Clutch play.....

 8:29 am - Friday - December 1st - GNHS - 53° F, humidity 77%, wind 2 mph out of the west....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 66° F.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were having lunch at Los Jilberto's Taqueria in Borrego Springs, CA....↴

TLE and I opened the COA office around 9 am, even though there were no advance bookings.  There is always the off chance of a walkup customer, but with the park virtually empty I did not expect any.  While TLE busied herself with office stuff, I decided to remove the clutch housing cover from RZR 7 to see how dusty it was in there after some 600 miles of use in our dusty environment.  On the old RZRs we had last year I could have the cover off in less than 10 minutes, but there have been some changes since 2022, and it took me a good hour to remove it, only to find very little dust, which is a big improvement over the 2022 version.  We had to blow out the clutch housing at least once every 10 days.  Now that I know how it comes apart, and goes back together I think I can do it in about 15-20 minutes.

So, why did it take so much longer?  First a couple of pictures of the updated clutch housing assembly....

....first of all, and this was the part that took me way longer to remove than on the old version. This is the air intake line.  On the 2022 version this was a soft, flexible hose that could easily be removed after loosening the hose clamps, but on the new 2023 version this air intake is made of a rigid PVC type material, and even with both hose clamps loosened it is hard to remove, due to its stiffness, from the clutch housing.  Ultimately I needed a small pry bar to slip it off the clutch housing.  Once that was done, the removal of the 13 bolts which affix  the clutch housing to the engine was easy....

Rear portion of the clutch housing....the forward part is obscured by the air intake. There are 13 bolts which must be loosened using an 8 mm socket.

.....I'm glad I had the time to figure this out in the controlled environment of the office parking area.  Now I know I will need additional tools to do this job in the 'field'.  I wish I had taken a picture of the new drive belts on the 2023 version.  The old belts broke quite easily, as you may remember.  The new version is about twice as beefy as the old, and I believe it is the one they use on the 4 cylinder turbo version of this motor.  Another change they made is that the 13 bolts, once loosened, remain attached to the housing, so there will be no worry about losing one, or two in the sand out in the field....a very good change!

Once I had the clutch housing and air intake reinstalled I began the task of refueling, and washing those RZRs which were just parked at the end of Sunday.  It was took dark, and we were tired, so I decided to wash them later in the week.  In all I fueled and washed 4 RZRs, and by the time I finished with the 4th one it was 1 pm, and since there had been no walkup business TLE and I called it a day and closed the office.

After having some lunch I walked down to the hot pools for my 4th soak in as many days.  After kneeling on the ground (I do use a foam pad for my knees) and wrestling the air intake, and clutch housing from their cubbyholes I needed a good soak....

....did I mention it was very cloudy Thursday?  After soaking for close to an hour I headed home, changed, and then retrieved the white paint, and paint brush I used last year to paint the trim on the front of the COA office, and began painting the new window trim I had installed Wednesday....

.....looks great, doesn't it?  After viewing the application of the first coat of paint TLE gave it her seal of approval.  By the time I cleaned the paint brush, and put everything away it was 4 pm, and time for a sunset fire.....

....as the sun continued its daily skid toward the San Jacinto Mountains to the west the sky began to light up in every direction of the compass....

Southwest

West

Northwest

Southeast

....the last picture (above) is my favorite from Thursday's sunset....looking southeast.  We sat by the fire until after 5:30 pm before heading inside for dinner.  As is our habit on Thursday nights we watch recorded episodes of 'Survivor' and 'Amazing Race' from Wednesday night.

Thanks for stopping by!

Framed......

6:56 am - Thursday - November 30th - GHNS - 55° F, humidity 64%, wind 3 mph out of the north by northeast....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 67° F.  On this date in 2021 TLE and I were near Borrego Springs, CA enjoying a sunset fire......↴ 

As I wrote yesterday we had plans to drive down to Brawley to do a small shopping Wednesday, and I was going to play a round of golf before we did that at Del Rio Country Club, which is just on the outskirts of Brawley before you cross US-86....

....we left around 9 am to make the 35 minute drive south to the country club, arriving there just after 9:30 am.  I hadn't really checked to see how busy they are on a Wednesday, and was surprised to find their tee times all booked for a couple of hours, so I decided to hit a bucket of balls to judge the status of my swing, which has not been employed for over 2 months now.  I'm glad I chose to do that before I play a round, because my swing needs a little refresher course.  After hitting 40 balls, or so I was satisfied I was getting back on course, and headed over to the putting green with TLE where I found my putting stroke is in fine shape.  I guess I am too used to the golf course at LPG&RVR being not super busy, so next time I'll book a tee time.  In the mean time I need to swing the clubs, so I'll set up my driving net from last winter, and get my swing and lower back in shape to play 18 holes.

From there we headed to the local ACE Hardware store on Main Street where I bought  a single 1" x 3.5" x 8' board to use to frame the window on the COA office.  When they installed the window years ago they never finished it, so I wanted to do that myself. From there we drove over to the local Walmart Supercenter to pick up a few things.  While we were there we stopped in at the Subway inside the store for an early lunch.....we love their footlong Subway Club sandwiches!  We were on our way home before 1 pm, and home by 1:40 pm, at which time I helped TLE unload the car, and put away my golf clubs.  Once that was done I turned my attention to the window project.

The window measures 35" x 35" so I cut two boards at that length for the top and bottom, then the other two slightly longer to add a little visual character to the window......

.....by the way, I failed to mention I've been carrying around another plank of the same dimensions for a year or so, which I bought for another project, which I never completed, so I decided to to use it to frame the window, but I needed two of them to do the job.  I think it turned out well, now I'll paint it white and call it good.  Now I'll have to frame the A/C wall unit to the left....doh!  Didn't even think about that, or I could have bought two boards Wednesday.

By the time I finished the window project I was almost 4 pm, and time to move to the 'viewing deck' to watch the Chocolate mountains light up once again, and when the light on them began to wane I walked into the parking lot to capture the inevitable sunset.....

....and once it was dark enough I snapped a few pictures of the Christmas wall hangers all lit up.....

....life is good, and the weather is wonderful!  This is the reason people come to the SoCal desert in the winter.  As I write there is not a breath of wind, and you can literally hear a pin drop....nice!  Right now we have no RZR rentals booked for this weekend (Thursday through Sunday), and the park is pretty empty...in fact the few that were here are leaving as I continue to write.  It may be a quiet weekend....we'll see.

On another note, here is the current Likely, CA weather, and forecast.....

.....this is why we head south in the winter.  Snow right now, the rest of the day, and tomorrow, with rain on Saturday...won't that be fun?!

Thanks for stopping by!

Christmas is in the air......

 7:02 am - Wednesday - November 29th - GNHS - 51° F, humidity 79%, wind 4 mph out of the east by northeast......cloudy today with a forecast high of 69° F, and NO wind.  On this date in 2021 TLE and I arrived at our favorite Anza Borrego Desert boondock site....spent almost two months there......↴

....many days were spent reading and lounging outdoors!

Tuesday I began the long process of sifting through stuff in the trailer, and creating keep, and discard piles.  No doubt some things which made it to the 'keep' pile, will get a second look, and may end up in the 'discard' pile.  At least I hope so, because the discard pile is not nearly big enough yet to make any difference.  

Before all that fun began I headed down to the hot pools to get in a soak before I began sorting through the trailer stuff.....

.....I had the place all to myself.  I even swam a couple of laps in the actual swimming pool to cool down before the two minute walk home.

Next up was the deployment of a few 'wall hanger' Christmas decorations, some of which were recently purchased at Walmart......

On the passenger side of the trailer

On the back of the trailer

.....most of my time was spent running electrical cords to power the three wall hanger displays.  I like how the front door came out.  Last year we only had the bells, but have added a kind of wreath in the middle.  Combined with the Xmas lights I have already deployed it is beginning to look like Christmas is on the way.  We still have to deploy our 3' Christmas tree somewhere within the 'lido deck' area, and that will probably happen Wednesday, or Thursday.

I stayed busy with the Christmas decorations for most of the afternoon, and soon it was 4 pm, and time to retire to the 'viewing deck' to watch the Chocolate Mountains get lit by the setting sun to the west.......

....that was followed by dinner, which consisted of a 'winter soup' TLE had lovingly been preparing over the course of the day (potatoes, celery, onions with a chicken broth and heavy cream base with croutons on top)....that soup blew off my socks....lol.  Next up was game night at the 'dining/gaming deck'.  Backgammon was the featured game, and although all five games were decided right at the end, TLE prevailed in four of the five games.....her smile betrays her pleasure at besting me....the dice favored her this night.....

....around 6:40 pm we had a moon rise....it was supposed to be a full moon, but I'm not quite sure it is there yet......

Cresting the Chocolate Mountains

Doesn't look completely full as of yet....maybe Wednesday evening

....and with that another GNHS day was in the books.  Wednesday we'll drive down to Brawley where I intend to play a round of golf at Del Rio Country Club, and then we'll do a small shopping before returning home.

Thanks for stopping by!

Preparations are being made.....

6:46 am - Tuesday - November 28th - GNHS - 52° F, humidity 61%, wind 5 mph out of the north by northeast.....cloudy today with a forecast high of 69° F.  Tomorrow, 11/29/2012, I wrote the following in a Facebook post.....

.....well,  two days from now will mark 11 years, and 10 months since we began our full time travels, and 12 years, and 10 months since we began living full time in our Newell Classic 36' Class A motorhome.  However, today it feels like we have always lived and traveled in our Newell.  That life we lived before, though still seeming vaguely familiar, feels more like someone else's life than ours. 

The winds which began 3+ days prior, finally abated around 1 pm Monday, and for the first time in that period of time we went to bed Monday evening, and woke up Tuesday morning to the sounds of silence.....

....but I get ahead of myself.

As you know, we have a reverse osmosis (RO) water filtration system under the sink in our coach, which we have had for over 13 years now.  We usually have it serviced once a year when we return to SoCal by Ruben Miranda of Kook Filtration, with whom we have dealt since the late 80's.  We weren't in Fontana long enough this time to set an appointment with Ruben, so we figured we'd get it done in April when we return to Fontana on our way back to LPG&RVR, however, our primary sediment filters, of which there are two, had other plans.  About a week ago the water flow out of our RO spigot began to slow significantly to the point where a few days ago it virtually stopped.  These are the first of 4 filters within the system, with each successive filter filtering much smaller stuff, such as microbes.  I figured, or should I say HOPED, it was just the primary sediment filters, so I bought the pack of two at Home Depot when we were in La Quinta last week.  I haven't had time to install them, and knew I wouldn't when I bought them, until after the busy Thanksgiving week, so we bought two cases of bottled water from COSTCO to tide us over.  Well, Monday that day arrived.  As I removed the two filters I was really, really hoping it would be that simple, and as soon as I removed them I was positive they were the problem.....mind you now, they are pure white when brand new.......

Our 'RO' system

The quite dirty sediment filters

.....Houston I think we found the problem....lol.  Yup, those filters are way past due for replacement....WOW, am I ever glad it was that simple!  Once I had installed the new, pure white, filters, I turned the system back on, and within an hour the holding tank was full, and full water pressure had been restored to the system!  I wish everything was that simple.

Over the past few months TLE and I have been discussing the need to be more prepared for if, or when our massive infrastructure, upon which we all depend, breaks down due to civil unrest, natural disaster, etc.  We've begun to stockpile, in moderation, basic foodstuffs like rice, flour, beans, canned goods, etc., and we have acquired a month's supply of dehydrated food.  Combined with our staples, should keep us eating for up to two months. In addition to that we have acquired solar water heaters.....

....with which to heat, and purify water.  This thing, and we have tested it, gets water to over 120° F (the temp which you need to kill anything harmful in the water) in about 10-20 minutes, and to a full boil not much longer after that.  We also are keeping our 160 gallon fresh water tank full all the time now, and are looking into a water generating system, which removes water from the air around us in quantities of up to 50 gallons a day, depending on how big a system you build.  Without water  we can die in 3 days, and without clean water we can become quite ill, and die, so having a reliable, clean water supply, which does not rely upon our water and electrical grids, is imperative.  While we have a Honda 2000 watt gas generator, what happens if gasoline supplies disappear?  All we have left is the sun, which leads me to our next acquisition....a solar generator....

we bought a Bluetti 2000 watt solar generator (model AC200P) complete with solar panels to recharge it.  We already have 620 watts of solar panels on the roof of our Newell, so we can live indefinitely without being plugged into the electrical grid.  We've already plugged our Newell into the generator, and it runs all our basic systems quite easily, as well as our induction burner, and we can use it at night to augment our large 8d house batteries, if need be to keep all of our systems powered.  We do, however, keep on hand about 12 gallons of unleaded gasoline to run our Honda generator, which, if we ran it continuously (which we never do), would cover us about a week.  Currently our 60 gallon propane tank will last us about a year since we mostly only use it for our tankless water heater now.  We've just started acquiring what we need, but we are well on our way to water, and energy independence, should the worst happen.

I spent a good bit of time in the trailer moving things around to make more room, and making hard decisions about what we don't need anymore to make room for things we do need now, and into the future.  I'm not sure TLE and I would fit into the 'Prepper' category, but we are definitely trying to be modestly prepared in the event we lose access to water and electricity for a short, or much longer duration.  We think it is just prudent to be prepared, what are your thoughts on this?

Before we knew it the sun was setting once again in the west....

....and another GNHS day has come to a conclusion.

Thanks for stopping by!

Twenty-eight.....

7:46 am - Monday - November 27th - GNHS - 52° F, humidity 48%, wind 9 mph out of the north.....windy, blustery, cool, cloudy day today with a forecast high of 70° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were having dinner at Hero's Restaurant and Brewery in Riverside, CA.....I only had one beer.....lol.....↴

Since last Sunday (November 19th), and I include last Sunday and this Sunday in these numbers, we rented 28 RZRs.  That beat last Thanksgiving week by three times, plus one.  Sunday became another very busy day with two advance bookings, and 4 walkup bookings.  We were kept hopping all day long.  My day began just before 8 am when I headed out to the wash station to finish cleaning the muddy RZR from Saturday.  It took me another 45 minutes to get it presentable for our Sunday customers, so 1 hour and 45 minutes to clean one RZR....that is also a record, and a record I do not wish to break in the near future.  Our day ended around 5:10 pm when we turned off the lights, and locked the office door.  We also worked portions of 7 days in a row (another record....only a couple of hours on two of those days), with the last two days (Saturday and Sunday) being the longest.

Along with the rental fees we charge we also offer tire and belt (drive belt) insurance for $110 per RZR.  The insurance covers you for two flat tires, and one drive belt.  Considering the tires cost $350 each, and the belts around $200 each, that is a pretty good deal if you have to use it.  For the first time this year we had a customer who had TWO flat tires in about 90 minutes, and he had taken the tire insurance, which saved him $700.  Thankfully, that was as exciting as Sunday got.  In all I washed 6 RZRs Sunday, and there are still 2, or 3 to wash, but I'll take care of them Wednesday, or Thursday.  Right now, as is often the case out here the weekend after Thanksgiving, there are zero bookings for next Thursday through Sunday (our work days), so it will probably be Thursday when I get to them.

Other than that the wind continues to blow (three days in row now).  It's not too bad during the day....probably under 15 mph, but at night it gets ferocious.  Although winds are coming out of the northeast, I do not know if they are Santa Anas.  What I do know it is gets extremely irritating to wake up to wind every day.  As I write, we are entering our fourth day of wind.

As I was driving the last RZR to the fuel station Sunday I stopped to snap a couple of pictures of the setting sun.....

....and with that a long rental weekend comes to an end.  Time to hit the hot pools! 

Thanks for stopping by!

A Saturday not to remember.....

6:56 am - Sunday - November 26th - GNHS - 51° F, humidity 51%, wind 8 mph out of the north.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 68° F.  On this date in 2021 TLE and I were boondocking at Octotillo Wells (across the Salta Sea from our present location) with our kids, and extended families.....↴ 

That's our trailer in the foreground

Saturday was one of those days.  To begin the day we had 5 bookings in hand, and by 10 am we had rented 7 units (5 RZRs, and 2 two seat Generals).  Getting them checked out was the easy part.  The rest of the day was one for the books, ending with one of our customers rolling over one of the 2 seat Generals around 4:30 pm, when they should have already returned the unit.  They were about 5 miles out towards the bat caves.  Finding someone in broad daylight in the broad expanse of the this BLM acreage is difficult, but at night it becomes almost impossible.  BUT, I get ahead of myself.

Around noon time TLE came out of the office to tell Hunter and I that one of our RZR rentals had shown up at Slab City, about 20 miles from here.  Anything to the southeast of us is expressly off limits.  Sometimes the trackers take a while to update, and the previous time this RZR had updated it was where it should be, but it didn't update for about 40 minutes, and suddenly they were way down at Slab City.  TLE called them, and advised them they needed to return immediately.  I don't know why people think they're going to get over on us.  We tell them right up front not to go to certain places, and that we will know if they do.  At any rate, within 40 minutes they had returned to the BLM land.....no harm, no foul so far.

Around 4 pm one of our RZRs returned completely, and I mean completely, covered in mud about an inch, or more thick....the kind of clay rich mud that will turn to concrete if you don't wash it immediately, so that is what I got busy doing.  It took me until after 5 pm to get all the heavy mud off, and just before I finished TLE walked over to the wash station with the final bit of bad news.....the news about the rolled General 2 seater.....  

This is after I spent an hour last night cleaning off the mud in the dark....it is still filthy, and I'll have to wash it again Sunday....lol!

......Hunter was down at the fuel station when the news came in so TLE called him to let him know he would be going out on a rescue just as the light had gone out of the sky.  He and Kyle were on their way in about 15 minutes.  To add to the difficulty the tracker in the unit was not transmitting, so the customer took a picture of the area he was in, and we were able to extract the co-ordinates of his location from the picture, which gave us some help.  While Hunter and Kyle were searching the dark reaches of the BLM land between us and the Bat Caves the lone driver managed to utilize the onboard winch of the General attached to a nearby boulder to put it back on its tires, and he then began the long, slow drive back to the park.  In the mean time Hunter and Kyle had still not found him.  By the time he returned, uninjured, thankfully, the boys were almost to the bat caves looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.  We were able to contact them with the news, and they began their drive back to the park.  Fortunately, the roll over was a very low speed affair, and in soft sand, so the damage to the unit was strictly cosmetic, at least it appeared to be in the darkness that enveloped our staging area.  We'll know more Sunday when I take it over to wash it, and assess the damage more completely with Hunter and Kyle.

The best possible outcome for a roll over....very minor, cosmetic damage...nothing broken, just scratches

We didn't finish closing the office until almost 6:30 pm...that was a long, long day.  Thankfully, nothing terrible happened, and it looks like the General repair will not be too extensive!

Thanks for stopping by!