Category: Uncategorized

Prompted by things I’ve seen along they way.

A car that said, “Veterans Affairs Police.” Do the people who administer veterans’ benefits misbehave enough to need an entire police force to monitor them? Or are veteran’s that promiscuous?

Is the Holiday Inn named for Christmas? You know, the holiday that celebrates the most famous hunt for a place to sleep?

In Mississippi the sign said, “M DOT”. In Minnesota it says, “MN DOT. I suppose Mississippi didn’t want to use their two letter abbreviation though. That would make them be MS DOT which would probably be pronounced Miz Dot and some southern lady would named Dorothy would try to answer.

A sign in New York said, “Break a treaty; break a law.” But, we already know our government doesn’t abide by it’s own laws, right? Never has. Probably never will.

Sign on a truck advertising Hunter Drums. “You can’t beat our drums.” Then what good are they?

At a rest area the sign said diesels over five tons are not to be left idling. So we turned off our engine. But, we have a diesel generator running our house air conditioning and the day is hot. I say, “The generator isn’t over five tons.” Dave replies, “It isn’t idling.” So we let it run.

“Jesus saves.” He must be rich by now. Think of all that interest.

The sign said, “All vehicles with livestock must exit.” But the truck must have been carrying pork since it said, “Make a pig of yourself.” Does that make it deadstock? Being carried by a meat wagon? Which is another name for a hearse? Enough of that line, OK?

Hobo signs are petroglyphs and pictographs. Shouldn’t we be preserving them?

The way we travel now makes me think of the card game Liverpool Rummy with it runs and sets.

“Do not throw litter.” Drop it gently.

On US 380 in Texas, “Watch for water on the road.” Is that like cross your fingers and hope?

“Slower traffic keep right.” But before we could get into that lane the next sign said, “Lane ends. Merge left.” Do you think maybe they could have found a better location for that first sign?

The sign on the truck said, “For all your concrete and construction needs.” But there was no company ID on the truck. I guess if you were supposed to know who to call you already would know.

Dentist advertising, “LOL again.”

On the back of a semi tractor, “Look what the CAT drug home.”

“Bikers make lousy speed bumps. Be aware.” Not funny; necessary.

Had enough yet?

TTYL,

Linda

Cue the RVer’s theme song by Willie Nelson. All join in now: On the road again…

Fulltime RVers who travel across the southern states call the route the I-10 route. Even though part of it follows I-12 and part of it follows I-8. Most of it follows I-10.

But, we have little in common with the movie “The 3:10 to Yuma” except our determination to get where we are going. For us right now that’s Yuma, Arizona, where our Escapee group is having a big get-together next week.

Wish us good weather with no cross winds, please.

TTYL,

Linda

It is dark and stormy outside but warm and calm inside. That’s a good way to start a new year, right?

Today’s date is 1/1/11. In computer terms the binary number 1111 means everything is on! So anything is possible, right? But in hexadecimal, which is a way computer programmers refer to 1111, that equals F. Which I certainly hope does not stand for failure.

It’s a new year. I want to write a good story about this coming year. I hope your story this year is a good one, too.

TTYL,

Linda

We’ve been back about a week but we’ve received no calls from Camping World. So this morning we stopped in to see them. It’s the holidays so nothing much is happening.

Back when Dave worked for a manufacturing company they used to shut down for two weeks at Christmas and the New Year. Nobody orders machinery during those times, right?

Now, I don’t know if Suburban Furnace shut down or not, all I know is our parts haven’t arrived. Our service rep, Becky, said if we wanted to wait until Monday they’d see if they can get parts shipped overnight.

But, I’m done waiting. Our RV group is in Arizona having fun in the warmth there and I want to be there, too.

Unfortunately the weather forecast here is for thunderstorms with high wind gusts through Saturday so we’ll wait until Sunday to leave.

In the meantime, we got a call from Colorado River Adventure membership RV park. Camping World signed us up to receive 20 free nights of camping. When we would like to come get the certificate? They scheduled us for January 10th. If we’ll listen to their sales presentation we’ll get another four nights free camping, $50 for our time, and certificates for $100 to be redeemed at Shell gas stations. I hope the Shell certificates are good for diesel since we don’t use gasoline. And I’m not sure we can get there by January 10th. We may have to reschedule that for after our big group gathering.

But at least we now have a date for leaving cold Alabama heading towards warm Arizona. And a furnace that still needs fixing at some Camping World on down the road.

TTYL,

Linda

When we left the story of Camping World Service, the latest fix didn’t work either. More parts are going to need to be ordered. So we decide to tackle our next project while waiting for those parts.

You see, our Winnebago Journey Express came with two wet-cell house batteries and a converter to charge them. This works OK for most people. But, as you all know, we aren’t most people so we wanted something that better suited us.

In the first place our converter was overcharging the batteries which meant Dave was having to add water to each battery’s cells every month. Not a pleasant task.

In the second place, two batteries were not going to provide enough power for the dry camping we plan to do next month without having to run our generator more than we would prefer to do.

Since day one of our ownership of this RV, I’ve been lobbying for AGM batteries and I wanted four of them not two. But the converter that came with our RV would not be good for AGM batteries. So we needed to save up money for the inverter as well as the batteries. We finally got there.

So, once we figured out how close we were to Palmer Energy, we decided to spend our Camping World waiting time going to Florida and doing the battery upgrade which would include installation of a new inverter/charger to replace the old converter. The new inverter would also provide whole house power so we could use all outlets and the microwave when we are not plugged into a campground’s power without having to turn on our generator.

So, John Palmer and Dave spent two days crawling around our RV running wires for the new systems.

And when they were done the two wet-cell batteries were out.

And four new AGM batteries were in the space Winnebago generously supplied for them.

Our AC panel produced a sub-panel in the space Winnebago provided under a cover that was bigger than it would have needed to be for just the original panel.

A new inverter/charger was installed in a basement bay. We had to move our own stuff for that to happen.

And the old inverter control module was removed from the RV’s power center to make room for the new module.

If you look closely at the new module, you’ll see it says our batteries are float charging. That’s the stage the old batteries never got to which caused the water to boil away.

So, Dave’s happy he doesn’t have to fill batteries anymore and I’m happy we should have enough power to run the furnace all night during those cold desert nights next month when we go dry camping with friends.

And we’re broke again.

Now, to start saving up for solar panels.

TTYL,

Linda