TOUR AMERICA, 2019: TUCSON, ARIZONA – THE GRAND CANYON STATE

Places We Have Called Home In 2020

Home Is Where We Park It:   NOMADS Project, New Hope United Methodist Church

January 28, 2020

Temperature 67 Degrees

Electrical Troubles in RV Land

The Project Almost Comes to a Halt

A Week From This Friday

This morning we all received a rude awakening – no electric.  Which would not have been a problem had the temperature not been 39 degrees.  So much for the heat pump.  Well, not quite.  Time to fire up the generator which came alive without an issue.  We had heat again.  But what was going on?  The problem turned out to be serious enough that this project was almost stopped.

First, though, a brief run down of our morning.

The team in charge of cleaning the perimeter of the church has already made some great progress.

This was supposed to be the answer to all the brush.  We dragged it out from where it had been sleeping for the last two years.  After a bit of Sea Foam, a squirt of WD 40 in the carb and we managed to coax it to life.

Meet the little tractor that can’t.  The one front tire constantly goes flat.  The battery always requires a jump from my Bolt.  Unfortunately, like much of the equipment around none of it has received any TLC for a long, long time.

Eventually, I managed to haul the shredder behind the tractor to where it was needed.  Only to find that it was not really up to the task of chipping the brush and limbs that we needed it to.  Par for the course sad to say.

I bet if I pound the steak with this I can really make it tender!

Regarding our electrical problem.

The team came together later to here the bad news.  In a nutshell as I understand it the problem is this:  the electric from the church to the RV park comes over in the equivalent of a drinking straw; but the seven rigs in the park need electric from a fire hose.  The net result is not only did the fuse blow but some wires actually burnt up in the fuse box.  The bottom line is we now have to run everything on propane and we can no longer run our heat pump.   To further help relieve the problem, two members of the team are pulling out tomorrow for other projects in other locations.  That brings us down to five rigs.  We should be able to manage with the five.  As for us we’re moving to another location on the lot where we can run our generator.  The remainder of our time here is going to be a bit dicey for sure.

On the home front we have a tentative date of  February 7th to pick up our new LV.  Between now and then we will be boxing up everything in Graybeard in preparation for the move.  Once Graybeard is empty he will go in to covered storage about a mile from where we are now.  I’m working on a route for my son Paul to take Graybeard home.  I’ll probably be driving home with him then flying back from Columbus to Yuma.  So much to do and so little time to do it.  I’m glad we’ll have a month or more to just kick back at the Escapees park in Congress after this is all over.

We’ve come to the end of another day on The Road of Retirement.  Some work was accomplished around the church.  We’re adapting so that we can stay and complete our commitment here at the church.  Now if the weather would just cooperate and warm up a bit all would be fine.  It is what it is.

These are the voyages of  Graybeard and it’s two intrepid travelers.  Our continuing mission: to explore as many new states as possible, to seek out new acquaintances and make new friends, to boldly go where we have never been before

See you on down the road!