So great news our panels are ready much earlier than advised. Well great yes and no! Because we didn’t think we were getting them until February at the earliest, we had re-arranged our original building and ordering plans. This meant that we didn’t order our water and waste water tanks as early as we intended because we didn’t believe we would need them prior to February. This was to allow us to focus on other things we could do and afford prior to panels, such as steel fabrication including roof rack, back mounts and hydraulic levellers and pump.
So as happy as we are, this threw a spanner in the works, a rather large spanner, as we had to pay the $10k balance and were told that we needed to pick them up within that week.
As we do, we embraced the chance for a road trip. So we asked our respective employers if we could have the Friday off and because we are both blessed with great companies/bosses, long weekend here we come.
So we packed up the truck on Thursday after work ready for an early get-a-way Friday morning. While packing, we quickly confirmed how great the new storage boxes are. Lucky they were installed last week hey! We were fully self sufficient, food, water, music, packing straps, tools but no spare tyre – that’s another story and thankfully we didn’t need it anyways. What more could we need, oh yeah, the bloody truck log books. It will be fantastic when the truck rego is transferred to a motorhome, we can then throw those bloody books on the fire!
By 3am we were on the road. We had 2 stops, one to pick up the panels from the BAC factory and the 2nd at Tallebudgera to pick up the joiners – in the pouring rain I might add. Yep the freak major storm you might of heard about on the news at the Gold Coast – we managed to find ourselves in it. We also enjoyed the wonderful Gold Coast traffic on a Friday afternoon, half an hour to go 1.2kms.
The peeps at the BAC factory were great. We had a lovely lady looking after us, getting our panels ready to load and the engineer also stepped out to chat with Fred. Maybe we were getting extra attention because they thought we were mad as we had ordered 2 floors. Or maybe they were worried we were going to request a refund. To assure everyone, we intended to order 2 floors as we are having a false floor to house our water tanks.
After a long day, we kipped with our niece Aymes, Caleb and Malakai at my brother’s place. He had rudely buggered off to Hawaii instead of hanging about to catch up with his favourite sister. No probs though as we helped ourselves to his beer fridge.
Next morning we hit the road again around 3:45am, there was no way we were going to encounter traffic again! Had a great run home, which was lucky as we needed a decent amount of time to unload the panels. We had been given strict instructions on storing them to prevent any damage. As the panels are 6mt long, it was no mean feat to get them off the truck manually. Lucky for us, we live with a great guy who provided his much needed muscle to help us.
In total we had a 1650km round trip, all within legal driving times of course.
Wishing everyone a great festive season, hope you all have a wonderful time with family and friends.
Stay tuned for next weeks blog – it’s Christmas so I’m going to leave the topic as a surprise………
The surprise would be if you two chilled for 24 hours.