Last minute items before I leave.

Location, at Home, CA

Well, time is slipping away. I have been working diligently this past week on the to-do list for the fall trip.

I leave Tuesday morning so that only leaves one day to finish up. I have several major items on my list for tomorrow that remain to be done.

The most vexing is the one tire on the RV which is not holding air. I set the air pressure at 80 PSI for each tire and expect a small amount of leakage over a few weeks. This tire however was at 45 lbs which is not good. I inflated it to 80 PSI yesterday and it was down to 77.5 this morning. I will check it tomorrow morning but suspect I need to remove it and have it checked at Big O in town. I really don’t want to leave with a bad tire and need to inflate it every day. That is a pain.

The other 2 major items are grocery shopping and a physical tomorrow afternoon. The physical is my annual so I need to get it done. The health carrier I have has been after me to get it.

I don’t know how much time I will have for the next week and a half to update this blog but I will try.

Moving forward.

Location, at Home, CA

 
I did buy a 1.5 TB hard drive as a backup for all my files. Actually, it is a backup to the backup as I have another drive I also use. Can’t have too many backups!
 
I am still working on plans for our annual fall trip. I think I now have all the facts together. We have had two drop out from our original bunch. It tends to happen every year. It is very hard to plan 6 or more months in advance with a large group of people.

We do have enough 4x4 vehicles this year so that is one less worry. We have three vehicles and only 7 people which makes it comfortable especially as most of the driving is off highway. A crowded vehicle is uncomfortable.
 
I washed the front and back of the RV today. The bugs really were stuck tight to the front. They were an accumulation from 6000 miles of driving. I also waxed the front but it is hard to tell I did anything. The gel-coat has lost its shine and wax doesn’t seem to bring it back. It just makes the surface smoother.

Cleanup and prepairing next trip.

Location, at Home, CA

This week was taken up by clean up duties after being on the road for two months. Actually, one day short of two months.

We stayed at Morro Bay until Monday morning and of course the weather was nicer by Monday. We played lots of Mexican Train and Tony won 9 out of 13 hands in one game. The game lasted until 11 PM on Sunday.

The trailer is just about ready for the next trip. I need to wash the bugs off the front and look at a problem in the cabinet under the TV. The wall next to the refrigerator cabinet seems to be collapsing at the bottom. Without pulling the refrigerator from its cabinet I would guess there is not enough bracing in the wall to take the bouncing of the refer weight. For now I think I will put a brace on the TV side of the wall but eventually, the refer has to come out to do a proper job. Ooooh… Budd! Looks like a job for us!

Thanks to Budd both at the start of our trip this summer and at the end when he helped me with several blinds. The cords eventually give out so the solution is to remove the day part of the shade and only use the night portion. This puts less stress on the cords.

My days are filled with plans for our fall trip. I think I have the actual 4x4 trips well in hand but other logistics need to be done ASAP. We need reservations in Las Vegas for 4 days, food assignments need to be done (my job). Menus need to be planned (we all take turns cooking), groceries need to be bought, etc. It is always a busy time.

I had a real scare yesterday. I bought a new Dell desktop computer just before we went on our summer trip so I am spending a lot of time trying to figure out how Windows 7 works. Yesterday I turned it on in the morning, read my email then went off to do errands for a few hours. When I came back I went to bring the computer out of hibernation which I always do during the day. I pushed the power button and nothing happened. Well, something did happen as in the power light blinked but the hard drive didn’t spin up. Uh.. Oh..

Early in their life, 1TB hard drives were known to fail frequently and I thought that is what happened. I called Dell support (India?) and after a few minutes the tech asked me to unplug the unit. As I reached behind the CPU the power cord fell into my hand. Problem solved! I plugged the CPU in when I first started it up back in July so I don’t know how the cord got loose.

Anyway, disaster averted.

However, I do plan to buy a 1 or 2 TB external hard drive to back everything up on as an insurance policy.