Days 117-120: Thanksgiving in Oviedo, FL

I had a short day's ride on the day before Thanksgiving, riding the 36 miles to just past Mt. Dora, FL.  From there we left our Adventure Cycling route and drove across northern Orlando to Oviedo, where we are staying with Alea's sister Jean (where we are camping in the garage).  We will return to that spot when we continue our journey to Palmetto, FL in the coming days.

A rare sign in Central Florida - a steep hill sign near Mt. Dora.
The hill was steep, but short.

The three of us had Thanksgiving dinner with Alea's other sister, Ann.  We certainly appreciated that meal far more than similar meals in the past, given the very basic cooking style that we've adopted for life on the road.

Me, Alea and Jean.

Me, Jean and Ann.

We are taking this opportunity to get resupplied and to reorganize the cargo area of the van.  We've placed a couple of good sized orders with Amazon.com, some of which will show up today.  The main thing that we are waiting for are two fork mounts that we'll use to secure our bikes to the cargo box load floor.

The goals for the changes in the van are:

1. Create a space behind the seats for Lana.  Increasingly, she leaps over the seats to travel back and forth between the cargo box and the cockpit.  We were getting concerned that eventually she could get hurt doing so, plus it is clear she'd rather be closer to us (her bed has been in the rear driver's side corner for the past four months).  
2. Secure our bikes in a manner that increases floor space and eliminates the need the need to swap the bikes at the end of each day's ride.  Our current system of 'rafting' one bike next to the one anchored bike has been hard on the finish of both bikes and is less than optimal.
3. Organize the cargo box so that Alea's items are all accessible from the back barn doors and all of my items are accessible from the side door (or vice versa).  We spend too much time opening and closing various doors to get at the things that we need.  This should put everything within arm's reach and make it possible to get what we need more quickly, while needing to slam doors far less often.
4. Create some additional usable space in the cargo box.  While the cargo box is pretty much loaded to the gills, by eliminating a few items and relocating others we will gain additional usable space above Lana's den.  That gives us a place to store the new car vacuum cleaner that we've ordered (Lana is shedding more now than she ever did in Idaho), and to make it easier to access some of our existing gear. 

We had originally discarded the notion of storing the bikes with the front wheels off, mainly because of a safety feature that converts the quick release wheel skewers into an exercise in frustration.  Back in the 1970s, one of the bike manufacturers (probably Schwinn) lost a lawsuit that resulted in all manufacturers adding little nubs to the ends of the front fork dropouts (where the wheel is attached).  With these nubs added, once you released the quick release skewer, the wheel could no longer drop off the end of the fork - you needed to unscrew the skewer wide enough to clear those nubs, and then re-screw the skewer when putting the wheel back on.  I took a Dremel and ground off those nubs on the aluminum fork dropouts on both of our bikes, so that the quick release front fork works like it had for decades before that lawsuit: release tension on the brakes (there's a lever for doing so) and flip the quick release lever, and the front wheel drops straight out.  Reverse the process to re-install the wheel.  With that change, removing the wheel every day to store the bike in the van becomes a much simpler proposition.  And storing the bikes in that manner greatly changes how floor space is utilized in the cargo box.

After planning (through repeated trial and error) where to put the floor mounts for our two bikes, it became apparent that we could move Lana's bed behind the front bucket seats.  And it became possible to create a storage shelf above her den, to give us better access to frequently needed items.  So I spent Friday constructing her den, while we are waiting for the floor mounts to arrive in the mail.  I designed it in such a way as to also create a place to store two spare Gatorskin bike tires without the need to lash them down or fold them.

Lana's new den, and our tire storage solution.
She enters between the seats by crawling over the console.

The key change that made it possible for us each to have our 'own' cargo box door was adding another shoe organizer in the rear passenger side of the box, identical to and opposite from our existing shoe organizer.  We had stored most of our shoes in the existing organizer, and stored all of our extra coats in the space behind the organizer.  Now Alea's shoes (all of them) and coats are on one side of the van and mine are on the other.  And there are now extra shoe pockets available for storing chamois lube, oil, and other items we use frequently.

Alea's new shoe organizer and coat storage.

The cargo box, sans les bicyclettes.

The change in how the bikes will be stored has opened up a large area of floor space between the bikes, which gives us a lot more room for storing dirty laundry.  It also keeps the laundry away from the bikes' drive trains and the associated oily mess.  That same area provides space to store items purchased on shopping trips (which was sometimes a complicated process when we would unhitch and leave the camper at the campsite).

We should have most of these changes completed early in the week, as well as several other minor tweaks that I'll be sharing...