Down for the count

We are at the Elks lodge in Havre de Grace, Maryland (map).

I was able to pull myself together enough yesterday to drive the 40 miles here from Carney's Point, about two hours with all the traffic lights on US-40. As soon as we got parked, though, I went to bed and crashed. Louise wandered across the street to the Weis grocery store and picked up some meatballs in the deli, and fixed us a nice dinner in. The store came in handy again today when we ran out of decongestant.

I've been wheezing all day, so we are definitely here for another night. I think for a while that Louise was worried I had contracted H1N1, but my symptoms are more those of a cold than any type of influenza (handy chart here from Roche Laboratories). With any luck I will be over this thing by tomorrow and we can get back on the road.

Any port in a storm

We are at the Flying-J in Carney's Point, New Jersey (map), just east of the Delaware Memorial Bridge on US-40/I-295.

After breakfast yesterday my folks headed back down to Brick, and we stuck around New City for another couple of hours waiting on a call-back from U.S. Coach. After I poked them a couple of times, we determined that there would be no word from the supplier on parts availability until much later in the day, and we decided to get underway.

A quick check of Gas Buddy revealed that there was diesel in Cherry Hill, NJ, right on our route, for $2.579, the cheapest we will see until South Carolina, and we stopped there to put in 200 gallons. As always, US-206 through Princeton was something of a slog, but we zipped past most of the rest of the state on Interstates 287 and 295.

By the time we were done fueling, we were ready to stop, and besides, when I called U.S. Coach while fueling we learned it would be another day before we had an answer on the parts. So we called over to the Cherry Hill Wal-Mart to see if we could park there (it was five miles in the wrong direction, and I didn't want to arrive there only to find out that we couldn't). Between the fact that the store is on leased property and could not promise it was OK with the landlord, and the fact that the store was not open 24 hours, we opted to skip it, as Cherry Hill is not exactly in the best part of the state.

Next we called the Elks lodge in Deptford, which was fairly close, but they were having some kind of political fundraiser and could not accommodate us. Even though we did not really want to commit to heading for the Delaware until we heard back from U.S. Coach, in case we would be heading to Vineland instead, we found ourselves with no choice but to head in this direction, where we hoped the Penns Grove Elks could take us, but knew there were several truck stops as a backup.

The Elks Lodge in Penns Grove appeared deserted when we arrived, and it was going to be a tight squeeze to get Odyssey up the driveway into the lot. While I was standing there noodling about how to get in, four police cars converged on some sort of incident half a block away, and we decided this lodge was just not in the cards. It was only another five minutes on city streets to get here to the Flying-J, where we settled in in the car lot -- for some reason, this location has no spaces striped for RVs -- in the company of about four other rigs.

U.S. Coach finally called me back this morning with the bad news: brake parts would have to come from Europe and were on about a five-week lead time. So that clears us to leave New Jersey and we will head over the bridge shortly. In the meantime, however, I have come down with a cold -- I coughed the whole way here yesterday, which I initially though was just my normal allergies acting up. When I woke up this morning, though, I had a handful of other symptoms, and am just generally miserable enough that I don't want to spend a full day on the road.

We don't want to spend another night here at the truck stop, so we've set our sights on the Havre de Grace, Maryland Elks Lodge just 40 miles away. Ironically, we stopped there about this time last year, when Louise had a cold. At least we know it's a nice parking lot that we can easily get into.

Photo by vanherdehaage, used under a Creative Commons license.

Two wipers wiping

We are parked on the street in front of my uncle's house in New City, New York (generic map). Tonight will be our second night in this spot; we've been so busy visiting since we arrived here yesterday afternoon that I've hardly had time to check email, let alone blog.

After leaving Pittsfield Sunday morning, we made our way north on MA-8, following the Hoosic River, swollen from all the rain the previous night. As we made our way through Adams and into North Adams we could see the top of Mount Greylock off to our left and the War Memorial Tower at its summit. I would have liked to stop there, as I have many memories from hiking to the summit annually, but the road is restricted to RVs under 13' long. A couple of the years I summited Greylock the tower was in pieces, dismantled block by block for cleaning and restoration.

In North Adams we turned west on MA-2, still following the progressively more turbulent Hoosic downstream to Williamstown, the very place where NOAA had issued flood warnings for the river the night before. We saw no evidence that the river had overtopped its banks, although some low-lying areas had plenty of standing water.

We lopped off the southwest corner of Vermont on US-7 and VT-346, both continuing along the Hoosic valley into New York and Hoosick Falls where we picked up NY-22. Shortly afterwards our route plans disintegrated, as first NY-372 west from Cambridge, and then CR-61 west into Battenville both turned out to have 11' clearances. NY-372 was at least posted back in Cambridge, even though the obstacle was some nine miles west, in Greenwich. No such luck with CR-61, which crosses a ridge with ~10% grades on both sides. We made it to within sight of NY-29 in Battenville only to have to turn back, climb back over the ridge, and go all the way around to the junction of 22 and 29 in Salem.

We finally found our way to Argyle without knocking anything off the top of Odyssey, arriving at my cousin's place in the early afternoon, just in time for the start of festivities for the annual pumpkin party. We had a great time with my "nephew" (actually first cousin once removed) Joseph and his cousins and friends, taking a hay ride to find pumpkins, carving them, and generally eating too much food. After the guests left and Joseph went to bed, we had a nice evening catching up, followed by a quiet night in their driveway. A tree in their yard blocks our shot to the satellite, so we were off line for the duration of our stay.

Monday was clear, dry, and sunny, so I tackled getting the wiper motor installed while Louise ran back and forth to the house doing laundry; somewhere in all this their dog Simon managed to eat all the leftover cupcakes from the party while Lori was out picking Joseph up from school. I felt a little bad, because the "cupcake incident" happened on our watch, but at least the initial test of the wipers was promising, and I got to call Simon "Cupcake" for the rest of our stay. He had the good sense to look sheepish about it, at least.

The five of us went out for a nice Italian dinner Monday evening, and we said our goodbyes -- we are late risers, and knew we would miss them in the morning as they raced off to work and school. Tuesday morning we got a relatively early start, as often happens when we have no Internet connection, and we made our way to US-4 for the trip south.

With plenty of time on our hands, we opted for the scenic route, taking US-4 south to Albany, where we picked up US-9W. This scenic route follows the west bank of the Hudson through many historic towns and places, including West Point. We did make a brief romp through the Catskills on NY-23A and NY-32 between Catskill and Saugerties, as there is another low clearance on 9W somewhere around Cementon. Other than the one detour, 9W brought us all the way here.

It started raining on us somewhere around Albany, and kept up pretty steadily the rest of the way. The cobbled-together wiper motor performed flawlessly, having run it for a good two hours or so at both jog and steady settings. It's possible that this "temporary" repair might hold us for many more months or even years; the new gearbox housing is certainly beefier than the previous one -- I even had to drill out the mounting holes to the next size, because this one has larger bolts.

My folks drove up here today from Brick, NJ for a visit over dinner; tomorrow we'll all go out for a nice breakfast, then we'll head out in search of warmer climes. I do have a call in to U.S. Coach in Vineland, NJ to see if they can service our brakes, but I have my doubts about whether they can get the parts in any reasonable sort of time frame. We'll see in the morning; if they tell us they can have the parts by Monday, we may hang around this area for a few days, otherwise we will keep moving and try to find someone in the Carolinas or Florida to handle it.

Rainy day project

We are at the Wal-Mart in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (map). Other than the Berkshires as a backdrop and the handful of fall color scattered around the parking lot, we could be anywhere. Around us are Home Depot, Applebees, Barnes & Noble, Fashion Bug, and other various and sundry national chains.

We actually tried to stay much closer to downtown, which has a distinct local flavor, at the Elks lodge. Unfortunately, the lodge does not open until 3pm, and their parking lot is gated; we arrived there just after 1pm, having made a mad dash from Cranwell at the first break in the rain. Even so, we ended up driving through a light drizzle, and depending on the Rain-X to be able to see at all. There was no place to safely wait for the lodge to open; in addition to the disappointment of not staying in town, we also had to drive another four miles in the rain.

Being stuck here in a shopping center parking lot in the rain at least gave me time to work on the wiper motor situation. The steel spindle that comes out of the gearbox rests in a pair of copper alloy sleeve bearings. After studying my broken housing, with its smaller diameter spindle and thus bearings, alongside the intact housing sent to us by our good friend Bryce with its larger spindle, it appeared to me that the outer diameter of our existing bearings were actually very close to the inner diameter of the new bearings.

Having nothing to lose with my irreparable gearbox, I found a ¼"-drive deep socket of about that diameter to use as a drift, and a large 3/8" drive deep socket to support under the housing, and was able to drift the bearings out of the old housing using my trusty engineer hammer. With a few more taps of the hammer I was able to press those bearings inside the larger bearings on the replacement housing, and thus was able to insert my old spindle and ring gear assembly into the newer gearbox. The spindle also required some coaxing from the hammer -- I think the soft bearings deformed slightly when I pressed them in.

Once I had the whole thing reassembled, I hooked it up to a 24-volt circuit with some clip leads, and the spindle is turning as it should. The spindle had to re-seat in the relocated bearings, so I let it run for a good half hour or so; it sped up a bit in the process, which is a good sign that the bearings have seated. While it was spinning around, I walked over to Home Depot for some new mounting bolts -- two of the three that came on it were stripped.

This is still a temporary fix -- since we are reusing the plastic ring gear, which definitely has some abnormal wear near the park position, we can expect the worm gear to start jumping the teeth at some point in the future, especially under the heavy load imposed by sweeping a pair of 28" wipers through more than 90 degrees of arc. Also, the helix of the replacement worm gear is slightly thinner than the old one, so the worm-to-ring mating is not an exact match. Lastly, with nothing staking them in place, the "inner" bearings may move enough in or out to cause excessive shaft wear. But if it holds up under testing, it should be enough to get us somewhere where we can have a new actuator arm machined to fit the larger diameter spindle. I can then either reinstall the proper spindle into this unit (if I can pull those inner bearings without damaging the outer ones), or buy a new assembly from Setra.

This morning the rain has stopped. It rained so much here yesterday that the alarm on the weather radio sounded last night -- there was flooding in nearby Williamstown. Now that I can work outside, it's tempting to get the kludged-together wiper motor installed, but we have plans to visit family in Argyle, NY this afternoon, so we'd rather get an early start. Today is forecast to be dry, so we'll get underway, and try to get the motor in tomorrow sometime.

Photo by Sidereal, used under a Creative Commons license.

Flashback

We are parked at the Cranwell Resort and Spa in Lenox, Massachusetts (map). We arrived here yesterday afternoon after a lovely drive through lots of fall color. We parked just to walk around, but when we explained to the front desk the reason for our visit, they invited us to park in this lower lot overnight.

That reason would be to visit a cherished part of my past. While this property, with its Tudor mansion, myriad outbuildings, and nearly 400 acres of woods, trails, and 18-hole golf course has a long and storied history dating back over a century and a half, it was a preparatory school for boys operated by the Jesuits from 1939 to 1975, the Cranwell School. While I did not attend this school as a student, I did spend six summers here at a summer camp that the Jesuits operated on the property, Camp Cranwell. My last summer here was the year it closed, 34 years ago -- it has now been a resort for nearly as long as it was a school.

It's amazing to me how much of the campus is just the same as the day I left. I lived in three different buildings over the years that I was here, and all three are still here, now converted to luxury hotel rooms. The building that housed the camp administration, used for classrooms during the school year, is also still here, also converted to luxury hotel rooms, along with one of the original houses on the site that, in my day, contained the infirmary among other things, and I spent more than a night there myself.

As long as we were here and well parked for the night, we signed up for a pair of spa day packages yesterday, including a 50-minute massage and a pass for the indoor pool and other facilities. We also had a very nice dinner at the restaurant in the mansion, together making this one of the most expensive "free" parking spaces we've ever had. We were the only guests in the restaurant --most of the guests in the resort last night are attending a conference and so dined in the ballroom, which was the dining hall in my camp days.

It has been a real trip down memory lane, and I am glad we had the chance to stop. We need to be rolling again shortly -- our parking invitation was for one night only -- and we are waiting for a break in the rain. Our goal is the Wal-Mart or Elks lodge in Pittsfield, just a few miles from here, as any break in this rain is likely to be short-lived.

And now for a brief diversion from our regular content here -- most of our readers can skip the rest of this post.

As I have written here before, for reasons known only to the search-algorithm gurus at Google, this blog gets indexed fairly highly in search results. And so I can expect that some number of people will land on this post while searching for memories of Cranwell Preparatory School or Camp Cranwell, and for them I offer the following photos. (If you've arrived here looking for information about the resort, I can't comment on the guest rooms -- although I expect them to be commensurate with the four-diamond rating -- but the restaurant was excellent, the spa is first-rate, and my memories of the golf course, which is much the same today, is that it was a challenging and beautiful course. And it's hard to beat the raw beauty of the campus with its immense grounds.) Click on any photo for a full-size version.

Here is what the mansion looks like today (sorry, this is the most that would fit on my mediocre cell-phone camera, and today is not the best lighting). This is the view from the campus side, and the image at the top of this post is the "front" or street side. When I was here it was known as "Cranwell Hall," the resort calls it simply "the mansion" and it contains guest rooms on the upper floors, and restaurants, meeting facilities, and public rooms on the first floor:



Most Cranwell alums will recognize the well, still here:



My first year, I lived in one of these two buildings, now containing guest rooms. This is a view from the rear, I believe the one on the right was "Loyola" back then. I lived in one of the upstairs rooms with the dorm windows in the building on the left, whose name I have forgotten but I believe it began with a "B":



My second year and one other year I lived in this building, whose name I have also forgotten (but "Helliwel" sticks in my mind). It is now called the Olmsted "cottage" after Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed the grounds (along with the nation's capital as well as my other alma mater, Stanford). The addition of the port-cochere in the front makes it a bit difficult to recognize. This building also now houses the main registration desk:



Here is the building that was the carriage house for the mansion, and was classrooms in my day, also housing the camp administration. Today it houses guest rooms and is known as the Carriage House:



I lived in this building two years, know then as "Founders Hall." Today it retains some of that name, being known as "Founders Cottage" and houses guest rooms and a small lounge. The cornerstone engraved "1963" is still in place:



This building, now known as the Beecher Cottage and housing guest rooms, was faculty residences and other facilities, and I remember spending a couple of nights there in the infirmary, which was on the top floor and was the only thing the camp used in the building:



We seldom used most of the academic buildings at the camp, but I remember one which had, among other things, the science labs, where we had a couple of workshops. I thought the building had been razed, until I realized it was still there, but with a berm of earth piled against it on three sides. This was the only identifiable part of the building, now used as a maintenance shop, that I could capture -- the berm is visible to the left:



I don't remember what this building was, but it was here 35 years ago. Today it is the resort administration:



Lastly, this concrete pedestal is still here in the center of campus. Today there is a gazebo next to it. I remember it as having a bird bath or some such on top:



Fans of the post-modern Pierce Chapel will be sorry to learn that it was razed many years ago, after an unsuccessful attempt to use it as an opera house.

#48

We are at an abandoned Park-and-Ride lot in Windsor, Connecticut (map), just north of Hartford. Our friends Mimi and Rich live literally across the street from this lot, and even though we had scoped out both an Elks lodge and a Wal-Mart in this town, they assured us it was OK to park here and even called the state police ahead of time.

I say "abandoned" because the lot is clearly no longer actively used for Park-and-Ride purposes. We passed several freeway exits on our way here with active lots, and each exit was clearly marked with a blue sign indicating a lot was at the exit, but this exit had no such sign. The bus shelter in this lot is overgrown with weeds, the bench is missing (but its feet are still in place), and there are no route signs; the route number on the lone Park-and-Ride sign just outside of the lot has been covered over. Most telling is that, besides us, the only civilian vehicles here are three cars that have not moved since we arrived yesterday afternoon, one of which has a flat tire and looks to have had its fuel tank siphoned. The state is using this lot to store idle van-pool vehicles, and there are a dozen or so of them neatly lined up in one corner of the lot; none looks to have been moved for many weeks.

We had a nice visit last night with an excellent home-cooked meal and several glasses of wine. It was nice to just be able to walk across the street to get home. Other than the noise from the freeway, which really does not bother us, it was very peaceful and we were undisturbed.

We had a wonderful day yesterday in Newport. It was nearly 70° out, and we pulled the scooters out in the morning and rode around town. We basically did the whole Ocean Drive loop, starting from the Gateway Center, down Thames street with its shops and restaurants, around the harbor and out to Fort Adams, then south to Brenton Point and along the Atlantic shore, past dozens of palatial mansions where we could not even afford the landscaping let alone the heating bills. We circled past the off-limits Elks lodge, which happens to be on the former site of the U.S. Naval Academy to see what we missed -- it would have been only a small challenge to get in there and a great spot within an easy walk of the waterfront, as well as right next door to the UU church; too bad the town has put a stop to parking there.

After our circle tour of the city we stopped back on Thames street -- Newport has conveniently provided free motorcycle parking throughout the area -- and walked out to one of the wharves for a nice lunch. It was a gorgeous day to stroll around the harbor. After lunch a quick trip over the bridge to Goat Island completed our visit, and we headed back to our stealth spot behind the Wal-Mart, loaded the scooters up, and headed out.

We are done with the coast now, having stayed as close as possible from Newport all the way to New London before turning inland on the Hartford Pike. We crossed into Connecticut on US-1 over the Pawcatuck river, with a celebratory yell as this marks our 48th state and we have now filled in our map of the continental US, having been to all of the lower 48 states and the District of Coumbia in Odyssey. US-1 brought us along the Connecticut coast and across the Mystic River (and past Mystic Pizza) in Mystic, but dumped us onto I-95 in Groton as it is the only bridge across the Thames. We just stayed on I-95 through New London for the two miles to CT-85 to Hartford.

From here we will continue north on CT-20 and US-202 until we hit US-20 in Massachusetts, which will bring us to my old summer stomping grounds in the Lenox area. We are hoping the Elks lodge in Pittsfield will have room for us; the directions say to call ahead, but they do not open until 3pm. Backup plans right now are a truck stop in Lee or the Wal-Mart in Pittsfield, but the lodge is our first choice because we may be stuck there a couple of days due to rain.

That's because the wiper motor parts sent by our buddy Bryce, which we picked up here from Mimi and Rich, are not the right ones for our system. Disappointing as that is, I have to say that I am really, really glad that we spent only $15 to have these used parts sent here rather than $300+ for a whole new assembly, given that the mis-match would have happened in either case. Bryce, you saved us a whole bunch of money. Thanks!

Now that we have the other motor on hand and can see the subtle difference (the motor itself and housing look identical, but the spindle is a larger diameter), we've gone back to the photos of the supposedly correct item available from the UK, and that, too, seems to be incorrect for our application. We now need to fall back and re-assess. Next chance I get, I will try to get the actuator arm out and see if there is a machine shop that can either enlarge the spindle hole on this one, or make a new one with the correct size hole for a new motor. Until then, we will have to continue to pick our way through the weather.

Our penultimate state

We are parked behind the Wal-Mart in Newport, Rhode Island (map), our 47th state. Actually, I think we are technically behind the T.J. Maxx next door; this Wal-Mart is in a strip-mall of sorts, and the front lots are actually quite small. We drove around back to the loading docks, and there are dozens of striped spaces here that are completely unused. Back here we were also shielded from most of the looky-loos and it was very quiet, at least until the morning cavalcade of delivery trucks.

Threading our way out of Nickerson Park yesterday was quite a challenge; the trees being low and well into the roadway meant Louise had to get out several times to guide me through without damaging anything on the roof, and still we got several good scrapes on both sides from the branches. It is ironic that we tend to get more such damage in developed sites such as Nickerson than we do in the wilderness, where we are guided by our own sensibilities rather than by one-way park roads and pre-defined parking spaces.

We had a nice, if slow, drive off the cape on MA-28, which was basically a city street most of the way, but became four-lane divided highway after we passed the turn to Woods Hole from Falmouth. Once we crossed the Bourne Bridge and exited to US-6, we were again on a city street, which threads its way through several coastal towns, and becomes particularly slow, narrow, and one-way through New Bedford, after crossing the Acushnet.

Things opened up a little bit west of Dartmouth, and we turned off US-6 in Fall River onto 24, which took us into Rhode Island and across the Sakonnet to Portsmouth. Once on Aquidneck Island, RI-138 brought us all the way to Newport, where we were following directions to the Elks Lodge, which is right downtown and where our guide said there was room for one rig.

Downtown Newport, being a very old city, is riddled with narrow streets and tight corners, and so we were following the lodge's directions to the letter, however, we came upon a road closure, with a police cruiser blocking our way. After turning off onto a side street I called the lodge for alternate directions, only to find they no longer allow RV parking. So we backtracked here, which had been our backup plan in the event there was no room for us at the Elks.

I had hoped to have dinner somewhere on the waterfront last night, but after a long day with some very tense driving toward the end, we decided to just stroll to the 99 restaurant right here in the parking lot. We'll visit the waterfront today; there is a city bus from here, or we might just pull the scooters out. When we are done with that, we will continue west from here, across the bay on the toll bridge, and into Connecticut.

Photo by Providence Public Library, used under a Creative Commons license.

From park to P-town

We are at Nickerson State Park, off Cape Cod Bay between Brewster and Orleans (map). We arrived just before noon yesterday; since the place is mostly empty, the lone agent staffing registration took our money and gave us our choice of spaces on this loop. The park closes for the season at the end of the month, and I think this loop, area 4, is the only one still open.

Getting into the space was a bit dicey -- there are plenty of tree branches on this loop that are lower than our roof -- but we found a spot with enough of a gap in the trees to get on-line. The park is heavily wooded, and mostly still green here, where the fall color is still a couple of weeks away. Once we got settled, we had our lunch and pulled the scooters out.

We noticed that there is a public bus that stops right here at the park and would take us all the way to Provincetown, and we briefly thought about doing that instead. But we wanted to see some of the backroads, and make several stops, and besides, it was a gorgeous day for a ride, with the highest temperatures we've seen in a week.

Our ride took us through the quaint town of Orleans, then to the Cape Cod National Seashore Park Service visitor center at Salt Pond, which has a nice museum of cape area artifacts such as scrimshaw, whalebone kitchen tools, cranberry harvesting equipment, and the inner workings of lighthouses. From there we rode along the Atlantic shore to Nauset Light, where we were forced to return inland.

Not knowing how long some of the side roads would take, we opted to zip directly out to P-town on US-6. Just before the "eastern terminus" of that road (which is actually heading southwest before it ends) we stopped at the "Province Lands" area of the National Seashore, riding out to Race Point and then curving around to Herring Cove. This area is full of sand dunes that the Park Service is scrambling to protect. I remember playing on them some 40 years ago on a family vacation here, though this is no longer allowed.

US-6 ends and MA-6A begins at the Wood End dike, and we continued along 6A to about mid-town or so, just east of the Pilgrim Monument (which we opted not to climb), and then looped back west on Commercial Street. What a fun place -- we could easily spend a few days here, except for the fact that there is absolutely no place to put the bus -- the lone commercial campground in P-town is not really walking distance from most of the town.

I was really too young to remember much of the town from my last visit, but I know it was not the gay mecca then that it is now, notwithstanding the Atlantic House being openly gay-friendly since the 50s. We did pass the area where I think our motel was, which brought back pleasant memories, and a jetty I remember climbing on. This was really the first family vacation that I have conscious memories of.

We continued south on 6A through North Truro all the way to its intersection again with US-6, which we followed for less than a mile before turning off to the west onto a series of back roads through Truro and South Truro, then a section of the National Seashore past the Atwood-Higgins House, and eventually landing us in Wellfleet. That left us time for one more loop out to the Atlantic side on Cahoon Hollow Road and south on Ocean View Drive. When we rejoined US-6 north of the Marconi site we were pretty cold and tired and we headed directly back to the park on the main road.

Shortly after we returned our friends came over from nearby Chatham and took us to dinner at the Lobster Claw in Orleans. We had a wonderful evening catching up over lobster dinners and Boston cream pie. All four of us are Red Cross volunteers, and we compared notes on how inactive the season has been; the last time we saw them was on our last deployment, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Today is another clear and pleasant day, and we will pack up shortly to head off the cape. We arrived here via the northern route on 6A, having come through Barnstable, Yarmouth, and Dennis (the detour from 6A down to Hyannis and back Monday night meant we missed the lone low-clearance railroad bridge on the route, in Barnstable), and so we will leave by the southern route, 28. That will loop us around the Falmouth peninsula, past Woods Hole, and off the island over the Bourne Bridge, whereupon we will again pick up US-6 to take us all the way to Rhode Island.

Photo by wayneandwax, used under a Creative Commons license.

Slaves to the weather

We are at the Elks lodge in Hyannis, Massachusetts (map), on Cape Cod. It is supposed to get up to 60° today, and the sun is shining; it should be a great day to visit the cape.

Sunday I wrote that we'd be pinned down in Concord by rain all day. I was wrong -- we were pinned down by rain only part of the day; the rest of the day, we were pinned down by snow. The rain turned into hail and then wet snow early in the afternoon, and by mid-afternoon it was fluffy dry snow that was sticking on the ground. Other than walking the dog and grilling dinner, we never left the bus, and we were thankful for the 20-amp power outlet, which was enough to keep the batteries topped up, plus run the electric heaters all day. We did need to run the Webasto for a couple of hours in the coldest part of the day.

When we awoke yesterday, the weather was clear and the snow was gone. The view out the window was a fall scene of colorful leaves on the ground -- you couldn't even tell it had snowed. We got a relatively early start, skirting around Boston on the Interstate and getting back to the coast in Quincy. From there we took MA-3A, the most coastal route, all the way to the cape. 3A afforded the occasional view of the water, passing quaint harbors full of recreational and fishing boats. 3A also runs through Plymouth, which was not unexpectedly a tourist trap of a town. We opted not to run the gauntlet to see the rock, which I've done before anyway.

There are only two roads onto Cape Cod. Nature did not intend it, but the cape is really an island, separated from the mainland by the Cape Cod Canal. We crossed the canal on the more northerly Sagamore bridge, then turned onto 6A to follow the north shore. That took us right past the canal visitor center operated by the Corps of Engineers, and we stopped in. The exhibits were mildly interesting; much more so was watching the incredible current in the canal race past us. With tidal bays on either side, the current in the canal changes direction twice a day and is a factor of the tide difference between the bays; tracking and reporting the currents is one of the Corps' full time jobs here.

We decided to spend two nights on the cape, taking the scooters out to explore. While there are a number of over-priced commercial parks further out, many of which are already closed for the season, the most easterly reasonable alternative still open on the cape is Nickerson State Park, another 15 miles east of here. That location is also much closer to our friends, with whom we've arranged to have dinner tonight.

The state park wants $17 per night for a spot with no hookups, and so we decided to spend our first night here in Hyannis, where the Elks lodge is free and has a 15-amp outlet. There was already a rig here when we arrived, though, so we are sharing the single circuit; I have our draw dialed down to 5 amps, which is enough to run the lights, pumps, fridge, and air compressor indefinitely, but we've had to run the Webasto as needed for heat. As a bonus, there is an Olive Garden literally right next door, where we had a nice dinner.

Today we will get an early start, head over to Nickerson, get settled in, and take the scooters out for the tour of the cape. From there it is about a 35 mile ride to Provincetown at the tip, and I expect the round trip will take us all the way to dinner time, when our friends will come over and pick us up at the park.

Pinned down

We are at (you guessed it) an Elks lodge, this time in Concord, Massachusetts (map). Yes, that Concord, the one where, along with neighboring Lexington, the first engagements of the Revolutionary War occurred, where British Regulars had to fall back in the face of the Minutemen.

Nearby is the North Bridge, where Emerson famously wrote in his Concord Hymn that the "shot heard 'round the world" was fired. Speaking of Emerson, this area is generally recognized as the cradle of Transcendentalism. Also near here is Walden Pond and Thoreau's cabin. While we have not done the whole tourist ritual here, we did pass all these places on our way here.

We arrived yesterday in just enough time to unload the scooters and head over to our friends' house, in a wooded area where once Emerson and Thoreau no doubt walked. We had a wonderful afternoon with them, including lunch at 99 restaurant and a nice walk in those same woods. They had a previous engagement for the evening, so we returned to Odyssey for a dinner of various leftovers we'd collected from restaurant meals in the last few days.

We stowed the scooters immediately upon our return in anticipation of rain, and sure enough, it has been raining since we awoke this morning. All of the forecasts and radar images tell us that it will rain the entire day, and, with no working wipers, we are basically pinned down here in Concord until tomorrow. In hindsight, we should have ridden into town last night, just to see it and maybe have dinner, and saved the leftovers for today.

From here we will head back to the coast and out onto Cape Cod. We'd made arrangements to visit some friends in the lower cape tomorrow, but we may have to push that back a bit depending on when we can actually start driving. I will sure be glad to have working wipers again; at this writing, we have parts coming to Connecticut on Tuesday to maybe get them working, and we'll intersect with those parts on Thursday or Friday depending on weather. And a distributor in North Carolina might be getting some brand new motors in on Thursday; if we determine those will fit, we will find a way to have one of those shipped to us as well.

Photo by Darwin Bell, used under a Creative Commons license.

Beantown

We are at the Elks lodge in Medford, Massachusetts (map), in keeping with our current Elks-supported theme. The lodge turns out to be just a few short blocks from our (absent) friend's house; it would have been an easy walk. We stopped by on our way in to pick up our waiting mail.

We had a nice drive Thursday, mostly along the coast. We elected to drive around Cape Ann on route 127 on our way to Gloucester, thinking we'd have some nice views, but mostly it was a narrow and twisty road with no real sight lines. It's a truck route, so at least we could breathe easy about the overhead clearance. The truck route just skirts the outside of Rockport, so we had to be satisfied with a few quick cityscapes.

Gloucester was just as I remembered, a busy seaport with endless whale watching tours, B&B's, and nautically themed restaurants crammed in between commercial fish processors, chandleries, and fishermen working on their boats. The streets are old and narrow, but an endless stream of 53' trailers manages to make it to and from the enormous Gorton's facility, so we had no trouble maneuvering.

Working our way down the coast from there was something of a slog, between some roads not being established truck routes, and the increasing amount of congestion as we drew closer to Boston. Eventually we made it to Revere, where MA-16, the Revere Beach Parkway, brought us inland here to Medford, a close-in north suburb of Boston.

We've both done the whole Boston tourist thing in years past, and I'd been there a dozen or so times for business meetings, so on this visit, where a cold snap has had the temperatures in the 40s, we've pretty much stayed in the bus except for two trips downtown on the scooters for dinner. Thursday night we ate at the Boston College Club atop the Bank of American building, and last night at the University of Massachusetts Club atop 225 Franklin. Both clubs afforded sweeping views out over Boston Harbor and the Charles River, and 225 Franklin has a wonderful view of the Customs Tower. We froze our buns, of course, on the 6-mile ride each way, but we got to pass many Boston landmarks including Faneuil Hall, the Museum of Science, and Boston Garden.

This afternoon we have plans to visit friends in Concord, so we are packing up the coach and will be moving to the Concord Elks Lodge in just a few minutes.

Coastal compromise

We are in Massachusetts, our 46th state, parked at the Elks lodge in Newburyport (map). It had not been our plan, but we seem to be doing the all-Elks tour of coastal New England. Last night we rode the scooter in to town for a nice dinner at the River Merrimac Bar & Grille.

I had hoped last night to be as far as Gloucester, a town I remember fondly, and where I had hopes of perhaps having dinner. Unfortunately, it is now a major challenge to find places to stay. The more touristy coastal towns that even have Wal-Marts have banned overnight stays, many state parks are already closed for the season, and ditto even for many commercial parks, where either Columbus Day or October 15th (or in some cases even sooner) seems to be the canonical closing date.

So as it turns out, the only place we could stay near Gloucester is a commercial park that might not even be open, and even if it was, it's not particularly close to town. In fact, after carefully combing through all our guides and directories, it came down to either stopping here, or continuing all the way past our goal to Salem, where there is a Wal-Mart that is apparently not on the no-no list. Slowing down a bit was also in order, since we have a date with friends in Concord on Saturday afternoon, so there is no rush to be in Beantown sooner than that.

We almost stopped even earlier; we passed a state park in New Hampshire that was right on the beach, and adjacent to a little town with plenty of restaurants and a nice beachfront walk. That would be Hampton Beach State park, at the south end of the town of Hampton Beach, just before the bridge over the harbor channel to Seabrook. As nice as that looked, though, we both decided it was too early to stop, and we knew we'd have some more coastal opportunities later on.

Yesterday we drove mostly down US-1A, which runs along the coast rather than the more inland alignment of US-1. The actual route of US-1A in Portsmouth runs right past the turn from the Elks lodge, but little did we know that somewhere east of us there was a sign detouring trucks around this stretch (we arrived at the lodge from a different direction). So we were taken by surprise when we came to a 6-ton bridge about a mile into it. Fortunately, there was a dive shop right there with enough of a parking lot for me to three-point the bus; about half a mile after we again passed the turn for the lodge we saw clear signs for the truck detour, which agreed with the route we had worked out in the dive shop parking lot.

We encountered no further obstructions and had a lovely drive; the speed limit on the coastal route varies between 25 and 35, which is a pleasant pace to enjoy the coast. Now that it is mid-week and off-season, the tourists are mostly gone and we could enjoy all the little seaside towns in a less frenetic manner. It's easy to imagine what a zoo some of these places must be on a nice summer weekend, though. Coastal tourist towns everywhere, in spite of minor architectural differences, share a common theme of endless motels, vacation rentals, restaurants, and beachfront amusements all with kitschy nautically-themed names. We were reminded a lot of the very beginning of our "perimeter loop" of the U.S. five years ago in New Jersey, also "off season."

Today we will continue hugging the coast, passing through Gloucester, Salem, Marblehead, and Lynn, finally turning inland somewhere around Revere to head to Medford and our waiting mail.

Photo by BGLewandowski, used under a Creative Commons license.

Rude awakening

We are at the Elks lodge in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (map), a lovely lodge right on the water, a small estuarial bay on Sagamore Creek where it empties into the Piscataqua River and then into the Atlantic. It's been a couple of days since I posted here and there is a lot to update.

Monday we continued down US-1 along the Maine coast, with an excursion south on ME-32 along Muscongus Bay to Bremen, where we toured the Maine Cat factory. Co-owner Lynn Vermeulen was a wonderful host, and we spent most of the time aboard a hull that is well along to completion. Frankly, the absence of a completed boat was not really a liability for us -- we actually preferred to see the gritty underside of all the systems and fixtures. We also got a good look at how they lay their glass up and the joinery details as we viewed three other hulls in various stages of construction.

While there are certainly some modifications we would have to make to suit our lifestyle and tastes, we thought the boat was a good fit for us and is now among the front runners in our search. The boats that are launching in the next year or so will be the ones we will be looking at on the used market four or five years from now, when we are ready to buy. All four of the boats we saw in the shop are already sold; hull #2, which is the lone complete boat in inventory, is heading to the Bahamas for charter, and our next step with this boat will be to try to book a charter at some point while she is still available. (We don't want hull #2, or #1 for that matter, as they are both 12-volt boats; we prefer 24 volts, which is what all the current and future production will be.)

By the time we returned to US-1 it was late afternoon, and we started looking at our overnight options. Since our fuel level by this time had dropped to the point where we could no longer run the heater, and the overnight temperatures have been dropping into the low 40s, we knew we'd either need to fuel up, or find power. Since we also knew that diesel would drop another $0.15 when we crossed into New Hampshire, a cheap power outlet would be ideal. We also knew it would rain most of the day Tuesday, and we needed a spot where we could spend two nights if we needed to, since the wipers are still out of service. That ruled out most of the convenient free options such as L.L. Bean, Wal-Mart, or Cabela's.

The Portland, Maine Elks Lodge fit the bill perfectly, with 30-amp power for $10, and we dialed that in to the GPS. On our way, we traveled through Newcastle and Bath, reminding us exactly why this area is called New England (we did not bring coals to Newcastle, nor did we bathe in Bath). Shortly after Brunswick, US-1 travels immediately alongside I-295 all the way to Portland, and Jill-the-GPS kept trying to put us on the freeway, but we held fast to our route.

That took us right through downtown Freeport, where we had briefly considered staying at the L. L. Bean flagship store, which is open 24 hours and allows overnight RV parking, so we could stroll the downtown and window shop. As it turned out, there was no need -- there is a major pedestrian crosswalk every half block, and on Columbus Day, the town was packed to the gills with shoppers. We crawled through town at 5mph, stopping at each and every crosswalk, sometimes for a good half minute or so -- Odyssey tends to have the effect of actually slowing people down as they cross the street. We feel like we got the whole Freeport experience just driving through town.

In another fifteen minutes or so we came to Yarmouth and the DeLorme headquarters, home to Eartha, the world's largest revolving globe, as well as a retail store showcasing not only all of DeLorme's products, but also map-related paraphernalia of every description. We make extensive use of DeLorme's Atlas and Gazetteer products, as well as Street Atlas USA, but still we could find nothing we needed in the store. We did enjoy seeing the giant globe, though, from each of the three floors of the building.



We arrived in Portland with plenty of daylight to find the lodge (map), which is right across from the airport. Despite having at least six 30-amp spaces, we were the only rig in the enormous lot. After briefly being social when we went into the lodge to make our donation, we pulled a lone scooter out and rode the mile or so to Espo's Italian Bistro for a nice dinner, stowing the scooter upon our return in anticipation of the rain.

Rain it did, all Tuesday morning. I used the time to continue working on finding a replacement wiper motor, a goose chase that has taken me down many dead ends. I stayed focused on that, to the exclusion even of blogging, until 1pm, when reader David arrived as previously arranged for a brief visit. David has been providing us with lots of local information about Maine, and he came through again by letting us know that the new Cabela's across town in Scarborough had a free dump station. We had a nice visit, spanning nearly two hours. By this time, the rain had stopped completely.

We decided to make a dash for it since the rain was done. The Cabela's turned out to be on the most direct route out of town, and we stopped to empty our tanks as well as do the requisite amount of browsing. Again we found nothing we needed, but did spend half an hour in the store. They have generous RV and Truck parking spaces, along with the dump station, potable water, kennel cages, and even a horse corral. A lone small sign in the opposite corner of the lot, which is allocated to park-and-ride use, says that overnight parking is prohibited by city ordinance. I am guessing this is not enforced in the RV area of the lot, but I can't be sure since we did not attempt to stay.

By the time we rolled out of Cabela's it was getting pretty late, owing mostly to the late start and the last-minute decision to get rolling rather than spend another night in Portland. We knew we needed fuel before we stopped for the night (or else another power outlet), and we opted to skip the coastal loops through Kennebunkport and York in favor of staying on US-1 and making New Hampshire in the daylight. My web resources indicated $2.52 diesel at a place called Hanscom's Truck Stop (aka Buzzys Bypass Gas) on US-1A just past the bridge.

We had hoped to cross the Piscataqua on US-1, however the bridge is posted at 10 tons -- but not until you're almost on it. We took the truck U-turn and had to widget our way through Kittery to find an alternate route. US-1A, aka the bypass, is posted at 20 tons, leaving I-95 as the only legal way to cross the river. Suffice it to say we went all the way around the mulberry bush to find our way across and then to the truck stop, wherein it became apparent why they have the cheapest fuel in town -- they need the customers. It seems the bypass weight limit was just lowered back in June due to the deteriorating condition of the bridge, and now Hanscoms is a very inconvenient detour for the trucks, where previously it was a simple matter to stop before or after crossing the bridge.

Finding our way from the truck stop to the Elks lodge was similarly challenging, bringing "you can't get there from here" immediately to mind. The GPS wanted to take us all over town, and the directions in the guide tried to turn us on a street that did not cross at grade level. We eventually had to pull into a parking lot and call the lodge for directions. Good thing -- we'd never have found it otherwise, with both the geocoding and printed directions being wrong.

The bartender gave us explicit directions on where to park, and we have a nice view of the water out our windows. Last night turned out to be lodge meeting night, and we sat in the bar for a good hour chatting with the ER (the chief officer of a lodge), the Secretary, and a couple of other officers, all of whom clearly knew we were here and would be staying until noon or so. It's uncharacteristic of us to call a lodge ahead of time, or to spend so much time chatting (usually the lodges are too smoky for us), but it was a congenial group.

So it was extremely annoying when someone pounded on our door at quarter to eight this morning to tell us there was a big meeting at 9am and they would need the whole parking lot. Harumph. I explained that the time to tell us that was when we asked permission to park, before we even arrived, not at oh-dark-early in the morning. He mumbled something about the bartender having failed to notify him, and I pointed out that we had spoken not only to the bartender, but to the ER himself. That pretty much left him speechless -- all he could say was "well, I thought you should know." I closed the window and went back to bed. I was too groggy to have thought to ask why he wasn't at the meeting last night, which would really have put a finer point on it.

Sure enough, the entire lot filled at 9, and a handful of cars had to park creatively. Frankly, I don't think the five spaces we are taking up would have made that much difference, and it certainly wasn't a hardship for anyone. Whatever kind of meeting it was did not last even an hour, as the first cars started leaving before 10. The lot is once again nearly empty, and we are left to enjoy our view of the water in peace on this bright sunny day.

Today we will continue down the coast and into Massachusetts, which will be Odyssey's 46th state. We'll curve around the coast through Gloucester, with an eventual goal of Concord, where we will visit with friends, and Medford, where our mail is waiting. We had our mail sent to a friend there, as well, but she left this morning for New Orleans, and so the mail is with a neighbor, and we are very sorry to have missed her.

We are trying now to remain in cell phone coverage and within a day's drive of a major airport. We learned on Monday that Louise's dad has been hospitalized in Hong Kong; they were on a cruise when a previous condition was complicated by cold/flu and sent him to the infirmary. The ship's doctor was taking no chances, and so he is in ICU ashore, thus ending their cruise. We don't really expect further complications, but if they need assistance Louise is ready to go, and I am prepared to move the bus to warmer climes solo.

West of Down East

We are at the Elks lodge in Rockland, Maine (map). Having rounded Penobscot Bay (crossing the narrows on the whizzy new bridge -- had we known the observatory was open, we might have stopped), we are in the strictest sense no longer "down east."

The drive down US-1 was lovely, although most of the towns along this stretch are very touristy, and yesterday being Sunday of, for many, a three-day weekend, the streets were packed. We might well have gone all the way to Freeport yesterday, where we are told the L.L. Bean flagship store allows overnight parking, save for the fact that we hoped to make a stop today in Bremen to see the Maine Cat factory.

After we got settled in here and hooked up to the 20-amp power, we pulled the scooters out, then started in on re-mounting the wiper motor. My bang-up J-B Weld job lasted about eight swipes before it gave out and the wipers came to a grinding halt. It was worth a try -- I only hoped to squeeze a week or so out of it until a replacement can be found. We pulled the motor back out and I installed a 4" round cover plate for a water-tight electrical box over the hole -- a perfect fit, and the gasket that comes with the cover plate will keep the moisture out until the project is complete, when I will use caulk for a more permanent seal.

Once we had that mess put away, we rode the mile back into town for dinner, at the casual and mostly local Rockland Cafe right on Main street. I was able to get my Maine lobster craving out of my system; a complete lobster dinner was $17. It is good to remind myself periodically that lobsters, as tasty as they are, are hardly worth the effort to extract the meat. I try to stick to tails, where the meat-per-effort is much higher (and someone else extracts the rest of the lobster into soup or salad or whatever).

This morning I heard from the Maine Cat people; they are indeed open today and we will stop by their plant in Bremen where four P-47 power cats are under construction. The lone completed boat in their inventory is en route between the Annapolis and Ft. Lauderdale shows. We are seriously considering a trawler-style catamaran when we transition from bus to boat in a number of years, and the Maine Cat is one of the few that appears to have the features we want; as long as we were driving virtually right past, we thought it was worth a stop to see how they're built.

After our detour to Bremen we will continue southwest toward Portland.

Acadiana

We are at the Elks lodge in Ellsworth, Maine (map), a dozen miles north of Mount Desert Island (referred to by locals as "MDI"), home to Acadia National Park.

Friday we had a beautiful drive from Cobscook Bay, turning south off US-1 onto ME-189 and heading to West Quoddy Head, which despite the name is actually the easternmost point in the United States (East Quoddy Head is in Canada, on the other side of the channel). After spending some time at the lighthouse and museum in the state park there, where the admission fee ($3 for non-residents) is collected on the honor system in an iron ranger, we also stopped at the "easternmost gift shop" a few miles west, to purchase a pin commemorating the achievement.

From there we continued west on ME-191, which disappointingly offered only an occasional glimpse of the coast -- hardly worth the bouncing and twisting. We stayed on US-1 all the way to Ellsworth, and were on Bar Harbor Road south to MDI by 4:00. Unfortunately, even though it's only ten miles, we did not arrive on the island until 5:00, because one-way traffic control due to road construction had traffic backed up five miles.

We stopped at the National Park visitor center, which was closed but had maps available. Good thing -- we learned on the map that the park road runs under several low bridges. The campground, though, was accessible via State Route 3, and so we widgeted our way through downtown Bar Harbor and then south to Blackwoods Campground, where a very rude and imperious camp host simply turned us away at the gate. We were prepared for this possibility -- there is nominally a 35' length limit and 11'8' height limit -- but it was aggravating the way it was presented. This is only the third time we've been turned away at a National Park campground, regardless of limits (the other two were Mather at the south rim of the Grand Canyon, and one of the concessionaire-operated campgrounds in Yellowstone). It's particularly annoying, as I wrote about Mather, since a 35' trailer behind a 20' truck or car is permitted without hassle, but our 39' coach is not, yet we require 16' less space.

Oh well. We worked our way back north on the other side of the island, past the picturesque Northeast Harbor, and back here to the Elks, where we are the only rig in the back parking lot. We walked right next door to Luigi's restaurant for a nice dinner, and yesterday morning we unloaded the scooters so that we could explore the park.

First stop was breakfast at Martha's Diner here in Ellsworth, a little hole in the wall recommended by blog reader and fellow bus and trawler enthusiast Paul, where we had fantastic fresh crab omelets.



After breakfast, Louise returned to town with two week's worth of laundry, while I set to reassembling the wiper motor and replacing the anemometer, which we snapped off on a low tree on the island. That used up my last replacement anemometer, and I've heard that Somfy has discontinued these, so I am not sure what I will do about getting another spare.

In the afternoon we rode the entire Park Loop Road, stopping at several overlooks and the Jordan Pond House, where we could warm up by the wood stove -- it was in the 40s for our ride, with a brisk wind. After we completed the loop we headed into Bar Harbor for dinner. We rode around the entire town, which is pretty much the tourist trap one might expect, not much different from Duval Street on Key West, Fisherman's Wharf in SF or Monterey, or Mackinac Island. On a Saturday night the place was packed with pedestrians, and every boarding establishment we passed on-island had its "No Vacancy" sign out. To make matters worse, two giant cruise ships were anchored in the bay, a Norwegian and a Princess, disgorging some 10,000 additional people into town; at least by dinner time most had returned to their ships.

Nevertheless, we could not get a table at any of the nicer joints in town, most of which have maybe a dozen tables and are fully reserved well before dinner time, but the Mache Bistro at the edge of town allows open seating at the bar, and we were lucky to get two seats together for a very tasty meal in traditional French style. We now feel like we've had the Bar Harbor experience and our fill of the park, and we are done on MDI.

Today we will continue southwest along the Maine coast.

Down East

We are at the Cobscook Bay State Park (map), off US-1 just north of Whiting, Maine. We have a lovely site right on the water, which right here is Whiting Bay. Whiting Bay empties into Cobscook Bay, which in turn empties into the Bay of Fundy.

When I say "empties," boy does it empty. The tidal swing here is 24'; we arrived near high tide and the water came right up to the edge of our site; at low tide the shoreline is several hundred feet away. In between extremes, you can actually see the current as the water rushes in or out; just a couple of miles from here (as the crow flies; it's a very long drive around the end of the bay) is a spot called "reversing falls" where the incoming or outgoing tide flows over a bar, creating a waterfall that changes direction with the tide.

The park is very wooded, and the fall color here is just past peak, so we are surrounded by yellow and orange, as well as a bit of green and some bare trees. The waterfront sites have a good shot to the satellite, though. When we arrived the host thought we wouldn't fit (the park supposedly has a 35' limit), but offered us to try for this site, #4, with a backup site that was not on the water. As usual, hosts are terrible judges of size and distance; Louise paced the whole campground and there isn't a site here that we couldn't get into; the backup site they offered us was over 200' long; we could have parked five buses there in a row.

US-1 here is now the Down East and Acadia scenic byway, and we've seen signs to that effect since turning southwest at Perry, near the mouth of the St. Croix River. Our drive south from Houlton was colorful and afforded an occasional glimpse of the river. Now that we are on the coast, we are officially "down east." Today we will continue along the coast, with some diversions from US-1 to more coastal roads, until we reach Ellsworth, where we will turn south and head to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island. It is the Friday before Columbus Day weekend, and we have our fingers crossed that we can still get a site in the lone campground still open in the park. We also have our fingers crosses that the rain holds off, as forecast, until our arrival, as we now have no working wipers.

Reader assistance - wiper motor

Well, here is the update on the windshield wiper situation, and it is not good. To make a long story short, we need either an entire motor assembly, or at least the gear housing and the ring gear, and finding either of those is going to be a challenge, which is why I am posting here for help. Read on to find out exactly what we need. If you've arrived directly at this post, for example by following a link from my frantic plea on one of the bus boards, you may want to read yesterday's post for the background on how this came about, along with a photo of the wiper motor installation from when the dashboard was out of the bus.

Let me start by saying that, despite many apprehensions about drilling a giant hole in the front of the bus, this turned out to be exactly the right thing to do. I was very focused on the job at hand, and did not take time to photograph the process until well after the motor was out, but here is what the front of the bus looks like, minus the fiberglass trim that extends from just above the 'roo bars to above the wipers:



We've cleaned the area around the hole with alcohol in preparation for taping it over temporarily to keep the elements out; the fiberglass trim will keep it out of direct wind pressure while driving. I drilled a small test hole first, then used a wire probe to determine I needed to go up half an inch to clear the lower steel tube, and left half an inch to get the spindle mostly centered in the hole. My second test hole was spot-on, and I followed up with the three inch hole saw. The resulting hole got me clear access to the spindle pinch bolt as well as the three mounting bolts for the motor assembly:



You can just see the passenger-side actuator arm across the hole, and the pinch clamp at the very top. Along the bottom next to the square steel tube is a piece of armored electrical cable for one of the 120-vac outlets in the cockpit.

Once I had a 3" hole, I could watch what was happening as the motor ran -- we could get the wipers to do a single pass if we lifted them slightly first. That showed me that the spindle was moving laterally quite a bit, rather than just rotating -- not good.

Removing the whole motor revealed that the cast metal gear box housing -- really just pot metal -- was cracked almost all the way through at the cast-in gussets. This sort of pot-metal casting generally can not be repaired; any attempt to weld it would just end up destroying it. Here is a photo of the motor assembly; the shiny light gray material you can see on the cast housing that looks like plastic is actually J-B Weld -- I am hoping I can squeeze another few dozen swipes out of the thing this way:



I'm sorry the flash reflection obliterated the snazzy Mercedes logo immediately to the left of the part number on the silver sticker. Conspicuously absent from this photo is the spindle itself; that's because, having nothing further to lose, I disassembled the gear box and removed the spindle and ring gear assembly. You can see the extensive cracking of the housing from inside; I've tried to highlight just outside of the cracks in red to show where they are:



The three-pointed "star" shape is the result of the cracks traveling around the outside of the cast gussetts in the housing, visible in the previous photo. (As always, click any photo to enlarge.) Harder to see in that photo, after my hack-job with the J-B Weld, is that the gussets themselves are also cracked all the way through, adjacent to the spindle sleeve.

Once the housing was cracked far enough, it was only a matter of time before the steel worm gear on the left in the above photo started slipping against the plastic ring gear, and the gear started to strip at the point of maximum stress, which is at the "parked" position. If you look closely, you can see the worn-down teeth at the very top of the gear in this photo:



I am hoping that once the J-B Weld sets, the housing will stay together enough for me to tighten the gear down far enough (there is a pressure set-screw on the backing plate) that the worm gear will no longer slip against those worn teeth. It won't last long -- those teeth are just nubs now.

So what I need now is either a whole motor assembly, as shown in the third photo above, or the cast housing plus the ring gear. My Neoplan parts manual shows an exploded diagram of the assembly, with separate numbers for the gear/spindle as well as the housing, although I can't quite make those numbers out (nor would they really be useful -- they are Neoplan-specific). Getting just the housing and ring gear would be ideal, as there is nothing at all wrong with the motor itself.

I suspect, though, that I will have to buy a whole assembly. Despite the Mercedes logo and part numbers, the motor assembly is actually made by "SWF," who makes wiper systems for most of the major European brands. This exact motor assembly goes by several part numbers:

• DB 0018243001
• DB 0018241501
• 0018243001 SWF
• 0018241501 SWF
• 0018243001
  
• 0018241501
• SWF 401.729
• SWF 402.308
• SWMV 401.729
• SWMV 402.308

In addition to being used extensively by Neoplan in many coaches of my era, including the Spaceliner, Cityliner, Jetliner, and Skyliner, this was also the stock wiper motor on the Mercedes o-303 coach, common in Europe.

So here is my plea: if anyone reading this has a source for either the motor assembly or the parts, contact me as soon as possible. The Neoplan parts distributor here in the U.S. can no longer source this, and if they could, it would be close to $600. We've seen at least one European firm selling them aftermarket, but they do not seem to ship to the U.S.

In a perfect world, I would find one of these used, with perhaps a blown motor, from which I could at least salvage the requisite parts.

Tomorrow we will return to our regular programming, wherein I will post an update on our position and travel status, which now involves moving only when it is not raining.

On hold in Houlton

We are at the Wal-Mart on US-1 in Houlton, Maine (map), adjacent to the northern terminus of I-95 and just 40 miles or so from where we started the day in Presque Isle. This is an unplanned stop (well, all our stops are mostly unplanned, but we intended to be much further south this evening).

It's been raining on and off since we arrived in New England (and we are very thankful to have our leaks mostly fixed now), and today has been full-on rain since we left Presque Isle. I've been alternating the wipers between full-time low speed, and the "jog" setting which wipes once every five seconds (not adjustable, unfortunately). About five miles north of here, the wipers quit -- we could hear the motor straining against something, but no movement -- and we had to pull over. Fortunately, we knew there would be both a Wal-Mart and a Flying-J branded Irving Oil truck stop here in Houlton, and, after giving the windshield a good clearing off, we made a run for it.

The last time the wipers acted up was en route to Infinity Coach back in November of 2002, on our way to the big retrofit. That time, the motor mounting bolts had worked loose, and we discovered there is really no tool access to the place the motor was mounted. I was able to get the bolts back in finger-tight and we pressed on, but actually fixing the situation had to wait until deep in the restoration project, when we had the dashboard completely out.

This time the problem is not as simple as loose bolts. Either the actuator arm is sticking for part of its travel, or the right-angle gear box from the motor has some sort of internal problem. In either case, I will need to be able to get to the actuator pinch bolt for sure, and likely the three mounting bolts as well to remove the motor/gearbox assembly -- there's realy no way to get into the gearbox while it's buried back in the dashboard.


(Click to enlarge)

Unfortunately, it looks as if the only way to have enough access from inside the bus will be to once again remove the entire dashboard. That would involve first disconnecting all the instruments and switches (and labeling anything not yet labeled), then removing them, then removing the instrument cluster itself, disconnecting all the heater ducts, and finally removing the dashboard which is held in with a couple dozen screws. I remember what it took to get it all put together, and I have to guess it would take me several hours to disassemble, and several more to reassemble -- maybe a dozen hours just to access the wiper motor assembly.

The reality is that the motor is just an inch inside the sheet metal of the nose of the bus, though, and we've decided it will be quicker to cut an access port to it from the outside. That will involve first removing the fiberglass trim that covers the wipers, which will also hide any ugly access covers when it is reinstalled. I will then have to make a best estimate of where the spindle is located (there's really no way to make accurate measurements from any landmarks behind the dash), and cut through the skin with my 3" hole saw.

If I get the hole in just the right place, I should be able to easily access both the spindle and its pinch bolt as well as the three mounting bolts. If all goes well, I will be able to cover the hole when I am done with a standard 3" stainless "cleanout cover" from a plumbing supply, sealed with some caulk.

We can't drive in this rain without the wipers, and neither do I want to stand outside in the pouring rain removing trim and drilling holes, not to mention the water that will come in to the cockpit while I am working. So we will just settle in here for the night; the rain is supposed to stop by 11 tomorrow, and I will get to work. Until I get in there, I can't tell if this is something I can fix myself, or if we will be ordering a gearbox or maybe a whole motor assembly from the Neoplan parts guys in England. If its the latter, we will be limited to driving in dry weather until we can get parts, which should be an interesting challenge.

Having arrived here early in the afternoon, we wandered across the street to the Maine Visitors Center, where we found Pluto, having had a nice romp through the rest of the solar system on our drive down from Presque Isle. I confess that I knew about this large-scale model, but had forgotten all about it or that it was here in this part of Maine. In fact, when we whizzed past Jupiter early in the day, I just thought it was a piece of roadside modern art, albeit in a strange place, and it was not until we passed a very distinct Saturn that I realized what it was. I'm sorry we were not paying more attention when we left Presque Isle, as we clearly raced past the four innermost planets without realizing it.

In a few minutes, we will wander across a different street to the Irving truck stop for dinner, the lone option within an easy walk.

Traffic light photo by jamelah, used under a Creative Commons license.