Stabilizer Finally Fixed

Back in December, the steering stabilizer fell off of the RV, and the original fix was done wrong, resulting in the RV acting like it was always in a slight crosswind because it only corrected one direction. The shop had difficulty getting the parts they actually needed, and then there was some missed communication between them and me. Yesterday, everything finally came together. Lisa and I drove the Rolling Stone to Reno and left it at Safari RV, then walked to the Atlantis for lunch. (As usual, as long as the Atlantis does 2-for-1 lunches on Thursday, we try to make Thursday our day to do errands if I can get away from work long enough to do so.) Upon our return, the repairs were done.

( That's More Like It )

The RV drove much better going home. On a straight stretch of road, you can release the wheel and it will track completely straight, which makes the drive a lot less stressful than fighting a tendency to pull to one side for 300 miles.

Somewhat ironically, I won't need the RV for more than a month, because I am driving the minivan to the Bay Area for next week's work trip (I want to take it to my favored mechanic before the Spokane trip at the end of this month) and then I won't be in the Bay Area again for many weeks. On the other hand, if the repairs to the Astro don't go as planned, the Rolling Stone is our back-up vehicle for the Spokane-Portland-Seaside trip at the end of May. (It's expensive to drive at only 9 miles per gallon, but a comfortable ride.)

Mr. Chairman!

Having spent most of my twenty years with my current employer at the company's corporate headquarters, I've been through several office moves. At each one, there has been a purge of older office furniture, and I've usually made the most of it. This means my home office is furnished with cast-offs from corporate. Usually these have been serviceable-but-beat-up chairs and the like, and they've lasted a long time. However, I'm a big guy, and hard on chairs. One of the two chairs I got from the last purge failed some months ago, and lately the other one (same design) started to give way. Lisa salvaged parts from the first chair to keep the second one alive, but it was clear that time was short and I needed a new chair. We looked at what was in the big box stores, but they seemed overpriced and under-capacity. Most of them had 225 pound or less capacity, and I weigh 300 pounds.

Yesterday, after collecting the RV from the shop, we went to an office furniture warehouse near Reno airport. Looking around, we found a good, solid chair with a 350 pound capacity, high back, adjustable armrests, and a metal frame (not the plastic frame that the two now-failing older chairs had). The price was pretty good, too, as it was a former showroom display model. For less than the cost of most of the chairs at the OfficeBoxes, I got a better quality chair that feels stronger. Getting it into the RV was a bit of a challenge (for all that the RV is big, it doesn't have much cargo space), but we managed.

( The Bear Test )

The only fault I've found so far is that the new chair has less lumbar support, and inasmuch as I am in the chair ten hours a day, that could be an issue. I'll probably get a lumbar-support pillow. Otherwise, it's very comfortable and I'm glad we bought it.