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!

 

 

An Atypical Lifestyle

 

I was recently asked, seemingly with some surprise, about my slightly less than mainstream lifestyle. In fact the phrase “renowned and brilliant engineer living in a barn” was used, follow immediately by “how the hell did you get a woman to keep you company?!”, or something along those lines.

OK, first off, if anything, infamous is probably a more accurate word than renowned, and I doubt even that is the case. The reality is more along the lines of “who?”.  And brilliant? That’s just wrong! Unless it was being said with a dripping dose of sarcasm, as in “Oh, that’s just brilliant!”, while looking down at the results of a dropped paint can that just exploded all over the place.

But OK, it’s true that I was, in a previous life, an engineer and that I found a partner that, for the past 20 years has lived in a barn with me.

More specifically, we have a 380 sq. ft. space that is split between a single multi-purpose room plus a bathroom

tucked in the corner of a 1500 sq. ft. barn.

This is where we cook, sleep, eat, and spend our evenings. (My sister calls it the transformer room.)

But that’s not the whole story.

The rest of the barn is my workshop where I spend a lot of time

and The Wife has a separate 400 sq. ft. barn with a 16 x 8 foot deck that is her workspace, where she also spends a lot of her time. And we also have 14 fenced, isolated, rolling (three ridges and two valleys with no flat spots in-between), wooded acres to wander as well. So it’s not like we’re “in” a single room all day.

So how did I get woman to keep me company in these circumstances? Well it hasn’t always been easy! For either of us.

The Wife and I met at a dinner party in 1982. She thought I was really boring and wondered why I had been invited in the first place. I didn’t think much about her one way or the other, being more concerned with how uncomfortable I am at social events and wondering why I had agreed to come in the first place. But working different divisions of the same company we kept running into each other,

The Wife, The Daughter (mine), and me the day we made it official

and four years later we shacked up, a year after that we made it official in the eyes of the IRS.

In many ways we make no sense together at all. I’m a fairly active person and mildly aggressive about maintaining my physical conditioning, she’s more sedentary and food-oriented. (When we travel together we don’t go from here to there, we go from restaurant to restaurant until we eventually get there!) In the morning I can’t wait to get up and out the door into the open air where I pretty much stay until sunset regardless of the weather, she loves her air-conditioning. I’ve hiked several thousand miles of wilderness trails, some of them pretty hairy, requiring a certain sense of adventure and a degree of nimble-footedness, her threshold for adventure is more along the lines of buying a new brand of salad dressing, and she can break a leg stepping off the sidewalk – something she’s done twice.

But there are ways we make sense together.

In slightly different ways both of us are, to put it mildly, uneasy around people. My particular form of autism (Not that we knew how to label ourselves until recently) makes it uncomfortable for me to be around and deal with people. I’m agitated while trying to deal with social norms I just don’t understand and therefore am really bad at. The Wife’s form of social atypical-ness is similar but slightly different. She can play the socializing game much better than me when she has to, but people scare the crap out of her. She is very distrustful of pretty much everyone and for her, being around people borders on terrifying. Either way, interaction with people is exhausting for both of us.

Even though we didn’t have names for what we were beck then, we knew early on that sharing these traits actually made us bad for each other, feeding off of each other’s social issues like a sound-system  squealing out of control, and together we were, not only feeding off of each other’s social issues but also creating a codependency. And in case we missed the implications of this before, they were made clear on Halloween of 1984.

Pretending we were normal people we had spent a couple weeks assembling our costumes for a party, and on the day got dressed up, drove to the location, parked, shut the car off, watched a few people going into the venue, started the car, and drove away to spend the evening on our own. But we made the conscious decision that, despite this, us together, taking care of each other and creating little sanctuaries for ourselves where possible in the midst of the social chaos, was preferable to us going our separate ways and trying to live full time in a world we didn’t quite fit into.

We also share a similar, muted, consumerist’s ethic. We aren’t afraid to spend money when it makes sense. We both have rather high-end vehicles with all the bells and whistles that make driving easier, more comfortable, and safer. But on the other-hand, we built both barns, our atypical home, and the well-house, by hand, on weekends, for cash (Which is a big reason I was able to retire at 58 and finally get away from people on a daily basis). I own two sets of footwear, slippers for evenings on our raw concrete floor and a pair of hiking shoes for everything else. The Wife never wears trousers and owns three skirts. When one or another of those wears out to the point of indecency she gets the sewing machine out and makes another one.

It hasn’t always been smooth. As is true for most everybody, ours is not the well-groomed garden path of a Hallmark movie. Our road is rutted and potholed, has sharp turns with no guardrails, exhausting uphill slogs and terrifying descents, but somehow we’ve managed to make it work. For 40 some years and counting, together we’ve been crafting the complex and ever changing choreography of a partnership.

She plans and preps most of our meals (in a kitchenette with a hotplate, a countertop convection oven, no microwave, but an 18” dishwasher!), I reset tripped breakers, sort the recycling, and take the compost out. She keeps track of birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays and ensures the appropriate cards, gifts, and notes get to where they’re supposed to be, when they’re supposed to be, I keep an eye on the finances and ensure the bills are paid. She gets on-line and places orders for groceries and household goods for curbside pickup (so we don’t have to go in and mingle with people), I drive. She assembles our evening snack while I shower. I convert our space from livingroom to bedroom while she brushes her teeth. She changes out the toilet paper roll, I change out the roll of paper towels.

We’ve had our ups and downs, our bad times, OK times, and great times, and will very likely continue to have all of those, but we’ve been around the block enough now to know that we are one hell of a lot better off together than not.

I suspect that, no matter how much people, the social animals that we (the collective we) are with our desperate, evolutionary need to fit into the pack, would like to think otherwise, atypical is actually the norm of the world. If that’s the case The Wife and I fit right in.