Mark's Off Road Warehouse Fire Thread (19 Viewers)

[cruiseroutfit]

You must mean this one

 

[65swb45]

Well, we’re safely back home. Operation Snake Oil is a qualified success, as Tina’s vision is showing significant improvement. I’m now unloading the ‘lemonade ‘ from this unplanned and unwanted road trip.

Of course, as I PMed @Redgrrr a little earlier, the real lemonade for me was the quality time we got to spend with @Solace in Solitude , @devo, @Poser , @Redgrrr , @3_puppies and @cruiseroutfit , as well as Caleb, who’s username I don’t know. Caleb, if you’re out there, is there a website link to your dad’s cool woodcarvings?

 

[Solace in Solitude]

That’s great news, Mark... I hope Tina continues to improve!!

Dianna and I also enjoyed our time spent with y’all!!

 

[Spike Strip]

The treatment worked? That's excellent ! It pays to be skeptical and do the research!

Does she have to go back?

 

[65swb45]

The treatment worked? That's excellent ! It pays to be skeptical and do the research!

Does she have to go back?

Everything is very preliminary Alf. There was no actual treatment in Chicago. Just an evaluation that the condition would be appropriate for their particular treatment regime. This was news to me.

Their ‘treatment ‘ consists of three different eye drop prescriptions which Tina must apply topically several times a day. The best we can figure is that at least one of them is responsible for partially shrinking the eyeball to assist the separated internal parts in reconnecting, along with permeable drops to assist the macula in repairing itself.

In the first nine days, the distortions have already virtually disappeared. Vision is still fuzzy, but the treatment still has more than half a month until finished.

 

[3_puppies]

Glad to have you two, just wish the kitchen was totally done. Good to hear Tina is on the mend.
Good to hear you got home in 1 piece and all is well. Now to get thru all the backlog of stuff.

 

[Rigger]

Mark & Tina, it was good to meet you and visit. I’m glad your eyes are improving. That’s most important thing here. Good luck to you.

 

[DSB345]

Wow, I missed this whole trip. I went here to see if you were on your way home and your back. Glad to hear Tina is seeing some improvement in her eye. Looks like you had a great time.

 

[65swb45]

Wow, I missed this whole trip. I went here to see if you were on your way home and your back. Glad to hear Tina is seeing some improvement in her eye. Looks like you had a great time.

The trip was such a whirlwind for both of us that we can barely remember most of the places we stayed. But we do remember all of the wonderful visits we had.
I’ve just been so busy moving forward since we got back that it’s been hard to really reflect on it.

I spent the first 8 days in a row since we got back tackling putting a new roof in our house. I did the major overhaul 25 years ago, stripping off two layers of shingles, a layer of wood shake, and sheathing the whole thing in plywood and felt before the new shingles. This time I get to just shingle, which is nice because at 57, I’m just taking a bit longer to do things. Only carrying a half bundle of shingles up the ladder at a time. But it’s still good.

And there’s been other news.

 

[65swb45]

Tina and I have a lot of sayings we've accumulated through our rich lives. One of them is "how you do anything is how you do everything." For the moment, we'll be discussing adventure, kind of a background theme with this forum.

Kind of like jumping out of an airplane, I came home from school one day just before I turned 16 and told my parents I needed to get a Social Security number and a backpack. Of course they asked why. I told them I had signed up for my first job: the Conservation Corps. A few weeks later school ended and off I went. Not much has changed in the last 41 years, except that the majority of my adventures are in four wheel drive.

As soon as I got my first car [station wagon] I was on the road, sleeping in the back, adventuring. No camping gear. By the time I got my K5 at 19, I had ideas. Built some storage boxes and an elevated platform to sleep on. Added a roof rack with compartments for a solar shower, etc. Nobody called it expeditioning back then.

Basically every vehicle I've owned since then has been conscripted into service as an 'expedition' rig eventually. So it was inevitable that the new Colorado would be no exception.

We had a lot of time to talk about the future on our recent road trip across the US. Like a lot of our middle-aged friends we found ourselves slowly gravitating towards the Sprinter van platform as something tall enough for me to stand in, and small enough for Tina to occasionally drive. With the future of her eyesight uncertain, we started rethinking some of our basic assumptions, and with more or less a clean slate started talking about it again. While I have the know-how to build almost anything I put my mind to, the opportunity costs of building out a Sprinter are substantial. And the price of the prefab units strike this old hippie as bordering on obscene.

Long story slightly shorter, we knew we had struggled with room in the Colorado on the road trip. And our first camping outing with the Colorado looked like the Clampett-mobile.

So, the process of expeditioning the Colorado has begun. I bought a rack two weeks ago. Testing it out today

 

[45Kevin]

One word... #vanlife.

Go for the van man. The women love them, and you can get a porta-potti of some flavour so you don't have to crawl down that ladder in the middle of the night. You know it will only get more frequent as you get older.

You don't have to get a new sprinter, there are plenty of used high top domestic vans available at very reasonable prices.

They ride like a chesterfield on the highway and our AWD can get us to some pretty remote camping spots.

And our van probably gets similar mileage to a Colorado all loaded up with a rack and RTT.

 

[DSB345]

Nice truck Mark!

 

[Ghetto Fireman]

Van Mark, here is what I picked up earlier this year. Retired two weeks ago, goal is to see as many National Parks as I can. Nice truck Mark, I’m sure you’ll outfit it to meet all your needs.

Best

Mike

 

[65swb45]

Van Mark, here is what I picked up earlier this year. Retired two weeks ago, goal is to see as many National Parks as I can. Nice truck Mark, I’m sure you’ll outfit it to meet all your needs.

Best

Mike

View attachment 1737677

Very nice Mike. I'm kind of kicking myself because a buddy of mine was selling a Ford 4x4 van with a high roof a few years back for 5k that would have made a decent platform for us with plenty of cash left over to deal with any deferred maintenance issues.

But we weren't at that point then.

 

[petersh]

You have a really cool truck, Mark. It is a great idea for me
I am also in middle-age but I can't have any road trip. I hope I can drive across the US when I am 60

 

[65swb45]

Anniversary! Two years since I started this thread. What a lot to look back on.

1. Emergency board up
2. Getting constructively-evicted tenants out without legal hassles
3. Dealing with insurance company
4. Sorting out my losses in the building
5. Pouring concrete at home
6 bringing in a second shipping container for my now-homeless inventory
6a. Eliminating the customer waiting area in the shop and installing a new pallet rack to start the first leg of the first major reorganization of my business in 27 years
7. Making the decision to give my tenants notice to move out of the house in front of my shop.
8. Negotiating the sale of my parents' warehouse.
9. Staging the move-out from the property
10. Building the wrought iron security fence on the front of my property.
11. Getting tenants out of house and starting the remodel
12. Getting @tequila4x4 to repipe the place.
13. 6 months of demo, installing a new bathroom, 4 new windows, stucco, sheetrock and sanding. And more sanding!
14. Getting caught and let off by the city inspector for not having a permit!
15. Flooring
16. Moving into the new offices
17. Demo of the old office
18. Acquiring one new pallet rack and reusing all my surviving pallet racks from the warehouse to fill in the space where the old office was.

And all while running the business, and living a life still full of outside adventures.

I am blessed.

 

[65swb45]

I am currently re-roofing my house. I did the heavy work 25 years ago, tearing off 2 layers of three-tab illegally nailed over wood shake. Sheeted the whole shebang in 1/2" CDX [compound hip roof yielding 24 square for a 1200sq house]. So this time, all I have to do is haul up shingles, recalculate all the hips and valleys [my aim is better now!] and nail this down.

The only really noticeable difference is that at 57 I can only carry a half bundle of shingles up the ladder at a time. But I am keenly aware that very few of my friends are even capable of this kind of physical effort any more.

So again I say, I am blessed.

 

[65swb45]

 

[Spike Strip]

Impressed.

 

[65swb45]

Impressed.

Thank you sir.

I’ve got one more panel to shingle and some more cap. Then some tidying up some old flashing issues I should have probably done last year. Then on to finishing the raingutter project started after the deck project 8 years ago.

Rain? What’s that?