The Blog of Harald

* dual, built-in convection ovens
* stand-up mixer
* cookie sheets, baking pans, etc.
* oven mits

Charlotte and I are off to make some chocolate chip cookies :)

back from vacation. House still in one piece, thanks to Pene!

* trailer: awesome!
* altantic canada: awesome!
* two kiting events: fabulous!
* 3.5 weeks with the family: The Best!

More later :)

This sounds familiar:

“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_attention_fatigue”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_attention_fatigue

We picked up the trailer yesterday morning; got a nice walk-through of all the features, etc.; as well as instructions for setup and tear down. We ended up spending three hours at the dealership, but they fed us hamburgers, so all is good!

We drove back home, picked up the kites and the camping gear, and headed out to Valens Conservation Area near Cambridge. I took Gerry’s advice and set the cruise control to 100km/h on the 401 and let everyone else pass me. It wasn’t perfect; I kept catching up with slowpokes! The truck uses more fuel towing the trailer; 15l/100km instead of the 10-11 we get normally on the highway. On the other hand, it accelerates well; we had no troubles with merging, left turns, or hills. I don’t have the trailer brake controller installed yet, so braking needed more distance than normal. I made sure to leave lots of room, so I never had trouble stopping anywhere, even when idiots were cutting me off in front of a traffic jam on the way home. (Trailers are like trucks; everyone wants to be in front of them, not behind).

It took us about 45 minutes to get the trailer positioned on our site, opened, and all the gear unpacked; about what I expected. We walked over to the camp store but they were out of milk, so we had to drive out to the local general store and (butter tart extravaganza!) to get milk and snacks. On the way back, we stopped at the beach to play for a bit, so we didn’t start dinner until 7pm, At which time we discovered that our camper’s stove isn’t quite hot enough to boil water, at least not in any reasonable amount of time. Fortunately I had packed the old kettle for coffee and dishes! By the time dinner was hot the mosquitos were organized into squadrons, so we committed a cardinal sin and ate inside. (I washed up outside, though; by 10pm the skeeters were mostly gone for the night).

We discovered a few problems other than the stove:

* The fridge does not work on 120v power; only on 12v and propane. We’ll have to get that checked out.
* It appears that the water pump was left on during our demonstration. Somewhere between Toronto and Valens it started sucking air; I have no idea how long it was running like that, and I hope it’s not damaged!
* The camper has a nice large drain pipe, but they gave us a garden hose adapter, and I had a small-bore garden hose. It seems that if there is enough back-pressure in the hose, not only does the sink not drain, but the interior drain vapour-locks, and so even after removing the garden hose the sink remains full. Blowing air into the system releases the lock, and can give a face full of sink water. (Fortunately I was faster than that :). I’ll have to get a larger diameter, shorter drain hose.
* The sink trap leaks; we’ll have to get that fixed or the wood holding that part of the camper together will rot out.

It took us about 30 minutes to pack up the trailer once we formally started (I’d already been loading out boxes and doing the dishes before then), and about 5 minutes to pack the truck and hook up the trailer. We spent the afternoon in a kite field, then drove home into a traffic jam; half of the 401 across Toronto was closed! We got home early enough that the rain started as we were putting the trailer into the garage and loading back in the bikes and lawnmower. (The trailer currently eats my garage; I’m definitely going to need a storage shed out back).

All in all it was a good weekend, and I’m very happy with the trailer. I’m looking forward to the Pinery in three weeks!

I cleaned out the garage a few weekends ago. I hauled everything out, sorted it into four piles (the usual trio of throw out, give away, keep; plus recycle). Then I put it all back in! Fortunately the majority of it was trash; stuff we’d never gotten around to sorting through after the chaos of our move from Treverton, plus other detritus acquired over the years. (There’s always something more important to do than clean out the garage :-). I even found a box of old printouts from fourth-year computer science; I though I’d ditched all of that stuff a long time ago! At least these days it gets recycled…

Since then I’ve been hauling garbage and recycling to the curb every Tuesday morning. One more week of garbage pickup should give me the space required to store the trailer; good thing, since we pick it up from the dealer on June 2nd. I still need to take one more trip to the transfer station; got some more old (dead) monitors to get rid of, as well as a box of misc. hazardous waste.

Of course, there’s still too much stuff in the garage; we have two desks, part of a bed, an ancient kitchen table that’s probably worth real money to an antique dealer, and a few more boxes that still need to be sorted. Like Gerry and Diana, we’ve reached the conclusion that we need a shed to reduce the amount of stuff that needs to be temporarily removed to get the trailer into (or out of :) the garage…

We drove up to the trailer dealer yesterday to make sure that the truck has everything we need to tow our trailer. We do! The trailer wiring connector is even completely hooked up already, contrary to what it says in the Saturn owner’s manual. The trailer guys were all quite impressed with the Saturn; the hitch is apparently well built, and the rest of the truck looks cool :).

I was a little confused about trailer brake connections. I was under the impression that the Saturn tow package included a brake controller that just needed to be wired up. It turns out that we still need to purchase a separate trailer brake controller and hook it up ourselves. However, there’s a connector for this purpose already wired under the dash, and the Saturn towing kit come with a wiring harness that connects to the brake controller and plugs into the existing connector, so it appears that we’re all good. McKenzie sells the controllers, so maybe they can wire and install it also, if our Saturn dealer doesn’t have an “official” model already.

We tried to use the new DVD player on the way home from Pene’s party last night, and it was dead! It appeared to be a problem with the power connector. When we got home I discovered that the cigarette lighter power connector comes apart, and there’s a 5mm x 20mm 5A fuse hidden inside; yes, the fuse had a broken wire. It doesn’t look blown (usually there’s an ugly black spot on the glass when that happens); I think it broke from being whacked around somehow.

I went to two different stores today looking for replacements without success. I even ended up buying the wrong size at “the store formerly known as radio shack”. Their website says they carry both 1 1/4″ and 20mm fuses, so I’ll have to go back tomorrow and try again. If these fuses are this hard to find, I may have to replace the lighter plug adapter with a different one that takes standard fuses. I’m thinking of re-wiring all of my 12V junk to use Anderson Powerpoles anyway, since that’s the standard ham radio power connector these days, so this would be an excuse to do so for the DVD player :).

Next up: clean out the garage and build a loft, so that we have somewhere to put the trailer, so that we can pick it up. Gerry and I are tentatively planning a Saturday night trip in early June to “shake down” the trailers before our three-day Pinery trip, so we need to get it sometime before then…

I picked up the new truck today; it is beautiful! Long story short (and coming later), we ended up with an entirely different configuration to the one we originally ordered. For one thing, it’s charcoal, a colour we like :-). On the other hand, it has one of those ultra-decadent powered rear liftgates, which I’m sure is going to be a maintenance nightmare in the future. But the ultimate in decadence: heated windshield-washer fluid!

Most important, it has the towing package: trailer hitch receiver and cabling, extra cooling capacity in the engine, and alternate settings for the transmission computer when towing. Now I have to make sure all the wiring is in place (there’s a mention in the manual that fuses for trailer brakes and trailer battery charging are installed, but the wires aren’t hooked up; this seems entirely backwards to me), and get a drawbar with a ball that is the right height for our trailer. Then I have to clear enough space in the garage to park the trailer, and then I can go pick it up from the dealer!

Two, actually.

Gareth’s team won their game against their arch-rivals (the Leafs) on Saturday. They were up 1-0 after the first period. The Leafs scored one to tie early in the second, but Gareth’s Oilers took it back almost immediately, and then scored four more goals to win the game 5-1. I think the main difference between last Saturday’s 1-1 tie and this game was that the forward lines remembered how to score goals :).

Meanwhile, Rick’s curling team (on which I play second) won the 2nd flight championships on Monday night! We’ve had three upset games in a row the last three weeks. We went 10-5 against a very good team, then 15-0 in our second game, then 14-1 in the final. With those scores, we ended up the second highest team in the overall standings! Not bad for my first year playing skins…

Gareth’s Oilers battled the season-winning Leafs to a 1-1 tie, forcing a 2-minute, 3-on-3, sudden-death overtime period. Alas, the Leafs’ star player scored a little less than a minute into the period.

It was a hard fought game; lots of aggressive defense on both sides (although there were surprisingly few penalties to go with it; they were playing clean, at least!). The kids were exhausted when they came off the ice, especially the Oilers who only have 12 players (Goalie, 2 defense lines, and 7 forwards rotating through two lines).

Goulding Park plays a double elimination tournament tournament, so The Oilers go to the semi-final game on Thursday at 6:30, and if they win that they play the Leafs _again_ in the final on Saturday at noon. Go Oilers!

Gareth’s team won, although it was a tense 2-1 win. Kudos to our defense for shutting down several plays. (I don’t think I’m too biased, even though the boy plays defense :).

The Leafs won also, so the top two teams play each other on Saturday. Our record against them goes both ways; they clobbered us early in the season; we clobbered them in the middle; we had very close games at the end. The winner goes to the final; loser goes to the “last chance” game, and gets one more chance to be the other team in the final…

Michaéla came up with a way to compromise on the “first model year” issue with the new car. If we lease instead of purchase, then if it the truck is a lemon we can return it and let dealer worry about it. We’ll take a bit of a loss, but theoretically this is smaller loss than if we tried to sell it ourselves; if it’s a lemon, the resale value will suck.

Because auto loan finance rates are disgustingly low (we’re staring at 2.9%), we do fairly well on the lease vs. buy tradeoff. We’ll pay slightly more in total interest if we buy out the lease, but our payments will be 25% smaller. Since we generally struggle with cash flow (damned tuition fees!), this is a good thing.

I didn’t get a chance to write about tow vehicles before we bought one; oh well :)

We went to the Hamilton RV show last Saturday and crawled around in a bunch of pop-up trailers. The data so far:

* Fleetwood is very expensive. The quality and features are there, but I’m not convinced that they’re worth the price tag.
* We want a 10′ pop-up trailer. 12′ would be nice on rainy days, but they’re freakin’ heavy and much larger than the 2′ difference would lead you to believe; I’d rather have the slightly easier to drive with smaller trailer. On the other hand, 8′ trailers are too small for the four of us, especially as the kids get physically larger.
* Rockwood and JayCo both have nice 10′ models. Palomino (same company as Rockwood) has some nice designs too, but for some reason they’re about 20% heavier than the Rockwoods.
* We decided to go with cargo space in the tow vehicle over a “box” on the trailer. We’d be hauling stuff in and out either way, and this way we have the cargo space without the trailer too.

The Rockwood and Jayco models that we like all weigh in at around 2000 lbs. Manufacturer “tow ratings”:http://www.suvoa.com/towing_matrix.cfm only include a driver, so add 400-500 lbs of passengers and 400-500 lbs of gear. Follow the “75%” rule of trailer/cargo mass vs. tow rating, and that means we’re looking for a vehicle with a 4000 lb (or more) tow rating. Strangely, there aren’t very many of those! There’s a big gap between minivans and small SUVs at 3500 lbs, and full-size SUVs and trucks at 6500 lbs and up.

We also wanted something that can carry our friends, and the kids and their friends, on normal trips (i.e. our regular kite festivals), up to and including carrying two adults and four kids on a camping trip. That ruled out the myriad 5-passenger compact and mid-size SUVs (probably just as well, because selecting from that many options would be challenging).

We also wanted to, at a minimum, _attempt_ to a passing wave at fuel economy, as our lives require two single-passenger vehicles during the week. You can’t really get an eight-passenger, tow-capable truck that isn’t a fuel hog, but we wanted to try…

Michaéla’s extensive research narrowed us down to a couple of the new “CUVs (Crossover Utility Vehicles)”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossover_SUV, which can be described as scaled down minivans or scaled up station wagons. They’re designed like SUVs, but have car-inspired unibody construction so they handle better and are more fuel efficient.

The only one we really liked, that met all of our criteria, was the new “Saturn Outlook XR FWD”:http://saturn.gmcanada.com/ss/english/vehicles/saturn/outlook/outlook_overview.jsp. While I’m very nervous about purchasing a new-model vehicle, Saturn has a reasonably good reputation for quality, particularly after purchase. Most manufacturers seem to be revamping their entire vehicle lineups anyway; there are lots of new-model cars and trucks on the market right now! Besides, it’s a very nice vehicle :-).

The Outlook also comes with all-wheel drive, but everything I’ve read says that AWD either doesn’t help with towing, or actively makes it worse. It makes the vehicle heavier, and it’s one more thing to go wrong. AWD also uses 5-10% more fuel.

Anyway, we’ve ordered one with the options we like; the heated leather seats, the trailering package (of course :), and we splurged and went for the built-in rear-seat DVD player. Everyone I’ve talked to with kids who didn’t buy the DVD option has regretted it. We could get a couple of portable DVD players for similar $$$, but there are advantages to the built-in. We didn’t spring for the “luxury” package (heated mirrors, seat position memory, yadda yadda) or the backup/parking assist (which would primarily tell us that we’re too close to the trailer :-). The “Cold Weather Package” (heated windshield washer fluid, remote start) sounded cool, but we decided not to be frivolous. Ditto the sunroof; I think we use the Maxima’s sunroof a handful of times each year. Finally, we left off the built-in GPS navigation system; we can get equivalent system for 1/4 of the price, which also means we can upgrade if the technology gets better (and move the GPS-nav to the other car when required :-).

It’s supposed to take 6-8 weeks for the vehicle to show up here in Toronto. We still have to choose a colour, though!

From BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: Do young children understand irony?

bq. Some children as young as six already understand the idea that people make sarcastic remarks, saying one thing but meaning another, according to psychologists Penny Pexman and Melanie Glenwright.

bq. The children found ironic criticisms – such as “that was great play” – easier to understand than ironic compliments. A grasp of the speaker’s true belief emerged first, then an understanding of the speaker’s attitude and intention to tease tended to emerge together, usually in the older children.

My kids are already experimenting with dishing out sarcasm…

We’ve booked our Pinery site for this year, as have several others.

We ‘stole’ Michelle’s site from last year (which she’s grumpy about, because it’s closest to the washrooms :). I liked our site from last year, but the layout of the trees at the driveway would make it hard to back a trailer in, and I don’t want that to be my *first* experience with the trailer on a campsite! (I plan to spend some time in a parking lot with pylons before going anywhere, but that’s not really the same…).

We’re planning several driving trips in the next five years, and are looking into buying a pop-up trailer instead of renting trailers or RVs. In theory, owning is cheaper than renting over the long run, and it gives us more flexibility.

We’ve looked into the possibility of renting a trailer or RV, but it’s not cheap. It’s not the insanely expensive that RV rentals are (I can go to Disney for a week or rent an RV for three weeks…). Reasonably sized popup trailers seem to rent for about $500/wk. For our first summer vacation, we’ll be gone longer than three weeks, so that’s $2000 right there. I can buy a reasonable used (and sometimes new) trailer for only 3-4 times that, and as we plan to take more than one long trailer vacation, we think we’re better off purchasing. Owning also gives us the option of taking 3-4 day trips across the various weekends that the kids are out of school and have no Holiday Program coverage, instead of sitting at home.

From what I’ve seen of the used market, we shouldn’t have too much trouble breaking even (compared to rentals) even if we change our mind in two years and decide to sell the trailer.

Mick’s uncle has 10 acres in East Gwillimbury and has offered to let us store a trailer there.

Gerry and I are planning to visit a Toronto RV show next weekend, to get an idea on what’s available, what the various sizes actually look like, what features we want vs. can live without, and so on and so on. Gerry already says that an awning is a must. The built-in kitchens are a nice idea, as long as the stove can be moved to the outside of the trailer on hot days.

Towing will be an issue. Even an 8′ trailer seems to be in the 1000-2000 lb range. Our existing car has a 1000lb tow rating (I’m told this is because of the unibody frame, not the engine or suspension); most cars are similar. We have yet to find anyone that rents SUVs or minivans that allows towing a trailer; usually they say it voids the insurance. (We need to find out if our personal auto insurance would allow coverage instead). Renting vans and/or SUVs for 3-4 weeks is also expensive. So we’ve been looking into buying a tow vehicle also, but I’ll write about that separately.

I’ve got “another spasm”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/archives/2006/10/13/ouch-2/ in my back. Higher up this time, and not as bad as the first one; I can still put my own socks on today :-).

How’d I do it this time, you ask? I got in the car to take the boy to his hockey game. I looked over my shoulder to check for pedestrians before backing out of the driveway. Ouch!

Michaela left for Kansas City on Monday morning, so I’ve been single parent this week. So far we’ve had:

– hockey practice, in which the boy injured his knee. Just a nasty bruise, fortunately.
– a lost tooth, with a lot of blood in the process
– one incident of vomit (probably caused by too much swallowed blood :).
– two nights of nose bleeds
– only one night of “I miss mummy!”, which is a good thing
– not nearly enough healthy food. Ah well, a week won’t kill them.

We’re going to the airport tonight to meet her… :)

I’ve posted some highlight photos from our cruise on “flickr”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/chkoch/tags/4x40cruise/ and I’m sure I’ll add more in the coming days/weeks…

We all eventually noticed that the bar / look-out at the front of the “ms Zuiderdam”:http://www.hollandamerica.com/cruiseships/Zuiderdam, called “The Crow’s Nest”:http://www.hollandamerica.com/signatureofexcellence/crowsnestlounge.do, could also be referred to as “Ten Forward”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Forward …

Geeks. Who’s idea was that?

It really sucks to come home from a Caribbean vacation to find that the house is 16.5°C instead of a slightly more balmy 20. Seems I mis-set the thermostat slightly, although I’m sure I checked it twice before we left…