Our RV Adventures

Tomorrow afternoon is Jan’s Pre-Op consultation preparing for her lithotripsy on Friday morning.

She’ll be meeting with the anesthesiologist that will be taking care of her during her procedure.

Hopefully after Friday she’ll be done with all of this.

About 2pm I went outside to reinstall the new rear window awning. Turned out to be pretty easy except for a couple of missteps along the way. So I started with this.

I first slid the awning fabric into the top frame and then slid the frame/awning into the window frame and locked it down. Next I slid the lower torque tube onto the bottom of the fabric.

Starting with the left side which still had the spring installed, I fastened my locking pliers into the spring end and cranked it 16 times, the number of turns that it took to unwind the spring. Then I slid it on the awning arm and and locked it in place with the screw.

Then it was on to the right side where I had had to drill out the rivets and remove that spring end so I could slid the fabric out.

I put the spring in and was ready to to pop-rivet it in place when I remembered the pull strap. It has to be slid in the bottom groove on the torque tube opposite the fabric groove. Luckily I remembered it.

Then after adding the strap and riveting the spring end in place, I locked the pliers into place and cranked in the 16 turns and then slid it on the awning arm. But when I when to remove the pliers I ran into a problem.

Due to the way I had placed the pliers, I could not unlock and remove them. Apparently when I did the other end I had locked the pliers in place the other way around. So now I had to get the spring end back off the arm, and after using a screwdriver to stop it from unwinding, remove the pliers, turn them over, and then lock them back in place.

Now I could rivet the spring end in place and I was done.

Hopefully tomorrow or Thursday I’ll be able to take down big passenger side awning and take it over to Sundowner Canvas so they can make a new one. And while there I’ll pick up the rear awning for the other side.

About 4:20 Jan and I headed over to Bacliff to meet up with Wil and Cyndy Olsen for dinner at La Brisa Mexican Restaurant, where we’ve met them before.

We were once again hoping to get Wil and Cyndy together with our other friends Jan and Dale Thompson. But a family illness took its toll and they had to drop out.

I guess it was not to be.

Jan had the Perchuga Monterey with a Grilled Chicken Breast.

I got a regular favorite for me, the Tortilla Soup.

Wil and Cyndy hope to have their truck out of the shop later this week and then move up to the Katy area for the repairs on their 5th wheel. All this due to a wreck that they were involved in several months ago where two vehicles collided, and then hit them.

Wrong place, Wrong Time.

The Word of the Day is: suspiration

David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920’s

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After being out all last week due to Jan’s illness it was actually good to be back at work today.

Of course I had a lot of stuff to catch up on, but the big problem was that right after I got in we found that the webserver email system had crashed completely. This means that no one gets a confirmation email for their order. Nor can we send out any emails on the company account.

I did finally get it limping back to life, but this problem has just reinforced my determination to get the Zen Cart shopping cart off this server and up on Godaddy. That way I can also set up the email there too and not have to worry about all this again.

It didn’t help things that workers were in and out of my office replacing the sheetrock ceiling that was damaged during Harvey, either.

I’m still really enjoying relearning Spanish with the Duolingo app. And they were right. It is fun and addictive. And it is working. I noticed this evening that when I was clicking thru the Spanish stations on the DirecTV channel guide, I could read most the program titles.

Neat!

Over the years we’ve come across a lot of RV’ers who travel with unusual pats – Ferrets, Nubian Pygmy Goats, Monkeys, Iguanas, large tortoises, a pot-belly pig, parrots and cockatoos, and even six large St. Bernard show dogs in a small camper. Watching them all come out was like watching a clown car.

And the Full-Time RV-traveling nurse I met at the hospital fits right into this. She and her husband travel with TWO ferrets and a Sugar Glider.

A Sugar Glider, like a flying squirrel, can glide from one side of the room (or coach) to the other.

But while flying squirrels are rodents, sugar gliders are actually marsupials like a kangaroo.

When I was a kid I had a pet flying squirrel that I raised from a baby. it was perfectly tame, and whenever I would walk out on the large screen-in porch where he usually stayed, he would swoop down and land on my shoulder waiting for a peanut or a piece of carrot. I could even take him outside and he never tried to get away. He would just ride around in my shirt pocket with his head poking up looking around.
I had him for 5 or 6 years until I gave him to a friend when we moved to South America.

And what was the name of my pet flying squirrel, you might ask?

Well, Rocky, of course.

The Headline of the Day: Wild turkeys terrorizing mailmen, thwarting deliveries for weeks.

Thought for the Day:

Experience is a good teacher, but she’s terribly expensive.

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