{"id":14789,"date":"2012-05-21T11:17:40","date_gmt":"2012-05-21T15:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelswithmiranda.uskeba.ca\/?p=14789"},"modified":"2016-09-18T12:01:27","modified_gmt":"2016-09-18T09:01:27","slug":"back-to-the-grind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/back-to-the-grind\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to the Grind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a holiday in Canada today, but I&#8217;m treating it like a normal Monday. I neglected a lot of projects over the winter and have tons of stuff to catch up on. I am also sending out tons of bids on contracts. I have no intention of looking for a part-time job this summer. My budget is solid into August, especially since I won&#8217;t have the car and car insurance payments, so as long as I keep plugging away at whatever transcription comes in, I&#8217;ll be fine. This is definitely a more relaxed start to the summer than was last year!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve started to do some online shopping for my new toad. I&#8217;ve decided that buying it in Alberta really does make the most sense so I&#8217;m just waiting on the insurance cheque to buy a plane ticket. What I want exists, but it soooooo rare. I&#8217;d definitely have more choice if I was going with an automatic, but a manual transmission is a non-negotiable. I&#8217;m looking at 1990s models only.<\/p>\n<p>My first choice is a Nissan Frontier, then a Toyota Tacoma. I&#8217;ve heard mixed reviews of the Mazda B-series, but am not ruling it out. I&#8217;m considering American models (eg. Chevy Sonoma and Dodge Dakota) on a case-by-case basis and I&#8217;d prefer a truck that already has a canopy\/topper. One thing I have accepted is that I won&#8217;t be getting power windows and doors as those options just weren&#8217;t available, but AC is not negotiable. The Nissan Frontier is 3,000lbs, just under three times what my toad weighed, and that&#8217;s as heavy as I want to go.<\/p>\n<p>I also hope to time the trip with the motorhome repairs and other projects (I&#8217;d like to leave a few thousand of the car settlement money to do some work on Miranda). I got a lead from my younger sister, who just bought a travel trailer, on a good place close by that could go through my entire list:<\/p>\n<p>-the repairs covered by the insurance, including the bumper and the tow hitch, and I want them to confirm that my suspension is okay;<\/p>\n<p>-remove the over hang window and fiberglass the overhang seams;<\/p>\n<p>-replace my propane regulator (have the part, just need a pro to get it in);<\/p>\n<p>-replace the house door window frame;<\/p>\n<p>-square and plumb the house door;<\/p>\n<p>-repair the body damage to the metal portion at the bottom of the rig and repaint that part only (I doubt I&#8217;ll be able to afford this right now, but I&#8217;ll ask for a quote).<\/p>\n<p>Well, I just found out that a big and messy project is incoming so I&#8217;m off to get ready for that. Definitely a better to start to the summer than last year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a holiday in Canada today, but I&#8217;m treating it like a normal Monday. I neglected a lot of projects over the winter and have tons of stuff to catch up on. I am also sending out tons of bids on contracts. I have no intention of looking for a part-time job this summer. My [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[632,810,936,635,718,5,3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada","category-chambly","category-legalities","category-north-america","category-quebec","category-rving","category-travel","category-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}