A very unexpected report to post tonight. Yesterday, I think it was when I came outside after eating lunch, my cousin Jim asked me to move my motorcycle. I had it parked in one of the stalls of the carport, near his BBQ grill, so I thought maybe he wanted to use the grill. Then he told me to take it to the other side of the camper. There I saw that he had one of his ATV ramps up on the garage opening, and had cleared out some of the stuff in there. "Put it in the garage", he said. I had forgotten that he had that ramp!
I put a small step stool along side of it and tried to walk it up the ramp into the garage. I got the front wheel to the top and killed the engine, so had to roll it back down. Same thing on the second try. The third try worked OK! The bike fits in perfectly. I was a little worried that the foot peg would be too close to the water tank, even though I had measured it previously. You may remember that I built in a trough for the bike to set down in, to give more clearance, because I wasn't sure if I would get the Honda or a taller Yamaha. I began to regret that when it was time to take the bike out, now I have to lift it out of that 4" deep trough. We cut a chock for the front wheel to keep it from going too far forward, and made a little ramp to put behind the rear wheel. Because the garage is only 4' high, I can't stand straight up to make it easier to lift up the back of the bike to back it out of the garage. With the ramp, I was able to do it by putting one foot up on the battery box and push on that, but it is a little awkward. I may fill in some under the back tire so it doesn't drop in as far, but time to worry about that later.
Then in the late afternoon, Jim asked me to come in the camper, he wanted to talk to me. He said he and Adam (his stepson, who has helped with the plumbing and other things), were concerned about sealing the walls around the shower pan, and asked if it was OK for them to put something like shower stall material on all the bathroom walls, coming down to inside the lip on the shower pan. He said if it was OK with me, they would go get the material right then and do it while I was at church on Sunday morning! I couldn't say no, so they went off to get the material, and came back with FRP panels and all the trim. As it turned out, Adam couldn't help this morning, so they weren't able to start until this afternoon.
And then Jim decided to rebuild the vanity and medicine cabinet with a plastic 'lumber' material made of PVC, and that is taking longer than he expected, so it still isn't done.
I got the front escape hatch reinstalled, the hole filled in where the bathroom vent was, and a few other small details. I'm putting the former bath vent in the center of the camper where the old AC unit was because that is the only way I can put three 205 Watt solar panels on top, and at that it is a very tight squeeze! Jim had suggested going to Miami last week to get them, but we went to buy the bike instead, so maybe this week, not sure yet.
While starting to install the old gray water tank yesterday, we discovered a huge crack in it that hadn't been there before. It seems to be so brittle that it is worthless, so will have to replace it. Right now we are considering making one out of 4" PVC pipes and putting it the length of the camper, underneath between the frame rails of the truck, which otherwise would be wasted space. I did find one to buy that might work in the normal space (sideways under the back end of the camper. The price will be about the same either way, but the homemade one would have about twice the capacity. Decisions, decisions!
Here is the bike in the garage, sure looks nice in there!
