Raven’s RV
The ongoing education and adventures of two rank newbie RVers

I’m going to be blogging the road trip at Raven’s Roads when I can get enough time to do so; we’ve been en route for four days and it’s been a bit hectic, though it will calm down now we’ve completed our main mission. We did fix the gears, which are no longer slipping, and third gear is consistently present, but there is still an issue.

Basically the valve body needs replacing, but it’s moderately easy to get to, and not too expensive to acquire (somewhat around a hundred dollars). So, we set out on the road trip regardless, and Harvey is holding up very well, and doing some things we’ve never before asked of him, which I’ll get to in some other blog post when my battery isn’t about to run out. (It’s time for us to buy a solar panel.)

We are having fun. Lots of lovely views, new places and of course historical markers. We have also finally taken Harvey out of state, to Reno, Nevada! :)

It may be sweltering hot in Redding this afternoon, but it was anything but balmy in the mountains surrounding the far northern Sacramento Valley as thunderstorms struck the high country, spewing hail and igniting wildfires two days before the official start of fire season.

The above is from the local Redding newspaper, and I’m sitting here wondering, There’s an official season? Did anyone send Mother Nature the memo?

Humans are really, really silly sometimes.

We’ve had a small thunderstorm every day for the last three days. No lightning in our area, and according to the forecast (more…)

Or the hokey-pokey, if you happen to prefer that version.

Today I somehow twisted into the tiny corner of space between the door and the transmission and helped lift its assembled, 200-plus pound bullk to the jack, and thence to the ground. A little while later I shoved it under the RV. Now, it needs to be reattached to Harvey’s underbelly.

So it’s more like out, in, and shake it all about, but you get the idea. Very good progress has been made and I’m hoping that tomorrow will be the day it all gets buttoned up and we find out if it works. First order of the day will be to pick up some more transmission fluid, and (more…)

When I got up this morning I thought that I would be heading into Weaverville to pick up a tool that Don needed, and then spending the rest of the day working on my websites.

Er, no. Today had other plans for me.

Here’s how my day actually panned out.

First I did a little bit of web work and customer service. Then I rode into Weaverville where I discovered that despite this being the main hub on highway 299, neither Napa nor Ace were open for the day. So I rode home, and looked up where Kragen was in Redding, and I rode to Redding, where it was hot.

I found Kragen and acquired the correct sort of oil and the correct sort of transmission fluid and the correct esoteric tool (more…)

Life has this way of testing your commitment to new ventures, and tonight’s shenanigans were only to be expected. You see, I’m finally launching my freelance writing business, the one that’s been brewing and happening in fits and starts for a couple of years now. ;)

I don’t just mean the magazine writing, which I think will be a natural outgrowth of being full-time on the road; I mean offering writing services to small businesses and non-profits, something that would fit perfectly into the confines of a little Harvey, rattling down the backroads of America.

Tonight, two days into my thirty-day countdown to launch, our internet conked out. I picked up (more…)

I have a few pictures left from the “January” road trip, but towards the end of that excursion, not our most fun, I just kind of got sick of travel and taking pictures. So there are entire days with nothing to report on, and it’s rather more disjointed than the rest of the trip. I’m therefore going to summarize, which leaves me open to review the campgrounds we went to.

(more…)

The torrential rain seems like a myth: It’s well over 90 degrees today, and may hit a hundred tomorrow. Coming up to four o’clock, the heat is so intense that it’s not going to be possible to stay indoors without air conditioning, and I so I fancy that there’s a book and notebook with my name on them, to be enjoyed beneath the shade of a nice pine tree.

Yesterday, to our surprise, a UPS truck beeped us out of the RV and delivered our parcel, as promised. We were expecting the UPS truck, just not his arrival at the pad! Ever since, Don has been sorting gaskets and thrust washers and discovering that some of them seem to be missing. As many are very similar in size, it’s really quite tricky to know what goes where, so he’s doing what he can. We think there’s at least one missing. (more…)

If I said that my desk couldn’t possibly get any messier, I think the universe would take it as a challenge. ;) Nevertheless, I’m now operating from only half a desk, because the other half is full of transmission parts. The cab has been turned into a workshop and the RV still continues to list at a crazy angle, propped up on blocks.

But it’s okay! Because parts are coming! At the weekend Don took the last set of gears and esoteric widgets out of the shaft and we ordered our parts from Makco. And in return for an almost $200 charge they sent us a nice shiny tracking number on Monday which we are using to follow the progress of gaskets and thrust washers from Alabama on home.

After that, a great deal of reassembly will be required, after which we will be able to go back on the road, and boy are we looking forward to that!

02 March 2009: The view out of the window as we leave our space in Dos Reis. We holed up there for a few days, partly to wait out the rain and partly because I needed to do some work catchup.

28 February 2009: We found a new San Joaquin County park–Dos Reis–just outside Lathrop. It was a nice little place, rather odd; on one side were rural fields, on the other the long stretched-out line of I-5, flanked by lights. There was no night sky to speak of, but it did have full hookups for about $25 a night.