About Me

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Cedar, Leelanau County, Michigan (near Traverse City), United States
I am a 76 year old (born 7/4/1937) retired Public Radio Engineer from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. Happily married to the love of my life, Teddy (nee Teddy Schlueter). Teddy is a retired Medical Records Clerk from Theda Clark Hospital in Neenah, Wisconsin. Two children, Michael and Lon. Lon passed away in 1994. Michael is married to his wonderful wife, Toni and lives in Appleton, Wisconsin. For photos click on link below or visit our photo site http://www.flickr.com/photos/igboo NOTE: Click on photos for full-size images.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Home Improvements (counter extension)

From time to time we come up with an idea to modify and/or improve on our home on wheels. Last week I embarked on a project to add a foldable counter extension on the back side of our kitchen sink counter.Here is a pict of the finished project. We just finished it today and are pleased with the result. I purchased a pine table top at the local Home Depot, cut it to size with my skill saw and Teddy stained & varnished it. Now we have a breakfast nook in addition to our dining table. I attached it to the underside of the sink counter with a long piano hinge; I then made a fold out support on the right side as I could attach the support to the vertical end of the counter. However, the left end of the shelf ended in a portion of the the sink cabinet where it was too flimsy to attach a support to.



At first I intended on removing the back panel and beef up the counter but with a sudden burst of creative insight, came up with the idea of making a table leg from a baseball bat.











I found this Louisville Slugger at Amazon.com for $24.95. I attached a leg leveler on the handle end and a table leg stud on the other end and...VOLA! A cute table leg support.








Here it is in the travel position. It has to be folded down for travel so that the TV/Computer slide can be retracted.









The final step was to find two counter height (24") stools. A Google search came up with these European designed birch bentwood stools. A big bonus for us is that they are remarkably light, weighing less than ten pounds each and stackable for space saving storage when we travel.

All in all Teddy and I are very pleased with the way that this project turned out....
...and we had dinner on our new countertop tonight.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

The Trip West

We are now safely ensconced at Terribles Lakeside RV Resort in Pahrump, Nevada. We left Michigan on August 31 and drove through Michigan's UP to Escanaba where we stayed overnight in the driveway of our RV friends, Dan & Pat Martenson. They took us on a sightseeing drive around the Escanaba area after which Pat had prepared another of her wonderful dinners complete with homemade rhubarb pie. In the evening we played "Mexican Train" dominoes and stayed up talking until well after midnight.
The next morning, Sept. 1 we continued on to Appleton and dropped anchor at Appleton Camping to have some warranty work done on the Cardinal. They kindly let us park in the back of their lot and provided us with electricity. Since it was Labor Day weekend we had to wait until Wednesday the 3rd before they could start the repairs. We didn't mind the wait as it gave us time to visit with our son and daughter-in-law, Mike & Toni. During our stay we also were treated to a dinner with our friends, Dick & Jenny Orr, Tom & Carol Sykes, and Wes Evans at the "Orr House" Jen, as usual put on a great feed. During the week we also had lunch with our friends, Tony Welhouse and his sister Becky Welhouse.
Our repairs finally completed, we again hit the road in the afternoon of Sept. 9 and after overnighting in Tomah, WI, arrived at the Comfort Inn in Sioux Falls, SD on the 10th.
As we are fulltime RVers we have established residence in South Dakota for legal reasons and had to spend a night in a motel/hotel there in order to register to vote. We will now be able to vote in the upcoming November elections by absentee ballot.
I have always wanted to go over the Rockies on I-70 through the famous "Eisenhower Tunnel" so on leaving Sioux Falls the following morning we dropped down to I-80 at North Platte, NB and from there on to Denver and I-70.
It was a hard climb up to the tunnel with an approach grade of 6 percent for several miles. We were glad that we had our GMC diesel but even so we were down to 30 MPH and there weren't many trucks or other RVs passing us.The Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel is located approximately sixty miles west of Denver, Colorado on Interstate 70. It is the highest vehicular tunnel in the world, located at an elevation of 11,013 feet at the East Portal and 11,158 feet at the West Portal. Verified here by our GPS just after entering the East Portal.We saw snow along the road on the east side but although hard to see in this pict., we were surprised by spitting snow upon exiting the West Portal.The 6 percent climb on the east side was replaced by a 7 percent descent on the west. As you can see from this pict., in order to save the brakes I put the truck into low gear to hold us back and still had to gingerly tap the breaks every so often to keep the engine from redlining.
After overnighting one night in Rifle Colorado and another night in Cedar City, Utah,...

...we arrived here at Terribles RV resort in Pahrump' NV on Sunday the 14th.












We paid for a month so will be here till Oct. 14 when we will head on down to Lake Havasu City, Arizona for the balance of the winter.