Tag Archives: W. W. Williams

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

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

2013-11-01 (F)

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

2013_11_02 (S)

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

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

2013_11_03 (N)

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

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

2013_11_04 (M)

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

2013_11_05 (T)

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

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

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

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

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

2013_11_06 (W)

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

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

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

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

2013_11_07 (R)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2013_10_25-31 (M-R) FOOD At The Phase Place!

Sometimes I get busy and don’t keep up with my posts.  When I go back even as little as a week, as in this post, I find that many of the details are already lost in the continuous flow of daily living.

With the bus work in Williamston wrapped up, I turned my attention to figuring out what body panels and small parts I needed to order from Prevost to fix the damage I did to the passenger side of the bus leaving the campground in Townsend, TN.  I spent a fair amount of time in the Prevost CatBase Viewer database.  There were enough parts involved that I made an Excel spreadsheet.  I called Prevost U.S. Parts and got Roger Anderson on the line.  After discussing this for a while, we decided that it would be easiest for me to e-mail him the spreadsheet.

Next up was final preparations for the annual business meeting of our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter (FTH), of which I am the vice-president and secretary.  There are a surprising number of documents that are involved in a simple meeting of a small group: an agenda (from the president), minutes from last year’s meeting, financial statements (which Linda and I prepare based on data from the treasurer), proposed amendments to the bylaws, and an updated roster.  All of these get converted to PDF files and uploaded to a folder in our Dropbox account.  I have provided a link to that folder to all of our members.

We made our usual trip to South Lyon on Saturday morning for breakfast with members of the South Lyon Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC).  Linda worked on recipes.  I installed the WP-Recipes plug-in and she has started using it to capture and publish recipes for some of our favorite whole-food plant-based (WFPB) dishes.  She is evening taking a photograph of the finished dish and adding it to the recipe page.  (Click on the Food & Health Tab and then on Recipes in the dropdown menu.)

While Linda worked on recipes I worked on WordPress websites.  Besides our own, I am working on websites for our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter (FTH), our FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches Chapter (GLCC, of which Linda is the Treasurer), and our South Lyon Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC).

WordPress is constantly releasing updates and new versions.  This generally a good thing, but they always strongly advise that you backup your site (folders/files/database) before installing an upgrade.  I haven’t been doing that, so I decided on Saturday that I should.  The GLCC website is an add-on domain for our primary/personal site, so I was able to back it up using the backup utilities in the QTH.com cPanel.  The FTH website is hosted by iPower and the SLAARC website is hosted by GoDaddy, neither of which use cPanel nor appear to have built in backup utilities.  There is some provision for backup built in to WordPress.

When I used the cPanel backup utility to backup our primary/personal site and the GLCC site it was about 1 GB.  We only had 2.5 GB on our free Dropbox account, so I signed up for the 100 GB Dropbox plan.  I then went on a search for a WordPress plug-in that would do the backups on a schedule.  I selected WordPress Backup To Dropbox (WPB2D) and then installed and activated it on all four sites.  I am going to test it for a couple of weeks and see how it works.  I hope it works well as it is a very simple plug-in to use.

Our FTH meeting was scheduled as a conference call for 6:00 PM EDT on Sunday evening, October 27.  We have 40 memberships in the chapter and needed 10 to make a quorum.  6:00 PM came and went and at 6:15 PM we only had 8 people on the line.  The president polled the group and decided we would try again the next night; same time, same place.

Our SLAARC information net is held every Sunday evening at 8:00 PM.  I was a regular participant up until we moved to the new house.  Although I have our 2m/70cm base station antenna mounted on the old TV tower, I do not have the coax run to the ham shack in the basement.  Hooking up the radio is inconvenient, especially in cold/dark/wet conditions, all of which we now have.  I would like to have the ham shack set up and functioning, but it has not made it to the top of the list yet.

On Monday I drove the bus to W. W. Williams in Dearborn, Michigan to have them look at the auxiliary air system and the speedometer.  They thought the constant cycling of the main engine air-compressor was either the governor or the air-dryer purge valve.  Since the governor had just been replaced, I authorized replacing the purge valve.  They thought the speedometer issue was the “tone wheel”, the sensor, or the gauge.  The sensor was just replaced, so I authorized them to check that it was installed correctly and to pull the output shaft housing on the end of the transmission to check the tone wheel.

I called Roger back at Prevost U.S. Parts.  He had filled in my spreadsheet and prepared a Prevost quote, so he e-mail those back to me.  I decided to hold off ordering until Michele at Phoenix Paint has a chance to look at the damage and decide if she can fix it.

Linda and I had staked out the size/location of our planned bus barn and driveway.  We adjusted the stakes slightly, moving the barn 5 feet farther from the road and squaring it up.  It’s currently 32 ft. wide by 56 ft. long with a driveway that includes a spur for turning around.  Phil from Precision Grading came by Monday evening, measured the area, and dug a couple of test holes to see what soil conditions we had.  He said we had 13 inches of good top soil in that area.  This will have to be removed and replaced with crushed concrete and 21AA road gravel, so we discussed possible locations on our property for the top soil.  Some of it will go in a depressed area behind the proposed barn location.  This area forms a lake whenever we get heavy/persistent rain.  Some it will probably go on the west side of the main garage driveway, which currently drops off more than we would like, and somewhat unevenly.  There are also low spots on the far west end of our property, and some of the topsoil will likely go there.

I spent the rest of this period working on the various websites.  In particular, I finally figured out how to configure and use the WP-Members plug-in to restrict access to selected portions of a WordPress site based on a Username and Password.  With that feature working, I focused on design (structure) and content for the FTH and GLCC sites.  I got sidetracked on Halloween with the idea of installing a “slider” (automated slideshow) in place of the default graphic in the RESPONSIVE Theme I am using for the GLCC site.  I selected and installed Meteor Slides based on its demonstration by the authors of RESPONSIVE.  It had the appearance of being very simple to install and use, and it was/is once I figured it out.  It took me 5 hours to do that, but I did.  The site is not ready for viewing yet, but I will share the address when it is.

2013_08_27-28 Babysitting And Our First RV Visitors

Linda has signed up to babysit our youngest grand-daughter, Madeline, on Mondays so our son and daughter-in-law can attend to their professorial duties at the University of Michigan.  (Our step-grand-daughter, Katie, is 16 and does not need a sitter.)  However, Linda sat on Saturday the 17th.  This week she sat on Tuesday because of our Monday dental appointments.  Next week she is going to sit on Tuesday because Monday is Labor Day.  Like I said, she is babysitting on Mondays.

We both left the house early, Linda for Ann Arbor in rush hour traffic and me for Dearborn in rush hour traffic.  As retired people we are not supposed to be in rush hour traffic; it tends to spoil that special, relaxed mood that is the hallmark of the happily retired.  Morning rush hour traffic headed south on US-23 into Ann Arbor is always bad.  Morning rush hour traffic headed into the northwest suburbs of Detroit on I-96 is always worse.  I was late for my 9 AM dental appointment, but only about 10 minutes.  I won’t be making any more 9 AM appointments in that part of town.

When I was done at the dentist in west Dearborn I headed for Ann Arbor, looking forward to spending some quality time with my grand-daughter.  As I was nearing Ann Arbor I got a call from W. W. Williams in, where else, east Dearborn, letting me know that my special order part was in.  Life really is all about timing.  I continued my journey to babyland.  When I walked in the front door, Madeline was sitting up in the middle of the living room playing with Grandma Linda.  She turned, looked at me, and started crying.  You can’t take anything an 8-month old does personally, but it wasn’t quite the reception I was hoping for.  She got herself all worked up.  Linda tried feeding her, but she was not to be consoled, so we took her for a walk in her very spiffy stroller.

We peeled back the sunshade so she could turn her head and look up at me, which she did frequently.  She stayed calm for the whole ride, and even babbled for a while, apparently satisfied that I was at least doing something useful.  Or perhaps I am less scary when viewed upside down?  As soon as we got back to the house, however, she got herself all upset again.  Having no other plans for the afternoon, I made my exit and drove back to Dearborn to get the special order part for our bus.  Linda told me later that Madeline settled down as soon as I left and had a nice lunch.  It won’t always be that way, of course, and it’s not a contest to see who wins.  Eight month olds are spontaneous, irrational beings, and you just have to accept that and work with it as best you can.  That’s why she has parents, aunts, and grandmothers.

By the time Phil was done working on the driveway on Monday evening he had mixed 14 tons (yes, that’s 30,800 pounds) of sandy silt into and on top of the 6 inches of 21AA road gravel that forms the top layer of the pull-through driveway.  What we really needed at that point was a good, soaking rain and starting late Tuesday evening and overnight into Wednesday we got our wish.  The rain helps the fine particles work their way down into the gravel and lock it together to form a dense mass that will not spread out when driven on, even by a heavy vehicle.  At least that’s the theory.  I drove on it again with the car Wednesday morning and it seemed to be packed pretty hard.

The first test of the pull-through driveway came when the UPS truck showed up with our Centramatic dynamic wheel balancers for the bus.  He pulled the truck right up on the pull-through driveway and backed it out with no difficulty.  That was a good omen.  The next test came when Ed & Betty arrived around 1:30 PM in their Tiffin Phaeton motorhome.  They unhooked their car just after pulling onto our street as I needed them to be able to maneuver the RV to get it parked.  They were also going to have to back out when they left and you cannot do that with a car attached to the rear end of the rig.  I met them at the end of the street, led them to our house, and got them positioned to turn into the pull-through driveway.  Betty drove their car and parked it in our regular driveway.  Ed gave me one of their walkie-talkies and I guided him in to the pull-through driveway with voice and hand signals.  Their motorhome tires did not even leave visible tracks!  Finally, success.  Their rig has 6 tires and weights about 33,000 pounds, so the weight on each tire that is similar to our bus, except that our front tires carry a couple of extra thousand pounds each.  Once they were parked and settled they came inside and we quartered a small, round watermelon and had that as a light lunch/snack.

We had the pull-through driveway built for our own use as a convenient place to park the coach while we load/unload it.  We installed an electrical outlet so that we could also run the refrigerator and maintain the batteries while it was parked there.  We plan to eventually have a “bus barn” to store it in, but for now the pull-through drive is where it will live when we are home.  That meant that we might also want to run the air conditioners while it was parked, so we installed a full “50A” RV electrical service since that is what our coach is designed for.  We also had in mind, however, that it would be nice to have RV friends be able to come for a visit and have a level place to park with some nice shade and decent electrical service.  We also have water available, but we do not currently have a way for folks to dump their holding tanks.  We eventually hope to be able to dump ours using a macerator pump connected by a garden hose (reserved for that use only) to a fitting on the first septic tank.  We can’t use a normal gravity drain hose because we have to pump the tank contents uphill to the septic tank lid.  If we get this to work, guests could do the same as long as their rig is equipped with a macerator pump.

Some of the RV clubs we belong to allow members to list their home or place of business as available for no-cost overnight stays.  FMCA calls these “Stop’in Spots” and the SKPs include them in a list of free and low-cost camping.  There is also a program called “Boondockers Welcome” that our friends Butch and Fonda joined.  We are members of Harvest Hosts, but can’t be a host site as we are a residence not a business.

Ed and Betty originally planned to stay two nights, but they are on their way to some temporary work at the Middleton Berry Farm, a pick your own (PYO) operation east of Ortonville, Michigan.  They have worked summers there for some years, usually during the strawberry season.  At one time they owned a strawberry farm in upstate New York and were the secretaries of the National Strawberry Growers Association.  Ed has a PhD in plant pathology and has done extensive extension service work as a plant pathologist.  The owners of Middleton Berry Farm needed Ed & Betty’s assistance ASAP as the raspberries have come in very well this year.

We did our usual first time visit thing and gave them a complete tour of the house, yard, and bus.  We got to see their motorhome as well, and spent some time trying to tune in over-the-air TV stations with their roof antenna.  The only station we could get was FOX out of Detroit, so Ed turned the system off and put the antenna back down.

Ed and Betty are pretty avid cyclists and have a pair of very interesting tricycles.  They are Spike models made by Trident Trikes and purchased from Craig and Linda Current of http://www.boomersbentsandbikes.com in Florida.  It’s a two front, one rear wheel design with disc brakes all around.  The two front wheels steer and the central structural member is hinged to allow the rear wheel to fold up between the two front ones for storage.  They got the 24-speed gearing option.  I test drove Ed’s and Linda test drove Betty’s and we both found them very comfortable.  Linda can’t ride a bicycle because of occasional balance problems related to her loss of hearing in her left ear, so a tricycle or quadcycle is her only viable option.  At this point in my life, I would just as soon have the stability of a 3-wheeler as well.  Another alternative for us would be a side-by-side 2-seater, which might be a lot of fun, but would probably preclude either of us going for a solo ride.

We sat and talked like old friends and enjoyed a bottle of Pinot Grigio.  Eventually Linda and Betty set about making dinner.  Betty had prepared a “vegan cheese” out of cashew nuts and served it on Saltine crackers.  It was very good, and it reminded Linda that she had purchased a vegan cheese book on our last Holistic Holiday At Sea cruise, but had not yet used any of the recipes.  Linda prepared a nice green salad.  The main course was quinoa with mushrooms and Swiss chard.  She served it with a side of fresh corn, cut off the cob.  We opened at bottle of the 2009 Egri Merlot to go with dinner.  This wine is a little sweet for red wine aficionados, but it is one of the few red wines I will drink.  It lacks any hint of tannin, and is full-bodied enough to stand up to the earthy grain/mushroom/greens dishes that Linda often prepares.  After dinner we sat on the back deck for a while and continued to enjoy our Merlot.  The mosquitoes appeared about the same time we were ready for dessert so we went back inside and enjoyed the last of vegan chocolate cake Linda had made on Monday served with fresh strawberries.  It was still as moist as when she baked it and you would not know it was vegan.  We washed it down with the end of the Merlot, which also goes very well with chocolate cake and strawberries.

The rest of the evening was a free- and far-ranging conversation about life, travels, kids, health, careers, and interests.  We looked at maps and old copies of Wilson’s Free And Low Cost Camping directories and talked about getting large rigs into National Forest campgrounds, which Ed and Betty have done successfully on numerous occasions.  Being full-timers, they are by necessity knowledgeable and skilled when it comes to finding places to park for the night.