Tuesday, September 26, 2023.  Plans for the week.

Ms. Shawn returned yesterday.  Flew from Bah-stun to Dulles Airplane Patch and was picked up by her brother, Sam, who lives only 25 miles from the patch.  She is now staying at his house, and he will shuttle her back and forth, to and from, over and out, two doctor appointments at John Hopkins Med Center in Bal-Mere, Maryland over the next two days.  The reasons for the above are three-fold.

On one-fold, the total miles to be driven for the above if I do it from the Hobo Palace here in Colonial Beach, is close to 600, while if Sam gets saddled with it the miles are just shy of 300.  That’s a lot of miles around here because east coast miles are twice as long as Arizona miles, and 3000% more crowded.

On two-fold, Sam knows exactly where the doctor’s office is and the secret procedure for finding one of the few available parking spaces in the whole town of Bal-Mere.  City Motto: “We wish you weren’t here as much as you wish you weren’t here.”

On three-fold, Sam had the same procedure done that Shawn hopes to have done, by this special (eye) doctor and that’s the reason we are here in the traffic-strangled-water-falling-out-of-the-sky national-cesspool DC Capitol area, where traffic accidents are so common, they have sponsors.  “Today’s accident is on the 96 at exit 32 and is brought to you by Magic Bakeries, makers of bread as full of holes as the laws passed just downtown.”

My plan for the day includes doing laundry and a trip to Wally World to buy two DVD players for the rig.  “Why?” you ask?  Cause’ the rig was built with a fancy-dancy sound system that includes speakers everywhere and a switching system that can (could) send all the noise and video everywhere.  But doesn’t anymore.

It appears that in the past one of the owners had a satellite system installed and some clever soul “improved” the switching system and cables to accommodate the add-on.  Then, original guy or the next guy sold the coach, they pulled out the new stuff and I got a system that has inputs, from the (1) over-the-air TV roof antenna, the (2) cables from the satellite system, the (3) dash radio, (4) two additional Aux inputs, and the (5) massive 10-year-old original DVD player.  And just left the cables hanging.  On top of all that the cabling itself is routed thru the ceiling and walls of the coach and is unreachable.

So far, I’ve spent about 700 hours tracing the cables end-to-end with a $15.00 toy ohm meter and have decided to simply pull out the old 25-pound DVD player and 16-button switch box and install a small DVD player for the front TV, and another one in the bedroom directly wired to that TV.

Once I made the above decision, I asked myself, “So Frank, who other than you, watches DVDs anymore?”  With the answer being, “With the invention of the Firestick, no one.”  But that’s the plan and I’m gonna do it anyway.

That’s my day. 

See you on the flip side.

Rusty Pistons.