Category Archives: Western RV/Alpine Coach

Lost Dog

We’ve all been coping with the pandemic for nearly a year now. People have adjusted their lifestyles in different ways. For us, it mainly affected how we entertain. We’ve avoided large gatherings and only eat out or go to a pub when we can be seated outdoors. I think this is true for many people.

I browse a number of forums online and from what I gather, there’s been a resurgence of home cooking – this makes sense as restaurants are restricted in many areas. If you take a look at a couple of online kitchen knife retailers, like Japanese Knife Imports or Japanese Chef Knife, you’ll see more sold out items than knives on offer. We still manage to socialize and dine with friends – we just restrict the number of people we interact with.

Sunday was a great example. We went over to Frank and Kelly Burk’s house for a potluck-type meal and cocktails. Mike and Jodi Hall also came over. Mike brought shredded pork and beef he had smoked for tacos. We brought taco toppings, a green salad and tortillas. Kelly made flan for dessert – it was her first attempt at flan and it was outstanding.

As usual, we had a good time with great food, good people and lots of laughs.

I don’t have much to report as it’s been business as usual this week – pickleball in the mornings, a couple of grocery runs and playing with ham radio in the afternoon. We’ve been doing a lot of cooking, but that’s not unusual for us. What is a little different is our roles in making some of our dinners. For example, on Tuesday. Donna manned the grill and cooked chicken thighs, legs and wings while I was in the kitchen preparing Japanese fried rice. Donna also grilled baby bok choy. The grill used to be my bailiwick while Donna cooked in the kitchen.

Grilled chicken, bok choy and fried rice

We’ve been buying whole young chickens, right around five to six pounds. I break down the whole chicken into 10 major pieces – two legs, two thighs, two breasts, two tenders and two wings. I also set aside some of the other meat taken from the carcass to use for yakitori. We find the whole young birds to be more tender and flavorful than the over-sized breasts and other pre-cut chicken meat found in most grocery stores.

Since we had a lot of fried rice leftover, Donna decided on Wednesday night to make a new recipe – orange beef. She used boneless ribeye steak. I was her sous-chef – well, I was more like a line/prep cook. She told me she needed minced ginger, minced garlic, and minced jalapeno pepper and I got to work. She used these ingredients along with orange zest and orange juice, soy sauce and brown sugar to make a sauce. Meanwhile, I trimmed the thin-cut steaks and cut them into strips along with some green onions.

Orange beef with broccoli and fried rice

It was delicious – the orange beef is a winner.

A couple of rows down from our site, there’s a park model home that has informal live music occasionally. They keep it under the radar. They put a sign out with a picture of a dog – the sign says “Lost Dog.” That’s the signal for live music on that day. It also has a smaller sign that says “Band practice at XXpm.” The Lost Dog band usually plays in the evenings, but yesterday they were playing in the afternoon as I returned from giving pickleball lessons.

They have to keep it low-key because we aren’t really supposed to have gatherings with entertainment in the park under covid restrictions. Everyone has been good about it – keeping their distance and they keep the sessions short enough that a large crowd doesn’t gather.

We have four more days until we close the deal on our park model house. Here in Arizona, park model homes are classified as mobile homes – even though you’d have a hard time ever moving one. This means transfer of ownership isn’t like a regular real estate transaction – it’s more like titling and registering a car! I’ll withdraw a cashier’s check from the bank tomorrow and on Monday, we’ll go to the DMV and make the transaction.

The weather this week has been great as promised. We’ve had daily highs near or at 80 degrees. It will be a little cooler – in the lower 70s for the week ahead, but we should continue to have plenty of sunshine. Tomorrow I’ll have to be up early – I have to take the truck back to Sullivan Motors in west Mesa at 8am. The airbag light is on and they have to replace the clock spring under the steering wheel and a side curtain airbag. This was part of the deal when I bought the truck. It will probably take most of the day to perform the work.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

Sunshine On My Headlights

We had more good company this week. On Thursday, we met up with Deb and Jeff Spencer at Fat Willy’s for lunch on the patio. The last time we saw Deb and Jeff was in Kanab, Utah in September. We’ve met up with them several times over the years in various places – that’s how it often works with fellow full-timers.

Fat Willy’s is a pub/restaurant and also has the pro shop for the golf courses at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. As I mentioned, we took a table on the back patio overlooking part of the 18-hole course. I shot a photo of the view, but neglected to get a people photo.

The photo above illustrates Arizona winter grass. The grassy areas surrounding the course appear to be Bermuda grass, which goes dormant over the winter. Bermuda grass goes dormant and doesn’t produce chlorophyll when the soil temperature drops into the 50s. It will recover in the spring with an application of fertilizer. The fairway is green – presumably it was overseeded for the winter with a rye grass variety. I don’t know what type of grass is used on the greens.

After a couple of hours of pickleball in the morning, I took care of a small project on Friday. Our new-to-us Nissan Frontier had some deterioration of the acrylic headlight covers. This has been a common problem for cars built with this type of headlight over the last 20 years – especially in areas with abundant sunshine. The acrylic covers are coated with a UV inhibitor, but over time, it breaks down – especially here in the desert.

Our Nissan Frontier was originally sold by Peoria Nissan on the west side of Phoenix and has been in the valley of the sun ever since. Our headlights weren’t in really bad shape, but once they start to degrade, it doesn’t get better.

Hazy area on upper right headlight cover

When this happened on our Alpine Coach, I polished the lens covers with a product from Meguiar’s. The problem was, the Meguiar’s polished out the haze, but it also removed any remaining UV inhibitor and within a year, the headlight covers were in worse shape than ever.

After looking around a bit, I found a product made by Sylvania that not only polishes out the imperfections, it includes a new clear lens coating with UV inhibitor! I ordered a kit from Amazon – it was only $19.99 – to give it a try.

The kit included detailed instructions – it’s broken down into three steps. First you clean the cover and spritz it with a liquid etching solution. Then you wet sand progressively with 400 grit, then 1000 grit and finally 2000 grit sand paper. I used a spray bottle to keep plenty of water on the acrylic cover while sanding with fairly light pressure. You sand until the surface is smooth with each grit. At this point, the headlights look really bad – they are completely clouded from sanding. After rinsing and drying, you apply the etch again, rinse and dry again, then apply the clear coat with the UV inhibitor. The results were amazing.

The whole process took about an hour. I’m pleased with the result. Now we’ll have to see how it holds up to exposure to sunlight.

Speaking of sunshine, we have plenty in the forecast. After having daily highs in the mid-60s all week, the forecast calls for 75 degrees today – and we’re well on our way there – and mid to upper 70s for the week ahead with clear skies.

Our Transportation Evolution

When I closed my last post on Thursday, I mentioned our plan to go to the Power Food Park and meet up with friends. That’s what we did. We arrived around 5:30pm to find a much smaller crowd and fewer food trucks than were present on the Saturday before. Donna had reserved a fire pit and s’mores packets from 6pm to 8pm. We found Mike and Jodi Hall right away and staked out a picnic table.

We decided to go ahead and order food and eat at the picnic table before going to our reserved fire pit (number 6) where we had six Adirondack chairs around the fire pit. Frank and Kelly Burk joined us. We had a lot of laughs around the fire – the temperature drops fairly quickly after sundown and the fire pit made it very comfortable. Here are a couple of underexposed photos.

It was a fun time and two hours was about right for yukking it up around the fire.

Friday morning I started the Traeger around 8am and put on a pork shoulder (Boston Butt). I didn’t play pickleball Friday, I was saving my legs for the Valentine’s Day tournament on Saturday. The plan was to make pulled pork and take it across the street to Chuck and Sue Lines’ place at 5pm. Roxy and Dick Zarowny would join us there. Sue made potato salad and Roxie made cole slaw and a cucumber salad and lime pie. I brought nearly five pounds of pulled pork and it made a great dinner. Again we had a great time talking into the night and Chuck had a propane fired fire pit!

Donna and I played in the Valentine’s tournament Saturday morning. It wasn’t really a tournament – it was a round-robin type scheduled play with players teamed up with their sweetheart and rotating play against other teams. We won 50% of our matches, but I don’t think we were playing at our best. It was fun nonetheless.

We drove to Frank and Kelly’s place in the afternoon – it’s only a couple of miles from where we used to live in east Mesa, about five miles from Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. It was breezy out and felt chilly although the thermometer registered 69 degrees. We enjoyed cocktails and laughs, then Frank got serious on the grill. He had some super thick USDA Prime New York steaks and grilled them to perfection. Donna brought spinach and bacon stuffed mushrooms for an appetizer – they were delicious. Kelly made roasted asparagus and yellow squash and potato kisses for sides. It was a great meal and laughs continued at the dinner table.

We drove our new-to-us Nissan truck to the Burk’s place and I was glad we did. It started raining when we left around 9pm. I don’t like to drive the MG Midget at night, especially when it’s raining. It was no bother in the Nissan Frontier though.

Our modes of transportation have evolved over the years we’ve spent on the road. When we first left our sticks-and-bricks home for the full-time RV lifestyle, I thought having a scooter to get around would be sufficient. I figured we just needed something to go to the store occasionally and if we really needed a car we could rent one from time to time. We learned to pack away a surprising amount of groceries on our Kymco Downtown 300i scooter. It’s pictured on the header of the blog page.

It had limitations though. It was capable of carrying us on the freeway, but whipping along at 70mph with cars all around us wasn’t exactly comfortable. Also, with its small wheels, it wasn’t the best on dirt or gravel surfaces which we often found in and around RV parks.

After a couple of years, we traded it in for a Can-Am Spyder three-wheeled motorcycle. This was much more versatile, but again it wasn’t the most comfortable vehicle for longer trips and extended freeway driving. We tried to avoid rainy weather or didn’t drive much at night.

The MG Midget was the next step in the evolution of transportation for us. Midget-San with its Nissan A15 engine and five-speed transmission made freeway travel easy, but you have to be on your toes as the sports car is very low and small. Like riding a motorcycle, you always have the assume the other drivers don’t see you. For Donna, all of these choices compromised her hair style. She either had helmet head or wind blown hair from driving top-down in Midget-San.

Now we can take the Frontier without any of our previous limitations. Midget -San will be relegated to local jaunts when we feel like it. The Frontier will be more of a daily driver.

We took a drive on Sunday morning. I felt like getting out and Donna wanted to see how the Salt River and Saguaro Lake looked for kayaking. The Frontier will be great for transporting the Sea Eagle kayak to almost any drop-off point. We loaded the Sea Eagle in the Midget many times, but we tried to stay off of dirt roads or difficult launch areas.

To get to Saguaro Lake from east Mesa is an easy drive. We took Ellsworth Road over Usery Pass to Bush Highway. It’s only a few miles, but it’s night and day compared to town. Crossing Usery Pass dropped us into the Tonto National Forest – a forest of desert scrub and cactus. Saguaro Lake is a popular boating, kayaking and fishing spot. It has a marina with a restaurant and also the Desert Belle tour boat.

View of the lake toward Butcher Jones Recreation Area

The Desert Belle cruise is a narrated tour of the lake and various sites and recreation areas. It has food and drink onboard, but currently only upper deck outdoor seating is open.

We back-tracked on Bush Highway and took a look at the Goldfield Salt River access point, but it didn’t look too good to get a kayak down to the river there. Next, we stopped at Phon D Sutton which has access and the water level is just enough to put a kayak in there. We stayed at Phon D Sutton several years ago when dry camping was allowed there – it’s the header photo – but you can’t stay overnight anymore.

Our last stop was at the Granite Reef Recreation Center. It was busy and we saw several kayakers there. With the low water levels, it seems like the stretch of water between Phon D Sutton and Granite Reef is the place to go.

It was a fun-filled weekend with good food, good friends and lots of laughs. We don’t have any real plans for the week ahead. The weather forecast calls for cooler weather with daily highs in the mid 60s until next weekend when it will warm up again.

Donna’s Deals

I wrote about my decision-making process when I bought the Nissan Frontier truck. I’d decided on a simple work truck that was inexpensive and didn’t have a lot of bells and whistles to repair. I didn’t always have vehicles like this. In fact, for about 35 years, I always drove a current model-year car and rarely put over 6,000 miles on it before getting a new one.

This started about 40 years ago when I was the service manager at Herman Cook VW in Encinitas, California. My compensation package included a company car which was a new VW out of the dealership inventory they called a demonstrator (demo) vehicle. I usually drove a Volkswagen GTI back then. In 1984, I went to work for Volkswagen of America and again, as a manager, my compensation package included a company car.

In fact, it came with a car, gasoline and car washes at the company’s expense! I always drove a new car and turned them in every 6,000 miles or so. These cars would be sent to wholesale auction listed as “executive demo.” My position also included company lease car privileges. I could lease up to four vehicles at very favorable rates. The rate would be 1% to 1.5% of the MSRP. So, a $30,000 car would cost me three or four hundred per month and it included full coverage insurance. Unlike retail leases, there were no upfront fees, just the monthly rate.

This was such a deal that I leased a car for my wife and when my daughters got their drivers licenses, I leased cars for them. It was cheaper to put them in a new car every year than it would be to buy a used car when you factor in the cost of insurance and repairs. The lease program was a 12-month term, so they were always in a current model-year car with warranty coverage. While they were in school, I paid the lease for them. They’re adults now, but they still get a new lease car every year – I don’t think they’ve ever had to buy a car for themselves.

Volkswagen offers these programs to management level employees for the benefit of the employee, but it also helps them. When they send a 12-month old car or a 6,000-mile demo to the wholesale auction, they get a good price for it. This helps keep the wholesale residual value of the cars high – which, in turn, is used to set retail lease rates. Higher residual values mean lower retail lease rates. But I don’t drive new cars anymore – just my daughters do.

Donna’s been watching for deals on stuff for our new-to-us park model home. She found a deal on a stereo system for the Arizona room. It’s old school – a Kenwood KR4400 receiver that’s circa 1974, a Pioneer CD player and a set of Celestion D4 bookshelf speakers. There was a guy here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort selling the system. He was the original owner and bought this stuff when he was in high school. I was a senior in 1974, but I didn’t have the money for a stereo like this. It’s good stuff.

I’ve always been a fan of Celestion speakers. They don’t make consumer speaker cabinets anymore. The company, based in Britain, makes speakers for use in PA systems or for guitar amplifier cabinets. Building vacuum tube guitar amplifiers was once a hobby of mine. I always used Celestion speakers in my cabinets that I special ordered from an outfit in Idaho called Avatar speakers.

I built several guitar amplifiers – one was a clone of a Marshall 18-watt that was a blues monster. It had that fat Marshall sound and could be pushed into a creamy distortion without blowing out your eardrums.

Marshall 18-watt clone head and Avatar 2×12 cabinet

The amplifier was built with point-to-point wiring of all of the components. I enjoyed this work. You had to be meticulous, the wire lengths and pathways were important.

Another amp I built was based on the British Hiwatt design. This amp was loud and produced a very clean tone. It also powered an Avatar 2×12 cabinet with Celestion speakers.

There was a fairly obscure amp designer and builder back in the day named Ken Fischer. He designed a line of amps called Trainwreck and custom-made them for star entertainers. Ken passed away in 2006, but his amps are still highly sought after. I read recently that Brad Paisley acquired one. His amp circuits are complex and everything has to be precisely placed to make it do the Trainwreck thing. The thing about them is, once you have this rig set up, you can change the sound of the guitar from a clean, almost sparkly tone to a growling distortion with small adjustments of the guitar volume knob. The amplifier is very sensitive to the input voltage from the guitar pickup.

I corresponded with a few guys that were trying to copy the Trainwreck design. I found a guy in Australia, an electrical engineer that was also a musician. He experimented with building a printed circuit board (PCB) that followed Ken Fischer’s original point-to-point design. I bought a board from him and built one. It’s fantastic and also plays very loud.

Trainwreck patterned printed circuit board

I’ve been hauling the Marshall 18-watt and the Trainwreck amps in the basement of our Alpine Coach for nearly eight years. The Avatar 2×12 cabinet was lost when our trailer was stolen by those dirty, rotten thieves. I’ll have to get them out and clean them up after we move into the park model.

I was talking about deals Donna found before I got sidetracked. Donna found a small, 4.4 cubic-foot refrigerator for $75 – it cost $275 new and we bought it from the same couple that sold us the stereo. On Tuesday, Donna made a fantastic find. She was talking to our neighbor, Dean, when he mentioned another neighbor on the row behind us was selling a tow bar. I’d been looking at tow bars online – we’ll need one for the Nissan Frontier to tow it behind the coach. I was looking at the Roadmaster line, made in Vancouver, Washington. I toured their plant in 2014 and I think they have the best tow bars available.

We walked over to Jim and Gerry Jarvis’ site and what do you know – he had a Roadmaster Nighthawk tow bar with the Defender shield for sale. The Nighthawk is their top-of-the-line unit. It’s the Cadillac of tow bars. He bought it new in late 2018, used it to tow his Jeep to Oregon and back before he sold his motorhome and bought a fifth-wheel trailer.

A new Nighthawk is listed online for a price of $1140 and the Defender shield is $460. Jim sold me this $1600 set-up for just $500. Deal! Next month I’ll have a Roadmaster base plate installed on the truck and we’ll be good to go. That’ll cost about $1200, so I’ll be about $1700 into what’s about a $3,000 set-up!

The weather here in Mesa, Arizona continues to be pleasant with daily highs in the 70s and overnight lows in the 50s. We plan to go back to the Power Food Park tonight and meet up with our friends, Mike and Jodi Hall and Frank and Kelly Burk. We reserved a firepit from 6-8pm. Donna is playing in the 3.0 pickleball round robin tomorrow morning. And we’re signed up as a team for the Valentine’s pickleball tournament on Saturday.

Lighter Load with a Toad

In just 22 days, we’ll be making a major change in our lifestyle. We’re gearing up for the move to our new-to-us park model home here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. We will take possession on March 1st. Our motorhome will remain in site 5245 until the end of March, so we have a full month to make the transition. I plan to move everything out of the cargo trailer and put it up for sale. In the future, we plan to travel without the cargo trailer and leave the MG Midget behind.

To accommodate that, I’ve been looking at alternate transportation – we will tow a vehicle directly behind our Alpine Coach. We’ll be able to travel a lot lighter since we won’t have to carry everything we own all of the time. We’ll be able to leave behind winter clothing and a lot of the gear that’s in the trailer and basement compartments when we travel in the summer months.

After considering our needs and options, I decided to shop for a used pickup truck. We can set it up to flat-tow behind our coach and use the bed of the truck for things like Donna’s bike and the Sea Eagle kayak. Not all vehicles are suitable for flat-towing (all four wheels rolling). Most automatic transmissions with a few four-wheel drive exceptions can’t be flat-towed without making major modifications such as a drive shaft disconnect or external automatic transmission fluid (ATF) pump. Automatic transmissions will generally self-destruct if the driveshaft spins the output shaft of the transmission without pumping fluid through the transmission to cool and lubricate it. The ATF pump is usually found at the front of the transmission and only pumps fluid when the engine is running.

Most manual transmissions don’t have this issue. Some modern manual transmission designs still have flat-tow issues though. It would take a lengthy technical description to fully explain this, but I’ll try to simplify the details. In modern manual transmissions, the gearsets mesh together full time – that is, if the input shaft is spinning, the gears on it are turning the gears on the output shaft. However, only one set of gears can be engaged at a time. For this to work, one half of the gearset spins freely on the shaft (the shaft runs through the center of the gear) until the shift fork moves the gear along the shaft to engage splines, thus locking it to the shaft. Simultaneously, the previously selected gear is moved off of the splines and spins freely, so only one gearset at a time connects the input to the output.

Here’s where the problem can happen. In some modern designs, the gears on the input shaft are fixed while the sliding gears are on the output shaft. This means that with the transmission in neutral, engine off, the input shaft doesn’t spin as the output shaft is turned by the driveshaft because the output shaft spins freely through the center of the output gears – in neutral, none of them are locked to the shaft splines. The transmission relies on the spinning gearsets to splash the gear oil throughout the transmission. Since the gearsets aren’t spinning, things aren’t lubricated as well as they should be.

In older designs, the sliding gears weren’t all on the output shaft. Some were on the input and some on the output with corresponding fixed gears on the opposite shaft for each gearset. This kept oil splashing about any time either shaft was spinning. I had to do some research to find out which manual transmissions could be flat-towed without risk of damage. It turned out Toyota doesn’t recommend flat-towing any of their trucks, regardless of transmission type. I’ve read where several people have said they do it with Toyota manual transmissions and haven’t had any issues, but I don’t think going against the manufacturer’s recommendation is a good idea. Nissan, on the other hand allows it, but they advise starting the engine and letting it run in neutral for two minutes to spin the input shaft after 500 miles of flat-towing. This is easily doable.

I told Donna I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a vehicle that will be pulled behind the coach and subject to the road rash that’s inevitable. I also said I wasn’t interested in a lot of bells and whistles that could spell expensive repairs on a used vehicle. She bought into the concept.

I watched the Internet sites and found a few interesting trucks in the area. Yesterday we made a trip to west Mesa to look at one and take a test drive. It was a 2015 Nissan Frontier. It’s the base “S” model, 2.5 liter four-cylinder (QR25DE) engine with a five-speed manual transmission. This is the basic, no-frills model that Nissan advertised with a MSRP under $19,000 in 2015. By no frills, I mean no power adjustable seats, no power windows – that’s right, it has manual window winders and manual mirror adjustment. It does have climate control though. I didn’t want electric power windows – that to me means a possibility of having to replace a $300 window regulator when a manual window winder is under $100. I can roll windows up and down, no problem.

We took a test drive and I liked it. Back at the car lot, we dickered a bit and came to a deal. It was 2:30pm by then and we had dinner plans. Donna needed to shower, dry her hair and get ready to go out, so she left in Midget-San while I finished the task of buying the vehicle. Since I was dealing with a used car outfit, it wasn’t so simple to finalize everything. Once we had agreed on a price and the manager approved it, I told them I wouldn’t be financing – I would write a check for the purchase price.

Then I had to wait while paperwork was generated. I looked at the breakdown of the final cost and saw a “Doc fee” of $499! I told them to forget about it, there wasn’t any reason for me to pay a document fee when all they had to do was write up a sales receipt. There weren’t any financing or credit reports to generate. They rewrote the sales agreement lowering the purchase price by $500 and keeping the $499 doc fee. I was okay with that, but it shows how shady car sales can be. By keeping the doc fee on the paperwork, it made the floor manager on duty look stronger to his management, while cheating the salesman out of some commission. Salespeople are usually compensated with a percentage of the gross profit of the sale price (retail price paid minus wholesale cost of the vehicle and reconditioning costs equals gross profit). They don’t get anything for fees paid.

They left me stewing over this for about 45 minutes before I could finish the paperwork with their “closer.” This is where they try to generate some extra profit by selling mechanical breakdown insurance they call an extended warranty. I made it clear right away I wasn’t interested and finally got out of there around 3:30pm. We have a toad now – our 2015 Nissan Frontier truck.

This truck will be a lighter load going down the road than the loaded cargo trailer and our overall length will be four or five feet shorter. In RV parks, we can quickly disconnect the truck and won’t have to deal with finding a long pull-through or dropping the trailer.

I got home in time to shower and head out with Donna to the Power Food Park where we were meeting Howard and Sara Graff. The Power Food Park is an empty gravel lot with picnic tables, lights strung up, hay bales and few games like corn hole. Food trucks come in to the lot and it opens at 5pm for dinner.

Howard, Sara and Donna at the Power Food Park

We heard that Four Peaks Brewing would have a truck there Saturday night and we planned on having a cold one with dinner from one of many food offerings. It turned out that Four Peaks Brewing had a truck there, but it was serving food only, no alcohol sales in the food park! To say I was disappointed is an understatement. We claimed a table, then wandered and looked at the dinner options.

I decided to go for a gyro from a Greek food truck. It was a long wait for the food to come up. Meanwhile, Donna chose a Mexican shrimp bowl, Sara had a vegan bowl and Howard had a burrito. The Mexican truck they went to was much quicker than the Greek truck I was at. They were halfway through their meal before I even got back to the table.

Today is Superbowl Sunday. We were invited to a couple of Superbowl parties, but opted out. We are still playing it safe and avoiding indoor contact with large groups of people. I plan to break down a chicken and grill yakitori before the game, then we’ll probably snack for dinner during the Superbowl. I don’t have a horse in this race, so I just hope it’s a good game.

The weather here in Mesa, Arizona has been fantastic. We’ve had clear skies and daily high temperatures in the mid to upper 70s. The forecast for the week ahead calls for more of the same. We’ll be enjoying the sunshine on the pickleball courts. The nights cool quickly and we’ve had overnight lows around 50 degrees. No problem with that!

Bitchin’ Sauce

I spent most of Saturday morning on the pickleball courts. I played in the men’s round-robin 3.0-3.5 matches and ended playing a total of nine games. I was pretty worn out by the end. Later we met up with Mike and Jodi Hall for a late lunch on the patio at Lucky Lou’s. We caught up on things – we haven’t seen them since before Christmas. Mike and I enjoyed a cigar and a few beers.

Afterwards, we made a stop at Winco where Donna restocked groceries and I found a nice cut of beef top round for jerky. I cut the steak across the grain with a my 240mm sujihiki (Japanese slicer) and was able to achieve very uniform strips for jerky. The right knife makes all the difference. I mixed up my usual marinade and refrigerated it overnight.

On Sunday morning, I made a Costco run to restock the liquor cabinet. I made an impulse buy at Costco – I saw a large container (of course it was large – it’s Costco) of Bitchin’ Sauce. Bitchin’ is a Southern California slang term from the late ’50s or early ’60s and was usually heard among the surfer crowd. It meant really cool – better than good.

I haven’t seen Bitchin’ Sauce in the store before. It’s made in Carlsbad, California and we used to buy it at San Diego County farmers’ markets. It’s an almond based chipotle dip – gluten free and kosher! It’s great with tortilla chips or crackers – in a word, it’s bitchin’.

I put the jerky on the Traeger in the afternoon and had it on the smoke setting P0. After two hours and forty-five minutes, I had a superb batch of jerky. I think it’s my best effort ever. I really think the evenly sliced strips contributed to the final outcome.

We also bought a whole chicken at Winco and I broke it down Sunday afternoon. It was fairly easy and didn’t take too long. Although whole chicken is a little cheaper than buying pre-cut chicken, we didn’t buy it to save money. I think you get a fresher product that’s arguably better quality than pre-processed chicken thighs or breasts. Once the chicken is cut up, it begins to oxidize and lose fluids. Pre-processed chicken may have been cut days earlier at a processing plant and who knows how long it’s been in transit before you finally buy it. Whole chickens broken down at home are definitely fresher. Plus, I can cut it the way I want it for yakitori.

I stayed off the pickleball courts Monday. I had to drive to west Mesa where I signed documents at Rocky Mountain Cummins for my refund. Mesa has a population of about half a million people spread out over 139 square miles. It really sprawls – it’s a 15-mile trip each way to get from our location in east Mesa to the west side of town. It’s the third largest city in Arizona and the largest city that isn’t a county seat. It has more people than Minneapolis.

While I was on the west side, I made another stop at Asiana Market. I picked up some nori (seaweed wrapper) and also mirin for yakitori tare. Back at home, I got to work on my kitchen knife handling skills. I made Japanese fried rice while Donna grilled baby bok choy and Jerk shrimp.

The results were outstanding – a fine dinner plate.

Grilled Jerk shrimp, bok choy and Japanese fried rice

I paired the dinner plate with a Japanese beer I bought at Asiana.

The weather on Monday was a little strange. The temperature reached the low 70s, but it didn’t feel like it. I was outside in my ham shack under the canopy and the cloudy skies coupled with a fairly stiff breeze made it feel a lot cooler. I had an interesting conversation with a guy named Frank in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico. Frank and his wife are from Placitas, New Mexico and spend their winters in Puerto Vallarta. He told me that last year on the NFL Conference Championship weekend, they went to a local club which is like a large sports bar. He said he estimated there were around 200 patrons there. This year, they went to the same place last weekend. There were eight people there.

Many people that usually winter in Puerto Vallarta didn’t return this year due to Covid restrictions. Canadians in particular – their government requires citizens returning from Mexico to quarantine in a hotel at a cost of around $2,000. No choice – mandatory quarantine at a hotel selected by the government! He also told me that they usually go to the Walmart near their condo to stock up when they arrive for their winter stay. This year, they were stopped at the entrance and had to show identification. Anyone over the age of 60 was denied entrance to the store! This put a wrench in their shopping plans! They had to order contactless grocery delivery.

Donna and I hit the pickleball courts this morning. We were treated to excellent weather although it was a little more humid than usual. It’s sunny and 78 degrees as I type this at noon. The forecast calls for 80 degrees today, a high of 75 tomorrow and low 70s through the weekend. I can handle that!

Jaws

Donna has a new assistant. No, not for work – she retired, remember? She bought something she’s wanted for a while – a Shark IQ robotic vacuum cleaner. She actually wanted it for the new park model house when we move in, but she’s been using it in the motorhome. It’s an amazing device.

It docks in a charging station – it’s battery operated. When it’s activated, it relies on a number of sensors as it finds its way around the floor. It will transition from hard floor surface to rug or carpet with ease. It can work in tight spaces such as around chair legs or tables.

It stores information in its memory and becomes more efficient as it “learns” the layout of the floorplan. When it finishes the task – about half an hour for the motorhome – it docks itself in the charger to recharge for the next use! Since it’s a Shark, Donna dubbed it Jaws.

I don’t think it will take much more time to vacuum the park model home – it’s twice the square footage but it’s also more wide-open allowing longer straight runs without a lot of maneuvering.

You might recall back in the beginning of November that I took our coach to Rocky Mountain Cummins Avondale shop on the westside of Phoenix. When they completed the lift-pump replacement, I felt I’d been taken. They overcharged for the work, including charges for work that wasn’t even performed. I filed a complaint with the Arizona Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division since I couldn’t get any satisfaction from Rocky Mountain Cummins.

The Consumer Protection Division basically just forwarded my complaint to the Cummins Corporate office. They, in turn, sent it to their legal counsel which responded by writing a letter stating they did nothing wrong. I countered their argument with another filing – their position was not justified.

Last week, a representative of Cummins phoned me and we talked it over. He agreed that a compromise solution should be made. He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I just have to go to the Cummins shop in west Mesa and sign a release and they will refund me $606. A good ending to a bad experience.

Last week, Donna made an oven-roasted boneless chicken thigh recipe with a balsamic dijon garlic sauce. She served it over brown rice with French green beans with everything bagel seasoning. It was delicious – I loved the sauce.

Boneless chicken thigh with balsamic dijon garlic sauce

I think I said in my last post that experts, like author Kevin Kent, say most home cooks should have a selection of six knives or so. I’m getting there. I ordered another knife, bringing me up to five Japanese kitchen knives.

This time I ordered a petty. A petty is a small knife, usually ranging from 80mm to 180mm. The shorter size is for paring fruits or vegetables in your hand while longer pettys can used for board work. I ordered a 135mm petty from Japanese Chef Knives (JCK) in Tokyo, Japan.

This knife is from the Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan line and it’s made from a core of Hitachi Shirogami #1, also known as White steel #1 clad in soft stainless steel. The White steel #1 is a fine grained simple carbon steel without alloying elements and it takes a wicked sharp edge. The stainless cladding is unspecified, but I think it’s likely a SUS 410 series stainless like the stuff used on microwave oven or refrigerator doors.

This blade was hand forged by Teruyasu Fujiyama in Tokyo, Japan. Teru, or TF as he’s often referred to, is quite a character. He is a fourth generation blacksmith. In the 1970s, he and his father pioneered the art of cladding carbon steel by forge welding stainless steel to it. They had to experiment a lot before they got it right – 80% of the time they failed as the steel either delaminated or cracked. But they eventually got it right. TF is one of the very few blacksmiths that still make san-mai (three-layer) steel by hand forging. Most buy pre-laminated steel from the Hitachi YSS division or from Takefu Special Steel Company.

He makes three lines of knives, ranging from the value-priced Nashiji line to the mid-price Maboroshi and the premium line called Denka. I’ve read a lot about his work and a lot of knife aficionados complain about the lack of fine finish and fitment of handles on some of his work. Then they all rave about the fine heat treatment and geometry resulting in hard, durable blades with incredible cutting ability. It seems TF is rightly proud of his ability to forge great steel, but doesn’t care so much about a few stray grind marks or handle fitment. But the knife-crazy guys will pay upwards of a $1,000 for his top line stuff.

The JCK Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan line is their house brand and the particular knife I bought is sourced from the TF Nashiji line. I used it last night to slice an apple and it does have an incredibly smooth cutting feel. I also ordered a saya (wooden sheath) for safe storage. The simple magnolia wood saya was shown as available when I placed the order, but somehow it was out of stock when they picked the order. Koki-san at JCK took care of me though. He upgraded to the premium lacquer saya at no extra cost – it’s twice the price of plain magnolia!

We had some rain on Monday and Tuesday as a cold front came through. It was much cooler with the thermometer hovering around 60 for the daily highs. We had Midget-san under cover for a week when we finally had a warm, dry day yesterday. I uncovered it and found a dead battery! Something was drawing current from the battery. I put a charger on it. Then our neighbor, Chuck, brought over his charger with a boost function for starting.

I got the car fired up and Donna and I drove over to Basha’s for a few groceries and we picked up takeout from J&M – our favorite Chinese restaurant in the area. It’s amazing how affordable Chinese takeout is – we both had kung pao chicken with rice, spring roll, two crab puffs and soup for $12.50 per plate. And the portions were large enough for each of us to have a second meal of leftovers!

I got back on the pickleball courts Thursday and again this morning. My back is holding up fine. I planned to rest over the weekend, but they needed a player to fill out round-robin play tomorrow, so I’m in. It looks like we’ll end the month with fine weather. The temperature is predicted to be 70 or higher for the next several days.

Mesa Winter

The weather held up and I was able to coach the pickleball class on Wednesday. The daily high temperatures stayed near 70 degrees through Friday with occasional rain showers. My back is much better, but with the rain showers and breezy conditions, I didn’t play any pickleball. I’m raring to go now, but we’ll have to wait until the weather improves.

With a lot of time spent indoors, I’m trying to improve my kitchen knife handling skills. On Friday night, I helped Donna prep dinner. She had chicken with peppers and tomato over orzo on the menu, so I sliced onion and also red, yellow and green peppers. I also did a fresh basil chiffonade. I told Donna she needed to enlist me as sous chef early because I’m pretty slow with a kitchen knife. I keep in mind the wise words of Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto – he says if you cut yourself in the kitchen, it’s because you weren’t focused on the task at hand or you were trying to go too fast. The dinner came out excellent and it’s fun for Donna and I to work together in the kitchen.

Chicken with peppers and tomato over orzo

Saturday morning the rain held off and it wasn’t too windy which was a good thing. Donna had a tennis tournament at 10am. I walked down to the east courts to watch.

Donna and her teammate Cindy easily won their match. It was interesting. The tennis club here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort is very well organized and a lot of members take their tennis seriously. Donna has really improved her game and looks forward to continuing to take instruction and is thinking she might play in the tennis league next season.

I had an e-mail notification of a USPS packaged delivered on Saturday. The thing is, these notifications usually mean the package arrived at the local post office. The Viewpoint mail team picks up at the post office twice a day. Then they sort the packages and will usually put a notification slip in the small mailboxes the next day. With it being Saturday, that meant I wouldn’t get the notification until Monday. So what, right?

I was anxious to receive my package because I knew what it was. That’s right – another Japanese kitchen knife. This one came from Japanese Knife Imports in Beverly Hills, California. This store is operated by Jon Broida and his wife, Sara. They sell high-quality gear and Jon is both a former chef and expert knife sharpener. Sara is Japanese – she grew up in Haguro, Yamagata prefecture in northern Japan. She says, “Imagine Ohio with rice paddies instead of corn fields.”

How many knives do you really need? Most recommendations I’ve read for home cooks is around six. Professional chefs will have two to three times as many as they need some specialty blades and back ups for their most used knives. Anything more than that and you are a collector.

Donna has plenty of kitchen knives to choose from. I wanted to have some of my own. The Japanese knives I’ve bought for myself tend to be a little more specialized and higher maintenance. I don’t want to go too far though – I don’t need a collection. There are guys that constantly buy, sell and trade knives online just to keep their collections alive and sample knives from different makers.

For me it started with a $25 certificate from Cutlery and More. I ordered a Yaxell/Enso ko-bunka – an all around small utility knife. It’s a factory-made knife constructed from stamped steel blanks – with the discount certificate I got it for around $60. Then I bought a boning knife – a Misono honesuki (Japanese poultry knife) forged from Swedish steel at about twice the price of the Enso. Then I stepped up and bought a hand forged JCK Natures Blue Moon sujihiki – a slicer from Japanese Chef s Knife in Tokyo made in Sanjo, Niigata Prefecture, Japan.

I went to the Viewpoint on-site post office Saturday afternoon and they were kind enough to find my package among the delivery waiting to be sorted. This time I really stepped up and bought a Kintaro 210mm Gyuto (chef’s knife) hand forged by Yoshimi Kato in Echizen, Fukui Prefecture, Japan. Echizen was formed when the city Takefu and the town Imadate merged in 2005.

In Echizen, there’s a place called the Takefu Knife Village. This is a cooperative that was created by a number of master blacksmiths in the area. They were concerned about aging out of business while younger workers weren’t interested in learning the traditional ways of making knives and tools. The cooperative built a modern workplace and equipped it to attract younger workers. They buy steel in greater quantities by combining orders – a lot of their steel comes from a local factory, Takefu Specialty Steel Company.

I find the history fascinating and the Takefu Knife Village has been a huge success since it was formed in 1993. Today it’s a tourist attraction and supports many younger blacksmiths and sharpeners making knives with traditional methods.

Yoshimi Kato, the maker of my new knife works at the Takefu Knife Village where he forges steel into knives. He is the son-in-law of Hiroshi Kato, one of the founders of the village. He married Hiroshi’s daughter – I find it interesting that they have the same last name. I read that the name Kato ranks number 10 among the most common Japanese surnames.

I think this is a pretty cool knife. The core steel is Hitachi shirogami #2 clad in a soft stainless steel. Shirogami is often called white paper #2 or just white #2. This is because Hitachi ships it with a white paper label. The ship their aogami #1 and #2 with blue labels – thus they are called blue steel. The shirogami is a very pure carbon steel without any alloying additions. It can be made very hard through heat treatment allowing a thin, sharp blade that paradoxically is easily sharpened. The JCK sujihiki I have is made from stainless clad aogami blue #2 – it’s like white #2 with some chromium, manganese and tungsten added. Enough knife nerd stuff.

Winter has really arrived in Mesa, Arizona. Yesterday’s high was only 54 degrees with scattered showers. When it rains here in the desert, we rarely see a continuous drizzle like you might find in the Pacific northwest. When it comes down here, it usually pours with larger raindrops in small storm cells. The desert always welcomes moisture, but sometimes it can mean flash flooding. Today will only be in the low 50s with more rain. The rest of the week should be about 10 degrees warmer, but we can’t rule out more rain coming from the west where southern California is getting wet.

Who’s Tracking You?

Information is power – and that’s where the money is. How much of your information is out there? Probably a lot more than you think. Since I wrote my last post a few days ago, which featured Japanese kitchen knives, every time I open Facebook now, I’m inundated with kitchen knife advertising. I wonder who’s watching what I’m up to?

I dug into a few of the ads and found another interesting tidbit. There are companies using social media to not only advertise, but spread misleading information about their brands. For example, one brand called Dalstrong wants you to believe it makes Japanese kitchen knives. On their web site, the “Our Story” page doesn’t tell you anything about their story – it’s all advertising copy. Nowhere do they say their products are actually manufactured in Yangjiang, China.

I see ads loudly proclaiming “Japanese steel knives.” Hmmm…does that mean Japanese steel or is it a Japanese knife made in Japan from steel or what? “Japanese steel” in advertising copy usually means a misleading ad. Wasabi Knives are another company that wants you to believe it’s Japanese. Wasabi sounds Japanese, right? Maybe if a Japanese company wanted to be called horseradish they would use that name.

How about Kamikoto knives? They have an office in Tokyo and use Japanese 420J2 steel – an inferior steel not intended for knife blades. It’s usually only found in liners for pocket knives and bolsters or handle tangs. Kamikoto knives is another brand from Yangjiang, China – who knows, maybe it’s the same factory that makes the Dalstrong brand. They want you to believe it’s a quality Japanese product so they can charge $100 for a $10 knife.

Then there’s a company called Cookidea – when you read their ad carefully, you see it says “Japanese design” knives. Why would these companies go to these lengths to mislead? If the products they are getting from China are truly quality products, then just say so. I don’t have anything against a quality item made in China, however there’s a lot of junk peddled from Chinese factories out there.

About four years ago, I bought a pocket knife to break down cardboard boxes for recycling – we get a lot of Amazon deliveries and always seem to have cardboard boxes. I looked around and thought a Spyderco knife was the way to go. I didn’t want to spend much money. I just wanted a good workhorse-type pocket knife. Sal Glesser, founder and president of Spyderco, has his knife designs made in various factories around the globe. He doesn’t try to hide this fact – it’s openly displayed on his knife blade. The first knife I bought from Spyderco was a knife called Tenacious, made from 8Cr13MoV steel in China. It was under $50.

8Cr13MoV steel (Chinese)

I’ve used this knife almost daily since then – we start our day with a cup of hot lemon water while I grind and brew coffee – this knife cuts lemons most mornings. I liked the Spyderco product so much, that I followed with an assortment of Spydercos in different steel types from different factories.

Takefu Special Steel Company VG-10 steel – Japan

Carpenter Technology Steel CTS-XHP – USA

The Taichung factory has a great reputation for high quality with fantastic fit and finish.

Crucible Particle Metal CPM-Cruwear steel – USA

I have confidence in any Spyderco knife, regardless of which factory produced it. I can’t say that about Chinese companies that pretend to be something else.

Last Friday, I tried my hand at a Japanese dish that took me back to the days of my childhood. It’s called onigiri – a Japanese rice ball. My mom made these as snacks for us – nowadays I realize it was probably due to the cupboard being bare at the time. When I was a kid, I thought nothing of it. It’s just what it sounds like, rice packed into a ball shape. I rinsed white sushi rice, then soaked it in cold water for 10 minutes or so before putting it in the rice cooker to ensure a soft and sticky finish.

When the rice cooled, I put salt on my palms to keep the rice from sticking and flattened a handful. I put bits of ahi tuna in the center and squeezed it into a ball. In Japan, I’m told onigiri can be found in delis or convenience stores and is as common there as a sandwich is here. Donna and I each had two for lunch.

Over the weekend Donna tried a couple of recipes from a cookbook she bought here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. It had recipes from park residents and was sold as a fundraiser for a community charity organization called Sunshine Angels.

The first dish was a pork tenderloin with dijon marsala sauce. The sauce was a winner and I’m looking forward to having this one again.

Pork tenderloin with dijon marsala sauce, smashed red potatoes and green beans

Last night, she made a dish called gluten-free lemon chicken Chinese-style. It had a delicious lemon glaze but the recipe was labor intensive.

Gluten-free lemon chicken with brown rice and green beans

I’m pleased to announce I have a new ham radio callsign. The original callsign the FCC assigned to my station was KF0AZQ. This was a mouthful using the NATO phonetic alphabet – it was kilo-foxtrot-zero-alpha-zulu-Quebec. I applied for a vanity callsign – I asked for K7KPR. The number is assigned by region – I had zero before because my official address is in South Dakota. I applied for a seven in my callsign because we spend most of our time in seven land – Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming are all region 7. My request was approved today – I’m officially K7KPR – much easier phonetically – kilo-seven-kilo-papa-romeo.

The rain in yesterday’s forecast for the week ahead arrived early. We had rain and gusty winds last night. It’s dry, but it’s breezy and cloudy this morning. The forecast calls for more rain and high winds this afternoon with a high temperature of 74 degrees. More rain is expected through the weekend as moisture comes up from the southwest and the thermometer won’t reach 70 again for the remainder of the week – if they have it right.

My back is much improved and I plan to coach the pickleball lesson tomorrow – weather permitting. Donna has really stepped up her games – both pickleball and tennis.

Just One More

I got through last Wednesday’s pickleball coaching session without too much pain. I was very careful of how I demonstrated certain drills and techniques, then mostly stood to the side and observed the students. It was a 90-minute lesson and I think it went well.

Later in the afternoon, DHL delivered again. Yeah, I bought another Japanese kitchen knife. I know, how many do you need, right? Well, it’s like cowboy boots – just one more is always the answer. I wanted to have a longer slicing knife to use for brisket and tri-tip off the smoker. A Japanese style called a sujihiki was what I wanted. Sujihikis are usually long and only about one and a half inches (38mm) tall at the heel of the blade. They are ideal for cutting boneless meat into thin strips.

I had sent an e-mail with questions to Japanese Chef Knives and got a prompt rely from the boss there, Koki Iwahara. I placed the order for a JCK Natures Blue Moon kuritsuki/sujihiki. These knives are hand made in Sanjo, Niigata Prefecture, Japan. Japan had a number of well-known blademaking cities, each with its own take on knife making. Sanjo historically was a place where blacksmiths made mostly farming tools. That changed and today there are reportedly around 100 knife factories in Niigata Prefecture. Factory in this sense doesn’t mean what we might think of a factory.

Many knife makers operate out of a small dwelling – maybe the size of an American two-car garage with one to three workers. This is typical in Sanjo where all of the knife making process, other than the handle, takes place under one roof. In other areas, different steps in the process are contracted out to various specialists.

Typical Sanjo knife factory – photo from Tokyoknives.com blog

Once again, Koki and DHL came through. The knife left Tokyo on Monday and I had it Wednesday afternoon. It’s a 9.5-inch (240mm) sujihiki with a “K” type reverse tanto tip.

I ordered a saya (wood sheath) to go with it. I oiled the chestnut handle and magnolia saya with camellia oil and it darkened nicely.

The extremely sharp blade is made from Hitachi Aogami #2 – also called blue steel #2 – a high carbon steel that’s not corrosion resistant. The blade is san-mai, that is, it’s three layers. The core of Aogami #2 is clad with soft stainless steel on each side, like a sandwich. This gives the advantage of the hard blue steel edge and the toughness of the soft cladding – otherwise the blade would be too brittle and fragile.

Wednesday evening, Donna cooked seared ahi (yellowfin tuna) and I put the sujihiki to test. It sliced the ahi cleanly with one pulling stroke into thin serving slices. She served it over Japanese fried rice with grilled bok choy. Delicious!

Seared ahi over fried rice with bok choy and a dab of wasabi

On Friday, Donna made an announcement on social media that she’s been considering for awhile. She officially announced her retirement. No more articles, newsletters or books to write, no more interviews with magazines and no more blogging. She’s selling her Internet domain name and completely leaving the organizing business. Her days are already full with tennis, pickleball, bicycling and sometimes just relaxing with a book.

I had another delivery and set about doing some regular RV maintenance work on Friday. I had ordered replacement filter cartridges from the RV Water Filter Store for our dual canister water filtration system. I replace the cartridges on a regular schedule – the sediment filter gets changed every three months while the carbon block filter gets changed every six months.

The water here in the desert is very hard with lots of mineral content. Additionally, in December, they replaced the water meters in the park, which undoubtedly released sediment into the pipes.

The 5-micron sediment filter really showed a lot of trapped debris and rust. I like the 5-micron element as it it’s fine enough, but still allows good flow. A one-micron filter would trap smaller particles, but it also impedes flow.

The weather has been delightful – as forecast, the highs have been in the mid to upper 70s with overnight lows around 50. We’ll have a few more nice days ahead, but clouds and a chance of rain are in the forecast by the end of the week.

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Category Archives: Western RV/Alpine Coach

Lost Dog

Sunshine On My Headlights

Our Transportation Evolution

Donna’s Deals

Lighter Load with a Toad

Bitchin’ Sauce

Jaws

Mesa Winter

Who’s Tracking You?

Just One More

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