Zephyrs

Randy went out to Dog Valley to take a look at Crystal Peak. It is not a drive for the RV or even the highway sedan as the road is rather rough, but the scenery is spectacular.

See the photo gallery for Lookout Campground on Crystal Peak. Truck and tent territory here.

The Region 12 Hobo Rally in 2010 for the WBCCI had a parade and all sorts of activities for participants

See the photo gallery. Check out the parade and the 50th celebrations.

The I’net is creeping into the RV lifestyle. The access to the world wide network is becoming a necessary link for everything from paying bills to chatting with friends. The government thinks it is so important that they have allocated some of the old UHF TV channels to be used for I’net access and even allocated funding. The website Welcome to Broadband.gov
has been set up with explanations and speed tests as a part of this governmental effort.

It used to be that you’d have to use satellite for I’net access on the road. This was slow, especially for uploads, and there was a latency that made it impractical for voice communications. Nowadays, you’ll find wifi access points at many RV parks and at some rest areas as well as at libraries, fast food and coffee joints, and other places. Cell phones are also moving to I’net integration. You may have seen the adds where the two major cell phone networks are fighting about coverage maps. DataJack is a way to access a cell phone network on a monthly basis without any longer term commitment.

A network telephone, called voip or voice over ip, can be a convenient and inexpensive alternative to a cell phone. Examples include Ooma, available at Costco. It uses a standard network device to make the connection between standard telephone and I’net. Magicjack is available at Radio Shack and uses a dongle for your computer that has I’net access. Both provide complete telephony services that you can use anywhere you can get a decent I’net connection.

Speed measures can be a bit confusing. You will hear terms like bits and bytes and have no idea how to figure out what it means for what you want to do. There is a table of these numbers at Network Connection Speeds Reference  for a start. Cell phone I’net access provides from 2 to 7 times dialup speeds. Bluetooth, used most often for those wireless cell phone earplugs, runs at a bit more than 12 times dialup. Wifi can run from 200 to 1,000 times dialup speeds. Home networks usually run at about 1800 times dialup speed. DSL, the connection that uses telephone wires, runs about 18 times dialup and cable, using the TV coaxial network, can run up to 100 times dialup speeds.

What speed do you need? Voice calls over the I’net need only 2 times dialup data speeds so Cell and wifi access will do just fine. Satellite would also do OK but the second or two lag in the link can require some adjustment. The need for speed will likely only be evident if you want to watch video or look at a lot of pictures. The base for that pushes cell phone technologies. The only choice for a true video nut is going to be cable at this time.

To find your connection speeds, you can use the government site or dslreports.com which need a Java plugin. Other speed test sites include
audit my pc (good speed chart by connection type, too) and  CNET Bandwidth Meter.

All of this is fine as long as you are somewhat near civilization – major highways or cities and towns. That doesn’t include some of the best RV spots, especially west of the Rockies. You can still get away from it all if you want but beware, technology is creeping up on you.

Spring is coming and that means its time to get the rig out of storage mode. That often means finding out what didn’t make it through the winter. The cooler temperatures are usually a good thing for your batteries because they reduce the self discharge rate but the long periods of sitting are not so good for the batteries.

Venkat Srinivasan, who works with the Lawrence Berkely National Lab, started a blog about batteries and an entry described the problem with lead acid battery life.

For a lead-acid car battery, the failure mechanism is called sulfation, where the discharged material undergoes a phase transformation after which it can’t recharge.
…
But, keeping a lead acid completely charged also leads to other problems (like grid corrosion) which would be lessened if you let the voltage decrease a bit. Moreover sulfation takes a few days. So one could do something complicated like let the battery charge, and then let it discharge a bit, but come back the next day and charge it back up before sulfation kicks in.

These two competing phenomena, sulfation and grid corrosion, may explain why keeping a float or trickle charge on the battery is not optimum. Float charging keeps a top charge to prevent sulfation but promotes grid corrosion. Solar charging systems may also tend this way as they spend perhaps a quarter of the time keeping a top charge. This may be why RV converters like the Progressive Dynamics with Charge Wizard do so well. Those maintain a reduced float level which keeps gassing and grid corrosion down. Every day or so, they bump the charge up for just a few minutes to inhibit sulfation.

There is a progression here. Float keeps the batteries always at top charge. Solar provides a top charge for maybe a quarter of the time. A good battery maintainer prevents discharge but puts a top charge on the battery only about 1% of the time.

For your spring time battery checks, make sure to your battery water levels of OK (unless you have sealed batteries), Disconnect the charger and maintainer (unplug the rig), turn on a load like a few incandescent lights (5 or 10 amps or about 100 watts) for an hour or two, then let the batteries rest with no load or charging for an hour or so. Check the battery voltage. If the batteries are good, they should show about 12.6v to 12.8v. If in doubt, consider replacement. Batteries often cost less than a tank of fuel for the RV and that cost may be good insurance against a dead battery on a cool spring morning.

SNU Folks,

The March 2010 Newsletter has been posted

Note: Links to photo galleries and additional information mentioned in articles in this newsletter can also be found at the above link.

March Weed Heights Rally

Thursday March 18 to Sunday March 21 at Weed Heights RV Park is the first SNU rally for 2010. This is a full service RV park with a really nice indoor meeting room. Activities include breakfast in a bag and a crock pot pot luck. The RV Park fees are $20 per night per rig with Good Sam or AAA membership. SNU Kitty Kall is $5 per rig per night payable at the rally. Take advantage of having electricity, bring your patio lights and decorate your Airstream. We hope to see you all at Weed Heights.

Topics in the February newsletter include:

Lunch at El Charro Avita -|- Time to Rally! -|- Region 12 Rallies -|- Notes from the SNU President -|- Amateur Radio at Gillette -|- Mesquite Springs -|- Operational Notes

=> For the latest on the Sierra Nevada Unit, check the website homepage:

=> Check Zephyrs and find out what else is new on the SierraNevadaAirstreams.org

–
SNU HQ

How do you adjust your mirrors? Most drivers adjust mirrors so they can see a reference point in the mirror. For side mirrors, that means they can see the side of their vehicle. Car and Driver suggests that this might not be the best way to cover blind spots. You don’t need to see your own vehicle in your rear view mirrors, you need to see as much of what is adjacent lanes as possible.

A caveat for RV’s, especially trailers, is that the centerline rear view mirror usually cannot show what is directly behind you. Many states require that you have two mirrors that can see to the rear and that you be able to see the road 200 feet behind the vehicle (JeepForum has a thread on mirror laws as an example). While there is some interpretation as to whether this means that you have to be able to see something in the center of your lane 200 feet behind you or not, it does mean that your mirrors have to be far enough away from the vehicle to be able to see around your trailer and that they must be angled such as to be able to see straight back. That means that, without a centerline rear view mirror, RV’s need the mirror adjusted so they can just barely see the side of the RV and additional external mirrors will be needed to help cover blind spots in adjacent lanes.

It should also be noted that many states have restrictions on video screens viewable by the driver and this restriction means that using video cameras for rear view mirrors is not allowed when on the road.

Whenever someone thinks they know more than the manufacturer of a device or about the codes involved, you need to be very careful that you really know what is going on before doing anything. Howard falls into this trap in the February Blue Beret when he suggests modifying Honda gensets to implement neutral to ground bonding when the small Honda 120v gensets do not have a neutral to start with.

The lesson is that you need to be very careful in listening to recommendations from ‘experts’ and make sure you really understand what is going on. Be especially careful when the experts starting tossing around ’safety’ as the primary reason for their recommendations.

There is no need or reason for an earth ground with a portable genset. The chassis grounds of the genset and the RV are connected together by the cord and plug ground wires and that is sufficient to provide a proper frame of reference for the fault detection circuits required in modern equipment. The reason for earth grounding is with grid attached power where the earth ground, chassis ground, and neutral are connected together only at the service entrance. This is why your RV circuit box does not connect these together as it is a sub panel and not a service entrance. The grid has long transmission lines that couple it to the earth which is why it needs careful earth ground considerations. Your RV on its own, off-grid and local, power systems does not have that problem and, hence does not need earth grounding for power safety.

You do not have a safety hazard as long as the power circuit is isolated from your RV frame and the earth ground, despite what Howard says. This is why the code is as it is for small gensets or other power supply devices (like battery powered inverters).

Your 3 light circuit indicator is designed for grid power. When using small gensets with plugs, it is entirely proper for it to not show a light for hot to ground voltage as the hot and neutral sides of the power may be isolated from everything else. Like with the voltmeter, you need to use the proper test equipment and properly interpret their readings in the context of what you are doing.

The column also gets into the problem of a genset not being able to power things such as air conditioners and microwave ovens. The lesson here is to watch out for oversimplification. The reasons why a 3kW genset might not power a 1.5 kw microwave include many factors. Altitude effects on genset performance is one. The appliance power factor is another. Power startup surge might be another. Hidden loads (the fridge going to electric is a common one) can be a source of failure. Even the type and length of extension cord you use between the genset and the RV can be a factor.

When you have larger gensets or wired in gensets, then you should have a transfer switch that will automatically make the proper connections.

Note that circumstances determine how things are done. Single phase small 120v portable gensets that use plugs are not the same as house backup systems or contractor power. Sometimes you know the generator is completely independent of any other power source or not. Sometimes, especially with portable equipment, you do not know for sure it is really a ’separately derived system.’

A 2-wire 120 volt system has no neutral and therefore bonding is optional. Recall that neither side of a 2-wire derived system is a neutral and when one grounds either side, it becomes a grounded terminal or conductor, but it is not a neutral. (OSHA 1993 clarifying letter)

Definitions of terms such as neutral and ground confuse people, too. A neutral is halfway between the two sides of a split phase 240v system, not an arbitrarily selected side of a 120v system. Chassis grounds and earth grounds are two separate things. Unless you and the expert are very careful with terms, confusion can result.

There is a lot of bad advice out there. Forums and discussion boards are particularly poor sources as they don’t do any filtering. Magazine columnists can also go astray. It is up to you to properly qualify what you find by using sound logic, gaining a proper understanding, and using multiple sources of information.

See Also

see OSHA Grounding Requirements for Portable Generators and Using Portable Generators Safely

PORTABLE GENERATORS AND OSHA CONSTRUCTION REGULATIONS is by “Grizzy” Grzywacs at the OSHA National Training Institute. He had a ‘discussion’ on RV.NET where he very patiently went over the genset grounding issues with some recalcitrant objectors and that provided a good tutorial that is summarized in the paper linked here. (the RV,NET blog has the same bad advice as the Blue Beret, though)

Solid Grounding For Your Generator thinks through some of the issues. Another EC&M column on this is about how you should treat the neutral conductor. Mike Holt also talks about the National Electric Code on Neutral to Ground connections to describe what the code says.

The IMSA describes Generator Grounding and when ground rods are required at portable generators. The article carefully describes what a “separately derived system” is with illustrations. Also note

“Portable generators are covered in Section 250.34 Portable and Vehicle-Mounted Generators. This section allows the generator or vehicle frame to serve as the grounding electrode when:
(1) The generator supplies only equipment mounted on the generator, cord-and-plug-connected equipment through receptacles mounted on the generator, or both, and
(2) The non–current-carrying metal parts of equipment and the equipment grounding conductor terminals of the receptacles are bonded to the generator frame.
…
If the generator neutral is grounded then the generator can only be used with a transfer switch that transfers the neutral, or as a stand alone generator for a carnival or special even, and then ground rods are required.”

Generator Joe also has some good ideas for the proper operation of your portable generator.

With I’net searching, it is easy to find good resources to use to understand technical issues. Don’t get caught by bad advice, even if it does have the imprimateur of print in a journal or magazine. Electrical power is nothing to mess with so don’t think you know more than the NEC, OSHA, and the OEM unless you have the background and the resources to outweigh those authorities.

One way a club rewards participation is with memorabilia. Here are a few examples from the Monterey Bay California Unit of the Wally Byam Caravan Club International collected by Dale and Virginia during the 1980’s.

see the photo gallery!

Some of these are crafts projects, some advertising specialty like items, some just home-made certificates and recognitions. What does your club do to reinforce participation and have fun at the same time?

SNU Folks,

The February 2010 Newsletter has been posted. Note: Links to photo galleries and additional information mentioned in articles in this newsletter can also be found at there, too.

February Luncheon at El Charro

The next SNU lunch is Saturday February 27, 2010 11:30 am luncheon at El Charro. Located on South Carson Street, south of downtown Carson City, NV fees: $15 per person. To RSVP: hq@sierranevadaairstreams.org or call 775 972 5011. See you on February 27th.

In the February newsletter

Cabela’s Lunch -|- February lunch at El Charro -|- Message from the President -|- The Poll’s Airstream -|- SNU 2009 Highlights -|- WBCCI International Rally -|- SNU announcement list -|- Caravan in Nevada -|- Open invitation to members

-> For the latest on the Sierra Nevada Unit, check the website SNU homepage:

-> Check Zephyrs and find out what else is new on the SierraNevadaAirstreams.org

–
SNU HQ

Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera, Chronicle Staff Writer at SFGate discusses the problem of how Web sites deal with digital assets after we die. Do you have a contingency plan so someone can easily take care of your online presence if you die or are incapacitated? Who knows the ID and password you use to access online banking or investment accounts or how to obtain them? Do you have instructions that someone can use to notify your friends and correspondents of your status if need be? What should be done with the user accounts at social or shopping websites?

And how do you protect this personal access information while on the road yet still have it available with use instructions in a safe and secure manner? No longer is it the family lawyer with a will in his safe. Exactly what it will be is being figured out. Martínez-Cabrera describes some of the options being tried. A first step is just being aware that the problem exists and that is where you can start.

The SNU managed a get together between winter storms in Verdi. Cabela’s has a nice meeting room and a grill that offers food like from the hunt.

Check out the photo gallery!

Next month is Carson City.

Marks RV has an interesting page about the properties of LP gases including both propane and butane. Near the bottom of the page is a table that provides information about the BTU per hour as a function of temperature and tank type. It tells the story of why keeping warm in cold weather gets difficult from many directions.

For the typical RV with 30# propane bottles and a 30 kBTU/hr furnace, the furnace is going to be fuel starved when temperatures get below 10F or your tank gets below 20% full. The factors behind this include the surface area of the liquid in the tank and the fact that it is tougher to get from liquid to vapor when the temperature decreases. A chart on the page puts propane vapor pressure at 0F at only a quarter of its value at 70F. If you have a lot of Butane in the mix, which might happen if the tanks were filled in warm climes, then getting vapor will be even more difficult as butane has to get to 100F to have the same vapor pressure propane has at 0F.

The bottle size is one reason for getting a large, rented, bottle when parked for the winter. From the tables, a 20# tank nearly full could just barely fuel the furnace at 20F and a 65# under mounted tank could be 30% full and keep the furnace going down to 0F.

The website also has a good rundown on troubleshooting your RV furnace that will help you learn how it works.

Lifehacker suggests that you Humidify Your Home for Increased Winter Comfort.

If it seems like your skin is dryer, you get zapped with static shocks more often, and you wake up frequently with a stuffy nose, you’re not just imagining things—you’re experiencing the effects of low humidity.

In an RV, winter humidity can be a control issue. The walls are often poorly insulated and there is a lot of wall surface compared to the inside air volume. One of the comments linked to Humidity and the Indoor Environment at the Minnesota Blue Flame Gas Association. That website has a lot of good information.

The basic problem is that cold air cannot hold much water. That means that when outside air with a very high relative humidity (that means it is hold about as much water as it can) is brought inside and heated, the humidity is significantly reduced as the amount of water in the air is the same but the warmer air can hold a lot more.

If the outside air temperature in winter is 0°F and the relative humidity is 75 percent, that same air inside your 70°F home will have a four percent relative humidity. That’s dry! The Sahara Desert has an average relative humidity of 25 percent.

One way to gauge indoor humidity is to “Drop three ice cubes into a glass, add water and stir. Wait three minutes. If moisture does not form on the outside of the glass, the air is too dry; you may need a humidifier. (Do not perform this test in the kitchen, because cooking vapors may produce inaccurate results.)”

But the problem in an RV is that many things you do add water. Just breathing can add a quarter cup per hour. Cooking for a family of four will add 5 pints a day. A shower can add a half pint. A catalytic heater or stove burner also adds significant amounts of water to the air. What that means is that you can get condensation on windows and walls in the RV and that can lead to mold and mildew and rot. That means poor air quality which can lead to musty smells, head or chest colds, stuffiness, headaches and other ills?

How do you balance the ‘too little’ and ‘too much’ humidity? They call it ACH or air changes per hour. This means ventilation that replaces inside air with outside air. Your RV probably needs more than one complete air change every hour. For a thirty foot RV, that means more than a thousand cubic feet of air every hour or 20 cubic feet per minute. For contrast, a high end vent fan on high will move nearly a thousand cubic feet of air per minute.

Generally, an RV will ‘leak’ 2% of the volume a vent fan can move so the problem is usually reducing air changes per hour unless you are preparing dinner or running a catalytic heater or showering. Balancing air exchange with inside humidity can conflict with the energy budget for keeping warm. Perhaps that is why Quartzite is popular in January and February – except that they are having significant rain problems so keeping warm and reasonably dry might be more of a challenge this year than usual.

Winter is hard on batteries. The RV storage batteries need to be properly maintained to assure that they are healthy come spring. The batteries for flashlights and other gadgets also need some consideration although they tend to do well sitting in cool temperatures. This hasn’t always been the case.
Gizmodo says “FACT: Stale Batteries Are THE Leading Cause of Fatal Snake Encounters“. It shows a 1936 Everready battery newspaper ad with an interesting story.

For your lead acid storage batteries you need to make sure that they are kept fully charged and that the electrolyte is not allowed to stratify (see Zephyrs Basic battery guidelines).

If you have gadgets with built in rechargeable batteries, give them a charge every month or two and make sure they don’t run flat.

For gadgets with replaceable batteries that aren’t being used, take the batteries out and check for any indications of corrosion in the battery compartment. If these are the inexpensive non-rechargeable alkaline type then it might be worthwhile to replacing them with new ones as a part of your preparation for a new season. This is like the general advice to replace smoke alarm batteries every year.

Temperature extremes and discharged states are hard on batteries. Make sure you are prepared for emergencies by taking care of your batteries, especially when ‘out of sight out of mind’ might apply. Who knows, maybe you’ll wake up in the middle of the night wondering what is making that strange noise …

see also Wikipedia and Powerstream Battery Storage Recommendations for more ideas and background.

That’s Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens as Wired has it. The story is a head’s up on what in on the horizon in digital cameras.

The traditional choice going back to film days is that you could aim your camera with a viewfinder or you could use a reflecting mechanism to actually see what the film would see. Digital cameras have provided LCD screens to view pictures and control the camera but these screens have not been used so much as a replacement for the old standby’s.

The key with EVIL is the ‘IL’ or interchangeable lens. That is a step up from the fixed lens usually found in cell phones or snapshot cameras. When you can change lenses, you have options to make the best choice for distance, light, and other factors that you can adapt to differing circumstances.

The ‘EV’ or electronic viewfinder provides ‘what you see is what you get’ capabilities without the bulky mirrors and complex mechanisms needed for SLR viewfinders.

These days you can see a lot of folks holding a camera out at arm’s length trying to use the screen on the rear as a viewfinder. It is difficult to hold a camera steady that way. The EV needs to be one that can be held close to the eye yet still provide a clear focus for presbyopic old eyes.

The Reference Frame has a good rundown on what goes on in winter temperatures with ice and snow in the post Warming induced by the latent heat of snow. If you can handle basic math, even the formulas could be interesting. The ideas apply not only to atmospheric temperature conditions when there is ice and snow but also in how you keep your RV warm and the energy budget for a hot shower.

You only need 1/2 of the water’s thermal energy to heat up the same amount (mass) of ice or snow. And melting of 1 kilogram of snow/ice into water needs as much energy as warming 80 kilograms of water or 160 kilograms of snow by 1 degree Celsius.
…
Moreover, ice is three times as good thermal conductor as liquid water (in the units of W/(m.K) – so that it enters Fourier’s law for heat conduction). So in general, I do expect that the temperature swings become much easier below the freezing point as long as there is any ice around.

One point being made is that making snow takes heat out of the water and gives it to the atmosphere. That can warm up the air where it is being frozen. The calculations indicate that 4 cm water equivalent can make something like 1C in temperature change in the atmosphere above it. That’s why wet snowstorm temperatures usually hang around freezing.

What this also means is that every inch of water equivalent snow, maybe six inches to a foot of snow, blanketing the ground warms up the atmosphere by a degree Fahrenheit when its made and cools the atmosphere by that much when it melts. Once freezing temperatures have taken hold, it is easier to get really cold because ice can only hold half as much heat as water and it conducts heat only a third as fast as water does.

The fact that ice has only a third the conductivity for heat as water plus the fact that snow tends to mix in a lot of air which has even less heat conductivity is why building a skirting for your RV with snow can help you keep down your living space heat budget inside the RV.

If you want numbers for these phenomena, check out the post. They have much to do with our climate and with the biosphere of our planet. You can find out more about the Anomalous properties of water that we depend upon for life and comfort beyond this global temperature regulation.

Way back, like just after the medieval warm period when the little ice age took hold, they used quilts to warm up the stone walls in the castles. Airstream does that nowadays by using padding to add an insulating layer to the inside aluminum skin. But that leaves the windows.

You can use something like Prodex, a foil-foam-foil insulation for the Windows but that is expensive and would not let light in. The office supplies blog has another suggestion: Bubble Wrap Keeps You Warm.

You can find bubble wrap with big bubbles or little bubbles. You can buy it at office supply stores or you can troll places like furniture stores that might receive stuff wrapped in it and be willing to pass it along to you rather than throw it out.

Bubble wrap is cut to fit. It attaches to the window by using only a thin film of water. Put the bubble side to the window and the smooth side to the inside. It will fuzz up the view but should still let light through. It is an easy and inexpensive and temporary way to help reduce winter heat loss through the windows and that may help keep you comfortably warm while reducing the fuel bill.

Peter calls it An astonishing migration at Bayou Renaissance Man. A research team attached 1.4 gram geolocators on several birds to find out exactly how they made their pole to pole yearly migrations. The geolocators worked by detecting light intensity which were used to determine local day length and time of sunset and sunrise. From that information, the researchers could figure out where the birds were. That’s a bit over 1% of the bird’s weight being carried on an annual round trip of over 44,000 miles so the researchers could track them.

Let’s see, 1% of a typical person’s weight would be ten to twenty pounds. If you were hiking at a typical rate of 3 mph, the bird’s trip would take you nearly 2 years of steady hiking. For a typical RV daily jaunt of 250 miles, that’d be 176 days of traveling. At highway speeds, 44000 miles is 800 hours of travel.

The research findings revealed that the Arctic Terns trip south was different from that going north. It appears that food supply and winds were the major factors. That sounds a lot like the kind of things cross country RVers consider.

New research suggests Sierra Nevadas older than previously thought. 50 million years ago:

The western United States would have looked very different back then, filled with lush forests of vines and magnolias. The Pacific Ocean would have lapped the foot of the Sierras.

“The work, which was published in the journal Geology, also provides a more accurate tool for exploring the elevation of ancient landscapes.” It looked at leaves and things washed out of the mountains and figure that they “were sitting at their current height 30 million years earlier than anticipated” when it was more than ten degrees warmer.

Can you break open a rock and find 50 million year old leaves and figure out the story they tell?

Coyote Blog has Total Frustration With Arizona Parks. He runs a business of privatizing public recreation and knows how to keep state parks and similar recreation areas financially viable yet cannot convince the authorities to act on his knowledge.

Of course, I am not completely naive. I know there is a tried and true kabuki dance here where parks departments threaten to close down the Washington Monument in a bid for public sympathy that will either deflect budget cuts or spur new taxes. I also know that state parks directors have sworn a blood oath together never to let private concessionaires run whole parks, even if the parks have to be shut down

The places we like to visit in our RV’s make for good symbols because they are ‘recreational’ and, hence, luxuries that are not critical to the state and they are visible. When times are good, that is why they get a lot of extras and fancy geegaws and RV spaces with utilities and fancy trails and facilities. When times are not so good, …

The observations in the commentary are worth considering. They touch on how government and social ideology influence our access to outdoor opportunities with our RV’s.

Marine catering at Global Sea Services has some best practices that might be helpful in keeping your RV kitchen in top shape. For instance, the tip about dealing with greasy dishes or plates suggests soaking in hot water with baking soda. The rationale makes sense to anyone who has made their own soap.

Browse the website- it is an interesting business

We also believe that that the way to anyone’s heart is through the stomach. To our sensibility, life at the sea not only builds great character, but a wonderful appetite as well!

Whether you agree with Joseph Conrad that “The true peace of God begins at any point 1,000 miles from the nearest land” think maybe some wilderness will do, good food well prepared and enjoyed with friends will make an experience away from home a much more enjoyable enterprise.