Winter 2018/19

If we don't see you or talk to you before the big day be assured that e wish each and every one of you a Merry Christmas!

The New Year Girl

Oh wow, is it really that long since I posted a blog!! They say time flies when you are having fun and we have been having fun!

We hooked up with all our friends here in Sundance and got back into our winter activities. Shuffleboard, Darts, partying with the friends! Christmas and New Years were hectic what with parties, dinners, invitations to friends houses, the Elks. My liver was glad when we got it over with!

Shuffleboard Tournament

Busy Darts night

We have had a few chores to do on the new rig. A small leak in the bathroom drove me crazy for a while. I recaulked the roof penetrations a couple of times but because it doesn't rain much here it took several weeks to discover it wasn't really fixed! Eventually a product called “thru the Roof” from Home Depot seemed to have fixed the problem. But a month or so later we had torrential rain and it got back in again. I had puzzled over the difference between the Rexhall roof and the new one. It took me ages to realize the new one has no MaxAir rain covers! New ones arrived extremely quickly and another examination and application of Thru The Roof together with the new covers will hopefully do it, maybe.

New house batteries for the new season

The rig came with a built in vacuum system which didn't work when we tried it. I hauled it out from under the bed and a repair place in Phoenix replaced the control board. It probably would have been cheaper to buy a separate vacuum but the built in one doesn't take up much room.

It was a wet winter and COLD in Casa Grande

 Just to get out for the day we jumped into the Miata and after deciding that the Patagonia State Park was too far for a short winter day trip we decided to visit Maricopa which is about 20 miles from here.

On a whim we punched in “Dwarf Car Museum” into the GPS. We've heard other people talk about it and it was on a recent episode of Jay Leno's Garage.

What is a Dwarf Car? We these cars are perfect reproductions of actual vehicles but about ½ size. The gentleman who created them had no sheet metal experience before he began and his mechanical ability came from working on farm vehicles.

Can you believe this is made from old refrigerator sheet metal

Even more incredible is that these STREET LEGAL miniatures are made from metal reclaimed from old refrigerators!

And it's free to get in. Sure you can make a donation if you want but there is no requirement to do so.

If you saw a photograph of them you wouldn't know they weren't actual full size cars, it's only when you see a person beside them that you realize how small they are.

Suddenly you see how small they are!

Ed the creator of them is there just about everyday, and just comes up and chats about his work. He showed us the next one he's working on and one another guy is working on in the shop too. The way the steel is cut, shaped and welded to make the compound curves is amazing. They build them out of old refrigerator sheet metal! He calculates it takes about 3000 hours to build one of these. The engine and drive train comes from Toyota cars, with axles cut down to fit the width of the Dwarf Car.

We are getting ready for the Escapades RV Rally in Tucson in March. I'm teaching two art classes so I have to get all the supplies and handouts ready for that. I discovered Jerrys Artarama online and found they had a store in Tempe about 40 miles away. That's a very tempting place! We managed to get out without going bankrupt!!

Painting of Point Loma Lighthouse

I went to a “Quick Draw” event in Florence. You get 2 1/2 hours to produce a painting of your own choice. At the end of that they display the pieces and have a silent auction with the proceeds going to the Art Society. I painted an old favorite, Point Loma lighthouse San Diego from a photograph I took several years ago and it sold for $40! I even sold anther painting I brought along as a sample of my work. I think I'm only about $2 million down on the cost of all the supplies it's taken to get this far!!

We are in the middle of deciding whether we want to get satellite TV for the rig. We have managed this far with a regular antenna and DVD's from thrift stores. Our only TV “Need” is Formula 1 car racing. We both like to watch the races from around the world and unfortunately only ESPN2 show them. Last year we used “Direct TV Now which was iffy. Sometimes you couldn't get the race and other times we found we had the Spanish feed! It comes over the phone lines so if we streamed it to the big TV we used all our data up, otherwise it was watching it on our phones. We think that Dish TV will be about the same cost as Direct TV Now and we'll be able to watch other channels than we would get over the air.

Wiring everywhere

Getting the cable company's equipment out and the wiring in the rig restored to where it was before they did the install was a major problem, it wasn't helped by the fact that the coax from the roof antenna was apparently bad so lots of time was wasted between them finding the cause of the lost antenna signal and 3 of us searching for fuse boxes after they blew the fuse that feeds the signal booster! We found 3 fuse boxes around the rig eventually and the one tiny fuse that had blown.

I was down to do the satellite installation. We renewed our Good Sam Club membership in January and they sent us a $25 gift token for Camping World. When we got there they had refurbished Dish receivers on sale for $50! We bought a use antenna and tripod for $45 on Craigslist, a signal strength meter on E bay and 50 yards of satellite grade coax from Home Depot. First I had t find where the outside satellite connection came into the cabinet inside the rig. YouTube provided the method of isolating which of the many it was. I hooked everything up and, and, NOTHING. No signal on the meter or at the receiver. “Total Signal Loss” message on the TV screen. Various calls to a surprisingly helpful Tech Center finally had me re route the coax thru the slide direct to the receiver and a small realignment of the dish before we were getting TV again.

The "Urban Sketchers" had a mor ing drawing in the junkyard

The sedentary life has advantages and disadvantages over wandering. I don't know whether doctors visits are an advantage. It was ten years since we'd had colonoscopies. That was a disadvantage!! Barb did her's one week and mine was the next. Now we have to wait another 5 years before we “Enjoy” that experience again. Wellness checks and a bone density scan for Barbara, then we were declared fit for the next 12 months.

Larry and Marylin Forbes dropped by a couple of times and stayed at Sundance this last time. They know lots of people who are involved with Escapades the SKP Rally coming up in March. Next thing we were invited to a Happy Hour at the home of Bill and Jan who it turned out live just down the road from us! Good time were had by all. Potluck dinners for the Shuffleboard and Darts players left us with full bellies and an urgent desire to take a nap. Oh the hell of being retired!!

A wet day out in Scottsdale

Suddenly it's March first. Escapades is only 2 weeks away and we leave in 4 weeks. Where the heck did the winter go? Even the weather is getting warmer after what is the coldest winter we'e had here in the last 5 years. We dug out the maps and sketched out a route for the summer thru California, Oregon and Washington the across Idaho intoo Montana. Now we only have one problem.

We want to get going!!