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,...

 No pictures today: Most of what I have been doing on the little camper has been pretty repetitive and boring. I have new fraining and a new piece of interior paneling on the rear of the trailer. Most of the siding is now off. Though it is pretty clear which piece goes where, I followed the advice of Larry (Mobiltec) ( https://cannedhamtrailers.com/ ) and labeled each piece. (If you are in a project like this, do it on the inside (unfinished side) of the metal 😅). I also have done the same for windows. There is only one door, so I didn't label it. If I get to the point of not recognizing a door I figure Kathy will need to run an ad for an unfinished camper project. Siding for one of these vintage trailers is really expensive, besides that, I'm trying to save as much of the 53-year-old camper as possible, so I'm refinishing the siding that the guys in Elkhart put on it. I've already told you about the liberally applied house paint. I was using a process that involved a ...

 My project has been delayed by some joyful travel and rainy weather. Last week, we spent the remainder of our frequent flyer miles to visit our son and his family, in Texas. A late plane/missed connection, extended our trip by a day, United put us up in a hotel. It was nice, and the delay gave us an opportunity to have a lovely meal and a great visit with some dear friends. Rose and Tom served at Faith Church in Guam. Tom was our pastor. They "retired" a year before us and live in the Chicago area.  It was all great, but none of it advanced the renewal of the Frolic. Jesus gives new life instantaneously, not so, when Howard does it. Anyhow, I've been able to spend a couple of days working on the trailer this week. Partly because it has been rainy, and partly to stave off boredom with some tedious tasks, I've adopted a strategy of going back and forth between several tasks. I'm continuing to remove the skin, where needed. It looks like all of the wall siding will ...