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Trip postscript

We have not gone off on another trip, but we haven’t moved back into the house yet either. We’ve been sleeping in the driveway every night (in the motorhome in the driveway), to solve the clicking mystery.
We found it! It does have to do with the heating system. We haven’t heard it before, because we haven’t needed the heater on at night, or there was more background noise. When the furnace needs to ignite, there is a noticeable “click” from the thermostat in the hallway, a heavier “click” in response from the cold air return on the other side of the bedroom, followed by another “click” of recognition from the thermostat. Every time. The sound of the heater fan blowing isn’t all that noticeable, so I didn’t connect the clicking noise directly to the furnace cycles.

I think there are other clicks involved as well as all this digital electronic stuff communicates with each other, but I haven’t sorted them all out yet.

But we have identified the source.

The solution is simple: turn on a fan for background noise; or suck-it-up, get over it, and get used to it. I think it was the mystery keeping me awake more than the actual clicks.


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Trip

It was a fifty-mile day. Our first work trip in the new motorhome. It wasn’t exactly an out-of-town job. In fact, Castle Rock was a poor excuse to go spend the night in the motorhome, but hey, we needed a shakedown cruise in the new rig. So we drove down Sunday morning, set up, watched the Bronco game, hiked Castlewood Canyon State Park, found Monday morning’s job site, had a nice dinner, watched Mars and the Milky Way, and got a good night’s sleep. Almost. Shakedown cruise. We have a mystery. We discovered the turn signal lights mounted under the side mirrors. No mystery there. We just hadn’t seen them before. Lots of stuff still to discover. The mystery didn’t happen until the wee hours. About the time I had to get up and switch the climate control system from air conditioning to heat, whatever time that was. The air conditioning was great. It was a warm evening. I set the temperature for sixty-five, and it held it there all night. Until it got a lot colder than that outside. It got down into the thirties outside. So at about fifty-five degrees inside, I switched over to heat to get it back up into the sixties. That’s when it started. The noise. I don’t actually know if it started then. It could be that it was happening before that, and I was just sleeping through it. But after I switched to heat, there was a clicking sound. An intermittent clicking sound. Three clicks. Sometimes four. Then nothing. Nothing for a long time. Long enough to just fall back to sleep, then the clicking again. Three clicks. Sometimes four. Not quite awake enough to react and locate it. Then it was done. Again. Until the next time. Of course, I spent the rest of the night, in my sleepy stupor, trying to reason out where the clicking sound was coming from. It didn’t start until I made the switch to heat, so it must be related to the furnace. But we’ve used the furnace before and never heard it. And besides, it didn’t coincide with the heater fan switching on and off. We were plugged in for the night. The automatic refrigerator could be clicking between propane and electric, searching for the best mode, but when I looked at it the next morning, it was calmly fixed on propane. The new rig has an air bed. It could be the pump, checking the setting periodically, deciding it was OK, and going back to sleep until it was time to check it again. But I unplugged the air pump, and the noise happened again later. It could be the electric water heater. I inadvertently left that on all night. We’ve never had one of those before. Don’t know what issues they raise, but seems to me now, in the daylight, that any noise it might make probably wouldn’t be in our bedroom. Judy thinks it was the cat fiddling with the latch on his crate. From the inside. I don’t think so. It was an intermittent noise, like a smoke detector battery going bad, and it makes that periodic little “beep” that can be difficult to locate, because it won’t cooperate and actually beep while you’re searching for the source. But after daylight, the smoke detector did beep. Several times. Enough times for us to locate the offender and disable it until reinforcement batteries arrive. But that didn’t stop our clicks. They quit, but not as a detectable result of anything we did. They remain. Hidden. Waiting for us to relax. Waiting for us to let down our guard. They will strike again. I can feel it. Meanwhile, I left the mystery behind to meet up with Ken and Janay the next morning at the new client’s office. We had a good time. We got some work done. I left. Judy and I unhooked from the shore facilities, connected the Jeep back up to the motorhome, and drove back to Louisville. An uneventful drive. I was going to go play some Monday night challenge when we got home, but some nice people dropped by to look at the old Bounder, so I stayed and visited with them instead. No offer yet. We’re home to the house, but I don’t want to sleep in the house. I want to solve the mystery. I have to solve the mystery. I’m going to the motorhome.
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Trips

Feeling good about the new Bounder. Now we can do the things that will personalize it and make it ours.
I have a job in Castle Rock next week. It’s not exactly Rural Colorado, I can get there in an hour and a half drive, but we decided to drive the big guy and park it there anyway. To practice. We’ll leave tomorrow morning and set up in time to point the dish, watch the Bronco game, then head over to a nearby State Park we don’t normally get to, and do some birding. Just like when we’re on the road.

Then I’ll work part of the next day, and drive the motorhome back home in the afternoon. A leisurely pace.

The next weekend, we’re going to take a three day weekend, just the two, I mean four, of us, to celebrate. We’re considering Bonny Lake in Eastern Colorado, to just go sit by the lake, Sugarite Canyon, in Northern New Mexico to sit and bird, Utah, to hike Little Wild Horse together, or Southern Wyoming, to sit by a Lake up there, then swing by Bill and Marge’s. We can’t seem to choose. I think weather and the Saturday morning mood will just have to dictate.

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Travel

Speaking of Rural Colorado, we got the flyer finished, and the mailing list is a work in progress. The first fifty letters went out to Eastern Colorado mid week. The advertisement in the CANPO newsletter won’t be out for a couple more weeks. We’ll keep making small mailings. Looking forward to some response.