Lounging around…

I have had an exciting month…I’ve started to look for a permanent home (I sold my last house 21 years ago to begin my full-time RV’ing adventure) in the area but looks like I’ll need to wait until the fall to find anything suitable at a reasonable price. Pool of sellers has shrunk this season. The VA in their wisdom has granted me 100% disability due to my damaged hearing while I was on active duty and now pays me a monthly stipend. Which, coupled with my SSI gives me enough to afford today’s mortgage payments for a lower cost manufactured home or a sticks & bricks. Still, even though I’m waiting to find something, I do check the available listings several times each week.

I arrived here in Milton Freewater on May 7th and have been puttering around fixing minor things on the RV. Up until around 10 days ago when I tried to take a shower. No hot water. WHAT? Lemme tell you that a cold shower is NOT fun. First I went outside, opened the water heater panel and felt the pressure relief valve…it was hot. So my heating element was working fine, and opening it a little released water so the tank is full. Than I switched to onboard water using the pump, but the same thing happens, the water comes out in a strong stream and then just slows to a trickle. This suggests a back flow preventer is blocking the flow just past the water heater. And I believe that device is accessible under the RV. Well, it’s been too hot to work underneath for over a week now but today the heat wave has abated and will be in the ’80’s but cloudy for a couple days so I’ll have to get on the ball, crawl under there and see what’s happening. I do need a shower but if worse comes to worse I’ll heat water on the stove and take a sink shower. More on the things I’ve worked on a little later.

First though, I went to visit my brother in Eugene on May 17th where he’s recovering from having to have a couple stints installed. Funny that being a vegetarian doesn’t seem to protect from high cholesterol. I had to look that up, and no, it doesn’t. Anyway, he’s 81 so I thought I should visit.

I get to pass through the famous Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area which I have grown up with and love. It’s an amazing route.

After leaving the dry portion of the state, the freeway passes by Cascade Locks where I stop at the Bridgeside Inn. I’ve been stopping here for 40 odd years now whenever I get the chance. In all seasons. Used to drive here from my home in Gresham (bedroom community just east of Portland) just to enjoy the ambiance. Foods not bad either. If you click that link, they have a presentation video that shows you much of what I like about the place.

Had a nice lunch there while enjoying the view, than it was straight through to Eugene. Knocked on the door and my grand nephew opens it to me standing there and taking his photo. Freaked him out a little as he didn’t recognize me at first.

And my brother Dan, still recuperating from the operations to install the stints. Has the ol’ ticker working great now though so that’s good.

But of course we went out for pizza.

It sits right on the Willamette River where back in the day, decades ago, Dan and friends would raft down this river on the regular. I was living up near Portland at the time but never made it down for a raft party. I did make it down many times for Oregon Ducks football games.

Anyway, it got to cold out on the patio for us old duffers so we moved inside the building. Good pizza.

After that, it’s back to Dan’s home and we’re sitting in the living room looking for something via streaming to watch, but there was nothing good or worth watching. I asked about local stations and he tells me they have cable he’s been paying for since they moved in 8 months ago but couldn’t get it to work on the smart TV. Whaaaat?

So I check out his setup, moved a coax cable connection or two, used the HDMI from the cable box to the TV, set up and scanned channels with the smart TV’s function for that and 20 minutes later, all the cable channels with local stations are working. Even installed his wimpy indoor off-the-air antenna and got that working with a few channels showing. Let him know that with an external antenna he would likely get all the local channels for free and have it available in an emergency if the cable went out or a storm knocked out the cable repeater. The HOA would probably complain about a roof top antenna but powered antennas are low profile these days and can work inside an attic.

Meanwhile, grand nephew was trying to figure out and construct the ‘quick setup’ bed they had for me. They knew I was coming for several days too. Never got it made up while I was there so I flopped on the uncomfortable and dog hair covered LR couch. Gah.

Brother was feeling well after the stints but was still moving slowly. Looked a bit weak too. He did have the energy to show me around the yard where he’s filled the flower beds, even building 2-3 giant wooden grow beds for things like veggies and startup flowers.

Visited his giant garage…wish I had one…where he still has that ’67 Studebaker project car. I did a lot of work on that nearly 2 decades ago when I’d visited him and told him then that the best thing for that car would be to push it into a lake. Crappy car. He had the engine rebuilt then couldn’t get it to run. He was a master mechanic back in the day but hasn’t been an involved mechanic for 40 years now. But it’s his hobby car, more power to him.

Nephew’s hair shedding dogie. Nice dog, but it’s spring so he’s left outside to help keep down the long white hair left all over the house and furniture.

Brother enjoying local TV after I got it working.

My nephew Paul did eventually come out of his room and say hi. He’s having trouble finding a job, been over a year now, and he’s feeling a bit lost with himself. I missed having our talks that we used to share when I’d visit. Living with Dan is an adventure and a chore too. So there’s 3 grown men in that 3 bedroom home. Has gotten a bit cluttered.

Anyway, enjoyed my visit but couldn’t wait to get away from the really uncomfortable couch I was sleeping on. And was soon on the road home…see ya brother!

Back through the gorge and it’s wild forests.

This is an interesting section of the freeway just before heading into the dry side of Oregon where decades ago I would pass this area when it was a giant sand dune that would encroach on the road. It was a several times a year where the road crew would have to scrape up the sand off the road. Eventually, they hired a person that had experience with stabilizing sand dunes. Was in the papers and many thought it was a waste of tax payer money to pay a consultant to fix the dunes in place. But the department of road maintenance prevailed and then one year I passed by where they had planted some stabilizing sand happy plants. Look at it now…all green and no longer covering the road. The sand used to work it’s way past that white line on the edge into the road bed. If you weren’t paying attention it was possible to have a bad day hitting the encroaching sand as those dunes in the road could be quite large.

I remember when the plants were sparse but they’ve taken over and spread. Well done road maintenance department!

And soon I was dropping into the Walla Walla valley outside of Pendleton.

So, back to the maintenance on the RV I’ve been doing. The current work is trying to get hot water again, and I’ll work on that later today and tomorrow if necessary. So I can take a much needed shower. Had a couple big floods from the basement water cabinet while trying to track down the issue and trying different tests but no damage done. I’ve also had toilet issues where the pedal spring broke on me so I had to install a new one I had on hand. Nasty work. Still has a problem with the pedal sticking when pressed down to flush so I have that to do too. And then I was not happy with the outside antenna setup I had with it strapped to the side of the RV next to the front door. It did extend 3 feet above the roof. I could get several channels from the local translator but they would be spotty and were often pixelating when the wind blew. So I moved it over and strapped it to the power tower just 20 feet away from the RV and even with the lower height, I’m getting much better signals because I can aim it between the distant trees directly at the translator transmitter setup, which is on a distant hill top. I should have thought of that 2-3 years ago. Get great signals for all the 52 channels except one or two. Just that slight move 20′ from the RV to there greatly improved the picture quality and the number of received stations. And here in the picture is another project I’m going to get to soon…fixing that TV on the sawhorses. That’s one of my hobbies, fixing things. In the background covered by the blue tarps are the two Coleman Mach basement heat pumps I have. I’m selling the brand new refurbished one and parting out the 1 year old one that has a bad compressor. I may have mentioned it before, I am an authorized AirXcel repair person. They make the Coleman Mach line of basement air units for RVs.

So that’s it for this post. Thanks for reading!