Blue View – Geriatric Backpacking – Part 2

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Blue View – Geriatric Backpacking – Part 2

If you read last week's Blue View, you may remember that we were planning to spend a night or two sleeping on the ground to see whether our old geriatric bones could still manage it. Would we have to endure a very long night of throbbing hips, backs and shoulders? Would we ever again be able to get into an upright position? Would the campground host, investigating the bad smell emanating from our tent, find our bloated, rattlesnake-bitten remains? Since then, we did spend a couple of nights camped at nearby Lake Mead, and I'm happy to report that …

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Blue View - Repairing the Fuel Filler Door on Blue

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Blue View - Repairing the Fuel Filler Door on Blue

The fuel filler door on Blue is rather unique. It is located just aft of the driver’s door, and can’t be opened without first opening said driver’s door. I like the arrangement except for one teeny-tiny detail - the little tab on the edge. It’s put there to make the door easier to open when it’s time to fill up, but it has a tendency to catch on my pants pocket as I exit the driver’s side, especially when we’re parked in a tight space and I can’t open the door all the way. On at least one occasion, I’ve exerted enough leverage to actually break the hinge that holds the filler door.

It’s not cheap to repair… the dealer wanted $485. As it turns out, the repair is quite simple and a whole lot less expensive to do it yourself, once you discover a couple of little disassembly tricks. Watch our video that describes the process…

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Blue View – Leveling Blue

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Blue View – Leveling Blue

In Blue, we prefer to sleep on a bed that is more or less level. We can deal with a little slope, but too much slope front to back and we find ourselves sliding off or crunching our heads against the headboard. Too much side-to-side slope, and we both end up sharing the port or starboard ¼ of our full sized bed. This is just fine (perhaps even kinda nice) for a short while, but our old bodies need to re-position frequently - which is not easily accomplished when one of us is squished against the cabinet alongside the bed. Thus we'd like to be able to level Blue when his parking spot is on an incline.

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