The Many Personalities of the LRT*

 *Little Red Tractor

Most people mow with their yard tractors.  I do too.  Five acres, several times a year, just to keep the weeds down for fire protection. 

But this LRT isn't content with just mowing...

She's almost never this clean

Today, I installed a trailer hitch for moving the boat around.

 

But she can still tow her own trailer

And haul the trash out to the street

And carry a spray rig

With her headlights and a couple cool added LED lights, she can do all this stuff at night too!

She's also good for running down to the mailbox when I'm too lazy to walk, and maybe even making hay... Click on the video!

Betty - 30 days, 6600 Miles in a rented van

First of all, it wasn't me. I ain't that crazy.  Or young.  But Daughter number 1 Jami is.  Every year she goes to Saranac Lake in upstate New York to visit good friends. This year, covid19 made airplane travel and staying in hotels problematic, so she came up with the brilliant (or insane) scheme of renting a van for a month, having dear old dad throw something together to make it livable, and setting off.

Betty

Named for the beloved, fearless, and somewhat wacky Betty White, this Dodge rental van is about to undergo a fast transformation.

Since the furniture had to be installed quickly and removed even more quickly, we had to come up with a unit that could be pre-built and attached to the van framing with velcro straps.

The rental agreement was for 30 days, and not a moment more.  The Hertz pricing algorithm wanted to add hundreds of dollars to the price if she was one day late returning the van.

Here's what we came up with.

And here's the real thing.  Fresh water pumps out of the Sparklets bottle and the sink drains into a five-gallon jug. Jami's brilliant idea of plastic tubs meant secure storage on the road without the need for cupboards, drawers, and doors.
 

The white thing in front is a wastebasket

The trip was not all play.  She works mostly remotely in this covid time, so with this little workstation setup, she could get some work done using a WIFI hotspot.

The plan was for a standard twin bed to be placed opposite the cabinet, made up all the time so she could just flop in after a long day's driving, but at the last minute, sweet cousin, housemate, and fellow adventure traveler Lisa offered to come along and keep her company on at least part of the trip... .

...So the twin bed became bunk beds.

This presented a little problem, because that upper bunk really limited elbow room and the ability for two adults to move around in the van, so...

We came up with a solution. In the daytime, the upper bunk swiveled up and hooked to the ceiling beams with rope clips. Made moving around much easier.

The Master bathroom

Somehow all this needed to fit...

In this...

But she made it work.

Can you tell this is a girl's van? Hint: the rack on the door is for shoes! 😍

With Chewie for a privacy curtain...

And R2D2 for a mascot.

The two road warriors had a cozy little home.

3700 miles out

2900 miles home

   

          Across Lake Michigan on the ferry

Destination: Saranac Lake New York

In the words of songwriter Robert Earl Keen, 

The road goes on forever, but the party never ends.

Campo Grape Harvest 2020

When the grapes are ready, friend and local winemaker Richard Westfall somehow charms a few of us unemployed seniors into showing up at his vineyard at the ungodly hour of 6:45 AM for the harvest. We do it for the experience, for fun, and to see the process, but basically we're slaving away picking grapes for eight hours.

This year we picked Grenache.  We pressed about 30 gallons of it to make rosé, but it all went through the stemmer/crusher, and the rest will ferment for a while with the skins on.

Don't I sound like I know what I'm talking about? Not bad for low-grade field labor.

Stemmer/crusher

Some people, (not me!) have referred to rosé as "garbage wine." But in this winery, garbage cans (clean and new of course) do get used in the process...

They made me use the press because my feet weren't clean enough...

Didn't go home empty-handed.  Two bottles of Westfall Winery's famous Blue-Label Wine!

They actually do have fancy labels, but the ones I got were "sneak previews."  I really shouldn't drink the Zin for at least a year, but I probably will ignore that rule...

Dreams do come true... an air-conditioned shop!

I've been doing woodworking for 50 years. My first projects got done in the living room of an apartment. Most of the rest of the time, my shop was the garage. My poor wife never parked a car in a garage the whole time we were married.

Never have I had the luxury of air conditioning.  Until today.

I bought what's called a 'mini-split' system, which is the same thing installed in the house.  It's halfway between a window air conditioner and a full-house central air unit.  It's really designed for one room or open space, but it's silent and very kind to the electric system.  

Like the central air system you may have in your house, it has an outside unit, but it's so quiet you can barely hear it, and it only runs as fast as it needs to, as opposed to being full-on/full-off like a central air unit.

The inside unit needs to be connected to the outside part with insulated pipes, and since I had already closed in the wall where the pipes needed to go, I cut out a section of sheetrock.

But I saved the piece, so it will go back.

Voila! Tomorrow I'll texture and repaint

Also, eventually another large cabinet will go on that wall, just like the one on the other side of the door.

You're supposed to hire a professional to install these things, but being a "senior on a fixed income" (read "cheap."), I decided to do it myself.

The main reason to hire a professional is that some special equipment is needed.  A vacuum pump and special gauges to suck all the air out of the pipes before letting the freon flow through them.  I just bought the equipment for less than a pro would have charged me, and now I have them for when I add another one of these little air conditioners for my dining room! (Stay tuned for that.)
 

Flaring the pipes

All hooked up and ready to go.  The tubes on the ground are drains.
Molly is unimpressed.  More interested in the box.

Moment of truth (AKA the Blinding Flash Test)

It displays the temperature setting

Whaddaya know... it works!

INSIDE

OUTSIDE

 

After weeks of 100+ degree weather, this week we're getting a cold snap.  By Saturday, it's supposed to get down to 72!  You're welcome, Campo.

Luckily, this unit is a heat pump, which means it becomes a heater in winter.