More Repairs & 20th Anniversary!

We had another couple of sunny days! 

First up: recaulking the windows and awnings on our driver's side and installing gutters on the main awning.

Window awning recaulking

Aaron had actually built the gutters way back in the fall when we were first getting ready to start this adventure, but he didn't get them installed before we left.  We figured we'd install them on the road, only to figure out that we didn't have a tall enough ladder with us to really do so safely.  So they made a trip untouched in our cabinets until we got back on the farm!  Some glue and a couple zip ties later and they're up on the awning and *hopefully* will help keep the running water off the side of the RV.

New gutters before and after painting

Installing the new gutters

We also reglued the facing to one of our basement doors.  Aaron banged the doors pretty strongly getting the facing back in place and accidentally broke one of the door strut attachments (these things were falling like flies in the fall when he was doing repairs, so no big surprise there).  Our next sunny day he fixed this with a new steel plate, epoxy, and a few rivets.

Adding rivets to the new metal plate

All done!  The gray is JB Weld epoxy, Aaron's
go-to for small gluing jobs

Our final and MAJOR project was lubricating the 40ish lubrication points underneath the RV.  This took a LOT longer than we expected, mostly because it took forever to locate all the grease fittings.  Fortunately we had a list of what we were looking for...as Aaron lubricated the various points, we discovered that the ones that were easy to find appeared to be well lubricated...but the ones that were harder to find seemed like they hadn't been lubricated in a LONG time...which suggested to us that the previous owners did NOT have this list and just lubricated what they could see.  Everything should be in good shape now though!  One of the lubrication points was a two person job - you had to hold a finger over a release hole while pumping grease into a fitting so it would go out the other end of the joint - so I even had to get up under the RV to help!  Unfortunately we don't have a picture of that rare event.

Trying to locate grease fittings

Aaron and (mostly) my dad have a slowly ongoing project of trying to figure out how to straighten or support our front hydraulic jack.  It's at a bit of an angle - we think the previous owners ran over something - and when the jack is extended a lot it just looks precarious.  My dad has fabricated an impressive looking bracket out of steel, and we went to a Fastenal location to get some extra long threaded rods to support the process.  So far we're still in the preparation phase for that so I'll have more details later, but in my ongoing reporting on the impacts of coronavirus on our lives, I thought I'd share this picture from shopping at Fastenal.

Social distancing

That's Aaron in the neon yellow shirt.  They wouldn't let you in the shop except to pay - an employee met you at the door, noted what you were looking for, and went inside the shop to try to find it.  Social distancing was going great with just us and this guy, but then another person walked up and stood right at the door and encroached on everyone's space.  So it was halfway working?

Finally...it's our 20th anniversary today!  Staying home/staying safe this rainy (and sleety??) day in Blacksburg is a far cry from our planned 2 month cruising trip in Europe, but we're doing our best to celebrate nonetheless.  I made Disney's Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Banana French Toast this morning for breakfast, which was quite a hit.

Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Banana French Toast