I'm Back & Packing!

Thursday, August 2, 2018 - Oswego, NY 0 Miles, 0 Miles for the Trip

It is time to start packing for my next long trip. Actually, I started a couple of days ago and am already close to 95% done. I took the truck & trailer to the Oswego Transfer Station to weigh both. The truck is well under it's ratings, although at 4800 pounds and 480 pounds of tongue weight, the trailer is just under its GVWR. I probably have too much stuff! Maybe I don't really need the 3" vice? Maybe I need to do some redistribution between the trailer & truck... Well, I did move stuff around, moving 150 pounds or so from the trailer to the truck. That is about as far as I'm going to go, but I still have 750 pounds capacity left on the truck.

Like last year, I'm leaving quite a bit earlier than my usual October, this time to attend the Boler 50th Anniversary Event in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Described as the largest gathering of fiberglass trailers with over 500 registered trailers as of today, it should be interesting. The Boler was the first production fiberglass trailer. The story is that someone pointed out to the manufacturer of fiberglass septic tanks that if you put wheels on one, it would make a nice, small camping trailer. The manufacturer made some new molds, and the Boler Trailer was born. While no longer manufactured, there are many of them still being used & loved by enthusiasts.

Along with the usual trailer rally events, I will be running a photography workshop aimed at getting users to use some of the non automatic functions of their cameras.

Don & Anne, friends that went to Alaska with me in 2015 will be traveling along on the first couple of months of the trip. They plan to head back to Binghamton, NY after the Albuquerque Balloon Festival in early October. Until then, we will hang out in the higher altitudes of the north & south west trying to avoid the smoke from the many wildfires. I plan to visit Big Bend, then head to Matagorda in late November for this year's Matagorda Madness rally. After that it is off to Quartzsite for the winter.

I was concerned that I would not be able to put 1000 miles on the new truck before towing, as the manual suggests. No problem, it already has over 1000, although I did make lots of individual trips to Syracuse that could have been covered in one. The new truck is a Ford F 150 SuperCab 4X4 with the 3.5 EcoBoost engine. In some ways, a step down from the Tacoma (I'm back to a key rather than push button start) but over 700 pounds more payload. Built in brake controller, and a fancy trailer backing package that I won't be able to program until I build something to hold the checkerboard pattern necessary for it to work. The yoke on the Escape 21 is too short for the normal placement. The trailer tows well; the truck working far less hard than the Tacoma. Still, I did love the Tacoma. The F 150 is big! I ordered it with towing mirrors, and I have to say they are a big improvement over the add on mirrors I had on the Tacoma. They were Grand Aero mirrors, the best I've found, but these are larger & the bottom is a convex section that gives a wide angle view. Absolutely no vibration!

Don and Anne are planning to arrive in Oswego tomorrow & we will start on the trip to Winnipeg on Saturday. Anne is suffering from bronchitis, not much fun, but better than the original diagnosis of pneumonia. I'll update this page after they get here.

Until Tomorrow -