Settling in…

Posted on January 24, 2021 by Jim@HiTek

Based on the VA appointments I have now, it looks like I’ll be here in Pahrump for the 1st quarter of the year. My knees will get xrayed, my bladder will get an ultrasound, they’ll check my heels and maybe figure out why they started hurting last T-Day week, and I hope someone at the LV Vets Hospital will make the decision that I need the prostate surgery, I am allowed and scheduled to get it, so I won’t have to worry about any of that any more.

I’m also thinking of making a quick 2 week trip down to Parker, AZ in order to get my slide awnings replaced, one has a tear, and while that’s being done, get a new big pull down awning over the LR slide’s 2 windows…or all the windows in the RV. Haven’t decided yet whether to use the money I’ll get from the government due to Covid for the awnings, or any of those 3 trips I have planned for the future, OR to donate it to any number of worthy causes. I’m leaning towards donating to a Vets charity ATM.

So here in Pahrump, the weather is kind…which is why I’m here. Up in Milton Freewater it’s cold, in the 30’s, and rainy. But right now, I am just a short drive from Death Valley here in the mid-high desert (2600 feet) and we do get cold weather but right now it’s pretty comfortable during the day if the sun decides to peek out. Which is most every day. Last night it got to the 30’s but it’s now 61 F and I expect it to reach the 70’s like it’s done nearly every day. Really good weather for strenuous work outside…if I had any. Makes me think I should buy some fixer-upper or something. But then when I try to stand, my bad knees sort of remind me of how hard it would be to do construction work with my knees as they are. Or how they’d make it difficult to travel to distant lands like I want, and walk a lot while on those journeys. Or run away from bad guys.

Speaking of travel, since I have little to do these days, I thought I’d run out to Death Valley Junction to check out the Amargosa Opera House. I was hoping the cafe there would be open so I could sit awhile, and have a coffee with a piece of pie, so I timed my visit like that was possible. I also hoped I’d be able to go inside the opera house and take some pictures of the art there. Checking the web site sort of ended that dream since it says they’re closed for Covid but, hell, I’ll just zip out there for a look around anyway. Especially because state governments are changing their minds about what can open so often these days of Covid. A few years ago there was an opera I wanted to see put on there and I almost went just for the uniqueness. Eventually I decided not to go. Wish I had now. Anyway, off I went!

Pretty much a death valley around here…

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Hello 2021…Time to upgrade the car…

Posted on January 10, 2021 by Jim@HiTek

The year has started out pretty well…because I found a new to me car!

I’d set up the Carfax online ‘Shop for a new car’  automatic system months ago. They have this automated system that will send you an email if the car you’re looking for pops up in their system, from dealers only… I’ve also tried watching local towns FB selling pages (more popular than Craigslist now) wherever I’ve parked the RV. And for a few days to months I’m in a certain area, I’ll check to see if the car(s) I’m interested in show up. Over the past year that I’ve been seriously watching, I’ve not found what I want. One time came close, and it was nice, low mileage, but too old. Other times the car was in the rust belt and too far away.

And what I want(ed) is as follows:

  1. Automatic transmission
  2. Sedan
  3. Halfway decent paint and body w/o rust
  4. Cruise Control
  5. Power windows
  6. Power door locks
  7. Power mirrors if possible
  8. Weight under ~4,000 lbs
  9. Lay down rear seats between the trunk and cabin for my golf clubs and other long stuff
  10. Near my current location wherever that happened to be at the time
  11. Low Mileage
  12.  TOWABLE without having to spend thousands. Not all AT cars are.

I was looking for Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Saturn, etc. but usually I’d just narrow the search to one brand, model, and a range of years. And over the months, Carfax sent me many leads but only a couple were close enough to me or in an area of the country where I didn’t have to worry about a rusted out undercarriage to bother pursuing. I’d have to ask the dealer to take pictures of the undercarriage as I searched for rust. Some were listed way over the highest Blue Book value because of low mileage so out they went. Some were in Florida and a bunch surprisingly were up in the NE. Too far to go to pick it up and too expensive to have them drive it out at $1/mile. When I was up in Milton Freewater, I did see one up in Washington State that looked good and was close, but they sold it so quickly I didn’t get the chance to go look at it. Wrong color anyway.

Anyway, I got down here to Pahrump late Dec. ’20 and 3 weeks later, one pops up on Carfax in Oceanside, CA as a price reduction. Just a 4.5 hour trip from here, and my brother lives over that way so I could visit him, possibly. I’d seen it before on Carfax but I was up in Milton Freewater at the time so too far away, and it was too expensive that time. Now with the price reduction and the fact I’m in Pahrump and it fits my list, yeah, I want it.

I didn’t want to go over with a trade-in as my current Saturn has the tow plate and wiring already installed and I felt I could get better money selling it myself here in Pahrump what with the 22 RV parks that are here in town. Could be a few people looking for a low cost towable with only 78,000 miles on it. So that meant I’d have to have a 2nd driver to bring my car back here. Tried, but couldn’t find a co-driver here in Pahrump, and it was short notice so wasn’t able to find anyone to watch my cat for me either. So contacted my brother over in Rosamond and he’ll be happy to help.

I know how fast these things sell if they have low mileage and the one listed by Carfax at a dealer’s is a ’03 and only has 66,000 miles. Whoa! Almost brand new. It’s a Saturn, L200 so has nearly all the power gear I’m looking for. And Saturn cars are always easily towable even with the AT. Missing the heated seats and heated mirrors but everything else on my list is there. The dealer had had it since September and had recently lowered the price from $4999 down to $4100. I perused the pictures over and over, contacted the dealer the same day it had shown up in my email and got them to post some pics of the engine, those looked good so then put $300 down on it (lowest they’d go to hold it).

Now that I had a plan, what I did was drive 4.5 hours to my brothers place in Rosamond with the cat, cat supplies, and litter box in the car.  She howled the first 2 hours of the trip but eventually settled down.

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Hanging in Pahrump…

Posted on December 31, 2020 by Jim@HiTek

Here I sit in Pahrump, Nevada, with it only 56 F outside, but sunshine, trying to decide if there’s somewhere I can drive just to get out of the house. It’s Dec. 31, 2020 and like millions/billions of others, really looking forward to the end of 2020. I’m very happy to be relatively healthy mindful of the two ER visits due to my prostate, the bad knees I’ve developed since April of 2019, the new sore heels I’ve developed just a few weeks ago, and the other signs of aging. I did feel I had a few close calls with something, while going shopping in several stores in 5 states, always wearing my home made mask with the paper insert, there have been a couple scares health wise concerning Covid-19. At least 5 times since February of this year I’ve felt something coming on, dry cough, mild headache, lethargy, soreness, but in each and every case, I could feel my immune system stomping whatever it was. So as a result, I’ve not had any health issues for more than a few days that appeared to mimic Covid. In one case, just 6 hours after it began I felt fine, weak, but fine.

Because of things, I didn’t post many pictures from either Nov. or Dec. These following are the only ones I took in Dec. 2020 that didn’t get trashed.  And by that I mean I did have a few of after the trip down from M-F to Pahrump as you saw in the last blog posting, but something happened to the SD card I think, and the ones I had after that trip all disappeared. Probably when my computer crashed and I needed an SD card to restore the drive. Well, too bad. I do have copies up on the Blog site of some of the missing ones so I’ll try to copy those back down to my computer as a backup. Don’t need them really once I’ve published but my brain makes me want to have backups here on my home computer.

Here’s a few of today’s shots around the Preferred RV Resort in Pahrump, NV. I’m settled into space #104. Note that I had to skooch up from under the tree branch that was blocking my DTV reception. That branch and other trees across the street, but eventually, found the sweet spot. Sure glad they have soooooo much room here. I could park the car behind the RV if I wanted but what’s shown is more convenient.

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Things I fixed in M-F…

Posted on December 11, 2020 by Jim@HiTek

I’ve had my fill of just sitting on my a/ss being retired and all, so when I first arrived at the RV park in Milton Freewater where I’ve stayed the last 5 months, I let the parks handyman know what my skills were and that I’d be happy to help fix things that might need fixing. Eventually he tried me out, and pretty soon I was working on several things for him and the park.

Over the 5 months I was there, I ended up fixing these items:

  1. A contractors boom box, (battery was bad);
  2. Repaired a dryer (bad idler pulley);
  3. Repaired a coin operated washing machine (bad water valve);
  4. Found a bad circuit breaker supplying a range;
  5. Repaired a washing machine (bad brain board);
  6. Helped the handyman’s helper find a bad plug on his RV’s shore power supply;
  7. Repaired the dryer again (broken belt this time);
  8. Repaired the dryer again (bad thermal fuse this time).
  9. Replaced bad LED strips to restore operation of a 47″ Vizio TV. Owner got fired and never returned to pay and pick it up so I now have it sitting on my dash and use it instead of my tiny 35″.

So I had many fun things to work on. And the money I paid for parts was repaid by either cash in some cases or being allowed to stay a week past my leave date without charge. Only worth $125 in my estimation, not nearly enough to cover the labor if they’d paid someone to do that work I’ve listed above. The dryer broke 3 times and I’m hoping the 3rd time’s the charm and that it won’t happen again for many years. Damn thing. These newer laundry appliances (Amana’s in this case) are really delicate. I even spotted a weak point in the washer the handyman needs to watch carefully and that I might need to fix when I go back there in the spring.

One thing I got out of all this is that the handyman is so happy about all the work that he’ll make sure I get my spot back when I come back up there in April. The monthly at his park is $375/month in an area where it’s typically $600-$650 at other parks so I’m pleased I’ll get that prime spot in the park. Cost me less then $80 for those parts that weren’t reimbursed. My labor was only partially paid for with the free spot for a week but, [shrug], I did enjoy the work. Exercising the brain and all.

—————————————————————————————————–

So what was happening was that I was near leaving for points south in order to miss the cold miserable weather there in the Walla Walla valley but one day, I started to have pain and difficulty taking a leak. Not good timing. There is a large VA clinic nearby, and there’s a hospital that’s a VA partner [I thought…turns out it’s not part of the VA system] plus my family lives in the area. My daughter, son, sister, and BIL are all nearby. In Pahrump, my current VA home base, I have no such support system. I do like the ‘looks’ of the VA clinic in Pahrump and the VA has a partner arrangement at a newer, large Urgent Care Clinic here in town that’s ‘almost’ a hospital. But for most medical work in this area, I have to drive 55 miles or so to Las Vegas. Nice medical services there for Vets. Oh, and a huge Vets hospital there. But, no family, no friends here. Just me and my cat. Some very helpful people in the park to lean on if necessary though.

Eventually, I ended up in Walla Walla Providence hospital’s ER and had a catheter inserted due to a swollen prostate squeezing off the urethra. They have a separate Urology Clinic and I was lucky to get in to see a great urologist after 6 days with the catheter in, originally, I’d gotten an appointment for Feb. 15th and here it was near Thanksgiving. And the newer appointment date was just 2 days before I was supposed to leave the RV park. My rent would be due but I didn’t want to stay, because of the cold. But I didn’t want to drive down to Pahrump with a catheter either. Luckily, the Dr. decided it would be okay to remove the catheter there in his office so I had that done. And I made a future appointment for prostate laser surgery on April 26th, 2021 after discussing my options. He wanted me to stay in town a few days until they could be relatively sure the prostate wouldn’t choke up again and I stayed for a week beyond my departure date at the RV park. That’s where helping fix things around the park came into play and there was no effort by the park staff to get me to pay or leave.

And I had to travel up Deadman’s Pass above Pendleton. If you don’t know it, it’s a very steep pass that often gets early snows. And they often salt the road because it’s so dangerous. But the day I chose to leave, it was going to get up to 50 F! Yea! Here’s a link to Trip Check web site that some state’s DMV’s sign on for. They have hundreds of webcams pointed towards roads so they are very handy for travelers in dicey weather conditions. I spent an hour on it just before departure checking the passes on my route. Not all states sign up for the system, I’m happy Oregon did.

So here is the travel blog about my December trip from M-F Oregon to Pahrump, NV. As you can see, it was a nice sunny day on Dec. 7th early AM. My BIL, Gary, came over and helped me break camp.

No snow, plenty of sunshine, but cold. In the 30’s.

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More from Milton Freewater…

Posted on November 22, 2020 by Jim@HiTek

Have yet to stumble upon that magical fun time social distancing group here in M-F. This area is home to a stanch and bullheaded cadre of scofflaws. Just today there was an ad in the local ‘uncensored’ FB page asking for people to come join them in downtown Pendleton to protest the lock down. Without masks of course. Dumbass people. It’s now at a point where 1,000 US citizens are dying every day. It’s expected to top 300,000 deaths in early December. And then the millions who end up hospitalized that survive and spend the rest of their lives trying to pay for it. Not a fun time.

I had a scare just two days ago, I’ve been going to the store just once per week to keep my exposure down, wearing a mask of course. Last Tuesday went shopping like normal and I ended up going to 3 new to me stores just to break up the monotony. So then on Friday, 72 hours later, I felt warm as I prepared my car for a detailing. Didn’t think much of it, it did seem to be fairly warm that day.

So my sister and BIL came and picked me up at the detailer’s and I hung out with them for the 3.5 hours while I waited for my car. Felt fine. Wore my mask most of the time and perhaps 85% of the time at their place. And then I picked up the car…$140! and headed home. Loaded up all the junk back into the trunk and back seat I usually carry and sat down to rest. And BOOM a bad ass cold hit me. Hard. Whoa, I could feel it struggling to overtake/overpower my immune system. Scratchy sore throat, dry cough, mild headache. Didn’t measure my temp, I should have, but it was likely just slightly above normal. Before it turned out that I couldn’t move much, grabbed a Lipton Chicken Soup packet and made some soup. Aww, that felt better. But the cold or whatever it was was still tugging on my health, and at 9:30 pm I couldn’t hardly see straight so I had a big swallow of Nyquil and went to bed. Was asleep within 5 minutes. Didn’t wake up until 8 am the next morning. And didn’t feel too bad except for the lingering effects of a bad cold. Over the next several hours got better and better. Em’ed my sister and BIL to let them know.

So that was a scare I could have done without. Sorry to have bored my readers but it’s getting pretty bad here in the land of not doing what you can to protect your neighbors I guess because, fuk em. I guess I’m guilty of that too now because I should have kept my mask on the whole time I was at my sisters place.

Anyway, back to normal and time to post another travel article. Though I’m not traveling much because of Covid-19 I do plan to head back to Pahrump in a week or so.

Meanwhile, here’s a pig!

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Visit to Weston…

Posted on October 27, 2020 by Jim@HiTek

It’s been a few weeks since I published an article here but time flies. I’m sure many of you have been busy preparing for winter too. I’ve been helping fix things around this RV park along with my regular stuff. So far I fixed a commercial washer, fixed a 47″ TV, fixed a workers boom box, worked on a really old electric range and solved the problem with it (no power to the outlet to the stove), and spent a great deal of time working on a newer front loading washer. That one has a computer board and I was trying to fix it rather than just replace it, no such luck. Had to admit defeat and just today ordered a used brain board for it.

And of course I finished installing the gas furnace hardware as it’s been down in the low 20’s F here for a few nights and I needed it. Only thing left on it was to install the screws that I hadn’t gotten to. Would have worked even without those but wanted to get it done. And none too soon because the next night got down to 22 F.

We have had a cold snap here in the Walla Walla Valley and as I said, it was getting into the low 20’s F every night. That lasted for 4 days and it’s just let up so tonight will be a bit more comfortable at 26 F. I haven’t stayed where it would get cold during the day, and of course even colder at night, for years so my plan on staying here until Dec. 2nd is a relearning experience on cold weather camping. This ’02 Journey is well made and well insulated, like it has dual pane windows, 4″ of foam insulation in the ceiling, insulation under the floor, and a fresh water tank in it’s own insulated box so it’s pretty comfortable. My only worry so far has been the hassle of dumping the tanks. But this Thursday it’ll be very warm during the day so I’ll do it then. And add water to the tank at the same time.

I’ve scored an electric oil heater (it was next to the RV park’s trash bin) and it’s doing the most work keeping the front of the RV warm under those large front windows, than I have 4 other electric heaters scattered around the house, along with the heat pump which I found today still heats even down to 32 F (they generally won’t heat when ambient is 40 F or below) so that’s handy. The 50 amp service here (100 amp total) has been very reliable so far. And last but not least, I have the working gas furnace now. Which surprised me that just one night leaving it set ‘On’ and a thermostat setting of 72 F sort of drained nearly 1/4 tank of propane. I’m now down to 1/4 tank so I’ll be using it less and less. I don’t need gas for much usually, just occasionally for the water heater (it has an electrical heating element) and for everyday cooking. I’ve only been filling the tank once per year…this year looks like twice. I was planning on a refill mid-November and it’s not all that expensive here locally, just $2.09/gallon, it’s just a hassle to break camp to drive and get filled.

The cold snap seems to be over as the prediction for the next 10 days look pretty nice. Just flirting with freezing at night. Sunshine most days with 50 F temps. Turns out tonight is the last of it for a while, getting down to 26 F. Then it hovers near 40 and above at night into mid-November. Yeah, I can make it to December easily enough.

So that’s the news from here, just hanging out going into old town occasionally for Chinese food, running up to Washington for shopping once a week, working on projects, and so far so good NO COVID in any of my family! Are we lucky? Or is it because we were all early adopters of the CDC guidelines regarding masks? I don’t know. I wish for all of my readers to have a speedy recovery if you or yours catches it.

And now, on to a little trip I made south of Milton Freewater a few miles…

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New RV repair post…Gas Furnace

Posted on October 18, 2020 by Jim@HiTek

I needed to get my gas furnace working, in the event I would be staying here in the Walla Walla valley. The over winter temps aren’t all that bad here, but I wanted to get my gas furnace up and running again as a back up to the many electric heaters I carry with me. You never know when you might have a power outage. I also have the heat pump which does a great job heating the RV but the gas furnace does it faster on really cold mornings, and doesn’t have a problem with temps lower then 40 F like the heat pump does (nature of the beast, won’t work below 40 F).

So I went to work on my gas furnace and decided that I’d need to design my own control circuit, after verifying that was what was needed. And that’s what I’ve done, and here’s the article for your enjoyment or amusement.

Take a look at this article since many of you will have the exact same or similar furnace, and have it installed the same way. You might want to buy a new control board if you have a failure instead of building a new circuit like I did but that is up to you if you have the kind of problem with yours that I had with mine.

Anyway, here’s the article: https://chaos.goblinbox.com/rv-repair-section-2/rv-repair-section-2004-winnebago-journey-dl/d-heating-cooling/furnace/

Enjoy!

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Burger Quest…

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Jim@HiTek

There is a place in Walla Walla that was opened by Chef Andrae Bopp in a Cenex gas station of all places. I happened to read a review about Andrae’s in the local paper or on Facebook or in a travel magazine, I no longer recall where I first saw mention of the kitchen, and I was intrigued so checked out their web site: Andrae’s Kitchen.

After checking out the menu, which includes pictures of some dishes, I read an excellent review of both the kitchen and the Walla Walla area in this Travel + Leisure article by Ray Isle. That article cinched it for me and I decided I needed to visit. An upscale meal from a gas station?? Yeah, count me in! I rarely eat red meat any more except as a treat so a beef burger by a real chef suits my fancy these days.

One thing on the menu that was interesting was that they also have a food truck, for some strange reason parked way out in Minam. At the time I saw that, I didn’t even know where that was and I grew up in the valley. Didn’t recall every hearing the name of the town. Looked it up and it’s over an hours drive from where I’m staying in Milton Freewater up in the Blue Mountains. Seems a bit strange they have a food truck there but I ran into a photo of their featured Beef Brisket Burger basket that just looked so mouth watering that I called up my son and invited him to take a ride with me out there to have dinner. Why not? Son knew of Andrea’s Kitchen at the gas station but jumped at the idea of checking out Minam’s place.

So off we headed to basically a wide spot in the road at the confluence of two rivers…the Minam and Wallowa Rivers. We took the 204 through Tollgate and joined up with the 82 at the lumber town Elgin.

Hunter the dog enjoying the scenery. The window was down most of the trip.

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Relaxing in M-F…

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Jim@HiTek

Note to readers: It has come to my attention that at least one reader who wished to be removed from the notification list for my blog when a new post was posted *couldn’t* get taken off the list by using the Subscribe2 app’s ‘Unsubscribe’ feature and repeatedly got an error message whenever he tried to unsubscribe. At the time the subscriber contacted me, I was unable to delete his email from the list. This was either a problem with the app or with Word Press, I was unsure. Well, months passed with no solution I could find online. I told him what he could do at his end but for whatever reason he didn’t do. And that was, because he uses gmail, to just click on the ! at the top of his incoming mail page and show the email from my site as being spam. Problem solved as that email app would automatically place any emails from my system into the spam folder. That would work for any email service.

Just recently he contacted me again mentioning he was still getting the notifications from my blog so I had reason to check online for a solution again and this time I found something! A thread about the problem and one of the code authors offering a code change to the internal program of the Subscribe2 app. I’m not much of a coder these days due to lack of practice but eventually, I did find where to insert the repair code and that did the trick. I’m now able to remove subscriber’s email addresses that the app was preventing. One thing about his address is that it was in the form *****.****@gmail.com. So it had a period between his first and last names and that seemed to trip up Subscribe2 so it wouldn’t allow me to delete it as it didn’t recognize it as a true email address. Other subscribers didn’t seem to have a problem like this.

But, to shorten this story, if you’ve tried unsuccessfully to unsubscribe from my Blog, I (probably) won’t send any ruffians to rough you up to help you change your mind, so try again if you wish. Should work now.

And now…on with the blog!

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Another new repair article…

Posted on September 3, 2020 by Jim@HiTek

Had a problem with the bedroom ceiling fixture…it just stopped functioning. No light. So had to stop what I was doing and fix the darn thing as it’s helpful to have. Here’s the write up article about it…Electrical – Bedroom 12 volt issue…

Enjoy!

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