Enhancing Toto

I promise not to say anything else about it.

July 23, 2015 By drpaddle 3 Comments

Yes, well, so we finished up the TV saga. Almost. Knew you’d want details. Here they are.

TV mounted on wall. Random cord hanging below.

Remember Chilliwack? I do. It was boiling hot. But while we were there we got a new refrigerator, and a tv mount installed, from the wonderful folk at Escape Trailer Industries. Just look at this articulating TV mount, and be amazed. Pay no attention to that little cord. It’s the end of the power cord that plugs into the back of the TV, but it’s not plugged in here. The other end will plug into the 12-volt receptacle waiting patiently below the TV.

Flat-screen on articulating mount in the Toto Lounge.

Here is our proposed positioning for three TV-watchers (humans — the terriers can fit in anywhere). The new, two-door refrigerator (doesn’t have a name yet, but give us time) poses nearby. Look, more cords. Just don’t ask.

I’ve been working many, many, many, many hours, making actual income, since we got home from our British Columbia trip. But I’ve been sneaking out to Toto in the evenings to finish up this install. Yes, the ETI folk installed the TV mount (after reinforcing the wall behind it), but then, of course, there’s more to do.

Before we get to that, though, let’s have another look.

We can scoot the TV around to accommodate a complete watching-while-lounging arrangement. With the extended seating configuration we’ve been using, we humans can recline side-by-side, with terriers tucked here and there, and watch the TV in considerable comfort. And if there’s no DVD available and no Internet to get streamed content and no broadcast tower close enough to work with our antenna, we can always just stare at the blank screen. With all the fingerprints on it right now, it could probably work as some kind of Rorschach test. We could find out if I have a personality. Doubt it. Note that the cords are rabbitlike in their propensity to proliferate.

Let’s pause to consider: according to my Internet research, we will spend approximately three hours watching this TV during the next 12 months. But what a good time getting it installed!

Now. At first I opted for a removable mount. I got this gadget that let me pull the TV off the mount, leaving the mount on the wall, and the TV could rest on the bed while we are in transit. This quick-release gadget was pretty easy to use, but…

But it added 1/2 inch to the distance between the TV and the wall. And this made for a sloppy-looking situation, with the TV not quite perfectly parallel to the wall because of limited space between it (the TV) and the edge of the window shade. Argghhh.

We could remove the quick-release thingy, but then the TV would be there all the time, flopping and bashing around during the simulated-earthquake experience of trailer towage. Unless. UNLESS. Unless there was a way to secure the TV, and the mount, on the wall, while driving.

There is.

Behold, the TV Safety Strap, from the same Thumb Lock people who make almost everything for RV-housed TVs. Because of our space limitations, I ordered two of ’em. You’ll see. Also, there is no cord in this picture — there’s not even a strap. But there are strap images. Straps and cords. So many ways to go here.

We went through a couple of iterations getting the straps just so. First, I read and followed the instructions — sort of. The TV wouldn’t move too far, but it felt wobbly. Wobbliness is not what we were shooting for. So we added a few more grommets and screws and whatnot, and we got one very solid, secure, mounted TV.

The entire trailer will disintegrate before this TV comes loose (or even vibrates much).

So, enough already. But there is one thing. See the DVD player affixed to the underside of the cabinet there? It works flawlessly, and the install looks good, except that it clearly was designed to be resting on a shelf, not hanging by its thumbs from above. Poor thing. So we need some visually appealing trim to attach to the poor little player’s feet. We have been exploring our options, but no answer yet. Something in a black polycarbonate sounds good. Sooz wants it to Look Nice. I get that.

We have time. It’s almost two more weeks until our next trip, to a state park near the fish-challenged bitter end of the Hood Canal. Personally, I can’t wait.

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It’s a lounge. It’s a dinette. It’s a dessert topping.

May 13, 2015 By drpaddle 4 Comments

We’re experimenting with the Toto lounge. Table out, extra lounging area in.

If someone else modifies their trailer, and the mod looks good online, then shouldn’t everyone else try it, too? No, not necessarily, but

— wow, I am hardly started and an announcement has just been made that I HAVE TO FIX DINNER. —

This dinner is pretty easy, but it’s going to hold me up a bit here. There is water to boil. Pasta to cook, and drain. Sauce to re-heat. Parmesan to sprinkle. Salad to… wait, I had salad for lunch. Forget that. Oh and I probably have to get out napkins and flatware and water glasses.

Tyler and Wally love it when we have pasta, because we usually let them lick the bowls when we’re finished. They know the scent (aroma?) of the sauce, and they start making assumptions. We could ignore Tyler’s whimpering toward the end of dinner but, um, how?

Okay so I make the dinner and come back.

–BACK–

So we’re trying an experiment with the Toto Lounge. I did some work with a pencil, straightedge, 3/4″ plywood, jigsaw, router, random orbit sander and two terriers.

Tyler got to check it out first.

Tyler looks adequately entertained as he inspects my Toto Lounge experiment.

“This looks okay. Routed edges. Sanded surface. These cushions are okay, though a single, larger cushion would be more comfortable.” “Oh, and Wally, take note: I am here first. You are still over there on the bed. Life is just.”

“There is no logic behind you always going first.” “Dad, don’t forget about me down here. Hellooooo, I’m on the bed still!”

Tyler gloats on the experimentally extended lounge.

“This is soooo comfortable. Gosh, W, I wish you were over here with me. Not.”

“You are a spoiled old cur, T. I don’t need to be on that lounge. Dad likes me best anyway.”

“I revel in my status as a superior being.”

Will Wally ever get his chance at Lounging? Stay tuned.

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So many projects, so little time

May 8, 2015 By drpaddle Leave a Comment

On the way home, fresh from the factory, and already not good enough. Modifications are required!

One of the joys of Toto stewardship is the opportunity to modify Toto. Why? To make him even better than he is. Though we selected many of his features, we left some things for ourselves to do, so Toto wouldn’t be too expensive and so I would have something to do after all my clients flee. (It’s bound to happen sometime. Isn’t it?)

We’ve talked about all sorts of potential Toto enhancements.

An electric powered tongue jack, like this one, to save my shoulders. But it would add 25 pounds of tongue weight, so… maybe not. Would be nice though.

Some sort of TV setup. We have a 19″ TV we could install — all we would need is a mount. But it raises all sorts of questions about what we like to watch. Ultimately we would want a setup that let us watch anything that’s at home, live, streaming, or recorded on our DVR. That can all be done, but it involves expense and hassle. And it would make going home pointless, no? Yes.

In our four trips to-date, watching something streaming on the laptop or tablet has been good enough, if not exactly a home theater experience. So, yeah, this project is out there, but it’s just out there.

Now I will admit to having already raised the TV topic. It says something that I am raising it again. But what does it say?

Raising the Toto Lounge floor. We’re not really tall, and our feet don’t reach the floor from the dinette seats if we try to get comfy (note that our feet reach the floor just fine when we’re standing). Some Escape trailer owners have put in a riser of sorts in this are for the same reason. We might. Or we might just an empty cardboard box as a footrest. Thrifty! Aesthetically bankrupt, though.

Re-working the dinette table. The double-pedestal setup is kind-of an industry standard, and it’s okay, but it’s a hassle to set up and take down. The pedestals also get in the way of my cardboard footrest idea. We have to take it down for travel, just to make sure it doesn’t fall down. And sometimes I don’t want a table at all, especially on those trips when I don’t plan to do any work. (Ideally, all trips, but that’s not going to happen much in the next year or two, unless, uh, see earlier comment about clients fleeing.) This project could be/should be done in conjunction with the raise-the-dinette-floor project. Frankly I’m tired just thinking about it.

Deepening the bottom of the U. The Toto Lounge’s U-shaped dinette seating is a little shallow at the bottom of the U (located at Toto’s stern). Other Escape 21 owners have found a way to use the existing cushions (supplemented by big pillows) and a hunk of plywood to deepen that seat. This only works if you’ve removed (permanently or temporarily) the stock dinette table. I really want to try this. My only hesitation is that I’ve somehow never learned how or where to acquire plywood that doesn’t warp.

Wow, the dinette has a lot of opportunities. I’m thinking it won’t be such an issue during the warmer months, when we probably will spend more time outdoors and less time in the Toto Lounge.

Installing the cellphone booster. I got a booster that comes with a little antenna, designed to be snaked out a car window and stuck on a car top with its (the antenna’s) magnetic base. The booster is a cradle that comes with a mount, suggesting that perhaps I ought to mount it somewhere. And then if I want an antenna outside of Toto’s envelope of fiberglass and metal-ized, mylar-coated bubble-wrap, then I have to get a different antenna, one designed for permanent mounting on Toto’s roof, and drill a hole in Toto’s roof. <shudder> But, yes, I want to do this, because it makes quite the difference in mobile reception when we’re in marginal areas like Grayland Beach State Park.

Re-sizing the aftermarket shower curtain. We love the new shower curtain but it’s larger than it should be. Sooz was going to cut it down and hem up the side last weekend, but then life happened and it’s not done yet. Not critical but it will reduce the frequency of my inadvertent brushes with the cold, wet shower curtain, causing instant chills and possibly back spasms.

Team Toto will spend more than 50 nights away from home this year, at various campgrounds and a few RV parks. Is that too much? Not enough? We have no idea, but we expect to have an opinion (or two) by sometime in November. We’ll probably also be better prepared to rank the importance of these projects. Maybe some of them will get done, someday. Maybe not.

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Remembering our time with memory foam

May 2, 2015 By drpaddle 2 Comments

After our first two weekends out with Toto, Sooz and I agreed that the mattress provided with Toto — innerspring, full-size, with a beveled corner at the foot to make it easier to enter and exit the trailer — is a little on the firm side.

There’s plenty of room here for sleeping, or reading, or watching a show on the tablet or laptop, or napping, or for two terriers to hang out in the daytime. Is there room for Sooz, Doug and Tyler overnight? Not really. Yet we try.

Better too firm than too soft, yes? Firm is good if you have a dodgy back, and I have one of those. But if part of your dodgy back care routine is to sleep on your side, then there are Pressure Points to consider.

Pressure Points is one of those terms you learn at Mattress Sales University. No, I did not attend, but I am pretty sure it’s in Mattressology 101, because you hear and read this term all the time, and it always comes from Mattress Sales People or perhaps Mattress Marketers. The Pressure Points are going to keep you awake, ruin your sleep, end your marriage and possibly threaten world peace. They have to go. And the way to make them gone is… add a topper, or purchase a mattress that has a cushy topper built in. Either way, this adds to the Mattress Company’s profits.

I can be gullible, and I can be impulsive, but really I am just mostly attentive. I hear you, Mattress Professionals. I will get a topper, I thought. In fact, my studies have revealed that any number of other Escape trailer owners have added mattress toppers of one sort or another to their boudoir arrangements.

So we tried one from Costco. It was light blue. It was a Gel Memory Foam thing. When we opened it up inside our house, it took a few hours to expand to its ultimate size — just a tad smaller than Toto’s mattress — and we trundled it out to Toto and set it in place.

Setting it in place was as easy as making Toto’s bed, which is to say, it wasn’t at all easy. The only way to walk around the side of Toto’s bed is to walk outside the trailer, and the walls are difficult to reach through. So everything must be done by reaching from the foot of the bed, or by crouching on this or that part of the bed while you’re working. Great dodgy back therapy!

But we got the new topper on the mattress, and encased it all in the cotton cover that came with the topper. This was in late February.

Toto's full-size bed, complete with coverlet and shams.

When the bed is all made up, and before it is subjected to terrier rooting and other activity, it looks like this. That thing on top is called a Travasak, and we’ll likely see a review of its qualities from Tyler or Wally in the near future. Shams by Sooz!

Then we took our trip out to Cape Disappointment State Park. We slept on it. Also, we crawled across it. Back and forth. Our early assessment: more comfortable to sleep on, not so easy to move around on. Getting in and out of bed was a little like walking, crablike, on your feet and hands, over quicksand.

No Pressure Points. In fact no sense that there was anything at all underneath me while I slept, or rather went through the motions of sleeping because who can sleep in quicksand?

But that was just three nights, so we decided to leave it in place for our Big Trip to California.

(This is the thing about Costco… you can take things back if you don’t like them. We don’t ever want to abuse that privilege, but…).

So we used that topper for our 11-day, 10-night trip to California. We thoroughly tested that topper. And so did Wally and Tyler.

Did I mention the topper’s weight? It weighs a little. I think this is generally true of memory foam mattress toppers. But you will recall that weight is an issue for Team Toto — especially weight toward Toto’s hitch, which adds to Toto’s Hitch Weight, and how TinMan considers too much hitch weight a pain in the… bumper?

Last week, Sooz washed the topper cover, and we took the topper back to Costco. They were gracious about it — even somewhat impressed that we were able partially stuff it back into its box. We got a credit on our credit card, and spent the money again, instantly, on paper towels, canned kidney beans and a vat of Yoshida’s Gourmet Sauce.

I read recently (on WinnieViews) about the idea of using a self-inflating foam pad — the kind used by backpackers and tent campers — as a mattress topper. Well! We happen to have a couple of those, left over from our kayak-camping days which seem to have ended (or at least paused). They don’t fit the bed just right, but they’re oh so light, and the concept might work. We’re going to try them on our next trip out, which will take us to the sunny end of the Columbia River Gorge. If they work out, we’ll find some that fit the bed.

Will report back after our experiment. You’re probably anxious to know how it goes, but don’t lose any sleep over it…

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The separation is in the preparation

April 5, 2015 By drpaddle 6 Comments

Tinman and Toto in the driveway, ready to head out. Almost.

TinMan and Toto are positioned to head for California.

We’re preparing for our longest trip ever. 11 days, 10 nights, six different campsites. Yippee!

Around our home turf there is a young NFL quarterback who is just super. Knows his stuff, wins games, goes to Super Bowls, the whole thing. He says The Separation is in the Preparation. He says it a lot. He believes it. It seems to be working, and he is about to get a sizable raise.

Sooz should have been an NFL quarterback. She lives to plan, and then re-plan, and so on. I, too, place a high value on planning, but I don’t so much like to do it. But, as a former IT project manager type, Sooz is always casting about for something to plan. So when a trip is in the offing, I’m really enjoying some fantastic ROI on my life partnership. One of my best investments ever.

Okay, planning. We have been planning our upcoming California trip for many months. We’ve done lots of online research into RV parks and campgrounds, mountain passes, spring weather patterns and some other stuff.

You don’t go to visit people in Granite Bay, California in the middle of summer. It’s too hot. Even they think it’s too hot, and they live there. So you visit in the spring or fall, when it will only be 80 (F) in the daytime and cool at night.

Our trip to California won’t be like, well, your trip to California, assuming you actually want to see the place. We’ve been there (lived there for most of our lives), so, yeah, Yosemite, Marina Del Rey, Hollywood, whatever, who cares. (We will admit to wanting to see certain places in California, but they’re more about special times in our lives and not so much concerned with places tourists, or campers, want to go).

Instead, this strategically planned trip will give us some quality time with family and friends, and some good experience with Toto. What sorts of experiences?

Mountain passes. We’ll be going over six baby ones and one young adult — that one only a little over 4,000 feet– so just challenging enough for us less experienced trailerist types.
Weather. We’ve tried to time this trip to be after most mountain snow in the passes, and after heaviest rain in the northwest, but before it gets too hot in central California. As of this morning’s weather forecasts, we should miss snow in the passes on the way down — but we may have to delay a day while en route. Day 2 of our trip will involve the four highest passes, and the forecast keeps moving back and forth regarding snow for that day. If we know there will be snow in those passes we will delay a day and spend some quality time in our first RV park. We have snow chains for both TinMan and Toto — we’re required to carry them — but we don’t want to use them.
RV parks. We’ve never stayed in one. But we want to get down to our first California destination in just three days, so we’ve found a couple of RV parks to try on the way down, and we have pull-through spaces reserved. We hope they’re sufficiently level that we don’t have to unhitch on these first two overnights. Don’t want to do that. We’ll be staying in two more (different) RV parks on our slightly different route back home.
Dry camping — another first for us. We’ll stay two nights at Doran Regional Park in Bodega Bay, CA… no hookups! We’ll have to fill up our water tank a bit when we arrive, rely on our solar to keep the batteries happy, and use the dump station when we head back north. We paid extra for the higher-capacity, two-battery setup, and for the solar panel and controller, so it’s about time we try ’em out.
Mobile drudgery. Hard as I try, I’m still not retired, and my clients want me to write stuff for them. I’ll have the laptop, the smartphone-with-wifi-hotspot feature, and a spot in the TotoLounge to work. I also picked up a cellular booster and antenna that had just been replaced by a new model, and we’ll see how that works before I go drilling holes in Toto’s roof.I think there’s a white paper wanting me to write it during this trip, and there may be other stuff. If I can focus on the work, it will inform our plans for future travel before the eventual retirement thing happens.

So there. Lots of new experiences to try. Fortunately we’re a strong team, with complementary skills, and I think it will be good. We’ll find out.

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Still in the powder room, but not for long

April 4, 2015 By drpaddle Leave a Comment

At last, we’re going on a trip — our longest to-date. In a few days we’ll head out to California’s Central Valley, where family members are having birthdays and we are going to help celebrate. We’ll also head to the coast to get a snootful of ocean breeze and meet up with a longtime friend who is also Wally’s human breeder. That doesn’t sound right, and I’m working through how to say it better. At any rate she is a Cairn terrier breeder and one of her bitches gave birth to Wally nearly seven years ago. Wow that doesn’t sound much better. Anyway you’ll learn more about her in a few days if you stop by. Here, I mean.

New shower curtain. New nonskid grid thing on the floor. Shower caddie on the wall and NOT on the floor. Progress.

It turns out you just can’t show your new trailer to family if it still has a stock vinyl shower curtain and an unadorned shower floor. So today I installed a kind-of non-skid grid onto the floor, and a quick-dry shower curtain too.

I also “tested” the re-installed Command shower caddie. This time I let the sticky things cure for three days before I got any weight involved. I think it will work better. Note that I still haven’t worked up the courage to put the shampoo/conditioner combo in there. Baby steps.

The shower flooring is made of Duragrid tiles. They promise to help keep our shower clean and safe. I’m not sure how the clean part works. Showers are hard to clean — it’s a fact of life everyone must face after the age of 30.

Duragrid tile shower mat, installed. In the shower.

Just look at the fine workmanship, and the tasteful, understated, bland beige.

The tiles are easy to interlock unless you try to do it wrong, and then it’s quite the challenge. I only got half-way through the project before I figured out the right (and easy) way to connect them. Perhaps there were some instructions I failed to read.

The tiles come in 12-inch squares and, unless you order the optional 8-square-foot shower floor from Escape Trailer Industries ($850) (not really), you have to do some trimming. I ended up trimming a couple of inches off one side and adding to another side. The trimming involved a utility knife, some kitchen shears (don’t tell Sooz), and some difficulty with the dogs’ water bowl, which is always in your way no matter where you are or what you’re doing in our kitchen.

There are now thousands of tiny Duragrid bits on the kitchen floor, and I think we’ll be discovering them for months. Yes, I used the mini Shark vac to clean up my mess. But I’m certain there are more bits down there on the floor.

One thing about grids of any kind underfoot: Tyler won’t walk on them. If he sees anything like that in the street or on a dock, he walks around. Doesn’t. Like. Grids. We’re pretty sure he wasn’t going to spend much time in the powder room anyway.

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