Back in Perth (OJG)

Hi everyone,

Just typing away at a local library (which has pretty good, fast, and FREE Internet access, but no ability to attach USB drives, so no pics... yet), and I wanted to let you all know very briefly what we are up to at the moment.

After our great week in Margaret River, we decided that we would in fact spend a little bit of money on Henry and spend 2 weeks in Perth getting him ready for the adventure ahead.

On Monday I took him to see Kurt at V-Dub Repairs in Freo, and he sorted out the wipers, horn, indicator switch, new seatbelts, a few engine bits, wheel alignments, and several other things. Henry honestly feels better drive for it. Thanks a lot Kurt.

Today, Henry is with Ross (an Electrician in phoenix Rd), who is sorting out the spot lights, fluo lights, additional 12V adapters and a battery charge indicator. Next Monday Henry should be going to get to the John's Motor Trimming, to get a new pop-top fabric (no more leaks) and possibly sort out a couple of other little fabric problems.

In the meantime Emelie is working on some new curtains, although she can't get past the initial obstacle of "what colour", and I am completely re-doing all the storage inside Henry. Well all of it except the bed and it's under storage area.

I have gotten pretty far with the plans, of course as many of you who know me will realise, I usually take months to ponder, draw, ponder some more, re-draw, ponder yet again, start again from scratch, and after many months and many brainwaves, I usually come with the ultimate and most perfect design! Which of course is completely impossible for me to actually make and I usually get stuck and then bored early on when I hit the 2nd or 3rd hurdle.

I am hoping that the immediacy of this particular project will mean that plans never life long enough to get too complicated, and therefore will be totally within my grasp and within the time limit of 2 weeks. I can hear some of you laughing with doubt, but we shall see who laughs last!

I of course am also slightly suffering from a colour conundrum, and although I have now 100% decided how the outside of Henry will be painted (although we have decided it is not worth it to paint him now), the inside is proving a bit more tricky. Add to that the complexity of what material to finish the units in, and also if any additional surface styling is needed. It might sound like I am falling into old habits again, but if I am going to do this, it needs to be good, or at the very least I need it to have potential to be good!

So... on the bright side of all that, I know have Carte Blanche to buy a ton of new power tools!!! YEEE-HAW! It is possible to rent power tools, but the price of some of the tools are so cheap it is actually more economical to buy than rent for more than 1 week. So Router (my fav), Drill, Sander, Jigsaw, Workbench, and corresponding bits are all a must. They can all be bought for about $100 each = 40GBP. The tricky one is a Router Table which is a real necessity (I think anyway), but you just can't get them cheap (probably the only item that isn't made my China, yet). So, with any luck I will be cutting away this weekend. I will post sketches and ongoing progress pics as soon as I can (unless of course the progress is negative, in which case I will just show pictures of somebody else's Kombi).

That is it for the moment, sorry for the delays in posting stuff, but there s nothing like a slow connection to sap your blog writing energy :)

Oly