Maiden Voyage & Shakedown Cruise

From Statecrest to Nautical Way, our first flight. 

Bon Voyage...

First fuel stop South Hill, VA

Dinner in our Falcon from Las Lupitas in Charlotte, NC

Safe landing!

Gone Fishing Assateague Style

Since my dad has been camping at Assateague for the last month we decided to go visit him our first two days of retirement together. The first day was great. It was very breezy and we stayed cool an comfortable. The beach was great, the bugs weren't biting, and the ponies were calm.

The next morning we decided to go to the National Seashore where on sand vehicles are allowed to see if my dad could catch us some flounder.

We were there for about and hour before the flies drove us out. So we went back to the State Park where we thought the flies would be better only to discover they were not. In fact, the flies were so awful the ponies were suffering from Mad Pony Disease.

We fled the campsite and headed for water. The ponies had the same idea except they brought guests with them, horse flies!

We spent the entire day fending off the flies, dodging the ponies who had were going nuts because of the flies didn't know what to do with themselves and dousing ourselves in Listerine. My dad swears that Listerine repels bugs better than bug spray. I'm not so sure about that but we were willing to try anything. 

Around mid afternoon my dad showed up with a Flounder.  Yay!!!! We had dinner and it only took 200 casts!  It was delicious. 

18" of pure deliciousness!

Listerine aka bug spray... someone had convinced my dad that listerine was a healthy, eco friendly, and non toxic alternative to bug spray.  I disagreed!

Dad's camp

On our way back to Washington that night1 George found us a great local restaurant in Cambridge. They close at 8pm and it was 7:50pm and we were about 20 miles out when he called to get their hours. Crystal offered to stay open late for us!  We ordered hamburg steak with Mac n cheese and onion petals and a crab cake sandwich with fries. When we got there Crystal even brought us some yummy Maryland crab soup. It was wonderful. I you're ever driving along 50 towards the beaches stop in and see the fine folks at Cindy's Eastside Kitchen off of Airey's Spur Rd. in Cambridge MD. You'll be hard pressed to find such hospitality and good food. Enjoy (we certainly did)!

Go Green Streak

We nixed the bicycle idea and decided to go with a dual sport. This mean we had to reconfigure the van setup. I think this works better.

We opted to keep only one trunk and moved it to the roof.

Then George bought a motorcycle carrier rack and replaced our previous trunk and bike rack contraption on the back. 

Looking good but it needs some reinforcements.  

Now for the bike...

Then George got these for $10

And we ordered these to replace the Honda patch

Now for the test drive. We weren't sure how the bike would hold up on the rack so George took it for a spin. Luckily it all stayed put!

Falcons Of A Feather Flock Together

Funny thing is that we saw this same Falcon at a garage on our way to the beach the very next day!

Goodbye City Mouse

It was definitely a fun car but the time has come for this city mouse to travel to other cities and dragging it behind our van just didn't seem practical. 

Charging From the Sun

Finally after much tinkering, we are charging from the sun. It's not fully correct yet with all the right connections, but George managed to get it wired together to prove it works! Our setup doesn't like the free circuit breakers we were given so George hot wired past those for now to get it working.

We did order the correct parts for it so we won't end up driving along and suddenly burst into a ball of flames! Here are the pictures of our current set up.



Charge Controller mounted to our newly upholstered couch

Hot wired on the roof


Wrapping black wires in white electrical tape = rainy day task.
 

George's ingenious idea to get the wires outside without cutting a hole in the side of the van


While George was working on wiring our van I was working on our new snap curtains.  Turns out when you use a rubber mallet like the directions say (instead of a metal one), the snaps will actually go on. We ordered some more snaps and will soon have our side curtains up with the outside facing side reflecting the sunlight and hopefully keeping the van cooler.  We lined our curtains with reflective sun shades we found at Ollies for $5.

Do we really need a water pump?

Two bolts broke off while George was trying replace the water pump.  He was not very happy about it.  His exact words were, "Ford uses subpar hardware in their manufacturing process that seize in place and simple snap when put under any sort of pressure... I'm done for the day...another day wasted."

I think he has a tendency to forget that our van chassis is a 1994.

3 Days of Work Gets Us A Few Inches Closer

The inch we gained:

Fire Extinguisher mounted and all the door trim painted


New pull handle for the backdoor and we replaced the other pull handles in the van.
   

Definitely needed one of these (check out our amazing finish carpentry work)


Trimmed the hinges under the couch with a strip of carpet to give it a more finished look


George's distressing work. Now we can beat the crap out of it and it will still look ok!


Carpeting looks good and now that the icky gold hinges aren't showing it looks almost like a regular living room!


Works in Progress:

I got the ugly pink armrests off, now I just need to cover them with something that will match our nothing but business decor


Upstairs curtains done...2 down 4 to go


Hmmmm....
  

This looks like it doesn't stick out far enough. Oh wait...


That's better! Maybe we should consider reconfiguring this contraption.


George was having so much fun working on replacing parts on our van.  Things always go so smoothly!


Water pump and serpentine belt replacement called for...George's curses will provide fuel all the way to Ohio!!!