Our RV Adventures

A week or so ago, while we were still on the gate, our Mr. Coffee didn’t want to make coffee one morning, not something you particularly like in a coffee maker.

The problem was that it heated up OK, and then water started coming out of the spout onto the coffee grounds. But after a few minutes the water just stopped flowing. You could hear it still bubbling in the heating unit it boiled away and the until beeped to signal it was finished making coffee. To finish it up manually , I heated up water in the microwave and poured it directly on the grounds. So at least we had coffee.

Later in the afternoon, I took the Mr. Coffee outside to flush it out with the hose, figuring it was stopped up somehow. And in washing it out, I did find some coffee grounds in the bottom of the reservoir. I’m not sure how they got there, but I was hoping that it would fix the problem.

And it did for a few days.

At least until yesterday morning when the problem reoccurred. And again I finished up our coffee by pouring in microwaved hot water. But with our leaving at 1pm and not getting home until after 9pm last night, I forgot about the problem until this morning.

Not wanting to put up with this again, and desperate for coffee, I decided to take the thing apart and either fix it or trash it. And ‘trash it’ is what Jan wanted to do with it. “Just buy a new one.” is what she said. But I’m cheap.

You do remember I’m cheap, right?

Anyway we just bought this one back in July, and I wasn’t ready to give up on it yet. So getting out my screwdriver set, I tore into it.

First off I removed the spout after taking out one screw.

I disassembled the tube and the spout , but found no blockage there. So turning the unit upside down, I took out the six small screws, including the two hidden under the removable rubber feet., something you see a lot in equipment.

Note I’m once again using my trusty WORX Power Screw Driver.

Opening it up I found the heating unit and the associated plumbing.

The first thing I noticed was some sort of blockage in the lower tube.

At first I thought it was a clump of grounds doing the blocking, but when I looked closer,

I found it was something mechanical. So I removed the tube and tried to blow through it, finding nothing would go through in either direction. Probably not the way it’s supposed to work.

Using a screwdriver I pushed the object out and found this.

Getting a closer look, I saw it was a check valve of some sort. Perusing the layout of the unit I figured out that the water pressure in the reservoir pushes the water down past the check valve where it is heated up and pushed up the tube leading to the spout. The check valve keeps the heated water from being pushed back into the reservoir, only letting it go up the spout..

But since I wasn’t able to blow through the tube from either direction, it was obviously stopped up, and cleaning it out, I did find a small bit of coffee grounds in it.

Hoping this was the problem, I put everything back together and crossed my fingers. And a few minutes later I had this.

Ahhhh! Coffee.

About 3pm Jan and I headed out for a late lunch and some shopping. I wanted to stop back by the Convenience RV Store to pick up the bulbs and the latches I ordered yesterday. We had also decided to eat at the adjoining Fish Pond Restaurant while we were there. We’ve eaten here twice before and always enjoyed it, and it was no different this time.

Jan had the ‘small’ Catfish Platter.

and I had the Grilled Chicken Club Sandwich.

What I want to know is if that’s the ‘small’ platter, how big is the big one?

My Grilled Chicken sandwich was maybe one of the best chicken sandwiches I’ve ever had, possibly because it also had grilled onions on it, not a usual ingredient on a Club sandwich. We both also had a small salad with our meal, made even better with their delicious homemade dressings.

After our great meal, and picking up my parts, we headed back down I-45 to the Kroger’s in Willis to pick up a few things before finally heading home for the night.

Another nice, non-gate day.

Wrapping up, I have a favor to ask of our readers around the country.  Our daughter Brandi received this email from Landon’s Kindergarten teacher. Boiling this all down, his teacher would like people to send picture postcards from around the country reporting a Gingerbread Man sighting.

I would really appreciate your help with this project. Thanks.

Gingerbread Express

In early December, our Kindergarten class will have a Gingerbread Man unit. We will do a variety of activities with this unit. We will read and compare the various versions of the stories. We will sequence the story. We will follow directions to create a Gingerbread Man for decoration. We will graph, measure, and describe our gingerbread men. These are just a few of the activities. J

I would like to teach a bit about geography during this unit. THIS IS WHERE I COULD USE YOUR HELP! I will be reading The Gingerbread Man in class. I will have a Gingerbread Man in our classroom at that time. When the children go to specials, I will remove the Gingerbread Man from the classroom and tell the students that he ran away.

Hopefully, with your cooperation, we will begin receiving postcards from all over the world telling about sightings of the Gingerbread Man. We will then track them on a map to see where the Gingerbread Man has been. At the end of the unit, our Gingerbread Man will return and the students will make and decorate their own Gingerbread Man to take home.

Here’s how you can help. Contact relatives or friends living outside of Houston. (Hopefully with email, this will be easier!) Ask them to send a picture postcard telling about a sighting of the Gingerbread Man. We will track the postcards on our map as they get mailed in until Friday, December 11^th 2015.

Mail Postcards to:

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

I know that this will be an exciting and educational adventure for our class! Thanks for your participation.

Working Together
The Kindergarten Team

PS. This is a secret, so SSSHHHH…don’t tell your Kindergartner about it!

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Thought for the Day:

Men are like steel; when they lose their temper, they lose their strength. –— Chuck Norris

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Our first day of gate freedom and I slept in until about 11am, my first full nights sleep in 3 months. When I’m on the gate I normally sleep 3 or 4 hours at a time, twice a night. I can do this for long periods with no problems, but it’s certainly nice to not have to.

Along with our morning coffee and pumpkin bread, we enjoyed just sitting and talking, and not jumping up at the sound of the bell alarm. Jan did say  that she still hears bells in her sleep. For my part, I find myself checking out tag numbers to see if I recognize them as we walk around.

About 1pm Jan and I headed out for some shopping and then a trip down to Katy to have dinner with Brandi, Lowell, and Landon. They leaving tomorrow for Oklahoma to visit some friends and then spend Thanksgiving with Lowell’s parents before coming back home Sunday night.. So this would be our only chance to see them for a week.

Our first shopping stop was the Convenience RV Store a couple of miles north of here next to the Fish Pond Restaurant. I was looking for a couple of things, 12v light bulbs, and a shower door latch.

in our bathroom, besides the overhead lights, we have six  light bulbs, three on either side of the vanity mirror. A week or so ago, four of them suddenly died, all three on the left side, and one on the right.

Now three bulbs going out in one fixture is kind of suspicious, and makes you think that maybe there’s a problem with the fixture itself. But I took a good bulb from the right side and it worked in the left fixture, and one of the dead bulbs still didn’t work in the right side. At first you’d want to chalk this up to just a coincidence, and it kind of is, but not quite.

In the 8 years we’ve own this coach, I’ve replace two of these six bulbs, both on the right side. And I’d be willing to bet that those two bulbs are the ones still working. The other four are original to the coach when we bought it in 2008, and may just be original to the coach from1999.

And actually it’s not that unusual for bulbs with the same amount of hours to go out in a group. Back in my younger, skinnier (stupider?) days when I was working in radio and TV broadcasting, I used to moonlight replacing the bulbs in the transmitting towers for a number of stations in the area. I have no fear of heights, and I worked cheap, so I usually got the job. And one thing you did when you went up to replace a bad bulb, you replaced them all at the same time. Otherwise, if one went out, more would follow, sometimes within a few days.

These bulbs were kind of expensive, and sometimes the station would try to cheap out by only replacing the bad one. I’d warn them that I’d be back in a short time, but they wouldn’t listen. And anywhere from few days to a few weeks, I’d be back.

I was also looking for a new shower door latch, but as it turned out they did not have either the bulbs or the latch in stock, but they did order them for me, and they should be in by noon tomorrow.

Nice service.

Our next shopping stop was Wal-Mart, of course. It’s not really shopping without a Wal-Mart stop. Beside the groceries and stuff, we both got haircuts while we were there. I hadn’t had one since the 1st of October so I was starting to look a bit shaggy, at least on the sides. Not a lot to worry about on top.

Finally about 4:15 we were on our way down to the Katy area to meet Brandi, Lowell, and Landon at one of our favorite restaurants in that area, Torchy’s Tacos.

Where else can you get a taco with a grilled jalapeno sausage, queso fresco, shredded cheese, and pico de gallo. Not your average taco.

Later, after some time at Brandi’s, we finally headed back to Conroe, getting back to the rig about 9:15.

Another nice, but long day.

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Thought for the Day:

“If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re going.” Professor Irwin Corey

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