Our RV Adventures

I was outside working on cleaning the rig by about 11:30 this morning, but it took longer than I had figured, due to the fact that it took longer to get all the encrusted oily grime off the rear of the rig than I thought.

But Awesome is awesome for cutting through heavy grease and grime.

So I went from this

to this.

And it’s shiny too. It just took a while.

And by 2:30 I had done the rear and the passenger side of the rig, using Black Magic Wash/Wax. Turned out to look pretty good.

Beyond the nicks and scrapes the big problem with the rig’s 19 year old paint job is the fact that the Clear Coat finish is slowly peeling off in spots, making the area look like it’s sunburned and peeling. The pressure washer will clean of f these spots, but it will continue to peel back from there.

My research says that there is no way to remove the clear coat without removing the paint underneath. And I’m just not sure I want to spend $10,000 to $20,000 on a new paint job for an almost 20 year old coach. But I’m thinking about it.

But by 2:30 I was pooped. I plan on finishing up with the front and driver’s side tomorrow afternoon after I get home from work. But, as usual, we’ll see how it goes.

After 3 hours out in the hot sun, I decided that I deserved a steak, so about 3pm Jan and I headed up to Webster to eat at Saltgrass Steakhouse. On the way we were debating, Longhorn or Saltgrass? But Saltgrass won out due to their fantastic Wedge Salad.

Really good.

Jan had the New York Strip with Steamed and Grilled Broccoli,

while I got my usual Pat’s Ribeye, also with the Broccoli.

Well worth 3 hours in the hot sun.

We’ve always been impressed by the quality of the steaks we get at Saltgrass, and a couple of years we found out why.

We were eating at one of the Claimjumper restaurants out in Las Vegas and I compliemented our waiter about how good the steak was, and he told us what the secret was.

Claimjumper is one of the 40+ restaurant chains owned by Tilman Fertitia and Landry’s. Among others are Morton’s, McCormick & Schmick’s, and a couple of other high-end steakhouse chains. But all the Landry’s restaurants get the same quality meat from the same suppliers. It’s apparently cheaper to do it that way rather than have the different restaurants getting different meat from different suppliers.

Make sense, and good eating for us.

Coming home we stopped off at the new Dollar General on FM646 to pick up more Awesome since we were running low.

Several of our readers have ordered the SoundBar that we recently installed, and are just as happy with theirs as we are with ours.

So if you’re having problems with the sound levels on your TV, check it out.

I’m still hanging in there with my Duolingo Spanish lessons, having not missed earning my 30 points (2 or 3 lessons depending on how they’re scored), for 157 days straight.

There are 61 lessons, covering everything from Starting Basics,  to Vocabulary, Clothing, Animals, Food, Occupations, Adverbs, Numbers, etc., with each lesson having multiple levels (don’t really know how many) of increasing difficulty. After a little confusion on how to proceed, (the program is no real help), I decided to just run through each lesson at Level 1, then start over with Level 2, etc.

At this point I’m working on the 3rd Level of Lesson 9. One thing noticeable about Level 3 lessons is that now you get less help. On level 1 and 2, when you are asked to translate a sentence to/from Spanish, you were given a list of words from which to pick the correct ones.

However now you’re just on your own. You have to translate from scratch.

But it’s still fun.

Thought for the Day: 

Prolonged life has ruined more men than it ever made. – Will Rogers

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It rained.

I tried. I really did. Right after I finished my coffee I headed outside to get started, only to be greeted by the loud rumble of thunder, a gray solid overcast sky, and heavy rain drops.

Where did that come from?

We haven’t had any rain in over a month, at least that’s what La Crosse Weather Station says. And none was scheduled for today. So why rain on my parade?

One thing I did do was to top off our fresh water tank for our upcoming jaunt. We were below 1/4 tank, and we don’t expect to need it, but it’s best to be prepared.

Since I decided to put off the power washing until this afternoon, weather permitting, we headed out up to Webster about 1pm. Our first stop was for breakfast, again. Like I said, it’s our favorite meal.

But this time it was to another local favorite Breakfast/Bunch/Lunch place of ours, The Egg and I. We’ve been eating here for years, even before we started RV’ing in 2008 and it’s always been great.

Ironically, one of our favorite things there is not just the food, but their Hazelnut  Coffee. Don’t know what brand it is, or where they get it, but it’s literally the best tasting coffee we’ve ever had. Much better than any of the Hazelnut coffees we buy at the store. And we’ve tried a lot of different brands.

As far as breakfast itself, Jan had an Omelet with Mushrooms, Onions, and Avocado with Fruit and an English Muffin.

I stuck with my usual Two Eggs Over Easy, with very crispy Bacon, Fruit, and an English Muffin.

A great breakfast. Just wish it was a little closer.

Then it was a quick stop by my clients to see if my Wyze Pan Cam had come in as promised.

Well, it may have been promised but is was not kept. It seems like every time a package doesn’t show up on time, it’s in the hands of the Post Office. In this case, according to the tracking, UPS delivered it to the Houston PO on Wednesday. And there’s been no change in the tracking info since them. It’s just sitting around out there somewhere.

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night, my rear end.

Our last stop was at the El Dorado WalMart to pick up Jan’s prescription that we dropped off a couple of days ago, and once again GoodRx saved us a bunch of money.

I’ve mentioned this app before, but if you don’t use it, get it. The first thing is that it shows you the cheapest places for any drug in your area. Pretty useful by itself. But it get’s better.

In many cases GoodRx also gives you additional discounts, either by a coupon you print out and give to your pharmacy, or just a code number that you show to the clerk when you check.

In today’s case, the initial cost for Jan’s prescription was $41.58, but after I showed them the GoodRx code on my phone, it dropped to $21.20, almost a 50% discount. Nice!

Tomorrow it’s once more unto the breach, and another try at washing the rig. But we’ll see.

Thought for the Day: 

“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” -Attributed to Mark Twain, but maybe Gideon J. Tucker, 1866.

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