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2001 Harley-Davidson Road King





Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Getting "butterflies"...

The time seems to be just flying by!...and there's so much yet to do! (been very busy with other things lately) Yikes!
All the bedding, towels, much of our bathroom stuff, silverware and other cooking utensils (real and plastic), dishes, glasses (all plastic, paper or Corel, except for a couple of favorite mugs for our tea and coffee), cleaning supplies, tools, hoses, chairs, fishing gear, and some other things I can't recall at the moment...are IN the trailer where they belong. Still have to finish packing the clothes, a few office supplies & paperwork, a few books, computer, camera and other electronic gadgets and charging cords, batteries & flashlights, cooler, the Harley, the bicycles....and ...well, hopefully we will be ready to hit the road next week. Our very first trip! We're still trying to decide if we will actually need the generator or not, and we will probably not stock any food other than all my cooking spices, until we arrive at our destination and get all hooked up.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

"Storage" anywhere I can think of...



Back of bedroom door

Carpet in the garage...


Installed cushy carpet in the garage today. We know...people say "WHY would you put carpet in your garage??!!"....well, anyone who knows William, knows that he keeps the bike in "showroom" condition...and...we want to use the garage as another room sometimes...in other words, "barefoot friendly", so, there you go!

Monday, November 2, 2009

Handy-dandy helpers for trailer modifications...


(Click on picture to enlarge it)

An update to "waiting, waiting"...

Well, the guy finally showed up a few days later, all sheepishly apologetic (but, this time we weren't buying it) and he still didn't have the *diamond-plate for the beavertail(garage door) and the (trailer)tongue that he had been promising, or some of his tools with him for a few other projects, so we just had him install the wheel chock (that he was supposed to bring with him, but also always "forgot", so we went out and bought one). He was supposed to straighten the television, because he installed it crooked, put the light fixture over the bed upright again (he took it out to do the wiring for the dvd-player that he had cut a hole out of the closet wall for next to the bed, but put the light fixture back upside-down), and a few other random things, but we just wanted him to go away at this point, so we decided to just live with the crooked television. As for the dvd-player, we originally thought that a very small shelf just above the tv might work, but the room is very small and the ceiling not very high, so someone could have easily bumped their head on it from time to time. The guy came up with the idea for cutting a hole in the closet. At first we thought that seemed rather drastic for our new "home", but then decided it would be a good idea ...(time will tell). At least the tv and dvd-player seem to be wired correctly and working great, and the guy is gone...so that's that.



DVD-player installed in closet.




The rolled up cable that is hanging on a 3m "Command" hook next to the tv is for hooking up to the laptop computer (it's already connected to the tv) to watch Netflix movies or other computer stuff. Cool, heh?

*Since then, Ben, a very good friend of ours came up with a great (and much less expensive) idea for a beavertail....and then he did an excellent job of installing it! Very precise. Thank you Ben!
"BEAVERTAIL" (garage door ramp extension)

Here are a few pics of some little mods we did ourselves:
Shark hand-vac

"Hook thing" for well...the obvious. We'll probably put a bungee cord across the door when travelling to keep them from banging against the door. ( and there's the new wheel chock).

A couple of extra heavy-duty locks (very difficult to cut). I put heavy-duty velcro on the backs of them to keep them from banging against the trailer door.


Used velcro on the paper-towel holder and soap containers! I won't have to bother moving them now.

Suction-cup "thingy" on shower glass next to bathroom sink for toothbrushes, etc. Also, thinking about maybe installing some kind of small light-weight shelf unit on the wall near the toilet (the only other usable wall-space in there).

*Experimental "work-in-progress"...trying to think of a way to keep from get bruised every time we get in and out of the dinette seats. Pipe insulation seemed like a good (and cheap) idea...but I have to come up with a way for it to NOT look like pipe-insulation. :-)

*UPDATE: Got fed up messing around with the pipe insulation, so I completely abandoned this idea....instead, just adapting to getting in and out of the seats while trying not to get bruised.

Bed modification (oh, so important!)...

An excerpt from a post I left on www.rv.net on 9-28-2009:

..."just brought our new travel trailer toy hauler home and yes, the "bed" is awful. It isn't even a real mattress, just a piece of egg-crate foam about 2 to 3 inches thick, wrapped in cloth material. You can immediately feel the hard wood bed surface by just sitting on it....so...I did some research...and considering our budget...decided to go with the reviews I read on a number of different store websites. The ones that consistently sounded the best were on the Wal-Mart website (from other RVers). Below is a list of the three items we ordered online.

...just unwrapped the Spa Sensations topper today to let it air out for a few days (per instructions)...and then will put a grip pad on top of the plywood base to keep the bedskirt from slipping, another piece of grip pad on that to keep the original mattress from slipping, then the 3" Viscolatex topper on the mattress, then the "puffball" pad on top of that, the quilted mattress pad on top of that, then the fitted sheet (regular Queen size sheet set) and the rest of the bedding. I might have to use those sheet corner grips to keep the sheet from slipping, but I don't know yet. Anyway, according to many reviews I read, it's supposed to feel like heaven. I hope so, because our old bones need it. We're so spoiled in our home!...we bought a king size Sleep Number bed about two years ago and we absolutely LOVE it! It's worth every penny and we never wake up with those terrible backaches anymore!...BUT, we just couldn't really and didn't want to spend that kind of money in the RV. We have so much yet to learn. We thought we would have sold our house about three years ago (we tried!), but that didn't happen, so our plans to buy a large motor home to live in full-time fizzled. We thought about it for awhile and then decided to try to have the best of both worlds on a tight budget, hence our travel trailer toy hauler. We plan to live in it 4 to 6 months at a time or so, basically to escape the Michigan winter....and to fullfill our dreams of exploring this beautiful country, riding our bike and bicycles as much as possible, go fishing, etc.

Here are the items we received from Wal-Mart:

370-Thread Count Jacquard Mercerized Quilted Mattress Pad; Option: queen 5" x 15" x 18" 4 1


300- Threadcount Microgel Puffball Fiber Bed;
Size: Queen 11.2" x 18.4" x 18.5" 10.1 1


Spa Sensations 3'' Viscolatex Topper;
Size: Queen 14.96" x 24.8" x 15.35" 22.7 1


So far, we love it! I feels so good!
Not bad for about $189.00, heh? (not including sheets and blankets, which we also love!...SO soft and lightweight, but warm or cool depending on the weather)."



***Scroll down this page(a different post)to the pic of the tv lying on the bed and you can see how much the layers added to the bed since then***


These pics don't really do the bedding justice. It actually looks much nicer up close (the color too), and if feels and looks like a super soft suede (and it's machine washable).



Also...thinking about getting rid of the little black "leather" window toppers that came with the trailer and replacing them with nice room-darkening, sunlight-resistant curtains at some point.

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