Start of our 2019 adventure

Rey and Ron were driving the shuttle carts. All in all a very active group of people and a joy to be with.

Back to Sundance in Casa Grande for the final week gave us an opportunity to tick off the last few items on our “To Do” list. We have a white board on the fridge door that has places for maintenance items, grocery needs and a spot for when the black tank needs emptying. 

A white board from the Dollar Store and double sided tape hangs it on the fridge door.

The last couple of items of maintenance where “Rear tire valve” “Check tire pressures” and “TV antenna”.

My anxiety disorder plays havoc with my maintenance items. If you have never suffered with it it seems kind of weird. You get an idea, you know you can fix it. Then the anxiety thing kicks in and invents reasons why you might not be capable of doing it, or some hidden problems that might pop up and stop you finishing it.

It's like laziness, you keep putting things off. But you aren't lazy just afraid of things going wrong. I know it's happening and I have to get over it.

The best way I have found (But it doesn't work 100%) is to go lay down on the bed and meditate. I think of all the good things I've done in the past. Rebuilding engines, making a motorcycle out of a pile of parts. Then I tell myself that if I can do all of that then fixing the rear tire valve is easy. If I get into trouble I can always call the tire shop's mobile repair guy like I did last year when the Rexhall's tire inflation extenders had problems.

So all fired up I went out and tackled the job. Turned out to be a loose Schrader valve core. 

(http://banbrv.blogspot.com/2015/08/tires-what-rotten-trick.html)

I checked all the tire pressures, adjusted the ones that were slightly off and packed up my tools.

This will be our new "Business Card" picture

Success went to my head and I was soon up on the roof replacing the coax cable on the regular TV antenna which had suffered from UV damage to the insulation. As a reward to myself I went and meditated some more and told myself how good it was to get things done.

This year we decided that we want to watch all the Formula 1 car races. We attended the US Grand Prix in Austin TX several years ago and love the glitz and high tech aspects of the races.(https://banbrv.blogspot.com/2015/10/usgp-at-circuit-of-americas.html)  

In order to watch it we need access to either DirectTV Now or ESPN2. Last year we did DirectTV Now but it didn't work well for us.

The only way to get ESPN2 is by Satellite TV so we bought a Dish TV receiver. The coach has a fancy built in satellite dish which we soon found didn't work due to it being obsolete! We bought a used fixed antenna on Craigslist. This setup worked OK until the antenna blew over in high winds at the Escapees Rally

The "Fixed" satellite dish that had to be aligned manually each time.

In for a penny as they say! We next bought a used self aligning antenna complete with stand, another receiver and a hard drive to make it into a DVR. Not cheap but certainly a lot less than buying one new, and it's a lot easier to set up than the fixed dish,

Self aligning satellite dish on stand.

We were all set to hit the road. Clive and Jean our new English friends were in another park in Casa Grande and we went to visit them there. We took them to the Elks for dinner where they met the whole crowd from Sundance. The happy hour that we postponed 2 weeks ago due to cold weather and high winds was rescheduled on Wednesday and we had about 30 people having a great time.

A final game of darts and the next thing we knew we were finding places to put everything, storing the Fiesta again pending settlement of the law suit with Ford (Again) and filling the rig up with diesel.

It felt good to be setting out for the summer once more. This will be our 4^th year “On the Road” the basic plan is to spend a week in Yuma then about a month in the San Diego area catching up with friends. We already have invites to a birthday party and a “Bacon Fest” with a group of friends. Add a “Shanty Shakers” breakfast and Rally for good luck and we will probably be surprised how fast the time goes by.

Beautiful spring flowers at KOFA Yuma Arizona

After San Diego is a little vague. We are aiming at Oregon and Washington then Idaho and Montana before turning south and Casa Grande for the winter again. But the “No Plan Kids” of course have NO PLAN!!

Although we don't like Interstates there is little choice going from Casa Grande to San Diego and 175 miles seemed to fly by. This is our first full year in the new Monaco Cayman rig. The big diesel in the back is so quiet. The airbags have you floating along with none of the jolting crash when you hit bad spots in the road. Instead of shouting over the gas engine at 40 mph as we climbed several steep grades, we chatted, laughed and reminisced at 55 mph on the steepest ones. I think the Monaco is growing on us. We still miss the Rexhall though, it certainly did us well for the first 3 years of our fulltime adventures.

Our favorite spot for lunch "El Pariso" in Algadones Mexico

The two of us were so happy being back on the road we were giggling and laughing the whole way.

In Yuma we like to stay at the Escapees KOFA park. Generally we drop in twice a year on our way to and from Casa Grande. Very reasonably priced with excellent facilities, it provides us with a base to revisit our old haunts at the Prison Hill Brewing Company, Da Boyze Pizza, Arizona Marketplace, Algadones Mexico, the Yuma Elks Lodge and several others.

A nice big site at the KOFA RV Park Yuma.

We bought our Rexhall here in Yuma and had regarded it just as a hot dusty stop along I8. After exploring it we have come to love the place and I think if we got tired of Casa Grande we might try wintering here.

A bougainvillea cover trailer in KOFA

And then at the weekly Ice Cream social at KOFA a couple from Alberta we met here last year walked in and we were chatting away like old friends!

So stay tuned for more adventures!