A Case For Change

We ordered cases for three of our speakers in 2020. They were delivered to Fouke Arkansas the last week of October 2020 and we have been using them ever since. The quality of these affordable custom cases has been impressive and they have worked perfectly for us.

The one with the blue lid is an existing case we already had.

They might or might not hold up to roadies tossing them into semi-trailers five days a week, but they work great for our usage. They are handled mostly by me and Kelly Jo and it appears they will last a long time.

We have struggled for years to find a good way to transport all the different cords we use on a regular basis. We have used suitcases, tool boxes, plastic tubs, bags and who knows what else. Nothing has worked well.

Our good friend Galen Cummins gave us a case that he had used years before for a CD case. We have been using it for two years for cord storage and it has worked great. 

We put hooks inside to hold the cords. It did not really have room to keep the different cords separate, but it was much better than any other method.

Recently, I was on the website of the company that made our custom speaker cases and found a case with four removable tubs rather than shelves or hooks. Like the case we have been using, it is just the right size to roll into the center of the bus bay.

I ordered it and waited on a shipping date. They called when we were in Mississippi and I had them ship it to Brownsboro, Texas to meet us this week. 

It arrived safe and sound after much back and forth with UPS. KJo loaded the cords into it this week and it appears to be exactly what we need.

For perspective, it is almost 28" tall with the 3" casters.

I think this will serve us for a long time.

Our case that holds our mixer, mic receivers and other things is up for replacement next. It has had broken latches going back to the spring of 2016.🤣 I have found one that will work and I plan to order it soon.

Thank you for stopping by today. Tomorrow we should have lots of revival pictures.

Davy

Traveling "FUN"

We have been having a wonderful time this week under the Blue and White Gospel Tent. That completely makes up for the work and stress of getting to this point. 

We are praising God for His help!

But the reality is that tent revival is not all fun and games.

Monday I mentioned that last Thursday was a whopper of a travel day. IF all travel days were like that one, I might croak. But if all travel days were easy, everyone could do it and I might be out of a job!

We were leaving Central City, Kentucky, driving the bus and pulling the trailer 470 miles to Thomasville, Alabama.

This was the plan. We would crank the bus and KJo would follow me in the Green Machine about 3.5 miles to a local business where the tent trailer was parked. There we would hook up the trailer, pull to a local store with a big parking lot and load the Green Machine in the trailer.

Easy Peazy, right? This is how it turned out in the real world.

I left in the bus, but KJo could not follow me. She had left the Green Machine key in her apron pocket and the apron was in the bus with me. 😁

No problem, except, there is NO place for me to turn a bus around on the road. So I had to go all the way to town, turn around and go back to the church, pull into the church and leave again.

25 minutes gone like dust in the wind.😢

At least KJo captured pictures of the BoggsMobile coming back.

It took about 25 more minutes to go to the trailer, hook it up and drive to a nearby store with a large parking lot. We inserted the Green Machine, strapped it down and we were ready to go.

Before leaving, I checked a few lug nuts and also checked a few tires for proper air pressure. While doing that, I noticed one of the dust covers/grease caps had come off. Ugh!

Keep in mind, we just had these off recently and we are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN all the caps were on good and tight. 

Thankfully, the cover was not lost, the center cap caught it, but this one has come off before. Since that cap had a history of coming off, I replaced it.

I had ordered four of the correct size (2.75") two weeks ago so I had extra. I put a new one on and it stayed on all day. It is a different style, but it works fine. Of course, the wheel had to come off to get to it. Ugh Again!

I did not reinstall the center cap. In the pictures below, the left one has no center cap and the right one does.

What do you think? I may remove all the center caps. It would be so much easier to work on.

By the time we finished that, 90 minutes had passed since we first left the church, we had driven 14 miles, but we were only about 6 miles from the church in 90 minutes. 90 minutes = 6 miles. Not a very good start for the day. At that rate, we might be in Alabama by November.😢😜

50 miles later, we stopped at a truck stop so I could retighten the lug nuts on the tire I had removed and reinstalled.

The traffic in Nashville was not near as bad as it could have been. It was only slow for a few minutes. However, with all the delay at the beginning of the day, it took us four hours to get south of Nashville about 130 miles from where we began. Wow!

The rest of the day was better. We finished with 353 miles and over 8 hours later at a Flying J near McCalla, Alabama.

It was a welcome relief to pull into a parking place and shut down for the day. Hallelujah!

Some days you eat the bear and some days the bear eats you. Keep putting one foot in front of the other and press on!

Thank you for reading today.

Davy

Approaching A Deadline

We have not been to Nigeria since December 2018. We had a visit planned for September 2020, but a worldwide pandemic got in the way. Eventually, we set our sights on December 2022.

That is still our goal, but the vision is a little blurry at the moment. It is not possible, as a US citizen, to purchase a plane ticket and go to Nigeria on a whim. The airlines will not even let you board without a valid visa because the Nigerians would send you straight back home!

 

The Nigerian government has a few consulates in the USA, but only the consulate in NYC has been issuing visas for travel from the USA to Nigeria. Since July, even the Nigerian consulate in NYC has not been issuing visas. 

The process for obtaining a visa to travel to Nigeria is completely complicated at best. First, you wade through a tangled application process for each person online and then pay the various fees associated with the visa. 

Then you must print each receipt, print the completed application that has already been finished AND accepted online and then walk all of that into the consulate with your passport and cash.

You leave it there (including your passport) for several days and then go back and get it, hopefully, approved and the Nigerian visa affixed to your passport.

This would require a ten day trip to New York or two trips ten days apart. Instead, we pay a company to walk our printed information, money and passports into the embassy and then go back and get it all. We have used the same company for 15 years.

When I called that company in early July, they said the Nigerians had run out of visa stamps to insert into our passports. In late July, they said the consulate was completely revamping the computer systems and they would begin issuing visas to US citizens the second week of August.

I waited until the third week of August and called. They are now saying the person over the consulate in NYC is traveling to Nigeria and should be back in New York soon. Once they arrive, the consulate will be able to issue visas.

All of this would almost be funny, except it is not. I have been trying to guide an acquaintance that needs a visa for travel in about two weeks and it looks like he will not be able to get it. He has been trying for a couple of months. Ugh!

All of that to say, IF we are going to Nigeria in early December as planned, we need God to work this out. The Nigerian consulate recommends applying for the visa 90 days before the trip and not purchasing airline tickets until the visa is approved. 

90 days is this weekend. We are nearing the deadline and we will need to make a decision by mid September at the latest. Would you help us pray about it? We greatly desire to go, but we are completely content with God's guidance.

Thank you!

Davy

Gotta Know Your Limits!

It has been too long since I have had the bearings packed on the tent trailer and it has been sitting mostly idle for nearly two years. The plan is to pull the trailer behind the BoggsMobile when we leave Ohio and I had a nagging feeling the bearings needed some attention.

You have to know and respect your limits, right? 

Taking things apart, I could do.

Cleaning wheel bearings I could probably do. 

Packing wheel bearings I could maybe learn from YouTube. 

Inspecting wheel bearings would make me nervous. I am not sure I trust my knowledge. 

Putting it all back together being sure it was right, nope, beyond my limits.

It is time to bring in the professionals. Except, I have not been successful in finding the right professionals that I can trust. I have a trusted friend who is a mechanic, but he has been physically sidelined and there is no way he could get to it.

No one else was interested.

I did have one partial option. I could remove the wheels, check for improper movement in the hubs, remove the grease caps/dust covers fill the hubs and caps full of grease as best I could, put it all together and roll.

I used to do that to our Kountry Star wheels once or twice a year and I have done that to the tent trailer too. It is not a substitute for cleaning, inspecting and packing the bearings properly, but the wheels will pull the added grease into the mix.

It was really the only option that I had.

I awoke one morning to find an extremely pleasant surprise of 58 degrees in August. Wow! What an amazing gift!

I figured it was a gift that I should take advantage of!

I jacked up one side, inserted two jack stands, removed one tire at a time and went to work.

All of them had plenty of grease. That is a good sign. I cleaned each cap, filled it full of good high-temperature grease, packed as much grease in the hub as I could and buttoned everything up.

On the second side, the last two wheels showed a small problem. The grease cap on each of them was working its way loose. I am very glad that I caught that. You may be able to see what  I mean in the picture below.

I tightened all 48 lug nuts and I will tighten them again once I get south of Cincinnati in a couple of weeks. 

I am not a mechanic, nor do I play one on TV, so please do not take anything I say as mechanical advice. I do have a very beautiful helper. That should count for something!

With KJo's help we had all six wheels removed and reinstalled in about two hours. I spent some time the day before finding my grease and some tools, but not too bad of timing for a flunky like me.

I am very close to having the tent trailer ready to roll and that makes me very happy!

Thank you for joining us today.

Davy

Home and Preparing to Roll

When we leave this area in just over two weeks after Dryden Rd Indoor Fellowship Meeting, we will be dragging the tent trailer behind us. It has been idle for a good long time, so it needs a little TLC before we roll. Those things are on our list of priorities this week and next.

First things first, Dad needed his old mower. He brought this old mower here and used it to mow Odie's grass many, many times since the summer of 2015. He had purchased a replacement sometime before and the Lazy OD Ranch became the retirement home for the old one.

Even after we brought a newer used mower to the Ranch, Dad used this old one for the tight areas and for trim. It has served in retirement well.

Dad had a purpose for it at home so I backed the truck up next to the hill by Odie's house and rolled it onto his truck.

Of course, we ate a few times this week as well.😍

A Word For Wednesday was concerning upcoming tent revivals.

Wednesday, KJo mowed while I tackled the first tent trailer project.

My main task for that day was to change the two deep cycle batteries in the tent trailer. They had been charged three weeks before we came home, but were dead when we arrived. I charged them for two days and two days later, they were dead again. Time for a change.

These two batteries are Group 27DC-2 Deep Cycle batteries that I purchased and installed on August 18, 2014. I replaced them on August 10, 2022. That means they went 8 days short of 8 years between replacement. Not too shabby at all, I say. Much better than my normal "luck" with batteries.

The tent trailer goes months between uses at times and we always try to have it plugged in for two-three days each month. Maybe that helps. Maybe I just happened onto some good batteries in 2014.

The batteries are not super easy to access in the tent trailer, but they are not super difficult either. Inevitably, several things need to be moved from in front of the big panel, but then you remove the panel and the doors for the battery compartments are right there.

The batteries were not a special brand of batteries. They were AutoCraft brand that I purchased at Advanced Auto. I think they were about $125 a piece in 2014.

Advanced Auto is the second closest parts store to us. The only reason I bought them there was that the closest store, O'Reilly had none that day in 2014.

In the last 8 years, Advanced Auto quit selling AutoCraft and began selling DieHard, the old Sears brand. They were made in the same factories as AutoCraft for years and I imagine they still are. They were $172 each minus $22 for each old battery so $150 each.

The compartments did not need much attention, because the doors stay closed all the time.

It did not take long to put them in, hook them up and test them out. The lift went right up!

I have also been sorting things in the tent trailer. Some trips require certain things and do not require other things. The trick is figuring out what you need and making sure it is in the trailer, while not carrying everything in the world.😁

You will hear more about the tent trailer as we get closer to departing.

My sister in law, Karen, is in Ohio for a few days working and she came by with JoJo for a visit one afternoon. It was good to see both of them!

Drawing Jo on the sidewalk with chalk.

Thursday, we went to lunch with Dad and Mom! The food was excellent and it was wonderful to spend time with them. We enjoyed it so much. Hopefully, we will be able to do that again in the few days we have left at home.

Thursday night we went to church and that ended this part of our week.

Thank you for stopping by.

Davy