Stargazer's Garage

Sunnyside Campground Cultus Lake BC The date has been set. Our spot has been reserved. The destination for our very first RV trip, the "Shakedown" trip, will be a campground within walking distance of the Cultus Lake Waterslides. A tip that I've read in every RV book and website is to take a short 2-3 day trip in the RV at the beginning of the season before you head off for a long trip. That way you can make sure that everything is working and deal with any issues close to home before you hit the road. The is commonly called the shakedown trip. Having never been RVing before, I feel that we still have a long journey before we get to that point with our new travel trailer. Wish us luck!

We jumped through another hoop today and the financing has been approved for our new 2009 Tango Travel Trailer. We're another step closer to parking this behemoth on our driveway. Overall, we must have looked at over 25 different RVs over this past month. This particular Tango happened to be the very first one we saw when we started this journey. On that first day, it was shown to us as a high-end trailer with high-quality materials throughout. But the $33000+ CAD list price was a lot of money. The sales person showed us different trailers and configurations (even used ones) until we reached an entry-level double-bunk model with slides that was very reasonably priced. We left the lot that day with a handful of brochures and our heads about to explode. We went to other RV dealers and looked at many more models and realized that there were certain things we liked and didn't like.... Click below to read more. Some things just seemed to be standard issue so we didn't concern o

Well, once again there was a pathetic voter turnout in the May 12 BC provincial election and the referendum for proportional representation failed miserably. Talking to some colleagues afterwards, I found out they voted "No" because they didn't completely understand what it was about. Kinda sad, really. I don't see voter turnout in BC improving any time soon or in the distant future because without proportional representation, my vote in this riding is pointless.

  This has been an exciting weekend for us because we just added a new member to our (virtual) garage: a 2009 Tango Travel Trailer. (Being 30-feet long, it doesn't fit in our real garage.) While the idea of getting into RVing has been with me a long time, taking it seriously and acting upon it didn't start happening until about a month ago. Since we had missed the spring RV shows, we stopped at our local RV dealership a few Saturdays ago for a look and we got a very informative and educational tour of different types of travel trailers. Our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali is the most tow-capable vehicle we've owned, and I wanted to see what a 7800 lb. trailer looked like. The sales person spent a lot of time showing us the entire spectrum of RVs from modern upscale to affordable entry-level. We learned about GVWR and towing limits, as well as about slides (not the ones we're used to that you find at playgrounds!), outdoor showers, and saw that there were almost infinite varie

I was at a professional development work session today and someone showed us a video clip demonstrating some very cool technology called Photosynth . It's built with the technology of Seadragon and has the ability to create a model of reality built from the photo memories of the collective whole--very Borg-like! The individual members of the collective benefit by creating something more complex and rich than would have been very difficult if not impossible to do by themselves. One example shown was using photos found on Flickr to create the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Here's my simple attempt at making a synth of a floor jack I bought at Costco for R32Argent: Click below to check out the TED video and see the demo yourself: Jaw-dropping Photosynth Demo

I purchased some 5-spoke O.Z. Crono HT wheels for my summer tires a short while back. This weekend I finally installed them. Click below the fold for pictures. First, for easier comparison, this first picture is with the stock Aristos: Now, the last two pictures are with the O.Z. wheels: Me likey! I think the O.Z. wheels make the R look cleaner and a little more aggressive than the Aristos.