The FORTRESS of solitude…

October – week 4

We are less than 1 week from launch time for the Fortress.  Both of us are excited and scurrying around sorting, packing, fixing, finishing and just generally enjoying our pandemonium..  Our timeline is to push the GO button on Sunday November 1 at 10 AM.  Not that anyone is holding us to a timeline, but both of us are still coming down off of the regimentation that is instilled in us by 40+ years in the business world..

Randy just finished waxing the Fortress today and I must say that it does look really nice.  There are only a few things left on our list that need to be done – but by and large, the Fortress is ship-shape and ready for the road.

The rest of our work is to pack and get the house ready for the house-sitter.  You know who you are – so THANK YOU!!!!

The computer will be packed away after I publish this, so we’ll be trying to do updates from the iPad.

Here’s a few pics that might be of interest..  More later!     Randy & Dar

BEFORE AFTER

The floor-plan of The Fortress below:

Big-Foot truck waits as another day sets on the work on Fortress

We’ll post some more interior pictures in a future update.

Retirement – Imagination / Reality - What’s next!

October – Week-1

Retirement thoughts and impressions - Our imaginations are wonderful God given abilities. Our imagination supports creativity, precognition of events and help guide us.  Mankind has not figured out how to synthesize imagination – yet..  Where am I going with this train of thought? Dar and Randy both had very similar reactions to their last day of work.  Darlene had imagined that it was going to be full of joy, excitement and elation.. Instead it was like reading the last page of a well loved book that she’d been involved with most of her life. It was sad.  Randy’s imagination had him running out the door, jumping up in the air yelling “Yahoo I’m free!!!”.  Instead, it was like a long lonely walk out the door, knowing that there was no turning back. There was a feeling of great dread. Like a best friend and constant life-long companion had just past away.  We’ve come to find that we are not alone in our reactions.  Our work lives had become so much a part of us, that it actually defined much of us. Time heals all wounds we’re told. It will take time for these feelings to subside.

Let the Adventures BEGIN!!!!

VACATION PLANNING – We are going to head south for the winter and have reserved a spot in an RV Resort in Arizona.  On our way there, we plan on visiting friends in Texas.  Believe it or not – this will be our first real vacation since 1986.  That’s 29 years..  Once in Arizona, we’ll unload the GrassHoppa SxS and head up into the mountain trails..

 

CAMPER UPDATES

Water Heater Upgrade – The water heater in this camper runs on LP Gas. We wanted to reduce the amount of LP gas being used so we added an electric heating element to the tank. Now we have a hybrid system that will run off LP or Electric or both! In the process we had to add an additional 110v circuit in the basement of the camper to power the heater. 

 

 

Let their be LIGHT!  One area that this camper was deficient was in the lighting in vanity area. Randy added another circuit to power a pair of Natural Light LED fixtures. When the switch is off, the LEDs are dimmed way down and serve as a nightlight for the adjacent bedroom.

 

LED Lighting --- We’ve invested quite a bit of effort and dollars in replacing literally all incandescent lights inside and outside with LEDs.   Randy did some load tests on just the ceiling lighting. We went from over 7 Amps with the incandescent bulbs to under 2 Amps and in the process, we increased the effective wattage by 50%

 

October – Week-2

One thing leads to another. Our work in the basement of the camper got us to inspecting the furnace ducts.  There was a rattling in the ductwork in the basement. Following the duct up into the camper, we opened up the base of the shower and if you look at the top left picture below – you see where a mouse decided to create his own shortcut to the basement. So did our little friend have other friends and are they, perhaps, still in the duct?  Maybe taking a long nap?  Can’t take the chance, so rather than patching up the duct, we replace the whole thing all the way back to the furnace.  Oh – and our little friend was no where to be found, but we dumped a lot of little smelly black things out of the old duct..  Yeech!

   

 

Shock Therapy – Well, not really. Along the line of the many updates we’ve made to the electrical system, adding low voltage as well as high voltage circuits, we decided to protect the camper from electrical surges and poor voltage control that may exist at campgrounds we visit. We added an Electrical Monitoring System Made in America by Progressive EMS.

First picture shows how small an area Randy had to work in. There is a monitor that Randy mounted in the Command Center that shows the voltages and frequency continuously.

 

October – Week-3

Southern Comfort --  Arizona has few trees where we are going.  That means we need to bring our own shade! Our camper was born with an awning, but somewhere along the line the awning is Missing In Action. We suspect that the awning was damaged during a storm and lost. We ordered a new 20 foot long Dometic awning in a Desert Sand color to compliment the new stripes and made some repairs to the arms. Consistent with all our other work – fasteners used were all Stainless Steel (no rust).  A couple of friends came by to help us install it. More pics later as it was too windy to open it up.

 

 

Kitchen Slide – Articulated Arm mount – This arm actually carries the LP Gas as well as 12 volt and 110 volt cabling to the kitchen. The mount was probably just fine for the first few years of our camper’s life, but was not up to our standards. You can see in the pic on the left that the mount was less than sturdy.  We fixed that with 1/8” thick aluminum diamond plate that was anchored securely to the steel framework of the slide.  Better and Stronger than NEW!

  

Autumn of the year and careers…

September 2015

Dar’s recovery continues as she regains all the strength she once had in her legs and knees. She remains diligent on her physical therapy with CoCoa helping her (actually just an observer). At this point the cane is only used occasionally and when she’s tired. She’s increased the amount of weight that she’s strapping to her ankles and at the rate she’s recovering, the cane will be a distant memory soon.

Randy’s decided to heed the advice of his doctors and family. He’s discussed his intention to retire with his manager at work. Friday, October 2nd will be the end of his 43 year career in Information Technology.  This does not sit well with him and he’s got a great degree of anxiety over the decision. Coupling this anxiety with a huge dip in the stock market which has devalued his 401k substantially – well – let’s just say he’s not a happy camper.  He’s working a lot of hours trying to create and update all the documentation possible in order to help his manager and anyone taking on his many roles. The hours are taking their toll on him and he knows it..  If you know Randy, you know he’s passionate about his work.

September is our Anniversary month!  39 Years ago – September 11, 1976 we were married at Fort Snelling Chapel.  If you spin back to the beginning of this blog you’ll see one of our favorite pictures..  Here are a couple more.. These are cell phone pics from our album. Not the greatest quality. Randy thinks the pics make him look fat.  Probably the tuxedo and maybe a couple of beers did that..

    

Randy’s manager arraigned a Retirement Gathering for him at the office.  Many people came to congratulate him on the work he had done both here and over his entire career. He was deeply moved by the outpouring of notes, well wishes and most particularly by some of the gifts.  One gift was that of a custom made quilt by a couple of very sweet ladies on his team. They solicited pictures and notes from people Randy worked with, printed them on cloth (we didn’t know you could do that) and sewed them into the quilt! Both of us have tears in our eyes as we look at the beautiful work and the nice things his friends and managers said about him. Clicking the pictures makes them bigger

 

 

Camper update!

Early this month, Randy finally slayed the Boogey-Man that has managed to keep him off of roofs for the last 51 years.  As you may recall reading earlier, Randy had fallen from the roof of his house while helping his Dad back when he was 11 and has not been able to transition from ladder to roof since.  He’s not really afraid of heights, just roofs!  With a very strong ladder borrowed from a friend, Randy did it.  He got up the ladder and onto the roof where he was able to take care of all the roof repairs, cleaning, sealing and new vent covers. YAY!!!

      13’ up!

 

Before and after pictures above – you can see the cracking in the caulking. This can lead to water leaks – the #1 enemy of all campers.  All cracked caulk has been removed and/or re-sealed with Butyl Caulk and Dicor Lap Sealant. There were a lot of hours spent on the roof in the sun.

 

The Living-Room/Dining-Room Slide before and after.. The booth seating was terrible and the hide-a-bed really smelled bad, was a bit worn and was not comfortable.  We replaced the booth seating with IKEA chairs with Dar’s Custom Dye job that matches the mottling of the new automatic reclining theater love-seat.  That’s CoCoa’s spot in the center! We also recovered the ceiling of the slides here and in the bedroom. We took on a little more weight with this setup and hope it is worth it!

 

Slide ceiling before – note the rippled vinyl from the previous water leaks in the slide.

 

Slide ceiling after – nice smooth lightweight fabric (actually carpeting) covering now..

    

The bedroom slide ceiling was the same and got the same overhaul.  All lighting is now done by energy efficient LED.

Turning Points…

August 2015

We’ve had quite the August. 

Dar’s healing is not complete at this point and given that she needs to go back to work this month, we’ve determined for her that retirement is the answer – at least for now. Who knows what the future will bring. She will miss the many friends she’s made but is interconnected with them so there’s always visits and email..

Randy was released to go back to work on a very limited schedule as long as he’s not starting to have any more problems.  This works for a couple of weeks, but he quickly jumped back into the deep end and started having problems again.  A discussion with the doctor called for stronger medications to help him cope. Those meds make the rest of life more difficult..  We’re weighing our options.  We’re not really in a position financially for him to retire but running out of options.

Randy’s sister celebrated her 60th birthday with a big party for friends and family. About 50 people came to help her celebrate – those not able to come in person sent cards and video greetings. We donated help in setting up / tearing down and – oh yeah – all the food and cooking!

The end of the month was celebrated with the family reunion – again hosted at our home. Lots of great food, friendship, singing, laughter and of course tales of old…

CAMPER UPDATE!  Work on the camper has progressed pretty well but not as fast as Randy would like.

STRIPES – That’s a fact Jack! (great movie BTW) We’ve decided on a facelift for the exterior. Too many stripes and the Blue does not compliment the Bronze Metallic of our truck. So – Randy tested a spot on the camper where he prepared and painted part of a stripe last spring. After four months and being washed with a pressure washer – the paint is holding fine. So – after buffing out the entire side of the camper, he masked off the stripes, prepped and painted them. After the paint cured a week, he waxed the side of the camper. That’s a lot of work, but we think the results speak for themselves. The pictures below are Before and After. The blue stripes are now “Aged Copper”..

 

 

Down and Dirty – Parts that we won’t show you is the work done on the underside of the camper. the entire underside was cleaned, painted and undercoated in the wheel areas and on the insides of the camper walls that are exposed. Trust us when we tell you that this was a filthy job and there was no escaping it.

 

  

The TUBE! (boy if that doesn’t date us??)  The old TV on the left must weigh close to 90# – it was replaced with a flat panel that is roughly 15#. Adding another 15# for the Blu-Ray DVD player and surround sound processor – we’ve saved roughly 60# of weight.

 

 

Sweating the details – There are hundreds of fasteners (screws, nuts, bolts) in the camper. All of them were starting to rust and leave streaks. We spent a lot of time to replace literally all of them with stainless steel – cleaning and sealing each one of them. 

 

GrassHoppa gets new shoes – and a bunch of other parts. In order to prepare the Arctic Cat Wildcat Trail SxS for the types of trails we will be taking him on, he got a new set of 8 ply tires with tread that will grab the rocks or dig through mud when necessary. We’ve also added a trunk, full windshield, rear window (not shown in these pics) and Randy made a secondary muffler system to quiet it down a little.

 

Beautiful summer but…

July 2015

While the weather this July is more pleasant and mild than many recent years, we’re having our ups and downs it seems.  On a good note, Dar is progressing well and has migrated from using her walker to using a cane to help her stay steady on her feet. The cane is just basically a tactile feedback mechanism that lets her know if she is off-balance or not. We tend to think of our joints as just dumb hinges in our limbs.  This is apparently not the case. They give feedback to the brain on the load they are carrying, the angle at which they are operating as well as how much torsional deflection (twist) they are doing.  Mechanical knees don’t really give you all this feedback – so instead, your body has to compensate and use other senses to replace those that are missing.  At least that’s what we get out of all of this. Still – Dar’s progress is nothing short of phenomenal.  Her pain levels are manageable with Tylenol most of the time, although there are times when they ache terribly.  Stairs are doable, but in very small doses and not very fast.

Randy’s slowly getting better.  His doctor is taking this a couple of weeks at a time. The medications have had some bad side effects – some are expected, others not. We still have not gotten the right combination but are trying.  He is able to drive safely, but shouldn’t while on the medication. His primary doctor is concerned that if we don’t find the right medication that Randy will have a relapse with possible dire consequences.  Randy is going slow and still working on the camper and yard work.  The time off is good for him, but he worries a lot about his job and his team.  His manager is being extremely supportive and that makes all the difference!

Camper Suspension Rebuild – With our apologies for all the Technical stuff for those not interested..

After getting the landing gear operational again, we jacked up the entire camper and supported it with jack stands and the landing gear legs. All six wheels came off and then we set our sites on the springs, shackles, bushings and shocks. While it was in the air and access was good, Randy designed and fabricated 4 additional suspension cross-members to spread the cornering load out to both sides of the chassis. In the pictures below, those are the Gray painted rectangular tubes that run laterally from one spring/shackle hanger to the one on the opposite side.  The shackles were 1/4” mild steel and were replaced with 1/2” plated steel. Unlike the original shackle bolts, the new bolts are called “Wet-Bolts” that have a grease zerk (fitting) on each one so the bolt and its paired bushing can be lubricated. The plastic bushings were all discarded and replaced with bronze bushings. The springs are all disassembled, cleaned, inspected, re-assembled and painted. Then the wheel bearings are all serviced with fresh synthetic grease and grease seals replaced. The brake shoes and drums are all inspected after cleaning and found to be in good condition. While the wheels are off – the tires are all replaced with brand new Load-Range G radial tires. All the while the camper is in the air, no one goes in/out of it.

 

The camper’s suspension is in better shape now than when it was manufactured.

From the Interior perspective, we’re pretty certain we will remove the dining booth in favor of chairs and will remove the smelly hide-a-bed and replace with recliners for both of us.  The TV in the living room is a very heavy 35” TV with built-in DVD and VCR. It also will be replaced with a lighter weight flat panel TV and a Blu-Ray DVD player and surround sound system. 

More in the next installment!