Trailer Version 1 (Part 2)

Last time I left you with the newly installed walls and ceiling of the cargo trailer painted a nice clean, warm white.

Which meant I was then free to hide all the drips and slop of my less than stellar painting skills by painting the floor and ramp/deck with a hard-wearing porch-paint.

Once that was done and cured I finally had a clean slate to work with and could start actually building my new RV!

But to be honest it had been slow going to this point  with far too many recovery-breaks and not enough working hours and now it was already late February. Way longer than something like this would have taken me BC (Before Cancer, which is, second to Mom's death, the newest bookmark in my life.) Given my health and other physical challenges I was trying not to have expectaions, but I couldn't escape the nagging pressure to have the trailer finished so I could get up to Michigan to see Mom. I had been sidelined from any and all visiting in 2023 and Mom wasn't getting any younger.

So now it was time to kick things into a new gear. Which, in reality, was akin to shifting from little-sprocket first gear to little-sprocket second gear. Not much of a jump. But at least I was shifting!

I started out this phase by fabricating and installing the mildly complicated right-wall assembly.

It has a 4-slot battery-box (currently two used and two spares) and 12V electrical distribution space on the bottom, cubbies for dirty-clothes hamper, magazines, and toiletries/first-aid stuff up the forward end with a spot on top of that for solar intake and distrubution, cubbies for clothes across the top, and a space between them and the battery box for the folding bed platform with a sliding pivot system so I can tuck it close to the wall when down but still have the necessary clearance to fold it up.

Next up (literally) was the overhead cubbies down the left side and across the V-shaped front.

With that out of the way I turned to fabricating

and installing the lower cabinets

that would make up the kitchen. (The handweights are there to hold the sink down while the caulk cures)

It was mid-May by the time I actually got to the point of installing the bed platform

and cabinet doors. (The handweights are still there because I just haven't moved them yet)

We were well into June by now but at last it was time to put down the tool-belt and don my sewing apron to get some curtains on those windows as one of the final touches.

Actually I had the curtain fabric laying around for quite a while by this point since I bought it early on so I could color-match for the blue accent paint used on the interior. (It's a hell of a lot easier to match paint to fabric than it is fabric to paint!)

With about a month and a half to go before heading off to visit Mom and family, the cargo trailer was, other than a short shake-down trip and some fine tuning, finished!

When I started this project I wasn't sure I would finish it in time for the Michigan trip, but I made it, and probably sped my recovery from the surgeries and chemo along while doing so. (I finished the second, and so far final, round of chemo shortly after finishing the trailer.)

Yes, the spare tire lives up against the front wall where it is secure, clean, and easy to get at.

I've skipped a lot of the build details here, but in terms of equipment the trailer has 200ah of LiFePO4 battery with room for another 200ah. There was enough space on the roof for 400w of solar. I initially bought 200w but the cost to add the second 200w while I was already up there was too good to pass up. About 10% of the cost of adding two more batteries.

Although both the trailer and The Van have about 12 feet of inside living-space length the trailer has significantly more moving-around space. 

With the bed down I have about as much aisle-space between bed and counter as The Van but the trailer

still has a huge "dressing room" left over up front that I never had in The Van. And with the bed stowed I have a full 36" of aisle-space to cavort around in. (not that I actually cavort, but - well - never mind.)

I have a very efficient chest-style fridge with seperate freezer that easily holds at least as much as the front-opening 4.0 cf Norcold in The Van. I made a couple of stacking acrylic bins for the deeper fridge side to make getting at things easier.

My portable toilet lives under the fridge.

There are two colapsable/freezable water jugs (2.5 gals each) under the sink.

One is for wastewater (with a second waste-water jug folded up next to it, on standby) and the other is for potable water and plumbed to a rechargable pump on the counter by the sink. 

There are two more full potable-water jugs stored in a bin nearby.  (You can buy an 8-pack of these jugs on Amazon for less than $30)

My portable stove lives on a custom shelf under the only drawer (used for utensils), the pans have their own shelf under that, and I have a few one gallon jugs of filtered rainwater (for drinking) tucked down there on the floor next to the enclosure for the 120v distribution box.

There's no micro, no oven, no stove-top, no shower, no bathroom, no running hot water (that's what kettles on the stove are for!), no TV, no propane, no furnace, no fancy coffeemaker, and uses a folding table and camp chair for furniture.

Many turn their nose up at it because it's not McMansion-on-wheels enough (I had a hell of a time selling The Van for that very reason.), but it's pretty damn luxurious to me. Everything a home needs. And for that reason I threw an AC unit on the roof while doing the build, because the climate is not going to get any cooler in my lifetime and I'm pretty close to being past young-n-tough now!

When parked at home it's an extension of our living space and I've spent many a sweltering summer afternoon out there with my watercolors.

On the road there's some give and take when comparing it to The Van.

Obviously the truck-trailer combo won't fit into the single parking spot The Van could. On the other hand I don't have to break camp just to drive to a trailhead or restock supplies like I did with The Van.

When stopping for the night after a long day of driving I can't just turn around and be in my living space like with The Van, I have to get out, lock up, and move around to the trailer,

but the trailer is a lot closer to the ground, making it easier to get in and out of than The Van.

The Van, using relativly expensive diesel, got a couple hundredths less than 20 MPG over the nearly 100k miles I drove it (never over 65) and I have the spreadsheet to prove it! The Ranger on it's own gets 24 MPG at 75mph with less expensive gas, but does so with a relatively small engine (the literature says the 2024 Ranger could be bought with a 2.3 inline-4 or a 2.7 v-6. The literature is wrong. The only engine actually available when I ordered mine was the 2.3). So when pulling the trailer it feels it and gets anywhere from 11 (when I was skirting around the remnants of a huricane into a headwind) to 15 mpg. (I tow at 65 mph) But that little turbo'ed engine is strong! If I need to hustle up to speed when merging with the trailer that engine will shove me into the back of the seat, and I've dragged the trailer over mountain passes at a steady 65 with no problem, the coolant and trans (10 speed trans) temps holding steady the whole way.

I didn't t skimp when building this thing (over-sized wiring, robust systems - mostly electrical - top-of-the line paints luxurious fabric, wireless backup and rear-view cameras), and not counting the $3k or so we paid for the cargo trailer many years ago, the all-up, equiped for camping, cost of the convertion was $8872. $2000 of that was the batteries and another $1400 for the rooftop AC, actually a heat-pump, unit.

According to the Ranger, which keeps track of this stuff, since converting it, I've hauled this trailer 8311 miles and I don't know how many nights I've spent in it (the Ranger doesn't keep track of that), and it suits me just fine. - well, mostly, but more about that later.

An Interruption – A Major Disruption

This isn’t the post I had planned on publishing next, but Mike died last night.

Who was Mike?

That’s easy, but it’s also complicated.

Mike was a salesman, and all the things you expect a salesperson to be. Outgoing, to the point of in-your-face at times; knows everybody; slickly dressed; used to drive a flashy Jaguar (which seemed to spend more time in the shop than it did on the road!); not always the favorite person of the Facilities Managers that had to deal with him; always handing out doodads to promote his business; always smiling.

This is one of the early doodads Mike was handing out in the 80's or early 90's, and it still lives in our key lock-box 

Everything that I'm not, yet Mike was also my friend.

We first encountered each other 40 some-odd years ago when I was the keeper/maintainer/repairer of complex computer systems and he was selling the UPS (Un-Interruptible Power) systems that made sure those computers always had clean, steady power, even when the grid went down.

In case you couldn't figure it out, Mike is the one guy in a suit and tie. We had just lifted this big building off a truck with two large cranes to set it down over a bank of massive conduits. The building is full of batteries and the conduits are for the wiring connecting them to the UPS in the building out of shot to the right.

Our relationship started out on a technical basis, and I am good at that, but gradually we morphed into something more. At least I think we did but I’m really bad at this friend thing so maybe I’m deluding myself.

We both wrapped up our careers at roughly the same time. By then I was the one designing the data centers, defining requirements, reviewing bids, pulling the trigger on purchases, and overseeing the installation and startup. Mike was still flogging UPS solutions.

But Mike was more than just a typical salesperson. I have, never once, been visited by the salesperson that sold me a new vehicle, or the one that sold me the humidification system or the fire suppression system in one of my data-centers. On the other hand Mike, often to the dismay of facilities managers until I told them to back off because he was providing a valuable service, could often be found wandering the dark, back-room nooks and crannies of the facility checking on the health of the systems he had sold, checking in with us to see if they were meeting expectations, and what our future expectations might be, reminding us when preventative maintenance service intervals were coming up and helping us contract with third-parties for those services.

But let’s get back to that ‘Mike was my friend’ statement.

To be honest, I’m not sure I really know how to be a friend.

As a ‘shy’ kid I had my cousins around but, though we lived in one of those kid-friendly 60’s subdivisions overrun with speeding bikes, shouting children trailing streams of bubbles from up-raised fists, or just running around manically, I can only remember one ‘playdate’ with a neighborhood kid, I think his name might have been Garret. Looking back on it now, he was also ‘shy’ and may have been autistic like me, but I didn’t know how to process that at the time. When I found afterwards that he had pooped, just a little, in my closet, I understood; knew first hand, the crippling fear of doing something so personal and outside the normal routine as using a strange bathroom, and I quietly cleaned up the mess without saying a word to anyone. But I didn’t have the skills to maintain a relationship, even with someone who might have been just like me, and that was the last time we got together.

I’ve often said that, other than my first wife, I can only remember three people from high-school, two of those were jocks that everybody knew, the third, Pat, was what passed for a ‘friend’ in my teenage life. Not enough so that we ‘hung out’ together, but enough so that he was my best man at my first wedding, and yes, we were both still teenagers at the time. But a few hours later my new bride and I were driving across the country to my next military posting and I never talked to Pat again. Until, somehow, we briefly reconnected well after both of our first marriages had fallen by the wayside. This had to be in the early 2000’s since I was driving the E350 Sportsmobile van at the time. Turns out we had a lot in common besides marrying and discarding our high-school sweethearts after a decade of trying to pretend. Growing up we shared the same community and school, we briefly competed on the tennis courts during PE. I took off for the military and followed a technical career path that let me focus on machines and not people. Pat followed in his father’s footsteps and became an MD, but rather than face the politics of hospital life or the hassles and long-term relationships of a private practice, he contracted with a small regional hospital as an ER doctor. Get them in, patch them up, either send them home or on to a trauma-center, andmoove on until it's timento punch out and go home. After a couple decades of going our own ways then a randome chance email encounter, we met up at the small cabin he had built deep in the woods at the end of a rough two-track driveway and sat out on the deck rather than in the combo kitchen/dining/living room. We both lived a quiet, purposeful life. We were both into writing, him published, me not, and creating art (his chimney was a soaring sculpture and the timbers of his cabin sported fancifully carved figures). But when he guided me back as I turned around in his tiny parking area and drove away that afternoon, it was the last time we spoke.

Yet somehow Mike and I, as different as we were, as different as our worlds were, connected.

I can’t really explain why.

Maybe, in part because we were both project people and that continued after our careers wrapped up. But while I hunkered down in our compound and specialized in building RV’s, furniture, knickknacks and the like, Mike and his wife specialized in moving all over the country, buying and selling, refurbishing and remodeling, and building houses.

When they were refurbishing an old frame house while building a boutique campground on the back of the property and a bespoke art gallery on the front only a couple dozen miles from our compound, I was often over there. Sometimes just getting a tour of the progress and update on the plans. Other times it was more than that. Like the time I dragged my surface plainer over there and set it up in the new RV barn next to the campground so that we could spend the better part of a day turning a big stack of rough-cut cedar into several really large trash bags of cedar shavings  and a pile of refined flooring for the balcony that looked down over the main gallery space.  

We frequently went for long periods without seeing, or even contacting, each other. Sometimes there was an excuse, like when they moved to Salida CO to built a house up on the side of a mountain during the COVID mess then quickly sold it (turns out it’s cold up there! And, like many small-ish towns, the people of Salida are not all that welcoming to outsiders, not a tolerable situation for Mike and his wife both.), other times there wasn’t, like when I ghosted him along with everyone else for two years as I dealt with cancer even though he only lived a couple hours away for much of that time.

Near the end of those two years Mike and his wife moved into yet another refurb job, an early 1900’s house with the all-important shop-building next to it, in a town less than twenty miles from our compound. By chance, or the intervention of whatever gods populate the universe, three or four weeks ago I went over to check out thier latest project and Mike and I sat around a work-table by the open overhead door of the shop and talked for several hours. As was our way, both about technical stuff as well as squishy stuff.  It was as if we had seen each other only last week and were picking up an ongoing conversation.

That, as it turned out, was our last visit together. A week or so later he wasn’t feeling good. Two weeks after that he died.

Sometimes we weren’t in touch all that often, and when getting a text from him after months of no contact, I might roll my eyes, figuring that he was contacting me because he needed some advice or a hint or two about a woodworking issue. But, even though contact may be sporadic, like Schrodinger’s cat, he was always there even though I couldn't see him. My friend. But last night someone opened the box, and now he’s dead, forever.

I’m not sure how good a friend I really was, or even if I truly know what a good friend is and how to be one, but in my world Mike was my only friend in the non-internet world.

I’m standing here this afternoon knowing it’s unlikely I’ll ever have another friend like him, and not quite sure what to do with myself as I’m trying to process this.

Trailer, Version 1 (Part 1)

 I’m a project guy. Unless I have a few active projects going to keep my hands busy I feel like a lump, a failure, wasted space (Thanks Dad, who never slowed down until the Parkinson’s forced him to). But there was a period from mid to late 2023 where I just wasn’t physically capable of felling trees, clearing trails, building furniture, all the stuff that makes me feel like I’m actually here for some purpose. So I switched to miniatures. Stuff I could do while standing at my bench (never have been able to work effectively while sitting at a desk or table), though for a while there about 20 minutes was all I could manage before having to sit down and take a break.

 

The spoon is there for scale

I did everything from tiny little folded-metal sculptures,

 

View through the window of the hardware store side

to paper models,

 

micro-block creations (think miniature Legos)

 

3D wood puzzles,

 

and one multimedia haunted house.

 

Oh, and a table-top Christmas display made up of bits of stuff we had laying around, because our usual display was way over my weight restriction limit and stored in a buggy, spidery part of the barn! (The Wife does NOT do spiders!)

OK, I have to fess up here. That Christmas display has been sitting the a corner of our room since early December 2023. We decided we like the festive mood and it creates a much better evening light than the battery-powered lantern we had been using. I have spent many hours staring into that idealized little world (note that, other than a few Santas, there are no other people around! Ahhh, bliss)] with its lights casting shadows across the snow.

But - through December (2023) and into January (2024) I was not only improving in physical capabilities, but also keenly aware that when the Ranger arrived to replace The Van as our second vehicle, that was also going to take away my camping rig. And man just can not exist without a rig!

Back in 2015 I did a speculative post about converting a cargo trailer into a travel trailer. Someone grabbed an image out of that post and stuck it in Pinterest. Then someone else grabbed that and stuck it in their Pinterest folder, and so on.

That one post now has 26,999, now 27,000, hits, almost 10% of my total hit count for all 769 published posts, and to this day keeps getting enough hits to consistently keep it in my top 10 list, 23 hits in the past 7 days.

And you know what? The cargo trailer I based that "what-if" scenario on was still sitting out there in our driveway! Now I was off and running! OK, more like shuffling, and then only once I managed to stand up, with a lot of accompanying groaning.

I dragged out my CAD program, did some tweaking, started a spreadsheet, did some calculating, compiled a materials list, and then, as a concession to my continuing weight restrictions and sorry (but improving!) physical state, placed an online order at Home Depot and paid to have them deliver the goods. (They had to block the county road up on top of the ridge with the truck while bringing the stuff down the driveway to the barn on that forklift that hangs off the back of the truck.)

Things started out pretty slow.

I could handle numbering (so I could get them back where they belonged) and unscrewing the existing wooden walls in the trailer but then had to have help from The Wife moving each section, one at a time, on a custom-made wheeled dolly across 50 feet of gravel drive into the barn where they were stacked up while I did some wiring, framed out windows and vents, then cut and fit the extruded foam insulation inside the trailer.

By the way, much of this had to be done while working around an old busted lawnmower that was too heavy for us, even collectively, to move!

Then The Wife had to help me move each wall-section from the storage stack to the bench where I carefully measured then cut away any excess material in order to keep the weight down.

By then my physical situation had improved enough that I was able to get each of these lightened sections back out to the trailer and reinstalled on my own. Followed with the 1/8th ply sheets that went over top of the original, rather rough-looking,  panels to form the finished walls. (By cutting away unnecessary bits of the original walls, the two layers of the finished walls actually weighed less than the original single-layered wall.)

I cheated a bit on my restrictions when I dressed up the insulated ceiling with more sheets of 1/8 ply, which was a bit of a challenge given that my range of motion on the right side was still limited and I could barely get that elbow shoulder high before things inside me started screaming. But that was the best kind of physical therapy, so I kept at it. (I passed on formal physical therapy because I was already overloaded with appointments and people-time.)

But eventually I got the walls and ceiling in and was able to paint (not my favorite thing!) everything in preparation for building and installing the interior bits. You know, cabinets, bed, that sort of stuff.

I originally thought I would cover this trailer in a single post but this sucker is already running long, so stand by for part 2.

Motovational Change$

 No, not those kinds of changes.

Did you miss-read the title? That’s an ‘o’, not an ‘i’, because I’m taking about the hard facts of transportation, not the squishy stuff of mental attitudes.

Over the past couple years of radio silence our transportation platforms have morphed to more closely match our current needs.

First and foremost, when this medical crap started we quickly realized that if it (the medical crap) was going to be long-ish term, not a sure thing initially, we were going to need two daily drivers. I guess, technically, The Van can, in some cases, double as a daily driver, but there were two main factors against that. The Wife was never comfortable driving The Van and would only do so under duress, and frankly we already had more than enough duress in our lives at that point than we needed. Also, when 80% of the many – many – (so many –) medical trips were to a downtown location peppered with van-unfriendly parking garages and no street parking, The Van was not a viable option.

So, towards the end of 2023, when we knew I wasn’t going to croak in the next few months, well – not from the cancer anyway, we placed an order for a Ford Ranger Lauriat FX4. (A decision that was made easier in those uncertain times by the fact that when you order a new vehicle, at least from our Ford dealer, you don’t have to take delivery of it and they’ll give your deposit back.)

Because of supply-chain and other lingering COVID issues it took nearly 6 months to get the truck delivered to us. (for reference, it takes less than 24 hours to build a Ranger once it finally makes it to the assembly line.) But once it finally showed up, HOLY CRAP! I had no idea driving could be so easy!

Adaptive Cruise, Lane Keeping, Emergency Crash Mitigation, Cross Traffic Alert System, 360 Degree Cameras, real-time TPMS, Dual Climate Zones, 3 presets for seat and mirror positioning, a 12” Center Console Screen, Electronic Dash with proper gauges (coolant & trans temps and oil pressure). If I want to check on the truck’s location, how much fuel it has, the tire pressures, washer fluid level, how many miles before the next oil change, or lock/unlock the doors, start the engine, stop the engine – I just open an app on my phone. And I can use the same app to initiate a trailer-lights check sequence while standing behind the trailer(s). None of this stuff was available on my 15 year old van, nor on The Wife’s 9 year old car.

To give the car, a 2014 Escape Platinum, a rest, and because the Ranger is fun and easy for either of us to drive, we started using the Ranger as our daily driver for supply runs as well as all the medical crap, but turns out it was already too late to save the car.

At 9 years old It had a lot of miles on it, north of 120K, before the cancer stuff (for comparison, when we sold The 15 year old Van recently it had just under 100k on it), being our only daily driver, and with all the 4 to 6 hour round-trips for medical crap, sometimes up to three times a week, the miles continued to rack up at an alarming rate until one day, 30-40K miles before we were hoping, the car crapped out. (Of course it chose to do so right when I was 1300 miles away with the Ranger making what turned out to be the final visit with Mom.) Fortunately it happened in the driveway, throwing an overheat alarm within 20 seconds of starting the engine, but it still left The Wife stranded with nothing but The Van for a week and a half until I could get home again. And nobody delivers groceries this far out in the boonies, so it was a big deal!

During that week and half The Wife managed to get the car towed (via The Van’s freshly expired Good Sam Roadside policy which she had to sort out first) to the dealer, but it took them a month to finally admit they had no idea what was wrong with the engine and their next move would be to put a new one into it. Clearly not a financially viable option.

So this is how we ended up acquiring two brand new vehicles within the span of 5 months.

We ended up buying the car, another Escape, an STline version, out of the inventory on the lot, and it’s nice, a hell of a lot nicer than most vehicles we have owned in the past, but not Ranger nice. So in addition to being our medical ferry the Ranger is also our daily driver, (which in our case, once you subtract the medical trips, is a supply run once every week or week and a half), while the Escape gets used for short (40 to 70 miles round trip) runs once every couple weeks unless I have the Ranger out of town.

In fact, after ten months in our hands the Escape has a grand total of 2466 miles on it while the Ranger has racked up 22,641 miles in 15 months. (I just stood right here at the keyboard and used the Ford Pass app to reach into each vehicle to get the current mileage.) Now to be fair, in that 15 months the Ranger has been through hell millage wise.  In addition to our supply runs and the medical trips the Ranger has also been to Michigan and back twice (Once for a visit and once more a month later for Mom’s memorial service), Vegas for a wedding (Not my choice, but what could I do? It was The Daughter’s), Bell Buckle TN for another memorial (cousin’s wife this time), and just this month, Grand Junction CO to pick up a trailer.

The Michigan visit to see Mom was the first long road trip after the cancer shit started and I wasn’t sure what sort of stamina I would have for the drive (nope, still not getting on a plane!), so I left a few days early. But it turned out I was up for my usual driving stamina and made it to the I-55 welcome center in the boot heel of Missouri the first night with no problems. (why stop early? It's not like I have anything else to do so might as well keep driving.)

Obviously, a change in vehicles like this also meant a change in camping rig(s), but that’s for another post – actually probably two posts – maybe more.

Speaking Of Elmer - -

 

Two years ago, shortly before he died, Elmer was trying to message The Wife but his old, fat fingers were having a tough time of it, so she asked him to call her instead. (Elmer could not multi-task so wouldn't answer his phone if trying to do something else on it at the same time.)

This morning, Father's day 2025, The Wife went out to her barn, laid her phone down, and a few minutes later came back to find this on it.

(Not me! I don't go in her barn unless invited, and I wasn't invited this morning.)

Cha – Cha – Cha – Changes

 I hope I don’t have to pay royalties to the David Bowie estate for that title!

Anyway - as much as I felt the whole world should have stopped right along with me when I embarked on my cancer journey – it didn’t.

Life went on and things moved forward.

A couple of the more momentous changes for us were the loss of The Wife’s father and my mother. Not unexpected in either case, but still, a loss to be felt.

Elmer, The Wife's dad (and not his real name), spent his last few years living with his middle daughter in Missouri and died under hospice care in his room at her house.

Elmer was a good source of amusing and outrageous stories, some of which have turned up in this blog. And while he was sometimes exasperating, his antics are missed. (Although, much to thier horror, certain traits of his are becoming evident in his daughters!)

He was an avid fisherman (Once his car rolled down the boat-ramp into the Missouri River [typical Elmer stunt] but when bystanders tried to save it he hollered “To hell with the car, it’s insured – save the boat!”) and often said that when he died it would only be fair to feed him back to the fish that he had eaten so many of.

Well it turns out the nosey parkers in various government offices didn’t like the idea of us chucking his body into the Missouri River at all! So we ended up dumping some of his ashes into the Gulf Coast off of Palacoius Tx where he spent so many winters fishing. A lot of his fishing buddies turned up on the chilly, blustery day to see him off.  In typical Elmer fashion, he thanked us all by wipping around in the wind and getting little bits of himself all over everybody.

My mom also died during those two years.

She was the daughter of Irish immigrants who worked as a taxi driver and upstairs maid in Belfast for around 10 years to pay for thier passage to Halifax, and then on to Detroit, around 1920-something before finally marrying and starting a family.

Lucky for us - her kids - Mom got our grandmothers gentleness and tolerance and not her father's unbending hardheadedness. Also lucky for us kids, though she grew up a city girl, she quickly took to dad's country outdoors lifestyle. (There's a family story that the first time I, the oldest of three, went camping was in a borrowed tent when I was two months old.)

Mom did inherit a touch of the old-world pessimism and for her, aging wasn't an adventure or even a part of the trip to be accomodated, it was an inevitable evil. Don't  get me wrong. She, a gregarious, outgoing, greatful, and generous person, fully enjoyed most of the 7 or so years she lived in a very nice senior comunity but she was wore out and frustrated by aging and more than once commented that she hoped she didn't live to be 90.

She didn't quite make 92.

The senior center she lived in was one of those where you pay a healthy up-front fee plus monthly rent, like buying into an exclusive club then paying regular dues. Once you're in (and you have to interview and pass muster first), they will never throw you out for financial reasons, and the facility offers any level of support you require.

Fortunately, for her and for my sisters who bore the brunt of her daily familial care, especially onerous towards the end, Mom went from independent living, to assisted living, to memory care, to hospice in the short space of about 5 months.

I was fit enough to travel in August of 2024 (road trip since I'm even more adverse to flying in a tube full of [shudder] people now than I was when I first retired) and was able to visit with her for several days, before returning in September to bury her.

With the loss of Mom, the last of our parents, my generation are now the atriarchs (be that M or P) of the family.

Something to ponder. (Holy Crap! I'm not near grown up enough to be an atriarch!)

When I was a boy and young man, the job of making the family reunion communal stew in a very large pot over a fire, something that takes all Saturday morning, was taken care of by our fathers. Eventually the job was passed on to my generation, who have since passed the tradition on to our kids, and the grandkids are standing by. 

Time moves on even if you don't.

There's been a few other changes around here over the past two years (I guess technically the blog title of "Travels of a Rambling Van" is a lie now) but this post is longer than it should be already, so that will have to wait.

It's Been 16 Years But It's Time to Break Up with Viasat

OK, let's try this. - I wrote this a couple years ago but never posted it because - well, you know - I was being a shit. After reading through it again the other day it still seems relevant. So instead of wasting it I thought I'd throw it out here now with an update tacked onto it.

Those antennas have been up there on the barn for sixteen years now.

The further one is DirectTV while the one closest started out as Exceed then they were bought out by the current service, Viasat. (satellite internet service)

Well we just got a pleasant little communication from Viasat couched in celebratory terms designed to make us feel special while we're getting screwed (Damn marketing people!), essentially saying, though our relationship is and has been working just fine on the current Ford-Pinto basis for a decade and a half, they, with no input from us, have unilaterally decided to take our relationship to a Cadillac Escalade level.

That’s right. They jerked our plan out from under us and tossed it in the trash with one slimy hand while with the other jeweled and bedazzled hand presented us (Ta-Da!) with the new alternative.

How exciting!

Wait! What?

You see that Liberty 25 bit on our current plan? That’s 25 GB of data and in 16 years there have only been a handful of months when we received the “we’re about to throttle your speed” notice for getting to close to the limit, and then only within days of the limit resetting anyway. (that Free-Zone crap is 3 hours per day of data-usage that doesn’t count against our 25 GB, Of course it’s between 0200 and 0500, hours when normal people [yeah, one of you readers out there knows who I’m NOT talking about!] are not much interested in browsing the Amazon shelves, reading the Yahoo news-feed, or researching the latest – unnecessary – updates.) So why in the hell would we suddenly be interested in the 60 GB of data they are so gleefully offering us in the new plan? (And that 12 Mbps claim -yeah right! If that was really the case why all that small print telling us all the reasons it might - will - be slower?)

Oh, and as an added bonus we have to foot the 25% increase in cost out of our own pockets for the privilege.

Well, unfortunately for Viasat their timing SUCKS.

Just last month we were without Viasat services for nearly two weeks waiting on a simple replacement power-puck for the modem. During that blackout period The Wife and I started playing around with the 5 GB of hot-spot data that comes with each of our T-Mobile basic Magenta accounts, (That’s 5 GB per phone for a total of 10 GB.) and could see no discernable difference in data-speed between the cell and the existing Viasat services.

THEN, a few weeks after getting Viasat up and running again, (We, of course received no credit for the lost time.) it cratered all over again. This time the modem was powered up and working but it looks like the transmitter/receiver up on the antenna has crapped out. So now we have the added privilege of paying for another call-out plus parts just to get back on air again with our new, and more costly plan.

So let’s review here. For a 25% percent price increase to $100 per month Viasat is offering us more data that we don’t need and didn't ask for, but by adding a $10 rider to each of our phone-plans we can bump our combined hot-spot data from 10 GB to 30 GB, which past history says is at least 5 more than we need, and the hot-spot speeds are comparable to the Viasat speeds we're used to.

Oh, and if that’s not enough hot-spot data it only takes $5 more per phone to bump us up to a combined 80 GB of hot-spot data! That’s 20 GB more than the “upgrade” at Viasat for significantly less cost!

Humm – carry the one – subtract the – Yep! Pay $70 less per month/$840 less per year and get sufficient data at the same speeds we're used to without worrying about cloud-cover issues?

I’m callin’ that terminate number right now!

And before you ask – no. I’m not allowed to cancel my service on line like any civilized person would want to. Instead I have to go through the recording at the call center and two different agents to actually break-up with Viasat. (And I SUCK at phone!)

And I’m not sure how this fits into a good business model, but they made it clear that if I go through with this I can’t come back for 180 days. (Yes ma'am, I understand and my hand feels properly smacked - and not in the good way!)

Oh yeah, and that line up there about no termination fees if I leave? Well I suppose that technically it’s true, but not actually.

You see, they are so pissed off about us leaving they want their old, broke, and obsolete equipment back, and if I want someone to come out and remove the transmitter/receiver from the actual dish - which they will graciously let me keep (The dish part) as a souvenir - it will cost me a $95 call-out. And if I don’t return the equipment to them within 30 days they will bill me $300 or so all over again for stuff I’ve long since paid for.

Yeah, we’ll skip the callout fee’s thank you very much.

But now the fun starts!

My longest ladder is still 4 feet short of tall enough so I have to get up on top of the roof to remove the transmitter/receiver from above.

But first a zoom-shot to see if I can figure out what tools to take up there with me, because I’m not Spiderman and this is a one-trip deal damnit!

I do have a platform on the side of the building that my ladder can reach.

And from there

I can step, very carefully, onto the roof.

And make my way, one short, shuffling step at a time, along the peak

Until I get to the end

 And the antenna

OK. Let’s see if, among all the stuff I brought with me in the stuff-sack tied off to my belt, I have what it takes to remove the transmitter/receiver.

Well Crap!

Simple philips-head screws but stainless isn’t always the hardest of metals and this screw has clearly been over-gorillaed in the past.

Even with a perfectly fitting bit I just couldn’t get it to back out.

So plan B.

Fortunately, anticipating something like this I brought a couple adjustable wrenchs up here with me so now I’m just going to take the entire carrier/trans-receiver assembly off the arms

And separate them from each other at the safety of my workbench

Where I had to drill way down into that one screw, obviously not quite as straight as I would hope, to get enough purchase for my screw-extractor to overcome the torque and corrosion.

 UPDATE June 2025: (I originally wrote this post sometime in late 2022 or early 2023)

We've been without a sat connection, and any sort of traditional internet, for over two years now and it's working out just fine.

In my case, I immediately started using my phone for everything and and typically only turn my aging laptop on once a month to update my spreadsheets and run backups, for which I don't need to go out on the internet.

The Wife has zombie-fingers making it difficult for her to use touchscreens so she uses her hot-spot to connect her laptop to the world, where she (especially during the hot months because she loves airconditioning!) trolls the Yahoo news-feed, watches funny videos with dogs, window shops, and orders groceries/houshold goods for curbside pickup.

For a portion of that two years I wasn't very active, or even very ambulatory, so The Wife spent more time inside than usual keeping an eye on me while using her laptop for entertainment, using more data than in the past.

The result being, we upped her hotspot to 40 GB (for a total bump of $15 per month) while leaving mine at the 5 GB that comes with the basic Magenta plan. So now we pay $150 per year for internet access through a hot-spot, verses $1200 a year for access through a satellite connection.

Kind of a no brainer!