Our RV Adventures

Sometimes you not only can’t see the forest for the trees, you can’t even see the trees.

At least that’s how I felt yesterday when I was complaining about how much trouble I was having trying to get the old gasket and gasket sealer off my oil adapter.

And then in one of those ‘Doh’ moments for me, my beautiful (and smart wife) asked me a question.

“Have you checked to see if anyone makes something to remove old gaskets?”

Again, ‘DOH’.

And as it turns out, Permatex makes a Gasket Remover just for this purpose.

So on the way home this afternoon I stopped off at our local O’Reilly’s and picked up a package of it.

Getting home, and starting with this,

I took everything outside, and following the directions (for a change) I used the built-in brush to cover the gasket area with the foam.

The directions said to let it soak for about 30 minutes and then use a plastic scraper to remove as much of the gasket/sealer as possible.

And ended up with this.

A big difference!

Then a final scraping and cleaning gave this final result.

Just like brand new. Yea, Scrubbing Bubbles.

So it’s looks like I’m good to go to get back under the the rig and reinstall the gasket/adapter/filter combo. Then I’ll do a 30 or so minute high-idle run to check for any obvious leaks.

This coming Sunday, or maybe next weekend, we’ll do a 120 mile round-trip test drive up to the Buc-ee’s in Katy and back. And we’ll be towing this time, since this seems to be the trigger to the leaking.

If this does finally fix the problem, then something around the second week in February Jan and I plan on taking the rig up to Alabama for a friends and family visit.

But we’ll have to see how it goes.

Thought For The Day:

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” ~ H.L. Mencken

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Our only real activity today was Jan and I traveling over to Pearland this morning to have lunch with Bonnie, Jan’s long-time friend and a former coworker. She and Jan worked together about 30 years ago at the old Medical Center Del Oro Hospital, up in the Houston Medical Center area.

We took her to our favorite Saltgrass, the one in the Pearland area, which turned out to be her favorite too.

It was really good to see Bonnie again, and look forward to doing it again soon.

Since that was about all that really happened today, I thought I repost this past blog, also from September 2009.

Enjoy.

Wings and more Wings

As I said, today was pretty much just an errand day.

We’re at the Sleepy Hollow Lake Campground in Corfu, NY, a little east of Buffalo.

It’s the only park we’ve ever stayed at that has a petting zoo!  They have alpacas, goats, sheep, pigs, and emus.  Not bad.

And for some strange reason, it also has its own firetruck!

Not sure that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

After sitting outside with Mister a while, we headed out looking a good place to have lunch.

While looking for, what turned out to be an out-of-business Mexican place, we stumbled on Quaker Steak and Lube,  a restaurant with, not surprisingly, an automobile theme.

And really good food.

Besides a full menu, they also specialized in Buffalo Wings.  I noticed that besides the normal ones, they had  ‘Atomic Wings, so Jan and I decided to try a sampler plate of 5 wings.

According to the SHU (Scoville Heat Units) chart on their menu,  regular Buffalo wings rate a 3000 of the chart.  Really, really hot wings rate a 30,000.

Their Atomic Wings come in at 150,000 SHU!

Jan ate two wings and I ate 3.  They were hot, very hot.  But I’m not sure they’re any hotter than the hottest ones that Hooters has.

But for the rest of the day, our lips did tingle and feel like they had been sunburned.

After lunch, with our tongues still tingling and our eyes still watering, we drove over to Sam’s Club for some ‘stuff’.

Heading back toward home we stopped off at a Walgreens that had flu shots available.  Jan wanted to get one.  This is just for the normal flu.  The Swine (H1N1) Flu shots won’t be available until sometime next month.

As usual,  I didn’t get one.  As I tell Jan,  “I depend on the kindness of strangers”.  I figure if everyone else gets a shot, then I won’t need one.

I haven’t gotten a flu shot for years and I haven’t had the flu for years.  And the two times I got a flu shot in the past, I got very ill. As in, in the hospital for a week or so, ill.

So there.

We also stopped off at a NAPA Auto Parts so I could buy a new battery for the truck.  We’ve had a couple of instances recently where our truck wouldn’t start, so I wanted to take care of the problem.

I installed the new battery in the NAPA parking lot so I wouldn’t have to bring the old one back later.

Later that evening, we decided to have more chicken wings.  This time from the place that created the first Buffalo Wings in 1964 and started the whole thing.

It’s called ‘The Original Anchor Bar” and is located in Buffalo, of all places.  The place is really a family Italian restaurant and has been around since 1934.

The wings came about when some friends of the owner’s son showed up right before closing one night, and the son asked his mother to fix something for them.  She took a bunch of chicken wings that she was planning to use for soup, deep fried them, and then dunked them in a sauce she had been working on for another recipe.

And a legend was born!

This being an Italian restaurant, besides an order of Spicy BBQ Wings, we got a cheese and pepperoni pizza, and an order of Pizza Logs, kind of like Italian Egg Rolls.  All very good.  And we had leftovers.

Then it was back home to get ready to  head out tomorrow on a two day trip to Celinda, OH for Nick Russell’s Eastern Gypsy RV Rally.

Thought For The Day:

Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading – T Jefferson. (Maybe from Thomas Jefferson, or maybe not)

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