I'm outa' here

[Jerry Campbell]

Well We made it back to the oregon country only to find it's still cold up here. It should be in the teens here tonight. We arrived to find all the plumbing frozen again so the first few days was spent replacing all the pipes, filters and toilet. I hate that when that happens, DAMN. This is the second year in a row. This year I'm putting an air fitting in so I can blow everything out. Anyway, We had a great trip, 6403 miles and are happy to be back in the land of green. What a Bus.

Code: Select all

http://www.crowncoach.bravehost.com/winterhome.jpg

[Sharkey]

THE TEENS??!!! Screw that!!! It must get lots colder up there than here. I've had 33°+ nights for the last couple, but no freezing. So which plumbing froze, the bus or the house? I'd have thought that you'd had drained everything before, knowing it would be cold.

Anyway, welcome back. How was the Huges.net satellite gear on the road? I was just talking to Sharon about this on Saturday. She showed me a picture of your old housetruck...

Everyone, remember that Jerry's host doesn't allow hot linking of images, so copy the address in the code box in his post and paste it into your browser's "open location" dialog or address bar to view his winter digs.

[Jerry Campbell]

Channel 9 was way off, It's 30 out there. A few days ago it was 20 so I thought there might be a possibility. I have been living in this cabin for over 15 years and until last year the pipes have never frozen. Except for last year I have always turned off the water and drained the pipes, and never lost a pipe. This year I drained everything but not good enough, it seems. So I must get more creative. I've got to stop this. Decompression time from the road is too important. Usually we have a week before anyone knows we're here. Plenty of time to stumble around looking for myself before I have to go to work.
The Hughes Satellite worked fine and was easy to set up. Except for the delay, the VOIP phone worked very good also, definitely worth the $4.07 a month for 100 minutes. In fact the whole setup worked so well that I made $500 in the month of January while sitting on the beach. Fixing Computers and doing some web page stuff.
Baby Truck followed along faithfully and made it possibly to squeeze a few more adventures in along the way. It didn't seem to affect the mileage. I got about 11 mpg. I did drop a gear on some hills because I'm carrying a 1000 lbs. of water I didn't have before.
I also learned a little more about my electrical system on this trip. We were 12 days on the beach without much sun. After about a week I realized I was going to be in trouble if I didn't pay more attention. The batteries got down to 64%, I was loosing a little more everyday. I didn't have my 5500 watt diesel generator because I need to build it into the bus. I realized then that I didn't need 5500 watts I only need about 1500 watts to run my backup battery charger. Which I would have used if I had one there. So when I got home I sold my 5500 watt and bought a 2000 watt sinewave inverter generator and with the money I had left I bought a Air-x 400 wind generator with a larger set of blades to work better in low wind conditions. This will be my back up charger for the beach where the wind almost always blows.
Say Hi to Sharon, I love that girl.
See you sometime soon.
Jerry