Thursday, April 29, 2010

The condenser just barely fits, the unit inside the bedroom



Five Vista Liners & a Highlevel, Two of the VL's are for sale

Charlie getting the sign ready...

Here's Charlie working on the wheel leak

The turquoise bus is a Flxible Highlevel, owned by another bus member

Parked right outside of the barn. The Clipper you see belongs to Charlie. He has a looong way to go to get this running...

Notice all the wood on the floor outside of the bus? Ben, the owner, drove this bus back from the east to have Charlie work on it. He has a Prevost bus, but, I think he's selling it, he'd rather own a vintage bus from the '50's. He tore all the cabinetry out of it and when Charlie gets it running, he's going to take it up to Canada to a guy who does vintage interiors on RV's. I can't wait to see it when it's finally finished, I know it's going to look beautiful.

Anyway, when we got there, Ron called Charlie to see if he wanted us to park in the bus barn or not. Well, as you can see, we couldn't, because of the wood in the way, so Ron took all of that out and put it on the trailer outside so we could park inside. The cabinetry he took out was pretty nice, so guess Charlie is keeping some of it to put in his bus.

This Clipper, owned by a bus member, is in to have the engine & transmission replaced

As we drove into the yard, it looked like he was starting up a bus garage, there were 3 VL's, including ours, one Highlevel & 2 Clippers, all made by Flxible. The newer one sitting there all junked out, was bought from one of the guys who owns the Clipper in the bus barn for parts.

This is what we saw when we came into Charlie's yard

April 29, 2010

Well, here it is, almost a month since I last posted anything. After we left El Cajon, we headed up to Hesperia to a fellow bus member's house to do maintenance on the bus, plus we had a rear wheel leak. Ron was thinking a worse case scenario, but, it was a simple fix, thank goodness. They also checked the suspension, to see how it was riding, as it was brand new when we installed it last year.

Ron also installed our new mini split air conditioning system. He originally wanted to put the condenser unit in the bay, but, didn't want to cut up the floor for a vent for the unit. So, he put it in the area he was going to put the generator because it already had open grill work for it to vent. The inside unit is attached to the bed pedestal at the end of the bed facing towards the bathroom & living room. The day we tested it, of course, it was cold outside. But, when we got back here to Yuma, it was 95 outside, so a good test on a hot day. It works really well, especially if you're standing in the bathroom! Yesterday, it was about 7 degrees cooler, but, still warm, so we turned it on in the morning, had a small fan blowing the cool air from the bathroom into the living room and it was quite comfortable. Our big test will be when we get into hot, humid Texas in a couple of weeks.

We ended up staying two weeks, instead of the one like we thought, but, our good friend, Margie, (whose husband passed away last October), came up to visit with us, while she cleaned out her bus so she can sell it. We had a great time & at one point, we got together with a couple of other bus members and had a photo op with all of our buses. Of course, all good things must come to an end, and we all split up going our separate ways...

We left on the 24th, to head back down the hill to stay at a Thousand Trails park in Menifee, CA to visit Ron's nephew & family for a few days. We also gave them our La-Z-Boy recliners. They were just too big and bulky for our little living room, so might as well give them a good home. We are temporarily sitting on our patio lounge chairs until we get back to the midwest & get some wall hugger recliners made by the Amish. I think I will definitely be ready to trade these in for a more comfortable chair...

On the way down the hill, we stopped and got our Jake brakes fixed, it turned out to be the fuse, so no big bucks to lay out to fix them, like we thought. We were supposed to have a block heater installed at our friend's house, but, it never came in before we left his house, so we ended up having to drive over to Irvine, where our friend works on the big trucks for Budweiser, and have him put it in there. We figured since we were over there, we'd drive to the Garden Grove Elks to stay the night and have dinner at the lodge with our friend Margie & a couple of other friends who live in the area. They used to own a bus like ours.

We finally left the big city traffic to head for Yuma on Thursday morning. Thank goodness, we hit no major traffic jams within the greater Los Angeles area on our way out east. We stopped near Salton City at a casino/truck stop for diesel & lunch and ran into Bea & Ken Marler, fellow Boomers, who were on their way to spend a few days in Palm Desert, before they headed out on their summer travels. We are now back in Yuma, but, will be heading out tomorrow morning, (Friday) heading for Benson to visit friends, Jack & Jeanne, who have a lot there & some other friends, who we used to know when Ron was still in the Navy, who live near Ft Huachuca. Now that we will be on the road, I'll have more interesting things to report, so will update this on a more regular basis.

Monday, April 5, 2010

It used to be just bare boards on each side with a hole in the middle, now it's finished & there's a lid to raise for dirty clothes


A different view

added...

The necessary parts.....

What the water system looked like before Ron added the necessary parts

April 5,

Wow, I must be really losin' it, I could have sworn I updated the blog since that last post, but, guess not. Maybe I was just thinking about it...oh well, we have finally left the Yuma area as of last Thursday. We are now east of Jamul, (pronounced hamool), which is in San Diego County. We are staying at a Thousand Trails park of which we are a member. It's out in the boonies & unfortunately has no cell service, but, the price is right...FREE!! We have to go up to the adult lodge to use the wifi, so we've not been online as much as we'd like.

We've been visiting friends & relatives all around and have dentist appts & a hair cut for me lined up for tomorrow. On Thursday, we'll be leaving here and headed up to a fellow bus member's house who lives near Victorville. He's going to be doing annual maintenance checks on the bus, plus fix a rear seal leak for us. We're hoping we'll only be there a week and then we'll once again head back down to Yuma until the first week in May.

Ron did do some last minute things to the bus before we left Yuma. He put in a fresh water line so we can hook up the city water when we go into campgrounds. We finally will be able to have endless hot water with our instant water heater for showers. We also got the last bit of work done in the bathroom when we had Corian put around the toilet area. Ron might get around to putting up some cabinets in the kitchen area before we leave for the summer, but, if not, there's always next winter...