Cleared for Take Off!

Big Easy has passed inspection and is cleared for take off! We even found that getting her to that point was not too terribly difficult. In fact, for the past couple weeks, the majority of the work focus was not even on Big Easy, but on the trailer instead. Even by the time we left Richmond, the trailer still needed to be painted, have shelves added and have some sort of kayak holding contraption added to it as well. Moreover, Daniel still needed to go through all of his tools and materials to decide what he wanted to bring and what he could bare to separate with. By finishing at least one task per day, Daniel was able to get the whole trailer finished, filled up and organized in about one week. On the left side of the trailer sits one shelf and the scooter while the right side holds two shelves and some larger tools and camping supplies. All of the shelves hold crates full of paint, canvases or other miscellaneous items that would be needed for painting or for vegetable oil filtration. The back of the trailer holds two 55 gallon metal barrels, one for the waste vegetable oil and one for the filtered oil. Above the barrels hang the filters and water separator that the oil is pumped through. Finally, on the outside of the trailer, Daniel welded a kayak carrier and tied his ladder to the top. Finishing the trailer was an enormous relief and we are confident that everything we are bringing is securely attached. Unfortunately, we still feel that the trailer is the most worrisome aspect of the journey since it is carrying a lot of weight and is a bit wobbly going over bumps since it is so disproportionate. The major highway tests with it have been pretty positive though so we will continue to keep our fingers crossed!

The kayak holder!

We also added another addition to our showering system during the past couple weeks. We had been debating for months over what would be the best system for disposing of our shower water since we did not really have the space to install a grey water tank. We had gone over the idea of just using a bucket but where would we store it or how would we dispose of it? It’s against the law in most places to just dump that water outside even if you only use environmentally friendly products because it will still go down the sewer drains and add even more chemicals to the water. By chance, we were perusing through an RV website and found portable grey water tanks which sounded perfect for us. They come in all different sizes and have wheels on them so we can just roll it under the shower drain, seal it back up, and roll it right back to storage until its time to take it to a disposal facility. We looked around some local RV stores and finally found the perfect size for a cheap price. With this latest addition, our showering system is now complete!  We definitely felt more comfortable leaving knowing that we finally had a simple solution to that very important, yet annoyingly stubborn, problem.

Portable Grey Water Tank

After a bittersweet goodbye with my family in Fauquier County, Big Easy hit the road on the way to Fredericksburg. We stopped along the way in order to get a state inspection done on the bus. It was not due until January but we figured we should get it done now since we would be on the road then and, if anything was wrong, we could hopefully get it fixed early. Of course, there were several things wrong and we failed the inspection, leaving us to spend the weekend at Daniel’s mother’s house in Fredericksburg trying to fix the problems. The first, ancient windshield wipers, was an obviously easy fix. The second, a broken brake light, was a bit harder. After figuring out that the bulb was fine, Daniel grudgingly began to take apart the wiring. Smartly, he decided to check the fuses for power and he found a blown one. After switching it for a working one, the brake lights started to work without a problem. We still are not sure what caused the blown fuse but hopefully it will not happen again and if so, well, we will just cross that bridge when we bravely come upon it. Lastly, and most time consuming, was the hole in the exhaust pipe. Before we adopted Big Easy, her previous owners had replaced the back part of the exhaust system, leaving the front part old and rusty. The connection of the old and new pipes was probably not made with the most care and, ultimately, the connection began to rust and fall apart, leaving giant gaping holes for the exhaust to escape from. In order to fix this, Daniel completely cut away the part with the holes in it and put in a new piece of pipe attaching it with clamps and special sealant. In the end, the entire older pipe will probably need to be replaced but we think that this quicker fix will hold us for quite a while. After proudly fixing all of the problems ourselves, we brought Big Easy back to the mechanic early Monday morning and (yay!) passed!

The rusted out connection that Daniel cut out of the exhaust pipe.

The new pipe that connects the older part of the exhaust pipe to the newer part.

After saying goodbye to Daniel’s mom, stepdad and a few of the most fantastic co-workers, we hit the highway, bound for Ashland. We are happy to report that this time there were no trailer doors flying open! We plan to stay there Monday night visiting with Daniels dad and stepmom, then head through central and southern Virginia on Tuesday. We are so very excited to get to Baton Rouge early next week and participate in our first event, the Baton Rouge Green Crawl! We will be visiting multiple “green” businesses in the city and listening to presentations about how they do it! We can’t wait to give you the rundown of what we learned!