Whoa, where did the time go? We've been in Kansas City for a month now and are starting to pack up to leave on Friday for Shreveport, LA. The past month has been filled with family time & laughs with Heinz's sister, brother-in-law, and extended family, along with working on the trailer.

There's been all sorts of work going on. We bought a new Dometic refrigerator and have it in place and bolted down. The heater and water pump have been installed, along with the radio. The bedroom is almost finished. Heinz built a bed frame with storage underneath, six large drawers and a bulk storage area. He's also got 2 nightstands almost finished. They're still missing the tops and doors, those are cut, but not stained and varnished yet - we'll finish them in Louisiana.

We've gotten the Vista window shades changed out and replaced them with all-clad aluminum with some cherry stained handles. We replaced the trim around the windows with almond colored molding used to trim up FRP panels. Following that we finished up all the interior riveting and re-hung the front curtain tracks. I've been busy making curtains while we've been here in Kansas, but haven't gotten the "G" and "T" slides attached, so sorry, no pictures yet. We decided to go with Roman shades in the bedroom and those are also made, but not mounted.

About a week ago, KC had the first snow of the season. Not much, roughly an inch, but enough to call it snow for this deep south-raised, ex-Californian. It's been cold here also, highs in the 20's and single digit lows. I'm looking forward to getting to Louisiana and temps in the 60's.

Last Sunday we went up to Heinz's aunt's house and helped her make Christmas cookies. I made a big pot of chicken and sausage gumbo with bread pudding for dessert and took it with us. We baked, laughed, ate, traded stories and mourned the Chiefs loss to San Diego. If you're interested, the bread pudding recipe is at the end of this week's entry. Enjoy and we hope you have a great holiday!

Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce

This is a "country" version of bread pudding and will not look like the nicely molded, "cake-like" versions you see in restaurants.

Bread Pudding:

One loaf of day-old French bread, cut into small pieces; 4 Cups of milk, scalded; ¾ cup of sugar; 1 tbsp of butter; ¼ tsp of salt; 4 eggs, slightly beaten; 1 tsp vanilla.

Soak bread in milk 5 minutes. Add remaining ingredients, mix well. Pour into 1 ½ quart baking dish. Place dish in pan of hot water and bake for one hour at 350 degrees.

Whiskey sauce:

½ cup of sugar; ¼ cup of water; 2 tbsp of butter; 2 jiggers of bourbon whiskey or to taste.

Cook first 3 ingredients until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and add whiskey. Serve immediately over hot bread pudding.

It's happening! We're on the road...sort of. We spent the time from our last post when we got back from the wedding to a week ago going full force on the trailer. We managed to get most of the outside work done to get it ready to travel, including insulating the floor, re-installing the belly pans and banana wraps, getting the levelers and spare tire mount back in, along with scraping old seals out from around the windows and installing some temporary seals from Home Depot for the trip (appropraite seals will go in when the windows are overhauled).

Heinz spent a long Saturday grinding off the propane tank holder from the tongue and cutting angle iron for a battery box base. The next day he and Paul (a VERY helpful neighbor) spent a part of Sunday re-welding the propane tank holder, moving it forward along with adding the battery box base aft of the tank holder.

While they were busy doing that I spent the weekend prepping and painting the inside. It was a red-letter weekend in my book. Something completed that could be seen by everyone, didn't involve rivets (whoohoo!), and touched on the individuality of the trailer versus the grunt work. One morning went into washing down the walls and roughing up the old vinyl and new aluminum with some sandpaper, and the afternoon was sucked up by painting with primer (STIX from Ace Hardware). The next day was paint. If anyone ever tells you that Thai Gold is a good wall color...RUN!!! I put the first coat on and knew how a pumpkin pie feels in the oven on Thanksgiving Day! It was a warm day, I was inside the silver bullet, and the color was pumpkin orange - a bit severe. Needless to say, we went color shopping again. Day 3 was spent putting on two coats of Citrus Punch. I know that it looks a little overwhelmingly yellow in the pictures, but as we started loading stuff into the trailer it toned down. Another nice part of this color is that as the day moves on and the light changes, the tones change and it goes from a bright and cheery yellow in the morning to a warm citrusy yellow in the evening.

There was another red-letter day before we hit the road. We got the floor finished! This picture is of Heinz and I planning it out, sorry, don't have any of it actually installed. We got too busy trying to pack up what we needed in the house before the movers arrived to stop and take pictures of the installed floor.

But show up the movers did. They packed up the rest of the house in 2 days and rolled away with most of our worldly goods for storage. We finished packing up the remainder, loaded up the truck and the trailer, cleaned the house for the landlord, and rolled off into the sunset, or actually the sunrise.

First stop was Los Angeles to drop off plants for babysitting with our daughter and new son-in-law (welcome again to the family, Pete). Next stop, Kansas City and around a month with relatives for the Thanksgiving season. We made it in a marathon driving session from L.A. to KC in two days. The trailer pulled like a dream and is so smooth we almost forgot it was back there. We had great weather the whole way and some beautiful scenery in places.

The trailer isn't livable yet, but Carl has a full workshop in the basement. The bed is coming together as the rest of the work continues, so stay posted - updates will be coming.

Retirement is working out great so far. A person could get used to this really easily!

It's given us lots of time to work on the Airstream and we've taken advantage of the extra time.

The electrical system is essentially finished except for putting in the 12 volt outlets. The solar panels are hooked up and charging like crazy and the inverter is installed. Sun power is so awesome. We can power the ceiling fans now and have a little breeze when working inside. Heinz has the power installed for the stereo system and the front two speakers in, so soon we should have music without trailing extension cords for the portable radio.

We installed the sub-flooring last week also, then realized that the nails we used were about a 1/2" too long. Heinz is now outside grinding them down over the water tank and spare tire spaces. Luckily we figured it out before we had done the entire floor and switched to staples for the rest of the floor as no one in town had 1" flooring nails.

All of the interior metal is back up except for the strip down the middle. Sometimes I think that piece is never going back in, but Heinz wants to leave it open until the last possible moment in order to keep the electrical wiring open for troubleshooting.

Since the remainder of the walls were up I spent Saturday prepping them for paint: scrubbing, sanding, filing down rough rivets, filling in old holes and patches with Bondo, etc. Heinz spent the day with the electrical system as mentioned above.

And then the rain came, and came, and came. It rained all Saturday evening, all night and most of Sunday. A total of 1.2 inches.

We got out to the trailer on Sunday morning and found 5 damp spots on the flooring. Boos, hisses, curses and depression. So off came some panels and the depression lifted a little. None of the leaks were coming from areas of our repairs. One was from a still open air vent hole that had been simply taped over with painter's tape, the second was from the front curved window that we hadn't done anything with yet and knew had a leak (we had hoped we had put enough sealant on it, but sigh, no such luck). The third leak was by the door and access panel where we had removed the seals and not gotten around to re-applying it yet, one by a wheel well that needs more sealant and the last was from a combination of roof line rivets and side rivets that we had not replaced. We got the window and air vents taped over with good waterproof tape (Gorilla tape--truly a wonderful product!) and when the rain let up in the afternoon, we drilled out the rivets on the streetside outer wall and roof line and replaced them. I had been down a little because the painting and flooring hadn't been completed yet, boy, was I glad they weren't done since we ended up having to track down leaks.

Today I plan to sand down the Bondo'd patches and then maybe, just maybe, the ceiling strip will go in and I can paint the primer coat.

It's official. We've retired, Heinz from a total of 28 years in the USAF and Teresa from 34 years of nursing. We immediately flew to New Hampshire for Heinz's daughter's wedding. We spent around 10 days up there playing around. It was a new place for the two of us and we had a blast enjoying the changing leaves and New England coastline.

The colors were somewhat subtle down in southern New Hampshire/Massachusetts and quite brilliant up in the Green Mountains in the northern end of the state. Before the wedding, we took in the Franconia Notch and the flume, the Shaker Village in Canterbury and Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth among other sights.

It rained most of the week, but the day of Jess and Pete's wedding dawned clear and sunny, which was great since the ceremony was outdoors. Following the ceremony we enjoyed drinks on the patio followed by dinner and dancing until close to midnight, then a firepit and bar-b-que at the home of the groom's sister. The partying finally broke up around 3 am. Now that's a wedding celebration.

We had family in for the ceremonies from Kansas and Colorado also, so it turned into a mini-family reunion in addition to the wedding.

Following the festivities we drifted down to Boston and did the tourist thing: followed the freedom trail and spent some time in Salem.

Following our return home, we promptly went into self-imposed isolation with horrendous colds, so no work got done on the trailer for at least 3 weeks straight.

But now we're better and we've made some major progress in the past 3-4 days: end caps re-installed, air conditioner installation completed, and side walls replaced. Heinz is spending today working on installation of the 120 Volt/12 Volt converter, while I start going through some of the house separating out Goodwill vs. storage vs. going on the road items.

We're adjusting nicely to the concept of retirement so far. I really can't say that either of us is missing work even a tiny bit so far.

We Have Walls (Sort of)

It was a week ago Thursday when we started in on the trailer again. Heinz finished up a few tweaks on the wiring and got in a little bit of insulation before neighborhood chat and darkness took over.

On Friday I started prepping my car for sale as Heinz worked on insulation installation. Of course his attention got pulled in both directions as I needed help getting started on sanding/buffing the headlights and sunroof. So, once again, darkness and neighborhood chat took over as people wandered over to see what those maniacs were up to now using a drill on a car roof.

Saturday morning Heinz made great strides in installing insulation and actually managed to get about 2/3 of the lower level in before he had to close things up and move the trailer. The next door neighbors were having a party that night and getting the Airstream out to free up parking spaces seemed the right thing to do. And besides, we were invited to the bash.



Sunday was decidedly a lazy day, with neither of us in the mood to do any manual labor, so we tucked the baby back into the RV lot, patted her on the nose and promised to make up for it next weekend.

A new weekend, gorgeous weather, and a couple of energetic people can make all the difference in the world when it comes to getting some work done. We pulled most of the inner wall pieces out of the backyard. While Heinz finished up some wiring tweaks (pulling speaker wires mostly) and the last bits of bottom level insulation, I began to drill out rivets that we’d missed during the deconstruction stage and scrub down all the wall pieces.

I have fallen head over heels in love with a product called Krud Kutter. Way back when we were trying to clean up the inside of the trailer after removing the old mouse infested insulation, I wandered the cleaning products aisle at Home Depot and Lowes trying to find a product that would clean, disinfect, and was safe for use on aluminum. READ YOUR LABELS! Almost all cleaning products state that they should NOT be used on aluminum, and then there are a few that don’t mention aluminum at all which made me skittish about using them. I finally ran across Krud Kutter, the only one I could find that states on the label that it is safe for use on aluminum. So I bought it and tried it. It doesn’t have too bad of a chemical smell and what is there dissipates quickly. But I really loved it this weekend. Man, can that stuff cut through dirt with ease! It took no time at all (relatively speaking) to remove 35 years worth of grease and grime.



So I spent all day Saturday scrubbing and Heinz spent it insulating and beginning to put in the inner walls. A quick suggestion here…if you are re-doing a trailer, mark the location of each section as you take it down. Don’t be like us and so eager to get them down that you simply pull them out and put them in a pile. Later you will regret it as you spend time trying to put the picture puzzle back together again. I know, I know, a definite “Duh” moment, but we’re slow learners at times.

Since we are moving some outlets around and had put in new flooring, it isn’t a simple re-installation. Each piece has to be put in with clecos, placement of the new outlets marked, taken down, bottom edge trimmed, old outlet holes patched, new outlet holes cut, re-hung with clecos to check the fit, possibly taken down and trimmed again, and then finally riveted to the frame. Of course, that often means having to drill new rivet holes since the old ones no longer match up. The nice part is that all those patches and old holes will not need bondo since they will be behind cabinets and never seen.

By the end of Sunday, we had walls, or at least we had half walls. The trailer now has the lower 1/3 completely re-installed except for a couple of small areas that needed too large an area patched. We have simply cut those out and will replace them with new sheets after Heinz makes a run to the scrap metal yard.



So the trailer is once again tucked away in the RV lot and we’ll spend this week straightening up the garage and ordering supplies for next weekend. It’s amazing how many rivets you can go through in a day.

Our Airstream life began about 2 years ago when we decided to retire at the end of 2010 and spend a year traveling the country. Like a lot of folks, we looked at RV after RV, but couldn’t find one we liked. They just all seemed so dull and cookie-cutter to us - monochromatic color schemes, plastic trim everywhere, each one looking like the previous one and the next one. But out there glimmering in the sunlight was the occasional shiny, silver Airstream, quirky, interesting, no two looking alike inside. So we searched on the internet and finally last October, spotted THE ONE. We drove down to Los Angeles from the San Francisco area and bought our 1974 Excella, with all its bumps, bruises, warts, and dings. It didn’t look too bad on first inspection, a little shopworn, but respectable.

Then we started to deconstruct it (or demolish it as the neighbors referred to the process). And there they were: water damaged floor, mouse eaten insulation (if I never see another acorn shell it will be fine with me!), twisted/rusted frame pieces, leaking rivets/seams, etc., etc., etc.

It’s now August, almost a year later and two novices have learned to buck rivets and install aluminum patches. We have replaced the flooring and numerous pieces of sheet metal; removed, cleaned and reinstalled the Vista View windows; cleaned and re-installed the water tanks; installed a new air conditioner and 300 watts worth of solar panels. As of last week it is now officially waterproof. In fact, we’ve tested it so often our next door neighbor felt compelled to comment that we could keep watering it, but it wasn’t going to grow. The only work we didn’t do ourselves was the welding to replace the rusted areas on the frame which we had done by a local trailer repair company.

It’s been somewhat, to say the least, time consuming, but we’ve reached a red letter moment: the outside is done and we started on the inside last Sunday. Whoo Hoo! As of today, the 50 amp service, 110 volt and 12 volt wiring is place – waiting installation of the inner sheet metal. Our next step will be insulation, then the inner skins.

So far we've come up with two major recommendations to anyone trying this on their own. 1) If you can’t be talked out of it, then press on. But be sure to take at least one weekend a month to play. All work and no play can really stress a relationship, both with your spouse and with your Airstream. 2) If you don’t have a warehouse-sized indoor storage place with electricity and tools, be sure you have tolerant neighbors who don’t mind you dragging a 31 ft trailer home every weekend and parking it in the street. It also helps if they don’t mind providing the occasional extra muscle or set of hands. We've lucked out with great neighbors that are fascinated by the project and drop by every weekend to check out the progress (or else they're calculating how long until we finish and pack up to leave).

Things are winding down a bit at work for both of us in anticipation of retirement, so we should be a little more regular at postings.

Page under construction

After a quick tutorial from my daughter Jessica, I am starting down the path to blog-dom. The site is currently under construction, as I play with the program, and learn the options available. Thanks for your patience! Heinz & Teresa