We are in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, parked at the local Red Cross chapter office (map), known as the Wyoming Valley Chapter. I expect, however, that we will move sometime tomorrow to a new and, as yet, undetermined location nearby, which will be headquarters for the relief operation here.
Moving has become routine. As you know, we were in Akron, Ohio just two days ago, on a different relief operation there. We were there only two nights before we were re-deployed here to Pennsylvania. We arrived yesterday afternoon in Harrisburg, where it looked like we would be setting up a relief headquarters there at the Harrisburg Mall. We are the advance team here; all our equipment was being held at FedEx in nearby Middletown. We surveyed the space that was being looked at, and even had mall management take us up on the roof to scope out a location for our satellite dish. It was the end of the day, and national headquarters (NHQ) had us hold off on retrieving the equipment because a second shipment was already en-route to the same FedEx holding facility.
We got to spend the night at the mall, with permission (they even let us tank up on water from one of their spigots). We parked at the Bass Pro Shop end of the place (map), where we were able to find a quiet an relatively flat spot, and, since we knocked off early yesterday, we even had time after dinner to do a little mall browsing. Bass Pro Shop is always an entertaining place to go; the fish tank alone is worth the visit.
As it turns out, NHQ was also not certain that Harrisburg was the right place to locate the regional disaster operation headquarters -- Wilkes-Barre was also being looked at seriously. This morning, as we were arranging for a truck to go retrieve our equipment, I got word that we would be setting up a headquarters in Scranton instead. I dispatched the ECRV, which had been sent to Wilkes-Barre the previous day, to the Scranton location. That location turned out to be both too small and also too expensive, and the plan changed back to Wilkes-Barre before we even left Harrisburg. We finally arrived in Wilkes-Barre around 5pm today, with Louise driving the Budget truck full of equipment, and myself driving Odyssey.
Unfortunately, after widgeting around downtown Wilkes-Barre for several miles, dodging streets with low trees, we discovered that the chapter had moved, and we were at an old address. A couple of quick phone calls led us to the right place, where we met up with our ECRV crew.
We spent most of the evening getting the ECRV on-line through our satellite network and setting up a wireless network here at the chapter. This will let the other volunteers who are already here get working with some wireless IP phones and laptops while we help scope out larger accommodations outside the chapter offices, get the lease signed, and start setting up our network at that location using a fly-away satellite kit. Once everything is good to go at the new location, we'll help move operations from the chapter office here.
In the meantime, another group of volunteers has been working on setting up some kind of service delivery site down in Harrisburg, at the location we scoped out yesterday. I have to send someone down there tomorrow with some laptops to help them out -- too bad we did not get word of this earlier today, when both we and the equipment were still in the Harrisburg area.
One of the downsides of working disaster relief is that we end up whizzing through interesting areas without time to stop and enjoy them. We had to pick our rental truck up today on Chocolate Blvd. in Hershey, PA -- where the factory is. We passed it; the whole town smells of chocolate. Some day, perhaps we can return and take the tour.
It has been a long day, and we're wiped out. Tomorrow is shaping up to be likewise -- I'm not sure when I will next get a chance to post.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Quick update from Akron
We are in Akron, Ohio at the Red Cross chapter office here (map). As long as I have mentioned it, let me just say that this is also the nicest chapter office I have ever seen -- it's a beautiful new purpose-built building that they occupied perhaps five years ago; the walls are adorned with plaques dedicating each space to the donor(s) who made it possible. The Ohio flooding response is headquartered here in a large conference room in the basement.
We made it nearly all the way here last night, stopping about five miles away at (can you guess) an Olive Garden for dinner. We spent the night in the parking lot of a shopping center across the street (map).
No sooner had we walked through the door this morning and started the process of signing in than my phone started ringing. It was another call from the Disaster Operations Center (DOC) informing us that three new operations were being put together, for New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. We are on standby alert that they will be redeploying us almost immediately to whichever of those three operations will be the largest. We need to start rolling that way as soon as possible, as we are between six and eight hours from those floods, but we can't leave here until they figure out how they are going to backfill us here.
I don't think I will get another chance to post until we land in the next location -- stay tuned here for updates.
We made it nearly all the way here last night, stopping about five miles away at (can you guess) an Olive Garden for dinner. We spent the night in the parking lot of a shopping center across the street (map).
No sooner had we walked through the door this morning and started the process of signing in than my phone started ringing. It was another call from the Disaster Operations Center (DOC) informing us that three new operations were being put together, for New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. We are on standby alert that they will be redeploying us almost immediately to whichever of those three operations will be the largest. We need to start rolling that way as soon as possible, as we are between six and eight hours from those floods, but we can't leave here until they figure out how they are going to backfill us here.
I don't think I will get another chance to post until we land in the next location -- stay tuned here for updates.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Monday, June 26, 2006
Deployed to Ohio floods...
We are still parked at the Casino Queen in E. St. Louis, IL. We decided to extend our stay here by a day, since we were pretty wiped out last night when GA ended, and we needed some down-time. Also, we had no clue where we were heading next, and I also wanted to get the clear-coat on my paint repair.
I am happy to report that the clear-coating is done, although it is a bit orange-peely, and I will need to fix that either with rubbing compound and elbow grease, or with some sanding and another quick coat of clear. We also got the waste tanks rinsed out today, and re-calibrated the level sensors on the black tank, which has lately never read below two bars even when empty, and the drinking water tank, which has not read any bars above empty even when full since sometime last year. The calibration process on this latter tank suggests that there is a sensor problem, which I have long suspected. However, at least now it is not constantly in "low" alarm. A couple days ago, I installed the replacement for the broken fridge door handle, and adjusted the door so it now correctly latches, so it has been a good week for maintenance and repair.
The other thing we did today, after some much-needed rest and a slow morning (which included, by the way, using our lone 2-for-1 coupon at the casino's breakfast buffet, which we can report, at $7.95, was an excellent spread even at full price), was to be canonical tourists. I walked across the historic Eads bridge and over to the arch, and Louise took the metro and met me at the riverfront, where we took a one-hour narrated riverboat cruise. Then we went into the arch, taking the four minute tram ride to the top.
Louise has claustrophobia and I have acrophobia, so we had to help each other through our respective fears -- hers the clothes-dryer tram gondolas, and mine the dizzying 630' nothing-underneath-you view straight down from the observation deck. This was my third time up in the arch, and I am always awed and fascinated, but it was the first time for Louise, who was happy to make it up and down without hyperventilating, and was rewarded with the spectacular views from the top. She's making either a movie or a photo montage as I type, so I expect you will get to see some of this shortly.
The big news of the day is that while I was walking over to the arch, I got a phone call from the Red Cross Disaster Operations Center. They would like us to report to Akron, Ohio to help the relief efforts for the major flooding there. We will be leaving first thing in the morning on a direct route to Akron. It is a ten hour drive from here, so we will be team-driving tomorrow to make the marathon drive in one day. En route we will find out where in Akron we are to deploy and what, if any, major routes in the area are impassable due to flooding.
I will not likely have time to post or update our position tomorrow, so look for an update here after Wednesday, when we get settled someplace.
I am happy to report that the clear-coating is done, although it is a bit orange-peely, and I will need to fix that either with rubbing compound and elbow grease, or with some sanding and another quick coat of clear. We also got the waste tanks rinsed out today, and re-calibrated the level sensors on the black tank, which has lately never read below two bars even when empty, and the drinking water tank, which has not read any bars above empty even when full since sometime last year. The calibration process on this latter tank suggests that there is a sensor problem, which I have long suspected. However, at least now it is not constantly in "low" alarm. A couple days ago, I installed the replacement for the broken fridge door handle, and adjusted the door so it now correctly latches, so it has been a good week for maintenance and repair.
The other thing we did today, after some much-needed rest and a slow morning (which included, by the way, using our lone 2-for-1 coupon at the casino's breakfast buffet, which we can report, at $7.95, was an excellent spread even at full price), was to be canonical tourists. I walked across the historic Eads bridge and over to the arch, and Louise took the metro and met me at the riverfront, where we took a one-hour narrated riverboat cruise. Then we went into the arch, taking the four minute tram ride to the top.
Louise has claustrophobia and I have acrophobia, so we had to help each other through our respective fears -- hers the clothes-dryer tram gondolas, and mine the dizzying 630' nothing-underneath-you view straight down from the observation deck. This was my third time up in the arch, and I am always awed and fascinated, but it was the first time for Louise, who was happy to make it up and down without hyperventilating, and was rewarded with the spectacular views from the top. She's making either a movie or a photo montage as I type, so I expect you will get to see some of this shortly.
The big news of the day is that while I was walking over to the arch, I got a phone call from the Red Cross Disaster Operations Center. They would like us to report to Akron, Ohio to help the relief efforts for the major flooding there. We will be leaving first thing in the morning on a direct route to Akron. It is a ten hour drive from here, so we will be team-driving tomorrow to make the marathon drive in one day. En route we will find out where in Akron we are to deploy and what, if any, major routes in the area are impassable due to flooding.
I will not likely have time to post or update our position tomorrow, so look for an update here after Wednesday, when we get settled someplace.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Making sausage
We are parked at the Casino Queen RV Park, adjacent to the casino of the same name which floats regally in the Mississippi River in East Saint Louis, Illinois (map). Our FMCA rate of $24.25 per night gets us full hookups with 50-amp power, meaning we can run all our air conditioners at once, a welcome relief in the 95+ heat and humidity here. The spaces on this side of the park are pretty close together, though -- not that it matters to us, since we are gone all day. For $5 more on the south side of the park we would get a bit more room, both side-to-side and front-to-back, as well as grass between the sites (we have gravel).
A phone next to the mini-mart, which also serves as RV park office, rings down to the security desk, and they will send a van any time of day or night to pick us up and take us to the MetroLink light rail station. (The return trip necessitates a short walk from the station to the casino entrance, where a van can again be summoned to take us back to the RV park.) The mini-mart, by the way, is especially well stocked, with a wide selection of beer, wine and spirits, frozen dinners and breakfast entrees, snacks, soft drinks, a small selection of food items, and the usual RV supplies.
We've been using booklets of ten two-hour transit passes, making each pass $1.75. Generally we only ride one-way on each pass, but I've been doing a round-trip back home mid-day on the longer days to walk the dog, and I can ride round trip on one pass. Our total transit outlay for the week will be less than $40 -- not bad in a city where that is also the going rate on dinner for one in a downtown bistro. The convention center is just two stops away -- less than two minutes -- across the historic Eads bridge, where the trolley runs on the old L&M train tracks on the lower level, below the roadway. You can look out the train window and straight down to the river below.
We've both been pretty busy at General Assembly since we are both delegates this year, meaning we have to attend all the plenary sessions and vote on the business issues of the association. (We also have to write a report on our experience, which we are doing by keeping another blog.) That's left little time here at home, including time to post here. We did have some time Wednesday and Thursday mornings (we pulled in here Tuesday evening), and I used most of that time to bondo, sand, bondo, sand, prime, sand, prime, seal, and paint the giant divot we got when a rock or some such hit us en route here on Monday. I got as far as a second coat of paint just in time -- Wednesday afternoon the heavens opened and dumped a few inches of rain on us.
Now that the paint has cured more than 48 hours, I can move on to the next step, which is to blend and smooth the area with rubbing compound, after which I can start applying clear-coat. It doesn't look like I will get much of a break in the program to do that, but I'm going to try to find time tomorrow, so we can leave Monday as scheduled. If I wait until Monday to spray the clear, it won't be dry enough to drive off. If I don't clear before we leave, the repaired area will be exposed to dirt and bugs as we drive, and I'll have to sand it again before applying the clear. I suppose that if we have to drive off with it unfinished, I can cover the whole area with some plastic sheeting held on with painter's tape.
I expect that the very full schedule of GA and the additional pressure of the remaining paint touch-up will mean that I will not post here again until either just before we leave on Monday, or at our next stop. I haven't a clue yet where that might be.
A phone next to the mini-mart, which also serves as RV park office, rings down to the security desk, and they will send a van any time of day or night to pick us up and take us to the MetroLink light rail station. (The return trip necessitates a short walk from the station to the casino entrance, where a van can again be summoned to take us back to the RV park.) The mini-mart, by the way, is especially well stocked, with a wide selection of beer, wine and spirits, frozen dinners and breakfast entrees, snacks, soft drinks, a small selection of food items, and the usual RV supplies.
We've been using booklets of ten two-hour transit passes, making each pass $1.75. Generally we only ride one-way on each pass, but I've been doing a round-trip back home mid-day on the longer days to walk the dog, and I can ride round trip on one pass. Our total transit outlay for the week will be less than $40 -- not bad in a city where that is also the going rate on dinner for one in a downtown bistro. The convention center is just two stops away -- less than two minutes -- across the historic Eads bridge, where the trolley runs on the old L&M train tracks on the lower level, below the roadway. You can look out the train window and straight down to the river below.
We've both been pretty busy at General Assembly since we are both delegates this year, meaning we have to attend all the plenary sessions and vote on the business issues of the association. (We also have to write a report on our experience, which we are doing by keeping another blog.) That's left little time here at home, including time to post here. We did have some time Wednesday and Thursday mornings (we pulled in here Tuesday evening), and I used most of that time to bondo, sand, bondo, sand, prime, sand, prime, seal, and paint the giant divot we got when a rock or some such hit us en route here on Monday. I got as far as a second coat of paint just in time -- Wednesday afternoon the heavens opened and dumped a few inches of rain on us.
Now that the paint has cured more than 48 hours, I can move on to the next step, which is to blend and smooth the area with rubbing compound, after which I can start applying clear-coat. It doesn't look like I will get much of a break in the program to do that, but I'm going to try to find time tomorrow, so we can leave Monday as scheduled. If I wait until Monday to spray the clear, it won't be dry enough to drive off. If I don't clear before we leave, the repaired area will be exposed to dirt and bugs as we drive, and I'll have to sand it again before applying the clear. I suppose that if we have to drive off with it unfinished, I can cover the whole area with some plastic sheeting held on with painter's tape.
I expect that the very full schedule of GA and the additional pressure of the remaining paint touch-up will mean that I will not post here again until either just before we leave on Monday, or at our next stop. I haven't a clue yet where that might be.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Off-line in Little Rock
No internet access today -- we're under the trees at Burns Park in Little Rock, Arkansas (map). As is usual in such circumstances, I am posting to a file for upload later. I might get on with my cell phone here, although the signal seems pretty weak; otherwise, you'll be reading this when I upload it from our next stop.
We are here because the route plan called for us to stop just a bit further north, and this is the only decent place to stay anywhere near our route with electric hookups. The latter is needed because it is once again in the 90's.
Yesterday was a somewhat irritating day. As is our usual practice, we stayed off the interstates, leaving Tyler on TX155, picking up US59 in Linden, TX, and connecting with US67 in Texarkana. US67 is a narrow two-lane that roughly parallels I-30, and, passing through Prescott, AR on it, we took a hit from either a rock kicked up by, or some debris dropped from, a haul truck going the other direction. The really, really good news is that whatever it was, it missed both the upper and lower windshields. The bad news is that it hit right between them, taking out a chunk of body filler and paint about two inches long and an inch wide. I'll have to fill the divet with Bondo, sand and prime the result, and somehow match the metal-flake black paint in that area to hide the hideous thing. Of course, there isn't really time to deal with this now until after General Assembly. I might touch it up with a black Sharpie until I can get to it.
As if that was not enough, the recurring generator heat-prostration is still with us. Temperatures climbed into the mid-90's in the afternoon, and we just could not keep the genny running. In order to keep the interior from baking, we were running both one roof air and the cockpit air, and any charge depletion at all in the house batteries coupled with these two loads was enough to cause the PathMaker battery combiner to cut out on overcurrent, thus further depleting the batteries as the inverter struggled to run both units. The afternoon was a constant cycle of resetting generator breakers, the inverer itself, and the air conditioner breakers and controls. By the time we arrived here we were very hot and very cranky.
On top of all this, the rear leveler stopped responding once we arrived, so I am in for another crawl under the rear wheels to check on it later. And, finally, we never made it to the grocery store, so we had to fall back on our emergency pasta and clam sauce supplies. At least we still had wine -- a friendly syrah was a nice finish to a cranky day.
We are here because the route plan called for us to stop just a bit further north, and this is the only decent place to stay anywhere near our route with electric hookups. The latter is needed because it is once again in the 90's.
Yesterday was a somewhat irritating day. As is our usual practice, we stayed off the interstates, leaving Tyler on TX155, picking up US59 in Linden, TX, and connecting with US67 in Texarkana. US67 is a narrow two-lane that roughly parallels I-30, and, passing through Prescott, AR on it, we took a hit from either a rock kicked up by, or some debris dropped from, a haul truck going the other direction. The really, really good news is that whatever it was, it missed both the upper and lower windshields. The bad news is that it hit right between them, taking out a chunk of body filler and paint about two inches long and an inch wide. I'll have to fill the divet with Bondo, sand and prime the result, and somehow match the metal-flake black paint in that area to hide the hideous thing. Of course, there isn't really time to deal with this now until after General Assembly. I might touch it up with a black Sharpie until I can get to it.
As if that was not enough, the recurring generator heat-prostration is still with us. Temperatures climbed into the mid-90's in the afternoon, and we just could not keep the genny running. In order to keep the interior from baking, we were running both one roof air and the cockpit air, and any charge depletion at all in the house batteries coupled with these two loads was enough to cause the PathMaker battery combiner to cut out on overcurrent, thus further depleting the batteries as the inverter struggled to run both units. The afternoon was a constant cycle of resetting generator breakers, the inverer itself, and the air conditioner breakers and controls. By the time we arrived here we were very hot and very cranky.
On top of all this, the rear leveler stopped responding once we arrived, so I am in for another crawl under the rear wheels to check on it later. And, finally, we never made it to the grocery store, so we had to fall back on our emergency pasta and clam sauce supplies. At least we still had wine -- a friendly syrah was a nice finish to a cranky day.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Tyler, Texas
We are in the parking lot of a Lowe's in Tyler, TX (map). Our route plan called for us to stop just a bit north of here yesterday, but we chose Tyler instead for two reasons. One was that we had a bit of a late start on the route yesterday due to a 40-minute or so excursion to McKinney Falls State Park in Austin to dump our tanks, which were quite full (our Texas state parks pass got us in, and it was another $2 to dump).
The second reason was that we did not have any dinner fixin's on board, and there is an Olive Garden here in this same parking lot. We've been jonesing for Italian food for a week: one of the folks we ate with every night in Austin doesn't care for it, and vetoed the selection every time it came up. So now we've had our fix, and we'll stop for groceries somewhere today so we can eat in, if we like, for a few days.
The second reason was that we did not have any dinner fixin's on board, and there is an Olive Garden here in this same parking lot. We've been jonesing for Italian food for a week: one of the folks we ate with every night in Austin doesn't care for it, and vetoed the selection every time it came up. So now we've had our fix, and we'll stop for groceries somewhere today so we can eat in, if we like, for a few days.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Preparing to leave Austin
We're done here in Austin. We have spent the last seven days teaching the Response Technology workshop here at the Red Cross technology maintenance center, preceded by two full days of instructor preparation. As I expected, we were busy from first thing in the morning right through dinner, with barely enough time to walk the dog a couple of times each day. I had hoped to squeeze at least one blog update out, but it was not to be.
We have been parked here at the Response Maintenance Center since last Friday, which has worked out just fine. The painters did not cause us any concern, and we had power here to run our air conditioners -- it's been in the mid to high 90's the whole week. We did find out the hard way that the standard 50-amp RV outlet on the building is really fed by a 20-amp, 120/240v circuit. Also that each leg of that circuit is separately protected by a fuse. We blew both 20-amp fuses in succession mid-week, and had to go hunt for replacements at a nearby hardware store. Before replacing them, we rearranged our energy management settings to keep from blowing them again. We did have to shut down one of our three roof air conditioners, but we managed to keep comfortable with only two of them running pretty much full-time the rest of the week.
We will be proceeding from here on the most direct route to Saint Louis, Missouri. We are scheduled to attend the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly there, which starts on Wednesday. That gives us only three days to make the ~900 mile trek, which is faster than our normal pace. We'll pull out of here in the next hour, find a place to dump our tanks, and hit the road.
We have been parked here at the Response Maintenance Center since last Friday, which has worked out just fine. The painters did not cause us any concern, and we had power here to run our air conditioners -- it's been in the mid to high 90's the whole week. We did find out the hard way that the standard 50-amp RV outlet on the building is really fed by a 20-amp, 120/240v circuit. Also that each leg of that circuit is separately protected by a fuse. We blew both 20-amp fuses in succession mid-week, and had to go hunt for replacements at a nearby hardware store. Before replacing them, we rearranged our energy management settings to keep from blowing them again. We did have to shut down one of our three roof air conditioners, but we managed to keep comfortable with only two of them running pretty much full-time the rest of the week.
We will be proceeding from here on the most direct route to Saint Louis, Missouri. We are scheduled to attend the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly there, which starts on Wednesday. That gives us only three days to make the ~900 mile trek, which is faster than our normal pace. We'll pull out of here in the next hour, find a place to dump our tanks, and hit the road.
Thursday, June 8, 2006
Back on-line in Austin
Our replacement DW6000 arrived yesterday and I installed it last night. By the time I was ready to commission the modem, though, our HughesNet VAR/ISP, Mobile Satellite, was closed for the night. Theoretically, they have someone on-call 24 hours for after-hours support, but my calls were never returned. Between that and the "handling" charge they tacked on to my warranty exchange, I am not happy with them. I intend to speak with the principal of the company sometime in the next few days about this, but I suspect I will be shopping around again for another ISP when my one-year pre-paid agreement is up.
In any case, I managed to get the modem commissioned this morning when they opened, right before we had to race off to work (more on this in a moment). During the process I discovered that, had I only realized the PIN used to commission the system originally is permanent, I could have done the commissioning myself last night. Live and learn.
We are in Austin to help teach the next batch of Red Cross technology volunteers. Instructor prep starts tomorrow, and class starts Sunday. However, we learned just as we were leaving for Mexico that there is a ton of work here at the Response Maintenance Center (RMC) that needs to get done in order to be ready for this hurricane season. They are short handed and behind schedule, so we agreed to come in early to help out for a few days. We arrived here Tuesday morning and have been working our butts off since then. We've created 43 "network switch kits," each consisting of two Cisco Catalyst 3560 switches in a flight-ready shipping case, built a dozen or so satellite modem shelves for fly-away satellite kits, run new cables for the 3.8-meter fixed land earth station here, and packaged up dozens of IP telephones.
We had expected to park at the RMC, as we have done in the past, but were told when we arrived that the outside of the building would be spray-painted this week, so we agreed to park off-site (the painters, it turned out, never showed up). So we are at what is nominally a highly-rated RV "resort" but is really a hell-hole known as the Austin Lone Star RV Resort (map). We've decided that "lone star" must refer to its rating in an unbiased guide. Allow me to elaborate:
I'm sure there are other annoying aspects that I have left out. Suffice it to say, we will not be back. We are pre-paid through tomorrow morning, and we're leaving here first thing. Since the painters have not started at the RMC, and they've been forbidden from working next week during the training, we are just going to move there in the morning. If we need to bail our again, we will instead head over to nearby McKinney Falls State Park.
In any case, I managed to get the modem commissioned this morning when they opened, right before we had to race off to work (more on this in a moment). During the process I discovered that, had I only realized the PIN used to commission the system originally is permanent, I could have done the commissioning myself last night. Live and learn.
We are in Austin to help teach the next batch of Red Cross technology volunteers. Instructor prep starts tomorrow, and class starts Sunday. However, we learned just as we were leaving for Mexico that there is a ton of work here at the Response Maintenance Center (RMC) that needs to get done in order to be ready for this hurricane season. They are short handed and behind schedule, so we agreed to come in early to help out for a few days. We arrived here Tuesday morning and have been working our butts off since then. We've created 43 "network switch kits," each consisting of two Cisco Catalyst 3560 switches in a flight-ready shipping case, built a dozen or so satellite modem shelves for fly-away satellite kits, run new cables for the 3.8-meter fixed land earth station here, and packaged up dozens of IP telephones.
We had expected to park at the RMC, as we have done in the past, but were told when we arrived that the outside of the building would be spray-painted this week, so we agreed to park off-site (the painters, it turned out, never showed up). So we are at what is nominally a highly-rated RV "resort" but is really a hell-hole known as the Austin Lone Star RV Resort (map). We've decided that "lone star" must refer to its rating in an unbiased guide. Allow me to elaborate:
- The rate is $53 per night, among the highest we have ever paid.
- The place is clearly an ex-KOA, with all the hallmarks, e.g. Kamping Kabins.
- The lone entrance is on a one-way freeway frontage road, necessitating an additional 4-mile merry-go-round loop on the freeway to reach it from nearly anywhere in Austin.
- The place has security paranoia to the nth degree, including an annoying (and slow) electric gate even in the daytime, and combination locks on the bathrooms and laundry. This despite that fact that it is not within walking distance of anything, so gate-crashers are non-existent.
- We did laundry here, only to discover that (a) the washers are an outrageous $1.50 per load and (b) the dryers must be supervised, since they will not allow any more than ten minutes to be purchased at a time.
- The park is long and skinny -- it is a walk of several minutes to the pool or the front desk from our site.
- There are myriad signs admonishing people to clean up after their pets (including signs offering a reward of one night's stay for snitching on guests who ignore this rule), but there isn't a single trash can or dumpster in the entire complex. Apparently, you are supposed to carry the poop from wherever the dog left it all the way back to your own site, to include it with your bagged trash for the daily pickup. Yuck.
- There is wireless internet here, but $53 per night doesn't include it -- it's an extra $3.
I'm sure there are other annoying aspects that I have left out. Suffice it to say, we will not be back. We are pre-paid through tomorrow morning, and we're leaving here first thing. Since the painters have not started at the RMC, and they've been forbidden from working next week during the training, we are just going to move there in the morning. If we need to bail our again, we will instead head over to nearby McKinney Falls State Park.
Monday, June 5, 2006
Off Line
Well, it's been giving us a bit of trouble for a week or so now, and, this afternoon, our DW6000 Satellite Modem finally gave up the ghost. This is the device that connects us to the internet through our sattelite dish, part of the HughesNet (formerly DirecWay) system. The consequence is that we are entirely off-line.
I am posting this courtesy of my cell phone, which works here at South Shore Park on Lake Bastrop, in Bastrop, TX (map). I have a cable and some software to allow me to connect to the internet through the cell phone, albeit at painfully slow speeds.
This is a nice little park, run by the Lower Colorado River Authority (no, the other Colorado river). We are right on the lake, where we might swim later, and have a 50-amp service here to run all our air conditioners.
I'll be checking email right after posting this, and then we will be away from email until a replacement DW6000 arrives Wednesday via second-day air. The modem itself is under warranty (we only bought it last August), but they are charging us for the expedited shipping.
I was able to manually aim the dish well enough to get the TV working, so I won't go stir-crazy later or, heaven forbid, have to entertain myself with non-electronic means, such as reading. (Actually, we were away from the internet and US TV the whole time we were in Mexico, so I am still feeling a bit disconnected).
I will post again from Austin. I can probably post to the blog from the Red Cross facility, though their firewall prevents us from getting our email that way.
If you need to reach us before Thursday, use the phone.
I am posting this courtesy of my cell phone, which works here at South Shore Park on Lake Bastrop, in Bastrop, TX (map). I have a cable and some software to allow me to connect to the internet through the cell phone, albeit at painfully slow speeds.
This is a nice little park, run by the Lower Colorado River Authority (no, the other Colorado river). We are right on the lake, where we might swim later, and have a 50-amp service here to run all our air conditioners.
I'll be checking email right after posting this, and then we will be away from email until a replacement DW6000 arrives Wednesday via second-day air. The modem itself is under warranty (we only bought it last August), but they are charging us for the expedited shipping.
I was able to manually aim the dish well enough to get the TV working, so I won't go stir-crazy later or, heaven forbid, have to entertain myself with non-electronic means, such as reading. (Actually, we were away from the internet and US TV the whole time we were in Mexico, so I am still feeling a bit disconnected).
I will post again from Austin. I can probably post to the blog from the Red Cross facility, though their firewall prevents us from getting our email that way.
If you need to reach us before Thursday, use the phone.
Sunday, June 4, 2006
Giardino delle Olive
I know it is uncharacteristic of me to post twice in one day, but here I am again. This morning's post, below, really belongs to last night, but we were bushed after a long day. This post might just have easily been done tomorrow, but we want to get an early start, and I have time on my hands tonight.
We are parked on a city street adjacent to an Olive Garden restaurant (map). Our larder was empty, owing to the field trip, and we were craving good, old-fashioned cookie-cutter Italian food. On our way here, we made a stop at the grocery store to stock up for the next couple weeks. This particular stretch of road is filled with tractor-trailers parked for the night, so we figure we're OK with the local constabulary as long as we blend in and keep a low profile.
Tomorrow morning we will pick up our pets at the kennel a dozen miles from here, and continue on toward Austin.
We are parked on a city street adjacent to an Olive Garden restaurant (map). Our larder was empty, owing to the field trip, and we were craving good, old-fashioned cookie-cutter Italian food. On our way here, we made a stop at the grocery store to stock up for the next couple weeks. This particular stretch of road is filled with tractor-trailers parked for the night, so we figure we're OK with the local constabulary as long as we blend in and keep a low profile.
Tomorrow morning we will pick up our pets at the kennel a dozen miles from here, and continue on toward Austin.
We're back....
We returned last night from Cancun, where the weather was beautiful and our stay relaxing, although I did get a nasty sunburn the second day which put something of a damper on the rest of the week.
We left Houston in a torrential downpour. Our friends here generously drove us to the airport, and the storm hit while we were en route. Our flight did get off the ground, albeit an hour late. Our friends from Beaumont, who were supposed to be on the same flight with us, were not so lucky. They were to connect on a flight from Lake Charles, LA, which was ultimately canceled due to the weather in Houston. They ended up driving from Lake Charles to Houston (right past their home in Beaumont) and did not arrive at the resort until late that night, after a 16-hour travel ordeal. (That did give us the opportunity, though, to catch a ride home from them last night.)
The resort has made a terrific recovery from hurricane Wilma last year. We saw photos of the extensive damage, and it's really amazing they were able to reopen as soon as last month. We posted photos of the place last year, and it looks more or less the same today, except the little-used lobby pool, claimed by the hurricane, has been replaced by a comfortable outdoor seating area. They have also added an additional restaurant with a Japanese theme, which we found quite good.
We spent one day "off-campus," visiting Xcaret, which is a park unlike any to be found in the US. Sort of a real-Mayan-ruins meets zoo meets Disney-esque theme park, with eco-tourism, snorkeling, a beach, and bars and restaurants thrown in. Hard to describe -- one just needs to go for oneself. We had a good time, and particularly enjoyed floating through the underground river.
A word about our map page is in order, since I received some comments. We did not bring Odyssey to Cancun (although it would certainly be possible to do so), even though the map shows us there. While we normally update this page with automatic software that derives our position from the GPS unit built in to our satellite dish, I do have a way to manually update it with any coordinates I choose. Since we did not want to post Odyssey's actual position at our friends' house, nor did we want to simply leave the map at our last updated position in Katy, TX, I decided to take a stab at the coordinates of our resort on the Mayan Riviera and show us at that location. I'll update the map again after we leave here and are in a more public place, probably tonight.
We left Houston in a torrential downpour. Our friends here generously drove us to the airport, and the storm hit while we were en route. Our flight did get off the ground, albeit an hour late. Our friends from Beaumont, who were supposed to be on the same flight with us, were not so lucky. They were to connect on a flight from Lake Charles, LA, which was ultimately canceled due to the weather in Houston. They ended up driving from Lake Charles to Houston (right past their home in Beaumont) and did not arrive at the resort until late that night, after a 16-hour travel ordeal. (That did give us the opportunity, though, to catch a ride home from them last night.)
The resort has made a terrific recovery from hurricane Wilma last year. We saw photos of the extensive damage, and it's really amazing they were able to reopen as soon as last month. We posted photos of the place last year, and it looks more or less the same today, except the little-used lobby pool, claimed by the hurricane, has been replaced by a comfortable outdoor seating area. They have also added an additional restaurant with a Japanese theme, which we found quite good.
We spent one day "off-campus," visiting Xcaret, which is a park unlike any to be found in the US. Sort of a real-Mayan-ruins meets zoo meets Disney-esque theme park, with eco-tourism, snorkeling, a beach, and bars and restaurants thrown in. Hard to describe -- one just needs to go for oneself. We had a good time, and particularly enjoyed floating through the underground river.
A word about our map page is in order, since I received some comments. We did not bring Odyssey to Cancun (although it would certainly be possible to do so), even though the map shows us there. While we normally update this page with automatic software that derives our position from the GPS unit built in to our satellite dish, I do have a way to manually update it with any coordinates I choose. Since we did not want to post Odyssey's actual position at our friends' house, nor did we want to simply leave the map at our last updated position in Katy, TX, I decided to take a stab at the coordinates of our resort on the Mayan Riviera and show us at that location. I'll update the map again after we leave here and are in a more public place, probably tonight.
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