Been busy with life lately. Applied and got into an administrative credential program, so hopefully this is my last year teaching in the classroom and I can be an assistant principal, principal, or work for the district office or county office of education from here on out. Looking to move up in the world a bit.
Visited my sister in TX and saw some old friends out there. While gone, a huge brush fire started at the end of our street. We were in the evacuation zone and it was definitely close, but praise God everything was ok.
The school year ended at the beginning of June. I spent the first week of break by prepping the pop up camper. Wheel bearings and new tires were the biggest need/preventative maintenance. The rest was packing and building a fold down table for the outside. We did a week long road trip, towing it with the VW Touareg TDI from further up on this page. It towed awesome and averaged 19mpg through mostly mountain passes, and we did some pretty solid off-roading to get to the most beautiful camp spot I’ve ever been. Torque was only once an issue while off-roading, as I was stopped, pointed uphill, kind of crossed up, and starting from a dead stop with a 2200# trailer behind me so I couldn’t get into boost. Aside from that, power was never an issue. The trip took us 1200+ miles from our home, to Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, through Sacramento into Napa for wine tasting, down through San Francisco to Big Sur and then the coast the rest of the way home. It was an absolutely incredible trip with my wife, son, and our two dogs. Looked under the camper when we got home to see how much water was left in the tank/if it was still leaking (had to flex seal it in a Tahoe parking lot) and found the front leaf spring hanger almost completely ripped off. Thank God we got home when we did. Easy enough fix. Aside from that, I lost a wheel bearing cap, the front plastic panel cracking to pieces, and the generator wouldn’t charge the battery when plugged in with the shore plug, even running the generator for 5 hours on the road didn’t charge it. I saw online that it may be due to the generator being a floating ground, so I stopped at home depot and made a jumper plug, connecting the ground and neutral for the second outlet on the generator to try and trick the on board charge controller, but that didn’t work either. Ended up stopping at Walmart and buying a battery charger. Connected it directly to the battery and generator and it worked great. I will say, that after the setting up and taking down the pop up camper 7 days in a row, we are going to start saving for a 24-27ft class C.
Got home from the trip and spent about a week getting the battens removed, paper, flashing, and hanging Hardie Siding. Then a couple days looking at paint colors for the house. Once we finally settled, I spent the last week and a half spraying it all. My mom has been a huge help by coming over to watch my son and help paint during his naps, since my wife is at work during the day. We just finished yesterday, with minor spots to touch up and finish putting away the equipment/getting things sorted again. I hate painting so much. It is 100% the least enjoyable trade, but I think we saved about $12,000 doing it ourselves. That said, I got quotes for new garage doors, so those should be getting installed hopefully next week or the week after. I’m really trying to get the exterior of the house looking good. I’ve always wanted a manicured home, and this is a big step towards that. I need to get the grass to come back, since it’s been pretty hot and I haven’t been able to run the front sprinklers with the new siding/fresh paint. And then some landscaping, paint the front doors, and it should be looking good.
More pictures in next post
