May Days

Things have been pretty quiet in the woods lately. We’ve watched the world wake up from winter, turn green, pollen-saturated, and lately we’ve been getting an early taste of the summer heat and humidity that’s still to come.

Most of May though the weather was pretty near perfect — 75 and sunny. The kids have had a blast watching all the birds’ nests come to life. So far we’ve seen three Phoebe chicks hatch and make it out of the nest on our front porch.

Currently we’re watching some Carolina Wren chicks in what might be the strangest nest location ever. One of my work projects for the spring was testing full size grills. One day five showed up at once. That was a bit overwhelming so two of them got stacked on the porch and covered with a tarp. A couple days later we had a windy storm blow through. The tarp got twisted up and made a little covered space that a pair of Carolina Wrens decided was a perfect spot for a nest.

So now every time we step out the door one of the adult wrens goes flashing by our heads, giving us an uncomfortably close view of their long, needle-like beak. A wren streaking by inches from your face first thing in the morning will wake you up better than a cup coffee.

Spring is always the best time to get some work done in the bus. The temps are nice, the full force of summer humidity hasn’t arrived yet, and the fire ants are still underground, making it the perfect time to crawl under and work on your exhaust system.

I’ve been tackling some little projects inside the bus too. I got the walls back together with new wires so we can add some solar panels down the road. I also put in a fancy new charge controller that has a phone app I can use to monitor everything (also have a wired backup monitor because I distrust technology). To give you some idea of how dramatically solar components are dropping in price, this new fancy unit was about 30 percent less expensive than the bare bones unit we bought in 2017.

One day I decided to finally tackle the passenger windshield wiper motor, which has never worked. I pulled it out, took it apart and quickly realized the motor was so rusted the magnet was fused to the coil. I managed to track down a similar unit though, which is on order. While I was in there I figured I might as well clean out the area behind the glove box. In vintage RV repair that’s the equivalent of saying, “hmm, wonder what would happen to this sweater if I pull on this dangling thread?” It’s how you go from this:

To this:

To this:

It’s for the best, but it still makes me laugh every time. Every single project in the bus goes so far beyond the initial scope I think it will have. But, as a fellow Travco owner said of that picture of me under the bus, “better there than on the side of the road.” Very true. I’d rather be doing all this while we’re not living in it, while the weather is nice, there’s no rush, and the rest of my family isn’t hot, tired, bored, and waiting on me to make everything work again.

As you can see from those images there was a water leak that destroyed the subfloor and was feeding the rust on the metal, which is in pretty bad shape. I found and fixed the leak that caused the problem (seal on the back of the headlight). I’ll reinforce the seat platform area with some steel bars, then add some well-sealed plywood on top of that (I’d like to have a conversation with whoever thought OSB was a good choice for Travco flooring). Eventually it’ll all get put back together better than it was, and that’ll be one less thing I ever have to worry about. Hey, maybe I’ll even replace the wiper motor and get that working too.

At some point, after I pull the radiator (pinhole leak from the extension tube needs to be patched), replace the starter, and get her running smoothly again, I’m going to tackle the kitchen. My plan is to put in a new counter top, but somehow I suspect I’ll have a photo of the kitchen gutted to the bare walls to post before too long.

Otherwise we haven’t done anything too exciting lately, but it’s hard to complain about much out here. At least once a day I’ll be outside doing something and all the sudden I’ll stop and listen… there’s never any sounds other than birds signing and the wind in the pines. It’s difficult to convey the peace of mind this gives you. It’s like the opposite of that subtle background stress you get living in a city. If it weren’t for the humidity and insects I’d think we were still camped up at Junction Creek, but without the crowds.