The Sandcastle

As I was combing the tangles out of my now long hair after my shower this morning I found myself thinking, “As a child, if my Mom had pulled this hard on my tangles, I would have been screaming bloody murder.”

Why did I not care now? Did it hurt any less? No. Were there fewer tangles? No. So what was different? Control.

I was the one using the comb so I knew when it hurt enough to need to stop. When Mom was combing my hair how was she supposed to know?I needed to signal to her that it was getting close to hurting so she would have time to stop before it really hurt.

Then I realized I do this as a passenger in a vehicle too. I put on the passenger side brakes before they need to be applied to signal to the driver that I’m going to need the vehicle to slow down soon.

So, if I’m riding with you and you see me apply my brakes, don’t slam on yours. You have some time yet.

Unless I’m frantically slamming mine, then hit yours hard.

TTYL,

Linda

That can be a loaded word. It has various meanings in various situations. In the RV world it means connecting to local utilities.

After three weeks of living in the desert, I got tired of not having utilities at my beck and call. So I am back at Emerald Cove RV Resort where my membership lets me camp for two weeks at a time for no additional cost.

The first thing I did after pulling into my site was plug in my electrical cord. Power! As much as I want. Whenever I want it. Without having to watch my battery monitor. At no extra cost. I can vacuum. I can leave my microwave circuit breaker on when I’m not cooking. I can even have hot water at any hour of the day. And leave all my electronics plugged in even if their batteries are full. And not care enough if I wake up to see a monitor light telling me I am using unnecessary battery power while sleeping to crawl out of bed just to unplug something.

Then I changed my water filter and hooked up to the local water supply. Changing the filter was easy. Except.

The old one looked like this:

Now, I might like golden brown but not when it comes to the water I will be using to cook and drink and wash with.

So I removed that one and put in a fresh, pure white one. My filter system came with a wrench that looks like to help you reassemble the casing.

And when it is all back together it looks like this:

 

But, when I turned the water on it came spraying out the top of the casing. No matter how hard I pushed on that wrench I couldn’t get it screwed back on tightly. Fortunately, a park crew person came by about that time and tightened it up for me.

So now I have water. As much as I want. Whenever I want it. Without having to watch my tank level. At no extra cost. I don’t have to wonder if the water is going to run out while I am taking a shower. Or when I try to flush the toilet as it did the other day.

Now I just have to hookup my dump hose. That way when my toilet’s holding tank fills up next time, I just have to go outside to pull one handle and it will empty again.

Those of you who live in houses that don’t move just need to appreciate a little more how good you have it. Hookups. Be grateful for them.

TTYL,

Linda

 

 

We all know what it means to be idle. To basically sit around doing not much of anything. Which is mostly what I do when parked out in the desert. I make an occasional trip into town but otherwise spend a lot of hours just sitting around doing computer stuff or napping or chatting with neighbors.

Another definition of idle relates to machines. One definition says, “to operate at a lowspeed, disengaged from the load.” That what my vehicle’s engine does when I just turn it on but don’t go anywhere.

I wanted to use my engine to recharge my batteries. But I was told if I did that while the engine was idling it would damage the engine. Not worth the risk. So every couple of days I drive for an hour or so, usually to Parker and back, to recharge my batteries. Driving puts the engine under load so the fuel burns cleanly thus not damaging my system.

But my dash has a high idle button on it. When you press that button it is supposed to increase the rpms which puts your engine under load so you can recharge your batteries without having to drive. My high idle button didn’t work.

I finally decided the thing to do was contact my conversion company and ask about that high idle. Now I’m feeling dumb again. That button only works if you engage the emergency brake first.

So I put on the brakes and hit the button, which upped my rpms from 900 to 1500, and charged my batteries. So, now I don’t have to drive to Parker tomorrow just to charge my batteries.

Instead I have to drive to Parker because Dave sent me a package via General Delivery that’s due to arrive at the post office there tomorrow. It’s always something, isn’t it?

TTYL,

Linda

I’m now parked on another section of BLM land here near Quartzsite, Arizona. This is the third group I’ve camped with here in the last couple of weeks. I forgot to take pictures of the first group.

Here’s several views from my sliding door this morning:

   

If it seems to you that all those rigs look amazingly similar to one another you are right. This group is the Winnebago View/Navion group and as of campfire time last night there were 38 rigs parked here with this group. Those of you who have been reading this blog awhile know we used to own a View.  It was built on the same Sprinter chassis as my new Sportsmobile is. So I bring my technical questions to this group. And even through my new rig is neither a View nor a Navion they welcome me. In fact I’ve been holding open house most of the time I’ve been here because everyone wants to see what I made fit inside my smaller rig.

So, another successful visit with another RV group of friends here at Q.

Even though I didn’t like their answer to my main question. 🙂

TTYL,

Linda

ps. I’ve been told my pictures are no longer clickable to increase their size. iPhoto did one of those “new, improved” things and I don’t know how to fix that yet. Sorry about that.

pps. One of the great things about being married to Dave is he figures out how to fix my technical problems. You should be able to click to enlarge the photos now. Thanks for your patience with this. And thanks to Nancy for telling us there was a problem in the first place.

Here’s ONE of the upsides of being surrounded by like minded people.

I was fussing that my solar panels don’t provide enough electricity to meet my high demands so I was driving for an hour every other day to keep my batteries charged.

Terry promptly jumped in and said he’d bring over his portable Honda generator to charge my batteries.

 

Which he did. We plugged my RV into his generator and all assumed all was well. You know about that word “assume”, don’t you? How it breaks down into three words?

Turns out the generator was producing plenty of electricity but my rig was rejecting it. Not good enough. Huh!

So Terry and Lee came over and spent a few hours trying to figure out why. Then a couple days later Mike joined them and they puzzled some more.

 

They took turns lying in the very narrow aisle of my RV analyzing what was happening.

 

The consensus is that my Electrical Management System (EMS) wants the generator to be grounded.

Now we are in the desert. The ground is all rock. We are not going to try to pound a four-foot stake into this ground just to keep my EMS happy.

So, I am using my engine to charge my batteries. We did find out I don’t actually have to drive anywhere to do that, though.

So while everyone else is running their generators, I run my engine. Hey, whatever works, right?

TTYL,

Linda