Rants and Revelations

Last week, Vicki was out of town, so I used the time to install a rack on the back of the trailer to carry the Blackstone grill. Afterwards, I wondered if putting the heavy grill that far behind the wheels would lever up the front (hitch) end enough to cause swap problems, so I loaded up and pulled the trailer out to the local CAT scale. First I weighed it all loaded and hitched, and then I wanted to unhitch the trailer and weigh the truck without the trailer, and the trailer without the truck. In order to get the trailer squarely on the 3rd weight pad, so even the hitch jack was on that pad, I had to back up a bit. Then for some stupid reason, I decided to use more wooden blocks under the jack than I normally use – mostly just to reduce the amount of extending and retracting of the hitch jack I had to do. I disconnected the weight distribution bars, and unhitched. Fine, I thought, ready to reweigh, except then I noticed the front tires of the truck weren’t on the front pad any more, so without thinking I pulled forward. Unfortunately I’d left the safety chains attached because I hadn’t been planning to pull forward, and I heard and felt a bit of a calamity happen when I pulled forward. I quickly jumped out and found the chains had pulled the trailer forward enough that the hitch jacks had toppled the stack of blocks, and make a big bend on the rear part of the hitch jack pad. Fortunately it had landed on the weigh pad, so I took my data and then got the hell out of there, properly hitched and with my tail between my legs, feeling like an idiot.

After that, I took the trailer back to the storage lot. I was feeling pretty good about myself because I’d backed it into the spot in one shot, almost erasing the shame of the previous error. Once again, I used the bigger stack of blocks. But when I pulled the lever to release the trailer hitch from the ball on the truck hitch (too many hitch words, got to come up with something better), the truck fell further than usual, and the trailer jumped enough that it fell off the blocks again. This time it fell off the back of the blocks, and so bent the front part of the jack pad.

Not too surprisingly, what it took the weight of a 7,000 pound trailer to bend, I can’t unbend with a little hammer.

So now I felt twice as stupid as I had after the incident at the CAT scale, and I resolved not to drop the hitch without chocking first.

Flash forward to day 2 of our big long Ontario loop. We’d only spent one night in our first destination, near Niagara Falls Ontario. I like a short first day because it sort of gets you back in the camping mindset without stressing you out too much. Because we were just staying overnight, I left the trailer hitched up.

This morning after I thought we were ready to go, I took walk around the whole truck and trailer, mentally checking off everything on the checklist I’m working on in my mind. Everything looked perfect. Off we go, and I feel a tiny bit of a bump just as we’re starting off. It was a lot more gentle than last trip when I tried to set off with the chocks still in place, or 2 years ago when I almost set off with the stairs down. Thinking it was probably just something in the road, we continued on. It was a longish day by my standards, and we didn’t stop for much except some fuel and snacks. But on our way into the campground, I stopped at a water spigot to fill the fresh tank. As I’m standing there listening to the water flowing in, I noticed something was off. The hitch jack was pretty darn low. And I suddenly realized, with horror, that that little jump I’d felt when we were leaving was because I hadn’t retracted the hitch jack, and that was just what it feels like when you leave 3 of your wooden blocks behind. Fortunately we didn’t do any more damage to the hitch jack plate, and we were lucky there weren’t any speed bumps or sharp pitch changes on the any on ramps or something.

But that’s it, I can’t keep my checklist in my mind. I’ve got to make it extensive, and probably have it printed so both Vicki and I can do our own walk around and make sure nothing is missed.

Today, I had a big day (for me). My pain levels were moderate, so I got down to do several things I wanted to get done before our big trip.

First thing I did was mow my grass. I mowed it yesterday, but because the grass was very high from our 10 days in BC, the first mow left big lines of grass clippings and some strips where the grass bent down and popped up after. So this time I did it 90 degrees to the first mow, so it got most of the clippings and most of the places where the grass sprung back up. I didn’t used to be this concerned about my lawn, but I got kind of shamed into it – my next door neighbor on one side is a lawn fanatic, who mows his lawn about every other day, and when he does he does 3 passes to get exactly the right diamond pattern. I don’t want to emulate him, but I also don’t want to get him mad at me because he’s an excellent neighbor. One thing that has changed is that he always used to mow the grass that technically belongs to us but that is on his side of our driveway – about a 3 foot strip – but this year he hasn’t. I suspect that’s a reaction to the fact that I’ve driven the trailer on that piece of lawn, and when we’re loading/unloading it we leave the trailer’s steps down on that grass. Oh, and when we assembled our Blackstone we ended up doing it on that stretch of grass and left it a bit muddy although it’s 100% recovered (although we never did find some screws we dropped). The neighbor on the other side mows his grass at a much more sane interval and doesn’t try to make baseball diamond style patterns – he’s who I try to emulate with my lawn care. Which reminds me, I’m going to need to hire somebody to mow the lawn while we’re away on our big trip. One of the neighbor kids was offering a service last year, hopefully he’s still doing it.

The other two things I did were at the trailer.

I first wanted to turn my hitch jack 90 degrees. This is a common modification, because when you’re hitched up, you can’t quite open your tailgate because it hits the switches on the hitch jack. Turning it gives you just enough room to open it. It’s a relatively simple procedure, although it involves two things I’ve never done before – drilling a hole through steel, and tapping a screw thread in that hole. But when I looked at the size of the existing holes, I realized I’d ordered the wrong size tap – I had a 5/8th instead of a 5/16th tap. I blame my Canadian education not equipping me with the experience in fractional inches to realize how wrong 5/8ths would be.

So with the wrong tap, I decided that first I needed to do the second thing – assembling and installing the hitch mount cargo carrier. I had a few small problems like misplacing (and later finding) two of the bolts I needed, but mostly it went together well. The biggest problem was that the carrier interfered with the spare tire. I see an under frame spare holder in our future. As I said it’s a hitch mount, but it is pretty amazingly solidly connected. It came with a hitch clamp tightener, which helped, but when it came time to attach it, I was wondering how I was going to be able to reach it to clamp it down, and then I realize the carrier was rated for 500 pounds, so I sat on the carrier to tighten it up. Pretty happy with how it turned out. But I’m definitely going to hit a CAT scale to make sure that having the Blackstone back there doesn’t take too much weight off the truck’s hitch, because too little tongue weight can lead to sway.

With that done, I ran out to the hardware store to buy the proper sized tap. I also bought a Diet Coke because I was dying of thirst working in the hot sun. Previously I had taken some ice out of the freezer and melted it into a cup, but I knocked it over before I could drink it.

So with the correct tap, I was ready to rotate my hitch jack head. Anyway, the video I’d watched for how to do this told me I’d need a 7/64th inch drill, and a 5/16th inch tap. Well, that turned out to be a lie – I drilled the two 7/64th holes, but there was no way to get the tap into the hole. So I tried the next biggest drill. And then I tried the next biggest after that. I think I eventually ended up with 9/32nds. Again, I blame the fact that the Canadian education system taught me the far superior SI system that doesn’t use weird-ass fractions. Drilling the holes was surprisingly easy, especially since I took one of the video’s suggestions to get a punch to make it easier to start drilling on a curved surface. However, driving that tap in was a real pain in the … wrists. But eventually it started going in correctly, and I got it all put back together and tested. Again, I’m pretty happy with the results.

Next up: repacking the pass through space because I think we’re accumulating cruft.

I’m writing this on Friday the 24th of April. Not sure exactly when it will post because we have to cell phone service or internet connection here.

Vicki and I have been enthusing about this first trip all winter long. The 22MLS group was planning a spring meet up in Michigan. You might remember that last year we planned our first trip to be about this time of year in Cowan’s Gap PA, and then the 22MLS group had a spring meet up in Ohio that we went to earlier, and afterwards we’d had to re-winterize the trailer while it was snowing, and then de-winterize it a week or two later to go to Cowan’s Gap. Well, this time the meetup was a little later, so it basically took the place of both trips.

We grabbed the trailer out of storage a few weeks ago for two reasons – to take it back to Meyers to do the annual safety inspection (and at the same time get the wheel bearings serviced so we had a baseline for them) and also to replace the factory mattress with a much more comfortable from rvmattress.com. We then put it back away after doing a few small maintenance tasks but without de-winterizing it.

Then last weekend, we grabbed it again. This time, we did the de-winterizing steps. It’s good we had an easy way to plug the trailer in because with the fresh tank full of chlorinated water for sanitizing the system, we were able to keep the tank heaters and the internal furnace on to make sure the tanks and the pipes didn’t freeze. The temperature while we had it home was barely above freezing most days, and got down to or below freezing a few nights. When we finally pulled the slider in to get ready to go, a sheet of solid ice came off the slider topper and shattered on the ground.

As well as de-winterizing, I also re-installed the batteries, got the solar system up and running (I bet you were wondering why the solar system hadn’t been working, right?) and did some other maintenance tasks. I’d intended to wash the outside of the trailer, but with the highest temperature that weekend barely above 41F, I didn’t feel like getting splashed.

Meanwhile, as we’re prepping for the 3 leg trip to get to Steamboat RV Park in Michigan, we’re hearing that the Grand River has flooded and they don’t know if our group’s spots were even going to be above water next weekend. Since it’s a 3 leg trip, we don’t really want to set off in that direction if the whole place is going to be underwater. The organizers of the group camp-out decided not to organize an alternative location, because evidently everything around that area was also experiencing flooding. Last year our destination had flooded out, but the park itself actually took care of changing our reservations to a different park on higher ground.

So Vicki and I decided, pretty much at the last minute, on Monday, to cancel our reservations at Steamboat as well as the places along the way, and head on down to Cowan’s Gap. We’d enjoyed the place last year, and it certainly seemed like it was going to have better weather.

One of the last things we did for packing up was finally taking the new Blackstone grill out of the box and assembling it. Due to bad planning (and not knowing how much assembling there was to do) we ended up doing a bunch of it on our next door neighbor’s lawn, or at least the strip of grass on his side of the driveway that officially belongs to us. We lost a few bolts in the grass, and I had to make a run to the local hardware store to buy a couple more. Another thing we made a hardware store run for was to buy a 100 foot long water hose – Cowan’s Gap doesn’t have water service at the campsite, but the spigots are pretty close together and I was betting with the 100 foot long hose, plus our existing two smaller hoses, we could refill from the nearest spigot without having to hitch up the trailer and drive over to one. Speaking of that, I also remembered to tie the pooper scooter to the back ladder, but I forgot to pack the little metal thingy that lets you easily tow it behind your truck. Oh well.

I don’t know why, after planning 3 legs of 3 hours each to get to Steamboat, we decided to just tough it out and do Cowan’s gap in one 7 hour push, but we did and it worked out ok. I guess we’d had enough of making reservations. I was pretty sore afterwards, but I was able to get through all the setup and stuff when we arrived. We also managed to make a very early start. Last year I think I’d told Vicki I wanted to be on the road by 10, and we didn’t put the truck into Drive until 11:15 or so. This time, we were actually not just out of our driveway, but I think we were at the Country Max getting our propane cylinders refilled before 10. Because of the early start, we got to Cowan’s Gap while it was still light, and setting up everything goes so much better when you can actually see.

So Tuesday was pretty much a driving day. The weather was nice, maybe a little cool, but way warmer than it had been at home when we were prepping the trailer. Wednesday was extremely pleasant weather, and we went for a very long hike with the dogs that tired all of us out. I’m not sure the dogs have recovered yet, here on Friday. We tried to connect up the Blackstone to the plumbed in propane line on the trailer, but something was amiss and it didn’t work out, so we went back to using the 1 pound bottles that we’d had for our Coleman stove.

Thursday, we ignored Gizmo’s whining first thing in the morning, so he paid us back by peeing on the comforter. So we spent most of the morning in the nearby town washing the comforter in the laundry, and doing a bit of “digital re-toxing”. There’s no cell phone signal or provided wifi in Cowan’s Gap, which means I’m ripping through my backlog of unread Analog magazines at a tremendous rate. But I had to bring my iPad into town so I could maintain my NYTimes crossword streak and catch up on my 82 unread emails. I also nipped into the Tractor Supply to pick up some more 1 pound propane bottles and look at their Blackstone display and see if there’s anything I’m missing. I posted something to the 22MLS group about my problems with the hose I’d bought to hook up the propane, but while I was posting it I looked up the order on Amazon where I’d bought that hose, and noticed that it had come with a brass piece with a 90 degree bend and some plumbers teflon tape. I didn’t remember the brass piece, but later on, as we were driving back to the campsite I remembered seeing the plumbers tape in the Ramboxes, and wondered if that piece was there too. After we got back, I had a root around in the Ramboxes and found it, and that was the missing link in getting the hose to hookup to the quick release on the camper and the nozzle opening on the Blackstone. So now we have 6 1 pound bottles of propane that we don’t need, but we no longer need to swap out bottles in the middle of cooking.

And after that, we went for a paddle around Cowan’s Gap pond. It’s not a very big pond, and even at a very gentle pace we circled it twice. But it was really nice to get out with Vicki – we haven’t paddled together in a number of years. Friday morning I dumped both tanks – the grey tank was making blooping noises that tell you it’s nearly time, and I did the black was well because why not? I improvised a connection between the pooper scooter and the tow hitch using a compression strap. I drove very slowly and watched it through the backup camera and it seemed to work ok, except one trip where the handle got kind of caught up with the tow ball and I had to drop the hitch to get it free.

After that I tested out my theory about the 100 foot hose and the nearest spigot, and found out we were about 20 feet short. So I borrowed a hose from a nearby camper and completed the circuit. Didn’t get the tank filled because it came over very dark and we could hear thunder. The tank gauge says it’s only 1/3 full, but I don’t trust tank gauges. But I thought I had to get the borrowed hose back before it started pelting down, and I took it back in a very light rain. And that was it, as soon as the light rain ended, we stopped hearing thunder and the black cloud above us stopped looking so black. So mostly we’ve been hanging around and enjoying the wonderful weather. But here it is a few hours later and it just started raining again. But it’s not pelting down and it’s not windy, so we’re not all buttoned up like there’s going to be a thunderstorm.

A couple of days of being in a site with no cell phone service and consequently no internet has taken Vicki and I from “there’s no way I’d give Elon Musk a penny if I could help it” to “maybe we need Starlink” pretty quickly. We’ve got a big loop around Northern Ontario planned for later in the year and we could run up some big data charges if we could even get data out there. Certainly we need to do some research, both on the costs and how to run it on the trailer – I’ve heard there’s some DC adaptors that would run it off the batteries with the inverter losses. I also wonder how well it work down here deep in a valley. Vicki’s been using the T-Mobile/Starlink connection to send text messages, but it seems to only connect to one Starlink satellite at a time and you have to hold it in alignment as it moves across the sky.

So now it’s Friday evening. I’ve done a bunch of stuff around the trailer, but mostly just relaxed and enjoyed the scenery and the weather. We still haven’t used our bikes, which I brought along, but the place is pretty hilly so we might not get to them. We also discussed maybe spending a full day at Gettysburg at some point in the next few days. I wish we could check the weather forecast. But you know, just hanging out at the trailer with Vicki and the dogs is pretty awesome too.

I’m in my happy place.