Spring in Texas

 

Besides enjoying the beautiful 70 degree weather it means getting the Flying Scotsman ready for the summer run with more updates and repair. The flowering trees though are really nice this year!

 

 

A little bit ago I went to pull out the tray that holds the four house batteries just to service them and add some water. As I did so the drawer slides which were rusted through collapsed ... oops. With four batteries in this tray it is about 130 pounds so pretty ugly and not moveable.

Time for help. My friend Barry from the Dancing Bear RV shop came over to help out (hah, that means I stood back and watched him work).  Here's his professional operating theater.

After he got the four top batteries out (yes, there are two more down below that need attention later) he cleaned and scrubbed the opening with baking soda to get rid of the rust and acid.

Then he installed the new rails and then the new tray and wired up the four house batteries just like new. This was about a two hour job but a lot of work and some nasty stuff in the back of the bus, but totally essential to our happily motoring down the road.

Of course this had to be celebrated by some first class wine. A bit of humor below as this is some of the wine known as "Two Buck Chuck" to the really serious wine consumers.

When we first started the RV travel this stuff was known by that name as it was exactly two bucks a bottle from Trader Joe's. As there were no TJs here in Texas, on our first run to Arizona we picked up numerous cases of the stuff to bring back here ... $24 a case.

Now there is a new Trader Joe's here in Dallas and we had to seek out and get a bottle (now $2.99) for nostalgia reasons and hey, the stuff is not really that bad ... we have thrown out much more expensive wine.