Settling down a bit.

I hadn’t had a very good night’s sleep since my mom passed away nearly 6 months ago. The routine had become waking up after a couple hours in bed, laying there trying to get back to sleep, and half the time just getting up, working on a puzzle or reading, and then trying to doze off again in the recliner. It was getting kind of old, but I thought maybe that was the new normal.

Well, since arriving in Minnesota, more like the old routines have started to return. While either noises or dreams seem to wake me a couple of times during the night, I don’t lie awake for hours, and can pretty much sleep through till 5ish – that is pretty much the old routine I had become accustomed to. Yippee!

Our accomplishments have not been huge since arriving, but we have taken some nice advantage of what the area has to offer. We took in Detroit 67 at the Penumbra Theater in the old mansion district of St. Paul. The play was about an inner city family during the race riots in Detroit in 1967 that either I was too young to have focused on, or wasn’t publicized the way such things would be today, because neither I nor the Woman had any recollection of them. The play was excellent and very thought provoking. We took the chance to walk around the area and take in the beautiful old Victorian homes, and then popped into WA Frost for dinner hors douvres.

We have discovered the wonders of the Lake Elmo Wilderness Preserve, a Washington County park just a couple of miles from our RV Park. The park has miles of paved biking trails, groomed hiking trails, some of which are available for both biking and equestrian use, and lots of other infrastructure for camping, picnicking, swimming, and all kinds of outdoor fun. We really enjoy our visits there.

We have been hiking almost daily at Lake Elmo Preserve – at least those that don’t include rain! We have probably logged about 40 miles there between the bikes and the hikers – and I am pretty sure we have only covered a bit of overlapping trails. I think we will have enough to keep us interested throughout our stay.

Our long draught of culture in Vegas will be over by the end of the year, but in the mean time we got our fix by strolling through the IKEA next to the Mall of America – what fun! Not only did we experience the overstimulation of all those millions of items to fill our houses, but we managed to pick up a bag of Swedish meatballs as well.

I will be signing off for a few days - my former partners at McGladrey were kind enough to invite me to their partner meeting in Las Vegas next week, so I am hoping on a plane tomorrow and heading back home. Pretty ironic that McGladrey has their partner meeting in my home town and I still have to fly in to attend. I guess that is what retired life on the road means!. We hope to tick up our accomplishments a bit when I return, now that we are settled in a bit.

Talk to you soon!

Family galore!

Hope your Memorial Day weekend was as wonderful as ours – it was filled with family and despite the threatening weather, we managed to have a great time.

The Woman’s sister Barb and nieces Jenny and Deanna, along with Deanna’s family rented a cabin for the evening. Austin and Ashlyn spent as much time as possible in the pool (nicely heated to 84 degrees), and then afterward, we spent the evening around a roaring campfire. After roasting some hot dogs and brats, out came the chocolate, marshmallows and graham crackers, and the smores flew everywhere. Except for the horrendous smore accident (I was roasting the most perfect evenly browned marshmallow for the Woman, and when I pulled it from the fire to check it, it fell on my knee – yikes!), everyone had a blast.

The next day was family day with the Woman’s aunt and cousins. Cousin Craig and his wife Mary Fran hosted a barbecue at their new home on the west side of the cities. Aunt Dorothy enjoyed getting together with her brother Jim (Robin’s dad), and Robin had a nice time catching up with them, as well as cousin’s Mark and Diane. If only Gary and Barb were able to join, it would have been a complete set of the Miller/Alshouse cousins.

After a rousing game of ladder ball on the (cousin Diane and I just squeaked out a one point win over the Woman and cousin Mark), we called an official end to the very successful holiday weekend activities.

Talk to you soon!

The sniveling continues!

We made Minnesota in record time. Two days of driving, no Check Engine or Stop Engine lights, and no blowouts – yippee!

We nestled into St. Paul East RV Park and immediately got a recommendation on both a shop and a mobile RV technician. The Woman called the gentleman, described our issue, and asked if that would be in his wheelhouse. He said it was and would stop over that afternoon to assess the situation. After looking it over and having a couple of phone conversations with someone at the company who makes the awning cover, he said he could handle this, and provided us with an estimate for repair. As I expected – ouch!

Next morning the Woman informed me that we had no water. I wasn’t really alerted to anything as the RV park has had water issues when we have been here in the past right after opening, and for the water to be shut off for a bit was not rare. However, a bit later, the Woman said she heard water running in the bedroom – I went and listened and heard it as well – it seemed to be either coming from under the bed or under the rear closet. I checked the closet and looked under the bed and saw no water. So I headed out to check the water heater which resides behind both the closet and the bed on Colectiva’s outside wall.

As I got out of the coach, I spotted the lake surrounding the rear wheel well. I also saw water streaming down from under the engine and the rear bays. When I opened the bays, water was streaming from the tops of the compartments – right under the water heater. But when I opened the hatch on the water heater, it was completely dry. I called Fleetwood (Colectiva’s manufacturer) and talked with someone at customer service. Fleetwood is so good at trying to help existing customers when they can – we are so happy that when they filed for bankruptcy during the depression, a private equity group, American Industrial Partners that focuses on US based manufacturing companies, acquired Fleetwood. So, we are still able to get support when we need it, unlike many of the other orphaned coach owners on the road today.

Fleetwood was kind enough to almost instantaneously e:mial me blue prints of the water system in Colectiva. They asked me if I had checked the water heater, and I told them it was completely dry. While they couldn’t diagnose the actual problem on the phone, they tended to agree with me that there was likely a burst pipe somewhere in the system. After reviewing the blue prints, I could see that finding the leak may pose a significant challenge, as the piping generally runs between the exterior and interior walls of the coach – out of sight and not easily accessed.

The Woman called Jason, the mobile RV tech working on our slide-out cover, and asked if he worked on plumbing. He came over in a couple hours, and I handed him the copy of the plumbing blue prints. He had already seen where the lake was, and watched the water pouring out once he turned on the water.  So he politely said he didn’t need them, went to the closet and pulled up the false floor – and the water sprayed out in force!

It turned out that a flexible water hose that connected the water heater to the PVC plumbing system had plastic fittings on both ends, and one of them failed. I really hate when companies put plastic fittings on out of view plumbing fixtures. We had a similar plastic fitting on a 2^nd floor toilet fail in Nick’s condo in Phoenix he lived in while attending ASU. Unfortunately, it happened during the summer when Nick was not occupying the unit – so about $100,000 in damages later the unit was once again habitable! The good news here is that we were in Colectiva to hear the water,

shut off the water to the coach, and minimized the amount of water permeating the woodwork in Colectiva.

Jason ran to Ace Hardware to get a new flexible hose – one with metal fittings instead of plastic ones! Once back, it took him maybe 10 minutes to connect it up, and watched as I turned the water back on – no leaks anywhere – yippee! Now it will just be a matter of getting out the fan to dry the affected woodwork, and later slapping some Rustoleum on the undercarriage.

So, with any luck at all, things will settle down and we can start to focus more on getting with family and checking out some of the interesting sites that the Twin Cities area has to offer.

Talk to you soon!

More trauma - gotta love it!

We did have a nice visit with Jerry and Brenda, but didn’t expect the foot of snow in mid-May! I guess the only good thing to say is that it snowed while we were parked rather than while we were driving. I know we are in the Mile High City in the foothills of the Rockies, but still, mid-May? Really?

While there was still plenty of snow on the ground, all had melted off the vehicles and the sky clear when we hit the road for our last leg. So, we went through our normal routine breaking camp – since there were no trees or anything posing an obstruction danger to the slide-outs, I prepped the Saturn while the Woman pulled in the slides and the jacks. Apparently I didn’t do what should be a standard visual walk around Colectiva before we headed out, or what came next might not have happened.

As we motored up I-76, we heard some unusual creaking and groaning from our full side slide-out on the driver side. About the time I had finally decided that the Woman (driving) should pull over and we should check out the noise, a passenger in a passing car was pointing up to the side of our coach as she passed. We pulled over, and found that the awning cover over the full side slide-out was bulging out in the very strong winds. I had the Woman attempt to open the slide-out a bit to see if the spring loading might pull in the bulging fabric, but soon learned that the slide-out would not even budge an inch!

So, everything had to come out of the big bay and get piled on the side of the road so I could get at the ladder. After climbing up on the roof, I could see the issue and speculate at what likely happened. I tried my best, but could not budge the awning roller that should be spring loaded, and turn freely. The awning fabric was quite torn and was askew on the roller at the front, and loose and billowing out at the rear. The front fabric was wound so tightly around the roller that it had actually bent the solid metal inch thick arm that was supposed to hold the roller out and away from the side of the coach – bent it so badly that the roller was pressed firmly against the side of Colectiva. That is why it could not turn. Using shears, I literally cut about a foot of the awning material that was so tightly wrapped around the roller – after finessing the snagged material out from under the roller, it appeared to me that perhaps the slide could now move. Although the roller still scraped the side of the coach as the slide moved, we were still able to get it out, take up the bulging material in the rear, and then close the slide with awning material more tightly wound. With flapping material at the front where I had cut the material to free up the roller, I was able to make enough holes in the remaining base material to mount a couple of large zip-ties to secure it in place, at least for the drive.

Well, its official – Colectiva is now officially a power boat. Of course you all know the official definition of a power boat I assume. A power boat is an artificial hole in the surface of a body of water – into which you pour tons of money!

Looking at what we have done, I know two things. One is that our breaking camp routine from now on will include one of us watching carefully the slide covers as we pull in the slide-outs before leaving. The other is that I know we are looking at another minimum $1,500 repair when we get to Minneapolis!

Talk to you soon!

It's a miracle!

Will wonders never cease! The EGR – the exhaust gas recirculation system which runs some of the exhaust gas back through the engine as part of emission reduction was stuck open. That results in complete loss of power and will eventually damage the engine (actually, a sticky EGR could have been part of the problems we were having with power as we were headed back from the Finger Lakes last fall). Silver State had them on hand and was able to get them installed by about 2 PM. That gave us barely enough time to pick her up, take her back to the house and get her packed up to leave. And if we left the next morning and drove pretty much straight through, I could make my flight. Of course that is with very little shake-down on all the repairs that have occurred in the last month, which we tried to fit in as we packed.

We hit the road bright and early next morning, a bit concerned about whether the engine bugs would prove to be all worked out, and with me still a bit gun-shy from the recent blowout. But, Colectiva performed admirably and the weather did us good. We were able to plow through to Fruita Colorado before it got too dark to be on the road. Being mid-May, we assumed we would have no problems getting into a nice Good Sam park right off the I-70, but our hopes were dashed when the Woman called and they were completely full! Luckily we got into another park up the road a piece in Grand Junction, and the weather continued to hold as we eyed weather.com to make sure the road ahead would treat us well.

The next day we were determined to reach Denver to visit Jerry. We had learned that Brenda would be there and was heading back to their home in Sunrise AZ on Sunday, so we figured that we had some leeway if needed. But the weather held generally (actually hit a blizzard in Cedar City Utah which we didn't expect) and it was actually sunny almost all the way to the Eisenhower Tunnel – it actually didn’t cloud up until right before we got to it. At the tunnel it was a little dicey, some wet but no snow or ice, so we plowed ahead, got to Denver early, and then learned it was lucky we did.

Brenda was leaving on Sunday, but her flight out was at 8 AM. So we hustled over to Jerry’s new apartment in Westminster, and upscale suburb north of Denver not far from DIA. We were able to check his place out, grab some dinner with both of them, and then unwind and get everyone up to date on news over a few adult beverages. It was a really nice evening, and we were so lucky everything worked out as it did (even though all the white knuckling) since we got to spend some time with Brenda that we didn’t expect. So, I guess I can’t complain – I can whine and snivel a bit, but can’t complain.

Talk to you soon!

Trying hard!

More major drama! We have been trying to get back on the road, but the body and chassis damage from the blowout has proved to be challenging. We assumed a week or so to get it all done – three weeks later we are still trying to get moving. I have booked a flight out of Minneapolis on the 14^th so we need to get there by then for sure – and I had hoped to stop by and visit my brother Jerry in Denver while on the way. We finally got some good news – Colectiva was do

ne and we could pick her up in time to make our planned departure date – yippee!

Oops – I yippee’d to soon. We picked up Colectiva and as soon as we started the Cummins a-rumbling, the Check Engine light came on. Findlay doesn’t have Cummins diagnostic equipment, so they couldn’t diagnose the issue. I topped up the oil and coolant – most common cause for a Check Engine light – but they weren’t really low. So I pulled out intending to give the Freightliner facility in North Las Vegas a call to get the issue diagnosed. But before I went 3 or 4 blocks, the Stop Engine light came on. Check Engine means there might be something wrong – Stop Engine means there is something wrong. And if you don’t stop the coach yourself, the engine will automatically enter into a shut down cycle where you will lose power and then she will apply the brakes slowly and actually shut herself down. So, I pulled into the first neighborhood where I could actually park her, did just that, and arranged for a tow – there is no other way to handle a Stop Engine situation than to tow to a facility that can diagnose the issue, but it was too late in the day. So Colectiva had to sleep where she was for the evening. I let the folks whose houses I parked her in front of know that I was sorry to block all their curb space, and that I would have her gone in the morning.

We assumed that we were stuck and I was going to have to reschedule my flight to depart from McCarran. However, Silver State (the Freightliner facility) said they could get a guy on it this afternoon, and if it was something that they could get at and had the parts in stock, that they could assign someone to it first thing next morning. While it would be cutting it too close for comfort that might still get us on the road in time to make my flight from the Minneapolis airport. So just keeping our fingers crossed.

So, the blog is officially back online for a while. But, since we are going to be sitting in Minnesota for 6 weeks or more, there may be a few days that go by before a new blog entry appears – I can’t imagine that we could find riveting sites to visit on a daily basis, but we will pack in as much as we can.

Talk to you soon!