Partner in crime....

 6:57 am - Thursday - April 25th - Bishop, CA - 43° F, humidity 34%, wind 4 mph out of the northwest....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 78° F, but we are headed for the Carson Valley (Nevada), so we won't experience that high.  It will be only be a 70° F high there.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were at the 'Tomb of the Unknown Soldier' at Arlington National Cemetery.....

....watching the 'changing of the guard'.

It seems like we have been getting up early for a week (we have), so sleeping in until almost 7 am Wednesday was a nice change.  I took my time typing my blog. By the time I was done it was almost 9 am, and time for our semi-annual walk over to Schat's Bakery on Main Street for some coffee and pastries.  It is about a half mile each way, so for the second day in a row we took a walk.....

.....lol....I think I take the same pictures every year to memorialize our visit.  There's something enticing about the familiar, especially when the memories are all good!

TLE bought a few loafs of bread, and a few bagels after we finished with our coffees and pastries, and we were on our way walking back 'home'.  It was a lovely day, and I wanted to get a couple of projects out of the way in our brief two day stay here.  First I needed to get out our Toro blower and blow all the dust out of the engine bay from our 7 mile egress drive out of TWW to US-66 on Monday.  Once that was done I got out that cool steam cleaner I wrote about a few weeks ago to clean the gigantic rear facing radiator on the Newell.  I haven't cleaned it since we had it steamed cleaned, and rodded back in 2022, so it was time.  It actually worked better than I thought it would, but it took me at least 90 minutes.  Nevertheless, any time you can clean your radiator without a pressure washer that is good.

Just about the time I was beginning to put away all the stuff I had out for the two projects I heard TLE call my name from the back of the trailer.  She had opened the ramp door to water some plants she has in the hatch of the Beetle.  I went back there to see what see needed to find that the two wire cables which assist one in raising large ramp door had come off their spools....doh!  That door weighs around 400 pounds, and there is not way she and I could lift it back into place so I could rewind the cables onto the spool wheels.  TLE's idea was to use pour two 20 ton bottle jacks to raise the ramp enough to put the large 6" x 6" wood blocks I carry around to 'block' the Newell when I have to go under it to fix something.  The problem is the door was too low to get the bottle jacks under it so we had to attempt to lift one corner of the door to put one of the wood blocks under it.  We were barely able to do it, but we were successful, so we did the same on the other side, and kept repeating until we had two blocks under each corner.  

Now it was high enough to put the bottle jacks under the door and begin to slowly raise it to a point where we could reattach the cables, and begin to rewind them on the spool wheels, which are attached to a large, coiled spring much like the ones used for roll up garage doors.  Normally one would rewind the cables with the door completely shut as it is very hard to wind those wheels to put a pre-load on the spring before winding the cable, but we did not have the luxury of doing that so I wound the wheel manually as much as I could then used a "C" clamp to hold the wheel position while we attached one cable and then the other.  I had to use some Channel Lock plyers to pull the cable down to the mounting point on the ramp door, while TLE inserted the pin.  Each time we repeated this process on each side the door moved higher and higher until we were finally able lock it in the closed position.  Now we can (at a later date) properly rewind the cables without any tension on the spring, which we will do when we have the car out of the trailer up in the Carson Valley.  For now it is mostly fixed.  Whew.....we weren't expecting that!

By the time we finished fixing the door it was after 3:30 pm, and we were tuckered!  Without TLE's help, and suggestions, which were all very helpful, we could not have gotten that door closed.  Unfortunately, there was no one around when we were trying to fix the door, or we could probably have gotten the door closed with the help of 2, or 3 men.

TLE made eggs and bagels for dinner, after I took a long, hot shower.  I managed to catch a couple of pictures of an interesting sunset around 7:15 pm.....

.....it seems no matter the obstacles thrown into our path TLE and I always overcome them, together.  I am humbled, and honored to have such a great partner in crime!  Living in an RV is much like living in a home.  When stuff breaks you fix it, right?  The main difference is you get to change your view on a regular basis without going through escrow.

Thanks for stopping by!