Month: June 2013

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Meanwhile, Back at Haven I’m Dealing With Weeds and Rust

I can’t believe I’ve been back at Haven for five days now! I’ve been getting internet in snatches long enough to check email and sometimes do a little surfing, but updating the blog is always difficult on this connection and I’ve frankly had more important things to do up the hill.

Let’s backup a little bit to Wednesday, which was a little hazy since I got so little sleep and got up so late (about 10:00). I started by emptying out the truck and putting things away, then I cursed the internet connection for a bit before going up the hill for a spell. I was able to pick up Neelix mid afternoon and he was happy to see me! I couldn’t believe it! He came running when I entered C&C’s house and cuddled for a long spell, then followed me around the rig.

I had bought shrimp in Medicine Hat, so I treated myself to a shrimp boil for dinner, then went to bed crazy early.

Thursday, I had transcription work to do, but it had a generous deadline, so I just picked away at it and really didn’t get much done. I don’t remember anything else about Thursday, except that I spent some time up the hill.

Friday, I had to do some updates on the Windows computer and the internet fairly cooperated, so I was saved a trip up the hill. I continued with my transcription until 7:00 and then it was time to head over to Laura’s for canasta.

It was so nice to catch up with her and then C&C when they arrived, quite late but bearing cake, so all was forgiven. Charles and I were a team and lost three of four rounds, but did so well on the fourth that we won the game overall! I love Friday night canasta. 🙂

I got up early this morning to finish up my transcription since more came in for the weekend. Also, I wanted to go into Assiniboia for propane and gas for Miranda’s tank since I didn’t know if the Co-Op would be open on Sunday and Monday (turns out yes).

I left for town around 12:30, got to city limits, and realised I had left my wallet on the desk!!! I had come home to a just about empty on board propane tank (good thing I got home earlier than planned or the fridge would have been off!), so not getting propane today wasn’t an option. I turned around, got the wallet, and retraced my steps.

My first stop was Peavey Mart, a store I had never been into before. It’s basically Alibaba’s cave as you can find EVERYTHING in there, from clothes to cow ear tags.

I picked up:

-a 25L jerry can (I already had a 20L one and wanted to bring back a decent quantity of gas)

-a 7 gallon (okay, I’m being bilingual on my measurements) water container (I plan to have running water soon, but this will be useful for my upcoming excursion)

-a cherry tomato plant

-a weedwhacker-type thing (more on that below)

I then got the fuel and propane, picked up some veggies and fruit at the Co-Op grocery store, and headed home, stopping at C&C’s first for water.

After hooking up the propane, I added the fuel to Miranda’s gas tank. I had bought a siphon thing at Canadian Tire for 15 dollars, a length of clear hose with a ‘pump’, that was well worth its money as it emptied the jerry cans quickly and with no fuss at all.

Then, it was time to attack my lawn. Charles has been doing a great job mowing it (THANK YOU) with a tractor, but the edges were really tall and my boardwalk had disappeared under a cover of grass. A weedwhacker was in order.

The weedwhacker-type thing I found  is a ‘grass whip.’ You use it like a golf club. I was looking for something cheap and the least costly powered option was $99. I had never heard of a lawn whip, but could understand how it would work and it was just $15. But surprise at the till, it was on sale for $11!

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Here is the boardwalk after the first pass with the lawn whip.

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And here it is after:

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After dinner, I went out to put some fuel stabilizer in Miranda’s tank and apply some carb cleaner to the genset. I only had a quarter tank of fuel on board, so I knew there was no hope in starting it, but hope springs eternal. I hit the start button and it sparked then tried to turn over. There is life in it! I am going to Willow Bunch on Tuesday to deal with getting water and garbage collection and I will get more gas so that I can try the start exercise again after cleaning the fuel line. I am probably being too optimistic, but I have a good troubleshooting manual and the confidence that if this generator is salvageable, I can fix it myself, thanks to the Onan dealer at the seminar thinking this.

Today, I had some transcription to do and I also wanted to tackle the rust on my truck. A guy came up to me at the RV seminar to tell me that he does body work and that the rust on my truck had to be deal with NOW. He is not the first person to tell me this in the last year… He said to go to Canadian Tire or Walmart and get some Tremclad for rust. I could apply that directly to the truck to seal in the rust, but the caveat is that I wouldn’t be able to get a colour to match my finish, nor could I apply automotive paint over top. This is the worst of the rust:

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I got as much of the loose material off as I could, sanded, and then wiped it down. Next step was taping off the area I did not want to paint:

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Here’s the Tremclad. I knew the green would be too Christmasy for my truck, but hoped it would dry a little darker than this. It didn’t. *spoiler* It dried lighter. I wish I had left the rusty look and just gone with a clear coat.

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You can really see the difference in colour here:

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I applied three light coats of colour, then two clear coats. Don’t laugh at the result. It’s better than rust!

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I could not see myself applying any more of that awful colour to my beautiful Moya, so I blasted all her other rusty spots with just the clear coat. These are the worst of them:

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So it’s been a productive few days. If I have no transcription tomorrow, I will likely tackle the driver’s side rear wheel well (damaged in the last blowout, sorry the connection’s too slow to load the blog to get back links). Tuesday, I want to go pay for garbage delivery and find out who to call to get a water spigot put on the property. I want water by the time I get back from camping next week!!!!!!

That’s the scoop. I’m off to see if my spaghetti squash is ready. 🙂

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Cusping

This is the longest time that I have lived a life, and the first time that I have gone so long without wanting a tornado to rip through that life so that I could start over. I still don’t feel that way. I love my life and I embrace all changes to it.

Talking to Donna about her and Ken starting over with a new house, I expressed how I feel that I’m going through a change, too, but couldn’t quite put my finger on how I was feeling. Donna immediately came up with the perfect word: cusping.

She’s right. I am at the cusp of my RVing life as I originally imagined it. I have seen as much of this continent as I need to, any more would be a bonus. I’m getting tired and the idea of traveling a little less is rather appealing, especially if it means being able to save up money to start traveling internationally.

I can tell my life is on a different course now that I have the property and it is working out so well, but I’m not certain yet what the course is. I just have a strong feeling that it’s going to mean winters traveling and summers staying put, unless I can afford to fly out and explore some far flung corner of the globe. But it doesn’t mean moving out of Miranda into a fixed home. I really don’t see that happening.

Going back to Kelowna, I had a meeting with the Women in Trades counsellor at Okanagan College about the RV tech program. Talking with one of the program teachers, it seemed that the demand for RV techs in Saskatchewan could work in my favour and that I could likely get a summer job with the freedom to travel in the winter. I’ve always wanted to learn a trade and RV tech is obviously a good fit for me.

The Women in Trades program also seemed like a good fit at first glance. I qualify for it and would get free tuition, books, and safety equipment. The hiccup is that I either have to live off savings or get a student loan. I cannot earn income while doing the program. I love our governments’ logic.

I always said that I would only go back to school if I could focus on it and enjoy it, so there is no way I would further put myself into debt to attend school, nor do I think it’s realistic to believe I could save up several years’ worth of living expenses. So it looks like taking the RV tech program is not the path I am meant to take.

There are more thoughts rattling around in my brain right now, but that’s all I feel like sharing at this point. I am curious to see where the next few months guide me. Right now, I’m still envisioning myself in Quartzite sometime next winter. 🙂

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Haven Without Internet

I have gotten zero access to the net since I got back to Haven, so I’ll be quiet for a bit as I have too much to catch up on to spend hours up on the hill. I have a Yagi-style antenna on order, but it’s coming from the States and I don’t expect it any time soon (I ordered it there since it was an all-in-one kit with the cable while I would have had to piece together something from a Canadian source). I am so annoyed since my phone is getting a signal with the booster, but the Mifi refuses to convert that signal into an internet connection. It was temperamental even with a strong connection, so it’s no wonder it’s misbehaving now. I’m working on a series of posts and will upload when I can.

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A Journey of 3,040 Kilometres

Whew! I made it home at 2AM this morning (Wednesday)!

I had a most excellent drive even though it was a loooooooong day. I stopped for a nice lunch in Fernie, paused in Blairmore, then had a long break in Lethbridge where I did a ton of shopping (one clever person told me the apocalypse is over, LOL). I hit up a few electronic stores for a better cell booster antenna (no luck), Walmart for dried goods, and then Canadian Tire for a few projects. I also bought a big cooler that was on special; nothing fancy but will come in handy for supply runs.

There was construction coming out of Lethbridge, so it was slow going for a bit, but Medicine Hat still came more quickly than expected. There was a lot of talk on the radio about the flooding and evacuations, but I saw no evidence of any of this. I decided that I was four hours from home, so I was going to get my grocery shopping done and finish up this trip.

When I pulled out of town, it was about 9:30, with my ETA being 2:30AM. The drive to Swift Current felt endless. I was physically tired, but not mentally since my body thought it was an hour earlier. I stopped for gas and a leg stretch, found a station playing my generation’s music, and rocked to Bryan Adams, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, and New Kids on the Block all the way to Assiniboia, a stretch that felt about a 10th shorter than it actually was. It’s nice when the last stretch flies by!

I pulled into Haven at about 1:45AM, unloaded what absolutely had to be unloaded, and climbed into bed where I was asleep by quarter to 3.

I’m feeling a little groggy today and expect it will take a few days for me to fall back into my routine. I did get the truck fully unloaded and most of my stuff put away. I don’t have internet at home right now (I’m telling you, the bloody thing is sentient), so I’m up the hill waiting for Charles and Caroline to come home so I can pick up my boy.

I have several posts to write up about the weekend, but I want to say two things right now.

1) The weather in BC was mostly miserable, as it usually is, and the mountains were damp and grey, and shrouded with fog. I am so happy to be back under the sun bleached skies of my beloved prairies. If I have to live in this cursed country, there is no place I’d rather be.

2) I LOVED camping in the truck. It was the perfect compromise between car and hoteling it or taking a cumbersome gigantic rig out. I’m going to write more about that, but I really saw on this trip that my gas guzzler wasn’t a stupid buy at all. I didn’t have a lick of trouble with her and she is soooooo comfortable. My clutch leg isn’t even sore today, as it would be with half the distance traveled yesterday traveled in my Accent. It took a year to really use the truck the way I intended to use it and now that I have, I am fully at peace with the compromises I have made.

I’m off to shop online for another antenna and plan to pay big bucks for fast shipping. Wish I’d known I wouldn’t find anything in stores and had ordered earlier.

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Monday At the RV Owners Lifestyle Seminar

I awoke to rain and dampness in the back of the truck. Still, I was up a little later than the other mornings and had to hoof it to my first seminar of the day. The one I wanted to attend, about water quality, was cancelled so I went to boondocking, which was the only seminar of the weekend that was really disappointing.

After coffee break, I debated whether to go to the seminar in Baja or to the one about summarizing and sanitizing your holding tanks. I decided that I really have no special desire to go to Baja and that I did want to see one of Sanidumps John’s seminars, so I went there. I got some good tips out of that one! But I missed the first few minutes of it for a meeting with campus faculty. I’ll elaborate on that once I’m home as the meeting is only a tiny part of some thoughts running through my brain right now.

The final seminar of the weekend was about generator maintenance. That one alone was worth the trip! I found out the likely reason that my genset failed and that if I can’t get it going myself after doing a few things the instructor suggested, then I might as well get another one. There is nothing a service tech could do that I couldn’t (seeing as I’m moderately handy). I’ll blog more about that later also.

We had a brief wrap up session and that was it! I HAVE to fit this seminar into my schedule for next summer! I had so much fun and it is so well organized. Really, anyone going north to Alaska or into the Rockies in June should attend!

I left Kelowna around 3:30 on highway 33. Jody was heading west on highway 3 and our schedules were so well matched that our itineraries would likely intersect at the junction of the two highways at almost the exact same time, which they did!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately, her plans had changed and she needed to get closer to Vancouver tonight. So we had a good chat, I got my mail, and then we continued on, with me taking the road she had just traveled, highway 3 eastbound.

There is no cell service along most of highway 3, so I decided to drive to Castlegar, where I would arrive around 9pm, with enough light to find a place to camp for the night. And that’s where I am now. 🙂

There was a torrential downpour between Grand Fork and here, so bad that I would start hydro planing if I went too fast. I hope it wasn’t that bad further east as the highway is apparently badly damaged around Fernie, with only one or two lanes open. It was fairly clear when I arrived in Castlegar, but it’s now raining lightly.

I decided against making a cannonball run to home tomorrow as that would stupidly keep me from doing a much needed stock up of supplies. I’ll see how far I feel like going tomorrow, will stop in Swift Current or Moose Jaw for stuff Wednesday morning, and will be home by mid-afternoon Wednesday. Provided I can get past flooded Medicine Hat…

Another upcoming post: a review of what it’s been like to camp in my truck!