Errands in El Paso

We spent the night at one of the several Wal-Marts here in El Paso (map). We spotted this one, conveniently located a short walk from and Olive Garden, as we were en route to Costco.

The Costco stop was occasioned by the fact that I can't very well go to Mexico without ice for the margaritas (I mean, c'mon now). Seeing as how I have not gotten around to fixing the U-Line ice maker that broke about a year ago, we opted to just go ahead and get one of these. Costco had them for $170, and, even though they don't actually have a freezer to keep the ice frozen, as does the U-Line, at least we'll have ice in Mexico.

The story on the U-Line, by the way, is that it came with the bus, in the original conversion. We resuscitated it, cleaned it up, and installed it in one of the bays (it had originally been in the kitchen, but we felt it took up too much space there), where it dutifully made ice for about a year. We only used it occasionally, and, one day, when I went to fire it up, it wasn't working. More specifically, the freezer was not coming on. I'm pretty sure the compressor and plumbing are fine, and either the thermostat, or one of the microswitches is broken or jammed, keeping the unit from coming on. Probably an easy fix, but, as noted, I haven't gotten around to it in a year. The U-Line is free to anyone who wants to tinker with it (it's a $700 or so unit), on the condition that you need to come get it here in El Paso or Las Cruces by this Saturday.

This morning I changed the oil and filter in the genny, something that was overdue, weighing heavily on me, and absolutely needed to happen before Mexico. While running the thing yesterday, the main breaker tripped off again, and, when I went down to inspect the connections for tightness, found the main feed to the generator subpanel has one hot wire burnt to a crisp. Today we are off to Home Depot to rewire the feed.