62 Super Dave

"Super Dave"

March 15th We pulled out of Weatherford  on our way to Tulsa.  Starting out a little cool in the morning it reached 87 degrees by mid afternoon maybe we had reached a turning point in the weather.  Our stop in Tulsa originally was going to be with our Son-in-law Bill's marine buddy Kevin.   However because of a conflict with his sons activities he turned over hosting duties to brother Dave.  We had met Dave at our daughters wedding several years ago.  At the wedding he had told us if we were ever in the area to stop in.  He said we sure took our time to take him up on his offer. 

      We had heard Bill and Katy refer to him as Super Dave because of some daredevil stunt he had done at an early age.  For years he has liked speed and racing.   If you are not familiar with the antics of namesake "Super Dave Osborn" comedy stunt man, make sure you check out "youtube" for one of his stunts.  He appeared often on the tonight show.
    Daughter Katy thought he had a Gold Wing.  However entering the garage the Honda's I seen weren't even close.  There parked in the garage was a row of  Honda’50’s  I figured they must be for some one other than our "super Dave"  but we soon seen the video of  him and his buddies trail riding with these beauties.   He even has some large dirt piles in the back yard to test them out.
     We had a great evening, some of Dave's riding buddies dropped in to visit, Kevin stopped in for a while and even their father stopped in with his classic car.  Great time, people seemed to be coming and going all evening.  Kind of a relaxed swinging door policy.  Nice people! 
     In the morning I checked emails and found out that our home area was still experiencing major snow storms and wind chills as low as -10  it was a full 20 degrees lower than normal.  Were we going to make it home for our projects.
     Dave had promised to give us a chance to ride his 50's.   He fired three of them up and gave us some riding instructions.   No clutch, make sure your knees don't interfere with the handlebars and here we go.   Ruthie took off across the yard dodged a bush, a water hydrant, a culvert and went down.  She didn't admit to any injuries however she complained about the brakes.  Super Dave mentioned that if we replayed the video that she actually was still accelerating at the time of the accident.  No excuses here!

      We moved to the back yard where there was more room.   It went quite well however we decided not to trade our trike for a matching pair.  It was time to get on the road.  It wasn't' as nice as when we arrived it was now 68 degrees in Tulsa with the promise of warmer weather in the afternoon.  Maybe we should have stayed put.   We had been trading emails and phone calls with a couple we met at the Stillwell RV and ranch.  Paul and Mary lived by Holton Kansas and had invited us to stop on our journey home.  They had met us and still wanted us to stop in, to good to be true.  We better check this out.  The temperature dropped 13 degrees in the first 50 miles and by the time we pulled into Holton Kansas it was 39 degrees.  We had not planned for this drop in temperature and we were chilled to the bone.  Paul and Mary lived in the country just West of Holton.   It wasn't long before we were heading down a gravel road the GPS was trying to tell us they lived in a pasture, with rural addresses it often has the land as the address and not the actual drive way.  We continued down the road and seen a home on the hill to the right.  This must be it!  There is always a little concern how your going to get along and if they really wanted us to visit or were just being kind?  It had been some time since we first met them at "Stillwell's".  Well we shall see, we are heading up the driveway now I only hope it's warm in there. 

61 Heading Home

Serendipity Ranch

   On March 14th  we loaded our gear into our little camper and trike and left Serendipity ranch.   This had been a welcome base to explore the area. We will think of this often, and maybe some day we will return.  Ruthie made a trip around the ranch taking pictures.  I think one of the Mexican roping steers seemed sad to see us go.

      We passed thru this town and of course had to turn around to take this picture, maybe that old movie line came true.  "Am I in Scotland?"
    Since we were this close we had decided to make a stop in Hobart OK and check out the motorcycle campers we had been researching.   One of the things about riding is it gives you some time to think.  It seems whenever I contemplate a new purchase, I start the mental process of how we will use it and how we might modify it to fit our needs.  It seems everything needs some modifications to make it satisfactory.   This line of thought brings up two fellas I should tell you about.  We have some time before we reach Hobart OK  sot it is a good time to you about Tim and Jerry,  I met Jerry thru Ruthie when we were quite young,  he stood up in our wedding and then due to service, children, work and life we drifted apart.  Sometime during this separation a change came over Jerry (you'll see) 

      Many years later after the children were older we became reacquainted at Ruthie's school reunion.  ( Ruthie would know which one, I don't )  We started hanging out again, trips, cards, golf Having a great time.  We even built our first project trike in his garage.  People have mentioned I might be anal, however they have not met Jerry.   When he has a project the engineer in him makes it a monumental undertaking.  This example might help.  Last year, lets say June, Deb his wife mentioned that he was overhauling a windmill.  I was impressed, I knew Jerry had every tool available, a hardware store supply of goodies and the skills to rebuild anything.  Was he now involved in the new wind turbine wind mills that were starting to dot the landscape?  This could be quite an undertaking?  I knew one of Jerry's son's climbed and worked on mobile telephone towers but I just couldn't see Jerry climbing one of those things.    It surely couldn't' be the old water windmills that the Amish were slowly taking down for the metal.   No!  It was a John Deere lawn ornament.  He had determined that the blades weren't balanced and it was not turning properly.   He completely disassembled it, installed bearings, balanced the blades and improved the assembly as only an engineer can.  However he has a few other projects in his shop that have improvements planned so it is not a simple in and out procedure.  It does not leave his shop until it has the "Jerry stamp."  A few weeks ago I asked Deb if the windmill was on the lawn, she said no.  Thought I would just check as of the writing of this post.  Deb answered and I said " look outside in the garden and tell me how that wind mill looks?  Well that's a long story, bottom line it's still in the shop.  Jerry got on the phone, "Brother Vern" how's it going?  We exchanged a few pleasantry's and he asked the purpose of the call.  I called to check on the windmill and ask if I could mention you in the blog?  He didn't' mind and told me some of the reasons the windmill wasn't done,  he had been working on his neighbors John Deere lawn tractor and it seemed to go from one problem to the next.  His own John Deere had also been taking up some of his time since he had to make some modifications ( of course) it seems they stopped making the air filter for his tractor and he would have to do some metal fabrication to make another work.  He mentioned he was very close on the John Deere ( maybe that's the problem) windmill being back on line.  The frame and  part of the blades were painted, the hub now had a high speed bearing in it, and the blades were perfectly  balanced and ran true.   He didn't say but I think it is probably just a matter of putting it all back together and a supervised test run in a licensed wind tunnel.  So how does this affect me?  If he is turning a part on his metal lathe, contemplating a bid or play in cards, lining up a golf putt or adjusting a micrometer.  You nor anyone else is going to hurry him, for that moment and as many moments as it takes the world revolves around Jerry.  He is a good influence on me, when I repaired engineering (fitting, right?) copiers I would mentally switch from my type "A" turbo mode to my "Jerry mode" and for whatever time it took for the repair it was "by the book", you can't do a better job than that!
    Now what about Tim?  And what do they have to do with the camper?  As part of our investigation for the perfect camper for our needs Shelia from Roll-A-Home ( from now on just RAH) had gave us the emails of a few of their satisfied owners.   We followed up with several and received lots of helpful hints from both email and phone calls, lots of nice people out there.  One of these emails was from Tim.  He had a lot of nice things to write about his RAH and also included a link to a motorcycle forum where he had been submitting some of his motorcycle and camper modifications Click here! and scroll half way down the page.   Almost turned my stomach! He had picked up his "new" RAH and as soon as he got it home started tearing it apart to modify and improve it.  Modify the tongue, jack, add air compressor, change the bed, add a power inlet, a charging station for electronics, led lighting, it's brand new Tim, maybe a refrigerator/freezer? It's a motorcycle camper Tim!  How about solar charging?  Another Jerry?  I'm thinking yes,  the link to the start of the forum post be prepared  shows his modifications to his motorcycle and on page 13 starts the mod's on his camper.  You have to like one or the other or just be intrigued with people like Jerry and Tim or perhaps "Tim the tool man Taylor"  Arh arh, I can make it better, faster, more lights and switch's.  At the time of this post it was the most popular read on the forum, 18 pages and 529 posts.    In one of our exchange emails I mentioned that if I did get a RAH, I wasn't going to let him know where I kept it.  I bet these two had their toys apart on Christmas morning.  Jerry still remains a close friend ( of course he hasn't read this yet) and some day I hope to meet Tim. (if that's his real name.)  Better yet they should meet each other.   Just think of what they could accomplish by putting their heads together, maybe even fix "the government",  No, I guess not, some things just don't react well to reason and logical thinking.  There I feel better now, compared to these two,  I'm not anal I just like things a certain way, mine!   However with the proper tools and funding I think I could be one of them.  Great guys.  Hmmmm maybe I'm jealous or  perhaps this blog is my obsessive compulsive moment?   See, there I go again, why couldn't I just say " Here are two great people that make things better!

. This picture of the RAH with the supports exposed is not at the factory, It is Tim's new one that he is modifying.
   We met Billy and Sheila the owners of the Roll-a-Home business, the story is that they had been looking for a small camper and ended up buying the business and moved it from Wisconsin to their home in Oklahoma.   Nice people,  they tried to answer all of our questions, showed us how they were constructed and set one up for us to look at.    

Interesting use of an old tanker!

     If you aren't familiar with these small campers, they can be towed behind small cars and motorcycles.  There are many different brands and styles.  Some fold out, pop up or are assembled with poles and canvas.  Some have king size beds and storage areas.  The one we are looking at is unique because there is a slide out to make the bed king size. We liked what we saw.
     This would take some thought as we already had a camper. It seemed like it was easy to set up, and had adequate storage, (we have a habit of packing to much, I have vowed that the bocce ball set will never take another trip with us.)   Satisfied we returned to our home ward path.  We had some scheduled work back in Minnesota and we were trying to stay South as long as we could and still make it home on time.   We headed North out of Hobart and turned East on the freeway.  Not far up the road we stopped in Weatherford OK.  Worthy of mention is T-Bone's steak house here, wonderful meal and service.