The 68 Frolic

 Apologies to Robert Burns and English teachers for abusing a good line. One of the realities of life on this sphere is that plans often don't work out. My plan when I retired the second time, back in May, was to spend the summer redoing this trailer and then tack it out west on a major adventure. The truth is fixing fifty+ years of wear, tear, and rot plus upgrading some of what was originally built into the trailer is just more than I could accomplish in 100 days or so. So, we're going to delay our big trip until the spring. In the mean time I'll keep plugging away on the project. I don't think the rest of Burns' words will apply, at least I hope not. I'll keep you posted.

 Wasn't it that great observer of the human condition Clint Eastwood who said scars are a sign of character.? The Frolic from Mt. Nebo has its share. I mentioned a while back that at some point in the camper's history a tree limb fell on it. The previous owner told me that there were two holes that resulted from that incident, one about the size of a tennis ball. Actually, there were three. Two of them are far enough back on the roof that they can't be seen. The other one is right on the little camper's forehead.  "Where'd you get that?" "Me 'n' and oak tree got into it one night. You should'a seen the oak. It lost a limb." My resources or abilities don't allow for getting the little trailer back into pristine condition. It will be a whole lot "prissier" than it was when I got it.  Except for the door and some touchups, I finished the external painting. I have the panels on the front temporarily mounted.  The red is Inte

 The distinctive feature of "canned-ham trailers is the way the front, roof, and rear are a unit--no clear break. This cartoon from cannedhamtrailers.com illustrates the shape. As I have said in previous posts, someone had covered the part of the roof that is clearly the roof plus about 3 feet of the part that flows into the front wall with your grandpa's roof paint, fibered aluminum goop. It's all off now.. As the guy in the joke about Calvinism said, after he fell down the stairs, "I'm glad that's over with." In addition to the goop, that panel on the upper front has a couple of holes in it. I'm told it's where a tree limb fell on it. Onward!

  I got 2 pieces of metal temporarily installed, along with the running lights for the upper rear.

 I've had some interruptions on the project. I've helped Kathy a bit on getting our decks repainted, and some yardwork was crying out to be done. My main, almost exclusive focus has been stripping old paint off the trailer's skin and putting new paint on. I think not counting the roof and a couple of tiny pieces there 16 pieces of aluminum siding that make up the Frolic's skin. The aluminum siding has the factory white or bronze on it, plus, as near as I can tell, one or two coats of latex house paint. Getting it off is tedious. I have the 2 pieces on the back of the trailer ready to put back on the trailer. I didn't take a picture of them, but will as soon as I get them back on. I also have 3 other pieces nearly ready for paint. Since I last put up a progress report, I also did the last of the frame repair, got the back bumper ready for a coat f gloss black, and repaired one of the wheel wells. I have about a 1/3 of the roofing goop scraped off the roof. Like life,