Some Plannin’, Some Doin’ & Some Finagling!

The RV-Anytimers are fixin to hit the trail again. I can’t believe that we are movin’ out so early this year, at Linda’s insistence. We are plannin’ on rollin’ out April 28th if nothin’ gets in the way. We’re goin up to the mountains fer a few weeks to do some tree & brush cuttin’ so we can get some more sun on the house. One of our friends, Gary, is comin’ up with us to give us a hand. Gary’s haulin’ a new stove up in his truck so we can bring the camper. He’ll be stayin as long as he likes then headin’ fer home cause him and his DW are comin’ back fer two weeks themselves. We’ll be rollin’ north I figure after they arrive back up there. Can’t wait to be on the road again, sorry Willie. Well that covers the plannin’.
I was perusin’ the WWW, checkin’ out some other folks site, when I decided to start this post cause my junior editor was tryin’ to motivate me.

Alright, alright I’m peckin away. Are ya happy now? I have to admit I’ve had one of those long dry spells when it comes to this blog, but as I’ve said before, I like ta’ keep it about RV’n! When you don’t have any Rv’n goin’ on , or RV related stuff, ya’ll don’t want ta’ here the daily yada-yada goin’ on.
So I been workin’ on some stuff to make our RV’n experience this year even better. Back a few posts I told ya’ll we purchased a Cyfre 3G Wireless Router to use with our Sprint Aircard. Well it seems that device has this big step down transformer at the plug-in end and it occupies the space of an entire duplex outlet where I have to plug it in. So I put in another outlet just for the router, freeing up the original outlet that we use for the laptops, toaster and charger for our 6V batteries for the lantern. I oriented the new outlet 90 degrees to the existing one to better accommodate the router plug.

Now I have to put an inline switch on the cord so it’s not on continuously. I positioned the router as high in the overhead cabinet and as far to the rear as possible. This allows me to plug in our  antenna to the Sprint Aircard boostin’ the cellular signal. Just can’t wait to try it out in some camp deep in a National. Forest.
That covers some of the doin’.
Next project. I bought Linda a bicycle for Christmas and our daughter gave me a used one shortly before Thanksgiving. We have intended to ride them regularly, but ya’ll know how that goes, the best laid plans. Well we wanted to take them with us on our trip this year, so we’ve been hunting for a bike rack. We considered receiver mount racks, several ladder mount racks, I even tried to adapt the bike rack we have which fits on an automobile trunk or SUV tailgate. I got it on with some finagling, but that idea was shot down by the boss. We wanted a rack that would be useable on both RV’s. I had visions of mounting a receiver mount rack on the pin box of the fiver and the truck receiver when using the Lance. That idea was scrapped cause we have a short bed truck and our turning clearances are close already. It would also require purchasing a receiver hitch extension for the truck as the Lance extends past the truck about 16-18 inches. So ladder mount it is. Looked at some at Camping World, read lots of reviews, didn’t like what I found. Then I found a rack, made in the USA, fastens to the ladder with machined aluminum clamps, swings away to allow access to the ladder, looks sturdier than the others. So after shopping for the best price, we ordered one from Tweetys RV. It arrived within 5 days and I went to work. Well it mounted just as I thought, seems pretty rugged, but tryin’ to mount two mountain bikes on it was a challenge to say the least. I put mine on first then fought with hers, put hers on first then mine wouldn’t fit without some pryin’ and cussin’. After fightin’ with it for 2-3 hours I quit and put the bikes away. The sun was up pretty high by then and I was gettin’ exasperated and burnin’ up. Well this morning I went back at it and got the bikes mounted on the rack, pretty good I thought. Shows what a fella only thinks he knows. I got Linda to come out and look at how the bikes were on there, all strapped down and padded where I thought they needed it. NOT!! Shot that method right out the sky! This will never work like this, this is gonna scratch my bike, this wiggles. So back to the brain drainin’. I went a it again, this one first, that one first, this one here, that one here. Finally we found a method that seems to work for the bikes, Linda & me. It’s a good thing cause I would have looked like Charles Atlas if I had to keep liftin’ those bikes, up & down, up & down. For lightweight bikes they sure were startin’ to wear a fella out. Here’s the final configuration (I hope).
The generator we carry on the back was another stumbling block that we had to work around, cant leave that home. So I think the bikes are happy, Momma seems to be happy, so I going to leave it at that. Now if I can just remember how I did it we’ll be A-OK.
Oh Oh the Junior Editor is lookin’ over my work again! Guess I better quit fer now.

Hope to see ya down the road as were,

Dancin’ on the Wind.

Life in the Mountains

Today is Monday and we are headed across the mountain thru the park.
The weather has been up & down. Friday was OK, I worked cleanin’ up branches and hulls from the chestnut trees and burnin’ em. Friday night we had tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings, all we got was some rain , thank goodness.
Saturday started as a rainy day, but cleared off around noon so we went to the local flea markets. A lady Linda worked for many years ago has had a booth here for many years so we visited a little, but she was closin’. We told her we’d come back and see her Sunday. Went home for dinner then some TV and internet. My air card doesn’t seem to work real well here even with the antenna. One minute I have 60% the next 10% signal and there’s a tower right down the road 3/4 mile, if that. I am workin’ off a Verizon network I think but I don’t know why signal varies so much, “Give me Sprint 3G” anytime.
Sunday was a nice day so we went back to the market to see Marret, the woman who owned the beauty shop Linda worked at shortly after we got married. Boy is that ancient history. Linda bought a pair of sunglasses she looked at Saturday. We then stopped at the Harrahs Casino in Cherokee to see if they had any Promo’s goin’ on, No luck. We headed home from there, had some dinner and another excitin’ night of TV watchin’.
As I said we’re goin’ over to Pigeon Forge to shop for unmentionables fer the wife, at Jockey and stop at the Coleman campin’ outlet store. It’s another rainy day so we figured we might as well do this as sit at home. The clouds are on the ground in the higher elevations today but the leaves are showin’ their best colors up there too.

This is Newfound Gap, where we ate dinner the other night
Made it to the ‘Unmentionables’ store and got more than what we came fer. I even got some new jeans and we ate dinner at Applebees, yum…. We also perused the Coleman Camping store and purchased 2 pie irons for makin’ mountain pies. Fueled up at 2.49/gal in Pigeon Forge then headed across the mountain fer home. The fog was lots worse on our return trip tonight.
Well that’s all the excitin’ news fer today. Hope to see ya down the road as we’re;

Dancin’ on the Wind.