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!