Happy Holidays

Wow ... it has been another month since my last Blog post. And what a month it has been!

Of course - if it was November then the traditional Thanksgiving Feast was the main attraction. We hosted the event again this year and all the Maine Evringhams and Johansens (minus Kyla who was busy in Boot Camp ... but including Bailey) made it over for a fun afternoon of food, family, and football. I cooked one Turkey in the smoker outside in single digit temperatures while Peggy cooked another in her new stove. Both turned out great ... as well as everything else. It was an all around fun day.

Speaking of Miss Kyla ... she graduated from Boot Camp at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center last Friday and is now Seaman Johansen stationed in San Antonio, TX awaiting the start of her Hospital Corpsman "A" School. Kaj was able to fly to Chicago to attend the ceremony and we watched the live streamed graduation from the comfort of our living room. Very nostalgic watching Boot Camp graduation ... on December 7, 2018! Congratulations again Kyla!

Winter has arrived early here in New England. We have already had two pretty good size snow storms, although most of that snow has been melted away by rains that followed. But now it has turned bitter cold and looks to stay that way for the foreseeable future.  

So ... now that it has turned cold and the Christmas season is upon us -- does that mean it is time for us Maineiacs to board the Winne and get in Motion? Not this year ... at least not yet! The plan for this year is to enjoy Christmas with all the family -- including those NJ Evringhams ... then hunker down for frigid January -- then head out to Israel for 10 days in early February. Yup ... you heard that right ... Peggy and I plan on making our first international trip (not counting Canada). Visiting the Holy Lands of Israel has been on Peggy's Bucket List for a long time and I reckon it's time.

We are going as part of an group tour organized by Mike Huckabee. Us and a couple hundred other folks! Although we are scheduled to visit lots of spots in our ten days .. the big picture is we will fly to Tel Aviv, take the bus to Jerusalem, spend 4 days touring sites around Jerusalem, take another bus to to Tiberius on the Sea of Galilee, spend another 4 days touring up there, back to Tel Aviv, another long plane ride (11ish hours) -- and we're home! Ought to be an interesting couple of weeks!!!

So that brings us to late February -- in Maine -- where it is still bitter cold ... and winter still has many weeks to go in spite of what any groundhog has to say! So .... after coming down from our whirlwind tour of Israel, and IF the weather cooperates, we may just fire up Winne and head south for several weeks before heading home around the first of May. Who knows? We may just find ourselves in San Antonio around the time Kyla graduates from "A" School!

I did manage to complete the engine reassembly on my motorcycle restoration project last month. She is back together with a "good" crankshaft, all new seals, refurbished carburetors and oil injection pump, and a new paint job!

Kaj and Bailey helped me get the rolling frame of the rest of the bike down into the basement on Thanksgiving afternoon and I commenced the complete disassembly and cleaning/restoration of the remaining parts soon after. Restoring an old motorcycle is probably like restoring anything else with lots of parts/pieces. You clean and restore each part/piece individually until you are satisfied it is in the best condition you can reasonably get it ... then move on to the next piece. After all the pieces have been restored - you put it all back together! Over the past several weeks I have been in the parts and pieces restoration phase and I really only have one piece left - the frame. Once the frame has been cleaned and painted it will be time to put it all back together!

So that ... and enjoying the Christmas season is what's happening here in Maine. Hope you all are also enjoying the holiday season. 

Merry Christmas to all!

Motorhead Fun

** Fair Warning ** This Post may be detrimental to all Non-Motorheads!

Hello again from the great state of Maine!

In between all the raindrops we have received the past few weeks I did manage to finish getting all the Evringham Fleet of playtoys into their winter storage spots. 

So ... if its November and all the playtoys are put away that must mean it is leaf picking up season here in Vacationland. Well yes it is! On the days it doesn't rain I fire up the lawn tractor and suck up all the leaves into the bagger attachment, dump said leaves into lawn trash bags, load the bags into the truck, and haul them to the recycling center to be made into next year's mulch -- then I do it all over again. I love autumn in New England!

When I'm not busy dealing with leaves I have started to work on my 2018/2019 winter motorcycle restoration project (1967 Yamaha YCS1 180cc Bonanza). As you may recall, this year's project bike came with a twin bike in pretty sad shape as a "parts" bike. I tried to negotiate the deal without the parts bike because I really didn't want to deal with a second bike with already limited space - but as it has turned out I'm glad to have a source of needed parts! I disassembled the "parts" bike several weeks ago and placed all the parts in the basement. Once my other, already restored bikes were put in storage I was able to start looking at what needed to be done on the new project. Since I knew the project bike had some sort of issue with not running on the right hand cylinder - I started there. It didn't take long to find the first problem - broken piston rings on the right piston. 

Fortunately the cylinder wall wasn't destroyed by the broken rings so all I needed there was a new piston and some rings. Unfortunately this bike had its cylinders bored out slightly larger than stock at sometime in the past meaning that the parts bike pistons couldn't be used. Good old Ebay came through again with some NOS (New Old Stock) parts to fit! The second problem I found while inside the engine was a bigger issue - the connecting rods on both cylinders had excessive axial clearance and would have to be replaced - and this meant the crankshaft would have to removed from this engine - a total engine disassembly was in store! The good news .... it appeared that the crankshaft on the parts bike was in pretty good condition - the fun news - now both engines have to come completely apart!

A week ago or so I disassembled the parts bike engine to "harvest" its crankshaft. That process went fairly smooth except for removing the generator armature. When these bikes were assembled at the factory some 50 years ago, certain parts like the generator armature were tightened to the crankshaft with a metal to metal tapered fit. In the next 50 years these parts would become one with each other, resisting all human attempts to separate the two. I'll spare you the details -- suffice it to say that it came out in pieces.

Now that I had a good crankshaft available from the parts bike it was time to disassemble the engine from the "good" bike. This time I learned a few things from my first attempts at trying to remove the generator armature - and was successful getting this one off in one piece. This was my plan all along! Learn from the parts bike and apply lessons learned to the "good bike!"

Now for the fun part --obtain some new seals, clean a bunch of parts, and reassemble one good engine out of two. You have to be a motorhead to imagine all the fun ahead!

Prepping for Winter

Well now ... we have been home for just over a month and life around here has surely changed. Instead of waking each day trying to remember where we are and wondering if today is a travel day - we are back in the groove of working each day to get the household ready for winter. Fall may have just arrived for some of you but it is in full swing here in New England and I even noticed a few accumulated snow flakes on my truck yesterday morning! The fall foliage is certainly beautiful when the trees are ablaze in color - but those same leaves look pretty ugly after they have fallen in my yard and must be picked up every few days and hauled off to the dump (oops, I mean Solid Waste Facility). 

I have also been working on the getting the Evringham Fleet of Toys put away for the winter. The Chevelle made its way over to its storage spot on Thursday, one motorcycle followed it yesterday, and I hope to have the other two restored motorcycles join them today. And then there is the motorhome to deal with. Peggy and I spent a couple of weeks getting everything moved out that needs to spend the winter inside ... and we got it pretty well cleaned up ... but then I lost control. 

Pretty much all year I have had "issues" with the transmission not shifting into "Drive" the way it is supposed to. I found a way to get it into Drive ... but it was a "work around" solution - waiting for the right time (when we were not traveling) to get it fixed right and while still under warranty. Making a long story short ... it spent the last week at the Freightliner Shop down in Westbrook, ME but was finally released from repair shop jail yesterday afternoon. It took them several days to find the problem (a failed electric shift actuator), several more days to find and procure the needed part, and another day to get the new part installed. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much considering the repair was done under warranty and it was done by a shop that isn't used to working on motorhomes. Regardless -- now that Winne The Two is back home it's time to prepare her systems for winter and then get her in storage as well.

When not picking up leaves and otherwise preparing for winter we have spent our time catching up with kids/grandkids, keeping a few doctors appointments, and otherwise keeping out of trouble.

Well mostly ... I did finally convince Peggy that it was time to replace our 32 year old kitchen range/microwave and not much younger refrigerator ... so we did a bit of "sh*pping" a few days ago and picked out some replacements at Lowes which should be delivered next week. Hopefully the replacements will last us another 30 or so years -- assuming we last another 30 or so years!

Those folks on the TV news and all the political signs along the roadsides keep reminding me that we have an election coming up soon. As has been the case now for at least 6 or so elections, this one is being described as the most important of our lifetime and a "tipping" point in the direction of our country. I agree wholeheartedly that it is important but I doubt that it is as important as the East and West Coast pundits would have you believe. Most folks I have observed in the thousands of miles in between the media meccas of Boston/NYC/Washington DC and LA/SF just want their governments and elected representatives to stay out of their lives as much as possible. Yes -- they would like stability in things that matter in their everyday lives like healthcare costs, energy costs, etc. but most don't look to the government as the solution. They want to be dealt with fairly (I hate using that word since it has become such a relative term) but unobtrusively by their government. Unfortunately, things haven't worked out that way for many years now so we have retreated to our respective camps where each camp wants government to make others do what "they" think is "fair." So here we are ... about to vote for people to represent our views ... not really believing that those people represent our views ... but sure that the other guy or gal running against them represents the devil.

I sure hope my grandkids can fix what a mess we have created.

Meanwhile ... I'll prepare for winter and will vote in a couple more weeks.

The Fun Continues

As I'm sure you are all aware, Peggy and I did make it home - safe and sound - last Monday. We left Elkhart last Wednesday driving east on I-80 and then transitioning to I-90 heading northeast along Lake Erie to near the Ohio/PA border. On Thursday we continued on ... making it to our spot along the Mohawk River in Glenville, NY. 

This was the only RV Park we stayed at on both the westward and eastward legs of our trip. We took a day of rest on Friday and then continued our trip home on Saturday. Although we could have made it all the way home from NY, we decided to take a little side trip into New Hampshire on Sunday and stayed near Loudon, NH where I just had to go checkout a potential new motorcycle restoration project (more on that later). We finished up our trip on Monday with a short 100 mile drive to home.

We had a great trip! The weather was pretty nice all the way, Winne The Two ran great, we had fun visits wherever we went, and even the highway construction areas were few and easily manageable. We got to visit with lots of relatives and friends along the way and I especially enjoyed my time seeing my classmates from the great class of McCloud High School - circa 1968!

All-in-all we drove 7,871 miles on this trip through parts of 23 different states and stayed overnight in 35 locations (only 1 location twice!).

Along the way we managed to burn 866 gallons of diesel fuel. The good news is that our old gas powered Winne would have needed about 1100 gallons of gas for this same distance. For those of you who like comparisons -- We made a similar trip in 2015 in the old Winne at a cost of 39 cents per mile for fuel where this trip was about 36 cents per mile. If you do the math -- that's a savings of about $240. I like to compare to the cost for the same trip in 2008 ... at around 53 cents per mile!

On this trip we filled up Winne 22 times at an average cost of $3.26 per gallon. Our highest cost was in Quincy, California (of course it was in California!) at $3.899 per gallon and our least expensive cost was in Warrenton, MO at $2.859 per gallon. That's over a $1.00 per gallon folks!

As mentioned before -- along the way we stayed at 34 different parking spots. 22 of those spots were in locations where we hadn't stayed in the past. Over the last 15 or so years of RVing we have stayed in 335 different locations. Yes ... I am one of THOSE people who count such things! Did you know that we have slept in our RVs for the equivalent of 4.3 years?! And we're not even Fulltimers!

I have plenty more silly statistics - but those will have to do for now.

Since we have been home we have been been catching up with Maine friends and family and I have spent some time getting caught up on routine doctor appointments. Well ... one was a routine annual checkup -- and yesterday's was of the every 5 year routine variety where you have to drink way too much stuff that keeps you way too close to the bathroom all day. Glad to have that "behind" me!

So ... about that potential new motorcycle project. I am now the proud owner of yet another "vintage" Yamaha. This one is a 1967ish Yamaha YCS1 "Bonanza." The YCS1 was produced from 1967 through about 1969 and is a 180cc twin cylinder 2 stroke street bike. This purchase actually included a second identical "parts" bike that was in pretty bad shape but some parts may come in handy as I go through the restoration process. 

The "good" Bonanza is in pretty nice condition for its age but does have a problem with one cylinder of the engine which will require replacement of the piston and rings. I have already sourced the new parts and should be able to have it running in a week or so.

For those of you wondering where I am going to find room for two new bikes when I barely have room for the three that I already have ... you are right .. that is a real problem. I have already solved half of the problem by completely disassembling the parts bike. It now takes up very little floorspace in the basement! The remaining "good" bike is temporarily in the shed after doing some shuffling of the other bikes. Once the rest of my fleet gets into their winter storage locations I should be able to find a spot to work on the new project!

Although Fall has definitely arrived in New England and it is time to start thinking about getting "stuff" ready for winter - we do have one more short trip planned later this week. We plan on heading up to northern Vermont to visit grandson Bailey at Norwich University during 'family weekend."

The fun continues! ... at least for a few more days!

Only Another 1,000 Miles To Go!

Well -- here it is September 11th , 2018 and I am way behind in updating this blog. I know -- it's an old story that keeps on a happening way too often!

When we last left you we were back in Montana heading east. Well it has been pretty much the same old story - different days - different states.

We finished off Montana, a small section of Wyoming, ALL of South Dakota (west to east along I-90 anyway), a good deal of southern Minnesota, northeastern Iowa, Illinois along I-80, and into Indiana along more of I-80 to here in the RV Capitol of the World - Elkhart, Indiana! We have enjoyed mostly clear sunny weather along the west to east leg of our trip with temps mostly in the 70s to low 80s for highs.

We saw some of this ...

and some of this ...

and definitely a lot of this ...

and we sure did do a lot of this ...

We have generally been traveling for two days and resting for one along the way and only making about 200 to 250 miles a day on travel days. Since we have seen most of the sights along the way in the past we haven't been playing tourist too much 

so we passed up Wall Drug, although the Wiz was very disappointed ...

- although we did take a day back in South Dakota to visit the Minuteman Missile National Monument 

and to walkabout the "1880s" town near Murdo, South Dakota. 

And of course we had to re-visit Buddy Holly's crash site near Clear Lake, IA!

Somewhere along the way these last few days I managed to pick up some sort of cold virus so that has made me sorta miserable -- and miserable to live with I'm sure! But I'll survive ... just keep the Puffs Plus nearby and I'll be fine!

So here we sit with just about 1,000 miles to go, I figure it will take about 5 more travel days and 1 more rest day before we roll into Maine ... and I may have to go look at a new potential motorcycle project along the way.

But we will make it home ... just in time to get busy on all those fall chores that await!

Heading East

Peggy, I, and our house-guests left Hornbrook last Friday and drove east a bit and then north along US 97 into central Oregon - through Klamath Falls, Bend, and into Redmond where we spent two nights. The wildfire smoke was noticeable but not too bad during our travels. We visited some friends of Jamie and Ernie's during our stay and did a bit of genealogical touristing. Jamie and my dad was born in Bend and our Great Grandparents and a couple of Great Uncles are buried at the Pilot Butte Cemetery in Bend.

We all continued our trip north on Sunday and Monday - through Oregon, through parts of Washington and Idaho, and into Montana - arriving in Libby, Montana. Our purpose for visiting Libby was to visit more with my other sister Marcie and her husband Don - and Marcie/Don's daughter Mindy and husband Kyle -- but mostly to visit/play with their daughter Kalista - a rambunctious 21 month old who we had not had the pleasure of meeting yet! 

Of course, if you are in Libby you can't go without a few visits to the best Mexican Food in the northwest at Rosita's Mexican Restaurant (which happens to be owned/operated by Mindy and Kyle)!

While in Libby we also took the opportunity to visit the Libby Dam, Lake Koocanusa, and the Kootenai River. Beautiful country and stunning views!!

We finished our too short visit to Libby on Thursday - Jamie and Ernie headed back towards California - and Peggy, I, and the Wiz headed south and a bit east to Missoula, MT.

We continued our trip towards home yesterday along I-90 to here in Livingston, MT.

In spite of just a bit of smoke in the air from the western wildfires ... our travels thus far in Montana have been fantastic. Whether it's the gorgeous drives through the mountains and trees of northwestern Montana - or the scenic valleys, rivers, and bluffs in the southern and central parts - Montana is a beautiful place! We should have taken more pictures along our drive - but we were too busy just enjoying the views!

We are taking a "zero day" today which fits in with our basic plan for our return trip. Drive for two days - rest for one ... and do it again ... several times. Our general route will be along I-90 through the Black Hills and central South Dakota and then drop down to I-80 somewhere along the line to continue the trek east until we make it to near Cleveland where we will backtrack the route we took from Maine when we left -- through southern New York and then into Massachusetts/New Hampshire and back into Maine.

We still have a long way to go - and we are both looking forward to getting home. But this is also my favorite time of year to travel! The kids are back in school leaving the RV spots to us retired folks, the air is crisp and cool with a hint of fall in the air, and the national politicians are busy worrying about their re-election ... too busy to create any new problems for we "normal" folks. I know - it's only a temporary respite ... but we should enjoy it while we can.

Winne The Two continues to keep running and operating well. It is always dangerous to tempt fate ... but ... so far - so good! I will keep air in her tires, keep feeding her diesel fuel and DEF, keep her pointed between the lines and away from the obviously crazy drivers - and she will keep up the good performance - that's our deal!

So ... that's about it from Big Sky Country ... see ya down the road a piece!

Home Sweet Home

Since it has been about 12 days since my last post - I have a lot to get you caught up on. So let us start at the beginning ...

When I last posted we were in smokey Shingletown, California ... about 30 miles east of Redding, CA and about 15 miles west of the northern entrance to Lassen Volcanic National Park. We did take one day to visit my niece Decky and her family in Redding and to experience some of the worse smoke pollution I have ever experienced. One of the largest wildfires in California this year was near Redding and even larger fires were near the coast and not that much further away. Needless to say these folks have been dealing with some really bad air quality issues for weeks and weeks! I suppose it's only a minor problem if your home was spared from the disaster - but it's still a not-so-good situation that simply won't go away anytime soon it appears!

We did get a chance to visit Lassen Volcanic National Park last Saturday on a somewhat smokey - but not too bad - day. We didn't do any serious hiking - just checked out the normal tourist spots at Manzanita Lake, the "Desolated" area, Summit Lake, the Sulfur mudpots, and other such areas along the north-south park road. The Park is really a pretty place ... and when you add the drama involved with a relatively recent (early 1900s) volcanic eruption - it makes for a day of awe - in more than one way!

We left Shingletown on Sunday the 13th and traveled along mostly State Route 89 to my hometown of McCloud, California. I only lived in McCloud for about 3 years - but they were those formative high school years and therefore I consider McCloud - home. McCloud is a very small town situated at the southern base of 14,000 ft. + Mt Shasta - about 11 miles east of I-5 and the city of Mt. Shasta - and about 70 miles south of the Oregon border. Our main reason for  making this trip out west was to travel 4,000 miles to attend my 50th High School Reunion - a reunion with about 17 of my classmates, about half of my graduating class at McCloud High in 1968.

But before I get to the reunion I need to supply some context. When I moved to McCloud in 1965 it was a bustling northern California logging town with a huge lumber mill and about 3,000 residents. The mill, the logging operations, and the town had been owned by the McCloud River Lumber Company - but had been recently sold to the US Plywood Corporation. When I say the Town was owned by the "Company" I mean that literally. Almost every building in town was owned by the Company - every house, the general store, the barber shop, the pool hall, the theater - everything was owned by the company ... right down to the wooden sidewalks throughout town. We had one service station, one grocery store, one hotel, and one of just about everything you might need ... but certainly not everything you might want!

The High School had an enrollment of about 170 kids - but only 38 in the class of 1968. It was a public high school but the girls all wore uniforms (middie blouses and black skirts) to school Monday through Thursdays ... but whatever they wished on Fridays (within the accepted norms of the day!). This "tradition" (it was mandatory but only by tradition going back to the 1920s-30s) would end later in my senior year.

So you can see -- McCloud was and still is a special place to me. The High School has had its enrollment drop to as low as 1 student in the past several years but enrollment is back into the low 30s now. They even have a football team for the first time in many years! They may only be playing 8 man football -- but they have a  team again and the town is pretty excited!!

Peggy and I spent a few days just driving around the McCloud area and checking out the various spots I enjoyed "back in the day." I especially enjoyed our tour of the falls out by the river. I spent a lot of time in the summers swimming in the pool below Lower Falls on the McCloud River ...

Even spent a few days swimming below Middle Falls ...

But never in the pool below Upper Falls ...

The calm and wide spot at "Cattle Camp" was a favorite spot for `young and old.

And then there was the "big"reunion consisting of a get together at a local Pub on Friday and then the more formal dinner/dance on Saturday night. Mostly - we congratulated each other on making it this far ... and then we told stories about the good old days. There was lots of laughing and generally we had a great time. We did manage to bring back the tradition of the class of '68 just a bit when we decided to get into a little mischief.

It has been the tradition at McCloud High School since it was built in 1958 for each graduating class to paint their class year on one section of the front sidewalk. When we visited the school on Saturday we thought our '68 looked a bit faded (as did they all) so we decided that a fresh coat of paint would be a good idea. We could have asked someone for permission to mark up school property - and we could have done the job in the daylight and in our painting clothes ... but not us! We did the job around 9 PM by the headlights of a car in our good party clothes while the band at the Legion Hall wondered where everybody had gone!

I was glad to see on Facebook that once the word got out what we hooligans had done - members of other classes were already following suit! Another McCloud High School tradition started by the Class of '68!

We had a fun visit and reunion in McCloud. A beautiful little town and a great place to be "from."

We moved on from McCloud on Monday and headed further north about 70 miles to my sister's place in Hornbrook, CA. Way back in early July a wildfire broke out just a few miles north of my sister's place and burned some 10s of thousands of acres of northern California and Southern Oregon. Fortunately it didn't burn south and my sister's place was spared. We have seen some evidence of the fire as we have traveled around this area and we have been living in a smokey haze left over from this and several other even larger California wildfires since we arrived a few weeks ago. From what I have read we will be putting up with the smoke for many more days/miles as we start to head north and east on our way home. 

We have been enjoying more visiting with my younger sister Jamie and her husband Ernie while here in Hornbrook and have really been enjoying all the local wildlife. Jamie and Ernie keep 20 to 30 hummingbirds well fed on a daily basis and the deer population around here are afraid of nothing! The deer are constantly wondering through the yard eating acorns from the trees, eating bread from Ernie's hand, and quenching their thirst from a trough that Ernie keeps full of water for their use. While taking a short drive a few days ago we found a group of bucks just laying in a depression. They were in no hurry to run away as we approached and just didn't really care that we were there! I'm pretty sure this big one could read and knew that this area was posted as a no hunting area!

Tomorrow we are heading north towards Bend, OR as we continue our trip. Our next destination is Libby, Montana where we plan on visiting with my other sister Marcie (again) and her Montana family. Jamie and Ernie will be traveling with us on this leg - staying with us in the motorhome at night and traveling in their own car during travel days.

More fun times ahead as we start the trip back home!