With summer finally here, a lot of us who have been sitting still much of the winter are hitting the road, and weekend warriors are getting their RVs ready for vacations and summer camping trips.

RVs are complex machines, and while I am far from a technical person, even I am capable of taking a few steps to make sure our motorhome is in the proper shape for the long miles ahead. It doesn’t take a mechanic or an RV tech to prep an RV for hot weather travel.

It takes just an hour or so to inspect your RV or tow vehicle’s chassis systems, which is time well spent, and can avoid hours sitting on the shoulder of the road waiting for a tow truck to arrive, and even more time spent in a repair shop.

The first step is to check all fluid levels: engine oil, transmission fluid, power steering fluid, brake fluid, radiator coolant level, and windshield washer fluid. While you’re in the engine compartment, check your air filter. A dirty air filter can really cut down on your fuel mileage, and make your engine work harder, too. Also, check all of your belts and hoses, as well as hose clamps, for cracks or worn spots that can lead to failure (and expensive repairs) on the road. Spend a few moments looking over your wiring. Is anything frayed or loose? Did critters spend the winter nesting in your engine compartment, gnawing on the wire insulation?

Step two is to check your windshield wiper blades for wear, and then turn them on and be sure both are working properly. Then, check all exterior lights, including headlights, turn signals, emergency flashers, brake lights, and marker lights.

Next, check your starting and house batteries to be sure they are filled with distilled, that all cables are tight, and that there is no corrosion on any connections.

Walk around your RV, looking for any leaks, and if you spot any suspicious spots on the ground, check to see where they came from.

Your tires are next. Check for uneven wear, any cracking or weather checking, and use a good tire pressure gauge to be sure all are properly inflated. I use a PressurePro tire monitoring system to make this chore easier, and to monitor my tires when on the road.

Next, deploy all of your awnings. Are they working properly? Are they worn or frayed? Are the anchor clips on your window awnings secure?

Once you are done outside the RV, go inside and make sure that your air conditioner(s) are working properly. Extend and retract your slide rooms. Do the same with your leveling jacks. Check your refrigerator and water heater for proper operation if the RV has been stored all winter. When things sit for long periods of time, the gremlins seem to go to work on them.

No matter where you live, or where you spent the winter before starting your summer travels, it is always easier and cheaper to get a problem fixed at home than it is when you are broken down on the road.

Now that you have your RV ready for the road, take a minute to check out Bad Nick’s latest blog post, Oops! and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – You can only be strong and useful for the people around you if you honor your needs as much as theirs.

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It’s entertaining just to look around you in Las Vegas. Not just for the fancy casinos, but some of the people you see on the sidewalks and in the restaurants seem to be from some other world. And not one I’d want to visit!

I’m not sure which it was, but I saw either a six foot tall peacock strolling down the Strip the other day, or the best reason to outlaw the Mohawk hairdo that ever existed.

Okay, I know that I’m a fat guy.  I’m not proud of that, but I have reached that stage in my life where I accept myself as I am. So I don’t wear clothing like wife beater T-shirts, or go around without a shirt on at all. I just can’t subject the general public to that kind of visual abuse.

But here in Vegas I’ve seen both men and women who make me look anorexic wearing less clothing than you’ll see on college kids on Spring Break! There should be a rule that if you have more square inches of skin showing than you do square inches of fabric covering it, said skin should be able to defy the laws of gravity! If you have more belly hanging out under your shirt than what the shirt covers, just stay inside, okay?

Maybe just as interesting are the women we’ve seen here who are on the far side of middle age, but who run around in slinky clothes, wearing enough makeup to camouflage a Winnebago, trying to compete with their granddaughters for attention. Ladies, take a hint – if your varicose veins clash with your fishnet stockings, it’s time to reevaluate your wardrobe.

People aren’t the only things that will make you take a second glance around here. Yesterday we spotted this truck at a Lowes store. Now there’s a guy who can probably fix your leaky faucet!

When we went to brunch yesterday, we spotted this pickup and camper that have seen better days, but the owner obviously has a good sense of humor. Check out the sign in the windshield.

Another sign, which I missed, but my friend Joe Long sent me from a recent visit he made to Las Vegas, is the kind of place where I’d like to hang out.

Even the names of some of the businesses here are memorable. Greg White found this ad in a tourist guide he picked up somewhere while we were running around.   I guess there are some serious pet lovers in Las Vegas!

Some folks come to Las Vegas to gamble, some come to see the shows, some come to people watch,  and some come to get married. My pal Greg White, on the other hand, apparently came to Las Vegas just to work on my vehicles!

After spending hours changing out the motor for our jacks and slide rooms a couple of days ago, yesterday Greg was back at it. The original 40 amp fuse for the slide motor had burned out when the motor started failing, and since I couldn’t find a replacement fuse, we stuck a 30 amp in as a temporary fix. Since then I got the proper fuse, and Greg crawled under the Winnebago to put it in.

Then he swapped out the air chuck for the air compressor under the front end of the motorhome for one that will work with a tow truck if we ever need to release the air brakes to be towed.

We have had a problem several times with the battery in our van going dead while we were towing it behind the RV. Greg installed a plug-in charge line from the motorhome’s batteries to the van’s battery, which will alleviate that issue.

Another thing that has been a constant irritation is that before we bought our van, the previous owner had installed a cheap security system that never worked right, and we didn’t have the remote control for it. After two years of trying to find a replacement remote control at several Ford dealers and aftermarket shops, we gave up. The doors lock automatically when we start the engine, and unlock when we turn the engine off. That’s fine when Terry and I are both in the van, but if there was just one of us, we were constantly laying across the passenger seat reaching to lock or unlock the door. Greg tracked down the wire that powers the passenger door lock and disabled it, which will make life a lot easier for us in the future. 

I hope Greg never discovers the slot machines and buffet dinners here in town, or he’ll disappear and I’ll never get anything else done! 

Bad Nick didn’t want anything to do with all of that work, so he stayed inside and posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled The Happy Pauper. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich – Napoleon

In a lengthy e-mail I received yesterday, a couple wanted to share their great desire to escape the rut they are living in and experience the joys of fulltime RV travel, but they also admitted that they have some serious misgivings, and asked a lot of “what if” questions.

What if our RV breaks down someplace where we don’t know a good mechanic? What if one of us gets sick? What if one of our parents gets sick or dies while we’re hundreds of miles away?

I know that to these folks all of their concerns are unique, but in truth, every fulltime RVer has asked themselves all of the same what if questions. In fact, when we were teaching at Life on Wheels, I developed an entire seminar called The Reluctant RVer to address these questions and others that wannabe fulltimers ask.

Some common concerns that new fulltimers face include separation from family and friends; serious illness or death on the road; accidents or mechanical breakdowns; leaving our comfort zone and stepping into the unknown; losing our financial cushion; adapting to the RV lifestyle; and never being able to afford another home.

Yes, people do get sick on the road, RVs do break down in strange towns, and unfortunately, sometimes family members get sick and even die when we’re not there with them. Life happens. We have faced each and every one of these problems at one time or another. We got through them, and trust me, you can too. We cannot spend our lives worrying about what if, or we’ll never get anywhere.

What happens if we break down in a strange town? That’s why we have our Coach-Net road service. They will send out a qualified repair person or a tow truck capable of getting us to a garage that can fix whatever is wrong and get us back on the road. That’s also why we created our RV Good Guys guide to honest and dependable RV repair shops coast to coast. Nobody can purchase an ad in the guide, the only way a repair shop gets listed is if we have had personal experience with them, or someone we know and trust recommends them. You can order this guide from our RV Bookstore.

What happens if we get sick while traveling? Any RV park manager should be able to point you toward the nearest hospital or walk in clinic in their area. In our case, when Terry was diagnosed with cancer nine years ago, having wheels under our house allowed us to be where she could get the best treatment, and to return for follow-up examinations as needed. Companies like Sky Med will also fly you and your spouse or partner home, or to wherever you designate, and then provide a professional driver to transport your RV to a designated place.

A few years ago we were in Ohio when Terry’s father was diagnosed with cancer. Again, because we have wheels under our house, we were free to travel back to Arizona to be with her family during her father’s treatment and recovery.

Everything in life has a certain amount of risk associated with it, whether we are driving to the grocery store, having a Sunday picnic with the family, or watching a baseball game. I don’t know what calamities may befall you as you enjoy the fulltime RV lifestyle, but you can rest assured that sooner or later something will go wrong. Just as it would if you stayed in your sticks and bricks house.    

But I’d much rather deal with whatever problems fate sends my direction while I’m living my dream instead of being back in my old workaholic lifestyle.

I’ll always remember that when her doctors first told us that Terry had Stage Four cancer, and the outcome looked grim, she said “No matter what happens, at least we had eighteen months to live our dream.”

A lot of people never get the chance to follow their dreams. Don’t let the fear of “what if” keep you from making yours come true.

Thought For The Day – Growing old is inevitable. Growing up is optional.

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Yesterday morning we were up and getting the bus ready to travel a couple of hours before we are normally even out of bed. We had a short driving day planned, only 150 miles from Elkhart, Indiana to Muskegon, Michigan. We never pull out of a campground before 10 a.m., because we prefer to let the morning rush hour traffic get over with, though Elkhart doesn’t have much of a rush hour anyway. 

But, things don’t always go as we plan, do they? We have a set routine we follow when we are traveling; while Terry stows things away inside the bus, I check our oil and water, give the engine compartment a quick inspection to be sure the motor is still where I left it, then unhook our utilities, stow our TV dish, and scan the bus and van tires with our PressurePro tire monitoring system to be sure of proper inflation.

With all of that done, we hook up the van to our Blue Ox tow bar, disengage the Remco driveshaft disconnect, and do a brake light and turn signal check to be sure everything is working properly. The whole procedure only takes a few minutes, and while we used a printed pre-trip checklist in our early days, after ten years of fulltiming, we have it down to memory.

As I was checking things inside our engine compartment, I spotted green antifreeze dripping from a short three inch diameter hose that carries radiator fluid to the engine. Since we were parked on grass, there had not been a puddle to notice before. Closer inspection revealed a hole in the hose.

We carry a few spare parts with us, as all seasoned bus nuts do, so we happened to have some extra hose of the same diameter in one of our storage bays. We put a bucket under the hose to catch as much fluid as possible, and replaced the bad one with new, then refilled the radiator.

The entire process wasn’t that hard, even for someone as inept of a mechanic as myself. (Let’s be honest, Miss Terry did most of the work while I tried to look busy in case anybody wandered by.)

With all of that done, we cleaned up (in case you have never been around a bus conversion, all you have to do is open the engine bay doors and grease and oil jump out and cling to you), made a stop at the dump station, and pulled out of Elkhart Campground about 11:30 a.m.

This just illustrates how important it is to do a pre-trip inspection every day when you are traveling. You never know what minor problem is just waiting to become a major problem once you’re on the highway. While it was aggravating to lose 90 minutes of traveling time and get all dirty replacing the hose, it was still a lot easier than trying to replace a hose on a hot engine while broken down on the shoulder of the highway, or waiting for our roadside service company to send out a tow truck.

We had a short nineteen mile trip west on the Indiana Toll Road to South Bend, where we picked up U.S. Highway 31 and followed it north 130 miles to Muskegon. We have a week’s reservations at Fisherman’s Landing, a city owned RV park and marina, and we plan to spend the time visiting family here, and maybe we’ll even get our kayaks in the water!

Thought For The Day – It’s hard to make a comeback when you haven’t been anywhere.

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