Tag Archives: trailer lights

Monday 16th September 2019 – STRIDER HAS BEEN …

… a busy boy today.

Back at the house after the school run, Zoe gathered up all of the glass, aluminium and plastic that she could find and we loaded it up into the back of Strider.

Then down at the bottom of the field by the lean-to we dragged the trailer out of the undergrowth. That was already loaded with a huge mound of stuff so we coupled it up to Strider’s tow hitch. Not for nothing did we fit a decent tow bar on him last year.

And that wasn’t the work of five minutes either. A trailer that hasn’t moved for a year or so and there’s quite a weight in it too. And, of course, the electric connections needed to be cleaned off so that I would have lights.

On the way down the road we hit a bump and the back door of the trailer opened up. As I have said before, I seem to be leaving a trail of possessions all around the world these days. But this time we were quick off the mark and we had it all back on the trailer and the door closed before anyone noticed.

At the garage we loaded more stuff up and then went on a tour of a few places to collect more. Off then to the recycling centre at Bath to weigh in the whole lot of it.

On the way back (for by now it was almost lunchtime after all of that) we went to Tim Horton’s where Zoe bought me a coffee and where I left my bag behind and had to run back and pick it up. It had taken ages to unload it all and separate it, and I question the wisdom of putting heavy glass into cardboard boxes and leaving it on a trailer for a year in the rain.

And inside the back of Strider now smells like a Babylonian boozer’s bedroom.0

The trailer door came open again on the way back (luckily there was nothing in it) and I stopped to pick up a sandwich. By now I was thoroughly exhausted.

And that’s no surprise either. I’d had another miserable night where I didn’t go to sleep until about 03:00 and then a fitful night of tossing and turning.

I don’t remember much of where I went but I remember three different segments. Segment 1, and then Segment 2 which was completely different and bore no resemblance to the previous, and Segment 3 where I stepped right back into where I was at the end of Segment 1. And if you think that that is confusing, imagine how I’m feeling.

And I do recall at some point the welcome return of a young girl who accompanied me on several voyages three or four years ago, and I wonder what has suddenly brought her back into the picture.

We had the school run of course and then the recycling, and then this afternoon I was hauling animal feed for a while, and then we replaced the rear brake caliper on the big Chevy truck that somehow manages to feature quite regularly on these pages just now.

As well as all of that, I’ve ordered my fuel economy chip and also made enquiries about my jacket at the hotel in Calgary.

Back at home I put back the trailer – and I do have to say that despite being out of practice I was totally impressed with my reversing skills – putting the trailer exactly where I wanted it (and in some tight corners too) every time, right on the button.

Not many of us here tonight so I made my usual vegan standby – stuffed peppers – for the two of us. And then I downloaded some more music. Two albums, both of which are vastly underrated.

Nektar’s album Down To Earth is a very interesting curiosity – am album by a British rock band that was totally ignored in the UK but became something of a phenomenon in Germany and eventually the musicians relocated there.

It’s one of these “take it or leave it” albums that I like to play every now and again but I can really live without it.

On the other hand, House On The Hill is a magnificent album. I’ve heard quite a few albums by Audience and was never particularly inspired but House On The Hill is another one of those that comes out of nowhere and stops you dead in your tracks.

It was one of the “Jackie Marshall cassette recordings” from the mid-70s and I bought a vinyl version in the mid-80s, probably the last vinyl album that I ever bought. And somehow I overlooked to purchase a CD version when I was modernising my collection.

As an aside, I’m only hunting down album tracks for albums that I already own and not for anything that isn’t already in my collection.

Now it’s bed-time and I’m hoping for better luck tonight when it comes to sleeping. I really can’t carry on like this and I’m back on the road on Wednesday.

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Saturday 6th December 2014 – I’VE BEEN OUTSIDE …

… just once today. And that was about an hour ago to take the statistics. And much to my surprise, I’ve had just half an amp of electricity today – and that was in the barn. It just shows you the importance of inclining the solar panels at the correct angle. Even though there are 6 solar panels on the roof of the house and just two on the barn, the roof panels are inclined at 48° (the pitch of the roof) whereas the ones on the barn are inclined at 71°, which is exactly what they ought to be (degrees north of the Tropic of Capricorn).

I had a late night last night, just for a change these days, and although I woke up when the alarm went off, one look out of the window convinced me that I was wasting my time. It was snowing just then, and had been for a while, and so I went back to bed.

When I finally did raise myself from the Undead, at 09:20, the snow had changed to light rain, and we had 5mm throughout the day. After breakfast I attacked the next month’s rock music radio programmes and they are now complete. It took me ages though because I’ve had to manufacture another concert as well as a speech, and everything was at different speeds and volumes so all of this needed arranging.

I’m beginning to understand how it was that when the radio station did the engineering, they made such a mess of it. I know the results that I am trying to achieve and it isn’t at all easy. The engineers don’t have a clue so they must have found it impossible.

I’ve also been spending some money again. This plant trailer that I bought with the mini-digger is a decent bit of kit, that’s for sure, but as I said the other day, I don’t know who has been playing with the electrics. The rear lights are add-ons – these really cheap and nasty 3-function lights that cost coppers each. And they don’t work either so there’s an even cheaper and nastier trailer board attached.

I hate trailer boards, especially on good-quality equipment, and so having a good browse around on the internet I’ve found a pair of rear lights – 5-function rear lights – that are such a good fit that they might even be the original equipment.

As well as that, I’ve bought a pair of these tiny LED real numberplate lights and a pair of side marker lights, the type that are on stalks so that they can be fitted on the mudguards to mark the extreme width of the trailer.

Apart from that, I’ve not done much else. It’s not been the weather for it.

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Monday 1st December 2014 – THAT HANGING CLOUD …

… that arrived at Chamalieres yesterday followed me home last night. When I went out late last night to check the stats, there it was hanging all over my little mountain.

It was still here this morning and it’s been here all day. In the barn I had the grand total of 0.350 amp-hours of solar energy, and here in the house it was about 1.5 amp-hours.

All day it’s been drizzle and tonight at 21:00 the temperature had dropped to 1°C – the lowest temperature so far. That means that tonight it will probably drop below freezing outside. Anyway, I had the fire lit in here and cooked the last portion of my last week’s curry. As an aside, those small sealed storage jars that I bought at IKEA are doing the business. Filling them up with hot food is creating a powerful vacuum and the food seems to be keeping much longer, as well as tasting better.

At lunchtime too, I had a go at making my own hummus seeing as I’ve run out of vegan cheese and I’m not too keen on this vegan pate. 12 spoonfuls of chick peas all mashed up, three spoonfuls of sesame seed paste, a pile of fresh garlic, some olive oil and some cumin powder and there I was. And it wasn’t all that bad either.

indespension plant trailer les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs for work today, this morning I braved the weather to go out and do some work on this new trailer. The lights on the trailer don’t work at all, and I’ll be resolving that issue in due course. It came with a huge trailer board but the light lenses weren’t so good on that, so I had a hunt around and found and old trailer board that still had some bits of light attached to it. I did a bit of mix-and-match with that and now the big trailer board is working properly.

I also cut a bungee strap in half, threaded the two halves through the holes in the traile board, knotting them at the cut ends, and now the trailer board can be hooked properly onto the trailer pro tem, until I can fix the lights on the trailer.

There was a number plate, off the old LDV that I used to have, on the old trailer board, and so now that’s attached to the trailer. The law here in France is that large trailers have to be licensed separately and carry their own number plates. In the UK, that’s not the case. Trailers carry the registration number of the vehicle that is towing them. With this trailer being an old British trailer, it doesn’t have its own number, so I stuck the LDV number plate on it.

That way, the trailer has its own identification and as the LDV is still on the British computer (it was scrapped in Belgium) any information about the trailer will eventually find its way back to me so until I can sort out some paperwork for it, that will have to do.

And then, apart from that, I’ve been up in the upstairs of the barn sorting out the wood and panels to make the power board in the barn – I want to start on that. I also found a decent but of wood for the portable power board, so I’ve been working on that. That should be finished tomorrow morning and then I can start on the power board in the barn.

High time I made use of these new batteries that I bought the other day.

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