Just knocking around.

 Now that my every waking moment isn't consumed with the acquisition of a truck to replace my aging one I can consider the things done in recent days/weeks/months.

As fulltimers we find ourselves frequent visitors to whatever post office is near.  And lately, with our daughter's family moving hours away from our current location, we have been very frequent visitors with packages of "things" for the grandkids.  On one of these package shipping runs I came upon something a little unusual.  It appeared as though someone decided to convert the Cartersville, GA main post office into a drive-thru facility.

                       

I came upon the scene just as it happened but I was not privy to any of the details as how things came to be.  The only thing I know for sure is that the driver was visibly upset.

Something new for us at this location is that a number of the volunteers in The Village got together and put in a community garden.  We were given a plot of ground near the volunteer meeting room.  It is a little shy on sunshine as it is shaded by a building in the morning and tall trees in the afternoon but gets good light mid-day.  And that seems enough; tomatoes, beans, squash, zucchini, kale, and okra are doing well.

 Everybody that wanted to participate kicked in some seed money and then what labor they could contribute to the tilling, planting, fencing (we're thick with deer and rabbits), and weeding.  I was able to get in on planting day and put in seedling sprouts and seeds of the beans, okra and corn.  And since planting day I've acquired a couple of blisters hand pulling weeds and grass.  All in all, good therapy.

The 4th of July weekend I took a small harvest of everything you see above plus a slug of kale, which I ate before taking the picture.  The zucchini and okra went on the grill that same day.  The cherry tomatoes are from Cyndee's plant that we have at our campsite.  I've never had so much flavor in such a small package.

Gardening seems to be a theme of late, but on a much larger scale than our little community vegetable garden.  The Corps has embarked on partnerships with environmental groups that are promoting pollinator habitat and aquatic habitat.  The pollinator program has seen the establishment of bee hives and the plowing of what was once mowed grass road shoulders and day use area green space.  Last fall and winter was spent plowing the grass and tilling the soil in preparation for sowing native wild flower.  In early spring the seeding proceeded and in just a few weeks it was evident that these plants were happy with their new home.

This plot is adjacent to the Upper Stamp Creek trail head parking area.

Since they are wild flowers they are not bold and showy like a residential flower garden.  But when you get closer in they can be pretty spectacular.

 Cyndee and I can't take any credit for work done on the wildflowers, that was almost all Ranger labor.  We've just enjoyed the fruits of their labor.

Something that we did help with was the construction of a hoop-house for cultivating aquatic plants that will become habitat and shoreline stabilization.  Many hands pitched in to construct the hoop-house but volunteer Curt went above and beyond, single-handedly assembling many components on weekends and evenings.  The below GIF spans 62 days.

In the GIF above when you see the covering balloon up, that is when a gust of wind came through just as we were putting the covering on.  We all almost went parasailing!  That thing tried to take off with us holding on.

With the covering secure the end walls and finishing touches were added and the little hot-house was immediately put into service.  The floor was covered in kiddie pools which were filled with cultivated button bush sprigs.  If I heard correctly, they will be mature enough to transplant in the fall of 2023.  Typically the survival rate of these little clippings is in the neighborhood of 50%.  So far our staff biologist has a 95% rate going.  Outstanding!

I was in the hot-house this past weekend and was surprised to see the bushes had grown so big and were beginning to bloom.  To my untrained eye they looked ready to go for this fall.  They are certainly better looking than any of the plants we worked with in previous plantings.

 

So these are button bushes (above).  I had never heard of them until a couple of seasons ago when we started helping with the aquatic life habitat rehabilitation.  They get planted in the shallow coves of the lake in the winter when the water levels are low and the lake bed is exposed, or nearly exposed.

The photo to the right was taken in September of 2021.  Sleds full of water willows were plugged in at one of the many coves on Allatoona Lake.  We did in the neighborhood of 2,000 plants that day.  The folks you see here are volunteers from The Village.

To the left is our Ranger biologist-extraordinaire.  Her efforts can be seen almost everywhere you look.  But everything looks so natural you wouldn't know it.

The fishing clubs are very excited about the aquatic habitats she is developing and the pollinator organizations are thrilled with the pollinator plant "farming".

However she is not alone in the endeavor.  An operation this big doesn't happen without support from headquarters.

Did I mention that the lake bed was not exposed everywhere plantings had to go? 😄

The fishing clubs aren't the only ones happy about the fish attractor plants.

When we meet people and they learn that we are fulltimers (which usually takes some explaining) and that we are year-'round volunteers, the next thing they want to know is "what does that mean, what do you do?"  The above ramblings kind of form an idea of what we 'do'.  I think I have an idea of how to write my next posting.

Saga of the Truck - Chapter 11 (the last one)

This saga of what it has been like to replace a fifth-wheel fulltimer's tow vehicle is coming to a close.  It has been a 25 month ordeal with the bulk of that time spent maneuvering in the throws of a pandemic.  Countless hours of research on the internet, dozens of hours on the phone negotiating with fleet services, weeks of haggling with insurance providers, a bi-coastal trip to take possession of half a truck, and two 1,400 mile round trips from Georgia to Indiana to get the truck finished.  The shortages I wrote about in Chapter 3 were the single biggest factor in the time it took to get everything done.

But it is done; almost.  Now it is time to shake out the annoying little things that invariably come up with a new vehicle purchase.  Unlike the purchase of our original truck, the 2006 6.0L F-550, nothing mechanical has reared an ugly head.  But I do have a crop of electronic issues, one of them critical to towing.

Immediately upon being a registered owner I received notice that there was a recall for my (and a gazillion other) truck because of the integrated trailer brake controller.  It seems it will simply turn off without notice, leaving you unknowingly without any trailer brakes.  Yikes!  Nothing like getting pushed right through a red light into a busy, high-speed intersection.  So I called a Ford dealership I trust to schedule the fix (a re-loading of the brake controller software) and was given an earliest possible appointment of nine weeks from the day I called.  Nine weeks!  The effects of the pandemic are still haunting me.

Additionally I have found a missing feature in the navigation system.  It does not have the trailer towing application that lets you input your trailer dimensions and other stats so that the nav system can route you safely through underpasses, tunnels and weight limited bridges.  And lastly, the rear view camera has horribly low resolution and is very dark.  The image is supposed to be of high enough resolution that I should be able to see the hitch so that it can assist me in hooking up the trailer.  It is not even close.

Anyway, the dealership will take a look at these issues while they have it for the recall work.

Meanwhile, I am getting familiar with everything else.  One thing I can say is that having all that fuel on board is very convenient.  I drove it from Indiana to our location in Georgia (670 mi) on a partially filled tank and didn't have to stop for fuel.  But when I did have to fuel up I learned;

Large fuel capacity: Good.  Paying for fill-up: Bad.

My actual capacity is 100 gallons.  Of course you can't use to the last drop but I got pretty close for the first fill-up and it cost me $470.  The credit card cut me off twice at $175 and wouldn't let me do the third swipe until the next day.  With that annoyance in mind I probably won't let it run that low again unless necessary.

Well, that's if for the saga.  Future posts will get back to our adventures in fulltiming.  Oh, I'm sure that subject matter will still include truck stuff.  After all, we are still stranded until the trailer brake controller is fixed in late August.

Saga of the Truck - Chapter 10

 That didn't take long!  Just a few days after making Big Gulp (2006 Ford F-550) available for sale, it is gone.  This little bit of info gets a chapter all its own.

Goodbye old friend.  Thanks for the adventures.  And good riddance to your wallet draining repairs. 

Saga of the Truck - Chapter 9

 We're off!  My son and I are going to Valparaiso, IN to pick up the newly minted RV hauler truck that has been in the making for the past twenty-five months.

It is a 630 mile drive, one way, to Valparaiso from our current location in Georgia.  With stops we can be there in a mere eleven hours.  We got an early enough start on a Sunday morning that we were checking in to the hotel by 5:30pm and had time to kill so we drove another 15 minutes and were on the shore of Lake Michigan.  My son had never seen the lake and I had only seen it from mostly Lakeshore Drive in Chicago, never in its "wild" form like where we were at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

We had to poke around for awhile to find someplace legal to park.  When we were getting out of the car we noticed other people in the parking lot and they were dressed in winter coats, long pants and gloves.  We thought that a little curious since our whole drive that day was in 90degF heat.  Then we noticed a stiff wind out of the north, coming straight in off lake.  It had a little bite to it we thought, but not bad, on to the shore we went.

Holy cow!  By the time we walked the 25 yards to the shore my teeth were chattering.  It was now abundantly obvious why people were in winter coats.

Always impressive to look across a lake that appears to be an ocean.

The waves rolling in and making small crashing noises were no 
different than what I was accustomed to all along the Gulf Coast.

Okay, enough of that.  Yup, it's an impressive lake but I'm freezing.  Snapped a couple of pictures hustled back to the car.

We drove back to town and went straight to the restaurant, Industrial Revolution.  Interesting place, it pays homage to the working people that pioneered high steel and other elements that made cities what they are today.  The bronze sculptures are amazing, and everywhere.

On the Friday before we left I got what I presume to be the last pictures from Classy Chassis.  They were giving it a bath before putting it in the shop for the weekend, ready for its Monday delivery.

Next morning we were up early and down to the hotel's hot breakfast.  Had to eat slow to kill time because it was way too early to go to Classy Chassis.  But the time did finally come.

Chad and I arrived just a few minutes after the door opened.  You could tell that people were just getting themselves into their work routine.  We were greeted on sight and immediately got down to business.

It was a bright, clear morning that promised to turn into a scorcher but made for a good picture taking setting.  The presenting of the keys!

And with that, we're off.  Georgia here we come.  I had eleven hours to get acquainted with all the bells, whistles and systems but it was obvious I was going to have to spend some quality time with the owner's manual.  Not everything is common sense to use.

However, I can't put my feet up and read a good book yet.  There is still one major chore to be done.  There is no way I am letting six new Michelin tires on the 2006 truck drive away and be left with the factory issued Continentals on the new truck.  Those Continentals will be lucky to last 10,000 miles.  I typically get 50,000 out of the Michelins.  So it's off to the truck tire shop for a swapping out.

This was not a simple matter of moving the wheels and tires from one truck to the other.  I wanted to keep the new wheels on the new truck and the 16-year-old wheels on the old truck.  Every tire had to be dismounted and remounted and balanced.

With that done full attention can be turned to selling Big Gulp.  But first, a family portrait.

Outwardly there is not much difference except for color of the truck and shape of the bed.  Inwardly the differences are enormous.  The two engines couldn't be more different and electronic appointments in the new truck didn't even exist when the old truck was built.  Noise is significantly less, power/torque is significantly better, turbo-lag is virtually gone, ride comfort is marginally better, and entertainment options  are so many I am still finding new ones each time I drive it.

With the color, power, aggressive stance, and commanding presence we tried to find an appropriate name by testing a couple dozen different ones.  There was one that seemed a natural fit and continued to feel that way days after first trying it out.

Meet CHIEF

Now it is time to do a deep dive on the owner's manual and start contacting the folks that were interested in buying Big Gulp.

Saga of the Truck - Chapter 8

 Big Gulp, the 2006 F-550 needs a little love to get it ready to sell.

The big red truck is done, we’re scheduled to go get it in a few days.  And when we do, our stable of vehicles will be one more than we have drivers.  If we lived in a sticks and bricks it wouldn't be a big deal but as fulltimers it's a problem.  Something has to go and there is no way Cyndee is giving up her little SUV.

It's time to put some lipstick on a pig.  Sixteen years of being outside 24/7 and 193,000 miles has taken its toll.  Now don't think I didn't do any care in all those years, just the opposite.  I kept it washed and coated with a high tech polymer coating.  But the intense UV rays at high elevations and acid rain of the southeast did take off the like-new look.

First order is to pressure wash the bed of the truck.  This was the area of greatest depreciation in looks.

It took three days and five washes to get all the road grime blasted off.  I would wash, let it dry, find streaks that I missed, and repeat.  But even after all that washing the bedliner looked dull and tired.  I found a bedliner rejuvenator and spent about five hours applying that stuff.  It was worth the effort, the bedliner looked new.

Next was the exterior paint.  I got help from a hand-wash detailing outfit in the next town over.  There was a thick coating of sticky tree pollen that the pressure washer wasn't touching.  It took some aggressive detergent and three guys hand rubbing to get it out of all the nooks, inside curves and sheet metal mating points.  Once that was done it was all me -

Father's day weekend was "wax on, wax off" for me.  Luckily the shop in The Village has a garage door just tall enough that I can get the truck in and do everything out of sun. I took my Bluetooth speaker with me, fired up Pandora and pretty much burned up all my data in one weekend. 

If you don't look too closely you can't tell the 2006 picture (left) from the 2022 picture.

       

I hope my efforts will be rewarded.

I've got three potentials standing by.  Time to let them know the truck is available now.

My son and I will be on the way to Indiana in a few days to pick up the new truck and get it to its new home.