Recovering in Austin 2013

Traveling in the southlands, we often come upon crematories that have huge acreage covers with plastic floral tributes. My family was brought up to respect our loved ones in thought and prayer, we did not present floral tributes. YMMV and that’s ok.

The monkey wrench gets tossed into the works last Sunday {Easter} when the youth group in the Church we attend in Georgetown decorated the alter with this beautiful tribute they make every year out of plastic flowers that had been discarded.

What a great morning, we had a 50 member adult choir and about 15 youngsters in a bell choir. Throw in the 3rd Baptism in so many weeks and you can see this is a very active church. Special for me as they also collect Tabs for Tots for our Shrine charities.

My recovery from the back surgery is now progressing with baby steps. I go to PT several times a week where they work on keeping me limber with various low impact stretching exercises. My trip to the doctor last week gave me the mixed message that I was doing very well but had to return in 30 days. Damn, I wanted to be on the road then, it appears that I am not this fellow!

 

My major task this month is to retire the 5th wheel. While the tire look great, they are 6 years old and it’s time for them to be replaced. RV manufacturers us ‘SC’ rated tires which are cost effective but have very little reserve capacity. The small print also limits them to 65mph. This is not prudent as almost all RV’s are going down the road at their max weight and follow the traffic flow.

The previous owner of our rig found this out the hard way when he had a blow-out which also caused bodywork damage which is often the case with the fragile plastic bodywork. At that time he had 5 Firestone Transforce ‘LT’ tires fitted. These are 10 ply commercial tires that have a 90mph speed rating and about 25% capacity increase at 100% load. The bad news is they have a 50% cost disadvantage and seem to never go on sale at Firestone dealers.

We bought 4 tires at a local dealer, I hired a young fellow at the campground to take off one tire per evening. I than cleaned and painted the rim and brought the tire to the dealer who mounted he new tire. I’m pretty happy with the results and feel better about the upcoming Alaska adventure. At no time did I lift more that 10 pounds, SWMBO policed me relentlessly.

 

Giggles for the week!

Pete & Anne-Marie