The Cool Factor

At long last.....our little "Honey Bee" trailer is more or less completed and, more importantly, it is inspected and licensed. There is still a list of several little things that need to be completed, like lining the inside, giving it the water test, making hatch props and those darned round fenders.

But, today we took it on it's maiden voyage down to Shelton, 1-1/2 hours away for the inspection by State Patrol. (It was Shelton today or closer by sometime in the middle of September.) We also wanted to stop and get Dad's advise/help on how to install/mount the new fenders. That issue is still being pondered.

Meanwhile, on the way south a commercial van passed us. As they passed, they honked and waved. The passenger also stuck her head out the window and gave us a big thumbs up and a huge grin!

Yup, THAT'S why I wanted a cool trailer. Or, as somebody on our WetWesties list said, something that doesn't look like a Rubbermaid container from Walmart. It's all about the "Cool Factor."

Crunch Time

So, last Friday afternoon, while picking up the new fenders for the trailer I learned from the salesman that I would probably have a long wait with State Patrol to have our trailer inspected. Great, this was NOT in the plan.

Monday morning found me making multiple calls to several of the inspection stations. You can NOT speak to a living, breathing human. You only get a recording and each different location gives you different information. I left countless messages and then sat back to wait and wait and wait some more.

Tuesday afternoon I finally got some return calls. The closest station had no appointments until the week AFTER we need the trailer. We are planning to leave on September 10th for the big WetWestie campout in eastern Oregon. Another somewhat close location could offer me September 8th. I took it, but it's a BAD day for The Bearded One to take off to get this inspected. (The first day back to work after a long weekend is always crazy with too many fires to put out.)

The 3rd closest location, 1-1/2 hours away offered me next Wednesday -- August 26th. I took it too. So now the big crunch to get this trailer finished by Wednesday so that it can be 1) inspected 2)certified weight & 3) licensed.

Here's what we have to show for 5 hours of labor yesterday:

The hatch is FINALLY skinned. What a pain! On Tuesday evening we realized our measurements were a bit off and we had to trim 3/4" off the length. With help from our wonderful friend Charles, that job was made much less painless than anticipated.

The Bearded One has off today and tomorrow as we are heading out camping for the weekend. Hopefully, today, things will go smoother than they have been and the rest of this thing can get skinned. Then it's just lights, latches and the rest of the trim. Why is it that everything takes at least 3 times longer than you had planned on?

Wish us luck!

Not Much To Show

Well, after almost 1-1/2 months, I have FINALLY managed to finish the curtains for the bus! Had to, we're going camping next weekend!

I think they look pretty darn cute. And, there's enough fabric leftover for me to make yet another quilt for the bus. Here's a closeup of the fabric -- note the yellow bus AND the teardrop trailer.

Other than the curtains, the only thing I've been working on is the trailer. It's coming along, slowly. We seem to take two steps forward and one backward. After getting the main portion of the trailer skinned with the masonite and everything worked just perfectly, we thought we were on a role. Skinned the hatch, using about a bazillion clamps. Let it dry for about 22 hours, like the trailer, then unclamped everything. We even took all the clamps back across the street to the neighbor! Came back to find that half the hatch had sprung!

We're hoping that because the weather was cooler and damp, it didn't let the glue dry completely. We will see when we unclamp it again later today.

Meanwhile, we discovered that the trailer will have to be inspected by the Washington State Patrol prior to being able to license it. We've also been told that it could take up to 6 weeks for an appointment. Grrrrrrrr! That is NOT GOOD. We've been working all summer to get this trailer done so we can take it on our 4 day campout to eastern Oregon, the biggest WetWestie campout of the year! I'll know more on Monday when I can actually talk to an inspection officer. They only work Mon-Thurs.

If you are really interested in viewing more pictures of the teardrop build, they can be found here: Teardrop Build Pictures.

Grrrrr!

See my nice, clean refrigerator! It needed cleaning but I really didn't want to spend $250 in the process. However, when the defrost timer & thermostat fail you get to spend $250 to get it fixed. What kills me is that the parts were only about $60. The rest is labor and two trips to the house -- one to diagnose and one to fix once he got the parts. On the plus side, the repairman was here within a few hours of my call to him, late Friday afternoon. And he was back by 10:30 Saturday morning with the new parts.

Meanwhile, I'm hoping that the food I was able to stuff into coolers and the bus refrigerator will still be good. According to the repairman this probably failed several months ago. It just took this long for the thing to get so full of ice that it completely stopped circulating air into the refrigerator portion. That might explain why we've noticed our milk going sour after only a couple days.

Anybody want some sour milk?