My new home

I rode out this morning to look at this rig. I dearly love my Escaper but it's feeling really cramped and it's aging...
After much deliberation and after consultation with HP and an unbiased mechanic, I bought this.
It's a 92 Holiday Rambler, one of my favorite brands. Basement. Straight line kitchen. Twin beds. Coach is amazing. Mechanically, it needs work. So it goes to the shop in the morning and when I see it again it will start, run, steer and stop like it should. Then there will be some modifications in all my spare time so my desk can be aboard. So no, i'm not moving in right away. I want to do everything that needs done before my Stuff starts getting in the way.

Expletive deleted - the rest of the story.

But there are many worse places for this to happen and few better.

What happened is a quick storm - one of those "isolated thunderstorms" - went by. It mostly missed the pig picking but the wind did this to my awning.

What is really cool is that if it had to happen, it happened when and where it did. Not the previous week when I was alone and getting ready for a long drive to work. Not as part of the rain/thunderstorm that hit later that night. There were guys around who could get it off the roof and rolled up and screw the broken bracket to the rig so I could drive. And yes - no one was hurt.

That was the Attention Getting Event for me this weekend, but most of it I spent having a blast at a pig picking hosted by friends in Emporia. I met lots of neat people and ate lots of good food, swam, rode scooter, rode in their side-by-side... Lots of fun. Actually, I was too busy having fun to take pictures - the awning picture happened because I was taking them for insurance.

Today's yard, June 5, 2010

At the end of my vacation week, I am finally on vacation, enjoying Lynchburg's best-kept secret, the Izaac Walton park. My rig's in my favorite campsite with the awning out, and I've just returned from my first swim of the year.
Why so late? I don't know. I usually find my way into water sooner than this, but this year there were other things going on. Ranging from excellent weekends with family or time-traveling to staying in town doing vehicle maintenance. This week while I was off the road, my rig got inspected, tranny service, and a modulater valve. Seasonal clothing got swapped out. Other chores in plenty got done. I went to a Rendezvous (another post, coming soon) and a memorial service. And now: it's time to float around in the lovely lake, read a few stories, nibble sweet black cherries, have friends visit this evening, and rest up for work. The weather, I might add, is ideal despite predictions of isolated thunderstorms. Life is good.

My copper pot is copper again!

I love it when a product does exactly what it is supposed to.
I have a beautiful Westminster Forge coffee pot in my camp. Unfortunately, in my early morning decaffeinated state, when I first got it I didn't think to soap it, so the campfire soot stuck. It has built up over several years of regular coffee brewing.
Last summer I decided I wanted to at least be able to see that it wasn't granite ware under all that black. I tried everything I - or my friend Sue who has every chemical known to man in her pantry - could think of. Including the wire brush on my Dremel. Nothing worked. Nothing even made a dent in the built up blackness.

On my way home from the Shenandoah Longrifles Memorial Day Camp, I stopped at the Shenandoah Heritage Market to stretch my legs and hunt something cold to drink. One of the stores in there is Kitchen Kupboard, which is a very cool kitchen gadget store. I had to browse that - and that's where I found SOKOFF. It ain't cheap but I thought it just might remove my soot. That's what it says it's made for: removing soot and baked on grease.

Yesterday I painted it on my blackened coffee pot. And yes, it IS a copper pot.
Here are the pictures. And yes, this is an UNSOLICITED testimonial. I have lots of friends with sooty stuff, so I must share the find.