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.