CuRVWander

 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 togeth...

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 ...

 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. 

 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 ...

 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 was...

  Whoop there it is! And just like that, it's done.  Even the owner of the conversion shop was surprised at how quickly things came together.  There were no uh-oh's, unplanned delays (when was the last time something didn't happen to slow a project you were working on), labor shortages, nothing.  It just all went great. How about a tour? (you can click on any picture to see them full-screen) Lots of storage compartments.  A couple are already spoken for, the Honda 2200 generator is going in the large front compartment on the driver's side.  It did work out that both the fuel door and the DEF door (the two round, chrome doors) are on the same side.  A nice touch is the chrome edge protector to keep the flying rocks from chipping the paint. Storage space is repeated on the passenger side.  The horizontal compartment above the rear wheel is going to be for my specialty tools like the torque wrench and Fluke multi-meter to name a couple. Also, not rea...

Things are happening, fast! What I was told would be weeks of work has seemingly gotten well underway in just days.  My last post saw the truck just arriving in Valparaiso from the body shop in Elkhart, ready to be fitted with auxiliary equipment.  The question was whether or not all the parts had arrived.  Apparently they have. 60 gallon auxiliary fuel tank, fuel pump, electronic controls and wiring. Tiara add-ons - Rear View camera, service lights, control modules, cameral wiring harness to attach to in-dash display. Bedliner sprayed onto top of bumper.  No scratching of paint  when you use the bumper as a step into the bed. Fuel tank and hitch mounting rails fitted to freshly sprayed bed liner. The folks at Classy Chassis didn't fool around, if they had parts to work with they got on it.  And with this amount of progress I had to make a call and ask if the completion date of late August was still the target.  Happily the answer came back "no". ...