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
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
We are headed for a Family Motor Coach Rally in Indeo California this week. As much as I boast that we take the slower senic route, today we made an exception and turned onto I-5 Southbound. We were cruising along watching the press of cars about us. Perhaps a half hour into our drive a pair of Alpine coaches just like ours merged into traffic just ahead of us. For an hour and a half we followed in their wake. They were going exactly the speed I prefer to go so we just tagged along. Read More
It is Thursday and we are on our way to a church campout this weekend in Chehalis, WA. Now one of the advantages of having a home on wheels is that you can schedule your maintenance on the way to these events. We were due to have the oil changed and the chassis lubed. I scheduled this event for Thursday around noon at Pacific Power in Ridgefield. Now that would give us time to seek a campground if all went well and leaves us a whole extra day if things implode.
Last report left you in suspense. Does the boat still leak? Will he try to re-caulk the windows?
We will find the answer to the first question this week. We are going to join friends and sail down the Columbia River from St. Helens, Oregon to Astoria, Oregon.
Sure and be-gory, me favorite weather prognosticator, Mr. Murphy, is going to be sure that we get a good test of all systems. Apparently a low pressure system is going to camp out over our area for the next few days.
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.
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.
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.
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.
