Our RV Adventures

After a quiet morning talking over our upcoming trip, I went outside about 1 pm to clean the oil off the back of the rig, and then do the wheels if I had time. I had stopped by the storage room on the way home from work on Friday and picked up my pressure washer to do the job. I had bought a gallon of Mean Green Cleaner/Degreaser at WalMart the other day just for this job.

They don’t explain why Mean Green Degreaser is purple.

I wanted something that would be safe on painted surfaces, and yet still cut the oil coating the rear of the coach, and this stuff seemed to do the job. I ran it through my Karcher pressure washer,

first soaking the entire area down and then letting it percolate for a while. Previously I had modified the washer solution pickup by adding a longer hose so I could pull directly from a jug of cleaner, instead of constantly refilling the small tank.

After spraying down the entire area and waiting a bit, I put on the high power nozzle and was able to just wash all the caked-on gunk with no problem. On a roll, I opened the engine compartment doors and repeated the procedure.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any before and after photos, so you’ll just have to use your imagination on how good it looks. In fact overall, except for a few scrapes, our 20 year old “Beauty” still looks pretty good. The only real problem is where the clear coat is coming off in places, making it look like it ‘s peeling after being sunburnt.

Next I started in our aluminum wheels, using Busch’s Aluminum Wash,

the best stuff I’ve found. They will take a wheel that looks like this,

and make it look like this, though somehow I didn’t get a before and after on the same wheels.

Add a little ‘Tire Wet and it looks really good.

We had originally planned to do our test driver tomorrow until I realized that I had found a lost week. For some reason I thought that next weekend was April 5th, 6th, 7th, when we’re going up to Kingsland to get together with the whole family at our son Chris’. So we’ll put it off until next weekend.

Thought for the Day:

My Kind of Guy

sgf

Finishing up on yesterday’s fun and folic, our next stop was for some WalMart shopping. And after all that food at Stomp’s Burger Joint we really needed a walk, so I parked at the far end of the parking lot, We could almost see the store from there.

Between football-ravaged ankles, as well as knees and ankles banged up from jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, I’ve usually worn boots most of my adult life, normally what I always called ‘Engineer’ boots, the short ones. Otherwise my ankles get sore very quickly walking any distance.

And I’d been talking about getting some new boots for our Europe trip, so I decided to see what WalMart had, based on my good experience with a pair of their Brahma boots that I bought back in 2014.

For the last umpteen years I’ve usually got my boots at Red Wing Shoes, mainly because that was the only place I could consistently find boots in my size. Which for me is around a 9 EEE or EEEE.

So yes, I have snowshoes for feet. I got these from my father, who said that he never had shoes that fit him until he enlisted in the Navy during WWII.

But Red Wing boots are very expensive, about $200 a pair, and it seems like the soles only lasted a few years before they would start coming apart.

But back in 2014 when we were gate guarding, I suddenly needed a pair of steel-toed boots so I grabbed a pair at WalMart for about $50. And five years later they’re still going strong with little or no wear on the tread.

But the tops are a little scuffed so I wanted some new ones, And this time I ended up with two pair, one black and one brown.

For a total of $55.

So I thought I’d start the break-in by wearing the black ones to work, and out and about. And I discovered that they apparently don’t really need any break-in period. They were just as comfortable as my 5 year old ones. And without the steel toes, much lighter too.

Finishing up at WM, it was on next door to Sam’s for gas. And a big shock. Since I filled up about a week and a half ago, the price jumped from $2.08 to $2.28.

Yikes!

When we got home, I dug out my Porter-Cable air compressor from the truck and started to check the rig’s tire pressures in prep for our test drive on Sunday.

And found out it wasn’t needed. The pressures were right where I set  them back last October before we left for Florida.

I’ve really been happy with these Ironman tires that I got back in 2015. I chose them because of all the big rigs in the oil field that were running them. And because these are truck tires, there’s a fast turnover, so these tires that I had install the first part of July 2015 have a date code of 0615.

Now that’s fresh.

Today was a big milestone for me at work. I was finally able to get a clean copy of our in-house Zen Cart shopping cart database transferred over and working on a new installation up on Godaddy. A big step toward my goal of getting our company shopping cart website up into the cloud and off my desk at work.

So to celebrate we went out for dinner tonight at a local fav, Los Ramirez Mexican Restaurant, where Jan got her usual Grilled Chicken Breast stuffed with Shrimp and Broccoli, while I got  the Beef Fajita Taco Salad.

A  delicious way to celebrate.

Thought for the Day: 

The mark of a wise man is not what he knows, but what he knows he doesn’t know.

fgj