We have been rushing back toward Portland this week. Three days of over 200 miles each puts us in Florence, Oregon. Normally we like to mosey, but we have covered this leg of the trip several times. The scenery is beautiful but I guess we are anxious to get it over with and see our family and friends back home. Read More
Spring Migration
May 14, 2010
Just-in-time Inventory
April 6, 2010
Just-in-time inventory is a concept that industry embraced back in the 90′s or so. Instead of stockpiling hoards of parts they let their suppliers inventory them and had them delivered just before they needed them.
I am trying to perfect this technique myself. I used to collect all kinds of stuff that I expected to come in handy…someday. Occasionally one of these parts would come in handy for a project and of course that reinforced the hording instinct. Read More
Flying Again
March 15, 2010
After eighteen days on “Shank’s Mare,” we are once again flying down the road on “Path,” our recumbent tandem bicycle. Read More
The Long Walk
March 9, 2010
Sometimes things go against you and you have to take a long walk to keep from doing something stupid. Today was one of those days.
From my last blog you know that we broke our bicycle. For the past ten days I have been working to repair the damage by creating a replacement suspension fork for Path. My goal was to create a new part that was stronger and more rigid in all dimensions. I have indeed created a replacement part that achieved those goals. Read More
Stupid Mistakes
January 8, 2010
Low hanging hitches and long overhangs team up to set a trap for the unwary RV’er. Just two years ago I snagged my hitch on a curb and bent the hitch receiver on Arcturus. Read More
Back in Oregon
June 10, 2009
I know! I know! I have been falling down on my Blog writing. Has it really been a month?
As all our local friends know, we are back in Oregon and hanging out in Hillsboro near Renee and Neil’s place. We have been quite busy this spring. First we attended the Human Powered Vehicle Challenge over Memorial Day Weekend. This is an annual get-together and race conducted at Portland International Raceway. We raced against other laid-back, recumbent bicycles in ten mile, one hour and 200 meter races. We were consistent in that we placed second in our class in every race.
March Update
March 9, 2009
I know! You haven’t heard from us for about two weeks and you are wondering if we drove off the end of the earth. Well no, we haven’t gotten to the end of the earth, but I am sure Gila Bend, Arizona can’t be too far from there. It is about half way between Tucson to Yuma and made a nice stop over. It is cheap, about $10, it’s windy and it is close to the freeway so it is somewhat noisy. It does have water and electric, so we are getting the water tank topped off and the batteries charged up. Tomorrow we will return to Mittry Lake. It is close to Yuma, on the Colorado River and we will be meeting several RV’ing friends there. It is also free, no water or electric and probably out of reach of the cell phone and inter-net. We will probably do a little canoeing and a little music around the campfire and a lot of talking. We heard from some friends that the mosquitoes are bad there this year, so we laid in a supply of Cutter.
Winter Cleaning:
December 19, 2008
I know you have heard of spring cleaning. Today we seized an opportunity to clean the “basement” of our motor home. We call the cargo bay under our coach the “basement.” The trailer is the “Shop Annex.”
We scheduled this winter cleaning just two days ahead of the winter solstice. That way there would be minimum of daylight. The schedule fortunately coincided with a record breaking warm day here in Nashville Tennessee at 73 degrees. You heard me, 73 degrees.
Rotator Cuff:
December 8, 2008
It’s not what you think! Neither Judy or I have suffered any injury. I am writing about a damaged rotator cuff on the TV antenna. You see in an RV you have to have an antenna that folds flat against the roof when you travel. A couple days ago we were preparing move on a chilly morning. The antenna was frozen solid. I returned periodically to try moving it as we worked through our pre-flight check list. At long last I put a little more muscle into trying to move it, and I broke it. I had to get the cold aluminum ladder out and climb on the icy roof and rotate it into the proper alignment for lowering by hand.
Face Lift:
October 23, 2007
Well if Arcturus had a “tummy tuck” when his brake and drive line were repaired earlier this month, today he is getting a “face lift.” In June as we started our trip to Alaska, Arcturus caught a fair sized rock in the passenger side windshield. We hadn’t even gotten to the gravel roads yet. Read More
