January 7th 2004
Today was a little different. We decided to split the kids up
for the day. I spent time with Erika running around town getting
supplies for the bus and Becky and Emily stayed home and took care of
things.
It was a pretty nasty morning, which provided me with the opportunity
to take some interesting photos...
Erika and I left early in the morning to try to get all of my
checklist items for the day done...
Our first stop was at Hitch Pro & Tow to check in and see if they
had the parts to work on the Jeep yet. Apparently the weather kept
the parts from getting to them as well, so they're going to give me a
call when the parts arrive.
Next stop was to B & B battery to pick up the 2nd set of 4 Trojan
T105 batteries for the bus. The parking lot was solid ice with
water underneath. Erika had a lot of fun sliding around on it
while I loaded up the batteries.
We stopped at one of the local pizza parlors and had a nice
lunch. Erika played on the indoor playground for about 45 minutes
while I called around to make sure that the rest of our supplies were
ready to pick up.
We headed out for Multicraft Plastics to pick up a piece of Lexan for
the back bedroom. I called in the rough dimensions a couple of
days earlier, so all I had to do was run in and pick it up.
Last stop on our shopping list was to get more window tint for the
kids room. The 2 sliding windows in the back of the bus are the
last ones that still have not been tinted.
We checked back in at the house at about 1:00 and the girls all
decided to stay home for the day and let me work on the bus alone
<sigh>. I headed out for the bus with all of the new
supplies...
As you might have guessed by the lack of pictures, I forgot to take
the camera with me.
I had a terrible time trying to tint the back windows. I wasted
about $15.00 worth of tint because I couldn't get it to peel away from
the protective backing without it folding in half and sticking to
itself. I finally managed to get one side of the room finished,
but since I was a little frustrated I switched over to working on the
hole in the back bedroom ceiling.
My original plan was to go out on the roof, hold the piece of Lexan
in place and have Becky trace the opening for me, but since I was by
myself, I had to find a couple of big bricks to hold it in place and
shape it to the curve of the roof so I could trace it...
Unfortunately, I had to take the interior ceiling panel out to be able
to trace it and that took the better part of an hour to accomplish
without breaking it.
Things went pretty well and I did manage to get the Lexan fit into
the rubber gasket . My fingers got too cold to finish up putting
in the center strip that seals the gasket up though, so I have a bit of
work to finish up tomorrow.
The last task of the day was to haul the batteries out of the car and
prepare the bus for the cold until tomorrow. |
