Another Tiny Yule Tree

I have a new little tiny tree this year. It's a sparkly green wire "tree" strung with very tiny battery operated LED lights. They blink, so I tried to upload a video instead of a picture. It didn't work.

This was the weekend for cleaning and decorating the motorhome for the holidays, and catching up on a few of the way-too-many unfinished projects. Santa, please bring me a few years off with pay to catch up with myself?

Hope everyone has a blessed winter season.

Winterizing the RV

I've been reading a lot about how to winterize a motorhome. But I'm actually USING mine, so antifreeze in the drains is not an option. Global Warming? Not here this past month. We set some records for cold.

Life aboard an in-use motorhome - and I don't mean in an RV park with skirting and heat tape - means you pay attention to heat and water.

I had nursed my dying coach batteries through the fall because I wanted to go into winter with brand new ones. In spite of the research I did on golf cart batteries and gel batteries, I bought three new deep-cycle coach batteries at Wal-Mart. I've had good luck with batteries from Wally World in the past and if they go bad I can return them anywhere I happen to be. They handle the heater blower so much better than my old, smaller, worn out ones did.

I run the furnace morning and evening but not while I'm asleep. I also have a small Mr. Heater space heater, which doesn't drain batteries but it uses the more expensive propane in pound cans. I have a carbon monoxide detector and keep a roof vent open a little bit to keep it happy. And I have an electric space heater for when I am plugged in to shore power.

I have an electric blanket under the bottom sheet for when I have shore power, to warm the bed before I get in. I also have a DC electric lap robe from a truck stop which isn't as effective as the electric blanket but it does work well enough to pre-warm the bed. If you haven't tried it, a pre-heated bed is a marvelous thing.

I drained the fresh water system and the water heater when the weather got Very Cold. I carry water in gallon jugs and heat it on the stove for washing and dishwashing. It goes down the drain like always.
That's the most winterizing I've ever done. I've had the pipes freeze when I haven't drained them but they didn't do any damage, they weren't frozen that hard or that long. Most winters I have drained the pipes at the right time. The only damage I've had, since I got my first RV in 1995, was last year's cold snap froze my waste tanks and the grey water has a slight leak in the valve. It only leaks when I actually dump it, and it's grey water so a couple of drops doesn't get me all excited.
NB: I have always had old-fashioned faucets with two turn knobs. My friend had drained his RV but re-filled the water for a Christmastime trip and forgot to drain it again. He went to take it out in the spring and had to replace both faucets because the lever mixer kind don't take to freezing well at all.

I still think the best way to winterize an RV is to drive it far enough south that people don't know what a snow-shovel is, but I'm addicted to paychecks, so I stay in the mid-atlantic region where I can get them.

Travel Safe, Stay Warm, Have Happy Holidays.
- Gypsy

Instead of blogging, I've been...

It's been a while since I've posted anything. I have lots of pictures backlogged because I got a new computer and then a new Treo and spent a lot of on-line time setting them up instead of messing with pictures.
And then, I haven't been anywhere. OK, I'm in a different supermarket each week, in a different town, but they are still supermarkets and supermarket parking lots. With gas as high as it had gotten, at 7 mpg I took to only driving when necessary. Then I got new coach batteries and necessary became less often. I can now park Sunday night, run the furnace in the morning and evening, and have batteries still reading "good" on Thursday. So I have been catching up on my reading and what not, but not doing bloggable things.

Now, thankfully, gas prices have dropped to levels I thought were only memories, RVers who sold their rigs because they couldn't afford to feed them are kicking themselves in the proverbial butt, and I am driving more and parking less. Last weekend, for instance, it was actually cheaper to drive up to Virginia and see my friends and my kitty cat and back to the same town in NC than it would have been to stay at a very inexpensive campground near there for the weekend. A month earlier it would have definitely been the other way around.

I don't know how long the gas prices will stay down but I'm sure enjoying it.

Desktop 4.* on Vista - YES!!!

Installing Palm Desktop 4.1.4 or 4.2 on Vista - I win!!!

OK, I have a shiny new Treo 755p. I take it out of the box and charge it the recommended 12 hours and prepare to install software. The included disc says Vista Users see website. I follow that link and it's the link that says on Vista you should install the new feature-deficient Access version of Palm Desktop. Now, I already know from my adventures when I got the Vista laptop that 4.1.4 runs fine on Vista once you get it to install. So I decide to ignore the instruction and pop the included disc into the CD tray. Install shield does its thing - and hangs up. Well, fooey. I reboot, realize the key last time was uninstall first, in spite of Palm's statement that you install over the previous. So I uninstall. In goes the disc again. Still no good. It just hangs up. I spent some time chatting with tech support and wound up downloading the Access version. It installed, but I hated it. Light blue on lighter blue, no options, no color-coded categories, and no birthdays in the desktop calendar. I don't know what else they left out.

I woke up with inspiration: Even though I uninstalled the 4.1.4 and the partial 4.2 before I installed Access's desktop, it still found parts of "a previous version". I figured out it probably dealt with them.

So - I booted up the computer and uninstalled Palm Desktop by Access in Control Panel uninstall programs. I rebooted the computer. I closed everything I could, windows sidebar and veriface and everything. Disconnected from the internet and closed my antivirus.
Put in the disc that came with my 755p and **WooHoo!!!** It installed fine. It runs fine. It installs programs and files to the handheld fine. And I'm not even running it in compatibility mode.

So if you miss your features, it is perfectly possible to run 4.1.4 or 4.2 on Vista. Just make sure the prior version is completely deleted and NOTHING, INCLUDING ANTIVIRUS, else is running after you reboot, and install the program.

If you like bullet lists, here you go:

What I did:
1. Uninstall Access desktop version
2. Reboot Computer
3. Turn off ALL running programs, disconnect from internet and close antivirus.
4. Insert installation disc that came with Treo 755p
5. Autorun. Uncheck download latest settings from internet (because you are off-line).

I want a Harley!

I want a Harley. Of course, my motorscooter is paid for, and it fits on the rack on the back of the motorhome, so I probably will not be getting a Harley any time soon. But that doesn't stop me wanting one.

I had the pleasure last week of visiting the Harley Davidson museum in Asheboro. They have a service shop and a diner (the menu has motorcycle-oriented names - for instance, Drinks are called "Fluids") downstairs. The museum itself is upstairs.

Note to Universal Beneficence: When I say I want a Harley, this bicycle is NOT what I mean. I had no idea H-D had made such. I'd have sure gotten one for my kid, though.

They had lots of vintage bikes, in and out of cases. The ones out of cases were of course much easier to photograph.



This is a price sheet for labor prices in a Harley shop of yesteryear. Oh, to pay these prices today! Right, Sue? Reboring and honing cylinders $5.00 each. Motor overhaul $55 or less.

This is an exact replica of the Captain America bike from Easy Rider.


This looks like a fun toy - biker leggos? The set will build 3 bikes.


Gear for yesterday's bikers.

An Eating Weekend

I got a new laptop! So instead of spending computer time posting blog, I've been spending computer time getting it set up and loaded with programs and what-not. Things that ran fine on XP are now running fine on VISTA but it took me a little figuring out on some of them. Even my Palm Desktop and Quick Install are running fine, in spite of all the statements on the internet that Quick Install won't run on VISTA.

Anyway, while I was doing all this, my motor home was taking me to Food Lions from South Carolina to Virginia and mostly in North Carolina, as usual. It's probably time I worked through the resulting photographs and told you about some of the cool things I did between work and work.

The quickest to post, and therefore the first: I went to the Roanoke Greek Festival at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Roanoke VA.

They had music and dancing and storytelling and stuff to buy pertaining to Greek culture, tours of the church (very interesting to me since one of my bestest friends is an Orthodox Christian). And they had food. OMG, did they have food. The Greeks know how to do food, and can slip calories into my diet like soldiers into Troy. I got a bit of everything and ate leftovers all week. It was absolutely wonderful.

It was an eating weekend: the night before, I'd gone with another friend to Nawab, an Indian restaurant - Indian as in India, not as in Native American. They know how to do food, too. I can't imagine why I'd never eaten any real Indian food before. I certainly will again at the earliest opportunity.