Lyca gets a make over

I’m on fire,

I’m a fabricat’en, modify’en, steel weld’en, luminum chopp’en, wood cutt’en, weight loos’en fool. I have just finished giving Lyca (my truck) a make over so he is ready for the big adventure.





Between me, him, and Cazee we are ready to hit the road, except Cazee has a few more modifications yet to be done. I have enclosed Lyca’s rear section and ladder rack for security reasons. (If people can’t see what’s in the back of the truck then they are less likely to try to remove anything from it. The other reason for the modifications is for more storage and being able to organize things better. When I finish Lyca and I will be able to fix almost, anything anywhere, any time.

If we can’t fix it, it ain’t broke.

The first thing I have added is a spare steel 55 gallon fuel tank.



The main reason for that is to be able fill up the gasoline burning members of my team. Of which Lyca is one, and there is Sicfiddy Kawalski of course. Then there are two more team members that are hydrocarbon combustion energy users and they are Mr. Lektrik Steelbinder and Buddy Blohard. Mr. Steelbinder is a 9 horse power electric generator / welder.



Mr. Blohard is a 12 horse power two stage electric start air compressor, for operating air tools and re-inflating the occasional flat tire.



In addition Lektrik has had the fore thought to invite his nephews, Ox and Ace, to travel with us. Ox and Ace are oxygen and acetylene tanks with hose reel and torches that will comfortably ride in the back of Lyca.



Buddy will also have an air hose reel so that he and his fellow travelers do not get in each others way. Even Lektrik will have a power cord reel to keep things neat and tidy.







As you can see I have enclose the rear section with diamond plate aluminum on the sides and 3/8 exterior plywood on the top. I think it will be secure and weather proof enough for everyone to have a nice adventure.

I started the modifications on Sunday morning and have worked about 10 hours each day, it is now Wednesday, that works out to a full work week, but it has been worth it.



244 lbs

Gotta go

New man in town

Hi again,
The other night I woke up again in the middle of the night thinking, “I’ll never get it done.” I have sooooo much to dooooooo that I have been worrying if I can get it done in the time allotted. That morning I sat down and decided that I was concentrating on the small projects and decided that I would re-focus on the larger projects and the ones that would bring in the most dollars. No more garage sales until just before I go. What doesn’t sell then, I will donate. So I re-worked my list focusing on the large projects and I felt a lot better, although I still have a lot to do.
I put a bunch of easy to ship, easy to list Items on e-bay and netted $1,800.00 which worked well. I still have to modify the storage compartment on Cazey, who by the way informed me that I was spelling her name wrong. According to her it is Cazee, (long A). Pronounced KZ.
I have new member of my entourage. He is a young man, I believe of Polish decent whose last name is Kawalski. His first name Sicfiddy.



He is taking the place of my Asian friend, Har-re Davisan.



Because Har-re is too heavy and limited in what he can do. I really hate not being able to take Har-re along but he is a luxury I can’t afford. So I invited Sicfiddy and he assured me he could meet my requirements of being able to explore through the woods and back roads as well as run to the store for light shopping. He also informed me that if I wanted to run fifty or sixty miles down the interstate he had the balls to do it. Perhaps not with the ease and comfort of Har-re, but he could get the job done.

To see the rest of my team just click on either one of the photo's

Slowly but surely the warehouse is emptying out. There are a few of bulky items left to move out and I will be glad to see them go no matter which rout they take. Hopefully I can find a nice home for them rather than adding to the local landfill.
I just looked at my to do list and at the top it says “Get off your ass and get busy”.

See ya
252 lbs

This ain't easy baby

Hi gang,

It’s been a while since I posted to my blog. Sorry about that. My plan has been to allow only three or four days between posts and I feel confident that I will be able to keep that commitment once I Hit The Road (HTR). We will see how that works at that time, and since I have never done this so I am going to have to wing it.

Getting rid of most of my worldly possessions is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Years ago, I saw a movie or TV show, about a man who stood to inherit several million dollars, but there was a catch. He had to spend a million dollars in a specified amount of time and have nothing to show for it. At first he thought it would be a piece of cake, then reality set in and he ended up scrambling to make it actually happen. With luck and the help of a love interest, he was successful. I feel like that guy (without the love intrest). I had my second Garage sale this past weekend and I feel like throwing everything I own in the dumpster and forgetting it. The only problem with that path is that every dollar helps smooth the bumps in life’s highway or at least that is what I believe. The money that these THINGS will bring me even if they only bring pennies on the dollar from their original cost is helpful. A penny is a penny and I would like to have as many pennies as I can get before I HTR. Having said that it would seem like I am broke and I am not, but even though I may wish for a utopian fiscally burdenless society, that ain’t reality. Oops, I inadvertently segued into philosophy. Back to the garage sale. I hate to disparage any group or to profile a group of people but there are those who would do their best to take advantage of me and have no remorse what so ever, whether it be demanding, pleading, begging or out right stealing from me, their thought process seem to be, if the mark allows me to get away with it then I have won the game, and coming from the view point that I am responsible for my own domain they are right. My problem is that it is exhausting to fend off these constant, (however mostly minor) attacks. I ask two dollars for an item worth well over ten dollars and they respond with the offer of a quarter. Then when I say no, it’s like I never opened my mouth because in front of me they stand, holding out a quarter. A bargain price is asked and a barrage of insulting counter offers is proffered. In addition I must be wary that this isn’t a diversion so that another of their party absconds with some item that I am selling. I probably sound like an old fart when I wish for times when honesty and integrity were the norm rather than the exception, and I probably am and a bit delusional in even expecting it. The really sad part is, I spend a day getting ready and a day selling (a very conservative estimate) and my gross is $513.00, which I could have earned in 4 hours before I retired. Like I said before, this is much harder than I thought it would be.

Adventures from another day.
Holy moley, it took four hours to set up the bathroom in my trailer. By set up, I mean take the bathroom stuff in pile number one that I wanted to keep and put it into the cabinets and medicine chest. Finding a place for everything and every thing in its place, plus arranging it in containers so that it doesn’t turn into a jumbled mess while I am traveling is a real challenge. And this is just the bathroom. I am going to ask my friend Jo to help me organize things. Like most anal retentive persons she excels at that sort of thing. (Just kidding Jo) I have begun to alter the front bunk room into my office / storage area. I will have to calculate how much weight I am loading in there and I will have to balance that weight in the rear. Most of what I will put up front will not weigh a lot. Some clothes, some paper products, files, and the computer.

260 lbs

Till next post

Industrious Men

Hi Peoples,

WOW! The new owners are serious about re-doing my former home. There is a term, that contractor’s use when they tear out the interior of a house and start over with just the shell. It’s called GUTTING, which is an appropriate term for the process. Well the new owners have not gutted the house but dam close. (see pic’s) The Kitchen and cabinets are gone. One of the bathrooms only has the toilet and the sink remaining. All the closets have been ripped out, the interior doors, windows. They are doing it right. They are able to do this way because no one is living in the house. He tells me that he should be able to move in by the end of January. That seems optimistic to me because he is going to replace all of the wiring and much of the plumbing in addition to all of the stuff he tore out. However if anyone can do it I think this guy can. They arrive at 8 am and have never left before 7 pm. He is here today with his crew (Saturday). They have been here every day following Christmas eve, it will be interesting to see if they show up tomorrow.

Cazey and I are getting along well. I am actually sleeping better in her embrace than I was in the house. I think it will even be better when I get one of those memory foam mattresses. Little by little I am sorting through my piles and putting the essentials in the trailer and the truck. When I get the that done I will add the luxuries or the I wannas, as the weight and space allow. I also need to start thinking about other things like mail forwarding, internet access and residency. Yes residency, even though I will be traveling from state, the government likes it when you call one place home and apparently it makes a big difference which state you claim as home. I haven’t figured it all out yet but I will before HTR day (Hitting The Road day).

My TO-DO list is longer than I am tall and that’s saying something. I am just prioritizing each item and knocking it off of the list as I go. One problem, as I knock one thing off it seems like I remember another couple of things I need to add. Eventually it will start getting shorter. Another problem is I keep loosing my list, it’s written on a legal pad and I keep putting it down and forgetting where. I guess I need to put it on the computer. I am experiencing another problem that seems to have gotten worse. I remember something that I need or want to do and by the time I move to where I need to do it I forget what it was. It just happened. As I wrote the line “I guess I need to put it on the computer” I remembered something I needed to look up, so I clicked over to the internet and in that small space in time I forgot what it was I wanted to look up. There is a bright spot though. While rewriting “I guess I needed to put it on the computer” I remembered something else and I immediately wrote it down. For all I know it might be the same thing I forgot in the first place. Hopefully, I won’t loose the paper I wrote it down on.

As I mentioned before I am on an eating re-learning program. I am doing very well, and rather than mention this on each post, I will just end with my last weigh-in. I was at an all time high of 295 pounds in November, and I decided to cut a few things out of my dietary intake. Like Peanut M&M’s and Potato chips that were supplemented with buttered popcorn and mini Almond joy’s, while laying in bed watching TV. After cutting that out I lost 15 pounds. Then I started the program on December 18th and I am currently at 268 pounds. My goal weight is 225, so I will end each post with the number of my current liteness.

268 lbs

See Ya

My first time with Cazey

The pottery pictures are posted as promised. I was really pleased as to how they came out. The pictures don’t completely show the nuances of the glaze but a picture rarely captures what reality presents.

Last night, Christmas Eve, Cayze (my travel trailer) and I slept together for the first time. She has that rear slide out Queen Size bed and she seemed a little tight. Perhaps it was because it has been awhile since any has slept with her or it is more likely that I am just big. I’m 6’3” so I have to sleep corner to corner, but surprisingly I slept well. I think I will get her one of those memory foam mattresses instead of the 4” slab of regular foam that she now has. It was cool here in Florida last night (around 68 degrees) and come early morning it rained and cooled things off a little more.

I am completely out of the house and I spent most of yesterday setting up my computer and desk in the warehouse. I had a couple of minor glitches but I finally got back online. I was almost surprised that everything actually worked. I had to reroute phone lines some 200 feet from the house to the warehouse and hook up new jacks. I expected to have more problems related to power drop due to the distance but everything seems fine. Even the TV is working fine without a signal booster.

Man the new owner was here today ripping out walls and closets. I didn’t think he would be here on Christmas day but here he was with a crew of four and the dust was flying.

Now I am having trouble finding stuff that is in the piles. In my haste to get out of the house I neglected to mark the boxes and now I have to search through them to find stuff. Well at least now I don’t have a deadline as to when I find any particular item.

Christmas was great, I spent the morning with my son (Jay), his faïence (Mari), her sister (Allie) and her mother (Nina). It was a very comfortable gathering. I acted the fool as usual. Allie got a small fluffy stuffed sheep and when they handed it to me to feel how soft it was I pretended to blow my nose on it. Anything for a laugh, I love it when people laugh and I love it even more if I am the one causing it. They gave me some things for Cazey, a couple of RV books a really cool backpack and some neat sandals. Later I went to my friend Jo’s and she got me some plastic space saver spice holders that fasten to the inside of the cabinet door and a album that holds tons of CD/DVD,s. with out their plastic cases, thereby saving allot of storage space. And as you RVers know, saving space is the name of the game.

As I was cleaning up and packing I ran across some stuff that I had written several years ago. One of the things I had written jumped out at me and I have decided to put it on the back of my trailer.

WHO’S LIFT ARE YOU LIVING?

Now I can honestly say mine.

Goodnight

Moving out.

Well, obviously I was unable to get the tool photos in the web album where I wanted them, therefore you are unable look at them. After Christmas I will try again.

I finally closed on the house in December 19th. I got a little bent out of shape because of all the EXTRA charges and PENATILIES but there was nothing I could do about them so I didn’t get too wound up over it.. It seems like everybody has their hand in the cookie jar. If I had it to do over again I would not have used a realtor. I would have used BUY_OWNER. I told the Realtor how to sell the property but all he did was stick 2 wire signs in the front yard, hung a lock box on the front door and put an MLS flyer holder on the mail box but never put any flyers in it. After several days I put a sign out front describing the unique features of the property and within 20 days, had a bidder. Any way it’s over and I am not going to dwell on it further. I only am expressing it here to let my readers know so that they won’t make the same mistake. In addition I informed my Realtor that I didn’t think he earned the Twenty K that he and the other Realtor split.

I did get an extension (Dec 23) to get out of the house. I am almost finished. Every thing is in piles in the warehouse. Pile 1 = Things to sort through and keep or sell. Pile 2 = Things that my friend had stored at my house and will come to pick up. Pile 3 = Things to sell, give or throw away. Pile # 4 = Tools and Equipment to sell. I will put some pictures of the warehouse and the piles on this entry.

I have decided to make another change. I have started a weight loss program. I am tired of my feet hurting, and I want the extra mobility for my adventures. A friend expressed that it might be a mistake to try to make additional changes with so many other things changing, and I had to agree that she might be right, because the diet program is taking up a lot of extra time and it is not an easy thing to do, but on the other hand, since there are so many things changing why not add one more and do everything at once. So far, I think that the second option has been the right decision. It will all eventually end up being one big change.

I am not sure if I mentioned that for the past 8 weeks I have been a pottery class at the local high school making Christmas presents. I am going to take pictures of the pots I made and post them on my next post. I don’t want the people I am giving them to, to see them before Christmas.

I have 95% of the stuff out of the house. I need to take some time to prepare Cazey Twofive for my move in. I still need to connect the phone cables and the TV cable. I haven’t figured how to get the hot water heater on board Cazey to work yet. I don’t plan on taking cold showers. I have a whole list of things that I need to purchase, repair and modify before I will be able to “Hit The Road” (HTR). That is in addition to sorting, storing, selling and / or disposing of all the material items.

Well I am tired and I will close for today. Check in after Christmas for the pottery pictures and the next up date.

Tons of stuff for sale

Wow! I got a lot of stuff done this weekend working in the warehouse. I hired two laborers to do most of the lifting and moving. The Warehouse is 40 foot by 30 foot and packed wall to wall with tools and lift parts. I have sold a couple of thousand dollars worth of the smaller hand tools on E-Bay and you wouldn’t even know it by looking at the warehouse. I wish that I had taken some before and after pictures. Even though we got a lot done we still only just scratched the surface. We removed the shipping container that I had in there to secure the more expensive tools and we also cleared out a bunch of junk for disposal. I took a ton of pictures of tools and parts to sell. I will make a web album to put the photos in so anyone can access them. If you see something that you are interested in e-mail or call me at 561-370-4962 and we can make a deal. Here are a couple of examples of I have. Just click on one of the images and it will take you to the entire album. There are large power tools (drill press, welders, table saw, band saws etc, and small hand tools (hand electric sanders, drills, bench grinders, wrenches, tool boxes, etc. I am also selling my 2005 Harley Road King (see pic) I will make another album for lift parts which I will offer to my competors in the automotive equipment industry.

I am supposed to be out of the house by the 14th December (4 days till closing) but I have asked for an extension after the close to be able to move all of the stuff out of the house and into the warehouse. I would have liked to have had a garage sale before Christmas but there is no way. In addition to getting the stuff out of the house I have to get Cazey Twofive (the travel trailer which is my new home) ready to cohabit. Now understand this, our relationship is strictly a platonic. After all Ms. Twofive and I just met; we aren’t even friends yet, although it somehow feels like an arranged marriage. I have to run 3 pvc pipe lines one for phone lines, one for cable TV and one for water to the trailer from the house which is 175 feet away. This is what we were going to concentrate on Sunday but we ran out of pipe. I will get another 200 feet on Monday and finish it.

Well for several days I was not able to publish on my blog but today it works. I got all the pipe installed for the trailer water, phone and cable. The water is connected and the phone and cable are in but not yet connected. I have a big installation job in Pompano and several service calls. Work is winding down but it is still taking up much of my time and is slowing my transition from the house to the trailer. My new mantra is “I get there when I get there”. I am refusing to get bent out of shape over anything not going exactly to plan.

Enough for today