1 August 2017
Benson

We’re in the midst of monsoons and are finally having some relief from the heat. Yee haw! All it took was 2 days of cooler weather (down into the 80°s) and I started whining when the temps went back into the 90° range.

The instantaneous appearance of color from cactus and other plants blooming has been startling, We have color everywhere. Amazing.

Doctor appointments continue for me and for Kelly (yes, we have different doctors!). She did extremely well with her surgery to remove the basil cell tumor on her chest. Yours truly, however, is struggling a bit. The dermatologist was able to remove the melanoma OK, but the skin graft to fill in the 1/2″ divot in the edge of my ear was a total flop. Now I have to wait for everything to heal and see what he recommends. At the moment I’ve got a piece of basically dead skin attached to my ear. If I understand correctly, the hope is that some tissue will start to regrow under the failed graft, but I don’t know what that means long term.

Oddly, my brother-in-law had the same surgery for a melanoma.

Our Arctic Fox. I’ve contacted Performance Trailer Braking in Norman, OK to schedule replacement of our electric drum brakes with a set of disc brakes from Titan. They have 4 teams traveling around the country that do the install. Actually, one of those teams is stationary in Elkhart, IN for the summer, so they’re down to 3 teams doing installs). There will be at least one 2 team in our area starting in perhaps September.

The work gets done in your driveway… if you have one. We don’t, so we’ll rent a site for a couple days so there’s no excuse for poor working conditions from working on gravel (yuk!). Estimated cost is about $1,650 for parts plus $1,000 labor. Probably going to get scheduled in October.

One disturbing report I heard was from an owner who said he had a 2 second delay between applying the brakes and when the calipers actuated. I need to get that cleared up, but it appears that it may be as simple as air in the hydraulic lines. Need some answers from the sellers.