Tuesday, January 27, 2009

2009-01-27 Update


Dateline, Richmond, VA

To force myself into the habit of updating this blog, I'll report even minor progress updates but try not to just post any empty calories.

I went out to visit the camper yesterday at RV Service of VA, where it has been in storage for the past few months.

The Amerilite survived its brief Winter storage without a hitch (har). Not a drop of leakage, and no funky smells.

I gave Wendell a short list of things I wanted to have done:
  1. Possibly swap the manual water heater for one with an electronic starter

  2. Install a new CD/Stereo and speakers once I provide the new unit

  3. De-winterize (this only takes a couple hours he says)

  4. Fill the propane tanks

  5. Add a hitch lock

  6. Add a kill switch on the battery

  7. Look into the viability of adding a second battery. I anticipate a good amount of boondocking on this trip

  8. and finally, to verify I have the right size hitch ball.

We had already tested everything end to end before Winterizing it, so it shouldn't take much more than topping the tanks and battery and it's good to go.

Today, we had about an inch of "sneet", causing a lot of road problems around here, so I chose to work on things around the house in preparation for this long trip.

I ordered a Solar Charger from Woot.com to help put a charge on the battery while boondocking. My good buddy Dr. Phil told me of a great DC Inverter at Costco for $20 which could potentially work with the charger so I could use a laptop on it. I paid a visit to CostCo on Sunday (a big mistake) and found the inverter but could not find the patience to wait in half-mile long check out lines for one item, so I will pop back over again during the week for that.

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