Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Time for an update

Lots to talk about to get up to speed and current.

1. Tankless Hot water Heater:

Now sitting on the dining table and out of the box (good thing we eat out all the time).

I have checked it out. The only obvious possible shipping damage is that it was shipped with the back of the water heater facing down and there are the hot and cold water connections there. It was shipped with some solid Styrofoam blocks under it to lift its weight off of these connections. The cold water inlet connection appears to have been forced to the side and inward and may have bent the tankless copper pan it is soldered to as the copper line spirals around it. DOn’t know yet if this is any problem or not.

The plan is to first, pressure test it on a table in the yard to be sure it does not leak anywhere.  Next, will be to hook up 12 volts dc to it and see if the electronics seem to check out. Lastly, I want to hook some LP gas to it and give it a test or two to be sure it all works safely and correctly before I go to the trouble of removing the old Suburban DSI HWH and mounting this one.

If all these test go well I will get it installed as soon as I can get the time and proper weather to work on it.

2. Anniversary trip to Disney World.

Did I mention that we now have campground reservations for our stay and tickets to see the Cirque Du Soleil – La Nouba show while we are there?  Well, we have them.  Now to get our Minds to focus on exactly what park admission tickets and accessories we need to have to fit our tenure there and not leave with unused tickets (they are only good for 14 days after the day you use the first one, unless you pay a bunch more for the "non-expiring” tickets.)

3. Shuttle launch event after Disney

We have nailed down 3 possible places we might like to stay. We would already have booked the campsite we want but they have a limit of 90 days advance reservation so we can’t book until Aug 13. I gotta write that down somewhere!

4. What’s doing after the shuttle launches… or doesn’t?

We will be there a few days after the scheduled date to give us better odds of seeing it.  If it does not go up while we are there, we will go back another time during 2010 and catch one.

Whether it does go or not, we will spend some time visiting with Bob,  Merrily’s brother and my best friend for over 50 years and his wife, Bette. They just live a few miles up the coast from Cape Canaveral and we will probably stay in Anastasia State Park or the KOA in St. Augustine Beach.

5. And then what and where?

The holidays will be close upon us by the time we finish visiting Bob and Bette and we would like to be back in the Raleigh area for Thanksgiving through the New Years Day.  After that, Merrily is still determined to get her big truck driving credentials so she will feel comfortable and safe wrangling Clifford on the highway.

I completely support this and will be glad for her participation when we move the rig to other locations.  She is thinking about taking a February or March class at the same truck driver training school where I got my CDL in 2004. This will take about 8 weeks of 10 hour days/ 5 days a week but when she comes out I am sure she will be better than I am at handling Clifford.

6. And then to infinity and beyond….

Let’s just say that we plan to just head out in that direction and see how far we can go.

7. Reality check Postscript:

The present economic climate has really made it necessary to focus in tightly on just how we will make this full time lifestyle float properly on top of our financial situation.  This is certainly a work in progress that has yet to return the necessary confidence factor for the leap to full time in the exact timeframe we have been targeting.

There is nothing that will prevent it but there is a lot of things still floating around that can delay our expected start date.

Previously, I mentioned our jump off date was to be our Anniversary and clearly, some vital benchmarks have not happened to guarantee that date so alternate planned schedules are in development as contingency directions should the emotionally significant anniversary date not quite match up perfectly with the reality at that moment.

In other words… to go on fulltiming from there we need to actually be there with all our dependencies locked in solidly in order to start the trip. Otherwise, we might not only not get very far but we might do irreparable financial damage to our situation that could halt our dream.

Most important, we have Lots to do, lots to work out, lots to discover and most important, lots of love.

ttfn

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