Friday, November 10, 2017

Hot Water and an RV Show

Greetings from the desert where it is still running 10 degrees above normal.  We keep looking at the radar for the GPNW and are very happy we’re not there anymore.

The Hydro-Hot is fixed!  We are now free to shower as long and as hot as we want to.  This is the new aluminum casting for the burner.  It’s a nice piece of metal.  One wonders why the other one failed.

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Upper left are bearings and bushings that were toasted when the burner self destructed.  Lower right are electronics.  I can’t remember what that round thing is.

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Here we are, rebuilt and reassembled.  It went surprisingly quickly.  Most things like this seem like a really big deal to me, but to the professionals it’s not.

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There is a table in the RV park next to the dumpsters.  It’s supposed to be used to cut up large card board boxes.  Instead, the denizens of the park use it to display treasures they no longer want, but are too good to put in the dumpster.  I thought this was particularly special.  It’s some sort of liquor bottle with two shot glasses attached to it. 

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Today we went to an RV show out at the fairgrounds.  Is this not adorable?  It’s a Terry and it’s very retro and shiny.

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Inside, it’s a little spartan.  One of the things we’ve talked about as an exit would be to buy a house in Tucson.  I keep reminding us that we can not live in the GPNW over the winter.  Living in Tucson in the summer is also not so pleasant.  So we thought maybe we’ll get a travel trailer and haul it up to the GPNW for the summer.  This is not happening!  Build quality on travel trailers is so terrible, I can not believe how terrible quality control is.  We were in one and none of the interior doors would close.  How does that get off the line in the factory?  One hates to store a diesel pusher for months at a whack, but it may come to that.  We are now back to the drawing board.

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A sad thing happened last week.  There’s a business in Junction City that provided indoor storage for Class As and also sold Country Coaches.  He had some beautiful high line coaches for sale as well as in storage.  Many were from the mid to late 2000s when companies used real wood and made a quality product.  It burned.  One coach caught on fire and it spread and destroyed a lot of coaches and the building.  It caused about $8M damage.  We left our truck with them one May, the owner was just a lovely person.  Here is a report from the local news.  Here, also, is a you tube report.  It’s just a sad thing.

7 comments:

  1. You are right about the build quality on RV's. It pays to be a handyman for those incidental repairs - or at least find someone like you did who can zing through the job.

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  2. There are some well built travel trailers and they cost more than the cheaply built ones. Check out Outdoors RV or Artic Fox. Both are made in La Grande Oregon and you can tour both factories if you like. They are well insulated and built for 4 season use as well as boon docking. We may get an Outdoors RV when and if we get a house in 2018?

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    1. Thanks for that. We will look in that direction.

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  3. What about an Airstream? Aside from the hipster factor, they are supposedly quite well built.

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    1. Airstreams are very cool, but they're really light on storage. It would be tough to get all of our bike/hike stuff in there as well as clothing.

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    2. I hear you on that. I have been following some vloggers on Youtube who are living fulltime (with a toddler!) in a 30' Airstream, and the way they manage it is using a full-size diesel utility van to tow the Airstream. They have an amazing amount of stuff stored in it and even have the rear seat, which you might not need. They actually downsized from a 38' Class A motorhome to this setup and seem to be doing well with it. Here's their channel if you want to check out their setup: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2IENUorXc6kRtIiAGPRKZA. They do have two bikes I think they store inside the van.

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  4. Yikes! Terrible news about the fire! That bottle is very...interesting. Looks like something from Spain or Portugal, maybe?

    You asked on my blog about the new Star Trek. Dave and I like it, but it took me a few episodes to warm up to it. It moves pretty quickly and the effects are good, but as is true of a lot of Star Trek, the science doesn't entirely make sense!

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