COOL!!

 7:50 am - Tuesday - December 29th - Seal Rock, OR - 34° F, 93% humidity, wind 8 mph out of the east.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 48° F.  The view this morning......↴

First big frost of the season

....on this date in 2011 TLE and I rode our recumbent tadpole trikes on the Pacific Electric Trail in Fontana........↴

....we loved these trikes, and took them on the road with us, but they were not practical on the road, plus we had a tandem, two road bikes, and a mountain bikes.....too much rolling stock.....so we eventually sold them....I still miss them.....

Monday was a beautiful, sunny, clear, blue skies kind of day......

....so what to do for work on such a magnificent day?  Well, it has been two months since we last patrolled our adopted section of US-101 for trash.  TLE and I met Greg around 9:45 am at the office to receive our instructions, don our orange traffic vests, trash bags and pickers.  The last time we performed this job it took us two days, and 8 bags to clean up the north and southbound shoulders of US-101 from the parking lot of Seal Rock State Park on the north to Seal Rock Street on the south.  This time around we had to do the entire stretch in one day, and only were given 4 bags to do it.......

.....we initially walked south against traffic on the east side of US-101 down to Seal Rock Street, then crossed over to the west side and proceeded all the way back north to the Seal Rock State Park parking lot, before crossing back to the east side to walk back to the SRRVC entrance....

.....as it turned out we were able to do it all in one day.  Why?  Well, we did such a good job last time that there wasn't as much trash to pick up this time around.  We finished at exactly 11:45 am, and were done with our two hour work day.

Monday was also the new, promised delivery date for our new Dometic Americana II absorption refrigerator by FedEx.  We had barely gotten back to the Newell when the 30 minute warning call came from Jason (the FedEx driver).  He advised he would arrive at SRRVC around 1 pm, and he did, almost to the minute.

He unloaded the fridge in front  of the office as he was driving a large tractor/trailer combo, which was too big for the steep, narrow dirt portion of NW Cross Street.  Terry and I then loaded it upon the 'pickup' portion of our golf cart to haul it up to our site.  Once we had it unloaded, Terry assisted me in removing the old Dometic from its cubbyhole, and then down the stairs to the 'lido deck'.  Next up we unpacked the new Dometic and hauled it up the stairs, into the coach, and slid it into the aforementioned cubbyhole.  At this point I bid adieu to Terry thanking him profusely for his help.  He did return about an hour later to help me haul the old Dometic to our refuse pile up by the barn.

All that remained was to hook up the propane, the AC electric, the DC electric, and reverse the doors to open from right to left so I got to work.  Hooking up the utilities again was easy, but reversing the doors was not.  These fridges come from the factory with the doors opening from left to right, which does not work in our kitchen.  Reversing the doors was actually not very intuitive, and took almost an hour, but we got it done by 4 pm.  

By this time I was out of gas and didn't want to fiddle with installing all the new trim, so I just ran blue masking tape over the openings  to keep out the cold air.  I neglected to order new black plexiglass door panels for the new fridge, so I went back on the CampingWorld website and got them ordered.  They will arrive in about a week, God willing, and the river don't rise.....

.....this new Dometic actually got down to operating temperature within 90 minutes, and now we are moving our refrigerated food stuffs back into the house from the trailer fridge.  The freezer is actually about 25% larger than the old one, which we like.  Even though the fridge part is slightly smaller we have plenty of room for everything.  We both think the space allocation between the freezer and fridge makes more sense for our needs.

Another big improvement is the more robust door handles/latches.  The old ones would only last about 6 months of continuous use before they would break.  The old handle/latches cost about $35-50 each, depending on the source.  The new handles only cost $21 each, but I doubt they will break for a long, long time, if ever.  Ironically, the door latch for the old Dometic broke Monday morning.....lol.

So, our three week odyssey since the old Dometic went kaput is over.  As 2020 limps to a close we have replaced the last of our major appliances, and life has once again returned to what passes for normal in the Wuhan flu era.

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