AMA Supercross Preparation

Thanks to the good tidings that Christmas with my beloved brought to me, we are eagerly planning an upcoming trip. We are looking forward to welcoming the 2011 Supercross series to the East Coast by attending the race at the Georgia Dome on February 25. This will be the third closed-course dirtbike race that we have traveled to and my first Supercross
experience! This will also be the first race event that we travel to as fans--not as working, refined, and professional journalists and/or photographers. I am thrilled to finally be able to participate in the excitement, adventure, perils, and indulgences esoteric to Supercross fans! Be still my eager heart!!

In our pre-RV-ownership lives, we attended the 2009 outdoor National race at Budds Creek, Maryland where rain transformed the dirt track into a dangerous, but gnarly mudslide. In 2010, we flew out to Denver, Colorado to see Team America sweep the Motocross Des Nations and take home the Stanley Cup. The crowd at both events featured groups of weekend warriors, hometown heroes, mx moms and dads, and motorsports fanatics in an atmosphere saturated with nationalism, pride, and fellowship shared by lovers of the sport. I am told that Supercross events host a crowd of a different nature and capacity altogether.

Over the last few years, mainstream media outlets have let their gazes linger a few heartbeats longer on the AMA-regulated sport, giving it a few mentions and occasionally dropping names throughout the sports highlights. Large Network partnerships--like the team of SPEEDtv and CBS Sports--have television prescence at the events, creating exposure opportunities to past and present celebrities of the sport. Companies beyond the motorsports and extreme sports clothing industry have cashed in and antied up with investments in Supercross--garnering sponsorships from companies like Monster Energy (who hosts the series) and creating partnerships between industry big names like Pro Circuit and Kawasaki. Mainstream exposure and mainstream support can--well--generate a mainstream crowd.

The best part about Supercross is--of course--its fans. Networks celebrate Supercross's love for its fans by featuring a wide range of attendees from the I-want-my-picture-taken-by-RacerX-"Who is Josh Grant, again?" troller to the GearHead on the lower-level guessing at bike settings. I am the type of fan that enjoys bench racing with the best of them, but there's a huge part of me that holds some angst toward my parents for not exposing me to the greatness of Supercross at an earlier age. As a result, there are some repressed behaviors that I am excited about going wild with! There's the little kid in me that waits until the riders are out of the first turn to exhale, meditating on just the sound of the bikes on the line. I cannot wait to shout at the top of my lungs when I witness Windham's traditional opening ceremony nose-wheelie. Even more juvenile is the part of me that wants to stand in line for autographs from the guys I have spent the last few years photographing for publication.

To get this trip rolling, we will need to pull the RV out of its Summer-use state. While the liquid tanks have been drained, we still have no heat and no hot water. The priority here is the heat since we plan on staying at least two winter nights off the road. The furnace has been pulled, uncovered, inspected, and cleaned, but we are still unable to light the pilot. We are planning on replacing the heater, but a new heating unit could run us between $400-$700! Because we would rather spend that $400-$700 on our trip, We are looking for indoor space heating units that run on LP Gas as alternatives.

The following space heaters came to mind:

This Mr. Heater unit sports up to 18,000 in BTUs and will definitely heat the RV from the rear sleeping area to the front cabin. It's $144.99 online and +/-$5.00 in the store, depending on which one you go to--yet they are usually limited in stock by this time of year.

The Hollywood Buzz on Motor Homes...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The video above shows a segment of the Today Show that covers the Hollywood craze about the Airstream motor home. Better known as the Silver Bullet, these easily modified motor homes have become accessories to movie stars like Matthew McConaughey, Steve Carrell, Pamela Anderson, and Matt Modine. While the body style has been around for 80 years, they are used as modern homes away from home, decorations on top of luxury hotels, and even have become trends in music videos. The Silver Bullet has become so popular that Kate Pierson of the B-52s even has a campground full of vintage ones! As a collectors item and a current luxury, Hollywood stars can find comfort and value in these motor homes.

Junkyard Finds

The good thing about having a weekend free is that we can spend all Saturday afternoon gathering materials, start on a project before sundown, and finish up before nightfall on Sunday. Productivity rose to an all time high this weekend as we set out to the local (not really local, it's like 20 miles away) junkyard in search of solutions to our RV problems.

The gas caps that we have on both of the RV tanks are the old non-locking gas caps and they are pain to mount on. The man got so fed up with the gas caps that we made a special trip to the junkyard just for threaded screw-in mounts. And if you try to replace the gas caps, you're going to have to replace the filler neck that runs to the tank as well. Lucky for us, we found an older truck to pull them off of and two screw-in caps off an old duel-tank van to top them off.

The pot-of-gold was in the old Dodge hi-top that was sitting in the middle of the Big Trucks section. Its big bubble-gum blue doors locked in big comfortable reclining seats suitable for long trips. They look just like Business-class airplane seats--the plush kind with the over-sized headrests. They are so luxurious that I wanted to put them in the living room! One of the seats and its mounting bracket were already pulled, so Johnny spent about ten laborious minutes unbolting the driver's seat. Two seats and brackets for the work of one and at $20.99 a pop, we got a great deal!

After a few more menial tasks like pulling the 12V lighter from some of the vans and all the interior light bulbs, and we called the junkyard trip a success.

Oooh that smell... Can't you smell that smell?

A few weeks ago, we tested the gas lines to make sure that the stove works. This amounted to big successes and an even larger victory dance for all of us! I wanted to take the test even further and see just how productive that little oven is. I turned on the propane, turned the dial on the stove, lit the pilot light with a match, and fired up the oven! It was not enough for me to see the blue flame. After all, the proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the chocolate chip cookies.

I found out that I don't have a cookie sheet small enough to put in the portable oven, so I used a mini-muffin cup pan. It worked just as well and cookie dough eats the same no matter what shape it's in!

RV = $900
Parts to get the RV running = $300+ dollars.
Experiencing the smell of fresh cookies baking throughout the RV = Priceless.

Study Shows that People Prefer Luxury Camping.

Classic literature of every age and civilization overflows with stories about the loss of ideals, the coming of age, and the constant cultural withdrawal from traditional values, which eventually leaves society morally bankrupt. Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau blamed civilization's degradation of morals on its loss of touch with nature. Modern cultural enthusiasts like Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves To Death (1985), pointed fingers at society's love of entertainment as the main constituent behind the collapse of integrity and the intellectual mind. Changing ideals between generations buries, resurrects, then entombs traditional beliefs in an unbreakable cycle. Evidence of our evolving culture can be observed in all aspects of life--even in camping culture! There exists a conflict in ideology between traditionalist campers who enjoy the isolation of the outdoors and modern campers who invite urban conveniences on vacation. A recent study conducted by Doctoral Candidates from the University of Washington and published in the Journal of Leisure Research in 2009 suggests that while campers and managers of campgrounds agree on the vacationing objective of camping, they disagree between themselves about the types of activities that define "camping".

Traditional campers define camping as recreation by staying in the comfort of the great outdoors. They do not view the lack of amenities as a limitation, but enjoy the freedom of being able to sleep, eat, and cook wherever they find themselves using only the resources that they can carry on their backs combined with what is available in nature to do so.

Modern campers prefer to bring more facets of urban civilization with them to camp including, but not limited to technology, telecommunications, gas stoves/grills, air mattresses, and sometimes ac-powered electronics. They seek a balance between the functionality of civilization and the beauty of nature.

Researchers from the University of Washington observed and surveyed campers and managers of ten different modern (developed) campgrounds situated in state parks and National Forests and Parks within the borders of Washington. The study defined modern campgrounds as, "large and intensely developed campgrounds with water systems, flush toilets, paved roads, increased supervision, and special facilities for trailers" (Clark, Hendee, Campbell, 2009) The purpose of the study was to determine camper and campground manager motives for choosing a developed campground versus a primitive campground, analyze the activities campers find acceptable in such campgrounds, and identify problems with developed campgrounds.

The study found that 67% of survey participants prefer to stay in developed campgrounds with modern conveniences, while only 16% enjoy wilderness and back country. This could suggest a number of things: 1) Campers would rather not do without plumbing, electricity, and modern luxury for the duration of their stay or 2) that even as self-explanatory as "wilderness" sounds, those who stay in modern campgrounds may have a different idea of what wilderness means.

Survey respondents were also asked to rank how important several traditional values about camping are. 78% of survey respondents thought that it was very important to gain awareness of unspoiled beauty through camping,66% want to teach their children about the great outdoors, and 62% go camping to get emotional satisfaction from solitude and tranquility. The majority of survey respondents still report consistent beliefs with traditional campers with one minor change--44% state that it is not important to get away from people other than present camping party. This reflects that modern campers are starting to adopt a more social camping culture.

Among campground activities, survey respondents rate strict enforcement of campground rules, playgrounds for children, camper discussion and singing, people bringing city conveniences into the campgrounds, other campers staying relatively close to respondent's camping party, and consumption of alcoholic beverages as acceptable during their stay at the campground. A vast majority state that these activities enhance their camping experiences. The only activity that people say would detract from their camping experience is the use of motorbikes on the campground! This data further reinforces that camping is more of a social event and that camping should share similar amenities to basic hotels.

Along with this "civilized camping" comes the problems of civilization in general. The study states that campers and managers perceive that horseplay, excessive noise, littering, campground rule violations, and vandalism plague these developed campgrounds.

I am somewhat on the fence of this debate between traditional and modern camping. I enjoy camping for the scenic views of nature, photographic opportunities, peace and quiet, and time away from the responsibilities of my city life, but I also enjoy the comforts of technology, my mobile phone, and a warm enclosure to sleep in (I hate bugs and I always fear that I'll wake up covered in bug bites from an unknown origin like Ren in that episode where he and Stimpy spent the night outdoors.) Television and the Internet are not necessary and take away from absorbing the beauty of nature. But when night falls and you can no longer see anything without artificial light (which the bugs immediately flock to), it does provide the perfect opportunity to watch horror movies in the middle of nowhere and scare the pants off the people you're camping with.

What do you think? Where do you lie along the lines of traditionalist and modern camping?

Source:
Clark, R, Hendee, J, & Campbell, F. (2009). Values, behaviors, and conflict in modern camping culture. Journal of Leisure Research, 41 (3), 377-393.

East Coast Campgrounds

It was not until recently that I had the means to do some real camping. In all my years of life, I believe I have only stayed in two real campgrounds, with the Fontana Village Campground (pictured above) being the most recent. Now that the RV is nearly road ready, I am gearing up to seek out campground spots on the East Coast. I am particularly looking for quiet and scenic areas--with or without electric and water amenities--for low prices. If you have any suggestions, leave a comment!! I may even add those locations to my new map at the bottom of my blog!

Favorite Campgrounds

America's biggest travel resource, The Travel Channel, released its Editor's pick of six of the country's best RV Parks--none of which are in my area of course. The Editor seems to favor places with the most modern amenities: Power, WiFi, cable TV hookups, pools, and clubhouses. Some of the places are conveniently located near National landmarks and carry pricier camping fees than nearby hotels! Check out what made the list here and then tell me where your favorite campgrounds are and why.

A Problem With The Gray Water Tank

Testing the water system on Saturday gave way to two new problems in our RV. The first being that the pressured water through the system is spewing out of the city water hose hookup. We put the cap on it--even replaced that cap twice--but still, the city water hook-up continues to water the garden.

The other problem is that our 35-year-old gray water tank has a large slice of age through it.



While we rejoiced wildly about the water pressure coming through the kitchen and bathroom sinks, we forgot that all drains lead to the gray water tank. Our fun promptly ended when we stepped out into the side yard by the RV and saw that we created a fresh pond in the comfort of our backyard.

We hope that fiberglass patching will work since replacing the gray water tank requires that we replace all the plumbing, which could be costly. In the meantime, I will hit the forums and see what other users have done.

Oh the Water is Cool and the Water is Blue

Warm weather, sunshine, clear schedules, and an extra hand in labor made up the recipe for a productive RV repair day. We have 10 weeks until the R1 Convention at Deals Gap and we need to make this RV livable, drivable, comfortable, and aesthetically pleasing (in that order). Our goal for today was to fix the problems we have been experiencing with the water system: the worn fill hose, the lack of pressure from the water pump, and the leaking toilet.

At first, we were reluctant to purchase a replacement plastic hose similar to the worn one that was on the RV when we purchased it. Because of the way that the tank sits in its storage unit and it's odd direction away from the filler neck, we wanted to plumb the fill hose to make replenishing the potable water tank easier. We tried two alternatives, (a) plumbing the tank like you would a house using flexible PVC and (b) using clear vinyl hose for its flexibility. The lack of space between the tank and the wall meant that straight connectors, flex PVC, and connecting elbows just would not fit. The limited space proved a challenge for the rigid vinyl hose and our determination to make it work resulted in a broken filler neck.

Two weeks ago, I bought a replacement plastic fill hose from an eBay seller called randpcarriage for $1.50 per foot. This was much cheaper than the clear hose and flex-PVC hoses that we tested to no avail. The hose clamped easily to the tank, fit adequately in the space, and ran up the filler neck with little hassle.



Next, we conquered the water pump issues by running thin vinyl hose from the tank to the water pump.



Once we replaced the hose, we filled up the water tank by running city water from the hose outside our non-mobile home to the new filler hose we just replaced. There were no leaks in the filler hose, giving us our first victory for the weekend!



One single flip of the switch next to the sink activated the water pump and water flowed freely to the water pump and out to the rest of the line! The kitchen and bathroom sinks ran water well and I learned how to activate the shower when I inadvertently pushed up on a lever and a torrential downpour came down on me. The toilet gave us a splendid swirl in a spectacular show of how fierce that water pump works!





We have water and this earmarks the beginning of a habitable motor home!

A drink for me and a drink for you

[ Product page for fill hose ]

Another Project: LED Lights

The dollar store is a wonderful place where you can pick up plenty of useful items for a dollar. I picked up about $10 worth of Sunbeam Magnetic Automatic LED lights for use in closet doors and drawers. The setup has two parts: a single LED covered by a diffuser and a magnetic strip. The light comes on when the magnetic strip is pulled away from the LED light and turned off when the magnetic strip is flush with it. The strip and the light have sticky double-sided tape for mounting. I thought it would be an excellent idea to mount these in every drawer and cabinet in the RV so that we're not wasting the energy of our house battery.

The way the doors are in the RV do not allow for the magnetic strips to mount flush enough to the lights when the cabinet doors and draws are closed. We wither need to stack the magnetic strip with double-sided tape or modify all of the magnetic strips to include stronger magnets.

This project will have to wait until we know the main functions of the RV work.

Tidy is the Way

A very very heartful and big thank you to Johnathan for all of his efforts to clean the RV. Thank you for scraping the clear coat off the counter, sweeping the mess out of the floor, and making a cleaning supplies cabinet. The interior of the RV is much cleaner because of you.

Can't wait for our first trip.

Water, Water Everywhere

March 20

The wave of beautiful weekend weather which we have been waiting for has come and 'tis the season to work on the RV. The temperature hit the 70's today and we were eager to play with water! We got down to the serious business of investigating the leak in the water system. There are several interrelated problems at different ends of the water network and all of these issues prevent the water system from working fluidly: The first is that hose between the filler neck (the exterior portion where you insert a water hose to fill the potable water tank) and the tank is old, flimsy, and has several leaks. It needs to be replaced. The second is that the toilet is leaking due to either the crack in the side of the toilet commode, a gasket/o-ring that needs to be replaced, or a combination of both. A third problem that may be caused by lack of pressure because of the first two problems is that the water pump cannot deliver water to the kitchen sink.

To approach a solution to this problem, we decided to start from the outside in--beginning with the filler neck and fill hose. Last week, I gave details about pulling up the tank. We sanitized the tank with a cup of bleach and rinsed the tank out until the scent of bleach became undetectable. Here is a picture of the water tank as we were sanitizing it:



The water tank lives underneath the dinette bench seat closest to the cockpit.



Herein lies the water tank in the RV.




The tank has two outputs on the side of it: one to hook up a hose that runs to the water pump, where the water pump creates pressure to push water out to the shower, bathtub, and kitchen sink. The other output on the side of the tank is a drain spigot that leads to a hole in the floor to drain the tank.



The drain spigot was missing so the one that you see in the picture above is its replacement. Here is a closer look:



After replacing the spigot, we fit the tank into its spot underneath the dinette bench seat.



As you can see from the picture, there is no fill hose running from the tank to the filler neck. The boyfriend believes that we can use elbows, collars, and bushings to plumb straight access to the filler hose. I disagree, and I believe we just need to replace the damaged flexible hose that is there. We tried two types of hoses --flexible pvc and clear vinyl hose to little avail.

1.5 feet of flexible PVC cost around $6.00. 1 foot of clear vinyl tubing cost about $3.50. I was able to purchase a foot of plastic water tank fill hose for $1.50 from the Internet.

As for the toilet issues, the boyfriend removed the driver's seat to get to the water hookup that connects to the toilet. A broken threaded connector was responsible for the leaky toilet that flooded us out. He replaced this connector, but we could not evaluate the effectiveness of this solution without fixing the rest of the holes in the system.

When the weather is warm enough to play with water again, we will attempt to fix the system.

New Soap Dispensers

I found a good deal on these automatic soap dispensers at Harbor Freight. If they are suction cup mounted, I can get a set of three to mount in the shower of the RV. I want to place one by the sink for antibacterial hand soap and two on the wall of the shower for shampoo and body wash.






They run on AA's so the motion-sensor probably won't activate every time we open that door. Besides all of the amenities, they're only $4.97 a pop.

That's what I love about Harbor Freight. They have so many functional items that I can find a convenient use at a small price.

I still want the disc brake clock for the kitchen.

Dollar Store AWESOME Cleaner totally works

Remember the huge nasty grease stain above the cooktop? If not, it looked like this:



I shot the wallpapered wall with AWESOME cleaner and let it sit for a total of two minutes before wiping it off and this is the shiny, squeaky clean result:



There's no way I would have known that that little vent behind the fan box used to be white.

Dollar Store AWESOME cleaner works!

Some More Minor Repairs

The boyfriend got tool happy and made plenty of minor adjustments to the hardware of the RV. Some of the locks and cabinet handles were misaligned and did not close so he remounted the handles and moved them accordingly. Now, all the cabinets with functioning handles close and lock properly!

Johnathan was particularly bothered by the fact that the RV bathroom door does not shut without turning the handle, so the boyfriend fixed that too.

A few of the receptacle plugs on the wall were broken and/or disjointed.

We picked up new receptacles for less than $2.00 at the Walmart and the end result looked like this:

Happy plugging!

Never do go to far from the apron.

I began giving the interior a bath starting with my favorite spot in the motorhome--the stovetop and range. I bought new wire brush set from Harbor Freight with the intention of scrubbing the thirty years worth of grime and rust from the top of the stovetop, fan, grating, and vent.



Scrubbing an hour with baking soda by my side amounted to very little progress with that rusty old cooktop!!

Valentine's Day morning, we took a trip to the hardware store (we're so romantic!) and picked up a few items for the project that we have going on. Power tools make everything go faster, so I hooked up a wire brush to the drill and scrubbed away at the cooktop some more. It took off layers of caked on grime and rust, but didn't get all of it. Not having this cooktop to my satisfaction means no fun camping trips, so I decided on a different route--painting the cooktop.

I had several concerns about painting the cooktop: the first being about flammability of the paint and whether the paint could endure surfaces exposed to heat. The second was about the off-gasing of toxins throughout the motor home and being cooked into the food. Fortunately, Rust-Oleum had a high-heat paint solution for painting BBQ grills, stove pipes, and--you guessed it--stovetops.




3 Coats later and the stovetop went from this:




To this:



Once we get the LP Gas running through the camper, we'll light the stove to let the top coat burn off for a while and then the surface should be fine to cook on!

FINALLY- Warm enough weather to do some RV Work.

The weather finally hit the 40s and melted the snow away, so we were able to hook the RV up to the house and run a space heater out to work on the RV over the weekend.

Johnny hooked up a water hose to the exterior fill spicket to fill up the potable water tank. Much of the water from the water line ended up in the tank, but a large portion of puddled up on the motorhome floor, signifying a leak somewhere between the fill hose and the tank. Because it may be a problem the tank itself, we will have to wait for a warm day to get under the RV, unbolt the tank and inspect for cracks/leaks. We have identified that we need to replace the worn fill hose that runs from the external spicket to the holding tank.

Spring Cleaning.

Since the weather has kept me from doing actual mechanical work to the vehicle, I decided that the only thing I can really do lately is to clean house.

I dropped by the Dollar Store to pick up some cleaning products.



They were running a 2 for $1 special on grip shelf liner so I doubled up on liner for the cabinets.



Right now, the forecast calls for this rain-sleet mix to ice over into snow. By the weekend, the weatherman says that it should be in the 40s and sunny this weekend. Hopefully he is right and I can get some work done..

Another family member stopping by to look at my latest investment.

City ordinances say that the RV has to be parked behind the front of the house. In fact, the City Inspector left us a kind note that informs us of following.:

"No major recreational equipment shall be parked or stored on any lot in a residential district except in a carport or enclosed building or behind the nearest portion of a building to a street; provided, however, that such equipment may be parked anywhere on residential premises for not longer than twelve (12) hours during loading and unloading. "

Needless to say, we had to move the RV around to the backyard. When the snow melted, it left our low-lying yard and driveway a runny, muddy mess. Our attempt to follow a city ordinance quickly turned into a mudslinging off-road adventure. The boyfriend threw the RV in reverse, revved the engine, pulled into the muddy banks of our wayward yard and dug a 20-foot trench right along the side of the house parallel to our grouchy neighbor's fence! The RV made it to the side yard which is "technically behind the nearest portion of the building to a street" so we are as much in compliance with the law as we can be at the moment.

This also put the RV right in the middle of my canine's running area. I did not make this keen observation until Khalista bolted out the back door! I honestly thought she had to pee like there was no tomorrow, but she headed straight for the 35 years of smells coming from the RV.


Look who's suddenly taken an interest in the RV.

She canted her curious head and threw up her curious ears and cast her curious eyes inside the doorway to see what it was I was working on.... Behold, she found a whole house that she could run around in and a couch that she won't get in trouble for sitting on!

More Pictures of the RV Interior

The last two weekends of inclement weather resulting in 8 inches of snow (aka Hampton Roads' Own Snowtorious B-I-G) have made it difficult to spend any time evaluating and modifying the Rogue Leader. One co-worker joked that I should plug the RV into the house and then a space heater to the inside to continue operations with my project throughout all weather conditions. Jobs that require standing outside the RV (like testing the water and gas systems and motor work) do not quite favor that idea.

I am waiting for warmer weather to work on the RV. In the meantime, I wanted to show some more pictures of the inside.


Dinette, bathroom door (with the only full-length mirror in the motorhome) and the cockpit.


The couch and fold out bed. New cushions coming soon!


Electric refrigerator and closet space.


Tight shower quarters


Good thing my side of the family is short. We can sit comfortably on this pot. The men are going to have to stop at Wal-mart for #2.