Day 2296

Tuesday January 16th 2024

Dear Journal:

Let me start by saying there just simply has not been a lot happening in our life’s other than our regular day to day living, I have been reading, and Miss Laurie is working on her PHD in rock collection, and not wanting to bore you with a whole lot of nothing I have not written any blogs, but I can confirm I have not missed having a cup or two of blessed coffee each and every morning.

We are in the middle of winter here in Arizona, and it has proven to be a wet winter as predicted, with more rainy days than normal, which is great news for the drought here in Arizona but with the cold and wet we have not been doing much other than staying close to the heater. But I have received a number of items for the coach that I need to get installed.

We have a road trip planned next week, it will not be a long trip but it is something new we are trying this winter, because we have four days in a row off we are going to try moving around some to extend our adventure reach. Moving whether a few yards or hundreds of mile takes the same preparation time both inside the coach as well as the exterior. one of the tasks that Miss Laurie has always undertook was securing cabinet doors and drawers, this consisted of bungy cords and elastic ties and if we missed one, a mess usually soon followed. All the cabinet doors have a latch system that should hold them closed, the problem is that they need adjustments to ensure they hold the door closed but remains not too difficult to open when access is needed. So today is the day that I’m going to check every cabinet door and adjust the latches to eliminate the need for the bungies and ties.

After I accomplished the adjustments on 5 cabinet doors in the bedroom, 11 doors in the bathroom, and 9 in the galley plus 6 in the living room space, my next task is going to replace some drawer guides. Way back in the summer of 2022 we had a drawer guide fail, in reality it most likely failed because the drawer was overloaded, it was one of the drawers located under our refrigerator cabinet, and it was a long, deep drawer that we were using for our canned goods. Most of the coach drawers would open while driving on highways, the momentum from regular turns would cause drawers to open and close, so we would have to run bungies through the handles to keep them closed. When I ordered two new drawer guides I did lots of research and found some guides that had good weight capacity as well as featured a soft close design. The new guides allowed easy complete full opening with ball bearing smooth operation and while they did not feature the locking feature that the old guides featured but that feature seemed to make some drawer difficult to operate. The soft close drawer guides operated so much better during that summer that I was willing to put up with them not staying closed on the road but over the next year they stayed closed under almost all road conditions, all the way to the Baja and back.

So I have ordered a number of the new drawer guides from the same company and that is todays second project, I’m planning on changing all the kitchen drawer guides as well as one annoying small drawer between the pilot and co-pilot seat. This drawer had a latch the same as the cabinet doors, but if I got it to catch it was difficult to open or you had to slam it multiple times to get it to stay closed. Problem was the new drawer guide manufacture that I was so pleased with did not make a drawer guide short enough for that drawer so I had to find a different style, but it had to have a soft close. It took some hunting but I found a 8″ drawer guide with the soft close, and now I replaced a number of drawer guides in the galley, we have some that are almost forward facing and I’m concerned about them coming open on a hard braking situation, I guess time will tell if they work as well as the first two.

Installing the new drawer guides is not difficult, but it does involve keeping every thing level and consistent from side to side of each drawer. It also involves reaching deep into the back of cabinets to install the new guides with multiple screws. On some of our drawers they are 26″ long which means a full arms length reach to install new screws. There will be pain in my life tomorrow, kneeling or laying on the floor reaching, using body parts unused for months.

While was tearing the galley apart installing the drawer guides Miss Laurie was rock hunting in the dry areas of Queen creek. The good news on the rock hounding is that there are new standards which means less rocks but better rocks. The tumbler has been tumbling for weeks and many of the new additions to the rock collection are staying in the patio garden.

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