It seems as though there has been a lot going on.  I have not been able to go anywhere because I have been taking care of Caesar and selling off worldly goods.  But I think as of today, March 7,

2017, Caesar is looking quite independent and I have somewhat lost interest in selling more stuff.  I have some large furniture items which I do not want to ever have to move.  A large cherry dining room table, and a set of wooden bunk beds from when I was a little kid.  I have had many people come and look at them to buy them, but nobody ever actually puts cash in my hand.  Craigslist has been failing me since Christmas.  I’m just trying to reduce my overall footprint of junk down from this four bedroom house so that I can move into a two-bedroom house sparsely furnished and then become a full-time RVer once I retire.  So I will have to re-visit the Craigslist posts sometime before May, but for now I’m taking a break.

So my little boy is doing good.  We go on little hikes about every other day.  And he gets excited and hops around pretty fast sniffing around the woods and following trails.  He still looks a little bit on the drunken side as his rear end seems to have only moderate side to side stability.  And one leg seems a little weaker than the other.  He has successfully completed the task of lifting one leg to pee without falling over.  Something that seems extremely important to him.  We’ve climbed up a couple of fairly steep hills that he seems to get up without too much trouble.  But coming down once in a while his behind gets away and swings past him.  Which means he ends up sliding down the hill sideways on his back or side.  If I can grab his tail it stabilizes him quite a bit and allows him dignity on the down hills.  He still seems a little played out though.  We use to go for an hour before he looked tired and now he only goes for about 15-20 minutes.  If you’ve watched his videos, you can also see that he doesn’t seem to lift his head much.  And I think he has a lot of arthritis in his neck and shoulders that is causing him pain.  He won’t even reach up for a biscuit when I offer them to him in the morning before I go to work.  Poor Baby !!

But, he continues on and we will continue on with our goals and aspirations.  We did get up a new video this week.  I have been tinkering with the Aliner, but have not been recording it due to other distractions.  So the new video is about changing the mounting for my solar panel.  I originally mounted the panel so that I had the ability to unlock it and take it off the Aliner very easily.  However, having it mounted that way meant that it was laying right on top of the aluminum frame around the roof, and that allowed it to rub and damage the frame.  So I bought some long heavy angle brackets and mounted those to the side of the trailer and to the Panel frame that I had mounted to the  solar panel during the original installation.  This allowed it to be a much more stable and secure mount and eliminates the wear on the edge of the Aliner frame.

There is still one issue with the way this is mounted because the mountings on the inner side of the aluminum can still rub against the inner roof frame.  I think what I am planning to do is to put a layer of epoxy over the screw anchors and let that be the rub point between the two roof panels.  Normally there are plastic spacers on the lower roof aluminum siding that spaces the upper roof aluminum siding away from the lower roof aluminum siding, but these tend to fall off after several heatings and coolings.  Aluminum has a rather high temperature related expansion and contraction factor.  So while I did the video of changing the amounts, I will have to do another video of the final finishing of the whole project and preventing the screws and anchors from damaging the aluminum framing.

I also have half a video done about the proper method to determine your solar set up.  But some of the video did not come out very well and I want to re-shoot some of it.  So that will be coming up soon.  And then I think finally I’m going to do a couple of videos on just places I can quickly drive to and do a nice video on some of the things around New York that people come to visit.  We’ll see how that goes.  One of the troubles I have with doing a video, is if I take a break from filming it, I tend to forget the come back to it.   And of course I am a professional procrastinator.

Anyway that’s a quick update and a little further detail on the latest video.  Please leave comments if you have any ideas of videos you want to see or things you want to know.  I’m still trying to figure out how to get a files repository on this webpage.  So stay tuned, things get more active in the days with more sunshine.

Rick, Caesar, Dakota.