Good Morning COVID-19 Warriors! We’re still warriors these days, but things are getting a little better. Hot spots around the country and Arizona is one of them so I’m glad I’m still in Colorado, but will be back in Arizona soon enough. My plan has been to stay here in Colorado until Sunday the there so I might do a Flagstaff run or go somewhere in the White Mountains of Arizona where Ted & Cynthia said to go.
Here is a picture of where I am in Wheat Ridge, CO – a suburb of Denver. I’m packed in like sardines!
OTIS2 was jammed up right next to Daisy’s door. Now I have him lining up behind Daisy with not a lot a room for people to go by, but it seems that most of the traffic happens in front of Daisy. Actually, the place is surprisingly quiet for being “in the city”. It’s quiet at night for sleeping. People are still keeping to themselves in the “unprecedented” time with COVID-19 which suits me fine!
Here is another picture of my “site”:
So yesterday, Susan and I took a “safe driving” course with a guy named Tim. He had been a cement truck driver for many years and teaches safe driving for CDL drivers. He was an interesting guy. Very nice and a good teacher. He was very respectful and I was impressed by the fact that he knew the names and ages of all of his grandchildren – something like 6 of them. Maybe that isn’t unusual but I was still impressed. He had scars on both knees that showed replacements – you can see in one of my videos that he walks difficultly. One of the major things we learned yesterday was that you are ready to make a turn when your body meets up with the middle of the road for a left hand turn and meets up with the sidewalk or bike path when making a right hand turn. It seems a little extreme at first but works and you are squared right up in the lane when the turn is made.
So this is the greatest thing we learned – the rule of 8 feet:
What you do is you put a frisbee or something else 2 feet from from the corner of where you are going to back in and also 2 feet forward in an “L” shape. Then you bring the rig up to the 8′ mark on the coach – meaning 8′ from the center back axle to the front of the coach. Once there, you do a “hard right” and turn until the frisbee disappears – that means you have the rear end of the rig far enough along to make the turn. Then you make a “hard” left and bring the rig around and you are in position to back into the space. The video above is Susan doing it at a 45 degree angle which is the way that she needs to park Mariah (her 26′ Born Free in her storage place. Tim had us practice this backing up thing in an empty parking lot.
Today we are going to work with Mariah. She had to get 6 new tires, new breaks and a new brake fluid line. Susan had anticipated this type of thing when she bought Mariah. So she is OK with it. I’m only sorry that we didn’t do the class in Mariah rather than Daisy, but it is essentially the same.
Here is a video of our trip up the mountain yesterday. Tim was in the passenger seat and Susan was driving:
I have one more video of our drive yesterday:
So the class was really good and then at the end, we got a certificate that said we took the course so we can get a “break” on our insurance. I’ll need to get in touch with Michele to let her know I’ve taken the course. I hope it is true with Progressive.
So right now, I’m going to call Safelite and work out getting a new windshield for both Daisy & OTIS2. They both have a chip in them. We’ll see how that goes and report back! I was able to get Safelite to come out tomorrow to fix both windshields. I doubt they will replace them, they will probably just repair them but that will be fine!
So today Susan and I had a chance to do a little sightseeing. Boy or boy – this country is really beautiful. Here is a picture of Susan with her two dogs, Cookie and Ginger. They are both about 15 years old and deaf. Good dogs though!
Our day changed a little. She is getting Mariah worked on and they need to do a few extra things to her breaks to make her road worthy. So tomorrow after my windshields are fixed, we’ll go pick up Mariah and get her inspected and gassed up with regular gas and propane. Then we’ll take her into storage. That is one of the reasons we took the class so that we can maneuver her into the correct space. We’re going to go to a parking lot and practice a few more times before we take her in for storage. It will be fun!
That’s it for today, Tomorrow I will do a new blog of some of the places we stopped today around the area. Come back!
