Some assembly required.....

7:30 am - Friday - December 17th - Anza Borrego Desert, CA - 39° F, 68% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the north by northeast......clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 66° F.  On this date in 2018 TLE and I were focused on our 'end date' at Amazon in Campbellsville, KY.....December 19th......

Thursday wasn't the coldest morning we've experienced here in the Anza Borrego Desert, but at 33° F it was right down with with the lowest lows this time around.  Our projection clock in the bedroom showed the interior temperature at 48° F, which is cold, believe me.  I'm the one who gets up when it's that cold and turns up the thermostats of our three Suburban gas furnaces to make our interior habitat livable once again, after which I scurry back to the comfort of our warm bed kept that way by TLE in my brief absence.  During my early morning forays into the Salon to turn on the heaters I check the Blue Sky solar monitor to see what our percent of charge is.....we usually, depending on how cold it gets each night, lose about 7-9% of whatever charge we had at bedtime.....sometimes, like on really cold mornings like Thursday we lose 10% overnight.  Usually, if our rate of charge first thing in the morning is 85%, or higher the solar panels will get us back to 100%, barring cloudy conditions, by late morning, or early afternoon.  This time of year the 'window' of optimal solar charging is from 7:30 am to around 2:30 pm.

I really wanted to get the Trailer Valet reassembled Thursday morning, and by 10 am I was out there doing just that.  I set up my work station behind the Newell to get maximum warmth from the morning sun, but I still had on my long pants, jacket, and watch cap until almost noon time.  I managed to successfully reassemble it, and reattach it to the trailer tongue by 1 pm.....

....then I turned my attention to replacing the plumbing fixture in the water bay which allows me to attach a hose and flush out the black tank each time we dump the tank.  The original plumbing assembly was all soldered copper with a brass gate valve.  It began to leak a few weeks ago, and was really leaking bad the last time we dumped just after Thanksgiving a few weeks ago, so I knew I had to deal with it, and began to try and figure out how I would do that.  I finally settled on a 'Sharkbite solution, which involved 4 brass 'Sharkbite' fittings, including a new quarter turn shutoff valve, and about 6" of 1/2" copper tubing......in all it took me about an hour to remove the old, worn out copper assembly, and install the new, bright and shiny brass/copper assembly.  I used copper tubing instead of PEX to give it more rigidity, and am quite happy with the result......

.....by the time I finished installing the new black tank flushing assembly it was after 2:30 pm, and it was getting cold once again.  By the time I finished assembling the Trailer Valet I was wearing a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops, but by 2:30 pm I was back in pants, shoes, and a jacket.

TLE and I headed outside around 4:20 pm for our nightly sunset fire.....on this night we did not get one of those amazing light shows like we did Wednesday, but we got a nice, albeit subtle one, nevertheless......

.....life is good here in the Anza Borrego Desert on day 24 of our desert sojourn.  We are healthy, not so wealthy, but certainly wiser, as we edge further into our dotage.

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