Our RV Adventures

After several days of mid-70’s days and mid-60’s nights, winter has finally returned,  with rain and low 50’s/ low 40’s temps.

The cooler weather is nice, but I could do without the rain, since I have more stuff that I want to work on outside, but I guess it’ll have to wait. It’s supposed to clear up toward the end of next week, but you never know.

Jan and I spent the day just goofing off, reading, watching TV, and playing on the computer, a very nice afternoon consisting of pretty much nothing.

About 3pm we headed out through the rain to have lupper at El Bosque, our favorite local Mexican place. We’ve eaten here a number of times and have always enjoyed it.

When we first starting eating here a couple of years ago they were located on Loop 336, across the street from the Wal-Mart/Sam’s Club. But when we returned here early last year we found they had moved to a new location on SR105, a couple of exits further south on I-45.

Jan went with the El Bosque Platter,

which has a little bit of everything, all very good, as she said.

I’ve always enjoyed their Chicken Tortilla Soup, although in El Bosque’s case, it’s more like Chicken Vegetable Soup,  with Tortilla Chips.

But it’s spiced very well, and really good. And a big enough bowl that it really fills you up. For that reason I probably didn’t need the side of Charro Beans, but they were really good too.

Next up was the Home Depot right next door for a couple of things. I was mainly looking for some hooks that could be mounted to the floor of the truck to keep my floor mats from sliding around. I found something I think will work, but I’ll have to try it and see.

Then it was on to Wal-Mart for a few things. It wasn’t as busy as I thought it might be. In fact it wasn’t anymore busy than a normal Saturday. I guess everyone was resting up from yesterday.

The only thing that was busy was the Returns line at Customer Service. So are people already returning stuff they just bought yesterday?

I had something to return, but I’ll wait until another time.

Before I forget, I’ve received a couple of inquiries about the PORTER-CABLE 150 PSI Air Compressor that I’ve talked about. They wanted to know if they can use the 125psi model instead, since it’s a little cheaper.

The answer is No, not if you want to be able to air up the bigger RV tires, i.e. 110 to 120psi. The 125psi model will struggle to get much over 100 psi, while the 150psi one will go to 120 to 125psi with no problems.

Wrapping up, we’ve got some more family photos. First up is our nephew Jason and his family, his wife Laura, and their kiddos, Ella, Avery Jan, and Annisten.

And here’s another shot of the kids,

with Annisten, Avery Jane, and Ella.

Brandi, Lowell, and Landon are up in Oklahoma spending Thanksgiving with Lowell’s parents, where Landon is hard at work building a Gingerbread Farm House.

Looks like he’s making some headway.

Tomorrow looks to be another nice stay-at-rig day.

______________________________________________

Thought for the Day:

It was Wilt Chamberlin’s mother who said “Kids don’t look up to their parents anymore“

asdfasdf

Overcast and it rained too. In fact this seems to be the start of rain every day for the next seven days or so. Not very conducive to the outside stuff I want to work on. But I did get a couple of things done inside that were on my list.

One of the things I’d been wanting to do was to install a fan speed switch on our front AC thermostat. I had installed one on the rear thermostat years ago, but we never needed one on the front unit, since in the larger area it needed to run wide open most of the time.

But our new Coleman Mach XV unit that I installed last August is over 10% higher in BTU’s (15,000 vs. 13,500) than our old Mach V, and in addition the fan in the new unit is more powerful. So what this means is that the new unit tends to short-cycle in milder weather.

This means that the unit doesn’t really run long enough to remove the maximum amount of moisture from the air. This is why the AC unit in your sticks & bricks needs to be correctly sized for your house.

If it’s too small, of course it won’t cool the house down enough. But if it’s too large, it cools the house down too quickly, without lowering the humidity, leaving you feeling cold and clammy.

In the case of the unit in the rig, the best thing to do is to slow the fan speed, so that’s what I wanted to take care of today.

On the thermostat in the bedroom I was able to mount the switch on the side of the case,

but because of the little shelf that mounts around the front thermostat, this switch would have to be on the bottom.

I started out by cutting a small notch in the bottom lip of the case and then I SuperGlue’d the SPDT switch in place.

Next I cut and stripped a small length of wire and soldered it to the center lug of the switch

I then connected the red wire to the thermostat terminal strip and soldered the HI speed and LO speed wires to the switch.

All I had to do now was reassemble everything, put the batteries back in and it was ready to go.

I’ll leave it set on LO except in the summer when it’s the hottest. In addition, keeping it on LO cuts down on some of the noise from the fan, so it’s a two-fer.

Next up was to finish up the kitchen LED light upgrade I started last month after the two fluorescent tubes died in the kitchen fixture. I was short one strip so I just fixed it up temporarily until I could order more. Then we got busy on the gate so it got put off until now.

So this what I started with.

I had just taped the LED strips to the plastic sheet and wired them up like this.

So today I was going to add the last strip and tape all of them to the top of the fixture. The strips come with a peel-off adhesive backing that makes it easy to mount them up in the fixture. So after I wired in the new strip and got them all mounted, it looks like this.

These six strips put out about 15% more light than the fluorescent tubes they replaced, and they’ll last a lot longer too. And I’ve now got enough strips to convert all the other fluorescent lights in the rig.

Here’s the ones I used, these Super Bright LED Light Strips and it looks like they’ve actually come down a couple of dollars, since they’re now $5.99 a set.

Wrapping up, Amazon has a couple of really good deals going on through Saturday. The amazing Kindle Fire tablet, normally $49, is on sale for only $35.

You can check it here: Fire, 7″ Display, Wi-Fi, 8 GB – Includes Special Offers, Black

And even better, they’ve got the Amazon Echo, normally $179, on sale though Saturday for only $149.

Jan and I both love our Echo and it gets daily use here in the rig, and we even used it outside on the gate. I’ll have a review on ours in the next few weeks.

Finally, don’t forget about Landon’s Kindergarten Class Gingerbread Man project. A number of you have already sent in postcards and we greatly appreciate it.

To recap, Landon’s class needs picture postcards from around the country mailed to his class describing sightings of the missing Gingerbread Man. You can just say something like, “We saw the missing Gingerbread Man here at Mt. Rushmore.”

You can mail them to:

Traci Blocker
Keiko Davidson Elementary
26906 Pine Mill Ranch Drive
Katy, Texas 77494

Thanks for your help.

_____________________________________________

Thought for the Day:

Information is the currency of democracy. ~ Thomas Jefferson

dfgsdfgs