We did not get far

Angel in better days

We are at Henderson Beach State Park in Destin, Florida (map), a mere ten miles or so from the Fort Walton Beach Elks lodge. While we'd not stayed here previously, the park was familiar to us because this is where we came to dump our tanks in the middle of our Elks stay last year. Back then, one of the beach parking lots here was occupied by emergency management as part of the oil spill cleanup.

We're here because it is just three miles from the vet's office. Actually, the vet is less than a mile from our spot here, but it's a full mile in the other direction to get back to the park entrance -- not only the vet, but a handful of shops and restaurants are tantalizingly close, with no way to get to them other than the two-mile round trip.

We spent Sunday afternoon in the parking lot at the Petsmart. Angel had a 2:30 appointment, and by 3:30 or so they decided to keep her for the afternoon to run a battery of tests. Realizing it would be dark by the time she was released, I called the park to check on site availability. Good thing I did, because the gate closes at 4:45, and I needed to get a gate code and site assignment from them.

The vet kept Angel till 5:30, and one of the things they decided to do was administer barium for a follow-up x-ray Monday afternoon, to ensure there was no blockage in the digestive tract. It was past 6 by the time we walked out of the Petsmart, and we decided to just walk across the parking lot to Olive Garden for dinner before heading to the park.

We had only paid for a single night, and with a 1pm checkout we packed up, emptied the tanks, and relocated to the beach parking lot to await our 3:30 follow-up appointment. In hindsight, we should have just paid for two or three nights up front, because it was naturally dark again by the time we were finished Monday and we came right back here. I called them again just before the office closed and they put us right back in this same site, a pull-through with 50 amps and a clear shot to our satellite.

One of the blood samples they took on Sunday was sent to an outside lab for a hyperthyroidism test, and the earliest they expected the results was yesterday, so when I rolled down to the gate to pay I extended one more night to today, reasoning the test would not be ready by checkout time. As it is, we still have not heard the results and it is already 11am on Wednesday. We want to stay nearby until the results are in, in case the test is positive and she needs to go back in for additional treatment. In the meantime, we are continuing to give subcutaneous fluids, and are having to force-feed her with a medicine dropper.

When it rains it pours, and in addition to all the drama with the cat, our week and a half of relaxation came to an abrupt end with several things breaking since our arrival in Destin. It started with the printer, which crapped out right in the middle of shipping all the items we sold on eBay over the last few days. It printed several labels just fine, and then all of a sudden the black ink (but not the color) started getting unreadable. Changing to two different spare black ink tanks had no effect, and it turns out to be the print head which bit the dust.

It's a shame, because I had just replaced a broken gear on the drive mechanism about two weeks ago, and with the printer working better than ever, I stocked up on ink tanks. The drive gear cost me $10, way cheaper than replacing the printer, but a new print head for this model is a whopping $78 -- more than many brand new printers. Reluctantly, I bit the bullet and dropped $50 on a whizzy new Brother all-in-one model that copies, prints, scans, and faxes (should we ever have a land telephone line). Of course, it's three times as large as the diminutive Canon "travel" model which broke, and I had to rearrange the entire equipment rack to fit it in. On the plus side, it is networked, so we can now print right from our chairs rather than having to set up the little travel model and hard-wire it to a computer each time we need to print.

On Monday, after relocating to the beach parking lot with no issue, the bus refused to start when we got ready to leave for our afternoon vet appointment. It took me less than five minutes to trace the problem to the fuel pressure switch that disables the starter once the engine is running, and I was able to start it by jury-rigging around the switch, so we were on-time for our appointment. Yesterday I ordered a replacement switch at the O'Reilly's in town, which was supposed to arrive 7:30 this morning. Of course it was not there when I went to pick it up, so I wasted a ten-mile round trip (and very cold) scooter ride.

After our Monday afternoon appointment it was again dark and we walked across the street to Miller's Ale House for dinner before returning to the park. When we came back to the bus, one of the smoke detectors had lost its mind and was making a low-volume, high-pitched squeal (much higher than the actual alarm sound). Turns out both smoke detectors were made in October of 2001, and they have a ten year life, so it was off to Home Depot yesterday for a pair of replacements. I'm hoping nothing else breaks between now and when we finally leave Destin.

In a short while we will clear out of the campground and head to the beach lot until we get the thyroid results. I am hoping that they will come in early enough for us to clear out of town and continue on our merry way, with any needed follow-up care at a different Petsmart in another town.

Thanksgiving at the beach

We are still at the Elks lodge in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, having decided shortly after my last post to just extend our stay through the holiday weekend. We had a nice, traditional turkey dinner with all the fixings at, of all places, a sports bar downtown called Fokker's. Several "nicer" places were also offering a Thanksgiving meal, but most seemed to stop at 3pm, and we wanted to eat our big meal later than that -- Fokker's served until 8.

An unexpected bonus of having stayed here through the weekend is that our new friends Vicki and Norm aboard Tide Hiker, whom we met in Mobile, stopped last night at the city dock downtown. We made plans to meet them there and walk to any of the half dozen or so decent places within a few blocks of the dock.

Staying overnight at the city dock requires permission from the city manager, or, when city hall is closed, the police department. While they were securing permission to stay, the police recommended they not leave the boat unattended at any time, and so we ended up ordering Chinese carry-out from the joint across the street and eating aboard instead -- it was a very pleasant evening.

We've also gotten some more projects done around the house, including changing the oil on my scooter and selling a bunch of stuff on eBay, but the big news around here and overshadowing all else is that our cat Angel does not seem to be improving. We've been giving her 100cc of subcutaneous ringers lactate every day to keep her hydrated, as she does not seem to be drinking, and we've had to tempt her with canned tuna to get her to eat anything at all.

We've paid up here through tomorrow, and after breakfast we will head east to Destin, where there is a Petsmart with a Banfield veterinarian. We want to get another opinion on what is ailing her, and we were able to get an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. Depending on how long we are at the vet, we will either spend the night at the state park there in Destin, or continue on to Panama City.

Cat tale

We are at the Elks lodge in Fort Walton Beach, Florida (map). This is a very familiar place for us, as we spent a little over a month here last year on alert for hurricane season. Since our last visit, the rate has doubled, to $20 per night, and we hardly need the 30-amp power at the moment (unlike last year), but that's still a good deal along the Emerald Coast. We paid for a full week when we pulled in on Tuesday, after a very short drive from Navarre.

Our plan had been to settle in and relax for a week, getting some languishing projects off the books at the same time. Our cat Angel, however, had other plans for us. She's been throwing up in the morning every couple days for the last week or so, and that reached crisis proportions Tuesday night. Wednesday morning we hunted around for a local vet so we could have her looked at, and ended up taking her five miles west to Mary Esther on the scooter.

The doctor was concerned enough to take X-rays as well as blood work, and ended up keeping her overnight for observation and IV fluids. So that ended up being two trips in two days, five bills, and a lot of overnight fretting on our part. Ultimately the diagnosis was the beginnings of kidney disease, and some dehydration. So she is now officially on the K/D diet that she's been eating anyway, courtesy of her sister with the same issue, and a higher proportion of wet food. That's worked well for George, and we are hoping it will for Angel, too. We were very glad to have her back aboard yesterday afternoon, and so far she has been doing fine.

Aside from cleaning cat barf, and futilely trying to explain the First Law of Thermodynamics to someone over on the bus board (after I wrote this about space heaters), I've spent the better part of the last three days updating my cell phone. There are times when it does not pay to be a geek, and sometimes I yearn to be ignorant both of the laws of thermodynamics, and that it is possible to do more with your cell phone than just what the carriers shove down your throat.

Back in March I ditched my aging Blackberry for a whizzy new Android phone, a Samsung Epic 4G. One of the reasons I chose Android was the ongoing development of the platform and the notion that the phone would be continuously upgradable to the latest release, theoretically obviating the need for a new phone every few years just to get the newer features. Mostly, I was tired of having to sync the Blackberry constantly with my computer, and wanted something that would just sync automatically in the background with the cloud.

I got the Epic just as Android 2.3, "Froyo," was rolling out for it, and I patiently waited for a few weeks until it came to me "over the air." Shortly thereafter, I tired of Sprint's spyware and bloatware, which just got worse with Froyo than when I first got the phone, and I ended up loading a custom software package, known generically as a ROM, on it instead. The phone got way faster and the battery life also got much better without the spyware and other junk constantly running in the background, plus some factory GPS issues were solved, and I have been very happy. I posted about the process here, wherein I also compared my phone to a 1980's-vintage mainframe.

Last week, Sprint finally rolled the newer Android, "Gingerbread," out to these phones over the air, but with the custom ROM I don't get those updates. Ironically, Sprint was rolling out Gingerbread right as Google released an even newer update, "Ice Cream Sandwich," just as they had rolled out Froyo just as Google was releasing Gingerbread. It seems Sprint and Samsung are constantly one release behind.

In any case, in order to get the newer release without getting all the spyware and other bloat back, I have to update manually and choose among the handful of custom ROMs available based on Gingerbread, some of which are not yet fully baked, if you will pardon the pun. And there is a certain amount of reloading and updating of applications that has to happen, which would also be a behind-the-scenes thing for the stock release over the air. Ironically, just as I was starting this process and wondering whether it was all worth it, I got a tweet from my Red Cross boss and tech guru, Keith Robertory, linking to this write-up about the invasive spyware to which I am referring and which I ditched long ago: yes, it's worth the effort.

I'm mostly back working again, but the battery life is not yet where it was under the Froyo ROM, so I probably have another couple of ROM updates ahead of me still. In the seven months or so that I've had it, we've become somewhat dependent on this phone for emails and underway web searching, such as to find overnight spots, and it is also now our backup Internet connectivity when we can't use the dish for whatever reason.

Our mail came the second day we were here, and it contained a part that I ordered for our portable color inkjet printer, which crapped out last month. Replacing the part, a plastic gear which cracked along a stress line, was a fiddly little project but now that it's done, the printer works like new. One of the things we look forward to whenever we move to a boat will be enough space for a full-size, wireless, desktop printer rather than the little portable job we have now.



Meanwhile, after cleaning cat barf off the dashboard (including the bookcase - yuck) for the umpteenth time, we decided the time has come for the three bobble dolls we've kept there to move on to a different life; Louise has freecycled them. But I took some photos for posterity, and because I was very fond of the hula ones. Each has a story.

President Obama is the most recent addition to the collection, and, frankly, we'd had to cover him a few times for fear of vandalism, depending on where we were parked (sad, actually). He was our consolation prize, of sorts, for traveling all the way to DC for the inauguration only to be thwarted at the Purple Gate of Doom, which I wrote about here. In this post I described how we got the bobble-head, and there is a photo from before the flag came off his little flagstaff.



The male hula dancer, whom we dubbed "Hunu," was a souvenir from our Hawaii cruise back in 2006, after just a year aboard Odyssey. We thought he'd make a nice counterpoint to the hula dog. Call us puerile -- after all, every little boy looks up Barbie's miniskirt -- but we couldn't resist peeking under his grass skirt in the store, and, discovering that he was not only "commando" under there, but also had carefully sculpted buns and, umm, "bulge," we both simultaneously exclaimed "Who knew?!" ... and the name stuck. He's made from a different type of plastic than the dog, so he still sports his original tan.



Hula Dog has been on the dashboard since the day Odyssey left the shop back in 2004. She was a wedding gift from our friend Carolyn; we had exhorted all our guests to avoid giving us any "stuff" since we were downsizing our lives in preparation for moving aboard, but she couldn't resist, and we thought the dog was a fitting figurehead for the bus.



Sitting, as she did, mostly exposed to the ravages of sunlight every day, she began to fade early on, and we had to rotate her as if on a rotisserie to keep her tone even. You can still see some of her original color under her faded skirt.



We expect to be here at least until Tuesday. If we don't get a better offer, we'll likely extend through the weekend and just have Thanksgiving dinner at one of the many nice restaurants here in town. After that I expect we will continue east and then south, in search of warmer climes and possibly some boats to view.

Scofflaws

We are at the Elks lodge in Navarre, Florida (map). Alas, our plans to spend a couple nights on the beach out on Santa Rosa Island were not to be, although that did not stop us from driving the length of the island. At least it was a pretty drive, and the island was very different from our first visit there back in 2005, not long after a pair of hurricanes wreaked havoc there.

After paying our $1 toll to get on to the island from Gulf Breeze, we noted a number of potential dinner spots before passing out of the developed zone around the causeway. We had entered the coordinates of the supposed overnight spot into the GPS, about five miles east of town, and I had also scoped it out on Google Earth, so we knew right where to turn. As promised, all the other lots were clearly marked "no campers or trailers" right out by the road.



As we turned in to the lot, though, we passed a giant "No RV Parking" sign, the same one I had seen in Google Street View. We did notice a number of spaces that previously had "RV" stenciled on the blacktop, but now painted out with black pavement paint. Apparently, between March and now, the Santa Rosa Island Authority had a change of policy about RV parking here, whereas they had previously allowed stays of up to 48 hours. We parked anyway -- the enormous lot was empty, save for perhaps a half dozen cars and, ironically, a giant fifth wheel -- making us scofflaws, at least for the half hour we spent having lunch, checking their web site, and regrouping.

We continued to the eastern terminus of the road, at the former Navarre Beach State Park, now operated by the county. The state park had a handful of RV sites, but the county did not resurrect those when they rescued the park from its hurricane-ravaged state. It and the two adjacent county park lots were all marked No Overnight Parking. At least we found a recycling bin there that would accept glass (ironically past the "No Glass Bottles" sign at the entrance) and we could get rid of the last of our recycling, now hauled through a half dozen states.

When we crossed north back to the mainland we then had to backtrack six miles to Camping World, where we knew there was a free dump station, the only one we'll see in the entire panhandle. That will give us the flexibility to spend a couple weeks here if we so choose. This Elks lodge was just a half mile or so east of the causeway, and while it is only another 16 miles to Fort Walton Beach, we decided to spend one more free night of dry camping before springing the $10 per night there. We'll head that way in a short while.

Panhandling

We are at a Walmart in Pensacola, Florida (map). "East" won the coin toss, principally because there are a couple of boats in the state that we might want to go look at, and we left the Dog River Marina late yesterday morning, after loading up the scooter and saying goodbye to our new friends Norm and Vicki. I am happy to report that the steering worked just fine while backing out of the parking space (one of the most stressful things power steering ever does), albeit there was some shudder as the air bubbles worked their way out of the system, and I had to top up the fluid before pulling out of the lot.

Our unintentional stay of several days at Dog River caused us to exhaust the larder, and we didn't even have anything aboard for lunch, so our first stop was the Walmart across the bay in Daphne, Alabama. While Louise did the grocery shopping, I put 200 gallons of diesel in at the on-site Murphy Oil station, where the price of $3.699 per gallon was the lowest we'd see all the way to Florida. From there our plan had been to do laundry across the street at the Magnolia Cleaners, but the place was packed on a Sunday afternoon and there were not enough machines available for us.

While having our lunch there in the parking lot we identified another couple of coin laundries here in Pensacola, on the way to a planned stopping spot on Santa Rosa island. If we had managed to finish the laundry in Daphne, we might well have spent the night at the Bass Pro store just north of town, a familiar stop for us. As it was, we got on I-10 east knowing it might well be dark when we finished the laundry in Pensacola.

The place we had our sights set upon is a parking lot on the island, listed in our Day's End directory as allowable for overnight parking up to 48 hours, with a dozen spaces designated for RVs. While the laundry was spinning, though, I spent some time looking at the imagery from the Google car, which seems to show a sign prohibiting RVs altogether. The directory entry was updated in March, 2011, and there is no way to know whether the Google street view photo is from before or after that date.

We had only ten minutes of daylight left when the laundry was done, and with a camp spot of uncertain status at least twenty minutes away, we decided to just pop back here only two miles from the laundromat. We'll head out to the island today, instead, where we'll have plenty of time to continue onward to a backup option should parking there no longer be allowed.

Now that we're in the Florida panhandle, we're going to slow down and relax. I'm still recuperating from the hose replacement project -- it feels like I did 200 squats and 100 sit-ups -- and we can both use some uninterrupted down-time to catch up. We'll probably spend a week in Fort Walton Beach, a place with which we are intimately familiar after a stay there of over a month last year.

Photo by WordRidden, used under a Creative Commons license.

Mobile again

We are still at the Dog River Marina in Mobile, Alabama. The yard is very generously allowing us to stay a few days at no charge, and they have even provided us with a 20-amp power outlet. No doubt the folks we are here to visit will have a fairly hefty yard bill, though, and I am sure the yard sees it as a good will gesture. For sure we will remember it, and Dog River will be on our list for whenever we need yard work.

I am happy to report that the power steering is fixed and we are again ready to roll. That said, we've decided to stay and visit at least another day -- we have a spectacular view, a power outlet, and good company, and no particular schedule or destination in mind anyway.

The power steering problem turned out to be a missed diagnosis on my part. There is some very obvious damage to the hard pipe I mentioned in the last post, and the pipe was covered in steering fluid. No damage was visible elsewhere, and I made what seemed like the obvious connection. Once I had a clear direction on how I was going to proceed, to wit, clamping a patch over the hole until we could get to a shop at the north end of town, I decided to double-check the diagnosis before going any further, by filling the system and applying some pressure.

I put two gallons of ATF in the steering reservoir and sent Louise to the driver's seat with a radio while I got under the hatch. We did not even need to start the engine, though, as just having fluid in the system was enough for it to start leaking. A bit to my surprise, the fluid was coming out from an entirely different spot -- the underside of the high pressure supply hose.

Admittedly, a rupture in the high pressure side of the system made much more sense to me than a break in the return line. There was a loud bang when the steering went, I lost all steering assist immediately, and almost all the fluid came out in a matter of seconds. Combined with the fact that I was cranking the wheel hard at the time, it all adds up to a high-side rupture.

The good news here is that this rupture was in a braided hose, something that can merely be replaced, as opposed to the damage to the hard pipe, which would need to be somehow repaired in place. Unfortunately, without being over a pit, getting the hose out was a real challenge. It took me the better part of an hour, but I was able to get the pump side off and the P-clamps undone from under the hatch, and by airing up the rear suspension and then blocking the frame, I had just enough room to skinny under the tag axle and disconnect the coach end of the hose.

We pulled out my scooter, and two hose shops and $63 later I had a replacement hose in hand. The original was braided stainless, but the Parker guy talked me out of replacing it with the same thing and instead sold me their 4000psi, high-temperature DOT-rated hose, which looks to have some kind of synthetic braid. Parker also had a 22mm high-pressure, bite-ring pipe union for $25, and I bought that as well in the event the return pipe finally lets go and I need to cut the damaged section out.

Getting the new hose in was even more of a struggle than getting the old one out, as I had to reach further up above the axle. But after another hour or so I had the system hooked back up and refilled, and we tested it. Everything works perfectly, and the groove in the return pipe, as bad as it looks, apparently does not go all the way through and is not leaking. I put a silicone hose around the pipe to protect it from further damage, and I have the pipe coupling in my kit as a remedy should it finally fail.

It was the end of the day by the time I had the floor back together and was finally able to climb in the shower and get the grease out of my hair. Louise whipped up some dinner from whatever we had lying around in the kitchen, as it was really too cold to want to ride anyplace decent from here. And today I returned the unused highfalutin hose clamp to the on-site West Marine here. We were sitting round discussing just where we were going to head, now that we are mobile, when the phone rang with a call from Vicki at the other end of the marina.

They invited us to go see a movie this afternoon, as they are renting a car for the weekend. And she passed along that she had run into the yard owner who explicitly invited us to stay longer if we wanted to. So that obviated the need to nail down our plans right at this very moment, which means we still don't know which direction we will head from here. There are still a couple of boats we might look at in Stuart, so that remains a possibility, or we may head west where parking is free and easy and the snowbirds are more laid back.

Photo by Siddharth Menon, used under a Creative Commons license.

Not mobile in Mobile

We are at the Dog River Marina and Boat Works, in Mobile, Alabama (map). We arrived yesterday around 3:30 after driving straight through from Montgomery, where we ended up spending an extra night. We had agreed to arrive here shortly after 3, when the yard ends its work day.

Shortly after my last post we learned that the person with the keys to the hot site was off for the day, and we could not gain access. After noodling for a little while and realizing it was only a little more than a three hour drive to Mobile if we stayed on the freeway, we decided to spend one more night in Montgomery, on the chance that we could get in on Tuesday morning. We told the Disaster Operations Center that we could be available to have a look up until about noon.

Since we were staying an extra night, we decided to ride the scooters into downtown Montgomery and have a nice lunch at our club there on Monday, and made that our big meal of the day. It was a buffet, which we are fond of saying is all you can eat, but not all you should eat. We ended up having a very light snack later, instead of dinner. Knowing that the chances were good that we would not gain access Tuesday morning, either, I took the opportunity to shoot some photos through the windows once the sun went down.

Sure enough, noon rolled around on Tuesday without any further progress, and we loaded the scooters, disconnected from our 20-amp power outlet, and headed back onto the road. We made it most of the way here without incident.

I say most of the way, because less than five miles from here, on the very short (one exit) stretch of I-10 we had to traverse, we took an enormous rock strike to the windshield. With less than five miles to go, and being expected around 3:30, we decided to continue straight here and repair it once we were settled and had a chance to explain things. Little did we know, however, that this was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and our day was about to get much worse.

We stopped at the marina/yard office to ask where to park -- the folks whose boat we'd come to see had arranged with the yard for us to park overnight. They directed us to a spot that required us to back up perhaps a hundred feet or so and then turn. Right in the middle of the turn came a loud bang, and I lost all power steering. A quick inspection revealed all three or four gallons of our power steering fluid in a large puddle under the bus.

With little other choice, I managed to wrestle the bus into its designated parking space by brute force. My 145 pounds is no match for the steering pressures on a coach this big, and it took me four passes of back-and-fill to crank into a space that would have taken one turn of the wheel under normal conditions. I dumped what was left of our cat litter on the pool of fluid, and we set to fixing the star in the windshield, a time-critical job when temperatures are heading down at the end of the day.

We had already let our hosts know about the delay for the windshield repair, but not anything else, and so after we had the patch done and it was curing we cleaned up and headed over to their boat to have a look. The steering crisis would have to wait for the morning.

We had a wonderful evening with our hosts Norm and Vicki aboard their beautiful DeFever 49 Raised Pilot House. As the boat is on the hard, we had to climb an 8' ladder to board, but it gave us a great opportunity to look at the running gear and any below-the-waterline issues. After an excellent tour we enjoyed cocktails and conversation for quite a while before retiring to the bus for the evening. We agreed to meet again today for lunch after a tour of Odyssey at 11.

First thing this morning I popped the hatch under the bed to have a look at the steering situation. It is dire indeed; I had hoped it was just a burst hose or fitting, but, instead, the hard pipe that runs from the engine bay to the front of the bus was rubbing against an engine mount and has worn through. Apparently it did not get properly secured from such damage after the engine was replaced at Choo Choo back in July. (Photos and more details are in this thread, on the bus board.)

I've spent most of the day, outside of our nice lunch at a local restaurant, trying to find someone who can repair the pipe. Replacing it is out of the question, as most of the chase that carries it to the steering box in the front is inaccessible. And, of course, it is hardened steel and also metric. The guys in the boat yard could do nothing for me, and the forklift repair company we called looked at it and told me there was nothing they could do, either. None of the hydraulic shops in town was able to help me.

There was one repair shop that said they thought they could fix it somehow, but we'd have to bring it in. They are 20 miles from here, and not only can I not drive it that far without the assist working, I am certain the pump would also be damaged with no fluid in it.

After lunch, as long as we were all in the marina's courtesy car, we stopped by Walmart to pick up five gallons of ATF, and more cat litter. And I picked up a heavy-duty non-perforated hose clamp and a section of 250psi reinforced water hose at the on-site West Marine here. Tomorrow I plan to try to plug the leak by clamping the hose over the rupture. I'm sure it will still leak fluid while under pressure, but I am hoping it will keep enough fluid in the system to get us the 20 miles to the shop. If that doesn't work, I have no idea what the next thing to try will be, but the marina does not seem to be too antsy about us being here.

Just to add insult to injury, when we got back from cocktails last night, the satellite dish was still searching the sky for the bird, after a good four hours, and the air compressor was running every four minutes. Every so often I reach one of those drive-it-off-a-cliff moments, and last night was approaching that point.

The satellite problem turned out to be a nearby power line interfering with the positioner's ability to detect a good signal. I ended up pointing it manually by using, of all things, the signal meter on the satellite TV receiver. Once I got the dish mostly aimed, we were able to persuade the modem to negotiate with the satellite, even though the positioner still did not believe it had a good signal. It took 45 minutes of fiddling, but we are on line. The marina has guest WiFi, and I supposed we could ask them for access if our shot had actually been blocked by the power line or the nearby Dog River bridge, some 60' above us.

The air compressor was running excessively because the caddywompus tag axle, from the unnatural acts we had to commit to get parked, was pushing the suspension in a funny way and I had overcompensated with the front levelers. Once I brought them back down into the correct operating range they stopped leaking air and all was again calm aboard Odyssey.

I am still collecting tips and advice about the steering situation, and am hoping that something will present itself that will allow us to repair it right here in place. Otherwise it will be a long, nervous drive to the north end of town.

Where the skies are so blue, and the governor's true

We are at the Red Cross hot site facility in Montgomery, Alabama. We have a 20-amp power outlet here, and we even took the scooters out to ride to dinner. Yesterday I posted that we would continue south on US-27 and likely spend the night in Albany, Georgia, so some explanation is in order.

No sooner had we published the blog and gotten mostly packed up and ready to go, than I received an email from the gentleman with the boat for sale in Mobile. The boat is on the hard for some maintenance and they plan to be in Mobile for most of the week, and we decided that made for an excellent opportunity to head down there for a look. So we turned west onto US29 right there in LaGrange.

The most direct route to Mobile follows I-85 into Montgomery and then I-65, and having already done US-29 to US-80 through Tuskegee on our first pass through this area, we ended up just taking I-85 west of Opelika. As we rolled into Montgomery, we decided to do a quick roll-by of the Red Cross hot site here, just to see how the place was doing. Long-time readers know this is a regular practice of ours -- the hot sites don't get a lot of attention between activations, and it's good for headquarters to have trained staff available to just put eyes on them occasionally.

It being Sunday, our expectation was that we'd just do a quick look-and-roll, since we knew there was no way to gain access on the weekend. But what we saw through the windows gave us some pause, and we decided it was worth a call to Washington. I called the 24-hour number for the Disaster Operations Center (DOC).

After giving them a brief report, the DOC asked if we could stick around until today so they could arrange to get us inside for a more detailed look. At the moment they are trying to get someone from the local chapter, who holds the keys, to come down and let us in. Our mission here today will be simply to "observe and report," although I am sure a number of the computers are powered down or otherwise off-line and we will do what we can to get them all back up and on the network for remote management.

Assuming they can get the keys here this morning, we should be back on the road this afternoon and in Mobile tonight. Depending on what time we wrap up, we might ride the scooters into town for lunch at our club here before leaving. We have tentatively arranged to look at the boat tomorrow afternoon, and they've even found us an overnight spot at the marina. I have no idea which way we'll head when we are done, but we're quite fond of the Mississippi gulf coast, which is just a bit further south and west from Mobile, so that is a distinct possibility.

Photo by I Believe I Can Fry, used under a Creative Commons license.

Indecision 2011

We are at the Walmart in LaGrange, Georgia (map). We had a pleasant, if short, drive here down US 27 from Cedartown. We stopped here, rather than pressing on to Columbus just another hour down the road, because we still have not made a decision about whether to head east or west, and making either choice now might take us around Columbus altogether. We toyed briefly with the idea of staying at the COE campground about ten minutes north of here, but decided it was not worth the $22, especially with the lake so far down as to be little more than a mud flat.

We did eventually connect with out boat broker, but he had no news that would help us make that decision. Which is to say that there are not really any boats to speak of that we could be looking at, other than a pair that are all the way on the west coast. I did drop an email to a fellow who is cruising Mobile Bay right now and looking to sell, but I have not heard back, and we don't want to make a beeline for Mobile if they are already en route to Florida, their stated destination.

And so here we are, another day later, and no closer to making a choice. So we will stay the course, which is basically due south. Looking at overnight options about three hours south of here, we will adjust our course just a bit to the east to intersect Albany, GA, where there is another Walmart (there is none on US27 south of Columbus until nearly I-10). It should be at least a couple degrees warmer there, and we'll be within a day of the gulf coast anywhere from Panama City to Steinhatchee.

Photo by NKPhillips, used under a Creative Commons license.

We're free! We're free!

We are at the Wal-Mart in Cedartown, Georgia (map). We are finally back to our preferred travel mode of just a couple hours on the road each day, and this spot is just 80 miles south of Rossville and the Choo Choo Express Garage, but it feels like a world away.

We actually wrapped up at the garage on Thursday afternoon. Shortly after I posted here Wednesday, they asked us to be ready to pull in over the pit at 8am. Joel went ahead and replaced all four of the tag axle bearings, although he allowed that they were in much better shape than the front ones were, starting with having a lot more grease still in them. We kept the best set of take-outs as spares.

While he was under there he also greased the chassis, and I had him inspect the brakes and kingpins as each wheel was off. I also asked him to swap the tag wheels, as the left seems to be wearing faster than the right and I wanted to even it out a bit. When all was said and done Choo Choo billed me for 14 hours, which seemed a bit high but it is hard to complain when we've been living in the shop for nearly three weeks, and the rate is only $55 per hour.

It was past lunch time when we were finally finished and buttoned up, and we decided to roll over to the Banfield veterinarian in the Petsmart store near the mall (map), about seven miles away. George, who has kidney disease, was nearly out of her prescription food, and we could not get any more until she had a checkup. Dr. Martin was great, and we left with new prescription cards as well as a note in the file to dispense lactated ringers as needed, which we can pick up at any Banfield (in many Petsmart stores) around the country.

We wrapped up at the vet's just a bit after 5, and decided that as long as we were at the mall, we'd just walk over to Bonefish for dinner. That left us with the option of spending the night at Wal-Mart, or rolling back to the shop, and considering the temperatures have been dropping into the 30s, we decided to head back to Choo Choo for one more night of 20-amp power, which I figured to have already paid for. That also gave us the chance to use the dump station yesterday before heading out, and to put in some fresh water as well.

We had a very leisurely morning and did not roll out of the parking lot until after lunch. With no specific destination in mind, we decided to head more or less directly south on US-27, which cuts through historic Chickamauga Battlefied just south of the shop. It was a very pleasant and relaxed drive, in stark contrast to the weeks leading up to our arrival in Chattanooga.

We did not want to get too far south until we make up our minds about a general direction to head, and this seemed like a good stopping point. We needed to stock up on supplies anyway, and there is a nice Mexican restaurant, El Nopal, right across the street. We had a peaceful, if brightly lit, night.

It is nearly lunch time here and we still do not have a destination in mind. We've been playing phone tag with out boat broker over the last three days, with one possibility being to head to Florida to look at some more boats. The other option would be to meander west along the gulf coast into Texas. If we choose to head to Florida's east coast, we'll start angling east not far south of here, so we'll try to make a decision before I fire up the Detroit.

Photo by Camdiluv ♥, used under a Creative Commons license.

Emerging into daylight

We've moved! OK, so it's only 70 feet or so, but we are at last out of the service bay and into some much-welcome daylight in the parking lot here at the Choo Choo Express Garage near Chattanooga. I have a goal of posting here every time we "move," and after we rolled out Louise said, "You have to blog now."

Yesterday morning I rode the scooter the ten miles or so to the local bearing distributor, arriving about 11:30, even though they had not yet called to say they had arrived. It turned out that they did, indeed, have them, and I was back here at the shop with the two correct bearings just a bit after noon. Master technician Joel had the new bearings in and the hub and wheel assembly back together in short order, and started on the other side, as I had asked him to repack the other three bearings.

The right side steer hub did not come quietly, and it looks as if some water has ingressed to the bearing area and rusted the spindle and hub somewhat. After Joel got the old bearings out he suggested we replace them as they were already showing signs of excessive wear. Fortunately, we now had the spare set on hand and just went ahead and put them in.

That gave us some pause about just repacking the tag bearings. With the two extra inner bearings that the distributor in the UK had sent in error already on hand, and two outer bearings still making their way to us through US Customs in Cincinnati, we decided to just wait for the two outers to arrive before tearing into the tag hubs. However, with both front wheels now back together, we were again mobile, and they rolled us out of the shop so they could move another coach into that bay for kingpin replacement.

Later in the day I learned that DHL, finding our paperwork and explanation in order, made entry of the package and paperwork to US Customs. By the time I went to bed, the items had cleared customs and were ready to depart for Georgia. This morning they arrived in Smyrna, and we just received them here about a half hour ago, after a glitch wherein DHL had claimed that a delivery attempt had been made with no one home (we've been sitting here watching the parking lot all morning since learning they were out for delivery).

Of course, the service bay is now occupied by a different coach with its hubs off -- as luck would have it, they've been dead for most of the time we've been here, and then two coaches pulled in for service this week. I'm not sure when they will be able to slide us back in to finish the tag axle, but I am hoping we will be wrapped up here no later than tomorrow afternoon. That would put us back on the road on Friday morning.

If the tag bearings are in as bad a shape as the steers were, we'll end up using all four sets of bearings, and I will have Joel set the best pair of all the takeouts aside for me as "emergency" spares -- something I can have slapped in to get us back on the road should we again suffer a catastrophic failure. And at least I can now count on finding the outer bearings here in the US without too much trauma. The inner bearings still seem to be specialty items that need to come from Germany.

After I came back from the bearing supplier yesterday, friends Pat and Ken dropped by in their tow car to take us to lunch. We had intended to try legendary Bea's south of town, but discovered they are closed Tuesdays, and so ended up back at old standby Los Potros just down the road from here. It was great to see them and spend some time together, and as we often tell our friends, whenever you travel, check our blog, because you never know when we might be right around the corner.