We Have Gas!

 

Sorry ... no it wasn't because of the latest restaurant excursion but the propane tank has  finally been replaced.

 

Here is the Flying Scotsman up on blocks in the McClain repair facility just south of Fort Worth. Great facility reminding me of many aircraft repair hangars.

 

 

 

 

I've shown you the culprit housed in the bus before and here is the new tank. Yup, this isn't just your backyard BBQ tank ... cool pallet eh? Shipped from England I think.

 

 

And Les our absolutely dedicated mechanic ripping out plywood and carpet in the bay to get the monster tank to slide in the side. Nope, it doesn't come out the bottom where I took a picture of it but comes out the side of the bus through one of the bay doors. This shop had never done one of these before and after many calls to the factory got the correct procedure .... whew. You can just barely see the top of the old tank to the far lower right of the picture below.

After six nights in the small RV lot of the repair place we finally got everything done and were able to motor down to Bryan on Thursday night.

This is the culmination of almost three years of fighting to get this thing fixed and finally it has occurred ... hey we have a furnace again .,.. even though it's 75 now in Texas I'm going to run the thing and heat the place up.

The Flying Scotsman is loose again! Here's are a couple of last shots of the Vineyards on Friday morning as we prepared to detach and head toward Fort Worth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And below as I rolled the bus off the plastic leveling blocks. While having a nice view we spent the last month with a pretty good list toward the right front. Even with the magic leveling machinery, these machines have a very little tolerance for sites that are not level. And the next size of bus larger even has less tolerance.

 

 

 

 

Anyhow, that was then and this is now. Here we have landed in the small RV parking spots behind the Camping World and McLain's RV repair facility near Burleson Texas, about 10 miles south of Fort Worth on I-35W.

 

 

 

 

Tonight Jo-Anne and Bandit go over to Leigh's for the night so that I can wait out the repair dudes tomorrow .... finally to get the propane tank replaced! Of course by this coming Thursday it will be 70 degrees as it is almost srping in Texas ... and we won't need any propane for a while ...

 

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013!

From the happy Blogger

 

 

Actually we were at the local Grapevine Mills mall after the new year when I shared the nutty Shiner Bock photo with my favorite pachyderm.

 

 

 

Ev and Brooks also had a close encounter with an animated ape in the Rainforest restaurant before we went into the aquarium next door. And Everett was mesmerized with all of the displays and creatures inside.

 

 

 

Likewise, Brooks inside the shark tube gets his fingers within a couple of inches of a large stingray. Really neat place with some awesome displays at the Sea Life

Aquarium in the mall.

 

 

 

Below is the last view out of our window of the Grapevine Vineyards campground and marina as we unhook the Flying Scotsman tomorrow to head down to the south of Fort Worth and the McLain's RV repair garage to get out propane tank replaced .... FINALLY!

 

 

 

No telling how long the repair process will take, but they have a small RV park behind the garage for us to live in until they get to us in the list.

 

We have put together a wish list for the balance of this year and where our adventure might take us next and in the next post I'll try to give you some of the potential tracks for the wandering bloggers.

 

On to the new year and love y'all!

 

Happy Birthday Jo-Anne! More aptly titled, "Look whose still alive at 65!" Yeah I know I'll hear it for that one, eh.

 

Anyhow, to celebrate the Social Security occasion on the 29th of December, I took my beautiful lady to a new place here in Grapevine called Cafe Italian; new for us, not Grapevine. Not a particularly zippy name but the food, ambiance, and service was close to perfect.

 

 

Above we started out by sharing a Tomato Caprese; tomato and mozzarella with capers and balsamic(two of the three tomato and cheeses have already been eaten); accompanied by warm bread. The restaurant doesn't have a liquor license so you bring your own wine of choice and they provide the glasses and uncork it for you. We brought a Volpolicella Ripasso Classico actually from the Vicenza area of Italy and it was excellent.

The main course was a shrimp and chicken dish for me sauteed in their classic pink vodka sauce ... soul food. The birthday girl had a veal Marsala accompanied by pasta in the same pink vodka sauce.

And we wrapped up the event with a creme brulee for me and a tiramisu for Jo ... you'll notice two sets of utensils for each dish for sharing.

Timely service, perfect food, good wine, shared with the love of my life ... nothing could be better ... and hey, $65.00 isn't a bad deal either.