Apirl 19th - 27th - Easter and a Week in California

Good Friday we flew out to California to spend a week with two kids and the two grandkids. The flight out went without a hitch. We had a half hour to make a connecting flight in Salt Lake City but our plane from St. Louis was a half hour early and the gate was right across the hall from our arriving gate. Easy.

Easter Sunday, with a two year old granddaughter, we had a big Easter egg hunt and Easter feast thereafter. Here is a picture of Violet finding one of many plastic eggs.

Here is a picture of the two grandkids enjoying the day and their booty.

Kellen made out like a bandit in money and Xbox gift cards.

As part of the Easter celebration Adam wanted to make a lamb cake, which he had always helped his grandma make when growing up. Earlier in the month he had mentioned this to his dad and as luck would have it his dad had grandma's lamb cake mold in the basement. He sent it to Adam. Easter weekend Adam made two lamb cakes. Here is a picture of him with the first attempt. It tasted as good as it looked. He opted for sprinkles on the outside rather than coconut because none of us like coconut.

Monday Adam wanted to get his car washed. I rode along and about dropped over when I saw what a car wash cost out here.

Despite the price there were several lanes of people buying the service. This wasn't a hand car wash, this was a machine car wash. They did vacuum it out, clean the windows, and dry it for that amount. In Florida Kelly got unlimited car washes for $20.00 per month. I picked up one of these coupons in case I drive back some time and need a car wash.

Tuesday Kelly and I went for a tour of the Winchester House in San Jose. It was built by the widow of the owner of the Winchester rifle company after he died at age forty-three. She inherited two million dollars and the equivalent today of $25,000 per day to live on. A medium told her to move out West. She bought an eight room farm house with 45 acres. She lived there and worked on it until she died at age eighty-four. She thought that all the ghosts of the people who were killed by Winchester rifles would haunt her so she had carpenters building on the house 24 hours a day 7 days a week so that the hammering would drive the ghosts away. She designed the place herself and was clearly nuts. There are hallways and stairs to nowhere, doors to nowhere, etc. Here is a picture of the place today. It originally was four stories tall but the earthquake in 1906 made parts unsafe and they had to be torn down.

As it sits it is 24,000 square feet, has 160 rooms, thirteen bath rooms, forty-seven fireplaces, six kitchens, 2,000 doors, and 10,000 windows. She built it room by room, was her own architect for thirty-eight years. Quite a weird place but fun to visit.

Wednesday Erin and Kellen came back over to Mountain View and we went to Facebook where Annie gave us a tour. Kellen had never been there. Facebook is an interesting place. Here is a picture of the Main Street walkway . It is divided with a broken yellow line, like a highway, to handle the foot traffic in both directions.. 

Here is what the work areas look like inside. This is the area for new hires and it was lunch time so no one was at the workstations in the area we went in. 

No one has a private office and with everyone working so close together the rule is "Be quiet at all times". If you have to talk with someone, or be on the phone, or have a conference call, you reserve one of many rooms set up for this, or go outside.

Because of the thousands of workers parking is a problem. We had to park many blocks away at building 54 and take a shuttle to building 41. Employees use the free bikes that are provided everywhere to get around. Here is a picture of some bikes outside one building. They are all painted Facebook blue and you are free to ride them home it you like.

Because cars are such an issue, and because many employees ride their personal bikes to work, there are bike racks inside the buildings. Here is an example.

A perk for bike riders is that you can bring your bike to work and they have a shop where it will be fixed just for the price of the parts. Here is a picture of the shop right on Main Street.

All meals, snacks, and drinks are free all day long. Another perk is a free arcade where you can go and unwind. Here is a picture of Kelly trying her luck at pinball.

After the tour of Facebook we drove to Erin's place in Tracy, California, about 57 miles away. We spent a relaxing couple of days there doing a little shopping and grilling before heading home Saturday morning. One of the things we did while there was go to Carl Jr's and get a "Beyond Burger". It is a meatless burger that looks, tastes, and bleeds like a beef burger. It was really good. Interestingly it had more calories than a beef burger. It is going to be a big hit.

The flight home went like clockwork. We got at the airport around 11:00 a.m. and were getting in bed in Perryville at 11:00 p.m.

April 11th - 18th - Marge's Tires and Repairs

Before we left Florida I needed to top off the trailer tires after it had been sitting for four months. I soon learned the compressor that I had been carrying around for a number of years could not do the job. (Luckily never needed it before.) It would only pump to 100 lbs and I wanted to put 110 lbs in each tire. I borrowed a compressor from a neighbor to get the job done.

With a major road trip coming up in June the first thing to do upon getting home was to purchase an air compressor that could propely inflate the tires if needed. For several days I looked at various models and finally decided on the Viair 450P-RV model, which is a twelve volt DC compressor that can pump up to 150 lbs of pressure. It was quite pricey but had all positive reviews.  Additionally is small and compact, which is important for RV travel. I bit the bullet and ordered one.  Here is a picture of it and all the accessories that came with it.I received it the other day and upon putting it to work was quite impressed with its ability. You have to keep your vehicle running because it uses a lot of amps to run. The only negative with the unit was that the quick connect on the air chuck leaked air. Luckily I had one in my shop. After swapping it out I topped off the tires to my satisfaction.

I knew I needed to check the air in the spare tire on Marge as well. The spare is mounted up under the frame and is lowered to the ground via a cable which you crank from the back of the RV. I had to lower the spare all the way to the ground to check the air because when they mounted it they faced the front side of the tire up so that there was no access to the valve stem from below. I am glad I checked it because after four years it only had 60 lbs of air in it. (I obviously should have checked it a long time ago!) I aired it up to 110 lbs like the rest of the tires and remounted it with the valve stem now facing down so it will be easy to check in the future.

While in Florida a molded part of the plastic that lines the inside of the refrigerator door off. It is a small piece tht holds on one of the door shelves.  I had no way of fixing this without proper tools so we just had to store less stuff on the door. The other day I took the door off and took it into the shop to make a repair. I forgot to take a picture of the broken section but here is a picture of the other side of the door with the red arrow pointing to the piece that broke off.

 

The inside of the door is made out of a very thin, molded plastic. All that is behind the thin plastic is foam to insulate the door. There is absolutely nothing to mount a repair piece to so my only option was to make a mold, fill it with JB Weld, and then file it and grind it into a shape that the door shelf could fit into. Here is a picture of the final result. The JB Weld is dark gray and the paint didn’t want to cover it very well but it is covered by the shelf anyway.

The new piece is solid JB Weld and wider than the original. I made a plastic mold and poured the material into it and waited a day for it to set up. JB Weld sets up like a rock. I also spread JB Weld around the bottom to affix the new part to the flimsy plastic door material. The repair will be stronger than the original if the cold temperature in the refrigerator does not cause any problems with long-term adhesion of the JB Weld product. I fixed one of the door shelves with JB Weld a couple of years ago and it has been holding. This repair will have more stress on it though.

Upon walking out of Marge after rehanging the refrigerator door I noticed the steps seemed wobbly. Upon examination I found that the two rivets on one side of the bottom step had broken off. Here is a picture.

I had other matters to take care of and could not make this repair before it started raining. When we get back from California next week I will put in new rivets and inspect all the others for possible failure. Marge is a 2006 so she is getting a little age on her and, like the rest of us, things are falling apart.

The other joy of RV ownership – fixing things.

April 8, 2019 - Learning Blogger and Cleaning up Marge

There is a learning curve with a new blog program so bear with me. There may be changes as I go along and figure out how things work.

After four months in Florida a lot of the things we use there will not be needed on the trip to Newfoundland this summer so I am taking them out to lighten the load. I am getting quite a pile in the garage where they will sit in my way until next winter.

Four months of sitting under oak trees in Florida left its mark on Marge's roof. I had swept and blown it off a couple of times over the winter but the pollen and mold built up. The roof needed to be scrubbed and yesterday was the day. Here is a before picture.  You can see the water streaks from the air-conditioner. These streams were brown from the pollen along the path and quite difficult to get off. The whole roof should be as white as the air-conditioner cover.

It is always a question of what to use to clean the roof. Harsh soaps run down the sides and strip off any wax. Bleach works great for removing mold and mildew but it is not compatible with rubber and vinyl materials. I recently read that baby shampoo will not take off the wax and that adding some vinegar will help get rid of the mold. So I tried it. It worked pretty well. The roof material is rough so the only way to get it clean is with a scrub brush on the hands and knees. I tried multiple brushes trying to speed up the process. The scrub brush that works the best is the old-time wooden natural bristle brush. Here is a picture after the first section was done.

I would scrub a section of the roof with the brush on a handle, rinse it off, then get down and scrub again with the brush on my hands and knees. It took three and a half hours to clean the main roof. Enough for one day.

This morning I scrubed the roofs on the three slide-outs. You can see on the above picture that they are just as dirty as the main roof. It took about an hour to do all three, not bad. I was able to scrub them from my eight foot ladder. The brush would not fit right up against the top seals so that part will just have to stay dirty. 

Next will be the project of buffing the sides and waxing them. It usually takes me a full day to do each side. I will wait on that project until we get back from California in a couple of weeks.

The joys of RV ownership.

April 1, 2019 - Planning Our Summer Trip to Newfoundland and Labrador

We are starting this new blog on "Blogger", switching from "Wordpress". This is the first blog.

We are taking a two month RV trip to Newfoundland and Labrador this summer. We are taking twelve year old grandson, Kellen, along. He will fly in from California when school is out.

It took us two full days of planning and many phone calls to finally get reservations for the three ferries we will be taking, for campsites on the way out, and for campsites on each end of each ferry so we know we will be where we need to be on time. We have never reserved this many campsites before because of how it controls the daily driving schedule. Our plan is to drive straight out from Missouri to New Sidney, Nova Scotia, to catch the first ferry. We will take a more leisurely pace back across the U.S. on the way home. A stop on the way home, which presented itself to us this winter by a couple in our RV park in Florida, is a couple days in Cutler, Maine. Norb and Marilyn have invited us to visit them there. Norb is a lobster fisherman and boat builder. He will take us out lobster fishing one day, which will be an exciting experience. Marilyn is planning a picnic one day on a nearby island. We look forward to the activities and visiting with them again.

We will only take the truck over to Labrador. There are limited places to stay in Labrador but we were able to book a room at a B & B there. We were going to take the five day working ferry up the coast and back but decided it was too much driving and too much time out on the water rather than sightseeing. We will drive around the lower parts of Labrador instead. After catching the ferry back to Newfoundalnd we will work our away across Newfoundland from West to East, catching the ferry back to Nova Scotia after about a month of taking in all the sights.

We are excited.