So what have we been doing in the last few weeks?

I'll warn you right now this will be a long post.  My posting took quite a break with the lead up to surgery, and one of my main focuses was to keep very busy, and my mind off the situation.  

First off, I serviced our Onan generator, a pretty straightforward and easy job, which I end up doing about every 18 months, filters, oil, fuel, and air, and oil change.  The new base plate for our truck came in, so we decided to tackle it.  Jan and I got the truck ready, and under I went to remove the bolts to get the bumper off and right back out I came, lying on my back under something and trying to work above me for some unknown reason makes me literally sick, weird, but true.  Well, BIL Tom came to the rescue!

Of course, before anything else, you just have to look under the hood:-)
Harold, my back, Bob, and Scott all oohing and aahing

My attempt

Tom's rescue

Then as we progressed, Harold came over and gave us a hand.

Bumper off

Three of us working to install the first side of the baseplate

Tom tightening up the first side

With all the help the job went quickly.

Bumper going back on

Fit perfectly!

Then on to the Aqua-Hot service, another easy job with the very convenient location in our coach, a new filter, nozzle, and a good cleaning of the burner compartment.

We even snuck in a nice lunch with Harold and Debbie.

A delicious lunch at Made in Italy

Interspersed among our projects were two farewell parties.  First was a good bye to Bob and Harlean, good friends, who have been coming here for over 30 years, that have elected to not return, I think they actually might miss the snow in Maine:-)

Good bye Bob and Harlean, you will be missed!

And the second farewell was to Jack and Betty, the virtual King and Queen of the park.  Due to health reasons they are returning to be with family in South Dakota and will certainly be missed by all.

Good bye Jack and Betty!

The park will have a different feel next year when these two couples are no longer here.

Another big project we tackled was to install Guardian Plates on our front two slides.  As I have mentioned in the past, Monaco didn't do a great job with the corners of its slides which have been prone to water entry and rot.  Chris at TalinRV, and also a Monaco owner devised a solution to permanently fix the problem.  With a bit of work, you install a quality stainless steel corner, and roller plate to totally encapsulate the corner.

First, the slide has to be raised

The sealant needs to be cut

Then with a die grinder, the ineffective Monaco trim piece needs to be cut away

After most is cut away, the rest is removed with a chisel,
so the plate will fit tightly around the corner

The cutting and chiseling does get a bit tedious

Then when the trim is off, the edge cleaned up, prepped for epoxy, you slip it in place and drill and rivet.

Applying the epoxy

Slipping the plate in place

The riveting, I'll tell you stainless steel rivets are tough!

Finished product

A few spots were a challenge

Harold and I got pretty creative to get to a couple of the rivets

We also installed plates for the slide rollers to roll over

With that done, we wanted to get our cargo carrier and rod vault remounted on the new truck.  We had a Thule rack on the previous truck and after waiting weeks and weeks for Thule to produce a fit kit for our new 2109 Ram, we decided the heck with them, and looked to Yakima to see if they had a fit kit.  Sure enough they did, so we ordered a new setup from them and will continue to use them, a USA company, for our rack and carrier needs, yes I am kicking myself we didn't use them from the get go.

Which brought us up to the surgery, our son Jason came down to help and ended up here for several days, his visit was much appreciated.

Our son Jason

So after taking him back to the airport, and celebrating a successful outcome, with BIL Tom's help we raised our glasses to good times ahead!