Monday, April 04, 2016

This Mess I Call Home

I drove my motorhome 60 miles in the last 4 months. I've taken gas savings to the extreme level.

However, my camping reservation is finished at Wickham Park in Melbourne, Florida so I am shuffling about soon. Time to pack up this mess I call home and roll along. The 29th Florida Vietnam and All Veterans Annual Reunion are already moving in for their upcoming event held in the park each year. Matter of fact, many disabled and retired veterans have already set up camp.

The Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall will be on display at Wickham Park starting April 17th for a week. The traveling wall is a 3/5 scale of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC. It stands six feet tall at the center and covers almost 300 feet from end to end.

This Traveling Memorial stands as a reminder of the great sacrifices made during the Vietnam War. It was made for the purpose of helping heal and rekindle friendships. It allows people the opportunity to visit loved ones in or near their home town who otherwise may not be able to make the trip to Washington.

Just typing that out brought tears to my eyes. I don't think I will ever understand the purpose of wars. Some things are just incomprehensible to my tiny brain.

It seems like it's a lot easier to just be nice and tolerate those who are different. 

But I know I am opening up a huge can of wild wiggling worms here. Maybe I better just shut up before I accidentally step on boots and toes. NOT my intention to insult anyone in any way. Many of my deceased relatives fought in wars. I doubt if any family is really immune. I think wars have been around for centuries, so who am I to question their existence?

In my own warped view of things, I see the current state of affairs in America, as a sort of business war as mega corporations seek to stomp out all competition and especially small businesses. I'm not in favor of that either. I think we need a healthy balance of both. Oh brother, I am really stepping in the dog doo-doo today! I seriously need to shut up and mind my own business of repairing my body, soul and RV rig... We both need lots more healing.

On to more mess...

Due to recent chaos, I have no reservations for April. Yepper, this April fool kind of messed up. Time marched forward faster than I was thinking...

Lately I've checked quite a few possibilities and one place I want to go visit refuses reservations since my arrival date is too close but they "think" they can work me in when I get there on a first come, first serve walk-in basis. Florida is one busy place, even in April to find reservations, especially for the weekends.

Tomorrow I have to get up long before sunrise and go park at a repair place that promises to fix my rig first thing when they open up. More on that later, let's see if they really fix it.

Some of these mechanics freak out when they find out my engine is an "ancient" 1993 with a whopping 60,000 miles on it. The RV is listed as a 94, but the engine chassis is a 1993. Seems silly to trash an old engine that has such low miles on it. But some mechanics tell me they can't work on something "so old". This seems silly to me! My engine purrs and runs great but of course needs some maintenance and now and then, repairs and so on.

It's a Ford engine yet last summer I was turned away from a Ford dealer in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. Life is goofy indeed.

A Ford dealer in Lavonia, Georgia used to do some work for me, but then they turned my records over to the sales department and some perky lady called me up thinking I was in a regular van. She wanted me to bring my van in and trade up for a new one. She was clueless about RV's and perhaps thought I was off my rocker when I explained I was living in it and it was a Class C. She told me Ford didn't make a Class C. It's true, they don't. Ford sells the "cutaway" van chassis to the RV industry and they build the RV on it. Confused? She kept promising me a great trade-in because of the low mileage and I was explaining that was exactly why I planned to keep it. I asked her to please take me off her call list. It was so confusing for her and for me. Normally I wouldn't go to a dealer, since they are notorious for high prices. But when I had fairly good luck at the Ford place in Lavonia, I thought that was the norm. Live and learn.

Somehow in my efficient style of living, I am finding that my limited storage on board my rolling home now has some big gaps of empty air. I decided to put my RV on a diet to lose weight. Over the years I've often found useful stuff through dumpster diving or purchases of used or refurbished equipment and so on. Some stuff has been patched and repatched of cobbled together so much, that when it broke again, I just hauled it to the dumpster. Also this campground has a table in the laundry room where RVers can park useful stuff they no longer want. I donated some stuff there and some to an animal charity that could use it for resale in their shop.

Off and on for a few months this past year, I was able to do some new product testing and reviews. This was a load of fun but also a ton of work. There is no pay involved, just the opportunity to acquire new stuff, test it out and write about it. As a result I was able to upgrade or replace some of my old worn out junk for new stuff. Some of it was just handy little items like testing out new pens, pencils, food products and pillows. My old stinky pillows were tossed out in favor of testing out new assorted pillows. I even tested out some toys and that was fun.

My dog has been working at this review testing too, as he was treated to things like a new teddy bear, a collapsible water bowl and an LED night collar that arrived far too big for him. Luckily a larger dog agreed to do the testing. She had thick white fur and the lights showed brightly around her neck.

Oops, time is running out and I've rambled long enough.

See you round the camp fires!

Harley testing out his collapsible water bowl




5 comments:

  1. That's a good pic of Harley. Apparently he likes his bowl!

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  2. Harley loves "working" at testing new products. He gave the collapsible travel pet bowl a 5 claw rating.

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  3. Our 1988 Class A has the same reaction from mechanics. (Even though it has a Chevy 454 that is the same engine they're still selling today.) So I'm going back to doing a lot of my own work.

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  4. I took an introduction to auto mechanics course for women in 1979. I was already working fulltime in a great job (that was also dominated by males at that time). The instructor tried his best to recruit me for their entire course. He wanted women to learn and know about their own cars. It was a great course and I enjoyed it. He was also trying to drum up more women to enter the field. I think 2 did love it enough to consider training. In those days very few women would consider mechanics as a career. I thought things would have changed by now, but I was overseas so much, I lost being in touch with the US women's movement or lack of... Now I am just too tired, too weak some days to consider working on my engine. But today at the mechanic's place, the guy seemed a little surprised when I was rattling off about my current engine, it's condition and what I thought it needed. He installed the part I wanted but labeled the work order "at customer's request... differential speed sensor installed".

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  5. You are so multi talented. I shouldn't be surprised you took a mechanics course.

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Life is goof!