Back in the warmth

We are back in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where we seemed to have spent a great deal of time about a year ago. And again I must apologize for not keeping up with the blog -- I'm not sure why, but I just have not found the time to post.

We are here because we are leaving tomorrow on another Caribbean cruise, where we will do some scuba diving in the Caymans, Cozumel, and perhaps Honduras. We will return next Saturday. Odyssey is well-parked at the home of some friends here; ironically, they are away at a bus rally this weekend, but the neighbors are not only watching the bus, but also taking care of our pets.

We had a great time at the wedding celebration of our good friends Robert and Linda in California. In the couple of days before the wedding we managed to squeeze in visits with a very few friends who were convenient to our lodgings, and we are grateful to our friends Martin and Steph for putting us up the night before the wedding, and schlepping us to and from Oakland as well as to our final hotel at San Francisco Airport. We all stayed in Oakland at the lovely Waterfront Hotel in Jack London Square with the bride and groom the night of the party, so that we could all enjoy as many libations as we desired. I'm pretty sure we were all hung over at brunch the next morning. We have perhaps two dozen friends in common with the happy couple, and we got to catch up with many of them during the course of the party.

4am came all too early Monday morning, but we made it to the airport in plenty of time, and our flight into Charlotte was early, affording us time for a meal in the airport on an otherwise tight connection to Tampa. We made it to Tampa in plenty of time to make it to the kennel before closing, so we had all the pets back aboard by the time we crashed into bed exhausted. Again many thanks to our friend Niles for not only providing us a place to park, but also hauling our pets to and from the kennel and our own selves to and from the airport.

We wanted to arrive here in Fort Lauderdale not only in plenty of time to get parked, packed, and squared away for our cruise, but also with enough time to take a quick refresher dive with Doug, an instructor we like. He happened to have an Open Water class scheduled into the pool at the Pompano Aquatic Center on Wednesday evening, and so that meant just two days to get here. We left Tampa Tuesday morning for Punta Gorda, where we had a pleasant afternoon and lovely dinner with our friends Pam and Di, who graciously allowed us to park overnight in their driveway.

The most direct route from there to here goes through Immokalee, where the Seminole tribe operates a casino, and we stopped there for lunch Wednesday to check it out. Security told us that overnight parking is available so long as the casino is not overly busy, so it is best to call ahead for permission. They want RV's at the far edge of the lot east of the casino, where the charter buses park. Lunch in the grill was passable, if a bit smoky as it is open to the casino floor. We also parlayed $25 in free slot play into $20 in cash when we signed up for the players' club. On top of the $5 apiece in discounts just for joining, lunch ended up being free.

We arrived here in just enough time to get set up, get our wet suits out, and pull the scooters out to ride the 15 miles to Pompano, a 40-minute ride. We were requested to be there at 5:30 for a 6pm class, which ran all the way to 10pm. We spent at least two hours under water, and it was an excellent refresher. We even learned some new skills that our original instructor had omitted from our initial certification class, and we now feel well-prepared for our first dive in the Caymans on Monday.

By the time we finished rinsing the gear and doing logs and paperwork, it was past 11, and we struggled to find someplace open for a light bite that would serve as dinner. As long as we were already nearby, we also swung by the Isle Casino and Racing at Pompano Park to check out the parking status there. My friend in the PR department at Isle Casinos HQ had alerted me several months ago that the casino no longer allowed overnight parking, and we had called on our way into town, too, since parking there would have been very convenient for our refresher class.

Security told us that there was no longer any truck or RV parking allowed, confirming what we had already been told, but we wanted to see for ourselves, as often the actual enforcement is different than stated policy. Sure enough, though, the large gravel lot formerly used for the purpose was now empty, and the painted sign for "RV Parking" near the lot has been painted over -- Isle Pompano is no longer a parking option. It's a shame, really, because it was a great spot, and the casino has several good restaurants. We had a nice holiday meal there last year, and would have done so again if not for the no parking policy. Now none of the three casinos in Fort Lauderdale allows RV parking. Neither HQ nor security could tell me the reason for the new policy, although it is clear it has nothing to do with available space -- the gravel lot is not being used, and the huge paved lot is never full.

A late night Wednesday meant a late morning yesterday. Plus, we are still jet-lagged from our jaunt to the west coast. When we finally dragged ourselves out of bed, the weight of deferred errands was upon us, and Louise scootered off to the laundromat so we'd have clothes for the cruise. I, in turn, put my grubbies on and crawled under the bus to install the replacement tag axle air hose.

Reader Phil requested photos of the repair, and so here they are. For starters, getting to the hose in question involves squeezing my upper body in between the drive and tag axles, which in turn involves rolling the interceding mud flap up and out of the way:



Here are the hoses in question. The one on the top is, of course, the new hose, which is actually hydraulic hose. Below it is the old hose, with the "T" attached at the far right end (not in the correct orientation, though -- it was just to keep it from getting lost). The dark spot about a third of the way from the left is the blowout:



Here is the left side axle lock cylinder, shown from the front. The loose hose is the supply line for both lock cylinders; while the damaged hose and tee were out, I simply connected this line to the left cylinder, so at least we would not dump all our air when I put it in reverse:



And here is the new hose installed. You can see the tee in place connecting the supply hose, the left cylinder, and the new hose, which runs across the A-frame, through a clamp, and on to the right side lock cylinder. While the hose was out, I had a piece of vinyl kitchen wrap over the input to the right cylinder and secured with twist-tie to keep the dirt out of the fitting.



You can see in this photo that the hose is actually resting on the A-frame. The hose needs enough slack to allow the A-frame to pivot through its full range of motion without binding or putting a strain on the fittings at the cylinders, so in some positions of the suspension travel there will be contact like this. I think the hose ruptured at such a contact point, not from suspension travel but rather just vibration. After 25 years the cloth-reinforced rubber was brittle, and 150,000 miles of vibration wore it through to the point where 120psi ruptured it. I expect this hydraulic hose to last the remaining life of the bus.

I also spent some time on the ladder inspecting and re-sealing some left side marker lamps at the upper rear of the coach. We've been getting some water in that area when it rains, and the lights stopped working a couple weeks ago. I did find a missing screw and some corrosion up there, so I am hoping the liberal dose of lap sealant I put on after removing the lights and cleaning everything will cure the leak. One or both of the LED lamps also now needs to be replaced, but they are a special order item.

Today's chore, in addition to catching up here on the blog, is to pack for our departure tomorrow. The ship does not leave until 5pm, but we try to be among the first to board. We'll probably just call a cab to take us to the pier. I had thought that we might spend half a day today at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show, which just happens to be going on this weekend, but after reviewing the exhibitor list, I could not find even a single boat in the show that we are interested in seeing.

I do not expect to have Internet access beyond tomorrow morning, so this will probably be my last post until we return next weekend.

Greetings from California

We are at the Hampton Inn in downtown Mountain View, California. It's an odd feeling being in a hotel here in our old stomping grounds.

We had a short and uneventful drive Monday down US-41 to the outskirts of Tampa. After getting Odyssey well parked and squared away at our friend's place, we pulled the scooters out, and I rode across town to the ParkerStore to see if they could make us an air hose. As it turned out, I got the last two 14mm metric flare fittings they had in stock, but they had to make the assembly with hydraulic hose instead of air hose. The finished assembly cost just $36, which I am certain is way less than it would have cost to order the factory hose from Germany.

I was hoping to have time Tuesday to try to install the new hose, but between packing for the trip, getting some eBay items ready to ship, and two trips to the post office, I never got to it. I'll have to do it when we get back to Tampa, as I want to get it installed before we get too far from the hose shop. We had nice dinners with our friend Niles both evenings.

Yesterday was an early morning for us, as we had 8am appointments for all three pets at the vet across town from where we parked. Niles was very kind to come in early and drive us all over to the vet, then sit around through our appointment to drive us to the airport. The pets are in good hands, and between Opal's advanced age and concomitant problems and George's renal condition, we are happy they are kenneled at a vet rather than elsewhere.

Our flights were uneventful and we were lucky enough to have one of the two or three empty seats on the plane in between us on the longer segment from Charlotte to San Francisco. That flight was delayed 50 minutes and landed half an hour late, so we ended up taking a Super Shuttle to the hotel rather than the planned BART/CalTrain route.

We'll be here in California through Sunday night. Our friends are getting married Saturday and we'll be in Oakland that night at a nice hotel in Jack London Square. Since our return flight leaves San Francisco at 6am Monday, we'll spend Sunday night at a hotel near the airport with a free shuttle. Other than the one night in Oakland all our hotel stays are on my Hilton points, which we seem to use up this way at about the same rate we earn them on our credit cards.

We'll probably have Internet access for most of our stay, but we've got so many quick visits planned for our very short stay here that I do not expect to post here again until we return to Tampa late Monday evening.

The saga continues

This seems to be our week/month/quarter for problems. Those tired of hearing me write about them should probably just skip the rest of this post, unless you really need to know where we've stayed the last couple of nights.

As I wrote in my last post, we did indeed depart the Charleston Elks Lodge on Friday afternoon, and headed towards Savannah. Somewhere about half an hour or so into our drive, the master Low Air warning came on, which is never good. A quick check of the two brake gauges revealed plenty of pressure in the brake system, and holding steady, so we did not panic, but we did begin looking for a place to pull over. Unfortunately, US-17 is narrow with no turn-outs, and between not wanting to use the brakes at all while hunting, and keeping an eye on the gauges, we managed to nurse it to a business parking lot somewhere near Seabrook, SC.

As soon as we slowed down to maneuvering speed, the low air light went out, the door tightened up, and the suspension, which had begun to sag after perhaps 15 minutes of driving this way started to firm back up. I attributed it to a governor problem, since clearly the compressor, once it was signaled to compress, was working fine. I was guessing the the brake applications for maneuvering were causing the governor to again call for air, though this seemed strange. We could find no leaks or problems in a walk-around, and with air pressure back up to normal, we continued on our way.

Shortly after reaching highway speed again, the master air alarm once again began ringing and we had the same situation as earlier, with good pressure in both brake systems, but air leaking down from the auxiliary system which runs the door and suspension. With the brakes holding rock steady near 100psi, we again continued on to find a safe place to stop. Once again when we slowed down, the compressor came back on and we very rapidly had full pressure in all systems.

Judging the situation to be an annoyance but not a safety issue, we continued to our first overnight possibility at Camping World in the Savannah suburb of Pooler, GA, stopping occasionally to let the auxiliary pressure build back up. The transient overnight spots at Camping World were all taken, offering as they do water and electric hookups, but when I asked in the store they told me we could use a spot normally reserved for deliveries, so we had a safe place to park and power to boot. While I was jockeying into the space, the low air alarm came on a few moments after every time I put it in reverse, also weird.

Once we got settled in we found that the inverter had tripped off, presumably from the poor electric air compressor desperately trying to compensate for the leakage in the main system. That was no real problem, but once we got the power back on we discovered that our satellite modem was dead, possibly due to whatever overload or surge tripped the inverter.

This proved to be a much bigger issue than the air leak, and I spent all night Friday and a good part of Saturday getting it working again. Rather than bore you with the details, those interested can read about resetting a DW7000 modem at this post I wrote on the DataStorm Users Forum. Being off-line and having my nose down in this work meant no post here, and I decided to defer it until this morning, when I knew we would be ahead of schedule and have plenty of relaxed time to write, or so I thought.

In any event on Friday evening we took the scooters out and rode the 9.5 miles into town for a nice dinner at the First City Club. We've been to Savannah several times in the past, and somehow we have never managed to eat at our reciprocal club here before. It turns out to be a very nice club on the second floor of a building right in the historic downtown. While we were there a pair of police Harleys rumbled down Congress street, followed by thousands of folks on some kind of march, we guessed for breast cancer awareness. We had a great view from the balcony.

Saturday our air leak problem had seemed to have disappeared, with no alarms driving out of Pooler and no further problems in an hour or so on I-95. Shortly after crossing into Florida, we left the freeway at State Route 200 to cut across to Callahan and pick up US-301, and once again the master air alarm went off shortly after the turn. This time, thinking that brake application was causing the governor to cut back in, I made several brake applications at highway speed, bringing the brake system pressure down to 90psi or so, but this did not result in the compressor starting to recharge the system. Once again, though, as we slowed down coming into Callahan, the compressor kicked back in and charged the system fully. This was starting to look like Heisenberg's air system -- every time we slowed down to look at it, it went away.

At some point I put two and two together, realizing that the problem was happening at high speeds and in reverse, and deduced that it was a leak in the tag axle air locker system. We stopped in Baldwin to test the theory. We parked the bus, and as soon as I applied the manual axle lock switch on the dash, a huge rush of air confirmed that somewhere, this system was open to atmosphere. Even the massive Bendix compressor could not keep up with such a large leak. The good news was that it was a simple matter to disconnect the speed input from the axle lock system, so now we do not have this leak above 35mph, although it still happens in reverse. I never did figure out why it did not trouble us on the freeway; perhaps at that RPM the compressor was just barely able to keep up.

Getting to the source of the leak will require either a pit or some claustrophobic time between the rear wheels, and we will now defer this until after our trip. In the meantime, with the tag axle unlocked at speed, we are trying to keep to 50 or less as much as possible. Figuring this out and disconnecting the speed input allowed us to continue on without further worry, and we set our sights on a Wal-Mart in Starke as our overnight stop, there being otherwise very few options along US-301 in Florida.

Unfortunately, the store was posted No Overnight Parking, located, as it was, just a couple of blocks from the KOA. We continued on, but parking options are few and far between here, without even any other Wal-Marts until Gainesville. We knew from past experience that the Gainesville store also did not allow it, and so we continued to a Petro truck stop on I-75 (map) that we had remembered from one of our mad cross-county Red Cross dashes.

That turned out to be a fine place to wrap up working on the satellite modem, and it has all the amenities including a decent restaurant, C-store, and even a laundry. My plan had also been to crawl under the bus there today to check on the air line, as it would have been nice to get the axle locker working again. Alas, it was not to be.

Back in Charleston, parked on the grass outside the Elks Lodge, we managed to pick up an infestation of ants. I can only assume we parked close to their lair, and thousands of them must have crawled up one of the wheels and into the bus. They had been a minor annoyance until last night, when we found them in the cats' food bowl in numbers. We've been spraying the environmentally friendly, pet-safe ant killer liberally, making the whole coach smell like wintergreen oil, but when we got up this morning, the pet food was again covered with hundreds if not thousands of them. We decided that today we'd have to fog the whole bus to get rid of them.

That necessitates sitting outside with the pets for several hours, and we could not do that at the Petro, so we made a hasty exit this morning in order to get to a more appropriate spot. We are now at the Inverness/Hernando Elks Lodge (map), a familiar stop, where I am sitting outside in a lawn chair while we wait for the fogger to work its magic. Tonight we will walk to a nearby Italian joint for dinner.



While the speedo fix meant no air leaks on the way here, backing into the space once again prompted the electric compressor to trip the inverter, since there was also an air conditioner running, and when we got parked the satellite modem was again defunct. This time the problem appears related to the transmitter on the roof, and I have my fingers crossed that it is not blown. I have a long night ahead of me troubleshooting, possibly followed by a day up on the roof tomorrow. At least we are in a good spot to do it, and within striking distance of the Tampa airport.

Tomorrow at some point we will head towards Tampa, where our friend Niles has offered us a secure place to park Odyssey as well as a recommendation for a good vet who can kennel the pets.

Charles Town

I'm not entirely sure how I managed to get so far behind on posting. I think the door project in New Bern took a lot out of me, and we've been pretty busy at each stop since then.

Monday night we were in Wilmington, North Carolina, at a Wal-Mart there (map). That was a great stop, with a nice large SuperCenter store, several other stores we needed right nearby including a PetsMart for the cats' prescription food, and a boatload of dining options. We opted for the Carrabba's right next door, although there was also an O'Charleys and a Ruby Tuesday, with Olive Garden right across the street. There was also a Cracker Barrel and we uncharacteristically decided to have a restaurant breakfast there on Tuesday.

One of the things we found in the Wal-Mart was an unusually large selection of plastic storage bins. I've been meaning to reorganize the starboard tool drawer for some time now, including protecting some items from the water that inevitably finds its way in there in driving rain, and I spent most of Tuesday doing that project right in the parking lot. It took four trips to the store to finally settle on a combination of bins that would fit snugly in the drawer, hold all the items, and not bind the mechanism.

In the middle of that project I was nearly sorry I had started, because I couldn't really stop until everything was back in the drawer. The end result was that we left Wilmington close to 4pm, a very late start for us, and definitely no time to be starting a blog post. We opted to leave town on the freeway route rather than work our way through downtown, since we've done that before anyway. We did not see any signs of serious flooding anywhere we went in town, although the road to Topsail was closed to through traffic, we presumed due to flood damage.

We had figured to be at Huntington Beach State Park near Murrell's Inlet Tuesday night, a familiar stop for us, but with the late start, Louise started looking through our guides to see if there was an earlier option. We were both surprised to learn the the Camping World store in Myrtle Beach allows overnight parking, considering it has been banned at all the Wal-Marts there, and they even have five hookup spaces available first-come, first-served. As late as it was, we knew the hookups would be gone, but we didn't need them, so we dialed it in to the GPS.

We did need a few items at Camping World anyway, so we asked permission while we went in to shop. We learned that all the hookup sites, which were not only occupied when we arrived but clearly taken by long-term tenants, were currently being used by seasonal employees. They are available for customer use only when not used for this purpose. We instead picked a nice anonymous spot among the coaches awaiting repairs in the back lot (map).

There was a Mexican restaurant right next door in the Days Inn, and a Bob Evans down the block past the strip club, but we opted instead to pull a scooter out and ride to the mega-tourist-trap that is Broadway at the Beach for a nice Italian dinner at Amici's, where Louise found a coupon on Restaurant.com. The whole tourist mall experience, which is pretty much all of Myrtle Beach now, is not our thing, but the food was decent and it was good people watching. Had we needed any other entertainment there is also a Red Box dispenser at the mini-mart a short walk from where we parked, making this Camping World a sort of full-service overnight stop.

We had hoped to use one of the hookup sites to dump our tanks on Wednesday, but with all the spaces occupied, we instead set our sights once again on Huntington Beach. We paid $5 for the privilege of dumping there, which was better than the $10 it would cost just for day use, or the $26+ for an overnight stay (still pretty cheap for this area). Oddly, this park is not listed in any of my dump station guides, but of course we already knew about it. En route to the park we also stopped for fuel at a gas station in Surfside Beach, which my guides said would be the cheapest we will see for the rest of the year, at $2.779. Between the slow car-sized pump and the fact that it insisted on shutting off after $300, we were at the fuel island for well over 40 minutes, much to the annoyance of the other guy waiting for diesel from the lone dispenser.

The late start from Camping World, owing to spending the morning installing the parts I bought in case I needed to exchange any -- and I did -- meant another day with no time to blog before hitting the road. Nevertheless we decided to push to Charleston yesterday rather that stop somewhere earlier, even with the lengthy fuel and dump stops, so that we could have a day of downtime today for Louise's birthday. We are now parked at the Charleston Elks Lodge (map), one of the oldest lodges in one of the oldest cities. In fact the current lodge site is just a couple miles from the site of the original Charles Town Landing settlement, now re-created as a historic park.

Louise once again used her mad coupon skilz to find us a deal at a nice waterfront joint at a marina right across the Ashley river from here, appropriately named The Waterfront, and we enjoyed a casual meal on the deck with a wonderful sunset. Tonight we have reservations downtown at the Harbour Club for a very nice birthday dinner; we'll leave a bit early to spend some time riding around the historic downtown in the daylight, as it was nighttime when last we did this.

In order to maintain our fairly relaxed driving schedule of just a couple of hours each day, we will need to leave tomorrow towards Savannah, Georgia, where we have several overnight options. We have friends there, too, out towards Tybee Island, but we are feeling some pressure to be in Tampa early enough to get the animals squared away and Odyssey well parked, so we don't really have time for a proper visit. Perhaps we can see them between our California trip and our already-scheduled return to Florida for Trawler Fest at the end of January.

Photo of Chloe the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel by Rach ♥, used under a Creative Commons license. Because, come on, who doesn't want to see cute puppies?

Unending maintenance

We are at the very pleasant Elks lodge in New Bern, North Carolina (map). It is a short scooter ride to downtown and the waterfront from here, and there is an enormous park and city recreation complex just a short walk away. The Elks are letting us use a 20-amp receptacle on the side of the building.

We never did make it to see the drill team practice. After we were well established here I learned that the practice area is 20 miles from here, and I was up to my eyeballs in projects yesterday. We did finally make it downtown for dinner last night, but Saturday night we ate just around the corner at a Hibachi steak house, since downtown was a zoo from the annual Mum Festival.

Shortly after we arrived Saturday morning, I set to work on the next pressing project on the list. I have not mentioned it here before, but sometime about a week ago the valve that controls our air-operated "plug door" started leaking with the door in the closed position. The leak was bad enough that the compressor was running every five to ten minutes, and we had to shut the door off at its emergency valve when we were parked.

With the door shut off in the closed position, we had to exit and enter the bus through the driver door, inconvenient at best. Also, the air-operated toilet had been connected to the air supply just downstream of that valve, so we'd have to go downstairs and turn the air back on every time we needed to flush the toilet. Now that the satellite project is done, it was time to take care of this pesky problem.

I know it must seem to many of you that I am constantly writing about repairs and maintenance these days, and I apologize to those friends and family who are following along for more pleasant anecdotes. But a good part of our readership consists of other RVers, full-timers, or folks contemplating the lifestyle, and our tales can at least serve as a reminder that every RV has mechanical issues from time to time. There was a time when I think my father-in-law was following along just to make himself feel better about his recalcitrant Winnebago...

In any case, the valve in question is a weird German-spec part that is now more than a quarter century old, and when I disassembled it I found it, unsurprisingly, full of crud. Also, a tiny part had come loose. Cleaning the whole thing up, securing the loose part, and reassembling the valve only took a couple of hours, and we were relieved when it worked on the first try, because getting a replacement is probably an expensive affair involving ordering from Europe, and we'd likely be waiting at least another week.

Having gone to the trouble, though, of removing all the trim and the downstairs passenger seat to even get to the valve, I decided that the time was right to correct two other problems. One was to re-route the door air lines from their precarious position underneath the rear part of the front skids. There was evidence that we had already crushed the lines there once, and they were in jeopardy of breaking. The other was to re-plumb the toilet supply so that it did not go through the door valve, and instead has a shutoff of its own.

That part of the project took much longer, dealing as I was with 25-year-old air lines and unobtainium metric compression fittings. Ultimately I was able to reuse a critical fitting by substituting a 5/16" sleeve for the original 8mm one, and the new cobalt drill bits that I had purchased for the satellite project came in handy to drill a half inch hole through the skid to pass the airline through above the danger zone.

Between going to Lowe's for parts and fighting with the corroded fittings, the project spanned two days and we had to latch the door manually on Saturday night to keep the cats from just pushing it open. But it's done now, and the good news is that our compressor is now running less than it ever has, leading us to believe that this door valve has had a slow leak for a very long time.

In a few minutes we will depart for Wilmington, where we have multiple overnight options.

A three Wal-Mart day

We are at the Wal-Mart in New Bern, North Carolina (map). We started our day yesterday at the Wal-Mart in Williamston, NC (map), and in the middle of the day we had a rather frustrating stop at the Wal-Mart in Washington, NC, which was offering flu shots yesterday but really did not have enough parking for us to be comfortable there overnight.

We had stopped in Williamston for the night, even though Washington was only another half hour down the road, because I knew from the satellite photos that parking in Washington would be tight. Also, while our guide did not list this store as No Overnight Parking, we did not want to get there and find out otherwise. As it turns out, we're very glad to have made that choice.

That's because getting to the Wal-Mart in Washington involved a 40-minute, 15-mile detour. A new bypass around town has been opened on US-17 since our GPS database was updated, and by the time either we or the GPS had realized we were no longer heading towards town, we had no choice but to continue a full five miles before we could come back. We would have just kept going to New Bern at that point, except we'd then have to wait several more days to get our shots. After getting on the business route back north into town, the GPS again took us several miles in the wrong direction due to a geocoding error in both the POI and address for the Wal-Mart.

Once we were there, we were relieved to find no line for the shots, and were glad to have received them yesterday because we will be on an airplane in less than two weeks. Which brings me to my next subject, which is our plan for the near future.

When we arrived here in New Bern we decided to just spend our first night at the Wal-Mart, with a short walk to the very excellent Paula's Italian Restaurant and next door to Lowe's, where we had some shopping to do. But after I am done posting, we plan to head over to the Elks lodge here just a mile or so away. That's because blog reader Jay has invited us to watch his Gold Wing motorcycle drill team practice here on Sunday. Just as well to spend a quiet couple of days here, since I have some work to do on the roof as well as in the cockpit.

From here we will be heading slowly towards Tampa, Florida, where we have flights booked to San Francisco for our friends' wedding in Oakland on the 23rd. Tampa had the cheapest flights in the entire southeast, although ironically both sets of flights connect in Charlotte, where fares are quite a bit higher. We also have friends in Tampa who can host Odyssey while we are away. We are very glad to be able to get reasonable flights for this, and I had enough Hilton points to make the hotel stays nearly free, although it took me most of Thursday evening as well as the day yesterday to get all the reservations made.

We don't need to be in Tampa until the 19th, so we will continue our slow roll down the coast, landing in Charleston on Thursday for a nice dinner at the Harbour Club on Louise's birthday. I expect from there we will try to visit friends in Savannah before cutting back inland en route to Tampa. Will all our reservations in hand and Odyssey provided for, our only remaining issue will be to line up a kennel for the pets while we are away -- recommendations for kennels in the Tampa bay area welcome.

Flu shot photo by zingersb, used under a Creative Commons license.

Fixed at last

We are in the parking lot of Mobil Satellite Technologies, our HughesNet VAR, in Chesapeake, Virginia (map). We've already canceled the service appointment we had here tomorrow, but I am hoping they have a part I could use to tidy up our system. Unfortunately, the parts guys are at lunch, so we are waiting in the lot behind the enormous service bays.

We spent last night at the Wal-Mart just a mile or so east of here (map). After spending most of the day in front of yet a different Wal-Mart further east, with the D3 controller still unable to find the satellite after several hours of searching, we conceded defeat on account of sunset rapidly approaching. So we stowed the dish and made our way back to Home Depot to take care of our returns and exchanges, then came here. We also canceled the planned fuel stop, as the price of diesel at that station had jumped from $2.67 to $2.86 in the two days we were stuck fiddling with the satellite hardware.

The good news is that I was able to completely break down the replacement mount into its constituent parts while we were there, making it all much more compact. We needed to get it off the roof before driving, and now it's neatly stowed in the scooter bay until we figure out how much of it we will keep.

After we relocated here and realized that the D3 would again take hours to find the bird, we did some quick calculations based on our driving GPS and the satellite look angles, and I was able to dial it in manually in a very frustrating twenty minutes or so. Controlling the motors through the web interface is a painfully slow process, but I had not yet downloaded the correct version of Don Bradner's excellent control program DSAdmin to do it any faster.

Once we were thus on line, I was able to download the latest D3 software and satellite tables, as well as the DSAdmin program, and after upgrading the firmware, loading the tables, and recalibrating the dish, the D3 was able to find the satellite in just a few minutes. This morning we moved the bus to the other end of the parking lot and in a different orientation and tried again, just to be sure, and the third test was right here in the parking lot of our VAR. While the D3 is slower to acquire than our old D2 was, at least it is all once again working fully automatically. Plus, the D3 controller will allow us to change over to our spare modem in the event this one dies, so all is again as it should be.

I now seem to have a surfeit of miscellaneous MotoSat/HughesNet parts that I will need to dispose of one way or another. We'll be keeping the items that appear likely to give us trouble in the future as spares, assuming I can find places to store them. If Mobil Satellite has the part I want, a different style of feedhorn, we can get rid of some bulkier items in favor of keeping some smaller ones.

As soon as we wrap up here we will continue south on US-17, skirting the eastern edge of the Dismal Swamp. We are making our way to Washington, NC, where the Wal-Mart will be offering flu shots in the next couple days.

Photo by slimmer_jimmer, used under a Creative Commons license.

I fought the dish and the... dish won

We are at a Wal-Mart in Chesapeake, Virginia (map). Tuesday night we were at the other end of the parking lot, in front of the Sam's Club. I had hoped to be long gone from here by now, but circumstances have conspired against us.

To start with, I got an email from UPS Monday morning saying that my package had arrived from Boise, Idaho. A quick check of the UPS web site revealed that the box containing our mail, from Kennewick, Washington, had also been delivered. So we packed up the bus, went into the lodge to pay our $30 for two nights (the first time they had been open since we arrived), and headed over to the UPS store in a shopping center here in Chesapeake.

Sure enough they had our mail, but only one of the two boxes from Boise containing the satellite gear. This was odd, since both boxes had left the UPS warehouse at the same time and presumably on the same truck, but since the missing box was the large and heavy one we figured maybe it was inaccessible until more of the truck was empty. So we trundled over to a nearby parking lot to wait, figuring it would be on the afternoon delivery.

The afternoon delivery came and went without the missing box, and it did not show up until quarter till 7, just 15 minutes before the UPS store closed. By this time it was dark, and so after wrestling the enormous box up the stairs, we came straight here, the closest possible parking spot. My original plan had been to pick up the boxes in the morning, then head over to the Wal-Mart closer to our satellite dealer across town. At least there was a Carrabba's a short walk away, and a nice glass of Montepulciano helped wash away the anxiety that had built up all day waiting for the box, which of course contained the piece I needed first.

There is a Home Depot next door to a Lowe's right across the street from here, and so yesterday morning we drove over to their parking lot to work on the dish, reasoning that if I needed tools or parts, we'd be right there. I would guess that the replacement mount was on the roof deck and I started unwrapping it at about 11am. I was still on the roof at 7:30, having taken a short break for lunch and made no fewer than four trips into the store.

Once I had the "new" mount open, I discovered that it still had the old-style "Rev. 1" motors and electronics. Our mount, while even older than this one, had been upgraded at the factory in Utah on a visit there, and I'd either need to move all the upgrade parts to the new mount, or just scavenge the part I needed out of the mount and move it to our existing setup. When the part I needed came off the new mount in under ten minutes, I figured I had it made. It was a simple matter of removing ten machine screws to detach the elevation arms from the axle, then loosening two set screws to slide the rotator/stop assembly off the keyed axle shaft.

Thus lulled into a false sense of confidence, I set out to remove the broken piece from our mount. The first problem I encountered was that the set screws on our mount were corroded beyond repair. My ball-end hex keys were a poor choice to try to remove these badly frozen screws, so Louise went into the store to get me some straight-end ones. Even after liberal application of WD-40 to both set screws, all I was able to achieve was to strip one of the hex drives out completely, and twist the 5/32 hex key into a corkscrew on the other.



Knowing I was going to replace this piece anyway, I decided to drill out the recalcitrant set screws. This is easier said then done, as they turned out to be stainless, even though the piece they are set into is mild steel. After breaking two of my general purpose high-speed bits, I went into the store again for a set of cobalt bits, about the only type that will make progress in stainless. Even so, the screws eventually deflected the bits into the softer steel of the rotator, and I had to side-drill the ends off the set screws to release them. OK, so that took way longer than I expected but now it should all be downhill.

Ha. The rotator would not budge. I ended up using one of the rotators from the other dish, a grade 8 bolt, washer, and nut combination, and a set of machine screws and nuts from the store to fashion a "gear puller" of sorts to try to remove the stuck plate. The force ultimately stretched the ungraded machine screws and then popped the nuts off the end, so back into the store I went for three 800-lb C-clamps. Those held their ground, and the end plate started to move perhaps a millimeter. At this point I noticed, however, that the pot metal spacer and the broken stop were not moving with it, in spite of them being firmly bolted together as an assembly. At this point I realized that the pot metal had, in fact, corroded onto the axle, and the bolts holding the spacer to the rotator plate were starting to give.


The broken elevation stop.

To make a long story just a tad shorter, I ended up having to destroy all these parts with a combination of the new cobalt drill bits and a metal-cutting blade in my reciprocating saw, followed by a pry bar, to get down to the bare axle. Even then, the slot key was corroded permanently into the axle slot, and the new assembly would not slide onto it until I filed it down somewhat. All's well than ends well, and, courtesy of the ample parking lot lights at Home Depot I managed to get the whole thing back together before 8pm. I had hoped to take some pictures along the way, but I confess that I was so frustrated, sore, tired, and irritated that I just did not have it in me to do anything more.

I managed to bungee the bulk of what's left of the new mount to the deck well enough to drive back over here for the night, and we stumbled over to El Patron for some tasty fajitas and a welcome margarita. This morning I am so sore from the unnatural positions I had to assume on the roof that I can barely walk.

Today's project is replacement of the dish controller. The new controller wants to calibrate the mount, which moves it to the stop limits several times, which is why the broken stop had to be replaced first. As I type this, off-line into a text file, the new controller is searching the sky for our satellite. It's been at it for over an hour now, painstakingly stopping at every glimmer of a signal in the sky and trying to match it to one of the known satellites. I suspect this unit has not had the satellite tables updated in well over a year, and even the software appears to be out of date. I am hoping this behavior will be a one-time problem, gone after the controller understands the relationship of the sensors to the sky. That said, I will also be updating the firmware and satellite tables at the earliest opportunity.

To be honest, I don't expect this to solve all our satellite problems, as I believe the culprit is the modem. I have two working HN7000 satellite modems here as well, but they would not work with our older D2 controller, so getting the new D3 controller in and working is a prerequisite to changing modems. With any luck the new modem will be the final answer to our troubles, but until it is all resolved we plan to stay right here in Chesapeake, where we are only a short drive from our provider, Mobil Satellite Technologies. We have a service appointment with them on Friday, in the event I can't get all this working on my own.

We don't want to overstay our welcome here, so no matter the outcome of today's D3 installation, we will head over to a different spot tonight, closer to Mobil Satellite. First we need to stop back at Home Depot for some returns -- I was too tired and hungry last night to just walk in and handle it -- and at a gas station here in Chesapeake reported to have some of the cheapest diesel in the state.

Photo by x-ray delta one, used under a Creative Commons license.

Hampton Roads

We are at the Elks lodge in Norfolk, Virginia (map), at the end of a narrow alley and backed up to one of the myriad tidewater sloughs that empty into Hampton Roads. We arrived here Saturday morning, which turned out to be the lone dry sunny day this week.

Shortly after I last posted here we were ready to depart the lodge at Hampton. I completed my walk-around with no exceptions noted, yet as I pulled up to the end of the driveway and prepared to turn left, when I checked my mirror the left awning was fully extended. Without really thinking about it I thought the worst, that I had driven away with the awning out, and I barked at Louise to retract it. Of course, it wouldn't retract, and neither had it been out when I started to drive, as awnings are part of my walk-around inspection as well as Louise's pre-departure checklist.

After our pulse rates came down, we immediately realized what had happened, because something similar has happened before. Apparently I did not blog it, because I did not yet know how popular my "coach repair" posts would become, but way back in 2006 that same awning suddenly started to deploy itself. We were parked in the RV area of the San Jose Elks at the time, and the awning very nearly extended right into the rig next door to us. Thinking quickly, we killed the power to it just a foot shy of the next rig, and then had to pull Odyssey forward 20' in order to fiddle with it.

In both cases the cause was a short in the control board, mounted in a weather-tight box on the roof. Four years ago that short was caused by a loose screw inside the box, but we'd also had water intrusion issues with the box at various times where the awnings stopped working altogether. We finally managed to get those boxes sealed up and have had no further for the past several years, although we did end up replacing one of the control boards early on. Well, apparently, this storm's 12" of rainfall (yes, you read that right, 12" in the span of a little more than a day) and 50-knot driving winds managed to drive some water into the control box, shorting it out and causing the awning to self-deploy.

We counted ourselves lucky that it happened before we even left the parking lot. It could have been much worse, as it might have happened on the road, or the light pole that we passed on our way to the end of the driveway could have snagged it and ripped it right off the bus. As it was, we had to retract it manually. The manual cranks that come with the Girard awnings won't work on Odyssey, because the curve of the roof precludes access to the crank connection. Years ago we drilled holes in the top of the awning cases and made a drive shaft that chucks into the cordless drill, and five minutes on the roof was all it took to get the awning back in.

That's in stark contrast to what we had to do four years ago, which involved spending over an hour on the roof, removing part of the deck to access the control box, then bypassing the control to supply power directly to the motor to retract the awning. Now that this has happened a second time, and while driving to boot, I've already sketched out an electrical interlock to kill power to the awnings while we are under way. In the meantime, we've added an item to the checklist to turn off the awning circuit breaker before moving the bus.

Friday night found us at the Wal-Mart just east of here, adjacent to the Janaf shopping center (map). We needed supplies anyway, and that put us a short walk from nearly a dozen restaurants plus some other shops to browse. We walked to Wasabi for dinner, a local Japanese Hibachi steakhouse and sushi restaurant. The food was excellent yet inexpensive, and we had the non-Hibachi dining room to ourselves.

We would have spent more of the day there Saturday, but I did not want to be taking the roof apart at Wal-Mart to work on the awning, and we needed to come here to the Elks later anyway to take the scooters out for dinner. Of course, as luck would have it, as soon as we got parked here at the lodge, the awning was working perfectly again, and so we turned our attention to other projects.

I had not yet had a chance to put away the electrical adapters I used in Richmond to hook up to the weird power outlet in the warehouse, and now that the weather was nice I took the opportunity to dig out the plastic toolbox I use to store them. To my dismay I found that the sideways-driving rain which had infiltrated the bays had made its way into the box, partially filling it with water and soaking my adapters -- yuck. I ended up taking every last one out, rinsing them off, drying them in the sun, and using WD-40 as needed to clean them all up. That gave me the opportunity to photograph all of them for an article I have been meaning to write on our electrical bag of tricks, and while the sun angle was terrible for pictures, now that it is done be looking for a blog post soon on the topic.

By the time I had everything put back away it was time to leave for dinner, and we had a nice scooter ride downtown. Dinner at the Town Point Club was very nice, and we got free entertainment as well, since the club was hosting a wedding in the room next door. The bridal party and various guests kept coming out onto the balcony just outside our table for photos, and after sunset, there was an impressive display of professional fireworks over the harbor, apparently a surprise gift from the father of the bride. I don't know what kind of pull he has, but there were at least three patrol boats of some sort closing off the harbor for the fireworks. After dinner we rode along the waterfront, past the cruise terminal and the USS Wisconsin, BB-64, now part of the Nauticus museum complex. Downtown Norfolk is quite pleasant, and we made a mental note to visit again, perhaps in the boat wherein we can stay right on the waterfront.

We would have ridden back downtown yesterday to visit the museum or the lovely waterfront parks and maybe sample another restaurant, but it has been raining more or less continuously since yesterday morning. We have 50 amps of power here so we ran the crock pot yesterday to make dinner, and basically just stayed inside catching up on email and reading. The lone other rig that was here when we arrived left mid-day yesterday, and other than them, we have not seen another soul here since we arrived -- no one has come to open the lodge at all since we got here, and I suspect this lodge is not long for this world.

UPS reports that all three of our packages are "out for delivery" to the UPS store in Chesapeake, and so we will pack up shortly and head in that direction to pick them up. I am hoping for a break in the weather in the next 24 hours so I can get the rooftop part of the satellite dish project done, otherwise we will be hauling the replacement mount around in the living room. Besides, I'd like to get everything working before we leave Chesapeake, where our satellite internet provider's office and shop are located, in case we need help.

Pounded by Nicole

We are at the Elks lodge in Hampton, Virginia (map), next door to Newport News and across the river from Norfolk.

Yesterday morning found us at the Wal-Mart in Williamsburg (map). Considering what a touristy place Williamsburg is, we were surprised parking is allowed there, but we had plenty of company, and more rigs were pulling in as we left yesterday afternoon. One rig appeared to have been there for weeks (it was actually months, we learned later) and had a sign on the windshield that said county ordinance prohibited such parking. It was laser-printed without any official seals, so we presumed the store management put it there after growing tired of this dilapidated class-C setting up permanent residence in the lot. Just before we left that rig got a visit from the sheriff as well, but he was uninterested in any other rig there.

We had a nice drive to Williamsburg on US-60, which is the "slow" way compared to I-64, but even then it was only an hour or so. We got a late start from Glen Allen due to our conference call, and besides, we are not due in Norfolk until Monday. The only full service restaurant near the Wal-Mart was IHOP, and it was surprisingly good for dinner -- we've only ever patronized them for breakfast. We needed the Wal-Mart stop anyway, to stock up on some essentials, and I also walked to the Lowe's next door to pick up some Romex^® for a new power outlet in the living room.

By the time we left Williamsburg, we were already starting to get drenched by the remains of Tropical Storm Nicole. So we opted for the freeway route to Newport News, where our guides said there was both a Wal-Mart and an Elks lodge with overnight parking. An Olive Garden was nearby but not walking distance, and, with nearby parking all but guaranteed, we made the uncharacteristic choice to stop for dinner first in the bus.

That proved to be an unwise decision, as the Wal-Mart and adjacent Sam's Club were posted No Overnight Parking, and when we arrived at the Elks we were informed that they no longer offer it. At this point we were now driving around unfamiliar territory in the dark, and in driving rain to boot. This Elks in Hampton was the next closest choice, and a quick phone call confirmed that parking was still available.

The rain had become torrential by the time we arrived, but I picked out a parking spot that had no standing water when we pulled in. The GPS said we were three feet below sea level. After we got settled and checked in with the lodge, we started getting pounded. The rain was about the hardest I have ever seen, and the winds drove the water into every available bay seal, door seam, and window casing in the bus. Most of our leaks have been repaired, but we still have a drip or two that seldom even show up in the first few hours of rain, but in this storm we used every microfiber towel in the house to sop up water.

At some point I just had to go out to walk the dog, and it was then that I realized Odyssey was surrounded on all sides by water 3" deep. The two of us just had to slosh through it, and I remembered that this region had flood damage when I worked Tropical Storm Ernesto here back in 2006. Fortunately, the water level never came close to the underside of the bus itself.

Somewhere in the nighttime the rains finally stopped, and we've been drying out all day. I opened up all the bays to air them out, and we've had fans blowing on any wet parts here inside while I finished installing the new power outlet. The good news is that, as bad as Nicole was, the massive flooding that had been feared in North Carolina did not materialize (you know you could be in trouble when Jim Cantore from the Weather Channel lands in your city, as he did in Wilmington yesterday). We will not be called to a relief operation as a result of this event.

In a few minutes we will pack everything up and continue to Norfolk. We have dinner reservations for tomorrow night at our reciprocal club there, and our satellite gear is due in nearby Chesapeake on Monday.