March 17, 2005

March 17, 2005

Quartzsite, Arizona

DAY 272

 

Today was sunny and very warm.

I lost most of the day to dealing with yesterday's tire blow out, and the damage it caused. First thing this morning I resumed the repair to the damaged fibreglass skirt. I had done the rough repair of it yesterday, and today, after it had dried over night, it was ready to be filed down, then drilled for attaching the brace. I wasn't too concerned with the cosmetic perfection of it, because it's the underside of the skirt, and not really visible. I filed it down, then got out my rechargeable drill. The battery pack for the drill was out of "juice".

Damn ! What a piece of junk. Just before we started this journey, I bought a rechargeable drill and vacuum combination kit. Up until a couple of months ago, it was the vacuum Joanne used. She was constantly complaining that the battery pack would only hold enough power for her to use the vacuum for a short time. She would vacuum part of the trailer, recharge the battery pack over night, vacuum some more the next day, and so on. It would take her a few days to vacuum the whole trailer, which isn't that large. She got really fed up, and bought a new 120 volt small vacuum a month or so ago. I tossed the rechargeable vacuum, and put the fully charged battery pack with the drill. After sitting for a month without use, the battery pack was completely discharged. So much for drilling today.

I removed and straightened the middle frame to skirt brace. Then I rewired to the missing side marker light. Then I installed a new side marker light, without the lens. I had previously purchased a trailer side marker light assembly, when I needed to replace a broken lens, so I had the entire marker light assembly, minus the lens. I figured I might as well install this one, and get a new lens whenever I can. All of that took the whole morning, and a little bit of the afternoon. I stopped working, put everything away, washed up, had lunch, and then disconnected Dee-Dee from Harvey. The whole time I was working, there was a bunch of banjo playing going on around us. I discovered later from the couple in the motorhome next to us that this camping area is filled with bluegrass musicians here for a bluegrass music festival.

We drove into the town of Quartzsite, about 3 miles south. I went to a tire shop, and they took about 15 minutes to ascertain that they didn't have the size of trailer tire I needed < fume ! >. We drove to the Love's Travel Centre ( like a Flying J ) to use up a Love's $5.00 gas coupon we got from the Good Sam RV Club. We went to another tire shop. They had the right size tire, at a reasonable price ( lower than the first shop ), and had it mounted and balanced in less time than it took the first shop to figure out that they didn't have what I needed. We drove around Quartzsite a bit, checking things out, and trying to figure out what the huge attraction about Quartzsite is to RV'ers. We stopped at one of the many market areas, and wandered around for awhile. There are a whole bunch of these large flea market type areas in and around Quartzsite. Most of the vendors have left for the season, but we stopped at one that still had a dozen or so semi-permanent businesses, each under a large tent. We bought a bunch of small stuff. I replenished some maintenance supplies, like auto fuses and wire connectors and little disposable paint brushes. Joanne bought something that we didn't even know existed. We had been told that Quartzsite is the place to buy anything and everything you need, and even some stuff that you didn't know existed. Such was the case with Joanne buying bi-focal reading / sun glasses. She's very light sensitive, and always needs to wear sun glasses. She recently bought reading glasses, because she's having difficulty reading maps. She's been constantly switching back and forth between sun glasses and reading glasses while we're travelling, and she's navigating. Now she has sun glasses with a 2.5 X bi-focal reading glass component at the bottom. Neat !

We headed back to the trailer about 5:00 P.M.. I had just enough time before it got dark at 7:00 to rehitch the truck to the trailer, install protective cable cover that I bought today onto the new wiring that I did this morning, jack up one side of the trailer, remove the spare tire that I put on yesterday, install the new tire that I bought today, remount the spare onto the back of the trailer, lower the trailer off the jack, and put everything away < sigh >. The trailer's spare tire is one load range lighter than recommended for the weight of the trailer, so I prefer to keep it as a spare, for short term emergency use only. We took Bo for a walk to see if there was any bluegrass music being played nearby. There wasn't. With the small amount of energy I had left, I barbecued burgers for supper.

DSK