Catching up - again…

June 5, 2008
Broad Brook, CT

Well, I find myself catching up once again. Not much interesting has been happening, I suppose. We've done some food shopping and tried to make sure that everyone's fed well, and I've started to get back in the swing of working around "the house" (the coach) on a regular basis.

On the food front, we're struggling a bit because things are kind of spread out in different directions from here, and we're trying to save on both food and gas. It seems like you can do one or the other, but not both, these days! If you're looking for the best values, you have to hit multiple places. If you're trying to maximize the results from a trip, you want to sequence stops for minimum mileage. It doesn't work well if you're going in multiple directions! It doesn't help that the higher-end stores (Whole Foods, Stew Leonard's, City Fish) are all on the other side of Hartford, making for a couple of hours of travel in total. I didn't realize how well off we are in Arizona, with most of what we want within a 10 mile radius.

In any event, we've been eating well, as usual. On Monday, I made a "beer can chicken" recipe with a nice spice rub. Tuesday, I made a recipe from a recent cookbook (sort of) acquisition: Alton Brown's Feasting on Asphalt, The River Run. It's more of a behind-the-scenes look at a Food Network TV show that chronicles a ride along the Mississippi River, from the Delta to the headwaters, by a motorcycle caravan, than a cookbook, per se. There are recipes throughout the book taken from the local cuisine all along the way. I've selected a few I'll try out over the next month or so, and started with a spare rib recipe that came out OK (good but not great) but matched well with Geri's baked sweet potatoes and Pat's grilled veggies.

Last night, we hustled down some semi-home made pizza (Geri did the toppings on pre-made shells to save time) since we had to go to the "Awards Night" at the local High School. Britt received a scholarship from the town's Athletic Booster Club, and a friend of Al's was honored for his contributions to the community's sports programs.

The key thing I've done to the coach is to stop (fingers crossed here) a sporadic water leak that sometimes makes a small wet spot on the bedroom carpet. Leaks are the bane of many motorhomers existence, and ones around a slide-out can be particularly hard to address. In our case, I found that the rubber seals needed adjusting and that the lower edge of the slide itself needed re-sealing. The seals were relatively easy to push into place. The edge of the slide was another story. I had to clean out the old silicone, add spacers for several days to get the wood inside to dry out, then add a row of stainless steel screws (countersunk and coated with sealer) to firm everything up before re-applying the silicone along the edge. It's rained twice now since I did the repairs, and the bedroom is dry, so I think I've got it this time. Yeah!

I have almost everything needed for the "annual maintenance" cycle on the coach, so I'm going to start that tomorrow with the oil and filters. Since Al has little time off from work these days, I'll break it up into multiple days and save the parts where help is required/desired for when he's available. Breaking the processes up will also help make sure that I can clean up after each step rather than leave a mess around. It's bad form to leave a mess when you're a guest. So, I'll do the oil and filters one day, the lube another day, the generator service, the furnace, the air dryer service, etc. I'll make each piece a 1-3 hour block, and work around bad weather. It should work out fine (fingers still crossed).