Our RV Adventures

Today we were up early again, for the third day in a row. Luckily tomorrow we can sleep in.

Our raison d’etre was to take our daughter Brandi to Houston-Hobby Airport to catch a Frontier Airlines flight to Denver. She’s going out for the weekend for a friend’s baby shower.

On the way to Brandi’s we heard on the radio that Southwest Airlines had suspended all flights into Denver until after 1pm, so we hoped she’d get out OK since her flight didn’t even leave Houston until 12:20pm

Dropping Brandi off at the airport, we headed over to our doctor’s office to correct some problems with our prescriptions. It seems like it’s always easier to get these things straightened out face to face.

By this time it was after 11am, and since we were driving right by the place, we decided to have lunch at the Texas Tea Room for some of their delicious soup and sandwiches

After lunch, I made a quick visit to a client before we started for home. Of course, along the way I made a quick stop at Fry’s Electronics to check on a warranty problem, and then we stopped at Buc-ee’s for cappuccinos and a newspaper.

Then finally it was home for the day.

After a short nap, (too short, but I had stuff to do.) I went outside to work on some more things to get us ready to travel in about two weeks.

First I used a piece of plastic hose to siphon the old windshield washer fluid out of both the rig and the truck and replaced it with Rain-X fluid. I recently bought Rain-X windshield wipers and read that they work better and last longer with the Rain-X fluid. So I thought I’d give it a try.

Next, and while I was in the area, I started to replace the wipers on the rig with the new Rain-X ones. I’d replaced the ones on the truck a couple of weeks ago, but got rained out before I could do the rig. But I didn’t get too far this time either.

The rig wipers are held on the arms by machine bolts and I noticed they were pretty rusty. So tomorrow I’ll stop off at the hardware store and get some stainless steel ones to take care of that problem.

Next up I replaced the outside and the inside water filters. The outside one is a Culligan RV-800 and just mounts on the faucet hose.

Up until last year I had always used one of those blue ones that everybody, including Wal-Mart, sells. But while we were staying at an RV park outside Glacier National Park this past year, my blue one just up and split open one day.

Since the park had a store, I check’em to see what they had, and that’s when I found the Culligan. It was about the same length as the blue ones, but bigger around. And even better, it was rated for a lot more gallons than the blue ones. So I decided to give it a try.

And as it turns out, it’s a really good filter, especially in places like Elkhart, IN that have a lot of iron in the water. This year, for the first time, we had no rust stains in the lavatory while we were in Elkhart.

Last thing before I went inside, I dumped a couple of ounces of biocide into my diesel tank. I came into the park with a full tank of fuel which helps cut down on the condensation and water in the tank, which keeps the algae from growing, which keeps the algae from clogging the fuel filters. It’s a vicious cycle.

Ask Nick about that one.

Then it was inside for the fun one, the one under the sink that feeds the icemaker and the drinking fountain. It’s not easy to get to, even if it has snap-in connectors. The one I bought was supposed to be a direct replacement for the one I had, but it sure didn’t hook up the same.

Once the old one is hooked in, no amount of pulling would release it until you push the button on the connector. However, it didn’t take much pulling at all for the new one to pop loose.

Just picturing in my mind the coach flooded after the new one came loose while we weren’t here, I grabbed my Droid and about 30 seconds later had the correct one on the way from Amazon. It’ll be here tomorrow and I’ll install it then.

About this time Jan heated up some great King Food Chicken in Hot Garlic Sauce with Fried Rice, an Egg Roll, and Hot and Sour Soup. Really good dinner.

After a great meal, I got to work on assembling the Kitchen Cart we got from Wal-Mart a week or so ago.

When we had the washer/dryer out of the cabinet for repair around Christmas time, Jan really enjoyed using it for extra counter space, so we decided to find something to replace it. And we found this at Wal-Mart.

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Mine ended up looking like this.

I left the towel rack/handle off the left side until we see how it fits.

For traveling and storing out of the way, it looks like this. The wheels lock, but I’ll bungee it in place too.

I think it’s going to work out pretty well.

About 8pm I called Lowell to see how Brandi did on her flight. He said she made it safely, but took off from here about an hour and 20 minutes late because of the bad weather in Denver.

And bad it is. Lowell said there’s a foot of snow on the ground and more coming. It won’t get above freezing the entire time she’s there, and tomorrow night the low is supposed to 8 degrees. Hope she took warm clothes.

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Thought for the Day:

Courage ~ Fear that has said its prayers.

kjhk

We had a busy day ending up with a dinner party with friends, and between the wine and not getting home until after 11pm, I’m just going to repost our visit to . . .

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Gulf Shores – Home to the World’s Tiniest Hooters!

Originally posted on March 29, 2009

Get your mind out of the gutter!

Not those kind of hooters. This kind of Hooters!

Gulf Shores – World’s Tiniest Hooters

Well, on second thought, maybe we are talking about the same kind.

Anyway, Jan and I went to the Gulf Shores Hooters for dinner tonight. And as the sign says it is the world’s tiniest Hooters!

It’s actually built on a double-wide trailer. In fact, when we were here back in November, one of the waitresses said that if you looked underneath, you could still see the wheels.

Jan and I have always called this place ‘Hoots’ because it was too small to be a real Hooters.

We started going to Hooter’s about 9 years ago and it quickly grew to be one of our favorite places

We were eating out with our son Chris, his wife, Linda, and our then 7 year old granddaughter, Piper. We also had Trudy, Jan’s mother, with us.

We were eating something, onion rings, or fried cheese, I believe, and Piper looks at us and says” This is good, but the ones at Hooters are better”.

I looked at her and said “How would you know?” And she said “Daddy and I go there all the time!”

Ah Ha! Busted!

We went to the NASA Hooters with the family a week or so later and were pleasantly surprised. They don’t serve hard liquor, just beer and wine. And we really liked the chicken wings.

Almost every table in the non-smoking area had a family with kids sitting at it. And they regularly have kid’s birthday parties there.

I mean, I would have like to have my 12th birthday party at a Hooters!

Happy Birthday!

Anyway, we hadn’t been there more than about 10 minutes when I heard someone yell “Greg!” Suddenly someone was hugging me from behind and kissing me on the top of the head.

Without even looking, I knew Jan was giving me “The Look”. You remember the “The Look” don’t you?

It took me a few seconds to realize this was a student I knew from the University of Houston – Clear Lake. Well, I mean, she wasn’t dressed like that the last time I saw her!

A few weeks before, she had come to my office at the university almost in tears. The ZIP disk that held her only full copy of her Master’s Thesis had become corrupted and she was afraid she had lost all her work.

It took a little work, but I was able to recover the entire document, and she was apparently very grateful.

After the explanation, Jan was somewhat mollified, but she still wasn’t too happy about the big lipstick kiss that remained on the top of my bald head.

Oh well…

Besides this young lady who was finishing up her MBA, we later ran into another one who was just about ready to take her CPA exam.

She said she made enough working at Hooters for just 2 – 3 days a week to pay her way thru college.

Anyway, as I said, Hooter’s became one of our favorite places.

I used to tell people that my wife and my mother-in-law insist I take them to Hooter’s at least once a week.

Am I a lucky guy, or what?

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Thought for the Day:

My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.

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