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.