Our RV Adventures

Jan and I were up about 6:30 for our usual pre-prep to travel back to Lake Conroe today. As usual I had done a lot of things yesterday afternoon to get ready, i.e., stowed the sewer hose, etc. I normally would have also put up the shore water hose, but since I don’t have a working water pump right now, I  left it hooked up for today’s showers.

The replacement water pump is on the list, but it’s now been pushed down to third place. Instead, first up now is to climb up on the roof and check the drain holes on the rear AC. I’ve got water coming in from the AC filter when it’s running and I don’t see any sign of it running off the side of the rig as normal. It’s probably an algae buildup.

Then second, is my microwave door problem. The latch has apparently broken inside and I can’t open the door, even after holding in the button and pulling on the door as has been suggested.

At this point, looks like I’m going to have pull it out of its over-the-counter cabinet, and remove the panels to get to the latch to release it. Replacement parts should only be about $18. Certainly better than $300-$400 for a new one.

Jan and I headed into Columbus for our usual Schobel’s breakfast buffet. We always eat here before we leave Colorado River, and always have breakfast at the Cracker Barrel before we leave Lake Conroe.

Yes, it is a rut, but it’s a tasty rut.

Besides attracting us to the  good food, Schobel’s also seems to attract neat customized trikes. This was the first one we saw in their parking lot last December.

And then this one today.

I didn’t get enough of a look at the engine to know what it is, beyond a V-8. Maybe a reader will know.

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With a Busch beer keg for a fuel tank, and a Busch beer container for a saddle bag, I’m sensing a theme here.

Now that’s heavy duty suspension. It would look right at home on a John Deere tractor, especially with the green paint job.

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A switch for everything.

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Now I’m not sure what the little ‘distillery’ here is for. That’s the fan and radiator in that rear box, so maybe it’s his radiator overflow.

But since it’s a Russian Standard Vodka bottle, maybe he’s making up some homebrew as he drives.

A neat bike.

Back at the park, I was outside finishing up and ran into Vicki Hall, a fellow gate guard, and Facebook friend. She had posted a photo of their 5th wheel and said they were at Colorado River. When I saw the photo I realized they were parked right behind us.

Then a little later, Vicki’s husband Roy also came over to say “Hiâ€. Nice to put a face to to a name and a Facebook post.

The way we’re parked on this circle, the rear end of our coach is near the camper right next door. Since our engine compartment is only about 15 feet from where they were outside cooking and eating breakfast, and we weren’t in any real hurry, I decided to wait for them to finish  before I cranked up since it takes 5-6 minutes for the rig to come up on the suspension airbags before we can pull out..

So about 15 minutes we were pulling out and getting hitched up. And by 10:30 we were on our way to Conroe.

Saturday, when we were traveling down to Seabrook for our Taft/NASA reunion, we  both commented on how there was no wind along the way, with the flags all hanging limp. But we both figured it would  be different today, And it was.

Today the flags along the way were all at right angles to the poles. The only redeeming part was that it wasn’t as gusty as in the past, just steady from the north.

Passing Brookshire, we pulled over on the shoulder for a potty stop. This is a good place for that because the shoulders on both sides of the three lanes are extra wide, due to the fact that they are designated as Evaculanes for hurricane evacuation, giving people 5 lanes to get out of town.

While we were stopped I cranked up the generator and turned on the AC’s. When we left Colorado River, it was overcast and 73 degrees, and it was supposed to stay that way the whole trip. But the sun came out and put an end to that. So AC’s it was.

We got into the Lake Conroe Thousand Trails a little after 12:30 and found a nice site in our favorite ‘E’ ring. Then a little later, I talked with Judy Mott about getting together while we’re both here. Really looking forward to seeing Dick and Judy again.

Life is good.

Thought for the Day:

“An elected legislature can trample a man’s rights as easily as a king.â€

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Jan and I were on the road for the 2 hour trip down to Seabrook, TX  by 10am to meet up at T-Bone Tom’s for a reunion of Taft Broadcasting’s NASA group employees.

Our last reunion was in 2007 at the Outpost in Webster (that doesn’t even exist anymore) so it’s been a while since most of us had gotten together. And before that, it had been 20 years since some of us had seen each other. So  it was good to see so many friends again. We had almost 20 people there, so it was a good turn-out.

And what was even better was how quickly we seemed to pick right back up regaling each other with almost-forgotten tales of wild times out at White Sands, and stories about people and things at JSC here in Houston.

But the biggest thing was the fact that we all got OLD!  I mean I had just turned 30 when I started at JSC in December of 1978, and now I’ll be 68 in October. And when we moved here our son Chris was 10, but he just turned 48 a couple of weeks ago.

After a really great time, and the great food at T-Bone Tom’s, the party started breaking up around 3:30. For some reason we just can’t party all night like we used to.

I want to give a big shout out to Perry and Molly (Quintero) Kuhns for putting all this together again. Thanks guys.

Don’t wait too long to do another one. There might not be too many of us left.

Finally heading home we made a Buc-ee’s stop for gas and Cranberry Walnut muffins, before our next stop at our son Chris’ to pick up the new Captain’s Chair armrests he had made up for us.

The old ones on the left were made from OSB board and they started coming apart as the glue broke down and the screws wobbled out. Another case of old age taking its toll.

So Chris made up these new ones out of 2 x 4’s and plywood. I’ll take the metal pivot arm off the old ones and install it on the new wood. Then I’ll put the foam back on with the leather cover. And they be good for another 17 years. Or more.

Getting back home about 6, I packed up Barbara Spade’s laptop and took it over to her rig. After de-gunking the computer, I increased the memory from 2GB to 4GB,  which will speed things up considerably.

I had left the MemTest86 running for over 36 hours to be sure she wouldn’t have any problems. And nothing showed up.

But when you run a long-term test like this, you have to be aware that you may get an occasional random error caused by cosmic rays

An article by Berke Durak  calculates that your probability of having at least one bit error in 4 gigabytes of memory at sea level on planet Earth in 72 hours is over 95%.

Of course that assumes you are using non-error-correcting memory (non-ECC). With ECC, he figured, you can wait 2.7 million years before you get an uncorrectable bit error at a probability of 96%.

And since Barbara’s Toshiba laptop uses non-ECC ram, I guess it’s lucky no errors showed up.

On a recent forum, people were discussing kids being punished unfairly by teachers for disagreeing with them, and I said that it was nothing new.

When I was in 3rd grade, 1956 or so, I got a spanking, when the teacher told another student that he would get lead poisoning writing on his arm with a pencil, i.e. pencil lead.

When I told her pencil lead wasn’t really lead, but carbon like charcoal, she said I was wrong, I said, “No, you’re wrong.â€

That got me a spanking and 30 minutes standing in the corner. Then at the end of class, as we were leaving, she overhead me mumbling “She’s still wrongâ€, and I got another spanking.

I guess that was my version of Galileo’s “And yet it still moves.â€

Unfortunately two spankings in one day was not my record. That would be three.

And now don’t you feel sorry for Jan for having to put up with me for almost 49 years.

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