And the hits just keep on coming

We are STILL at the Choo-Choo Express Garage near Chattanooga (map). Today marks two full weeks that I have been parked here, motionless, in one of the shop's two service bays. As yet, we still do not have the parts on hand to reinstall the hub and wheel.

When last I posted here, I wrote that the parts supplier in the UK was waiting on getting the parts in house, and would ship them either Thursday or Friday after confirming with me the dimensions and sending photos. As it turned out, the parts did not leave until Friday and we were hoping to have them tonight, just as happened last weekend.

Unfortunately, the individual who completed the DHL waybill wrote "BEARINGS" in the Contents box on the form, as opposed to "Repair Parts" as I had instructed them. I got a call from DHL Saturday afternoon that the bearings were being held by US Customs, thus realizing my worst fears. Bearings, it happens, are one of many categories of highly restricted trade items and I had to complete a stack of paperwork in order to get them released. Lord only knows if I will also be asked to pay duty and/or "anti dumping penalties." Just to give you a sense of the bureaucratic nightmare this can be, here is the list of what DHL needs to clear these through customs:

1. IRS Verification of Federal Tax ID # for the Importer of Record
2. Power of Attorney and Federal Tax ID that will verify/match the POA
3. Description Verification: detailed description; what the items are made of; what the items are parts of or what they’re used for. OR HTS codes
4. Country of Origin: where the item or part was manufactured (not necessarily the shipped from location)
5. Bearing Worksheet

This last item, the "Bearing Worksheet" again asks for descriptive information, including part numbers, manufacturer, and country of origin.

Well, of course, it being Saturday, there was no way I was going to be able to get the part numbers or country of origin from the distributor in the UK. Unwilling to wait for Monday to roll around to try to get the paperwork back to DHL, I went back to the photos they sent me on Thursday afternoon. From that, I could tell it was a Timken ISOClass bearing and that the first digit of Timken's part number was a "3". The other digits were obscured by the calipers showing the measurements.



That was just enough information, though, that after three and a half solid hours of Internet research, starting with the original, 26 year old Mercedes part numbers from my Neoplan parts book, I was able to cross-reference the bearing to the new ISO standard bearing number of 32310. Had I been able to do this two weeks ago, we could have saved ourselves much frustration and some money, because I was pretty sure I could now take the ISO part number to any Timken retailer and get this bearing right here in the US.

Armed with the part number and the manufacturer, a US company based in Ohio, I could fill out most of the paperwork, with the exception of the country of origin. Timken has manufacturing facilities worldwide, and these bearings might have been made in Japan, Europe, or right here in the US. No country markings are visible in the photos, and there weren't any on the similar Timken bearings that were sent to me in error a week ago. Presumably, since these bearings are not really meant for the US market, Timken saw no reason to etch them with country of origin markings as is only required by US law.

The intent of country of origin marking requirements is to ensure that consumers can not be misled into thinking they are buying domestic product and getting, instead, offshore product, or thinking they are buying, say, German bearings but instead getting Japanese ones. It took me a little while, but I eventually found the exemption in the federal code to these marking requirements when items are being imported directly by the end user. For the curious, it is 19CFR134.32(f).

In addition to the requested paperwork, I submitted a sworn affidavit that I was the end user and that I should be exempted from the marking requirements and returned all the paperwork by email Saturday night. Hearing nothing further, however, I called DHL this morning to check on the status. They could not find my paperwork, so I sent it all in again.

Shortly afterward I got a call back saying they could not submit the paperwork to Customs without the country of origin. After a few minutes of wrangling I convinced them that it was that way or not at all, and they are going to send it in. We will see what happens; other than releasing my bearings from bond, the other two options that Customs can exercise are to destroy the bearings (and, yes, US Customs destroys millions of dollars of goods this way every year) or have DHL return them to sender. I am promised a return call by 5pm tomorrow.

In the meantime, however, I again contacted the local bearing house here in Chattanooga, now that I had a proper ISO number for the bearing. They think they can have them here tomorrow by 11am, and I have ordered two of them. I'll go over to pick them up with the take-out in hand, to make absolutely certain it is the correct replacement. With any luck, we'll be packing and installing bearings by tomorrow afternoon.

It's been two and a half weeks since I dumped the tanks or took on water, and faced with the prospect of being here through most of this week if not longer, we had to deal with that over the weekend. The last time we were stuck here motionless, due to the engine being out, we were outside and our 50' macerator hose was a fairly easy reach to the dump station. Here in the shop we had to first run the hose out the door, and it's a 60' run to the dump. We just made it by adding the 10' hose I bought for the great manhole incident of 2009, which ultimately led to a long explanatory post on creative sanitation.

We've also had a couple of visitors in the last few days. Our good friend Russ from Nashville decided to drive down for a dinner visit on Saturday, and took us to the Bluewater Grille downtown, near the aquarium. It was quite good, if a bit busy on a Saturday night. That whole section of town is full of restaurants of every stripe and seems quite vibrant.

Today we had a surprise visit from our friend Pat, a fellow Red Cross volunteer from Baton Rouge. She and her husband are staying just a few blocks away in their Allegro motor home at the Holiday Trav-L-Park, saw on the blog we were here, and decided to drop in. She had to go back quite a few posts to find the map link, which has prompted me to re-post it today. Depending on how things go here in the shop, we might try to have dinner with them tomorrow night.

With any luck If our luck changes, we should be done and back on the road sometime Wednesday, for points unknown. And I will begin the process of negotiating with the chaps across the pond about returning over $1,000 in unneeded or incorrect parts.

Another week motionless

We are still at the Choo Choo Express Garage near Chattanooga, and now we'll be here at least into next week. It has been a very frustrating couple of days.

In my last update I mentioned that we expected the replacement bearings here on Tuesday. I was pleasantly surprised, then, when DHL reported them as "out for delivery" at 11:30 Monday morning. The DHL service center is in Smyrna, Georgia, a good two hours from here, and their delivery runs go all the way to 8pm. As it turns out, the shipment arrived here a 7:50pm Monday evening.

That's when I discovered that, firstly, they sent four sets of bearings instead of the two that I ordered. Not only was that over $600 in unnecessary parts, but also an extra 15 pounds sent via overnight express from England.

The much larger problem, however, was that, while the inner bearings and seals were spot-on, right down to the manufacturer's (FAG) part number, they sent the wrong outer bearings. They looked to have the right inner diameter to fit the spindle, but the outer diameter was more than 2cm smaller than the 11cm outer races on the originals.



Of course, the outer bearing is the one that is totally destroyed. Also, the outer bearings were made by Koyo in Japan, and are so old that even Koyo no longer has the part number (57249) in their database, so they could provide neither a cross-reference nor even a specification. Presumably Mercedes switched to a different supplier sometime after 1984, because I know these hubs continued to be used well after my coach was built in 1985.

I immediately fired off an email to Heavy Duty Parts explaining the mix-up and including a photo of the outer races and the obvious size difference. At this point I was also quite miffed, as anyone with a modicum of heavy duty experience could look at the correct inner bearings, which they sent, and the incorrect outer ones and know that they could not possibly be from the same wheel assembly -- whoever picked the order should have caught this straight away. Also I had emailed the original part numbers before ordering and asked explicitly to confirm they were sending the correct replacements, and they were quite certain on the phone with me that they had the correct items.

I received a reply around 4am that the individual I had been dealing with was on vacation this week, or, as they say, "on holiday." Which put me back mostly to square one with a different salesman, and I spent a good part of yesterday morning catching him back up. I also went out and copied down every number from all four wheel hubs, plus I photographed two more parts book pages for him.

By the time he was square on what we actually needed and working on finding a supplier, it was past DHL's pickup time, or about 10:30am here, and hopes of replacing the bearing this week were fading. This morning I asked for an update and was informed that they would have the bearings in house tomorrow, which seals our fate -- even if they sent them overnight tomorrow, we now know the earliest we'd have them is nearly 8pm Friday. This time, though, he first intends to send me a photo and dimensions, so we do not repeat last week's mistake.

And so it goes that we will pass another full week inside the Choo Choo Express Garage -- with the hub off, we can't move even an inch let alone, say, out into the daylight. We've taken all the covers off the upper windshield and I open the roll-up door each morning, just so we can have a little daylight in the coach. Direct sunlight is out of the question, since we are facing north.



Being inside the shop also means our satellite TV and Internet access are off-line. I can get one TV station on rabbit ears if no one moves too much. We are thankful to Mike for letting us use his DSL to get internet access, but the metal shop door won't let us pick up his wireless, so we ran a 100' ethernet cable direct from his router to ours. Odyssey's ceiling is reminiscent of a Red Cross operation, with the ethernet cable coming in the roof hatch and hanging on carabiners. Even the cable is the same, acquired on a Red Cross operation years ago, when practice was to give away or discard used cables at the end of the operation rather than spool them up and ship them back.



As long as we're stuck here with some downtime, I have been continuing to tackle various projects. The air door which I spent several hours working on last week turned out, while nicely adjusted by all appearances, to still be leaking air, and I spent another five hours working on it yesterday. It's still leaking, and I can see spending another several hours this week to conquer it. And I have several days' backlog of computer projects and paperwork to get done.

Being stuck here in Chattanooga into next week aces us out of the Fort Lauderdale boat show, which was one possible destination on the calendar, and also makes Trawler Fest in San Diego next month impractical, another (albeit unlikely) possibility we had considered. It had been suggested to us to attend another bus rally this weekend in Hoboken Georgia, and that, too, is now off the table.

All of which adds up to us having even less of a clue now than before as to exactly where we will head after we are done here, whenever that may be. Even though we can't make the boat show, there are a few boats we'd like to see in the Stuart area, so that remains one possibility. And it is starting to get cold here, so south is a preferred direction. As soon as our wheel is back on, we will return to the Red Cross availability roster, so we will probably also stay in the eastern half of the country until hurricane season ends in November.

Given the difficulty we've had in getting the parts, I am very glad we decided to continue here to Choo Choo to have the work done. In addition to being a bus garage (rather than, say, a truck repair shop), they are full-timer friendly, and have been very generously allowing us to live here in the shop. We have 20 amps of power and access to water, and other than what we will eventually pay for the repairs, it is costing us nothing to stay here. Should there be any further delays I also have enough macerator hose to reach the on-site dump station as well.

All that said, we are looking forward to getting out into the sunlight, and I am sure the shop will be glad to have its service bay back. With any luck, Hurricane Rina, and whatever becomes of Investigation Area 97 behind it, will miss the U.S. entirely, and we'll head someplace warm to relax for a bit before we make any further commitments.

Countdown to reunion

I am still at the Choo Choo Express Garage near Chattanooga. The parts supplier in the U.K. did not have them all together until after the DHL pickup on Thursday, and so they left yesterday. As long as it was no longer possible to get them here in time to get me out by the weekend, I told them to send them second day, to save a few bucks, so I don't expect them here until Tuesday.

It was just as well that the bearings did not come in yesterday, as Joel ended up working well into the evening on Cherie and Chris's 4106. Their replacement air bags did not come in until late Thursday, and Joel ran into a few snags while installing them, including bent mounts from where some tire jockey improperly placed a jack (sounds familiar). He stayed late so that they could get back on the road this morning to Saint Louis. They also had their bearings repacked, fortuitous since one turned out to be loose.

In the meantime, I've had lots of time on my hands since I posted here Wednesday afternoon, and I've been knocking projects off the list. I spent several hours working on readjusting the air door, which has not been closing properly for some time, a maddeningly fussy affair involving operating the door dozens of times, and removing and reinstalling the dogs nearly as many. Every time I thought I had it just right, it would turn out to be leaking air in the closed position, and I'd have to do it again.

I also got into the engine bay to find that the driver heat valve was, indeed, closed. I am hoping that's the only issue with it, but testing will have to wait until I am out of the service bay. Unfortunately, while I was in there I discovered the alternator is leaking oil, something about which we had some concerns when it came back from the rebuild shop with silicone goop on it. Not much we can do about it now, though.



There was also some oil coming out around an exhaust port, which Joel thinks is a cracked ring. Too bad we did not notice that before we put the engine back it, as it would have been fairly easy to replace when it was out on the stand.



I cleaned out the power cord bay, which had gotten into disarray after two Red Cross assignments and a number of cord-related projects. And I cleaned out the sink drain in the bathroom, a nasty project that needs to be done every few years when the sink starts taking a long time to drain. It was good to have an indoor project, as it has been quite cold here this week, and I went over and helped Chris and Cherie with their stuck driver heat valve as well, another indoor project.

When they left this morning I lost my overnight Internet access -- I can only receive the other wireless network when the metal roll-up shop door is open. So yesterday I spent some time running a 100' ethernet cable over to Mike's rig outside so he could plug me right into his DSL router. I've got my end plugged into our WAP so Louise can get on as well when she gets home.

In a few minutes I will head over to the shuttle company to pick her up, and it will be nice to have her back home. We've both been too busy to chat much, so we have lots of catching up to do. We'll also be discussing potential routes and plans for whenever we are done here at the shop, which I hope to be Thursday morning.

Waiting to get my bearings in Chattanooga

My apologies to everyone for the lack of updates here. I have been going non-stop since I last posted here, without a break long enough to post. Odyssey really wants a two-person crew, and when only one of us is aboard, things get extremely busy.

I am now at the Choo-Choo Express Garage, in Rossville, Georgia, just south of Chattanooga (map). This is the very same place we spent three and a half weeks back in June and July having much work done on our engine. The bad wheel bearing got me all the way here, and is now out on the shop bench. It was full of metal shavings, and the spindle got hot but not scored, so it will be an easy fix.



That said, we could not find the parts anywhere in the U.S. I am not surprised, as we had the same issue when we had the bearings repacked a couple years ago. As we did back then, I have ordered the parts from a supplier in the U.K. He plans to send them via DHL overnight on Thursday, and if we get lucky we can have them in hand Friday. If they get hung up in customs, though, it's anyone's guess.

To catch up from where I left off here last week, we made it to Atlanta without incident. My plan had been to perhaps park at the College Park or Lakewood MARTA station, take the train to dinner and then again to the airport first thing in the morning. Based on some responses to my question about this, posted here Thursday, we instead headed for the Wal-Mart at Dunwoody, which would mean an extra half hour on the train in the morning, but shaved another 50 miles off what we'd have to put on the bad bearing.

That turned out to be a mistake, as the Dunwoody Wal-Mart does not own its parking lot and the lot is posted No Overnight Parking, notwithstanding that it was not listed as such in my no-no list. We did speak with the manager on duty, who said it was fine with him, but he could make no promises about whether the landlord might boot us out.

We had arrived there around 3pm, with plenty of time to seek alternatives, but we did not see any No Parking signs, since we came in via a little-used back entrance that was not so posted. After noticing another rig settled in to the lot, we figured we were fine and spent the next hour and a half driving to the two nearby MARTA stations to see what we'd need to do to get Louise to the train in the morning before heading to dinner.

We came back to the Wal-Mart lot via a different entrance, and that's when we spotted the signs. By this time, rush hour was in full swing, traffic was brutal, and we had very limited options. One potential course of action was to head south past the airport to a different pair of Wal-Marts, but there was no way we were going to do that until traffic settled down.

I had hoped to take Louise to the Commerce Club downtown for her birthday dinner, but given the circumstances, we opted instead for J. Alexander's, just a short walk from the Wal-Mart. We discussed our options over a glass of wine, and when we got back to the bus we decided we'd take our chances with the landlord, parking in the back of the store with the trucks (map). The other rig also spent the night, but in a way more conspicuous place, so we figured they were an easier target anyway.

As it turns out, we were not disturbed, other than by the Friday evening noise of the nearby popular sports bar. And we were up well before the dawn, as Louise figured she needed to be on the 6:06am MARTA to make her flight, the very first train of the day. I dropped her off right at 6, in the bus lane at the Dunwoody station, and headed for Chattanooga, possibly the earliest I have ever gotten on the road in Odyssey.

Knowing I would be on the road immediately from the MARTA station, I had carefully programmed my route into the GPS the previous evening. I figured at that early hour there would be no problem running at 50mph on the freeway until I got out of metropolitan Atlanta's gravitational zone, and I set a waypoint on US-41 somewhere near Allatoona Lake. That would have made for about a four hour drive, putting me at the rally around 10:30 with stops.

What I had not figured on was that it would still be pitch dark out when I arrived at that waypoint. With only a single set of eyes in the cockpit, and still very little traffic early on a Saturday morning, I just stayed on I-75 all the way to the lone rest area on the route. The sun was just starting to rise as I pulled off, and I spent twenty minutes between using the facilities, walking the dog, and re-calculating the route.

By this point it made sense to stay on 75 almost to Ringgold and just take US-41 the last dozen miles, with a minor detour around the 11'7" underpass in downtown Ringgold. I rolled in to Camp Jordan park (map) and the Bus Conversion Rally at 9:15, while breakfast was still being served.

I parked next to Chris and Cherie of Technomadia, and after breakfast I set up the patio, fireplace, chairs, and hot tub, a project that normally takes the two of us and ended up taking me well into the afternoon. I had hoped to also get my swap meet table set up, but between meeting and greeting as well as answering questions and helping a few folks with problems, the dinner hour came along without that done. After dinner we had cocktails in the hot tub, within earshot of the large entertainment lineup that ran from 6:30 to 11.

Sunday morning found me still not fully prepared for the two seminars I was scheduled to deliver that afternoon. I had well-intentioned plans of detailed slide presentations for both, but that was before the wheel bearing crisis, when I had figured to have a few hours to work on them over the course of our trip to Atlanta. So after spending an hour or so getting my swap meet table together, I retreated to the bus to finish up my presentations.


Photo: Cherie Ve Ard

My first seminar, on hydronic heating systems, went off without a hitch and was well received. The second, on setting up a coach for boondocking, was a bit more ad-hoc but did generate some good questions and discussion. The pavilion area where the seminars were scheduled was too close to the ongoing afternoon gospel music, so we ended up doing the seminars right on the patio at Odyssey, with Technomadia generously supplying their large computer monitor for the slide decks.


Photo: Cherie Ve Ard

Once again it was a full day right up to the dinner hour, and another relaxing evening of cocktails, hot tub, and music. That did leave me with a huge pack-up project on Monday morning, putting away the unsold swap meet items (most of them, unfortunately) and packing the hot tub, patio, and other accoutrements. It was past lunch time by the time I rolled into the shop here.

While I was already expected at the shop, a number of other coaches from the rally had also decided to drop in for various service items, and it was late afternoon by the time they parked me in our familiar old spot. An hour later, however, already having loosened most of the lug nuts, they decided to have me turn around and back all the way in to the shop, since rain was forecast for Tuesday. That left just enough time to get the outer bearing out.



That was not really a problem, as the two-day workshop that I was scheduled to begin teaching here yesterday has been canceled, along with the one-day workshop that had been scheduled for tomorrow. Good thing, really, because after master technician Joel got the inner bearing out first thing yesterday morning, I spent most of the rest of the day trying to cross-reference part numbers and find bearings, all to no avail.



I had dinner on Monday with Cherie and Chris, who are here having their air bags replaced, and last night with Jim and Pat Shepherd of RV Safety Systems. Jim was also scheduled to teach a workshop that has now been canceled, on Friday, and instead they will be heading out tomorrow. I'm glad they decided to stay at least an extra day or two so we could get together; I am trying to persuade Jim to start selling his monitoring and fire suppression system into the boat market, where we would be happy to be his first customer.

With no workshop to teach, and the bearings now on order from the U.K., I am finally able to spend some time catching up on other things, including this post. I also need to adjust the air door, which has not been closing properly for over a week, and I will look into why we are not getting any heat in the driver compartment. I did already spend some time helping Chris diagnose why his coach is tripping GFCIs -- it turned out to be a branch circuit with two dead shorts to chassis, probably from someone running a screw through the cable. Potentially a very dangerous situation and I am glad we found it, all thanks to a GFCI campground outlet.

It is cold and wet here today, so I am trying to work up the motivation to go out and adjust the door. At least I have a little power for heat and hot water, and Internet access courtesy of both Bus Conversions Magazine as well as Technomadia. I'll be catching up on email and forum posts until that motivation comes to me. I should be able to get everything done by the time the bearing parts arrive.

Louise is due back to Atlanta on Saturday. I am hoping the bearings will be done either Friday evening or perhaps Saturday morning so that I can just drive the bus down to pick her up. If not, there is a shuttle from the Atlanta airport to Chattanooga every couple hours and she'll join me here Saturday evening. Where we go from there is still an open question.

Atlanta readers: need your input

We are at the Wal-Mart in Greenwood, South Carolina (map). We made it here without incident, but it was a long day's drive. As far as we can tell, there has been no change whatsoever in the condition of the wheel hub after another ~220 miles or so.

We managed to keep the speed under 50mph the whole way, with the cruise set on 48 for a good portion of it. Our decision to stay off the freeways meant we slogged through a few cities, including Columbia, where we passed right through downtown. Between the slogging and the slow speeds, it was a full five hours in the driver's seat, plus stops. We stopped every hour or so to shoot the hubs with the IR thermometer, and we also stopped for a rest in the middle of it all, at the Wateree River.

Just as we made the turn onto the Greenwood bypass a few minutes from here we also spotted $3.499 diesel, about the best we've seen, and stopped to put $300 in. Fuel will only get more expensive in Georgia. It was just about 5:30 when we pulled in to the lot here. With rain closing in quickly, we got squared away and darted across the street to Chili's for a couple of well-earned glasses of wine and a casual dinner.

We did get something of a late start this morning, even though we got up fairly early, owing mostly to me communicating with various folks about our situation, including trying to get price and delivery quotes on the parts from Europe. Last night I had also posted about our plight on the bus forum, seeking advice, and I spent a good part of the morning digesting that.

With any luck, we will get an earlier start tomorrow and should make Atlanta in four hours or so. Which brings me to my question for our Atlanta readers: Can I park the bus overnight at a MARTA lot? The MARTA web site indicates that parking is free up to 24 hours at many stations, and specifically we are looking at College Park or Lakewood. The satellite view shows large ground lots at both locations. What I can not tell from any of my on-line resources is whether oversize vehicles are permitted or not.

What we'd like to do is pull in tomorrow afternoon, then take MARTA downtown for dinner at the Commerce Club. After dinner we would come back, catch 40 winks, then get back on the train in the other direction to get Louise to the airport for her 8am flight. We'd be parking at, say, 3pm or so, taking two trips on MARTA, and I would be rolling back out of the lot by 9am Saturday, well within the 24-hour allowance. Odyssey fits easily in two parking spaces (end-to-end) in either of these lots.

If that's not going to work, the backup plan is to find a Wal-Mart not far from the airport, and I will have to drop her off at the terminal in Odyssey using the bus lane on the lower level. Never our first choice, since navigating an airport with its maze of ramps, low clearances, and low weight-limit decks in the bus is dicey at best.

One way or another, unless we have further problems with the wheel hub, we should be in Atlanta tomorrow night and I will be rolling to Chattanooga Saturday morning, stag.

Houston, we've had a problem

We are at the Wal-Mart in Lumberton, North Carolina (map). We limped in here off US-301 after discovering that we have a bad wheel bearing on the left front wheel while coming south on I-95. We are licking our wounds and contemplating our next move.

We first noticed an issue while heading towards Goldsboro on US-70. We were hearing a noise that sounded a lot like road noise from either rough pavement or a bad tire tread, and for a long time, maybe 20 miles or so, we chalked it up to the pavement texture on the highway. We both remarked, though, that it sounded louder than when we were heading the other way on the same highway -- not all that unusual, since the two sides of a divided highway are often repaved at different times.

After we went across a couple bridges, though, with completely different pavement textures, and the sound did not disappear, we knew it was something more insidious. We spent the next couple dozen miles trying to isolate the sound -- these sorts of low-frequency humming noises are incredibly hard to pinpoint. We had a vague sense it was the tires, and maybe even the front tires, but Louise reported similar noise from all six wheel positions when she walked around the bus under way trying to identify it.

We stopped in Goldsboro to do laundry, and I carefully inspected all the tires. There were a couple of flat spots on the left tag, and I thought that might be the cause. We've had an unusual wear pattern on the steers for a while, which we noted at rotation time, but that pattern did not appear to have changed at all.

After we left Goldsboro south on US-13, Louise tried even harder to pinpoint the sound both inside the coach and by opening various windows. I varied road speeds to see what impact it would have. After another couple dozen miles, we had pretty much isolated it to the left front wheel, which I knew to be somewhat scalloped. At this point we were starting to think that the irregular tread wear had finally caught up with us.

As we made the transition to I-95 south and brought the speed up to 65, though, the noise got so loud we had to suspect something else. I slowed to 55 and we nursed it to a rest area near Fayetteville. A quick check with the IR thermometer confirmed my worst suspicions, with the left front hub reading 152° while the other three identical hubs all read 96°-98°.

I dragged out the bottle jack and raised the wheel off the ground. Fortunately, I did not detect any play when I tried to wiggle the wheel perpendicular to its plane of rotation. But I could definitely feel flat spots when I rotated the wheel through 360°. If I gave it a good spin it only went around 30°-60° before hitting a flat spot and stopping, whereas the right wheel, which we jacked up later as a test, made a full revolution on one shove.

Now, for most people in most vehicles, including most modern RVs, buses, and trucks, a bad wheel bearing is no big deal. A couple hours to pull the wheel and bearing, pack and press in new bearings and seals, and put it all back together. But long-time readers will know that parts like wheel bearings and seals for our hubs are just not available in the US.

I made a few phone calls to try to determine what, if anything, we could do about the situation. Our friend Russ, who owned a Neoplan for a while, was particularly helpful. By this time, though, it was after 5pm, and there was no way I was going to get a shop on the horn who could deal with this. Moreover, without pulling the bearings, they'd have no idea even what they would be looking for.

When we had the bearings repacked a couple years ago, we had to order the seals from Europe, and I strongly suspect we'll have to order the bearings that way, too. If I order them tomorrow, the earliest I could have them would be next week. So there we were, at an Interstate rest area facing the prospect of spending the next week or so in Fayetteville waiting on parts and trying to find a shop to do the work.

This, too, is non-trivial, as most truck shops will not work on buses and most bus shops will not work on Neoplans. We last had the bearings repacked at a Freightliner dealer, at enormous expense, because they really can't refuse to work on our Mercedes hubs, as they are the arm of Daimler-Benz in the US charged with such duties.

Eventually we decided that, having already come perhaps 120 miles since the problem first manifested itself, coming another 20 miles or so here for a more comfortable place to spend the night would be fine. We did, however, bail off I-95 at the first opportunity, traveling instead on the parallel US-301.

There are a half dozen restaurants here, but it was raining so hard when we pulled in that we just ate in. We used up the last of a couple things while doing so, plus we are out of milk, so we will need to go into the store tonight once it dries out a bit. I've had a glass of wine, so the rough edges of the day are a bit smoother.

I'm not certain what we will do in the morning. In part, it will depend on what I hear back after posting this saga on the bus forums. My inclination, though, is to try to nurse it to Chattanooga on secondary highways. That's nearly 500 miles from here if I first stop in Atlanta to drop Louise off, but it's only 35 fewer miles to go "direct." I had to put that last word in quotes, because there is no good route from here to there, reminiscent of "Which way to Millinocket."

Honestly, I have no idea if the bearing has another 500 miles in it. With no sign of play, though, and checking the temps every hour or so with the IR gun, I think we have a shot if we keep the speed under 50. But that will put me at a shop that I know will take on the work, where I can stay as long as needed to get the parts, and I will also be able make my commitment to teach the post-rally workshops that start there next week.

I probably will not post here again in the morning, as we will have a long day ahead of us. If we do decide to press on, the back roads, reduced speeds, and frequent hub checks will mean a lot more hours on the road each day. The non-freeway route involves US-301 and US-76 to Columbia, then US-378 to Athens, so we would be somewhere along 378 near the Georgia state line tomorrow evening. Stay tuned.

Atlanta bound

We are at the Wal-Mart in New Bern, North Carolina (map). Having stayed here before, we knew right where to park. Curtis was already waiting for us when we pulled in at 10:45, and we hopped in the car and headed right to Morehead City to look at the 43. The couple who own it are live-aboards, and, amusingly, they are looking to move onto an RV instead. We joked with them about making a trade.

That said, the boat was in just about the same condition as the same model we looked at in Annapolis a week ago, even though the asking price is fully 50% more. To be fair, this boat has stabilizers and comes with more equipment, such as a water maker and a fully equipped tender, which accounts for at least some of the price difference. Still, a lot of work needs to be done.

We had a nice lunch in Morehead City before coming back to New Bern to look at the 48. It is exactly the same layout at the 43, but the additional 3-4' LOA, spread across the entire floor plan, makes the boat feel much larger. It is also a beamier boat. This particular example, a 2004 so 3-4 years younger than the two 43s, was in much better condition. It was also fully equipped just as we'd like it, and "ready to cruise," which would make it just perfect for us if not for the price, nearly double that of the first 43 we saw.

I think we really need to look at a 43 that is a bit newer and in better condition than the two we just saw. While the 48's additional roominess was nice, it's really more boat than we need, and it would seem to us that the appeal of the one we saw had more to do with it being newer and in better condition than the two 43s. Selene made several improvements to all its models in the early part of the decade, such as beefier watertight doors topsides, higher-end materials in the galleys, and generally improved fit and finish throughout.

Curtis dropped us back off here at Wal-Mart around 4:30, just in time to return his rental car and catch his flight. We had lots of time to chat in the car, and now that he's looked at three different Selenes with us, he has a very good idea of where we want to be, so he can keep his ear to the ground. It was a very enjoyable day and we learned a great deal.

After getting the bus squared away for the evening we walked over to Paula's Italian Restaurant, which was as good as we remembered from last visit. We also made a quick stop at Lowe's next door for a couple of essential items. We'll stop inside Wal-Mart this morning before heading out.

From here we are basically heading directly to Atlanta. I had thought we'd be heading straight to the airport, with my plan to spend the night in the long-term lot so Louise could just catch the shuttle bus to the terminal first thing in the morning. Unfortunately, none of the on-airport parking lots at Hartsfield can accommodate Odyssey -- all the entrance booths have low clearance. The woman I spoke to at the office said the highest clearance they had was 12', at the Silver Reserve lot.

I am now scrambling to find alternate arrangements, perhaps along the MARTA line north of the airport. Louise has a very early flight, and needs to be at the terminal around 7am or so. That rules out most of our usual spots, such as Wal-Mart or an Elks lodge, unless she wants a very early, very expensive cab ride or I want to pilot the bus through the curbside motor coach dropoff first thing in the morning.

Studying the parking alternatives will be my chore for this evening. In the meantime, we need to get laundry done, and so will be heading to a laundromat in Goldsboro on our way to I-95 south. I expect to be just over the state line in South Carolina this evening.

Picking up the pace

We are at the Wal-Mart in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina (map). This is a familiar stop for us, close to the freeway interchange and with a selection of restaurants within an easy walk. After dinner we went in to the store to stock up on groceries.

We figured this to be a good stopping point, after about four hours on the road today and with just two and a half hours to go to New Bern, where we thought we'd have afternoon appointments. About 9:30 last evening, though, I got a text from Curtis, and he will be arriving in New Bern at 10:30am and flying back out around 5:30. We'll need to leave by 8am to make it to New Bern by 10:45 or so, about when he should be done picking up his rental car.

I'm not sure in what order he's lined up the visits, but we will ride with him to look at a Selene 48 in New Bern and a Selene 43 in Morehead City, about half an hour away. We'll just leave the bus in New Bern with our attentive guard dog on duty, and after he drops us back off we'll spend the night either at Wal-Mart or the New Bern Elks lodge a few blocks away.

I had originally asked him to set up appointments for Wednesday, thinking we needed a day in DC and not realizing how tight that would make the run to Atlanta from New Bern. Having everything wrapped up tomorrow is really much better, allowing us to get right on the road Wednesday morning and giving us two and a half days to make the 500+ miles to Atlanta. That's comfortable, and will even give us a chance to go out Friday night to celebrate Louise's birthday before she flies out early Saturday morning.

DC fly-by

We are at the Elks lodge in Alexandria, Virginia (map). We are just an hour from where we were parked yesterday at this time, in Baltimore, but we wanted to stop in the DC area for a day to possibly visit some folks before heading south toward Atlanta.

As it turned out, the logistics were not favorable for visiting, and this particular spot was a poor choice. We chose it because it seemed to be the closest DC-area parking spot to our planned route, as well as the closest to downtown DC itself, at least as the crow flies. However, to get to the Red Cross headquarters from here requires taking one city bus and two Metro trains, for a combined total of 1-1.5 hours of travel each way. On top of the unfavorable travel logistics, the lot is very sloped here and there was no way to get level. At least they have a power outlet for $10 per night, but we didn't really need it this time.

Since we were neither able to have dinner with our friend Glen, in town for a meeting of the International response unit, nor inclined to spend ~3 hours on transit just to go in to headquarters for lunch today, we are just going to move along. I'm sorry we did not get to visit with anyone, but we are on something of a tight schedule anyway. Too bad, because the weather is beautiful and it would be a great time to spend a few days visiting the area and its many attractions.

We had a great time at Trawler Fest. For one thing, we could not have asked for better weather, sunny and with the temperature hovering around 80 during the day. Also, this particular venue had a good selection of boats in the style to which we are narrowing our search. And we connected with many friends we've made over the years, including Mark and Jennifer aboard Starlet, whom we met at a previous Trawler Fest.

While Starlet was not in the show, we had a chance to tour her, and we were stricken by just how different and more usable her layout was than that of the nearby Jenny, a brokerage boat in the show that we had been interested in. Both boats are Nordhavn 46 models, just a few years apart, but we found the engine room access and below-decks layout really unworkable on Jenny, and struck it from our list. If an N-46 with Starlet's layout came on the market in our price range, though, we would consider it.

We are grateful to blog reader Laura of Kady-Krogen yachts, who provided us with day passes for the show for all four days. The two boats Krogen brought were beautiful, and I'd have to say the the Krogen 44 would be our perfect boat, except it is a bit out of our price range. They have not been out long enough to be readily available on the used market. We had hoped to get aboard an older Krogen 42 while we were here in the Chesapeake bay area, but the timing just did not work out.

We also spent a good deal of time with our broker Curtis and his wife Gill, who brought four boats to the show. Curtis is continuing to work with us on looking at some more Selenes here on the east coast, and it just so happens that two of them are in the New Bern and Morehead City area in North Carolina this week. So we are making a diversion from the most direct route to Altanta in order to see them. It adds 190 miles and four hours of driving (and $150 in fuel and maintenance) to do so, but it's hard to imagine that it will get much more convenient. We are due in Morehead City tomorrow afternoon, and so we will get rolling just as soon as I post the blog.

Waterfront property in Baltimore

We are parked right on the water at Baltimore's Inner Harbor (map). This is a pay-to-park lot for the nearby Harborview Marina, operated by the same outfit who operates the Inner Harbor Marina, which is the venue for Trawler Fest. We're paying $15 per night (which may get discounted to $9 before we leave), and are within walking distance of the show. Since the show is also using this lot for parking, they are also running a shuttle van during the day, so we really only need to walk the half mile after dinner.

We have a great view of the Harborview Marina and a good deal of the inner harbor right out our windows, and it's been great watching the boats coming and going. It was a bit of a challenge squeezing the bus through the narrow entrance lane, as well as negotiating some of the streets downtown, but we're squared away now until the show ends Sunday. It was just about an hour drive here down US-40 from the Havre de Grace Elks lodge, where we spent Tuesday night topping up the batteries.

We had a nice ride down to Annapolis Wednesday with our broker Curtis to look at a Selene 43. This model is really the front runner in our search at the moment, although we had been led to believe that this particular example was in poor condition. We were pleasantly surprised to find that she was in much better shape than predicted, and would make a decent starting platform for us. The biggest issue is that she lacks stabilizers, which is a very expensive addition to a finished boat. That said, the current owner is not very motivated and we're not willing to agree to any of his current stated terms, so we will likely not be making an offer.

Yesterday we strolled the docks and boarded a half dozen or so boats, including a '94 Nordhavn that had looked good on paper. It turned out to be far from ideal for us, with extremely poor engine room access and a very cluttered topsides. It did sport a motorcycle on the boat deck, evidence that this is not only possible but has been done with some success. We also spent some time with friends Mark and Jennifer aboard Starlet, a 2000 Nordhavn from the same hull mold but with a much nicer layout.

A couple years ago, as we made our first circuit through New England, we stopped off and toured the Maine Cat factory in Maine, where we saw three Maine Cats in various stages of construction, none of which was a finished boat. Yesterday we met company president Dick Vermeulen aboard the latest finished example of this product, which was quite nice, even though we did not care for the main salon layout that this owner specified. While aboard I spent half an hour or so inside a cabinet in the kitchen helping him diagnose a problem with the solar controller, a model similar to ours. Unfortunately, the controller board was dead, with nothing I could really do about it, leaving him with 680 watts of unusable solar panels on the cabin roof.

In a few minutes we will head back to the docks for a second day of browsing. It's looking like it will take us the full two days just to make a first pass through all the interesting boats, which will leave tomorrow for a more detailed look at any particular boats we found worthy of it. The show has half day hours on Sunday as well, in case we don't squeeze it all in by tomorrow evening.

Ahh, back at our home park

We are at the Wal-Mart in New Castle, Delaware (map). We left my aunt and uncle's house in New City, NY around mid-day yesterday, and it was a pretty straight shot here down the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike. We did detour briefly onto US-1 in Edison, NJ, to fuel up, as the Raceway station there had diesel for $3.499 (cash), about the best we could find anywhere in the northeast. They had a high-speed truck nozzle, so it only took fifteen minutes to put in $500 worth.

We had a very nice visit with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, who came down from Argyle, NY for the Army game. My uncle volunteers for the Army athletic department in his retirement, which gets him on post any time he wants, and he gave us a nice tour of campus on Thursday. We had planned to arrive there early Saturday to tailgate before the game, as well as afterward, but the weather did not cooperate and we ended up just going for the game. Our seats were under cover, thankfully. It was a rout, with Army obliterating Tulane 48-6.



My uncle had fixed a giant batch of gumbo for the tailgate, in honor of the visiting team, and we instead had it for dinner at the house. I must say it was very good, even though my uncle does not have an Acadian bone in his body. We ended up with some of the leftovers here on the bus, and we had some for dinner last night as well.

While we were parked on the street in front of his house, we were using his 15-amp GFCI receptacle for power. It was tripped when we arrived and it tripped a few more times while we were there, so I ended up replacing all three of his outdoor GFCI outlets, which were probably due at seven years old. I also replaced his CO/smoke detector and three interconnected smoke detectors, since the CO detector quit (by design) at the seven year mark as well. As long as I had the tools out, I replaced the outside motion-sensing light over the garage, as the motion detector was intermittent at about that same age.

We are now en route to Trawler Fest in Baltimore. We stopped here for the night because we were trying to arrange an appointment to look at a boat in Annapolis either this afternoon or tomorrow, and we'd take a different route from here, down through the DelMarVa peninsula, to get there. That would put us in the Annapolis area overnight, and we'd roll into the Inner Harbor area of Baltimore Thursday morning some time.

As it turns out, though, our friend and yacht broker Curtis will also be attending the show, and he'll have a rental car. He's lined up the appointment for 3pm tomorrow, so we'll arrive in the Inner Harbor tomorrow mid-day and ride to Annapolis with him in the car instead. That will cost us an extra night of parking downtown for $15, but save us $30 or more in driving the bus. It does mean that we now have a full day to travel the mere 63 miles to our destination. As a result, we've been killing time here in the Wal-Mart lot, catching up on emails (and blog posts).

In a few minutes we will go into the store and do our shopping; this is our first Wal-Mart stay since we stopped in Dumfries, VA on our way north nearly a month ago. We often joke that Wal-Mart is our "home park," and spending some time at one actually signifies a return to normalcy for us, as odd as that may sound. It has been nice just having a relaxing morning with no office to go to or relatives to visit. We try not to stay even as long as 24 hours, though, so after our shopping we will move along, with our sights set on the Havre de Grace Elks lodge for tonight, about half way to Baltimore. That will give us plenty of time in the morning to get into position and squared away at the Inner Harbor before we head to Annapolis.