Day-Night Shades

This is the Day-Night shade over the kitchen cabinet . For those not familiar with day-night shades, they pull up and down with the night position (as shown) not letting anyone see in or out. Raise the bar that appears white (plastic reflexs the light while the fabric absorbs it so it appears white) and the curtain is sheer for day and you can raise the bottom bar and have no curtain at all.

The whole shade is like an accordion with strings running top to bottom to control the action.

A string in this shade broke shortly after we bought the trailer but we didn't have it repaired because we live in it fulltime and it would have to go into the shop for it to be repaired under warranty. After the warranty had expired and we could take it to the shop for repair the cost was over $100.

Last week the strings in the big day-night (it has four strings) shade in the living room broke and fixing them was now a priority.

I googled the string and came up with http://www.fixmyblinds.com/ , it showed how to fix the shades and I bought the strings at a craft shore.

The sight says the rv day-night shades use 1.4mm string but the smallest I could find was 1.8. I bought it and repaired the small kitchen blind but the 1.8mm was smaller than what came in the shade. I bought a larger size string for the living room shade because it is raised and lower every day.

Total cost for both shades was less than $15 including a large needle I purchased to thread the shades.

Our shades are tan colored and the only thread I could find was white but they actually blend in better as the original thread was a much darker color than the shade material.

London Bridge

No we didn't take a trip to England. The London Bridge is in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

Originally constructed over the Thames River in London, England in the 1830's and dismantled in 1967 piece by piece and reconstructed like a puzzle to become a tourist attraction for the newly formed Lake Havasu City.

It was all over the news at the time and people my age knew about it but many may have forgotten.

Even the original light fixtures are on the bridge.

If you want to read more, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge_(Lake_Havasu_City .

More changes, maybe

We will soon be parked here for a month and I see solar panels in our future. We are using about one gallon of gas a day in our generator. I know $3 and change a day for gas will not make solar panels cost effective for some time, but not having the generator noise is worth something.

We are energy hogs but I think 400watts or so will be about right for our rig, as we have 450amps of battery capacity. We plan to buy them when we get close to Phoenix.

Dang it's cold

We are still in Laughlin and the days are pleasant but the nights are in the mid to upper 30's.

We still don't seem to be making any effort toward leaving here. We plan on attending the RTR (Rubber Tramp Rendezvous) held by Bob Well of
http://www.cheapliving.com fame in January.

I have never been around Quartzsite, Arizona and it should be quite an experience.

Hey Buddy

The temperature is suppose to drop to the mid 30's Sunday night and I did not want to hear the inefficient rv furnace sounding like a jet plane so I purchased a















"Mr. Heater Buddy" . It has an output of 4,000btu on low and 9,000btu on high. It operates on the small 16.4oz propane bottles and with a larger bottle if you buy the optional hose. The white looking pad glows orange but the camera flash hides it.



A 1500 watt electric heater puts out approximately 5100btu on high as 1watt=3.41btu. As you can see, this little heater puts out almost that on low and nearly twice that on high.



I plan to use the bottles so I can move it where it is needed. I will buy an adapter so I can fill the little bottles from our 30 pound tanks.



Even though this is a short lived cold front, I know this heater will be a nice addition as it uses far less propane than the rv furnace and no amps from our batteries.

Much Better

We awoke to a very cloudy day but the wind subsided to a more manageable breeze. We extended our slides and puttered around the house all day.

We are headed to see a move tonight and for the first time in over 2 weeks we did not gamble today. We are still ahead of them and that is very satisfying considering how often we have frequented the casinos.

We saw J. Edger last week and I can say it was the worst movie I have paid to see in a long time.

Slideless

High winds started last night and we pulled in our slides because high winds can damage the awning that cover our slides when they are extended.

Woke up to a light sporadic rain and it appears the wind will last three or four days. Just enough rain that one has to say it rained or be disingenuous.

Appears we will be "slideless" for a few days.