.0 VDC and showing a 43% SOC.  The battery charger section of the Magnum 4024 went into Bulk charging mode, charging the house batteries at 107 Amps.

We are parked facing approximately WSW so the front of the coach gets the afternoon sun.  It was in the low 80’s, and a bit warmer in the coach, but we turned on the ceiling exhaust fans rather than run the air-conditioning, deployed the window awnings on the driver side, and lowered the day screens on the inside.  We used AntennaPoint.com to locate broadcast TV towers.  The two we cared about, CBS and PBS, were both north of us.  I rotated the front antenna to point in that direction and did a channel scan.  They both came in with solid signals so I repeated the set up with the rear antenna and bedroom TV.

Once we were set up we had vegan hot dogs for lunch and then walked to the CVS Pharmacy just outside the front entrance to the resort.  We crossed paths with John again and this time he had Ali with him so we had a quick reunion.  When we got back to the coach I was tired and with the warm conditions I dozed off.  When I woke up I set up the printer, NAS, and Amped Wireless router.

Meanwhile Linda had started preparing red beans and rice for dinner and discovered that she did not have diced tomatoes.  I drove to the Grocery Depot, which is also just outside the front entrance to the Resort, and bought a couple of cans that included green chilies.  It was 6:30 PM and the Resort gates were already closed so I had to use the code to get back in.  The dish was excellent and would not have been the same without the tomatoes.

After dinner I e-mailed Butch, Chuck, and Lou.  We are parked close to one of the Resort’s Wi-Fi towers with a strong N signal and reasonable speed, leading me to wonder if the Resort has upgraded their system and Internet connection.  Linda made a stovetop apple crisp and finished it just before our Tuesday evening TV programs began at 8 PM.  The crisp was different from an oven baked one but still very tasty.  We watched a few TV programs on PBS and CBS.  Linda has been fighting something and took some OTC Tussin nighttime medicine for her cough, congestion, and itchy throat.  She has coughed enough that it now hurts and is very tired from many nights of poor sleep.

 

2015/07/08 (W) Custom Desk Design

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.