Getting squared away

We are at the Elks lodge in San Jose, California (map), a frequent stopping point for us when we are in the bay area. And, even though we were just in the bay area a couple months ago, we are here again because, as I wrote at the end of January, we will be taking a cruise from South America that ends here. Between now and our departure, we are taking the opportunity to get some projects done, and get the coach squared away for its longest-ever lay-up since we hit the road 30 months ago.

The secure storage facility we will be using does not provide power, so, as usual, everything will be powered down except for critical loads such as the alarm system. Our new solar panels should take care of keeping the batteries topped up and the alarms and monitors running. A big question mark is the fridge. On past jaunts away from the bus, we've either been plugged in, or we've been gone only a week or so, which is within the capability of the batteries alone to run the refrigerator as well as the other items.

This time will be different, in that we will be gone too long for the batteries to do all that work without help. One option is to leave the generator on Automatic, which will let it start as needed to charge the batteries if the solar does not keep up. The other option is to empty the fridge for the first time in two and a half years, and shut it down for the duration. I'm leaning towards this latter option, since there is a risk involved any time an engine starts and stops unattended.

One of the projects I am hammering through right now is the full checklist for a long lay-up. We've had the idea all along that we might have to do this, even including such features in the coach as remote disconnects for the chassis batteries. It's just that, until now, we've never had to actually execute such a plan.

We did manage to make suitable arrangements for the pets, with the dog going to one set of friends, the fish tank going to another, and the cats going to an acquaintance who is in the cat rescue business. We hope the arrangements for all of them will be a bit less stressful on them than the usual kennel fare. Healthier, too, we would figure.

Speaking of projects, this has been a frustrating week on the vendor front. I've been arguing all week with the glass insurer about getting the window replaced. They really have no clue what they are dealing with, and can't understand why we can't just drive in to Bob's Auto Glass and get this done. By the end of last week, I think I had them convinced that the work had to be done by a qualified bus garage, and the glass had to come from Neopart. But this week, they called back and insisted that Safe-Lite was going to do the work, just as soon as they could find the glass. It's been two days, and they still have not gotten back to me with a schedule or a shop. Also, you may recall, our upper glass was put in by an automotive glass shop, with disastrous results. If Safe-Lite is going to do this, we're going to hover over them and supervise, to make sure they do it right.

The other vendor I've been fighting is Verizon Wireless. Over a month ago, Louise ordered herself a new phone, responding to a promotional email that said she qualified for a discounted replacement (we are long-time customers). Well, fine, she ordered it on-line, and eventually got a message from Verizon saying it had shipped, and we've been waiting for it to show up in one of our recent mail drops. After a month with no phone, we went back on-line to check on it, and followed a link over to FedEx with the tracking number.

According to FedEx, Verizon got a tracking number assigned and sent over billing information, but never actually shipped a package. Louise asked me to take care of it, so I called Verizon.

That was my first mistake: they won't do squat without the subscriber's permission (which makes sense), so they had to call Louise (who was out shopping) to verify that I could do this. Fine, but then they insisted on keeping her on the line during the whole process, which took 40 minutes (really)!!!

Silly me -- I thought I was just going to explain that they neglected to ship the item, and they were just going to type a few keystrokes and re-send the order. But nooooo.... First, they told us that they shipped the item, and it was returned to them (I later called FedEx and verified that, no, the item never made it into the FedEx system). Then they strongly implied that this was somehow our fault, specifically that there was no one "home" to sign for it.

Now, I've been doing business with package services for years, and I know for a fact that they try at least twice and usually three times to get a signature, they always make contact with the recipient by leaving a note, and they update the package status on the website with each delivery attempt. Furthermore, our mailing address is a mail-receiving service, which is always staffed during business hours. FedEx, UPS, etc. know this -- it's not really possible for a FedEx driver to show up at PostNet and decide "oh, I guess they're not home -- let's return this to sender."

I tried to explain this to Ms. Customer-Disservice at Verizon, but she was having none of it. Verizon could not possibly have made any kind of mistake -- the problem must have been at the customer end. OK, so can they just re-send it?

No, of course not. We need to completely re-do the order, from scratch. On the phone, where what took five minutes on the web mushroomed into 40. Oh, and, by the way, the price on that phone has increased, do you still want it? I hit the roof -- this has got to be the worst customer service I have ever experienced in the business, and I've been in the telecommunications industry for a long time. It reminded me of that snippet that made the rounds a while back, of some guy who taped his call to AOL to terminate his service (Google it -- it's hilarious and sobering at the same time).

I have to say that, if Verizon's network wasn't so vastly superior to every other carrier out there (and/or our no-longer-available National Single Rate plan was available elsewhere), this call would have been the last straw and I would have dropped our Verizon service right then and there. But I sucked it up and finished the process -- after supervisor intervention, we got the original price and the phone re-ordered. Once we have it in hand, I will be sending a formal complaint to Verizon about their crappy customer service in general, and in particular about one Cheyenne Sgheiza, who just doesn't get it that even big companies make mistakes and maybe sometimes, the customer just happens to be right (I have no illusions that anyone still believes the customer is always right).

In stark contrast, FedEx (who knows where its bread gets buttered) was extremely accommodating in researching the issue. After confirming what I already knew from the web site, they put me on hold while they called the originating center to find out if any items had come from Verizon with unreadable bar codes or other possible explanations for the package bouncing back to Verizon from FedEx without capturing tracking status. Then the two of us had a good laugh about Verizon incompetence and how they had tried to blame the customer for a shipping problem that we both knew was on their end.

OK, I'm done ranting for now. I think I'll have another cup of coffee...

Bleaky day in King City

We are in King City, California, at the San Lorenzo County Park (map). We stopped briefly yesterday at Delaney & Ahlf, who were too busy to work on the ECM. Tim Ahlf did agree to make some calls to Detroit Diesel to see if he could get any advice on our particular symptom, and I hope to hear back from him next week.

I thought about stopping at Valley Power just down the street, but we were done with Bakersfield and so we just continued on down the Rosedale Highway all the way to CA-33. We decided to jump over to 101 on 46, rather than slog up the central valley, and we ended up here, in King City. This is a nice park, although a little too commercial-RV-park for us. The place is mostly empty, though, so it was peaceful and quiet. This morning, it's been raining on and off, and even hailed for a short while.

We will leave in just a few minutes for San Jose, by way of Gilroy (where we will make a quick outlet-shopping stop, as we both need a few items for our upcoming cruise).

On another note, yesterday's post here was "rejected" by Blogger, who claimed some sort of system problem. I tried three times before giving up, with no results. Of course, I learned only later that all three tries did ultimately post, so apologies to anyone who got three of yesterday's update in their RSS feed.

Bakersfield

We left Death Valley yesterday, following our usual route through Trona and the Searles Valley. It is a steep climb out of the park on CA 190, and we plugged up the hill at somewhat less than 40mph. Coming down the other side was the opposite story, and we had to disengage the retarder several times due to transmission fluid overtemp warnings.

The Panamints had a light dusting of snow on top from a storm on Monday, and they were spectacularly beautiful as we drove past them.

We stopped for the night in a parking lot adjacent to the motel here in Bakersfield where our friends were staying on their route home (map). We had a nice dinner with them at a nearby Mexican restaurant.

This morning we will head over to local Detroit Diesel shop Delaney & Ahlf, to have the ECM looked at again. We have no appointment, so it's hard to say how long we will be here.

Sunset at Sunset

We are at the Sunset campground in Death Valley National Park (map). This is our first time in this spot, since our preferred digs over at the Furnace Creek campground were sold out for the holiday weekend. It is essentially a large dirt lot, with paved roadways and some concrete parking bumpers to delineate the "spaces." We took a nice end space close to the main road, for easy access across the street to Furnace Creek Ranch, where our friends are staying.

We arrived here Thursday, and had a nice quiet dinner at the Furnace Creek Inn. We rode the little scooter up the hill, and the best it could do with both of us aboard was about 25 or so. But we hit 40 on the way back down!

Our plan was to host a dinner here for everyone tonight, but it turns out several people were planning to ride over to Death Valley Junction to take in the show at the Amargosa Opera House. So by consensus of the group, we did dinner here last night instead. Louise made a big pot of pasta and a large salad, and I made a cherry sauce for the store-bought cheescake we had for dessert. Our friends Dale and Joan brought some flank steak and veggies to grill as well, but the regulations in this campground precluded them from using the Weber they brought with them. Dale was able to squeeze everything on to our little gas grill by staging it in waves, so all worked out in the end.

Dinner was quite tasty, and folks hung around chatting for a good hour or so afterwards. We seemed to end up with all the leftovers (including most of the beer we bought -- not sure how that happened), and cleaning everything up took the better part of another hour. Looks like we're set for dinner now for another week (thanks, Dale and Joan!).

We may try to catch the show ourselves tonight, if there are still tickets left. And tomorrow night we have a group reservation for dinner at the Inn again. We're planning on staying in this spot until Tuesday morning, when we will head over to Bakersfield, where I hope to have the engine ECM looked at again.

Speaking of the ongoing problems, we have once again cracked our lower windshield, a much more pressing matter than the upper one since we are behind it while driving. Ironically, we would not be dealing with a full crack and a windshield replacement right now, had it not been for the insurance policy on it. Allow me to explain:

As you may recall, Tuesday morning found us at Government Wash in the Lake Mead Recreation Area. Tuesday afternoon, we drove from there to Las Vegas, by way of Lake Mead Boulevard, state route 147. This road is well paved, with a limit of 55mph, and a few patches of construction. Apparently, 55 was not fast enough for some folks, and we were passed regularly by a variety of vehicles. Well, at some point a full-size pickup truck whizzed past us and we heard a thwack like a rock striking the glass, but we didn't see it fly or hit. In fact, to Louise, it sounded like it maybe hit the plastic bodywork below the glass. Absolutely no damage was visible from inside the cockpit.

When we stopped for the night in Las Vegas, we looked over the windshield from the outside, but did not see anything unusual. Perhaps it was the lighting condition at that time. The next day, though, we saw a clear "volcano" chip, less than dime-sized, at the very top of the windshield, where it would not be visible from the inside.

We immediately called the insurance carrier that underwrites our glass policy, which came with the fancy Diamon-Fusion coating we bought for the windshield back in August of '05. I explained very carefully to the call-taker that the windshield was hard to replace, and that we really, really wanted them to get the chip filled right away, to keep it from spreading. My pleas were completely lost on her: she repeated the corporate mantra that it takes 24 to 48 hours for them to respond to a glass repair. Now mind you, we were in Las Vegas in the middle of the day in the middle of the work week. We could easily have just driven over to any convenient glass repair and had this done. But we can do nothing until they approve it, and they have a process to follow.

After reminding the call-taker of the urgency, I informed her that we would be heading to Pahrump, and perhaps they could get someone to look at it there without further delay.

We drove to Pahrump without incident, and when we retired on Wednesday night, the chip was stable and still the size of a dime. I had not heard anything further from the insurer, Nations Auto Club, or their glass contractor, Safelite. Too bad, really, because once again, we could simply have had this chip filled in Pahrump on Wednesday. Of course, we awoke Thursday morning to an 11" long crack, emanating from what had been a small chip just the day before.

I called Nations back and informed them of the further damage, and that they now needed to get a new windshield on order. Of course, these folks haven't the first clue what this is going to involve -- in their minds, we're just going to drive in to a Safelite facility, and they are going to order a stock piece of aftermarket glass from a catalog, and just pop it on in. I spent an hour Thursday afternoon trying to explain the glass replacement process on a German-built Neoplan to various Nations and Safelite people. They are still clueless. Nevertheless, they finally got off their duffs long enough to send us over to Action Auto Glass in Pahrump (gee, why couldn't they do that one day sooner?) to have it looked at. (They will not authorize a replacement until a glass repair professional has said it is irreparable.)

Now it is hurry-up-and-wait, with the crack growing longer all the while. When they finally figure out how much the glass will cost, they will need to get several layers of management involved -- and they still won't understand that automotive glass shops can't do this work (after all, it was two different automotive glass shops that screwed up the installation of our upstairs glass, which now needs to be replaced due to improper installation techniques).

Back when we bought the Diamon-Fusion coating, before we knew they were just going to turn around and buy a third-party insurance policy, we had very carefully explained to the salesman what would be involved should the windshield ever break. He acknowledged everything we told him, and was insistent that we would have no problem with any claims under the warranty. So we shall see now how well they respond.

In the meantime, the coach will be laid up for a month anyway while we are cruising South America. Fortuitous, since the glass will likely have to come from Germany, typically a two- to three-month lead time. We'll also need to find someone who can install it, which will be tricky. If we can swing it, we will try to line this up to coincide with the upper windshield replacement, somewhere around Nashville.

On Tuesday, I will start calling around again to make sure the wheels are in motion.

Irony Department

Sean's discussion about the broken windshield reminds me that there is a discussion on the Bus Nuts Online bulletin board where several folks advised us to keep Odyssey on the paved road if we want to avoid damage. This was in response to Sean's request for recommendations for a welding shop to repair the tailpipe after our Big Puddle episode.

I will point out that the repair to the exhaust was about $500. Repairing the windshield, which was damaged while driving at the speed limit on a paved state highway in dry sunny weather, will be on the order of $3000. Because we have insurance, we won't be out of pocket that amount, but we know the cost because we replaced the windshield in November 2005. It was broken in almost identical circumstances: a rock thrown up on a paved Interstate in good weather.

So, we'll be increasing our driving time on unpaved roads as part of our cost reduction plan.

Photo catch-up day

Our free campsite at Government Wash on Lake Mead.

 

Reader Jim requested some pictures of the BLM free camping area near Lake Mead. These are of the Government Wash area. It is criss-crossed with dirt roads and lots of flat spots to park a rig. The water is quite a ways down from the bluffs, but an easy hike. We saw RVs of all stripes out here, about 1/2 mile from where the pavement ends on Government Wash Road.

 
 
  

Pahrump

We are at Terrible's Town Casino in Pahrump (map). There are actually several casinos here in town, but most either have their own for-fee RV park, or else don't allow rigs to spend the night. Terrible's has a big lot and is welcoming, even though they do have another casino several miles out of town (the "Lakeside") that has an RV park.

In any case, it was convenient and peaceful, with about a dozen rigs scattered around the lot. We did try to give them some business by going in to buy dinner, but there was a 2.5 hour wait for a table, owing to Valentine's Day. We ate at home.

We stopped here because we had our mail sent to the post office in town. That turned out to be next to an Ace Hardware, which had a few things I needed, including a 12' extension ladder that collapses down to 2'. We also loaded up on groceries here in town -- we're hosting a dinner for about a dozen while we are in Death Valley.

Tonight we'll be in the park, and we have our fingers crossed for a late cancellation that will get us in to the Furnace Creek campground.

We can see Paris from here...

We are urban stealth boondocking on the Las Vegas strip (map). As I've written here before, it's possible to do this if one is discreet, even though it is widely reported to be impossible, even in guidebooks like Casino Camping. This is our first attempt at it, though, as the last two times we came through, we stayed in commercial parks (the Silverton, now defunct, and the Oasis). Having to take a shuttle bus to get to the strip, and being chained to its schedule, was a pain, and for one night of passing through, we just wanted to be able to walk to dinner.

We had actually planned to park in the back lot of the Tropicana, next door to the old San Remo (now Hooters Casino), a location that has been known to be accommodating in the past. Yesterday morning, though, we met our "neighbors" at Government Wash, Richard and Susan, who suggested this spot. They were very nice folks, living in their Foretravel. Richard had actually come over the previous evening, seeing our engine doors open, to ask if we were having any trouble or needed any help. I was up to my arms in the genny bay trying to change the oil, a messy, frustrating process that was making me cranky (topped off by the fact that the fancy drain valve I bought to simplify the process in the future turned out to be the wrong size).

This lot, which doubles as a through street between Flamingo Avenue and Harmon Street, actually belongs to Bally's and Paris Las Vegas, which, like the Flamingo and Caesar's Palace across the street, are part of the Harrah's empire. There was one other rig already here, and several semis parked for the night. We were very self conscious and tried not to attract any attention, but Odyssey does that all on her own. As we left the coach to walk to dinner, one of the armed Bally's security officers, on a bicycle, came over to us. He asked all the usual questions about the bus (is that a two-story?), and where we were headed, and we asked if it was OK to park there for the night. We got a pleasant "yes" and directions on how to get into the casino from the back lot (not obvious). No guarantees for the future, of course, but at least this time, Bally's security was RV-friendly.

We had a very nice dinner (if lackluster service) at Venuto, an Italian-themed restaurant in the Flamingo. I stayed at the Flamingo on my first trip to Las Vegas, some 35+ years ago. Back then, the joint still held vestiges of the place Bugsy Siegel opened in the middle of the desert, and there was nothing else out here except for Caesar's Palace across the street. Bugsy wouldn't be able to even find the place, let alone recognize it, today. The landscaped courtyard was the only thing I found even vaguely familiar.

Our plans to wander the strip a bit, do some people watching, and maybe see the pirate spectacle in front of TI (which has been completely revised to a more adult theme from when we last saw it a few years ago) were thwarted by the weather -- it was cold and damp when we came out of dinner, and it started raining shortly thereafter. So we just spent a quiet night at home.

It's sunny and pleasant this morning, so maybe we'll wander around a bit before we head out. Our destination today is Pahrump, just a couple hours west of here and about the half-way point to Death Valley. Our mail should be waiting for us there, under general delivery, and we'll need to stock up on groceries for our Death Valley stay.

A good dam drive

We are at Government Wash (map), a free boondocking area in Lake Mead National Recreation Area. We're just one road over from where we stayed two years ago (almost to the day). Almost everything I wrote back then is still applicable today -- the approach to the dam was impressive, all the Wackenhut people needed to eyeball Odyssey, we are staying on what ought to the the shore, except the lake is even lower than it was then, and we can see the glow of Las Vegas and the vertical beam of light from the Luxor. About the only thing different was that the dam was much quieter, since we (deliberately) crossed on a weekday.

Yesterday we had a relaxing drive from our quiet BLM site to Kingman, where we stopped for more diesel and water at Flying-J, and to pick up oil and a filter for the genny at Napa. By 2:00 we were at our friends' house, about ten miles north of town (map).

I spent about an hour playing around with his Pro-Link, trying to get meaningful information out of our ECM. I had to jury-rig the wiring, since he did not have the adapter for my diagnostic connector, but, after some fiddling, we got it to read. Unfortunately, his Pro-Link turns out to have a problem, in that it would hang periodically for no reason. Sometimes I could get three or four keystrokes in before it would hang up, other times I could get maybe a dozen (and sometimes none at all). Each time I would have to power-cycle it and start over.

I copied down as much information as I could, and I did make some progress. Peter learned something too, which is that his Pro-Link is faulty. It had been doing the same thing to him on his rig, but the Pro-Link people were telling him that the wiring in his rig was faulty. Odyssey was the first independent confirmation that it was the Pro-Link that was to blame.

There are a couple of setting screens that I might have tried fiddling with on our ECM, but I was not comfortable writing ECM data with the Pro-Link acting up. So I gave up after an hour or so, and we spent the rest of the afternoon kicking tires and telling lies, as they say in motorsports circles. They were very gracious to let us park in their spacious driveway for the night, and also to drive us into town where we all had a nice dinner.

We left this morning around 11 or so, leaving enough time for the detour in case the Wackenhuts decided to turn us around. With no such problem, we arrived here with plenty of daylight remaining, and managed to get the generator oil changed before it got too cold and windy to do much else. Tomorrow, we will pressure-wash the coach, relax a bit in this lovely location, and then head in to Las Vegas for a night.

Out of Phoenix

As Louise has already written, we are parked on some empty BLM land (map), less than a mile from a $10-a-night BLM campground, which appears 80-90% full. We are just off US93, between Wickenburg and Wikieup (look those up on Wikipedia).

We did, indeed, buy a scooter today. We almost bought the leftover '05, but they sold us an '07 for just $200 more. In researching the bikes on the 'net last night, we learned that some performance improvements had been made in '06 (bigger carb, different ECM) that increased top speed by about 5mph (from just over 37 to just under 43), and the '07 was also a better color for us. Between those factors and the slight improvement in resale value by being two model years "younger," the pair of C-notes seemed worthwhile.

So we are the proud owners of a 2007 Honda Metropolitan 49cc scooter, color blue and white (officially, "Sapphire").

It fit quite easily in the bay, being (without mirrors) a good inch and a half lower than the lowest point in the bay ceiling. Despite it being much smaller than the Suzuki which previously occupied that spot, it is enough different that we had to completely re-engineer how everything else, particularly the two bicycles, went into the bay. Completing the paperwork, setup, and walk-through at the dealer took nearly two hours, and getting the bay loaded almost again that long. It was well past two in the afternoon when we finally left North Valley Motorsports.

Tomorrow, we will head through Kingman, stopping just the other side to hook up with fellow conversion enthusiast Peter Broadribb, who has generously offered use of his Pro-Link. I am hoping to gather enough information to figure out why I am not getting mileage data on my VMS engine display, or at least enough to get help from SilverLeaf with it. We are getting speed data now, for the first time in three years, and I had hoped that the VMS would simply provide the mileage numbers from speed and time figures. The engine information display also shows zero miles and zero hours on the totals stored in the ECM.

Burro Creek boondocking

A lovely free campsite on BLM land off US 93. A mile further down this road is a developed BLM campground called Burro Creek which has water and a dump station. Since we need neither, and the campground is fairly full, why pay to park right next to someone else?

 

Scooter fever

We finished up yesterday afternoon at All Coach and Truck Repair. They did a pretty good job of bending our pretzeled exhaust back into shape, and making a new heat shield for under the bumper, to replace the one we folded in half. They also used their Pro-Link to re-enable our VSS signal. Total bill was $500, and they were very professional and accommodating.

We did not want to overstay our welcome in their parking lot, but it was also late in the day, so we just boogied over to Casino Arizona (map) a dozen miles to the east, where we had spent several days a couple years ago. We had a nice dinner in the buffet, which was as good as we remembered. And, on the way over, our speed readout was working perfectly, so my fix in Tucson was dead on. Now if only I can figure out why the mileage display is not working...

Today we stopped by "our" restaurant downtown, which is still under construction at the corner of First Avenue and Van Buren Street. We're looking forward to the opening, and hopefully more success than the Tempe location, which closed its doors last year. With luck, the new store should be open by the beginning of April.

Tonight we are parked in a dirt lot next to a Honda motorcycle dealership (map). After much reflection, we've decided to add a 50cc step-through as a "replacement" for Louise's motorcycle, which is still in Houston. I put that word in quotes, because this is something of an experiment: if it doesn't work, the step-through will get sold, but, if it does, we'll get Penelope running again when next we are in Houston, and put her up for sale.

The idea here is that we don't use the motorcycles as much as we'd like, in part because of how much effort it takes to unload them from the bay, and store them again when we are ready to leave. In fact, we have a three-day minimum rule: unless it's an emergency, the bikes don't come out unless we are staying someplace for at least three days. So we are hoping that a 165-lb step-through with a low center of gravity will be enough easier to unload and load, compared to the 365-lb Suzukis, that we will take it out and use it more frequently. Also, it takes both of us to load the Suzis, whereas either one of us should be able to single-hand a scooter. And the final kicker, and the reason we are looking only at less-than-50cc models, is that we were told by Mexico's Banjercito that we can bring in a 50cc scooter in addition to both the bus and the full-size motorcycle, which would have averted the situation that left us one bike short in the first place.

We've been doing a bit of research, and one of the brands we had been leaning towards was Kymco, a Taiwanese manufacturer who sells scooters and some quads here under their own brand, and who has been OEMing small quads for all the major powersports labels as well. Kymco is one of the few step-throughs with both large-diameter wheels (a safety issue) and deliberate saddle space and footpegs for a passenger. So after our restaurant visit, we hauled up here to north Phoenix to visit the one and only Kymco dealer in town, and the largest in the state: AZ Desert Sports.

We test-drove and fell in love with their Agility 50 model, which has a driver backrest that flips down to become a passenger seat, really a perfect setup for how we would use the bike. Alas, it turned out to be two inches too tall to fit in the bay. We even spent a good hour with Gary, the shop's owner, and the other Gary, the mechanic, noodling through ways to lower the bike, or cut down the bodywork, etc.. None of the solutions was particularly easy or appealing. It was really very hard for us to walk away, especially after all the work the two Gary's had done to try to accommodate us.

Which brings us here, just a half mile away, to Northern Valley Motorsports, the Honda Dealer. Honda has two scooters that would work for us, the Ruckus and the Metropolitan. The Metro is lighter, and has that classic Vespa-esque styling, and we are leaning toward that model. Plus, they have a leftover '05 on deep discount. We arrived here just before closing, though, with no time to give it a test-fit into the bay. So they are graciously allowing us to spend the night here in their overflow lot, and we'll give it a try in the morning.

It remains to be seen whether we drive away from here with a scooter on board. In part, it will depend on whether it fits in the bay. It will also depend on how well the dealer will sharpen his pencil on the price.

Whatever the outcome, from here we will head northwest on US93 to Kingman, and on to Hoover Dam and Las Vegas. We will stop just north of Kingman to visit with a fellow bus conversion enthusiast, who happens to have a Pro-Link and is willing to help troubleshoot the remaining data issues with our DDEC ECM.

In for post-puddle repairs.

We are at All Coach and Truck Repair, a bus garage in Phoenix (map). We had an uneventful drive up from Beaudry in Tucson, with stops to fill the fuel tank (the Flying J in Eloy had the cheapest fuel we will see until we leave California in April) and stock up on groceries.

Barry from All Coach took a look at the exhaust, and seems confident they can repair the damage in short order. They also have a Pro-Link, and we will have them re-enable our VSS to see if my repairs in Tucson will have fixed that problem. And, while we're at it, we will have them look at our front-end shimmy and maybe the hubs as well.

I rerouted at least part of the TPS sensor return wire while we were in Tucson, and we experienced no throttle drop-out on the drive up, so I am hopeful we have that problem licked. (It was intermittent, so there is really no telling.) I also rebuilt the left front ride-height valve while we were there, which was leaking, and that seems to have done the trick.

We are in the lot for the night, among a fleet of Prevost tour coaches that operate out of this location. A limo company also shares the lot, with a fleet of super-stretch Hummer H2's. They will start on us tomorrow morning at 7am (ugh).

After the exhaust "incident," I posted a request for shop recommendations on a couple of the bus conversion bulletin boards, which is how we ended up here (thanks, Sammy!). These boards are great resources, and I spent a lot of time there while we were converting Odyssey. That being said, my post prompted a flurry of criticism for taking our coach on dirt roads and fording streams.

To which I say: pound sand. We didn't build this thing so that we could see an endless ribbon of Interstate, countless Wal-Mart parking lots, and a stream of identical cheek-by-jowl RV parks with a panorama of Fleetwoods and Winnebagos as far as the eye can see (no offense meant to those who drive either of those brands). We built it to see the entire country, much of which is not accessible via paved roads.

Now, one could argue that we should have started with something more off-road-worthy, such as the Oshkosh airport crash tender that was the foundation for Draco, the vehicle whose picture Louise posted here a week ago. But everything is a compromise, and we chose a coach that had the interior space and physical layout that suited our full-timing needs, understanding that it would place some strict limits on where we could venture.

Part of the compromise that we made was knowing that we would take Odyssey wherever she could physically go, and that there would be a price to pay for that in wear and tear (and, sometimes, towing).

I guess this sums it up:

Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in one pretty and well preserved piece, but to skid across the line broadside, thoroughly used up, worn out, leaking oil, shouting GERONIMO! -- Bill McKenna

When Blogs Collide

We just had a visit from Rich Luhr, the editor of a nifty magazine called Airstream Life. He is camped not far away from us here at Beaudry RV and noticed our wifi signal ID, which is "Odyssey." We chatted only briefly as we're trying to get an early start toward Phoenix this morning.

Rich keeps his own blog, Tour of America, which has a link back to us. I (Louise) read his blog, he reads ours. We both read Tioga and George. This blogging-fulltiming world is rather small. What Rich may not know is that in a previous life, I was also a publisher (I worked for, then owned, then sold Information Publications,) so the universe just shrank even further!

We hope to run into Rich again on the road and have more of a chance to trade stories.

The Big Puddle

As Sean promised in the last post, here is a short video of Odyssey plunging through a small water crossing in the Coronado National Forest. Click here or on the photo below to launch the video. (Having trouble seeing our videos? Try accessing them directly on the Blip.tv site by clicking here. The videos are available in other formats there. Apple users may want to try the Flash Video format.)



If you listen closely toward the end of the video, you can hear a metallic scraping, which is the sound of the exhaust outlet hitting the mud. We think this is the result of the bus "porpoising" as Sean hits the brakes. The wall of water completely blocked his view out the windshield and there were three cars waiting to ford the stream, so braking seemed like a good idea. Otherwise, gently coasting to a stop would have been the best plan. Here is the formerly rectangular sheet metal:



And here is one of the shattered halogen headlight bulbs. Hot light + cold water, not a good combination.

 

Goodbye, Mexico

We made it out of the forest yesterday without getting stuck, but not without incident. The giant puddle that we powered through on our way in inflicted some casualties -- as it turns out, in both directions.

Whenever we get ready to pull up stakes and leave a spot, even if it was just overnight in a parking lot, I start up the engine, turn on the exterior lights and flashers, and do a walk-around inspection. I'm looking for unsecured items or doors, tire tread or sidewall damage, leaking fluids, inoperative lights, and that sort of thing.

As I did my walk-around yesterday, I noticed both headlamps were out. Oddly, selecting high beams caused both to come on briefly and quickly flicker out. I guessed it had something to do with crossing the puddle on the way in, but we were anxious to make it back out in the warmth of mid-day, and give ourselves plenty of daylight if we had a problem, so we just made a note of the headlight problem, turned them off, and proceeded to leave.

When we arrived back at the puddle, I selected my path though, brought Odyssey all the way up on the air bags, and got ready to hustle through again. Louise got out to double-check the puddle depth, spot for me, and, given how things went the first time, video the experience for posterity. The spotting part turned out to be necessary: she had to motion to some oncoming traffic to stop well short of the puddle, so I would have room to clear on the other side.

I got my running start and plowed through again, and all seemed fine as I stopped alongside an appreciative audience. When Louise caught up to me, though, she had bad news: as I powered out and away from her, she noticed we had pretzeled the tail pipe. She clambered aboard and we drove a short way down the road to a spot wide enough to stop comfortably for an inspection.

Sure enough, Odyssey's lower angle-of-departure compared to her angle-of-approach, combined with the different geometry of the wash's banks, meant that the rear had slammed down onto the bank harder in this direction. I can't tell if we just hit the sand, or if there was an inopportune rock at that spot in the puddle, but the last foot of the weird, rectangular exhaust pipe was folded back on itself (for reasons unclear to me, the last foot has always been physically separate from the rest of the system) and hanging down below the bumper by one forlorn screw. Worse, the other two feet of heavy-gauge duct was crushed, and I could not spread it open with my crow bar.

There looked to be enough pathways through the flattened mess for some exhaust to escape, so we felt we could continue on with a keen eye on the engine gauges, and an easy foot on the throttle. Removing the loosely hanging section was a different problem: with the metal folded on itself, there was no access to the remaining screw. We ended up cutting through it with our two foot bolt cutters.

We made it the rest of the way down the washboard road without further mishap, having more thoroughly secured everything than we had on the ride out. Back on the freeway heading towards Tucson, though, we kept hearing a rattle or flapping noise, and, after pulling over twice, I noticed that one of the plastic trim pieces that constitute Odyssey's front lower bodywork was loose. It's been held on, on one side, by only one bolt for some time now, and either the puddle or the washboard caused the riv-nut holding the bolt in to come out completely. I secured the loose side with gaffer's tape, and we proceeded to Beaudry RV in Tucson, in whose large RV park we hoped to lay up for a day or two to lick our wounds.

It turns out the the enormous Tucson Gem Show was still in progress, and Beaudry RV Resort, huge as it is, was full. We pulled out our guides and set our sites on the Desert Diamond Casino across town (map), where we ended up spending a very pleasant and quiet night, and had a nice dinner in their restaurant. On the way to the casino we encountered a Home Depot, and spent an hour or so in their parking lot repairing the loose front bodywork, with ready access to a source of parts.

Yesterday Beaudry had told us there would be space today, so we came back here mid-day. We splurged and are in one of the high-zoot jacuzzi sites, with a nice patio, private hot tub, and hedges on either side to separate the neighbors (map).

This afternoon we disassembled enough of the front to get to the headlamps, noticing in the process that one of the polycarbonate rock guards had snapped in two, sacrificing itself to save the headlamp lens. We have spare guards, but we were able to re-fit this one, which should give us a bit more service from it.

Once we got the bulbs, or what was left of them, out of the headlamp assemblies, the cause of the problem was clear: the headlamps were on when we drove through the puddle (we always turn them on when driving), and enough cold water must have splashed back into the lamp assemblies to contact the hot quartz envelopes, causing them to shatter. The low-beam filaments then burned out immediately, and the high-beam ones days later, when I flipped them on after I noticed the low-beams were out. Lesson learned: turn off the headlights and let them cool before fording streams.

Fortunately, I carry spare headlamp bulbs, and we used up both of them today. I will have to order fresh ones to replace the spares; they are 24-volt items and not available in retail stores.

As long as we had the headlamps off, I took the opportunity to replace the 12-volt bulbs in the fog lamp housings (part of the OEM headlamp assemblies) with 24-volt ones, a project that has been languishing in the "to do" box for quite some time, as just getting into the headlamp assembly is a fairly major project (much more so than it should be). These bulbs are more expensive and harder to find than the common 12-volt models, but they have slightly higher wattage, and, more importantly, we have only limited 12-volt circuit breaker capacity in the front wiring box, and moving these to the 24-volt side gives us back some capacity for other 12-volt loads.

I also spent a good deal of time tracing wires, looking for spares to fix our intermittent throttle-position problem, and for the wiring error that has our vehicle speed sensor disabled.

Tomorrow we will call around to see if we can find a welding/sheet metal shop to make us a new exhaust duct and splice it to the muffler, and continue the great wire hunt. I've also found a local source for a drain valve to replace the oil pan plug on the generator -- it's due for an oil change, and I want to get something in place to cut down on the messiness of this operation in the future.

When we first headed toward Tucson over a week ago, we had hoped we would be here a few days and then move on, heading back down to Mexico for a week or so before we had to be in Death Valley. The extra time we spent at Williams, combined with longer visits with our friends here, had pretty much squeezed that down to a slim hope of a quick jaunt back across the border for a few days. With these latest setbacks, Mexico is off the boards, which frees us up to take our time, and spend a few extra days taking care of some of these long-delayed projects.

Speaking of saying goodbye to Mexico, while we were out working on Odyssey, a couple rigs pulled in with Fantasy Tours caravan stickers, so we surmised one of their caravans crossed the border south of here today or maybe yesterday. One of the rigs was missing the entire front left corner from the floor level down to the ground. Everything was gone -- headlight, turn signal, bumper, and whatever compartment was below the driver's feet. I figured him to be having a worse week than we were.

We have at least one more night here at Beaudry, and from there we will play it by ear.

Ahh, back to our preferred mode

We are at a dispersed camping spot in the Coronado National Forest (map). We are several miles down a dirt road north of I-10. Our friend lives several more miles up the road, but this spot was level, open, and easy access for Odyssey.

A good deal of the road was washboard, and there were casualties as several items jiggled their way off the counters. The real challenge, though, was fording a wash perhaps 25' wide with six inches or so of standing water. The bottom was sandy, and, worried that our drive wheels could quickly bog down in the sand, we took a running start at it, which sent water flying everywhere as we plowed through at speed. We made it across OK, and the coach now has a very clean underside. I'm still a bit apprehensive now about making it back across the other way.

We had a nice visit while we were here, and also quite a bit of relaxing time alone, with only the occasional vehicle to disturb the silence and the raw beauty of the nearby Rincon mountains, which are lightly dusted with snow.

Today we will head back to Tucson, where we will stop in at Beaudry RV for parts, and probably to spend the night.

The temporary throttle position sensor wiring. We drove around for two days like this. Classy, huh?


Our neighbor at W.W.Williams. For more about this vehicle, visit http://www.steelwheels4x4.com



Our campsite in the Coronado National Forest. 5 miles down a dirt road and through a forded stream.



Our friend's Airstream on his property, with a gorgeous view of the snow covered mountains.