All posts by Gary

We are full time travelers. We live in a 34 foot motor home. We travel from place to place towing a white Sprinter Van full of my tools and two Cattrikes. I like to play bluegrass music and you may find me at Bluegrass Festivals in Arizona during the winter months and in Washington and Oregon during the summer. We will also visit our daughter, Renee and her family in the Austen Texas area.

Maintenance

2019040513 TV is Working Again

April 15, 2019 Gary 1 Comment

Our Samsung TV has been on the fritz for about two months now. It had the habit of only working when it felt like it., and it mostly didn’t feel like it. I don’t miss it, except we watch the news for the weather in the early morning. We have now settled into The Escapee’s, North Ranch, between Wickenburg and Congress Arizona.

I cleared the deck for action and de-mounted the TV from its perch in the front of the coach. I proceeded to open it up and stirred the guts a little. Actually I unplugged each board in several places and checked for the required voltages. I had also watched a video about swapping capacitors on the power supply board. That guy had bulging capacitors, a sign that they are near the end of their life. I figured that if we had bulging capacitors we, Judy and I as a team, could de-solder and replace them. Judy holds the soldering iron and with my shaking hand I dab in the solder.

Our capacitors look bran new. Now what? Well I plugged everything back together and would you believe it, it started working again. The video suggested updating the tv’s firmware, so I watched more videos and got that done too. It played the full length of the Augusta Masters without dying of boredom, so I figure we are good to go.

The TV now occupying the Co-Pilot’s seat, and wires are dangling everywhere. In the morning we will mount the TV back over the windshield. I have to support the TV with cordage until I can get a half dozen screws through the mounting boards. Once I get it supported I will be assembling the cabinet around the TV. You see we used a big shoehorn to get this TV in the hole where the old CRT based analog TV sat. Our big mistake was making the hole a custom fit for the 26 inch Samsung UH27EH4000 model. They don’t make it any more and no other 27 inch TV will fit in the hole. Which brings me to the original thought for a blog today. “The redesign of the TV mount to fit a TV that is a half inch larger.” Now, at least for the time being, we are just fine with our Lazarus TV.

The TV has been mounted back in its station today. I checked out every function and it is good to go. I rather tuckered myself out getting the screws all tightened properly. You have to work at arms length over your head in a void space that is just a bit larger than the drill I was driving the screws with. Final seating was with the ¼ inch socket set but often times I had to improvise by taking the square drive bit in a ¼ inch open end-box end wrench and turning the whole wrench, bit and screw, 1/6th of a turn at a time. I don’t know how many times I caught myself unscrewing a screw I had been trying to tighten for 20 minutes.

And now, just as I am finishing this blog, it dawned on me that I had neglected to put back two screws that support the middle of the roller shade. There! That is done and now the job is done. Whether for a day, or a week or many years only time will tell.

Maintenance, Travels

20190405 Meeting New People:

April 7, 2019 Gary 4 Comments

I have been scratching for a reason to write a blog this week. Friday evening is a good time: My Parkinson’s symptoms are under control so typing is not challenging this evening. God knows that there has been plenty of excitement in our lives. For example the two hour ride over to the Arrowhead Mercedes dealership in second gear “Limp Mode” to meet and chat with the assistant service manager, Jared. We are set up with an appointment sometime next week to replace the rear brake rotors and speed sensors. I must make sure the parking brake is not partially set whenever we tow from now on. So I will be setting that sucker tighter than a drum whenever I park it. We won’t be able budge the van until it has been released.
So we are doing without the van for a week. That means we are doing without tools for a week. That means nothing is getting done for a week. Now we are starting the weekend and of course there is no open campsites. We are in dry camping, “Cheek to Jowl” ( as Ed D. would say) with our neighbors. In a small parking lot by the gate. Somehow I think we were placed here to help a new friend. A young gal who goes by “Noel” was seated by her luggage in one of the RV parking slots as we returned from a trip to see Saguaro Lake. Prominent in her pile of luggage was a guitar. I struck up a conversation and we were soon playing together. Also prominently missing in her luggage was any sign of camping gear at all; and where is her car? We were upset about our missing van, Noel just sold her car as scrap with a bad transmission and needed to wait overnight for friends to come from New Mexico in the morning to help her get to Oregon. Soon one of the park volunteers showed up with a small tent and we helped her set it up. Over the course of the evening we played a lot of songs, and had supper together. And chatted about Oregon. I have to admire Noel, she is handling this crises with calm demeanor. I am afraid I would be trying to control everything that could happen and worrying about the details.

You wouldn’t step on a poor defenseless sidewinder would you?
Dumm-de-dum-dum… Just minding my own business, walking down the road.

Some things we haven’t tried to befriend are the two rattlesnakes we have met on our hikes. The first was a sidewinder and Lynda, Judy and the dogs almost walked right over this snake. The second was a diamondback, a rather large one. This fellow quickly gained the cover of the roadside brush so we didn’t get a photo. There is lots of hiking trails in this park, Usery Mountain Regional Park, but we are really hesitant about hiking. The weather has been warm and delightful for most of two weeks now, hence the snakes are coming out. We did get the Catrikes out of the van so we are riding a bunch. I have a slow leak in one tire so I must pump it up daily. Yes! the good floor pump is in the Sprinter, I have the little roadside hand pump. It works but it takes a while.
Meanwhile I will gather a couple photos to include and get ready to post this blog from just outside Mesa Arizona.
It is now Saturday morning, and Aye ‘tis a wonderful beautiful day. We have walked the Samyoids, Lynda and Dave’s dogs, wheedled some photos from them and now I can publish. Photo credits go to Lynda and Dave Campbell. Thanks guys. The second Diamondback is by Judy not that far from our campsite in Flying Dutchman State Park in Apache Junction. He was a healthy 4 footer with 9 or 10 buttons on his rattle.

A Place for Everyone and the Trikes Too.
Two’s a Bit Crowded
Gabby’s Cage Was Knocked Down to Make Room

Uncategorized

20190104: Heart Transplant for Arcturus:

January 4, 2019 Gary

Well maybe that is just a bit of a stretch. It was the Inverter/Charger that we replaced. Just a month ago The 2001 vintage Freedom semi-sine wave 2000 watt inverter/charger burned up a component on the main circuit board. On Wednesday January 2, 2019 we replaced the destroyed unit with a new Xantrex Freedom Sine Wave Inverter Charger. It was a bit of a shoehorn job getting it in past the bed into its totally inconvenient locker in the bottom of the bank of drawers.
Continue reading 20190104: Heart Transplant for Arcturus: →

Bluegrass, Maintenance

20181201 Things are Poppin’:

December 7, 2018 Gary 4 Comments

We are in the midst of an exciting weekend. First of all we came back to Pearl Texas for the “First Weekend Jam Session.” It was every bit as fun as the first one we
attended in November. The bands may not be major festival headliners, but most are very good.

My first Ketogenic lunch; lettuce, cheese, tomatoes and mayo.

To keep things exciting, this

weekend I have gone on a radical low carb high fat diet to see if it will help me keep this Parkingon’s beast under control. It’s easy to find food for this diet. Just look at your grocers under “Meat.” Most vegies are off limits and don’t even mention fruits, chips, breads or deserts. I have been loosing a pound a day for nearly a week now, pounds that I don’t have to spare. For all these years I have kidded about being on a “see food and eat it” diet, I am now beginnning to understand. My heart goes out to you folks who have suffered through diet after diet. I can see where you can start thinking about food all the time.

To cap off the morning, while I was making my special “Semi-automatic Bullet Proof” coffee I forgot to turn the space heater off before I touched off the microwave. Poof! Went the circuit breaker. I turned off the space heater and went back to reset the circuit breaker. I shined my flahlight into the recesses of the panel and observed a thin curl of smoke in the air. I figured out that I had fried the breaker. We will pick up a new one back in Austin.

O.K. it is a couple days later and I can most positively state that I cooked the inverter. This is much more serious. I have found out from YouTube that there is a circuit breaker on the inverter box itself. It was completlly hidden beneath a huge cable from the battery.

Fine Bluegrass Music at Pearl Texas every first Saturday.

I will explore that in the morning. Meanwhile the place is laced with extension cords just so we can live in here. This unit is so shoehorned in under the closet that I took me a full afternoon to take out 14 screws holding the cover so that we could look inside. The replacement will come in a few days, meanwhile I have jumpered the missing inverter and the whole house is once again on the grid. It is four inches longer and a little shorter than the old one. It will bbe a shoehorn job for sure.

Go to this link to see some photos.

Travels, Volunteering

20180918 Yet Another Property:

September 18, 2018 Gary 2 Comments

We keep looking for a piece of property to settle on when we tire of this wandering life. The operative terms that we focus on are:

1. Equally inconvenient for both our children. ie. Show no favoritism.
2. Somewhere to store our stuff.
3. A place where we can do pretty much as we please.
4. Temperatures in the 70’s most of the year.
5. Close to doctors.

This new prospect looses in two out of the 5 categories. Today’s temperature is 89, and the doctors are far away and over at least 3 major passes. It is over 7000 feet elevation, in southwestern Colorado. It has a functional house, plenty of room to park RVs, (several,) with direct access for all right off highway 151. And best of all it has water frontage on the Deloris River. The name of this place is Slick Rock, Colorado.

Slick Rock is a real place, although the post office was closed in favor of the one in Egner a few miles south. SlickRock is known as a processing plant for Uranium and Vanadium. Hot Stuff; really, like radio active hot.

On second thought maybe we should let this opportunity slip through our fingers.

Tonight we are tucked into the Outpost Motel and RV Campground in Dolores Colorado.
We are still in high country, 6974 ft in Dolores, and there are ominous signs just everywhere. The Aspen are turning golden colored and we saw a flock of Western Bluebirds milling about smartly as though ready to start a long journey. All it would take is a little “Winter Weather Reminder Dust.” on the tops of these 9000 Meter peaks around here to get me to retreat to the South-Lands.

Still, the rugged San Juan Mountains in mid Colorado are quite spectacular. Wayne and Karen Hall took us to the heart of the mountains and a high mountain lake to soak in the beauty. I certainly see why they love the area. The gallery of photos shows the little fix-er-up-er in Slick Rock, some golden Aspen and a quiet lake behind the 1938 CCC constructed Chapman Dam…with who? Karen swimming in it. Also some quick shots of Box Canyon Water Falls in Ouray and one of the Galloping Geese in Ridgway. These from this morning’s explorations.

To get to see the photos follow this link:
https://www.dinsmore-enterprises.com/2018/09/20180918-yet-another-property/ ‎

Gallery:

Arcturus' Travels