We are back to work on the van and on to the crunch time. Remember the key shakedown trip is coming up. We need to be ready to tackle Baja in the next two weeks or so. No time to waste. I am going to post a separate post about the different projects, but the over arching feeling right now is that we will never be ready. It feels like a million little ends remain, and some huge ends. Case in point the cabinets. The cabinets are in place and the rear cabinet has been drilled and modified to fit. But they haven’t been bolted down, nor has the wiring inside them been finished (a few pesky lights). But again, like everything else, it cant be finished until another part is finished.

This week is GO time on the car alarm and stereo installation, which we have farmed out to an expert, which is actually exciting. At first I was concerned about giving the baby up to someone else to work on it, but now it feels like a relief. While I am at work, Robert will be at work installing the very complex car alarm, remote starter, stereo, navigation, back-up camera, etc into the van. I am stoked to have a pro working on it. While I can follow directions with the best of them, that’s really too complex and annoying of a job for me. Its about 10 hours of work to pull it off, and that means for me about 20 hours since it would be my first time. So I am thankful, and excited to have it done for me! Post the electronics install it’s off to the RV service center, Art’s, to have the propane system installed. This is where it gets fun again, because we need to “plumb” the van for propane, both to the stove and to the heater. The cool thing about our propane set-up is that we have designed it to be able to use disposable bottles vs a large an onboard tank system.  This was because we will be out in the bush and not sure the types of fittings they will use at propane fill stations across Africa, so we risk having this awesome tank and no way to fill it up once we are abroad. By using the refillable bottles, we just buy the bottles as we go and a fitting for the local market and we are good to go, vs needing to find a filling station that has an adapter.

The last system is plumbing and we need to get the tanks here ASAP. We are challenged right now because we can’t seem to locate the aux tanks on the west coast. They were shipped from South Africa (ironic) and they were due in CA but the contact in CA says he doesn’t see the tanks there…. ugh… Without the tanks we don’t have a way to set-up our water system which is annoying… Lets hope they turn up today and we are set to go next week with those and then we will JUST make it in time to hit the highway fully loaded.

So yeah it feels like this van is never going to be ready, reminds me of Sherman as he used to wait for me to talk him out on a walk…