DIY

Some of us got COVID.

June 5, 2023 by kvec Leave a Comment

Continued from “Insulation Installation and more…“

Summer 2021 ended but October 2021 got scary.

In Novelty, Ohio.

Derek grillin’ with Wayne and Forest watching, in the driveway.

September 29, 2021 – We had to get to Cleveland and help my mother who was coming out of the hospital. She is doing fine now. She is a tough cookie. Back to the story. Derek and I decided to take the trailer with us at the last minute. He had just put the insulation in June, but he thought maybe if we brought the trailer we could work on upgrading it a little more in the driveway at my mom’s house while there.

This is when it got scary.

October 7, 2021 – I started to cough just a little bit. My Mom was coughing but she had dealt with oxygen tubes in the hospital and then oxygen at home. So you are bound to cough, right? But that’s what we all thought.

On a call with a client, they told me that I should take a COVID test because they noticed I was coughing during the meeting. I even said, “Oh no, my mom picked up a cold in the hospital and I think I got the cold she got.” But then I thought, What am I thinking? I really need to check this out. Drove to CVS and bought four COVID tests from two different companies. I took three tests in the car. All positive, immediately. Then I took the PCR test, you know the test happens when the CVS worker comes out to your car in a hazmat suit and swabs your nose and walks away and says we’ll email you the results. That was positive as well. So I got COVID! It was the Delta variant. When I got home, I ran out to the backyard at my mom’s house and just screamed “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!” with a nice potpourri of swear words as a teared up.

Derek tested my Mom and she was positive too. We think she got it from the hospital. Ugg. When Derek tested and he was negative! Thank God!! We couldn’t believe it!

Sequestering myself in my childhood bedroom and my mom staying downstairs in her bedroom, we buckled down for the worst. I remember coming downstairs and checking in on her by just staring at her. I startled her. We would meet in the living room during the evening and watch tv and talk. Poor Derek had to stay in the trailer, in the driveway. Derek bought one of those small Smokey Joe’s Weber Grills and grilled pork chops, steaks, and chicken for our dinners. He also made these great, arugula salads with lemon juice, olive oil, and parmesan shreds. My Mom and I could NOT smell or taste anything. But I know those salads brought us back to the living. Derek would leave the plated dinners on the porch and yell “Dinner is served!”, then he would quickly back away from the front door and I would come out to pick them up. It was so weird to do that. We laughed every time.

As I sat with my Mom reminiscing about my Dad and family, I thought I was so lucky to be here helping my Mom out or just being there with her sick together. It made it less scary in a way. It would have driven me crazy to be in Chicago while my Mom was dealing with Covid. We were also lucky that we brought the trailer for Derek to escape to.

It became a family thing.

October 8, 2021 – We find out my brother also got Covid the day after us. We hunkered down for the fever part of the sickness to happen. My temperature didn’t go above 99.7º. It only lasted two days with a mild fever, coughing, and headaches. But my Mom and I were both exhausted. I would call my brother and then tell my Mom how he was doing. He had to live in his pole barn for two weeks. He even ordered a bed on Amazon so he could have better sleeping conditions.

After 14 days we tested negative and we were released from confinement. Derek still didn’t get Covid and we all thought that was so unbelievable. We decided to stay another week because my mother was celebrating her 80th birthday on October 22. We wanted to celebrate with Wayne, Gigi, and Forest. So we had a cookout and sat by the firepit my brother built in a day. It was great to have an outdoor area to meet for an evening fire.

It turned out that so many good memories were made out of this bad situation. We went back home on October 26.

Talk about an adventure. We were almost gone a whole month.

My Mom and I – we were a lot younger then.

Insulation Installation and more…

July 20, 2022 by kvec Leave a Comment

Summer 2021 at Jeff and Tamara’s House, Traverse City, Michigan

Continued from Trip report Week 4 of 4: here

During a week in June 2021 and in the sweltering heat, Derek carefully took out all the interior walls and ceiling in order to insulate the inside of the trailer. He measured and cut each individual panel while our friend Humberto (who was visiting) helped pull heavy-duty staples out of the trim so we could use the trim again. Thanks, Humberto! Also a really big thanks to Jeff and Tamara for letting us use your extra parking pad and garage for storage during our stay!

Here’s a little side story – On our daily trips to Home Depot and Lowe’s, we ran into a man that saw our stack of wood and insulation. Keep in mind this guy was a total stranger. He abruptly stopped, looked at us, and exclaimed, “Wow, did you guys just win the lottery?” He said that because in the middle of the pandemic the price of lumber and other build supplies rocketed up in price. He saw our stack of supplies and questioned us about what project we were working on. In talking to him we found out that he built yurts.

Derek also rebuilt his bed so you can lift up one end of the top and we have hidden storage. Lots of storage. He even built a handle and a hook so when you open it and you need two hands to get something, you just hook the rope attached to the handle to the heavy-duty hook and it will hold. Pretty cool!

When I go Squatchin’…

December 1, 2020 by kvec 2 Comments

Wyoming – September 2020

On my never-ending search for Bigfoot I’m happy to share a technique I use when I go squatchin’. Yes, this is another Bigfoot video. Take a look!

Find my other Bigfoot videos on the Happy Adventure Club YouTube Channel.

Trip Report – Heading Out West – Week 1 of 4

November 13, 2020 by kvec 3 Comments

Making our way out west. Getting organized first in Wisconsin.

When planning the trip, we thought it would be good to camp somewhere nearby to test everything out. We stopped in Viola, Wisconsin at a county park. Our plan was to try everything out in our trailer at a campsite just to make sure we were ready for the extended trip and had everything we needed.

The Viola campsite was nice. It is the first place I ever fly-fished. Derek couldn’t help himself and fished for a couple of hours when we got there. I set up camp and relaxed and took a nap with the back doors of the trailer open. The sun was going down and the warm sun was beautiful through the trees. We made dinner on the campfire and knew the second-day drive would be 14 hours. Our glamourous destination? A Cabela’s parking lot in Rapid City, SD. We had to pace ourselves too with a max of around 65mph while towing. Jeep Wranglers are NOT the best tow vehicle…

We left Viola after a nice breakfast of eggs and bacon. We’ve done this drive tons of times, and were kind of dreading it, but it was not as bad as we thought it would be. When you start getting into the western half of South Dakota, (coming from the East), you see a difference in the plant life and land. Fewer trees and more plains and then rolling hills. You also start seeing the billboards for Wall Drug.

Rapid City, South Dakota – Cabela’s Parking lot.

We finally got to Cabela’s lot and found a spot with a little privacy. You can’t really spend time outside your trailer there. It’s just for getting a quick night’s sleep and to get on the road the next morning.

Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming

The drive to the Big Horns from Rapid City was fairly uneventful, if beautiful. We stopped in Sheridan, WY for some supplies and hit our first climb up the switchbacks heading to Burgess Junction.

We stayed at Tongue Creek campground for three nights four days. Our campsite had a pretty creek flowing through it. This campground had a water pump and the cleanest pit toilet I have ever seen.

The fishing was really fun up here. We caught cutthroat and rainbow trout. The Bear Lodge Resort at Burgess Junction had showers for campers like us. They are behind the tavern for $2 per person. It was our first shower of the trip. I like showers.

Leaving the Big Horn Mountains.

We had a real scare driving down the west side of the Big Horns toward Cody. This descent starts at a bit under 10k feet and drops to 4500 in about 8 miles. About halfway down our brakes felt squishy and we pulled over. All four brakes were actually smoking! We thought we had been taking it easy on the brakes and using gearing to slow our descent but we drastically underestimated how much we needed to use the engine for that. Luckily this was just a learning experience and no damage done.

As we drove toward Bozeman, a flashing engine light came on and then turned off totally freaking us out. We stopped and checked everything and it seemed ok so we kept on driving. While on I-90 just outside of Bozeman, we had it on cruise control and the transmission shifted down and spiked the rpm – causing the flashing light again.

We were just outside of Bozeman at this point, so we got off the freeway and crept toward town. Derek stopped at a gas station to get error codes but the car had none. Pretty weird to not have any codes after a couple flashing engine lights.

We stopped for lunch and a drink (needed to calm some nerves!) at Montana Ale Works while Derek called the local Jeep dealership. Unfortunately they were super rude and didn’t have any time to look at the car for nearly two months. When Derek explained that we were travelling and if they had any local recommendations of someone else he could call, the woman he spoke with at the dealership literally laughed at him and ended the conversation with: “Good luck with that. You wont find anyone to help here – EVERYONE is too busy.” I’d not recommend the Bozeman Jeep dealer for any reason after seeing that go down.

Derek looked at some reviews online of local repair shops and called Deeter Auto Repair. They were super helpful and understanding of the situation. Unfortunately they couldn’t really do much since there were no error codes. The tech talked at length with Derek and we decide to proceed while taking it easy. He suspected the issues were just due to heat from the towing stress and using the automatic transmission. Turns out he was right. With our setup you really need to shift manually if you’re either climbing or descending. Again, lesson learned.

Our goal was to get to Ennis, MT that night. As it turned out, it was not difficult to take it easy due to the 40-65 mph winds in the wide open country there. It was a crazy wind storm and we couldn’t drive faster than about 40mph due to the wind. Yay, another stressful drive!

We made it to Ennis in a couple hours and the wind/rain continued throughout the evening. Ended up cooking a quick dinner between rainstorms and getting to bed early. Honestly, it was a pretty stressful day. On a positive note, we learned how to actually drive our Jeep while towing a trailer!

Better than a tent.

August 20, 2020 by drikfan 7 Comments

We love tent camping… for the first 2-3 nights. I guess we’re old(ish) now and the lack of good sleep started wearing on us. Excuses, excuses, I know – but the idea of a minimal camper – a hard shell tent with a real bed – started really appealing to us. Last year we went to the Chicago RV and Camping trade show and honestly just didn’t like many of the options. We don’t really want a kitchen, plumbing, complicated electrical system and all of that. We’re not trying to make a “home away from home” really – we just want to sleep better for extended periods of time.

The Plan

The first thought was buying or building our own teardrop camper. I still do like that idea but we had a month from when we decided to take an upcoming trip from when we started looking for options. Finding a trailer base and then building it out was going to take a longer time than that. We did find some teardrops out there that fit our needs well but they all had extended lead times that wouldn’t work for us. One we particularly liked was https://www.hikertrailers.com/ – great product and great prices but a 9 month lead time right now.

Next, we looked into renting a teardrop but the cost was pretty crazy – was going to run somewhere between 2k and 3k for a 3-week trip. Then while poking around in craigslist I saw that someone had taken a 6×10′ cargo trailer and built out the interior a bit. I started looking at trailer prices both new and used and found a great deal at Country Blacksmith Trailers in southern Illinois (https://www.countryblacksmithtrailers.com/) We came home with our econobody 6×10 cargo trailer a few days later.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CDAK2i4gq1z/

The biggest challenge we’ve had is that there’s no reasonable place to store the camper in the city. We live in downtown Chicago and street parking is not really a safe option. I called about 40 storage facilities ranging from typical self-storage units to commercial truck storage, to RV specific storage, but it was way too expensive in the city or nearby suburbs. Typically in the $175-$250 per month range. We settled on a place out in the far western suburbs for 33$ per month. It’s about an hour’s drive (sigh). It won’t be an issue once the trailer is built out since we’re not driving there every day, but during the conversion, it posed some challenges.

The entire project cost a little over $4000 including a brand new trailer. We consider this year a prototype build out since we were limited on time. We also didn’t want to spend a ton of energy and money to do a high finish build out without pressure testing the layout. Our goals with the build were pretty simple for this year: Comfortable sleeping for 2 people, as much flexible storage space as possible, and being able to complete the build in under 7 working days.

The Build

In order to make it a bit easier to do the main build and also test the trailer a bit, we drove to Cleveland to visit Kristen’s mom. We set it all up in her driveway and got to work. Was really nice to see some family we haven’t seen for a long time due to COVID-19 as well. Side Note: Kristen found a new purpose in life that she somehow missed growing up – setting off fireworks.

The build plan was really simple. Step by step it went like this:

Install windows (day 1-2) (DON’T BUY CHEAP WINDOWS)
Paint the interior (day 3)
build a small dining table (day 4)
build/install bunks (day 5)
install table (day 5)
mount spare tire (day 6)
install an awning (day 6)
decorate/finish everything up (day 7)

We had a few issues with the build but nothing major. The first issue was the cheap RV windows I bought off of ebay. They were half the price of normal RV windows, but if I had to do it again I would spend the extra money. These will work, but they were a pain in the ass to install and required several trips to the hardware store and a lot of frustration. They also just feel kind of cheap compared to the more expensive rv windows.

The next issue was mounting the spare tire. I mounted it on the tongue with a specialized mounting bracket and it mounted just fine but it reduces the already pretty low clearance and also interferes with our Jeep Wrangler’s spare tire, reducing the turn radius in one direction. In the end I tossed it under the bottom bunk, wrapped in plastic so there’s no rubber smell and made a simple little mount to keep it in place. It will work for now, but at some point id like to figure out a exterior mount on the back door.

We decided to splurge a bit and bought a solar generator. So far its working great for our needs which, again, are really simple: charge phones & laptop, run a fan at night, lighting, etc.. We ended up getting a Maxoak AC50 as the generator and a Togopower portable 120w solar panel. https://www.maxoak.net/products/bluetti-ac50-500wh-300w. I’ll spend some time on our upcoming trip putting it to test a bit and report back as well.

That’s it for now. We’re busy packing for our three week trip around Wyoming and Montana. Looking forward to catching some fish and a lot of time outside.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BmCfIQmguHD/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

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