Still nice weather and motorcycle parts arrive

This has been an exemplary fall here in Mesa this year....  We had another one of those days where the temperatures are exactly perfect...

I was up around 5 AM this morning before it became light outside and the temperature here on our weather station said 52 degrees...  Usually we would have made it down into the 40s after thanksgiving but not yet...

Right before dawn is the coldest part of the day here on the desert.. but I was surprised to see that inside our temperatures were still reading 71...

Usually in the motorhome we will turn the heat on once it gets into the 40s at night and sometimes even in the 50s it will become cool enough to start the electric space heaters...

But we have not had to run the heat here in the house yet for even the coolest nights...  That kind of surprises me as I had no idea how well this new house would do when it got cold outside....

Last year in the first part of January we had several days where it never became warm enough to ride the motorscooter during the day...

I always decided that it needed to be 60 outside to ride without bundling up a whole lot more than I do here in the desert....  Luckily those days are few here even all winter... But it won't be too long now that we will begin to have highs in the upper 60s rather than the upper 70s..

I never worry much about this change because it will only last for about 6 weeks, and we will be right back to the nice spring like days we have been enjoying for the last month...

But I made the mistake this morning of laying back down for another few minutes, once the dawn was over...   and the next thing we knew it was 9 AM...  Of course that sets the day behind... and then I had to read all the blogs...

Sometime around noon I rode the bike over to the motorcycle dealership over by the superstition mall....  This time they had received my gas door hinge from the regional parts office and in only a few minutes I had the piece and a receipt..

I rode around some, but found my way back to Wal Mart...  Here I purchased the ingredients to make a home made pizza..  Back home, I set about that gas door...

It took me a few minutes to study how the spring went onto the door and hinge..  Snapping the hinge onto the door isn't too much, but the metal bow spring has to be compressed with a pliers in order to load the tension.

The trick here is not to break the plastic parts, while only putting the compression on the metal spring...  But since I have done this before, it went together more easily today...

And the Pizza was quite tasty, but takes a rather long time when you start to make the dough from scratch allowing it to rise in the gas oven first...  But I was only reading the android pad reader and enjoying the nice outside temps anyway...

A slower day but enjoyable all the same..

Retired Rod

Changing the Oil in Salt....!

Remember last spring when I was graveling and grousing about having paid $285 for an oil change on the black scooter over at the Suzuki dealership?  That oil change was one of the works type changes...

By the works, I mean they changed all three cases that have oil in them...  The engine holds about three quarts and has a filter that is a spin on type..  The clutch housing holds 360 ml which is about 13 oz.  And the rear end gear holds about 300 ml.. or 10 oz..

That don't seem like much but I found out again today why it costs so much to change so small of a quantity of oil...  The whole bike is covered in plastic shrouds that riders lovingly call tupperware...  It has a variety of  screws bolts and snap in keepers that hold it all together...

After about 45 minutes I managed to get the right side cover off of the bike and the center cover in front of the seat...  What a pain....  But really that wasn't the bad part...

The engine which I change regularly on the other bike drained right out and the filter came off with only some minor cursing as the former mechanic had put it on about three times too tight...  A sign of things to come.....

I managed to get the plug out of the clutch case, but it took a longer breaker bar on a 8 mm stud to get it out....  But filling the case with its 13 oz of oil was slooooow..  In order to put this oil back in you have to use a squeeze bottle and two feet of plastic tubing...  I had to drive over to Home Depot to purchase this and it only came in 20 foot pieces..  Anyone need 18 feet of tubing..?

It took about a half an hour to get this pop bottle size amount of oil back in the case...

But the real problem became that the plugs on the final gear case were stuck shut..  Again they took the 8mm stud and a breaker bar... But I couldn't pull hard enough to break them open....  I was afraid I would round out the stud socket in the aluminum plug..

Then I dawned on the idea of putting a 12 inch crescent wrench on the breaker bar handle..  I popped it by yanking all at once and it snapped loudly as it gave away free..  The drain was even more frozen than the top hole...

It took most of the rest of the afternoon by the time I had that last gear case filled with 80-90W.  Of course then it had to be all put back together and cleaned up......

Now I know why they charged me $285 to change all three chambers... Its a royal pain in the A$$...

Retired Rod

Pigging out .......

We managed to have lunch today at one of my favorites joints here in Mesa today...  When we were here in July, they were remodeling the place and had all the carpet and much of decor on the walls pulled outside being loaded into a dumpster....

And in keeping with my mantra of only one more Hamburger to go, the joint was Fuddrucker's...  They freshly grind their hamburger right before they make it into a patty for you....  And the buns were tall and tender today such that when I cut into one I almost crushed it....

So with hand cut fries on the side and fresh hot melted cheese to dip those fries in, I gobbled the entire meal with lightning speed....  Should a got a bigger one......

But I was trying to be on my best behavior because we had company for this luncheon encounter, and they already knew that my burger addiction was close to popeye's buddy wimpy....

These fine folks came to our house mid morning and enjoyed the early morning sun on our back porch. Since we had not seen them since last February some time when we were on their porch out at Dogpound South, we had a lot of catching up to do.....  These people would be John and Brenda Brown...!!!

Its a long way to Dogpound North in Alberta, where they spend their summers, so we weren't able to go over everything that had happened all summer in only a short few hours, but eventually we had to leave the restaurant...  The wait staff had long ago taken our plates away and we had drank all the tea in the Iced tea canister....

Now the challenge will be to re convene this meeting again as winter progresses...  Perhaps in a location where it is somewhat more central between us....

After the restaurant, we went over to the motorcycle shop, looking for that hinge part that I ordered for my white scooter...  It was supposed to be in town by now, but we didn't have any luck....

I did purchase enough oil and a filter to change the main crankcase of the scooter..  Since this bike was purchased used, I really have no records as to how the machine was maintained...  But when the change oil light came on this past weekend, I think I have no choice but to assume it means exactly what it indicates....

Later tonight, after a stop at Wally World, we came home and made a lasagna from fresh ingredients...  Well fresh other than the sauce which was from a Hunt's big can...  I like their can, better than any of the jarred variety...   We did use real ricotta cheese and lots of mozzarella, along with Italian sausage...  It was rather good too...

So I think we will have to have bread and water tomorrow to make up for a day of good eating here in the East Valley....

Retired Rod

Monday...

I lost myself in the screen of the little android transformer tablet again this morning messing around with features and programs...  Where does the time go when you have your head down like that....

When I came back awake it was almost 1 PM....  So I went outside and began messing around in the yard with the weed whip hoe thing...   I don't know what to call it but it is really like work to run it thru the gravel....  Didn't last at that very long....

But then I decided to take a newer photo of the house for the header photo, as the clouds overhead were fluffy and puffy....  I installed that a few minutes ago after cropping and some very minimal changes to the back lighting...  Its hard to improve on the newer Panasonic camera's out of the box shot...

The cropping makes the picture the right size to fit in the header after its exported down to the 800 pixel size in Picasa....  I get the top to bottom size correct, but since everyone's screen is a different width, I leave it somewhat narrow so that it doesn't oversize the smaller sized monitors...  It filled the tablet about right, when I looked.... so I was done with that...

Otherwise I was out on the scooter again today as it was 79 degrees officially this afternoon, and I was seeing 83 in the sun on the dash of the bike...

This town goes on forever and that is just between here and the East side of Phoenix...  I seldom make it over into anywhere East of Tempe or Scottsdale....  I rode toward downtown Mesa today but never made it past about East 25th street...  Mesa starts numbering streets as west at downtown and goes another 40 blocks that way before you cross into Tempe...  And they have their own numbering system....

In Kansas City all the numbering is off of the KC downtown in Missouri on a North to South basis, so we live about 135 blocks from downtown... Here there are twice that many blocks just getting over to Phoenix...  I can get lost without some help like the GPS or finding an Interstate to get my bearings...

Anyway I was gone about three hours on the bike.....  Then the car needed washed....  But enough of this drivel, nothing more here is worth reporting so onward to tomorrow....!

Retired Rod

Sunday on the scooter

Out for a ride on the scooter this afternoon sent me to the older Wal Mart in downtown Apache Junction..  I had  decided to check out how much a micro sd card would cost.  I thought I would increase the memory in my new tablet computer.  The little speck like chips aren't too pricey until you decide to get a bigger one. And of course that is exactly what I wanted.  A 32 gb micro sd chip was $30, but that brings my memory up to a respectable 48 gb...

Android includes a memory manager in its basic programs which allows moving files and making folders.  I can put the little card in its standard sd adapter and plug it into my laptop to share files. So I can move a large bunch oof pictures all at once without going to the cloud or using my WiFi network. You could also put the card in the camera too, but I haven't tried that..

I thought it was rather amazing that when I signed on to Google with the android tablet, it synchronized itself with my android phone and linux desktop.  It pulled all the apps that were on my phone and loaded them one after another.  And when I downloaded chrome it pulled all my favorites from the cloud which are on the desktop and laptop..  It even knew what page I was on in the book I had been reading.

When you study the structure of the files on the internal memory you quickly recognize that android 4.1 jellybean is actually a version of linux..  That's somewhat funny as folks seem to shy away from linux and wouldn't choose it ever.... But run their phones and tablets not knowing they're  using it.

Even Apple ios is a form of unix.. That's why it is so much more stable than Microsoft Windows.

After I left Walmart I rode the motor scooter out to Tortilla Flat north of Apache Junction . This is a very twisty winding road with a 25 mile an hour speed limit. The road is very bumpy going out through the desert with every expansion joint raised in a hump all along the way. This is very popular with the motorcycle group , as every other vehicle seems to be a bike.

Once parked, the old wooden board walk was full of people checking out the stores and the restaurant . The outdoor bar and grill wasn't too busy but the live music wasn't playing either.  I went in the restaurant which is covered with dollar bills as wallpaper, but there weren't many people in there either. I think everyone was out enjoying the sunny afternoon. I didn't have my camera with me but I used my cell phone to take a couple of shots in the downtown area . Most of the folks had on motorcycle clothes in the pictures.

I can't help wondering if all the bikers intimidate the regular normal people who just stopped to use the bathroom and get an ice cream..  The ride home seemed quicker and shorter but perhaps I wasn't looking around as much. It did make for a nice Sunday afternoon...

By the way I dictated much of this blog entry with the voice recognition app in the android tablet..

Retired Rod

The outdoor bar is a kind of picnic area with live entertainment.  Nice picture of my fingers up on the top...LOL

What did I do?

Its Rick's fault, he had to go out and buy a new tablet!  And of course I couldn't stand it..  Not that I wanted an Apple, no sir I can't go dark side like that... But still I wondered what else I might find on sale  over at Best Buy....

So I was just browsing the adds mind you.  And before I knew it I was on the bike to go look at an Android.  They had two on sale.. an Acer and an Asus..  Asus makes the motherboard in my linux desktop in KC..

These were both $100 off from regular price.  The Asus was the more expensive at $279.  But it had both front and back cameras and a quad core processor. It also had an Nvidia display module.....   Somehow it jumped into my arms for the trip home...

For an avid PC user, this onscreen keyboard is slower than molasses.  I make mistakes in every word and the type ahead is correcting everything wrong.. But I did get chrome downloaded and skype too.  I was having a snit with my email account too.. But that's normal.  We finally decided to change the port number and it worked.  We means the tech at surewest that l had to call.

Loyce told me her Apple cost more so it was much better  , LOL.   Ya like three times..  But she has 64 gb and a verizon aircard, where this is only 16 gb.. and wifi only..    Android phones and tablets can have memory chips plugged in so their size is upgradeable.

So I ended up with another birthday present to keep me occupied, but I'm not getting rid of the laptop any time soon.

Retired Rod

Black Friday without shopping...

I wasn't going to go out shopping on Black Friday and slept in in the morning just to make the point....  But I didn't have any encouragement from Loyce as she said she wasn't about to brave any of the crowds...

But since today was my Birthday and I became old enough for all those entitlements that I have paid into for so many years, I was pleasantly surprised to find my UPS man banging on my door about noon....

This drives Biscuit batty as she goes into her attack dog mode charging for the door in an uncontrollable manner...  Where's the dog whisperer when you need him.....?

Of course Loyce accused me of having ordered another watch which she said I didn't need...   And I knew from instant messaging that my oldest son, and more correctly his wife Mel, had sent me a present...  But I played along and told Loyce that it was about time I ordered another watch since I hadn't received one for a couple of months....

But inside the overnight box was a set of Harley Davidson wide web suspenders and a new pair of nose pickers.....  I know, that's gross, and I didn't even know what those were until some of my lunch brothers had to explain that fingerless gloves were so named....

Mel got it right off the bat when I asked what they thought my gloves were called.... Chris kind of shook his head, but sure enough that made for a good gift....  And this HD accessory paraphernalia  stuff isn't cheap, so I appreciate their thought...

Anyway I eventually broke my rule about not shopping on BF when I went to Lowes...  And they had those drill bits from the other day, but they were popular and I ended up taking the last package from the rack again....  3/32nds must be the size that everyone breaks off....

So that started another project as today I purchased some LED under counter lights...  They had several sizes, but I bought the 18 inch as they fit under the double cabinet on the back wall of the kitchen..

I didn't know if I could make the light work, and it was $27 so I only purchased one.....  It had the brackets and tiny screws as well as daisy chain cable in the package, once I cut the hermetically sealed blast proof packaging off...

It went up in under an hour, and did a nice job so I ended up going back and getting the second light and some tiny screws and washers to route the wiring...

I used some of the little white cable mounts to route the wires up under the cabinets in order that they can't be seen....  I may have to redo some of that, but for now it works rather nicely...

That was the extent of my projects for today and Loyce was true to her word and never left the house......not worth it she said about BF...

Retired Rod

Thanksgiving in East Mesa....

Well I did have a project for today....!  And I set out on the motor scooter to find a better tool...  You see at the Lake I use a metal stand like device that has a pop can inside of it...

This device stands my chicken upright in the gas grill with the pop can or beer can inside....  The can by itself seems to always fall over spilling its contents...

As many times as I have been in Home Depot and Lowes, you would have thought I would have purchased one of these little devices...  But no, didn't think of it......

Wal Mart was open and I did purchase a nice grill brush to clean the grates, but no chicken stands....  Home Depot was closed, and its door alarm was going crazy with mostly everyone ignoring the siren....  And then over to check on Lowes, which was totally shuttered as well....

Oh, well back to the baking pan..  This time I wrapped it in tin foil with taller sides to catch the grease better....  And after an hour and a half the internal temp of the bird was about 180.... more than done....

Loyce had all the trimmings done inside so we feasted outside next to the grill in the newly planted back yard garden...  The temperature outside was a pleasant 79 degrees...   We were in our shorts for the perfect day...

To top it all off, I had a double sized piece of pumpkin pie with whipped cream......  That did me in as I was napping about a half an hour later...

From then on we watched TV and did our small hobbies  fro the rest of the day....

What do you have planned for Black Friday....???

Retired Rod

Happy Thanksgiving...

I never have many people that have the time to stop by the blog on Holidays...  Most everyone is either entertaining or have gone somewhere to be a guest...

But for those that do stop by, Have a Happy Thanksgiving....!

I brought the motorhome over to the house today to wash up the mud that gathered on our trip out of Kansas..  It was raining that first day when we left, but only kind of a drizzle...  Of course that kind of rain seems to loosen the road dirt and grit depositing it on your vehicle...

But the primary thing that needed washed today was the roof...  It was really dirty up there when I was working on the King Dome last week and since it still needs to be sealed with that special rubber it needs cleaned.

Once started, I worked most of the day soaping and scrubbing...  The Arizona water causes streaks badly, so it looks almost as bad as when I started...  But it isn't dirt now but rather water spotting...

As the sun was almost completely set tonight, I was over in the storage lot parking the coach in its spot and trading it for the car.  

Perhaps on Friday I will be able to finish the caulking project on the satellite dome..   By then things will be completely dry, but I will need to use some alcohol on the roof to finish the cleaning process.

I also found out with the computer that folks use super glue as a loctite formula when they want to set screws into plastic...  I am thinking that I need to take the dome back apart and set the screws on the brackets with the glue....  They kept talking about CA glue, which I found out is short for Cyanoacrylate but since no one can spell that, they just call it CA for short....

That's a project for the days after thanksgiving, but for now I had better use Thursday as a day of rest......

Retired Rod

Finding another hinge and more on the Rx

I don't always get the schedule widget set correctly to post the blogs at exactly midnight...  Sometimes it is after midnight when I publish so the widget isn't in need of programming....

Well last night I somehow scheduled the blog to post a week from now at midnight.....  So this morning at about 11 AM I happened to look at the blog, only to find that it hadn't posted....  Grumble grumble......

So I just changed the schedule to right away and posted it.  But by then the day was about half over...

If you read the blog this fall about me purchasing and fixing the fuel door on the black scooter back in Kansas, this will be a repeat....  Because as I was trying to fill up the white scooter over on Ironwood street a couple of days ago, the pump wouldn't take keyboard entries..  Press the buttons all you want but nothing registered...

So I had to move the bike over to the next pump..  with the cap off, and the fuel door was open.......   And sure enough when I got back off the bike I drug my leg over the open door...  Only to knock it off to the ground and break the little pegs that make up the hinge...  Exact same parts as before....

Dang, wouldn't you think I would learn........?   And even after picking up the broken pieces, the next pump wouldn't let me enter my zip code with its keyboard either...  So no gas and a broken fuel door.....!

My Suzuki dealer in Kansas had the little hinge thingy on hand, but not out here in Arizona...  Called several places this morning waiting in line on the phone until they came back to me, just to be told,   NOPE don't stock that one....

Glad I wasn't driving around to these dealers....  But then when I tried to order the part with the online order program, they wouldn't let me ship the piece to anywhere other than my billing address....  What...?

Yep, has to go to the credit card address and no place else.....  That would be back to Kansas....  Dang rules.....  So I had to wait in line on the phone again to get the dealer here in Mesa to order the piece for me, and be shipped to his facility...  Takes over a week with Thanksgiving in the middle..  But at least he took the credit card over the phone...

After spending a lot of time on the phone, I decided to go back over to Target and get those pills....  Rode the bike over there as it was 84 outside by now...  Arrived at 1:35 only to find that the pharmacy was closed and shuttered completely...  No sign, no nothing...  I read the hours on the wall and yes it should be open........

I was reading everything in sight, until I happened on some really small print that said if only one pharmacist was on duty the pharmacy would be closed from 1:30 until 2:00 for lunch....

So now what?  I walked around a bit, but noticed they had a Pizza Hut lunch counter up in the front of the store...  Well hey...  I can go to lunch too...  So with a pepperoni pan pizza and a small drink I was busy chowing down...  Had the pop fountain right behind me to make that small pop go a bit farther as well........

About the time I was tossing the box and napkins, the watch said it was 2PM...  But the people didn't come back right at 2, so I had to sit out front and wait some more....

But the joy of this whole experience was that Target and the new part D drug coverage filled the entire 60 pill prescription...  The Doctor had written the script for 2 pills a day for ninety days...   The pills are $7 each $1,260...  Of course the old insurance company wouldn't fill it...  They said I only needed one pill a day and gave me 30 pills...  Of course they know more than the Doctor....

I went back at the end of the first month and they allowed another 30 pills...  But when Target transferred the script, they saw the 2  pills a day order so they filled it the way it was written, now sending it into medicare and AARP United Health Care Supplemental...  The bill was $410..  for 60.....  Copay $39.......

Wow!  I'm now used to only taking one pill a day so perhaps this will be a 2 month supply.....  But remember I am now $410 closer to that $2,930 doughnut hole limit... At that rate I'll be paying on my own by June...

As I left the parking lot, I started to turn North from Target to go to Lowes up on Ellsworth, but it was such a nice day in the mid 80s with wall to wall sun and very little wind that I went South...

I rode all the way out to the foot of the San Tan mountains...  Which is about half way to Tucson by the back way...  The road curves off to the East around the mountain, but I never turned back to the South...  I wandered thru the countryside down there mostly without a plan as to where I was...  Too nice to care....

Eventually I stopped and filled the gas tank at a Quick Trip and then headed back North...  Ended up on Ironwood Road and came back into the South end of Apache Junction....

Ironwood really rolls coming into town, so we were doing almost 70, which is way more than the speed limit..  But I had big trucks all around me, so I just kept up with the traffic...

Never did get back over to the Lowes to find out about the little drill bits or a tub of drywall patch...  But hey, that's what tomorrow will be for...!

Retired Rod

Lighting the garage...

I wanted a fluorescent light over my work bench since I built it last summer, but it didn't have as much priority as the other things around here that needed fixed...

But today I decided about noon that it had come to the top of the list...  Off to Home Depot...!  They had several designs and I had to ask the young salesman which one he thought was best...  He liked the one with the smaller newer tubes in it.... T-8s..  Said they put out as much light but used less power....  I can't verify that by looking at the internet specs but hey he sold it to me...  I guess the T-8s are 32 watts and the T-12s are 40..




Any way after getting the bulbs and the hooks to put in the ceiling and then a  timer to turn the thing on and off, a $20 fixture became over $40...

But they didn't have some of the little drill bits I was breaking off yesterday, so I ended up going to Lowes as well...  They had more but not all of the bits I was looking for...  Promised me to have them tomorrow...

Once back home, I set about finding the studs in the ceiling..  Looking at pictures taken before the drywall was put up, I knew which way they ran but not how far apart they were...  But using the stud finder I thought I had it..  Wrong...

I drilled about 4 holes before I found it...  Note to self, need drywall compound to fill holes...!

With the light up and the timer programmed and plugged in, the whole deal ran nicely...  The fluorescent bulbs only pull 32 watts each, so I run the light from dawn to dusk or later as that way the garage always has light in it when you open the door..  Either the house door or the big door, no fumbling for switches...  I don't know how much electricity that costs me annually but it couldn't be much...

And then I needed a prescription filled, and since I am now medicare, I had to look up where this should be completed...  I was using Wal Mart, but of course the AARP United Health Care folks don't contract with them as a primary provider...

Now that's a pain because that means the script needs to be transferred...  And I wanted something that was nation wide, so I picked Target...  They're all over the place...  So with a short scooter ride, I was over at a supercenter about 5 miles away...

The pharmacist didn't seem to know how the script would transfer or how much it would cost...  She wanted to get me in her system and then get the transfer from Wal Mart... Then she would know the rest....  Of course by then, I would be committed to use them no matter what it cost...

And way late tonight I got a transcribed email from a missed call message that it was all done and to go pick it up...  It was even cheaper than the last plan,  until I hit the doughnut hole...  I think that's $2900 this year or something like that...

So I will get to ride the scooter back over there in the morning and pick the script up...  But at least the garage is lit up!!  Maybe I can stop by the Lowes and get some of those broken drill bits..  See if their promise to get them overnight is worthy...

I guess things are a little slow around here..... LOL

Retired Rod

EIFS and a cable wire...

EIFS...  That's Exterior Insulation Finish System...  Or synthetic stucco....  That's what we have on the outside of our house down here in Arizona.. So, whats that got to do with anything...?

Back in the Midwest where cable wires are routinely attached to the lower outside of your home and then punched thru the wall to appear at that magical point right behind your TV it all seems simple....  And I was naive enough to think I was going to hang the wire in the same fashion here.

But EIFS is a layer of black sealing paper with styrofoam nailed over it..  Then a wire screen fastened over the whole thing and two layers of concrete like finish...  The house is essentially styrofoam with concrete on it...

If you bang into it with almost anything the foam will just mash or break...  The concrete is fairly firm until it cracks...but doesn't have much strength once broken...  Maybe about like the drywall on the inside..

The fellows at the lumber yard told me to use wall anchors like you would on the inside to hang a picture...  But, any place that the wall has a hole punched in it allows moisture to get behind the EIFS and then the wall rots.. That doesn't seem to be much of a problem here in the desert, until we get those monsoon rains of late summer...

So how was I going to hang this wire on the bottom outside of the stucco panel?  The more I learned, the more the whole thing looks to be a problem...  In homes I have built before, the contractor allowed me to install my own wiring before the walls were finished, but not here...  You are not supposed to go on the job site at all, unless accompanied with one of their people..

Besides I was in Kansas when all of this construction was taking place...

But from crawling on the ground I learned that the styrofoam had a metal flashing running around the bottom of the wall next to the concrete base slab..    Oh, the base slab is post tensioned concrete with wires running thru it under extreme pressure, so drilling that is taboo as well...  It could explode if drilled..

What I did today was to drill up into the flashing metal from underneath and put a 2 inch screw up into the substrate under the styrofoam with a little cable clamp around the wire...  I added a dab of construction adheasive to glue the thing together as well...

Trouble was that my drill didn't fit up under there so I was drilling at an angle and breaking drill bits off about two to each hole...  I finally decided to use a self tapping screw with the head cut off as a drill bit...  It never broke again..

I had to run this wire about 50 feet putting a screw and cable clamp about every three feet...  This took me a long long time..  I am old and getting down on the ground to drill all these is rather slow.. The project took most of the day....

Reader Rick Rousseau suggested the cable wall thru washers, and I had found them at the Home Depot and had a package..  And as well I had the old work cable box to put into the inside of the house...  I found the stud in the wall with a  electronic stud finder and measured and cut that hole with a drywall hand knife..

Then using a long masonry bit I drilled from the inside of the hole to the outside of the wall...  The hole was soo small outside that I had to search for quite a while to even find it..  It was lost in the swirls of finish coat masonry..

Eventually late in the afternoon, I had the cable mounted and caulked and the finish plate installed in the inside room...  It just looks like another plate on the wall....

So the project was finally done......  Surely the satellite installers have a better way of doing this job, but with back yards inside of concrete walls here I didn't want to go poking around in others properties to see how it was done......

I did know that mounting the dish on the side of the EIFS clad house was not going to be a good solution, so that was why I used a pipe in the ground in the first place...

Retired Rod

More on the Satellite Dish and Steak...

Had one of those nights when you wake up at three AM and wonder why you aren't sleeping...  But then you go back to sleep about 5 AM and sleep until 9...  That always messes up the day for me...

Seems like everything was well behind where the clock said the time was, so after reading blogs and getting the day going, it was noon...  But I did get after that satellite dish...

It wasn't all bad that it was afternoon as just as I had predicted the concrete didn't seem dry to look at at all..  So as I was disassembling the dish from my portable tripod and moving it to the more permanent pipe in the ground I was being rather careful not to jar things too heavily...

Again and like usual I had to scan the sky repeatedly looking for the bird..  I had the exact angle of the birds location etched into the rocks of the ground, but still didn't find it...  I purchased a locator out in Quartzsite a number of years ago and I was using it in the coax as a sensor..

These things have a meter and a beeper...  When you get onto the signal the beeper sounds..  And as you center the dish on the signal it beeps louder until you go to far and then it quiets again..

Finally I found the bird as it was just a tad back West from where I was aiming..  And the new pole is vertical where the tripod was angled with the ground, so the elevation was off a bit too...

I was also running back into the house looking at the screen that shows all the transponders and the percentage of signal on each one..  When I was done, I had several that were reading all 100 percent...

I started to run the wire, but didn't like the fastener idea I had so I came back inside to think about it some more...  That caused a trip to Home Depot again where I purchased more hardware...

As I was coming back home, I decided that we needed a nice dinner as it was Saturday night..  so Wal Mart loomed for the fixings for a steak dinner...

Needless to say that was the end of the satellite dish project for the day... But the new gas grill worked quite nicely, so it was a good day in the end...

Retired Rod

Setting up a Satellite Dish

All I was trying to do was dig a hole and put a antenna mast in it in concrete.  This is to be the support for my direct TV dish....  And at times the top could have a small Ham Radio antenna mounted on top of it...

I was driving all over the place looking for a 10 foot long mast to put into this hole, but never could find one locally...  So back to the original idea of two five footers placed inside of each other....

The problem that this presents, it that the joint between the two mast pipes is not completely solid and may allow the dish to wobble some in the wind.....  Will that cause the loss of the signal...?

So anyway I purchased the two pipes and a sack of sakrete.. over at Home Depot...  After coming home and raking back the rock to bare the hard back yard red clay, I realized just how rock like this has become...

It was under water last summer which must have turned it into concrete..  That's when I realized my level was over in the motorhome......  So I set out on the scooter to go get it..

It took over an hour to get back to the house...  By then the afternoon was becoming long...  The ground was just as hard and I didn't have the right plan....  I dug with the spade but didn't make much headway...

Finally in desperation I drove a big screw driver down into the clay with a hammer...  That started to break up the rock hard soil...   After about an hour and a half I had a hole eighteen inches deep..

So the concrete mix and new pipe became my new dish support...  And I was able to use the level to get it straight up and down as well...  And in the nick of time because the sun was well over the hill as I was washing out the buckets and tools...

No more concrete than is in a one sack hole, I will have to be really careful not to jar or break it..  At least for a couple of days anyway... Its in the ground and not on top of the ground so the water can't dry out.  And that will take a bit longer than flat work...

All of this will be under ground, so after I rake the rock ground cover back over the area, it will look like a pipe coming up out of the rocks...

Tomorrow I will need to work on the entrance into the wall of our TV room...  The cable people just drill a hole and caulk it with a dab of silicone but I have purchased some plastic grommets that will dress things up a bit.

Again these plans are not tested and I haven't done this job over and over like the pros so what could go wrong......? LOL  That is why amateur jobs are just that amateur...!!

But all of this was a much better day than yesterday as I had another mouth full of Novacane.. I wasn't able to do anything other than sit here in my chair and watch TV for the afternoon..  But luckily that should be the last of my visits to the dentist for several months...  Of course stuff can break and that is true with dental work too...

Retired Rod

Inside pictures...

I was requested to put some inside pictures on the blog...  As long term readers will recognize, these are pictures from last summer when we were working to get the basics complete..  So you will have seen them before here on the blog...

Loyce loves her washers as she will do a little laundry every day...  That is why boondocking isn't in the cards much for us... We are used to utilities and seldom choose to go without them..

The bushes and trees have grown over the summer so I will have to go get some current pictures, once I get things trimmed and back under control..

The great room has the living area in the back and the kitchen in the front.

I just turned around and took this next shot from almost the same spot as above...

We have since added some bedroom furniture so that will have to be re pictured one of these days...

And we brought a headboard for the guest bedroom, so this picture is old and doesn't show it...

I usually sneak around when we are going to have some company over and take pictures...  Loyce is quite particular as to what mess I might be showing on the blog...  If anything is out of place that picture is to be omitted ....  LOL..

Since today is a dentist day that will leave me not wanting to be a blogger this evening, these older pictures will have to suffice for now....  But I promise to take some newer pictures as we get stuff around and current...

Retired Rod

A beautiful Wednesday...

We just hung around this morning, as I was still feeling the effects from being at the dentist yesterday....  They redid a couple of fillings that were done years ago...  Removing the old silver and replacing it...

So sleep didn't come too easy last night... and after breakfast I slipped back off for a nap....  Didn't intend to, but you know how that goes...

Anyway by mid afternoon I was out with the Toyota car looking for an oil change for it...  It had been over a year since it had been changed so you know how I am about keeping fresh oil in cars....

But I am also cheap, so I went over to the Signal Butte Wal Mart to get the work done....  And there was a line, so I had to hang around..  It finally was done and I went for parts and pieces over at Home Depot...

I am thinking about setting a pole in the ground to mount a satellite dish on more permanently..  But after looking in a couple of different stores, I was only able to find a 5 foot long piece of TV mast...  That won't be long enough.  If 2 1/2 feet is under ground that won't hold the dish up high enough to see over the neighbor's roof...

Late in the day, I decided that the Camry needed a bath, so it was back up to the car wash across the street from the Wal Mart...  I just got the econo wash, which meant that I had to come home and do the rest of the cleaning myself....  It got dark on that project...

Tomorrow it is back over to the dentist to finish what we started yesterday...  It was late in the day Tuesday when we started, so it became closing time before they finished with me.....  And that was OK, as I am not sure I could have stood the whole deal at once....

More later....

Retired Rod

Anticipation...

I spent most of the morning working on some more of the weed problem here in the back yard...  This was more to keep my mind busy so I wouldn't think about my afternoon chore...

Several years ago when we were here in Mesa, I needed some dental work and took a chance on using a local dentist over in the center of town by the Mesa Spirit RV park where we used to stay..  The fellow turned out to be excellent and has become my dentist.

So knowing that I would be coming back here again this year I made an appointment to get some additional work done....  And this afternoon was the day....

Going to the dentist is not something I relish much, so that is why I had to keep my mind off of it all morning...

Loyce wasn't much help as she had scheduled Biscuit for a hair cut and a bath at a local shop, that we also like more than the shop we use in KC... I had better keep that quiet though as it would be just my luck that the lady in KC would be a reader....

So Biscuit went to her appointment and I went to mine...  Biscuit is acting all squirrelly because of her extreme loss of fur, and I am acting the same way due to the effects of novacane or what ever they use now days to get you thru dental procedures...

As the stuff wears off, it causes a kind of burning phantom pain that you just have to live thru....  I think the worst of it is now over for tonight, but I have to go back again later in the week, so maybe that one won't be as bad.....  Uh, fat chance.........

Retired Rod

It works!!

We slowed things down here a bunch today, as I was out on the White Scooter that I call Salt...  It has a lot fewer miles on it than the black one back in KC and runs much tighter...  They are both the same year...

I went over to the motorhome and fired up the genny and set the King Dome in motion trying to find its satellite...  It came right on and began its sweeping of the sky while I held my breath.........

But in its third pass of the sky it stopped and did some little short zip zips and stopped with the light on solid....  Just like that it worked beautifully..  Whewwwwwwww!

I shut everything down and declared that the dome must have been loose for quite some time as we haven't found the bird that fast for several years..    So now it is up to me to re seal all the brackets...

Mid afternoon, I headed out on the scoot for Camping World to get some of the rubber sealer for the roof..  And they had just what I was looking for too, but since it said RV on the tube it was $9.95 ...

I only purchased one tube and we will see how that goes.  I will have to dig out some more of the old stuff and then clean the roof where the sealer goes on...  That will require a hose and a bucket of soap...  So on a warmer day we will need to bring the rig back here to the house...

It was about 15 miles each way over to CW so the ride took more of the afternoon than I originally thought...  It was dark once I was back home..  I rode the city streets rather than use the superstition freeway..  That thing is 5 lanes wide and rolls like crazy...  While I am used to the highway and ride the interstate in Kansas, Arizona is another ball game all together...

We reached 72 degrees for a few hours this afternoon, which was a lot better than the weekend...  Perhaps the warm up is under way...  The sun is much hotter down here than in Kansas so just being out in it is quite pleasant even if the temps aren't all that warm...

Retired Rod

Nailing that King Dome down....

The first paragraph of a blog seems to be the most important thing you can write on these blogger blogs...  Since they are including them as a snippet of what will follow if you select to read the rest from your follower dashboard...

I am learning that unless I start with something really interesting folks that are in a hurry don't always click on thru to the blog... So a blog like yesterday where I talked about the weather and snow on the mountains under a title of Saturday projects doesn't get many hits...

But a blog like what's that banging? instantly causes folks to click on thru to find out what I am talking about.....  Maybe I should write the first paragraph last after I finish the body of the blog.......

So while on the topic of the satellite dome that was banging on the way into Mesa, I managed to convince myself to climb back up there and work on it this afternoon...

All of the stainless steel brackets were still on the roof as I investigated things more carefully today...  They were embedded in big puddles of hardened rubber sealant.. So with an exacto knife and a scraper I managed to cut them out of the globs...

The screws that were threaded into the bottom of the dome were still in the brackets as well... They couldn't fall out because their heads were against the fiberglass roof...  So slowly I carefully scraped and and cut away some of the material until the brackets came free..

I expected the holes to be stripped in the plastic bottom of the dome, but they weren't....  I was able to thread the screws thru the brackets and tighten them with a sharp pointed phillips driver.  Not a one of them seemed reamed out as they all came tight...

The brackets in turn are held to  secondary metal brackets screwed into the roof....  I didn't dig all of the sealant out over those brackets, but they seem to still be fast to the roof...  A single 7/16ths bolt and nut held the brackets together..

This process took a couple of hours climbing up and down the ladder on both sides of the coach, but eventually the whole deal was bolted back into place..  This will have to be resealed again, and I didn't have a tube of the proper stuff, so the project came to a halt..

But as the sun went down, we were able to drive the motorhome back over to storage tonight, leaving our street back empty again...  Like our covenants say it is supposed to be.....

I'm not sure how I feel about this repair, because if the screws came loose over time once before, they will more than likely come out again... even though I twisted them as tight as I possibly could without stripping the plastic out that the screws thread into...  Locktite won't help with metal into plastic....

And once I pot the whole deal again in rubber roof sealant, you can't buzz up there and test how tight things are..  This whole deal seems to be a bad design...  I may have to think about it for a while.....  Suggestions....?

Other projects today included more tree pruning...  That would be no trouble at all in the Midwest, but here in the desert, all trees come with thorns...  Thorns that stick right thru leather gloves....  So armed with some small clippers and my hack saw....  Ya, I need more tools here that I own in Kansas, but you can't bring the whole house...

I also dug out some of that nasty ground cover weed that is doing my rock landscaping over... That gets old rather quick, so about a half hour a day is all I'm able to do....  If I stay at it for days.....

Am I ever stiff tonight from climbing that ladder repeatedly.....!

Retired Rod

Saturday's Projects...

Today returned again as a rather cool day...  Not with the snow on the far away mountains as it only rained here the night before....  We didn't have much in the house for breakfast so before we could eat, I was off to Wal Mart...

It seemed like everyone in the entire valley must shop on Saturday morning at the Signal Butte Wal Mart because parking was jammed with cars stretching clear out to the edges of the lot...

I just went for eggs and bread, but came home with much more...  Its like that with Wal Mart....

After breakfast Loyce began working on the weed problem we have in the yard... Our new rocks are covered with a ground covering creeping weed that grows outward from each watering drip point.....  The stuff is nasty...

So I headed to Home Depot so get a cutter like tool to drag thru the rocks severing the connection of the weeds....  Then a big bottle of spray  and a sprayer to cover the ground as pre emergence killer....

But while there, I noticed that a small Weber gas grill was on clearance..  We never did purchase one last summer as they seemed priced quite high in the middle of the summer season....

So that big box found its way into the back of my SUV...  And there went the rest of my day... These grills just take forever to assemble...  Loyce did more weeds and I did some in the front yard too, but eventually it was putting bolts in hole A and nuts on studs C.....

I had brought a spare full LP tank with us in the trailer, knowing that we would be acquiring this grill, but it was several years old sitting at the KC house waiting its turn to be used...

But when I connected it to the grill, it leaked in the spin on connection... Some soapy water proved it was leaking rather badly...  I called Weber's hot line thinking I had a bad regulator hose....

Of course they have seen everything and explained that the tank more than likely had bad rubber seals in its top valve...  That rubber part did look old, once I had the tank tipped over on its side....

So I took a perfectly full new looking tank back over to that same very busy Wal Mart, and traded it for another new full tank....  I even told the fellow that the old tank was full but had a bad valve.  He said it wouldn't matter as they would just take it back along with all the other empty ones...

So for supper tonight we bar be cued a large chicken in the new grill...  I placed it on a small steel baking pan and set it in the center part of the grill between the burners and let it go for an hour and a half.... Umm, fresh Qued chicken!!

We again never even looked at the motorhome sitting out in front of the house today....  I will have to re do the ties on the Dome tomorrow...  But I said that yesterday....!  But it will need to go to a repair shop on Monday so maybe it will be more urgent....

Tonight is to be very cold again, almost freezing in the outlying areas, so not putting the coach in storage may help protect it, as it no longer is winterized....  Will I have to do that again?

Retired Rod

Unloading the trailer......

We pulled the trailer back out here this time as we purchased a couple of items of furniture and brought more from home as well...  And the big job number one today was to empty the trailer...

It was backed up to the garage door last night, but the driveways here in suburbia, are so darned short that the car was still out in the street...  But since the motorhome was parked along the street as well the car didn't reach beyond the coach...  So I just left it that way..

Some of the boxes of furniture were quite heavy but Loyce and I managed to get the stuff unloaded with the two furniture dollies that we brought along for that task...  We grunted and groaned but no one was listening...

That took most of the day, except for the hour or so that I fell asleep in the recliner when I only intended to just sit a spell...  So then everything was pushed to late that should have been done earlier...

I took a big pile of cardboard to the recycle center but then learned that they didn't take styrofoam..   So now the trailer has a bunch of it inside without me having any idea what to do with it...

But as the day was getting dark, I parked the trailer over in the storage lot just to get it away from the driveway...  But the motorhome is still out in front....  Someone will complain for sure....

The weather that I was running from yesterday has come into the North part of Arizona and caused nasty winds all down the I 40 corridor...  One place had a gust of 122 mph....  That doesn't seem right, that's a hurricane force wind...  But I saw it on two different channels...

And the cold rain has arrived here tonight as it is only 60 degrees now and will be colder by morning...  I was watching the roof of the motorhome to see if we have any leakage from the King Dome problem, but didn't see anything...  I still need to revamp the tie down arrangement before I move it very far....

Storage is only about 5 miles away, but there are no tools and such once it gets there...  I never did call Camping World...  Not much chance of getting in on a Friday, I reasoned...

It's only 10:30 here, but it is 11:30 back home and we never got used to the time change so my body thinks its 12:30.... Yawn.........!

Snow down to 4,000 ft which should cap the tops of the Superstition Mountains to our East.....  They can be very pretty that way, but it always makes things here seem so cold....

I gotta go to bed......

Retired Rod

What's that banging?

It seemed like a normal day as we drove from Gallup, Nm on into Arizona on I 40.  Traffic wasn't too bad, just busy....  We grabbed a soda and used the bathroom at Mc Donalds in Holbrook...

We decided to eat some lunch down in Payson as we took the two lane road South...  About 8 miles from Payson after going over the 7,600 ft high mountain ridge, I began to hear some banging...  Up on the roof above my head...

I tried to radio Loyce, but her radio volume was knocked off by Biscuit....  She doesn't sit still, and we gave up on crating her a year ago because you can't stand her whining for hours on end...

I went slower and it still banged...  Then I heard a rip.... like tearing canvass.....    I pulled over and stopped to find my King Dome satellite box standing up on its side only hooked by one bracket that was almost torn loose as well...

I had a big ladder in the trailer, so it was leaned up against the side of the coach...   I couldn't get the wiring harness loose to take the whole deal off the roof, so I decided to use some rope and tie it down....

Trouble is that its perfectly round and domed..  There is absolutely  nothing to tie to...  I tried to make a rope basket to put over it, but I didn't have enough rope....

I thought I had it but after driving into Payson Loyce radioed that it was standing up again...  Now I was in a shopping center parking lot where I had to run over several curbs to get in....

This time I took one of the motorcycle straps and tied it around the dome with the ratchet clamp drawing it so tight it bent the plastic....  Then with the ropes, I tied it to the door handle on the drivers side and the front passenger mirror...

The strap itself was tied to the crank up TV antenna....  It still wasn't tight up there and rattled if I drove over 40 mph..  Still 87 miles away from home and at 3:30 PM we started out at 35mph...  It was dark as we pulled up in front of the house.....

As I looked up at the tie job when we parked, you can see that the strap is barely around the dome, but somehow it held up there as we drove down the mountain...  Payson is at 5,500 ft and we are at about 1,400 here in East Mesa....

We have spent the rest of the night unloading stuff from the coach..  Trip after trip....  We never did get the coach over to storage...  Might have to see about re tying the dome before we leave again....

This dome is about $1,200 to replace, so I am crossing my fingers that parts can be ordered...  The brackets seem completely broken off........

We have a camping world here, so perhaps that is where I will start....

Retired Rod

400 miles for us today.....

Another on the road day is now behind us, as we are in the USA Campground in Gallup, New Mexico...  We are now 270 miles from the house in East Mesa...

The big wheels were rolling about 10 AM this morning and the winds had now become Southerly right across all those cattle confinements South of town.... Pheewww......

We never even slowed as we zoomed thru the lots...  One breaths rather shallow as he passes right thru these places....  But in only 40 minutes we were crossing into New Mexico changing our watches to Mountain time...

Often times we stop for fuel or Mc Donalds in Tucumcari, but the timing was wrong and I was only missing about 10 gallons from the diesel tank...

And hour later we were passing Santa Rosa, and Loyce radioed that she wanted to stop at the Micky D's there...  They have a big truck parking lot, so that works well and we spent almost an hour there...

We hit it hard up over the high ground at Clines Corner's and then down the hill into Albuquerque...  It was about 2 PM and the traffic hadn't started for evening drive yet...  We blew right thru at normal highway speeds..

Another half hour stop at Flying J on the West side of town where we picked up 42 more gallons of $3.95 fuel....  Loyce fueled the car over in the car lanes at the same time...

We decided to head on West at about 3 PM....  Gallup is another 130 miles and on the West edge of New Mexico...  We arrived just as the sun was almost gone to the West....  Darkness was complete once we were registered...  $31...  Fairly normal...

It took a flashlight to hook up the utilities, and it is to be 26 degrees here before morning....   This park is at 6500 ft which always makes Gallup a cold stop in the winter....

And I can hear you all saying why such a long day...?  Over 400 miles.... But if you check the weather forecast for Gallup and up over the mountain starting Friday and this weekend, you will learn that snow is in the future....

So, like my normal luck we are ducking nasty weather going up over the mountain, and expect rain and 50s once we get to Mesa..  Warmer weather might be coming back by next week...

Sandy suggests we find another route, and we have used several other routes before, they are all longer but with the snow in the weather forecast we decided to make it quick and as short as possible...

This RV park is right off the West end of the local airport so planes will fly over with their wheels skimming the tree tops, but there is not much traffic after dark..  But the trains run right along the North side of old route 66, which is the road past the front of the park...  Wooo, Wooo!

This is about as long as we ever want to drive in one day...

Retired Rod

Texas, well the corner of it any way........

We didn't get up too early, but like usual I was awake from the middle of the night until early morning when I fell back to sleep...   Seems like I wake up and can't get back to sleep many nights....

But when we finally did wake up again, we were up and at it rather quickly..  A quicky breakfast and we were folding in the slides...  The campground was right at the convergence of three interstates I 35 and I 135 and I 235 and we were connected to the highway without much in town driving...

But the US 54 highway to the West of Wichita seems slow...  The traffic is bad and the road has a bunch of stoplights...  Eventually we reached Pratt, and I stopped to top off the diesel tank with about 25 gallons...  Also a pit stop break as well...

By then it was afternoon and we drove on thru Greensburg and almost to Meade, but just before you get there, Kansas has  a rest stop out on a corner where the road turns mostly Southwest...  We usually stop at this little stop, and today it was lunch time...  The sun was shining brightly but the wind was fairly strong.. But warm in the low 70s...  The sandwich was good, but the flies were overwhelming...

We pressed on thru Liberal and past the campground that we sometimes stay at just North of town....  It was only 3PM so we felt we had to move along...

Usually we put our head down and buzz right across the pan handle of Oklahoma, and this afternoon we were trying to make it into Texas before we quit..  So we never stopped in Oklahoma at all....

Once into Texas, we usually stop at Stratford, so not to change tradition I stopped at the usual truck stop where I know the motorhome fits into the fuel stations...  This particular station does not charge extra for credit card diesel and it was $3.89...  That has been about average since we left KC...

So tonight we pulled into the Coral RV Park in Dalhart, Texas..  This place is largely a gravel parking lot with telephone poles to mark out the camping spots..  The wires are overhead for the electric and cable tv....

There is nothing fancy here but they have sealed the blacktop during the day today, so we had to stay off of it when we parked...  Tonight the price is $20, so averaging that out with last nights bigger price we come in about average for the two days..

It was getting dark as I was hooking up the services so we were off of the road about the right time..

We have been listening to the trains as they blow their horns every few minutes here as this is a major crossing of tracks in two directions..  And for those that remember Dalhart for its large numbers of stock yards and associated smells, we were pleasantly rewarded with winds from the North tonight, which makes the normal smells blow away from town........!

This is the 500 mile mark of the 1,175 miles to our goal of East Mesa...  Still it seemed slow today because we have driven it too many times...

Retired Rod

Foggy drizzle, must be time to leave....

We got up this morning and as it was turning light outside, I could see the misty rain coming down...  Couldn't tell if it was a fog, or just really fine rain...

I had a lot of the stuff in the motorhome from yesterday, but Loyce had another of those pesky appointments...  Right before lunch..  And we still had that pink stuff in the water system...

It was about 45 degrees outside but I made a management decision and strung out the garden hose to the water inlet on the coach...  Wash er out!  The ground was already wet so no one was really the wiser..  I cracked the gray water drain  a little so the tank would be open and ran the water at full tilt from the inside faucets...

It takes quite a while to run all that red out of the water lines when you have a water filter full of the stuff.....  Eventually I filled the fresh water tank, and ran clear water thru the pump and out of the outside shower...

I also filled up the water heater once the clear water had washed everything...  We generally don't drink the water for a while anyway so I never hooked up the ice maker...

Well Loyce came back about 12:30 and we tossed in the last few items and called it good...  By now it looked like a white out of misty rain, but we have about 10 miles of slow county road to get over to the interstate..

What is it that Al says,......  Ya Hooie Louiee!!! Begin winter trip 12-13!! We are a rollin....  I usually scream this as we pull on to the interstate headed South...

By now it was after 1PM... Gonna make for a short day....!

We stayed right on the Interstate even though it turns to a toll road at Emporia...  It cost us $10.25 for both vehicles to drive down to Wichita..

By our arrival at about 5 in the afternoon, the clouds had broken some into just overcast behind us but with the setting sun shining under them..

We are staying at the Air Capitol RV park in the South end of Wichita... This was an old RV park, that some nice folks purchased and remodeled...  And by remodeled I mean they concreted the entire place...

But they left really nice grass plots between the pull thru sites..  Also there is a completely new bath house building but we didn't go up and look at it...  Maybe tomorrow...  Well I was in it when I paid the rather pricey new park fee....  Even with the good sam discount it was $44 after tax....

There are a lot of rigs here that appear to be spending long periods of time, but there is nothing junky around here...  I don't think they will allow that ....  Some of the rigs back in the back in site lots are older, but not junky or rusty or anything...

We didn't quite drive 200 miles today but perhaps we will make it a little farther tomorrow......  But then this isn't a race.....

Retired Rod     Be sure and Vote!

Cracker Barrel makes me forget about the time change.

So here I sit on the time change Sunday night looking at my watch wondering why it isn't late when it seems like it should be......?  As you all know, we had to change our watch last night in the middle of the night and when we got up this morning we weren't supposed to notice it...

And really it wasn't too bad this morning as I was getting ready to go have breakfast with my DIL and oldest Son at the Cracker Barrel....  Sun was out bright and I changed a few watches to the new time....  And the clock on the dresser and the portable desk travel clock....

Of course I have about thirty watches or so that need to be changed.... but some or many of them are windup mechanical watches and they run down when they are not worn so they have the wrong time on them anyway....  But the battery driven watches need to be changed...

But back to that high cholesterol extravaganza two eggs over easy and biscuits and gravy breakfast, complete with grits....  Better not make a habit of that little number........    But we did have a lot of fun with our family, as our son only comes home to town every two weeks for the weekend..  He works all over the country and has to travel on the airplanes everywhere...  Too bad there isn't better jobs closer to home.....

Not sure what else happened today, but I was over working on the Ham Radio antenna on the motorhome...  The trees have knocked the thing crooked.. When I investigated I found the screws had stripped the holes out in the metal and fiberglass strip around the roof...  A couple of bigger screws and a new hole did the trick...  Until the next low hanging tree anyway...

I did re install the anode rod back into the water heater as well in preparation for our upcoming trip...  We are flirting with the 30s here at night, so the pink stuff will remain until we actually travel and need to use the heat overnight.....

Maybe I need to go set some more of those watches here again as it seems like I should be tired and going to bed...  But on the good side, we are now only one hour away from the Arizona time zone that we will have to get used to...  Well until we come back to Kansas for Christmas.......  Do we have to?  So setting the watch back one more hour will do it for the winter trip....

But I checked the forecast in Apache Junction and found out that it is supposed to be much cooler this weekend down there...  60s.. What gives?  Just as I am beginning to look forward to Az warm temperatures the bottom falls out....  Need to get back on that white scooter........

Well that's enough for today, maybe tomorrow my inside clock won't be so screwed up!!  LOL

Retired Rod

More preparations

Why is it that all of the bills seem to stack up and wait for you to pay attention to them all at once.?  Several years ago, I began paying bills more often than once a month because folks won't wait an entire month anymore.

So I had paid some of the bills in mid October, but still there were piles of them for my attention today.....  We have utilities in three different locations, and more and more I do not rely on the paper bills to pay from...  You never know when the postal service will get them here, and sometimes it is so late that we become delinquent...

I have created signons for all of these pertinent utilities, so much of the days work was signing on and finding out how much each provider wanted this month....  I did match them to the paper bills I had, but several were not here yet..

And true to form, the cable TV company had changed its computer system and I wasn't able to deal with it without additional help...  And I feel that I am beyond the average computer user...  But then maybe that is just my own pipe dream...

But anyway, I had to call and have the company explain that I needed to completely start over as though I was a new customer....  They had even changed my account number..  I was simply without the necessary information to create a new signon..  I wonder why they do that without any explanation.

I kept the lady on the line with me while I set up the new account...  I will need this if I have any hope of handling this vendor when we are not home to receive the paper billing....

So that was where my day went, handling all these little things that end up taking so much time....  By mid afternoon, I was out on the motor scooter mailing the items that couldn't be paid by the online application....

That gave me the opportunity to add gasoline preservative into the motor cycle and the drive to the post office  brought the treated fuel into the injector system...   I guess I am done riding the black bike I call Pepper for the winter... It was about 55 degrees when I was out this afternoon...  Its only going to get colder here so at some point its over here for this season.....

Now many of my Romeo brothers ride all winter and on days that are only somewhat nice...  But they all own electric heated clothes, that plug into the electrical systems of the bike....  I have never purchased any of these items.... My solution has always been to go to Arizona...  And usually with the bike, but this year its different as I have Salt the white bike already down there...

So for the first time I will need to put the trickle charger on Pepper and pickle its gas....

We still have many things to address before we can actually leave the place in Kansas, but we are closer....

Retired Rod

Securing things for winter.....

We were on the road today but not going West towards Arizona,  rather headed East toward Lake Ozark...  We needed to shut things down for the season and set the heat on its low setting....

We never trust winterizing the cabin because it would be impossible to blow out all the water in the water lines...  So rather we run some heat in the house all winter...  Not a lot, but enough that the insides never freeze...

If you go down there in the winter, it seems like it takes forever for the place to warm up, but its not frozen...

We generally just drive down in the morning and work thru the middle of the day loading the rest of the food and beverages into the truck and by mid afternoon, we lock the place again and come back home....

That seems to work the best as you never have to move in from the car like you would if you stayed over night....  The beds are never messed up and no towels are dirty..

I went down to the dock and put air in the pontoon logs of the boat lift...  The machine that blows them out has a sensor on it that turns it on if the lift should sink in the water...  So by rights it should never go down....  And to my knowledge it never has failed to work as programmed...  I ran it up and down thru its cycle just to make sure it was still working properly..

On the way back home, which took another three and a half hours, the trip began to be a tad long...  Our journey was over 300 miles with the round trip which would be about the same as though we drove to Oklahoma City...

But now all the fridges are off and cleaned out, and the water to the place is also secured....  That makes leaving the home for longer periods of time in freezing weather a bit more acceptable....

One more job off the list....

Retired Rod

Back to the Hospital

I am out of gas tonight as I sit down to write a few lines about today...  A day which started at 6 AM, well before daylight...

This was another Cat Scan day at the University of Kansas Medical Center, and I never look forward to the procedure....  As usual, you are intimidated by the possibility of a frightening outcome....  The disease might reoccur and all plans would need to be changed....  Or outright cancelled....

And for me it seems that just going thru the tests has become more difficult....  Since I had to be at the Imaging Lab at 8 AM, we needed to be on the road at about 7:15 and compete in the morning drive time race to downtown...  We had several slowdowns to almost a walking speed as we made our way thru the construction zones....

Our weather here allows construction almost all winter long, with days off because of weather, but never causing a complete shutdown of the projects...  KC has had these ongoing projects since we moved here six years ago...  They never get done.

And at the Hospital it took three hours to get the tests done, with several complications, as my person doesn't always comply with what they are trying to do....  But eventually, it was time to go see the Doctors...  And today was the first time that I have filed under Medicare, so all the forms to change insurance preceded each different department....

But the outcome was favorable.......!!!  No more disease.....!  And no more appointments until next May!!  I was on the three month monitor plan and now I am switched to the six month plan...

It seemed surreal as I drove back to the South side of KC...  We are free to spend the rest of the winter as we please.....  Well once we get beyond Loyce's appointments...

Late in the afternoon I journeyed over to the Barber Shop to relieve the mop over my ears, as another early winter project...  And I am happy to report that the procedure went much better than morning IVs and the like.....  No blood letting what so ever, despite the spiral barber pool out front...

 Back home tonight we are glad to announce that all the ghosts and goblins seem to have stayed away, while Loyce took down all the orange and black decorations for another year.....

And yesterday afternoon, we had the annual compressed air blow out of our irrigation system....  So the ground is now free to freeze, but the temperature on the dash of the truck was in the high 70s as I was driving to the barber today...

At that rate I will have to put gas back in the mower because the grass thinks its still summer.........

Retired Rod

Beggars Night.....

Do they call it that any more??    I had to go look.....

Beggars Night, or more properly Beggars' Night, is a regional term for the Halloween-related activity that is referred to in most parts of the United States as "Trick or Treat". Specifically, the term is broadly but not exclusively used in central Ohio, and in many parts of Iowa,Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and western New York.

Well I guess I'm from Iowa, so that's why I refer to it that way, so perhaps I should use Trick or Treat........  But then I didn't see many tricks at our door tonight...   They just all say Trick or Treat and hold out their large candy sacks...  We used to have to tell a joke or something back in my day....  But then we were Beggars....

The beggars that left our place tonight were quite the sight....

This is the oldest two, but we had no idea who they were.....

They claimed that they had a little sister that needed more candy because she was starved....

But the little sister had this cousin that was from the green swamp........

But Miss Green, had this other little sister that thinks she is the princess of the whole lot....  And of course that is the most believable part of the whole deal.....

So while our gremlins were out canvasing the neighborhood for sugar pop and the like, we had ooodles of other gremlins grabbing treats at our door....

These kids drove poor Biscuit crazy...  Not because she was scared, quite the contrary she wanted to greet everyone of them and jump up on them and lick them.....  And when I held her back and wouldn't let her traumatize the kids she just howled like we were killing her....

We did keep her tied all night, because the last thing we needed to have was a loose dog in the dark of night, with thousands of kids out prowling about...

By the way, did you go look at the Antique cars in yesterday's post...?  I thought that a lot of folks would be interested in that older fellows collection of Fords from yesteryear..  But we had the poorest showing of folks logging into see them for most of the blogs I have written this last year...

And that puzzles me because the blog has a video and over 40 pictures....  It probably took me over three hours to put together  so it all worked with embedded slide show from Photo Bucket and the You Tube show...

I was quite excited about the blog when I finished, but I guess the gas is gone from that balloon....   I did post the slide show over on the club web site and had a bunch of hits from them....

Well that's blogging!

Retired Rod