October 30, 2011
Peoria, Arizona
We had a great breakfast with Wayne and Eva, then hit the
highway heading east (for a change). It
was a beautiful, warm (low-90s) day and we had another easy drive, following
I-10 to AZ-101 just west of Phoenix. We
were soon parked in front of the winter abode just before 4:00 PM. The timing was pretty good, since our plan
was to defer unloading most things until tomorrow. Like my friend, Dave, we have a homemade power cord with a 50 Amp plug, so I
plugged the coach in to keep the air conditioners running, then started
tackling the house.
Our fall start-up routine is nowhere near as complicated
as preparing for departure in the spring.
I call the city (water, sewer, trash) and the Internet people about a
week in advance; we leave the gas service on but turned off at the meter. Basically, I have to reset the air
conditioning, install new water filters and open the valve, fill the hot water
heater, turn on the gas, bleed the gas lines to the stove and water heater, and
light the pilot for the water heater.
Within an hour (barring any mishaps), everything is ready to go, and
this year there were no issues, per se.
The water valve was a little sticky but nothing a 12" pipe wrench
couldn't fix (last year, I had to make an emergency trip to Home Depot because
the water valve wouldn't open). The
toilets and drains were fine, since I've started sealing the water in with
plastic wrap before we leave. The water
heater pilot light takes a while to come on, but I'm used to that. We buy the water filters in bulk, so they
were already waiting for me to install them.
No leaks made for a pretty smooth start-up.
The only problem we had this year was that several of the
smoke and carbon monoxide alarms were beeping.
Actually, the real problem was that we didn't have any spare 9-volt
batteries in the house! Geri made a
quick trip to Home Depot (not me for a change!) while I was doing the water
filters, and we soon changed them all out and Merlin was able to come out from
under the bed. I thought I'd changed the
batteries in the spring, but maybe not.
Needless to say, "get batteries" will be added to the
one-week-before-arrival to-do list for next year.
Over the past few years, we've made a tradition out of
heading to a local pizza joint, Grimaldi's, for dinner on the night we arrive
back, and this year was no exception.
They serve the closest thing we can get to "real" New York
pizza out here. After dinner, I brought
in the network equipment from the coach and restarted the cable modem. Everything worked fine there as well.
All in all, an easy re-entry this year. As always, we love our travels but it feels
great to be back in AZ for the winter...
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