Our Odyssey

Washateria

2012-01-26T11:31:00.000-08:00

We are in Bastrop, Texas, at The Wash House coin laundry (map), or as they call 'em in Texas, "washateria". Google seems to think it's called "Spin City Laundry" but that's not how the sign reads. We had not planned on doing laundry today, but George had an accident on the bed sometime yesterday, which we discovered when we turned in, so we spent the night under an afghan, with the bed covers in the shower. She's been drinking tons of water, a side effect of her kidney disease and the special food that goes along with it.

We were at the Walmart in Bryan, Texas (map) at the time, just next door to College Station. It was a quiet and convenient place to spend the night -- we parked in back near some storage containers. And the Bryan drive-through recycling center is conveniently located in the same Walmart parking lot, allowing us to rid ourselves of four large bags of recyclables, many of which we have been hauling around since before Florida.

I spent some time hunting for coin laundries before I hit the hay last night, and while there are perhaps a half dozen or more in the Bryan/College Station area, none was particularly convenient to the route, nor did I find one with a large enough parking lot to accommodate Odyssey. Bastrop was the next town on the route that showed any at all (there are supposedly four here in town), and this one was right on the route and with a large empty spot in the parking lot to boot.

After we wrap up the laundry we will continue west to the Red Cross maintenance facility in Austin, about another half hour or so. We have dinner plans with some friends there, and tomorrow we'll spend the day catching up on some new technology and procedures that are being added to our kit. We expect to leave Austin Saturday morning for Killeen.

Photo by jovike, used under a Creative Commons license.

Winter Texan

2012-01-25T08:32:00.000-08:00

We are at the Walmart in Jasper, Texas (map). We got a bit of a late start from Alexandria yesterday after stopping at the mall, but I ended up with a much-needed light jacket to replace the one that I've more or less worn out. We hit the Toledo Bend reservoir late in the afternoon in driving rain, and seriously considered stopping at the South Toledo Bend State Park, on the Louisiana side, which has a campground with electric hookups for $16.

Ultimately we decided to use what was left of the daylight to make a bit more progress, in order to reduce our driving load today and tomorrow somewhat. After crossing the dam we pulled over for a restroom break, and while we were sitting there a truck from the dam operating authority pulled up; we thought he was going to ask us to move along, but instead he asked if we needed a place to park for the night. Apparently there is a small area on the Texas side we could have used if we wanted it; we thanked him and opted to continue to Jasper, but this is good to know, as it was not in my directory.

We pulled in here just before sundown. We had a quiet night in this corner of the lot, and this morning we stocked up on groceries. In a few minutes we will continue west; in order to make Austin tomorrow night, we will need to be somewhere near College Station tonight.

Photo of a Prairie Warbler at the east end of Toledo Bend Dam by jerryoldenettel, used under a Creative Commons license.

One night in LA

2012-01-24T11:06:00.000-08:00

We are at a Walmart in Alexandria, Louisiana (map). We've stayed here before; since that visit, Los Portales Mexican restaurant has opened across the street and we shared some tasty fajitas there last night. We also did some shopping in the store, and although they did not have my preferred brand, it's good to be back in the land of 5-liter wine boxes. Louisiana also has drive-through Daiquiri bars, so no surprise there.

We're speeding up our route plan just a bit in order to be in Austin for Friday morning. There have been some significant changes to the way we deploy computers and servers, and this is our opportunity to catch up on those and get trained before we have to use the new procedures in the field. If we didn't make it on Friday we'd have to wait across the weekend to Monday, which would make the schedule for Phoenix a bit tight for comfort.

I spent most of the morning wrapping up curriculum updates for the Disaster Technology Communications class, and in a few minutes we will make a quick visit to the mall next door before heading out. The new schedule will mean four hours of seat time tomorrow and Wednesday; we'll see how far we get today.

I had been toying with the idea of dropping in on the Silver Dollar Pawn shop, just a few blocks away, while we were in town, of "Cajun Pawn Stars" fame (no word on why anything in Alexandria constitutes "Cajun") -- who knows, maybe they'd make a decent offer on Odyssey. But I can't imagine what else we'd do there, and, really, the original "Pawn Stars" shop, in Las Vegas, is probably a more likely venue in which to sell a motor coach.

Photo by Nomad Thru Life., used under a Creative Commons license.

A rough night in a perfect spot

2012-01-23T09:26:00.001-08:00

We are at the free Rocky Springs Campground on the Natchez Trace Parkway (map), near Utica, Mississippi. In stark contrast to the last time we were here, November 2008, we have the place nearly to ourselves. When we arrived, only two of the two dozen sites here were occupied, and one of those cleared out first thing this morning -- he had reached his 14-day limit.

This is an idyllic spot, and today we have perfect weather. The last time we had this sort of rustic overnight experience, our preferred mode by far, was a good six months ago, in South Carolina on our way to get batteries last July. And it would have been an absolutely perfect stay had it not been for the tornadoes.

By now you have no doubt heard that there has been a great deal of damage and even a few fatalities from tornadoes in Alabama last night and this morning, eerily reminiscent of the events of last April which propelled me to Birmingham for seven weeks. We were actually parked in the watch area last night, and the storm blew through here in the middle of the night. Of course, as luck would have it, we have zero cell coverage here, and pointing the dish through a narrow slot in the trees to get Internet meant no shot to the TV satellite, so we could not even get the weather channel.

Fortunately, our weather alert radio does have coverage here (and, no, it is not universal -- we've been many places where not a single one of the seven NOAA frequencies comes in), and so we knew we would get an alert if the watch turned into a warning. We made a tornado plan, consisting of scooping up the pets and making haste to the cinder-block restroom building a few hundred feet away. And we stationed a flashlight, shoes, and a cell phone near the door for a quick exit.

The alert warble woke us up perhaps half a dozen times in the middle of the night, but none of the warnings was for our specific location. We only got a small bit of rain and a little wind, but it was a rough night nonetheless. Our hearts go out to the folks who were impacted by this series of storms, highly unusual for January.

I know some folks are wondering, so let me say that, no, we will not be responding to these incidents for the Red Cross. For one thing, none of these events is large enough to merit national-level response -- the chapters and regional offices in Alabama are well prepared to deal with this level of disaster with their own resources, including local personnel. For another, we are not on the availability roster this month, since we have several personal obligations on our calendar. That said, long-time readers will know that we have, in the past, changed our availability status on short notice to respond to major disasters, personal appointments notwithstanding. And if this event had been as devastating as the one in April, that would certainly be something we would consider.

Yesterday we had a very nice drive here from Pearl, after a brief stop in Clinton for fuel and supplies. The Clinton stop was eerie, inasmuch as Louise spent seven weeks there back in May and June under less favorable circumstances. Nevertheless, the Kroger gas station there had the cheapest diesel on our route, at $3.499 with the 3-cent discount for having their loyalty card, so we put in 175 gallons. While the diesel was pumping I ran into Radio Shack for replacement thermal fuses for the FanTastic vent, settling for 128°C models rather than the stock 98° ones, which Radio Shack no longer carries. Louise ran into the Kroger store for a few grocery items.

As idyllic and peaceful as it is here, we must move along to keep to our travel schedule. I know that a target of 2-3 hours per day must sound to many to be either luxurious or wimpy, depending on perspective. One of the things it does for us is to provide a good buffer at the end of the day in the event we have to press on further than planned. Saturday we ended up driving an extra hour due to the two Walmarts being unavailable, and yesterday we were perfectly prepared for this campground to be closed, full, or unreachable from our Internet satellite, any of which would have pushed us all the way to Natchez.

Speaking of which, our route plan for today says we should stop somewhere between Ferriday and Jonesville after crossing the river into Louisiana. Since none of our resources lists anyplace to overnight in either of those towns, it is more likely that we will stop either in Natchez at the visitor center, or in Alexandria at a Walmart. We'll decide when we get to Natchez, which is the nature of this sort of travel schedule.

The Pearl of Mississippi

2012-01-22T09:00:00.000-08:00

We are at the Bass Pro Shop in Pearl, Mississippi (map). We had not planned to come this far yesterday, but circumstances conspired against us. Nevertheless, it was a nice and welcoming place to stop. We had dinner at their restaurant, now "Uncle Buck's," a somewhat disappointing change from the Islamorada Fish Company (although the decor, including the enormous fish tank, has not changed).

From where we are parked in the lot, the Holiday Inn is actually closer, and also sports a restaurant, the Alumni House Bar and Grill, which likely would have been a better choice. Unlike Islamorada, which was a fairly upscale seafood venue, Uncle Buck's is basically a glorified burger joint, and I didn't think that the burgers were particularly noteworthy. Since Bass Pro is generous enough to let us park, though, it's probably best that we also patronized their restaurant, since we couldn't find anything else in the store that we needed.

Our original plan yesterday had been to take US-80 all the way to Forest, Mississippi, even though I-20 basically parallels it from Cuba, Alabama, and spend the night at the Walmart there. Unfortunately, even though that store purportedly allows overnight stays, there are 12'0" height restrictors installed at every entrance to the parking lot, to keep the trucks out. There was a small lot just for trucks near the loading dock, with five 70' stalls, but it was entirely full, and not very level. With no way to access the large and inviting parking lot, we headed back out onto westbound I-20.

Our Walmart directory indicated parking was allowed at the store in Pearl, so that's where we headed next. We found fairly new-looking No Overnight Parking signs there, a growing trend. It's possible that the store would have allowed us to stay upon request, but with this Bass Pro just another few miles west, we decided to come here instead. We did call ahead to check first, since we were starting to run out of options. The backup was a pair of truck stops just west of here, in Jackson.

It was a good choice, because it was fairly quiet here last night, and darker than the average Walmart lot. Plus we always enjoy browsing at Bass Pro; I need a new lightweight jacket and we spent close to an hour in the outerwear section. In a few minutes we will roll west to Clinton, where the Walmart has $3.52 diesel, and where we can find a Radio Shack as well as an O'Reilly's -- I need thermal fuses and liftgate struts for the never-ending bus maintenance.

Westward Ho

2012-01-21T07:50:00.000-08:00

We are at the Walmart in Demopolis, Alabama (map). We did our final wrap-up at the Montgomery hot site yesterday morning, but I waited until the rain stopped in the early afternoon to ride the scooter over to the chapter to return the key. We also needed to put some fuel in, to keep the level above the generator dip tube, and so we stopped at a station that had $3.69 diesel before we left town.

Between the late start and the fuel stop, we arrived here just a few minutes past sunset. The last time we stayed in Demopolis, almost exactly three years ago -- also on our way west from the Montgomery hot site -- we spent two nights at a lovely Corps of Engineers campground, just upriver of the lock and dam. This time we opted for the free overnight option, as we did not need the power (the low last night was barely 60°) and we're really just passing through. Besides, we've already seen the river and the marina on our last visit. We opted for the truck bypass around Selma this time, as well.

Now that we're done with all of our commitments here in the east, we are westward bound, with a commitment in Las Vegas in the middle of February. We have exactly three weeks to make the roughly 45 hour drive, which makes for a very comfortable drive of just over two hours each day, not counting stops.

Of course, it's never that simple, and as long as we are making the trek, we've arranged the route to make some stops along the way, as well as move us down into slightly more comfortable traveling weather. And, after announcing the route plan, we acquired another visit in Phoenix a few days before we are due in Vegas. Allowing for the flexibility of the other stops, as well as speeding up a bit to make the Phoenix commitment, I am figuring on around two and a half hours per day here in the eastern half of the country, and more like four hours in the western half.

Today we will continue west toward Jackson, MS. The cheapest diesel on the first half of our route will be just west of there, in Clinton, not far from where Louise worked a relief operation for several weeks back in May. Clinton is also were we will pick up the Natchez Trace Parkway, which will take us all the way to the Mississippi River at Natchez.

Photo by LylithLusitana, used under a Creative Commons license.

Roll Tide

2012-01-19T10:37:00.000-08:00

We are at the Red Cross hot site facility in Montgomery, Alabama. No map today, as is usual for us at Red Cross facilities not open to the public. We've more or less wrapped up here, and are now just waiting for FedEx to come pick up our cases.

We actually arrived here Sunday evening, after finding "No Overnight RV Parking" signs at the Ozark Walmart, our planned stop. Too bad, because we had our mouths all set for a nice dinner at El Palacio across the street. The signs looked to be fairly new -- they were not there when last we stayed there -- and the explicit inclusion of "RV" on the sign is rare and usually means the store has either had problems with RVers, or problems with the local authorities. I was later informed that the store permits overnight RV parking upon request, but who in their right mind would go inside to ask after seeing such a sign?

Fortunately, we had plenty of daylight left and we just continued here to our final destination. That got us an extra night of 20-amp power, and we rode the scooters over to Carrabbas for dinner, as it was near the chapter, where we needed to pick up the keys.

It turned out to be fortuitous that we arrived a day early, as FedEx called first thing Monday to check our address, saying they would be delivering the empty cases that day. I think the DC office thought that FedEx would be on holiday schedule for MLK day, but of course they were not. So Monday morning we opened up the building and got ready for the delivery, along with scoping out the work for the rest of our visit.

Tuesday morning we got started and mid-afternoon our colleague Vicky from the Disaster Operations Center arrived to help. We had almost everything cleaned up and packed by the end of the day, leaving only a few pieces of equipment to disassemble and all the FedEx paperwork to be completed Wednesday morning. Vicky took us out for a nice lunch, and by mid-afternoon we were finished.

We had to remain here today, of course, for the FedEx pickup, and as long as we had to be here for the day, we made a dinner reservation for tonight at the Capital City Club downtown. That will keep us here through tomorrow morning, when we will return the keys to the chapter before heading west out of town. Our route from here will take us west to Jackson, Mississippi, where we will pick up the Natchez Trace to take us southwest to warmer travel conditions.

Georgian short cut

2012-01-15T08:21:00.000-08:00

We are at the Walmart in Bainbridge, Georgia (map). The most direct route from Tallahassee to Montgomery cuts through the very southwestern corner of the state, entering on US27, which we've been following since Perry, and continuing on US84, which will take us all the way to Dothan, Alabama. From there, US231 will take us the rest of the way to Montgomery.

Just across the street, the Charter House Inn has a cocktail lounge that serves dinner, but the smell of the cooking pasta e fagioli wafting downstairs from the crock pot all afternoon sealed our fate. Good to know, though, for the next time we come through. We did go into the store to stock up on groceries after we arrived, and I was tempted to walk across the parking lot to Sonic this morning for breakfast, but I resisted.

This afternoon we will depart the state and the Eastern Time Zone for the foreseeable future. I expect we will land at (what else?) another Walmart this evening, in Ozark, Alabama. I'd like to actually get a bit closer to Montgomery, but there are not really any overnight options. There is a Walmart in Troy, but it does not allow overnight parking, which is how we ended up in Ozark the last time we took this route, in the other direction.

Photo by eabenes, used under a Creative Commons license.

Burning electrons

2012-01-14T11:41:00.000-08:00

We are at the Elks lodge in Perry, Florida (map). The place is hauntingly familiar, as if we've stayed here before, but I could find no record of it in the blog. (We blog to remember; we drink to forget...) Just a couple blocks away is a Walmart where we might have stayed for free, but we opted for the lodge with its 50 amps of power for $15.

That's because it got down to a chilly 21° last night, and we would have spent at least that much in Webasto and generator run time to keep warm. With the 50 amps we were able to run all three electric heaters as well as the water heater. We also needed to top up the fresh water, and before we leave here we will use their dump station, making it a very cost-effective stop.

The lodge also has a full dinner menu many nights, and we opted to have dinner there last night. It was really too cold to walk to town, and we were not really prepared for cooking. Today Louise is making Pasta e Fagioli in the crock pot for tonight, since we've already got the electric power for half of the cooking. The other half will come from the alternator under way.

Today will be our last day in Florida for this visit, as we expect to be in Bainbridge, Georgia tonight. It should be a bit warmer tonight than last, so a Walmart stop will be fine, but I had scoped out a Corps of Engineers park in Chattahochee just in case. The decision point is just west of Tallahassee.

Our apologies to all our Florida friends whom we missed on this visit. We had planned on lingering in the state till the beginning of February to catch Trawler Fest in Fort Lauderdale, but the Red Cross work in Montgomery needs to get done, and we were really the right folks for it. The upshot is that we never made it all the way to Southeast Florida, missing some folks down there, nor did we make it to the northern part of the state east of the panhandle, missing folks there as well. To paraphrase a famous cyborg, though, we'll be back.

Walmart-hopping

2012-01-13T07:03:00.000-08:00

We are at the Walmart in Homosassa Springs, Florida (map). We might have gone a bit further yesterday, perhaps to the familiar Walmart in Chiefland, but it was slow going rolling out of Tampa on US41, and we got a late start owing to a number of morning errands. Nevertheless, this was our scheduled "minimum" distance for the day.

There is a nice, popular local Italian joint right here in the same parking lot, Moschell0's, and we had a tasty dinner there. There was also a US Mail box in front of the Winn-Dixie next door, which I needed in order to rid myself of the very last eBay item in this latest round of sell-offs.

Tonight we should be in the eastern reaches of the Florida panhandle, possibly in Tallahassee. Somewhere between here and there I need to find a water spigot. A cold front has also moved into the region, so we're likely to see overnight temperatures drop to near freezing over the next couple days.

Photo by jo-h, used under a Creative Commons license.

Departing Tampa

2012-01-12T09:44:00.000-08:00

We are at the Walmart on Dale Mabry just north of the freeway in Tampa, Florida (map). This is a familiar stop for us, but since the last time we were here, Walmart has finally bulldozed the last remains of Tia's Mexican Restaurant and paved it, expanding this section of the lot. Also, the abandoned Circuit City store across Dale Mabry, which had acquired what appeared to be some permanent RV residents, is now a Nordstrom Rack and the lot is clearly posted No Overnight Parking.

Louise apparently had a great workshop yesterday, while I spent the day parked on a dead-end street about a mile away (map). It was an odd neighborhood, with several Victorian homes that had been converted to law offices, and a historic fire station that had been converted to homes, preserving the balance of the universe. I walked the five blocks or so to the water to take in the view.

After her workshop ended we drove the five miles across town to the Centre Club for dinner, which was tasty but with lackluster service not up to ClubCorp standards. This Walmart is the closest parking option to the club, not counting the long term lot at the airport, where we've also stayed previously.

In a few minutes we will head north out of town, taking US41 to US98 and then to US19. We have four days to get to Montgomery, which makes a comfortable three hours or a bit less per day.

Much-needed downtime

2012-01-10T17:32:00.000-08:00

We are at the Elks lodge in Pinellas Park, Florida (map). This is a familiar stop for us, as we spent several days here about a year ago. It's a great spot, within walking distance of several nice restaurants, a Target, a Marshall's, and a massage school with $20 practice massages.

We spent Saturday night at the Elks lodge in Sarasota, Florida (map), also a familiar stop. Since the last time we were there, they've turned the shack where the RV pedestals are located into a nice outdoor Tiki Bar, and we enjoyed a cocktail when we arrived Saturday afternoon after leaving our friends' house in Punta Gorda. The lodge charges $20 per night for camping, but that includes 30 amps of power, which we did not really need since we had just charged our batteries. Nevertheless it was a secure place to leave the bus while we were out all day Sunday.

Our friends Maria and James came down from St. Pete Saturday evening and we had a nice dinner at an upscale sushi place in downtown Sarasota. It was great to see them and catch up, and they brought our mail with them as well. Sunday morning, our broker Curtis and his wife picked us up at the bus, and we went straight back to downtown Sarasota to look at a boat, an Ocean Alexander with a pair of beefy engines.

The OA was a great layout and in excellent condition, but this sort of high-power motor yacht is not really what we are looking for. We only added it to the list since we were in the area, and Curtis had to come out anyway to show us the other boat, in St. Pete. That boat, a Hatteras 48 LRC, turned out to be much more up our alley, and we've been noodling on it ever since seeing it. After touring the LRC we had a nice lunch in St. Pete before heading back to the Sarasota Elks and the bus. The Tiki Bar was again in full swing when we pulled out of the lodge late Sunday afternoon to head here.

Out of all the boats we have seen so far, this Hatteras LRC came closest to our magic combination of size, layout, equipment, and price. It has a pair of Detroit two-strokes -- a powerplant with which we have more than a passing familiarity -- a Kubota-powered generator much like the one we have now, enormous fuel tanks, stabilizers, and a full complement of electronics and safety equipment. The engine room is capacious, if a bit low-headroom. And the salon is completely open with no fixed furniture, allowing for a layout of our choosing.

The boat did have a few downsides, though. For starters, it is a 1976 model, and 35 years is really much older than we'd like -- we would not even have bothered if not for the Hatteras LRC reputation. Some of the layout, woodwork, and other facets of the boat seem very dated, and I suspect a good deal of the plumbing is original, as are many of the bathroom fixtures. There are no walk-around decks -- behind the pilothouse, the side decks are unenclosed and only accessible from the cockpit, which is in turn only accessible from the salon. The flybridge is perched squarely atop the pilothouse, a configuration which adds to the air draft, and, to my eye, detracts from the appearance. And the stabilizers are pneumatic rather than hydraulic.

All of that said, this boat has to be a serious contender for us. We would still prefer a Selene 43 or 47 in our price range, which would suit us much better, and we have yet to even look at some of the other options such as a Seahorse 52, a Neville 44, or a later model DeFever 49. We'll probably ruminate about this one for a while yet, and Curtis is looking into how hard it is to access the cranks on the 453 Detroits, which is really a requisite. What that means is that if we do decide to make an offer on it, we'll probably be on the other side of the country when we do -- c'est la vie.

Tonight makes our third night in this spot. When we first arrived I hard harbored thoughts of perhaps getting together with some of our other friends in the area, and possibly another meetup with James and Maria. The reality, though, turned out to be that we both needed the downtime. Other than a single spare day, spent at a truck stop in Punta Gorda, we've basically been either on the move, or at engagements on the calendar, since we left Cocoa Beach three weeks ago.

So since arriving here we have kept to ourselves, and other than going to dinner each night, I've hardly left the bus. I did walk over to the massage school today and had an OK massage from a first-time student. For $15, the special new-customer rate, it's hard to complain, and it did help my sore shoulder at least a little bit.

Tomorrow we will get an early start, leaving the lodge here no later than 9:30 so I can drop Louise off at the University of Tampa for her choral workshop. I'll either head over to the big RV show which opens tomorrow, or, more likely, find a quiet place to park while I try to get some Red Cross work done. We'll try to catch dinner at the Centre Club before heading to a friendly Walmart for our final night in the Tampa Bay area. Thursday we will head north, towards Montgomery.

Photo by paulcole, used under a Creative Commons license.

Fat Point

2012-01-06T07:20:00.000-08:00

We are at a truck parking area near I-75 in Punta Gorda, Florida (map). The lot has the feel of a truck stop, but that's not what it is. In fact, we couldn't determine whose lot it is, other than to say it appears to be shared by several businesses on this road, including Pizza Hut, Waffle House, a BP station, McDonalds, and a motel across the street. There are a couple drop trailers here, and even what appear to be "drop" trucks.

We've been here two nights, with last night the busier of the two. When we first rolled over here from our stealth spot Wednesday afternoon, our first attempt was the Walmart about half a mile west of here. I had booked a massage at a place just another mile further west than that, and I figured we'd get parked and I'd just walk over.

Walmart, unfortunately, was clearly posted No Overnight Parking, even though it did not show that way on my list. I would have just parked for the afternoon, to stick to my walking plan, but Jones Loop Road was closed between Walmart and Tamiami Trail. It turned out to be closed at the railroad crossing, and I could have gotten through on foot, but there was no way to know that from the Walmart end, and so we came here instead and I pulled my scooter out to make my massage appointment on time.

As long as we were here, we walked over to the "Pizza Hut Italian Bistro" for dinner Wednesday night. It's been a long, long time since either of us has been in a Pizza Hut; the "Italian Bistro" format has a slightly expanded menu including some pasta and salad items, and like many Pizza Hut restaurants this one also had beer and wine. It was surprisingly good for this type of establishment. This morning we walked over to McDonald's for breakfast, and so we can say we were customers here both nights.

We had figured to do one night at Walmart and one here, but once we got settled here and saw several trucks spending multiple nights (weeks?) we just decided to stay put for two nights. Had we needed to move, there is a small Sunoco truck stop next door and a Pilot across the street, and we could have put some fuel in and stayed at either of those as well. Both of those lots, though, are very small, and we try to stay out of small truck stops to keep the stalls available for the truckers, who really need them. There is also a very nice rest area off this road, just on the other side of the freeway, but Florida limits rest area stays to three hours.

This afternoon we will roll over to our friends' house just a couple miles from here, where we've stayed in the past in their enormous driveway. We'll be there one night, and tomorrow we'll head north to Sarasota, where we have an appointment on Sunday to look at boats. My next post will be from Sarasota.

Photo by Caveman Chuck Coker, used under a Creative Commons license.

Impromptu overnight

2012-01-04T08:36:00.000-08:00

We are parked adjacent to a rail spur in a small industrial park in Punta Gorda, Florida (map). Just around the corner is a popular local restaurant (and fish market), the Peace River Seafood Company, where we walked for dinner, bundled up in our winter coats. It was really a very nice stop, which we came across quite by accident.

Yesterday afternoon we finally left the Arcadia Walmart close to 2pm and rolled over to the post office. Unfortunately, Louise's package, containing the sheet music for her choral workshop, was not there. We had to give up on it, and they are overnighting her a replacement to our friends in the Tampa area, where we'll be in a few days. Thus done with Arcadia, we started heading to Punta Gorda, where we have long-time friends.

We had emailed them early in the day about being in the area and trying to get together, but we had not yet heard back by the time we got rolling. In hindsight, we probably should have stayed right there next to the post office until we had a firmer idea of our destination, which would have given us one final chance to check General Delivery later in the afternoon. But daylight fades early this time of year, and even though it was merely an hour to Punta Gorda, without a clear idea of where we'd stay, and knowing that the Elks lodge, one possible option, was down a fairly narrow road, we got under way.

And so it was that just as we neared the city limits, we still had not heard from our friends, and were also not in any sort of agreement about where to go until we did. I started looking for a place to pull over where we could sort things out and maybe make a more concentrated effort to reach them. As luck would have it, there were no safe, legal, or otherwise suitable turnouts on the right side of the road for several miles, although we did pass a number of businesses on the opposite, northbound side of the divided road.

When I spotted the sign for the industrial park I figured there would be some parking lots and/or a wide spot in the road where the inevitable trucks could jockey around, and indeed we found this wide area with the railroad siding straight away. We parked out of the traffic lanes and set up the dish so we could work on alternative overnight options as well as await word back from our friends.

In addition to the Elks lodge, which is $10 per night for parking (there are no hookups), I found three other potential overnight spots, including the Walmart not far from our friends' house. By late afternoon we also heard back from them, and they are not available until Friday evening, meaning we'd need to find not just an overnight spot, but accommodations for three nights.

The whole time we sat here, close to two hours or so, fewer than a half dozen vehicles passed us. I also walked around the entire industrial park, which is quiet and perhaps 30% vacant. One business had an MCI bus conversion parked outside, quite possibly the proprietor living on the premises, judging from the way it was parked. We figured we would hardly be noticed here for one night, and discovering the restaurant a short walk away sealed the deal. We moved the bus a couple hundred feet, to be further from the housing development to the west and, instead, adjacent to the train tracks, where we guessed no one would be disturbed by our generator or Webasto.

This last item was needed because it got down into the 20s last night, a stark contrast to the lovely weather we'd been having for the last several days. That also put the kibosh on seeing the Quadrantid meteor shower last night -- even though it was a clear night and it is relatively dark here, neither of us felt like getting up at 3am to sit outside in 25° weather. I think we'll wait for the Perseids when we can lie outside in summer temperatures and be comfortable.

It was cold enough last night that I decided to turn in just before midnight, early for me, and enjoy the warmth of the electric blanket. As is my custom in such surroundings, I glanced out the windows before heading to bed, and I spotted a sheriff's cruiser idling a couple hundred feet away. I think the guy was taking a nap, as he just sat there for half an hour with a foot on the brake, and this is a pretty out of the way spot. I tuned in to the county dispatch just in case, and kept an eye out until he left. As soon as he put the car in gear, he fired up the spotlight, drove over this way, and gave us a thorough inspection. I am guessing more out of curiosity than anything else, as he never exited his car and I heard nothing on the radio.

It was a great stop for one night, but we don't want to push our luck and so we will move along this afternoon. We'll pick one of the other spots I identified yesterday afternoon for tonight's stop. In the meantime, I am trying to book myself a massage someplace in town, to deal with a stiff neck that is causing me some pain, and that might influence which spot we'll end up in tonight.

Photo of Peace River Seafood Restaurant by JenniferHuber, used under a Creative Commons license.

A plan comes together

2012-01-03T06:22:00.000-08:00

We are at the Walmart in Arcadia, Florida (map). We packed up at the Turner center yesterday afternoon, and after dumping the tanks and topping up the water we headed down here to await today's mail; Louise is expecting a package General Delivery (now overdue) and we are hoping the post office will have it later today.

This is a familiar stop for us, and, in fact, we had spent Tuesday night here in the same spot. When we left our friends in Vero Beach we headed west on a series of county roads and a short stretch of US98 to get to Lake Placid, where we had a very pleasant stay last year at the Elks lodge over Christmas. We knew there were several restaurants a short walk away, and a grocery store right next door where we could stock up. Unfortunately, after arriving at the lodge, we were informed that they no longer allow overnight RV parking, and so we continued here, where the dining option is a Chili's at the other end of the parking lot.

We eschewed Chili's in favor of cooking in last night, as we had ended up there Sunday night with Steve, Harriet, Pam, and Ken. We much prefer El Pirata, a nice Mexican place down the street where we ate with Chris and Cherie Wednesday, but they are closed Sundays. There seem to be fewer sit-down options in Arcadia each year; Cattlemen's Steak House a few blocks away appears to have closed after a series of failed health inspections.

(Steve and Harriet are the couple in the photo with us. For some reason, we took almost no pictures at the rally this year, and so didn't capture our nice camp setup with the hot tub between Odyssey and Zephyr, Chris and Cherie's bus. We did manage to capture this shot of two of the three Neoplans together, though, at the very last minute.)

I spent most of Sunday working on Chris and Cherie's Onan generator, which starts but will not stay running. Despite using a highly reliable Kubota engine and what appears to be a heavy duty and solidly built brushless generator head, Onan in their infinite wisdom equipped the thing with an overly complicated run/fault control system, and the trouble appears to be in the proprietary circuit board therein. As near as I can tell, the only reason for the extra complexity is to keep customers hooked on Onan service and parts.

By dinner time I had to admit defeat -- the Onan had won. I think the unit will work fine if they replace the control board, a $100+ part. However, I have recommended that they ditch the Onan control system and instead use the same system we have, which requires just two automotive relays and an SPDT switch. Ironically, their control box already includes the two relays and even the switch, and so the parts cost for rewiring the unit would just be some wire and a few crimp connectors.

After my last post, wherein I very briefly touched on some of our plans for the coming weeks, reader Barry asked if we would be at Trawler Fest in Fort Lauderdale this year. While we had, indeed, been contemplating exactly that up until last week, we now have solid plans all the way through March which will take us out of Florida before Trawler Fest this year, and so we will not make it. The next Trawler Fest we might be able to attend is the Anacortes, Washington event in May, but that's still too far off yet to know for sure.

Considering we were waffling about what to do and where to go all the way through Christmas, and we were even talking about remaining in Florida through the Miami boat show late in February, it is actually somewhat remarkable that we are now scheduled all the way through March. A message we got from the Red Cross while we were still in Vero Beach was the precipitating factor.

That message said that they had decided to downsize the Montgomery, Alabama hot site, removing most of the standby equipment and turning into, essentially, pre-wired office space that could still be used in event of a disaster. This will just require equipment to be sent in as normal and some extra setup time -- sort of a "tepid site." I can't help but wonder if this decision was, at least in part, motivated by the report I sent to the Disaster Operations Center (DOC) during our stop there in November. We never did get the keys, but what we could see through the windows was alarming and I recommended a complete overhaul. Too bad the decision could not be made while we were still on site, as it would have cost nothing for us to stay a few days to handle it.

In any case, when they asked for volunteers to help with the dismantling and cleanup, scheduled for January 17-19, it seemed natural for us to step up to the plate. For one thing, even though it will cost the Red Cross to reimburse us for our mileage to get us there, they will get two of us, and we won't need flights, hotel rooms or a rental car, expenses they'd also have with almost any other volunteers who could handle the job. For another, having helped set the site up initially and then checked up on it periodically, we are already thoroughly familiar with the site, its layout, and equipment complement. The DOC agreed and we were selected for the assignment immediately.

Montgomery, Alabama, is some 650 miles from Fort Lauderdale, and once we're that far away in late January it makes little sense to come all the way back for a boat show, especially when we'll be itching to be heading west shortly thereafter. So we decided instead to head west directly from Montgomery, which will allow us to be in Las Vegas in time to crash a wedding of some friends around Valentine's Day. Three weeks to get from Montgomery to Vegas is very comfortable, whereas just over a week to go from Fort Lauderdale to Vegas would be out of the question for anything but a disaster or family emergency.

Putting us in Las Vegas in mid-February makes it a slam-dunk to be in Death Valley mid-March for the annual gathering of our motorcycling friends there. And so, while we had been waffling up to now on whether we'd make it this year, we've now committed, and that will put us at Furnace Creek March 15-20. It turns out that our good friends Ben and Karen will also be in Las Vegas in early March, and we're hoping to spend some of the first half of the month with them.

Things get much more fuzzy after March 20. We'll already be in California, and so it would make sense to look at any boats fitting our criteria that might be for sale in the state at that time. That could take us to San Diego or LA before perhaps heading north along the coast. I expect that we will also put ourselves back on the Red Cross availability list starting in April (we're off it now, having let it lapse at the end of the year), which could easily then send us off in a completely different direction.

In the three weeks we have between Montgomery and Las Vegas, we'll try to swing by to see friends in Texas and maybe Arizona, depending on weather along the route. We'll need to move mostly every day to keep our normal pace. The actual route is not yet nailed down, but I should have it mostly laid out before we arrive in Montgomery.

The Montgomery project is still two weeks away, and in the meantime, Louise signed up for an all-day choral workshop in Tampa on January 11. Between now and then we'll try to look at a couple boats and mostly just relax for a week and catch up on projects around the house. I've also got a couple days of Red Cross curriculum development work I need to complete by the end of the week or so.

Goodbye, 2011

2011-12-31T13:25:00.000-08:00

We are at the Arcadia 2012 Bus Conversion Rally, at the Turner Agri-Civic Center in Arcadia, Florida (map). While we did not really plan it this way, this is the same way we finished out 2010, although we were parked a couple hundred feet further west of this spot. I posted a few days ago that we are visible in the satellite photo taken last year.

Parked right next to us are Chris and Cherie of Technomadia in their GM 4106. They bought Karen's Mini Cooper and so, oddly, we have the same car parked next to us as last year. Once again we set up the hot tub between the coaches.

This is also the second year in a row wherein we have had three Neoplan Spaceliners at the same rally -- in addition to Odyssey, our good friends Steve and Harriet Siems are here in their Lamar-built 45' Spaceliner, and our other friends Lou and Renea Kirk left this afternoon in their Pilsting-built two-axle model. All three coaches had originally been converted by Pegasus and so we have a lot in common. I'm sorry we were not able to arrange a group photo with all three coaches, since the Kirks had another commitment this evening.

We've reconnected with many other friends and acquaintances whom we see but once a year, if that, including Busnut On-line webmaster Ian, Jack and Diane (not the ones from the little ditty), John from Costa Rica, Ewen from Canada, Dave and Carol with the extra-spiffy Flxible Starliner, John from Central Florida Bus where we had work done last year, Marty from Georgia who generously provided us a parking spot one year when we flew away, Ace and Susan, Ken and Pam, Jack and Paula, Bill and Brenda, and many others too numerous to list. We also met some new friends including Sean and Angie who are retrofitting an existing conversion to full time with their four children.

For the first time ever I did not present a seminar this time around. I did participate as one of two panelists on a round-table discussion which seemed to be well received. The other panelist was none other than the inimitable Luke from U.S. Coach in New Jersey, where we've also had work done. Luke and I have been doing the round table for three years now and it's a format that works well.

Our plan had been to leave tomorrow, as today is the last official day of the rally. However, Louise was expecting a package at the post office today which did not arrive. We'll spend one more night here at the Turner Center with Steve and Harriet and whoever else might be around, and Monday we'll probably roll back to the Wal-Mart. We need to stay until Tuesday since the post office will be closed Monday.

We have a few days of downtime between now and January 11 when Louise has signed up for a choral event in Tampa. We'll probably roll in to the Tampa Bay area a few days ahead and maybe look at a couple of boats before that. We hope to also connect with friends in the area including James and Maria as well as Niles. After her choral event, we'll be rolling back to Montgomery, Alabama to help rearrange the Red Cross hot site there, and then we will be heading west towards Las Vegas and beyond.

Treasure coast holiday

2011-12-26T13:13:00.000-08:00

We are parked near our friends' house in Vero Beach, Florida. No map link today in consideration of their privacy. We've had a very enjoyable Christmas with them, and they fed us dinner on Christmas Eve as well as Christmas day, and a nice brunch in between. Tonight we will walk back over for hors d'oeuvres during the football game.

We had hoped to park right in front of their house, but a low tree on their private street made that impossible. Instead we are parked on the lawn of the neighbor three houses down, who is in the midst of a full-gut remodel, and thus is not living on the property. Very nice of the neighbor to allow us to park here, but, of course, the remodel will be done before our next visit. We're enjoying it while we can.

Tomorrow we will head out sometime mid-day and head towards Arcadia for the annual bus rally there. We're not due until Wednesday, so we will probably stop for the night somewhere near Lake O.

A boatload of boats

2011-12-23T07:46:00.000-08:00

We are at the Walmart in Fort Pierce, Florida (map). I stayed here back in January while Louise was on her training cruise, and, just as then, there were quite a few rigs here when we arrived. Also just as then, a circle of lawn chairs was deployed between a pair of rigs, another candidate for my Walmart Hall-of-shame. The roving security patrol was over there as well, and if he didn't have a problem with it, then I suppose we shouldn't either.

Nevertheless, just as last time, I wanted to distance myself from this behavior and so we rolled over to the other section of the lot where the trucks normally park. This time, though, security came over and asked us to park over with the other rigs -- oh well. We still parked as far away as we could. We were the only ones still in the lot here when we got up this morning.

Yesterday we met up with our broker Curtis and his wife in Stuart and looked at five boats there before lunch. After a quick burger in town we piled into the car and headed north to Vero Beach to look at one final boat, for a total of six boats in one very full day. It was a great experience, because it allowed us to compare quite a few similar boats side by side, and we knocked a number of models right off our list.

Once again the boat that appealed to us the most was a Selene, in this case a 47. This one was older and in poorer condition than the one we looked at in New Bern a couple months ago, and yet carries the same asking price, so it's not really a contender, but it was interesting to see a different example of the same model. We really think that if a Selene 43-48 in decent shape comes along at the right price, we will snap it up, but at this writing we still have not found it.

We still have a couple of boat models on our "to see" list, including a post-1990 DeFever 49 pilothouse, and maybe an Ocean Alexander Classico 430 or 460, but there are no available examples of those on the east coast at the moment.

This morning we will get our shopping done here in the store (no point in going in there in the evening the week before Christmas) and then head north to Vero Beach. With any luck, we'll be able to squeeze into a parking spot near our friends' house there for a few days.

From space to treasure

2011-12-22T05:31:00.001-08:00

We are at the Elks lodge in Port St. Lucie, Florida (map). We'd spent a week here this time last year, so we thought we knew right where to park, and we were looking forward to a friendly lodge which we remembered as having a nice bar and the occasional dinner. Unfortunately the lodge is closed for remodeling, and apparently has been since July, although there is nary a mention of it on the official web site, and the phones go unanswered with no message.

Actually, our hearts sank when we initially approached, because it almost appeared the place had been razed. The 15+ acres of woods that had surrounded the lodge (and visible, at this writing, in the satellite view) have been bulldozed in an unrelated stormwater management project being undertaken by the city. The area that was normally used for RV parking and where we stayed last year has been given over to the construction trailer and equipment parking for that project, we assume a loan from the lodge to the prime contractor, and instead we've parked in the front part of the main parking lot, since the lodge is closed anyway.

Of course, with no way to check, we had to assume that contractors would start arriving for both projects first thing this morning, and so we parked oriented for a speedy exit and set an early alarm, just in case. So far we've seen only two contractor trucks for the lodge remodeling, and the stormwater folks don't seem to be using this part of the lot, so we lucked out. Our original plan to spend two nights here is out, though, and we'll be moving along shortly.

Our destination is Stuart, just five miles south, where we will meet up with our friend and broker Curtis Stokes to look at several boats. Most of the boats are at the docks of the Krogen and Nordhavn brokerages there, conveniently located in the same building with an even more convenient empty lot right next door where we can park the bus. This is the very same lot where we spent three days a couple years ago for Trawler Expo.

As I ranted here last year, we can no longer stay overnight in Stuart, and so when we are done for the day we will head north, probably to Fort Pierce where I scoped out several overnight options back in January when Louise did her training cruise. Tomorrow we will meet up with our friends in Vero Beach.

Odyssey from space

2011-12-20T09:44:00.000-08:00

For the first time in our seven years on the road, we've managed to spot Odyssey in a Google Earth satellite photograph, here. Thanks to our good friends "Buswarrior" and "Depewtee" who posted links to the satellite view of the rally grounds in threads on the bus boards (here and here) about this year's rally. You can read my posts on last year's rally, when this was taken, starting here.

In this overhead view you can clearly make out Odyssey, and just south of us, Ben and Karen's bus as well as their Mini Cooper. In the shadow between the two buses you can see the round shape of our hot tub which we enjoyed nightly last year. If we make the rally this year we'll try to park in more or less the same spot, since that's about as far as we can be from the water spigot and still fill the hot tub.

A relaxing week in Cocoa Beach

2011-12-19T07:59:00.000-08:00

We are in Cocoa Beach, at a location which will remain undisclosed in respect for our host. It is the same spot at which we stayed back in August, a short walk from the beach as well as several restaurants. We arrived last Sunday evening after an easy drive from Orlando.

We wanted to come here because we knew it would be relaxing, and it has been. We've both had massages at a resort a short scooter ride away, and with most of the tourists gone, we've had the local dining scene mostly to ourselves. The weather has been a mixed bag, but we've had several evenings where it was pleasant enough to enjoy a glass of wine on our deck, in view of the ocean.

The location is not conducive to getting any of my "outside" projects knocked off the list, such as the bad ground on a couple of the marker lights. But we have taken the opportunity presented by the downtime to do some housecleaning, and I've listed quite a few items on eBay. And I've been emailing back and forth with our broker about lining up boat visits for this week.

I am still waiting to hear from him on a specific schedule, but we hope to have some visits lined up in the Stuart/Fort Pierce/Vero Beach area later this week, and/or possibly the week after Christmas. By the end of the week we are due in Vero Beach where we will visit our friends Chris and Alyse Caldwell of Captain Chris Yacht Services. We've been invited to spend some of the holiday with them, and we are looking forward to it.

Exactly where we will park over the next two weeks is something of an open question. For any boat visits in Stuart we will likely park at the Port St. Lucie Elks lodge, as the Stuart lodge is no longer an option. Over the holiday, we will try to get as close as possible to our hosts; there is a Walmart not far away which will at least be a good base from which to scope out other options.

Once we are in that neighborhood, it's really not a long hop over to Arcadia, and we are contemplating swinging by for the annual bus rally there. We are long past the point of needing to go to bus rallies for any reason, and I have mostly enjoyed presenting seminars at the last few. Having spent a considerable amount of money, though, to attend the rally in Chattanooga for that purpose in October, only to have my workshops canceled due to lack of attendance (overall, not just for my workshop), I'm a little burnt out on the whole seminar thing.

Consequently, I could not commit to doing any seminars at this year's Arcadia event, and, therefore, I am not on the schedule. If we do end up going, I'll offer to do something ad hoc, as the seminar schedule seems really light to me. I've always got items I can put out for the "swap meet," and it would obviate the need to figure out what else to do on New Year's Eve. As a bonus, our friends Chris and Cherie of Technomadia are planning to attend, and we missed connecting with them here on the Space Coast due to various schedule issues.

Exactly when we will leave Cocoa Beach is also an unanswered question. We figure to be here at least through tonight, and after that it will depend on what the boat viewing schedule looks like. I expect to hear back from the broker by sometime tomorrow morning. In any case, the next blog post will be from our next location, wherever that proves to be.

Bound for the coast

2011-12-11T11:30:00.000-08:00

We are at our customary stealth-parking spot in Orlando, Florida (map). We've had a quiet and pleasant two nights here, in near-perfect weather. We arrived just at dusk on Friday, after slogging through traffic from Disney, and shortly afterward Cherie and Chris from Technomadia showed up in their Mini, into which we all piled for a dinner run to Garibaldi Mexican Restaurant just down the street.

We had a nice evening with them until they needed to leave for the airport, just a few minutes from here, to make their pickup. I expect we will run into them later this week on the Space Coast, as well. They also have plans for the Arcadia bus rally this year. We have not committed to the rally, but may attend if we still are in the area.

Yesterday we decided to pop over to the Florida Mall, also just a few blocks away. Wow, what a zoo. I managed to get what I wanted, which was a "chair massage," and Louise made some progress on the very limited holiday shopping that we do each year, but being at the mall two weekends before Christmas was a good reminder why we have mostly "checked out" of consumer culture. (Our younger nieces and nephews, who have not made such an election, are the only ones for whom we shop.)

Last night we rode the scooters into downtown Orlando for dinner at the Citrus Club, which was delightful as always. This morning our plan was to just relax right here until we were motivated to get back on the road to the coast. We were surprised, then, when amplified live music started up while we were having our morning coffee.

It turns out the light industrial suite at the end of the complex across the street, which until recently has been the back-office operation for a chain of art galleries, is now leased to one of those new-age non-denominational churches. I guess the nice weather motivated them to have their services in the parking lot, and thus started the music from a half hour beforehand to well afterward, a good two plus hours starting at 9:30am. Next time we are here, we'll park at the other end of the lot.

In a few minutes we will continue east to Cocoa Beach, where we expect to settle down for a week or so and catch up on errands.

Photo by tom.arthur, used under a Creative Commons license.

Holidays at the fort

2011-12-08T07:56:00.000-08:00

We are at Disney's Fort Wilderness campground (map), on the Walt Disney World campus near Orlando, Florida. Long time readers know we have been here several times in the past, and it is one of the few "resort" campgrounds we'll willingly pay for. That's because, as spendy as it is ($57.50 per night, tax included, after our AAA discount), it's the least expensive way to stay on Disney property and get all the on-site benefits such as extra park hours and access to Disney's extensive transportation system. Plus, Fort Wilderness is very festive around the holidays.

This year we are again in the same loop as one of the perennial holiday decorating champions, whom we wrote about a few years ago. We're just two sites away, which means we can never get lost -- I'm pretty sure his site is visible from space. Last night we rode the scooters around about half the park just to look at all the decorated sites. Even though we were here earlier in the season last year, in November, this year there seem to be fewer decorations. Also, the campground seems much emptier. I'm not sure if fuel prices have grounded some RVers. or the ever-increasing cost of a Disney vacation is just not in some family budgets this year (or both).

Since this visit is a quick fly-by for us, we only bought two-day park passes. The downside to that is there are really no discounts available on those. We spent Tuesday at Disney's Hollywood Studios, and the light crowds meant we got to ride several of our favorites, including the Tower of Terror and the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, more than once. This was also our first time on Star Tours since the revamp that changed the script and added 3D. The Osborne Family Lights was spectacular as always, and we enjoyed dinner at the Brown Derby.

We discovered that we could see most of the fireworks at the Magic Kingdom from our roof deck in this space, although this is the first time we were unable to get the satellite dialed in. We're using the mobile hot spot on my phone instead, with good 3g service available here in the campground. After getting parked and set up Monday afternoon, we went over to the Wilderness Lodge for dinner at Artist's Point, which was disappointing. Everything at Disney is overly expensive for what it is -- all part of the gestalt -- but at this restaurant I felt it was not worth it. By contrast, the Brown Derby was excellent.

Yesterday we spent most of the day right here at Fort Wilderness. I had hopes of making it to the pool, but we ended up riding the monorail around to some other resorts instead. Today we will use our final park day to visit the Magic Kingdom, and I might try to get over to the pool tomorrow instead. We'll need to check out in the morning, but we'll spend the afternoon in the section of the main parking lot reserved for that purpose.

Tomorrow evening we will head over to our stealth parking spot across town for the weekend. We have dinner plans with Chris and Cherie of Technomadia, who are rolling in to Orlando to pick up a relative at the airport in the evening. On Sunday we'll continue east to Cocoa Beach.

Photo of the Osbourne Family Lights at Disney's Hollywood Studios by random letters, used under a Creative Commons license.

Chiefly eastbound

2011-12-05T07:44:00.000-08:00

We are at the Walmart in Chiefland, Florida (map). I would have liked to stop another 45 minutes or so east of here last night, but this is the last "legal" Walmart en route to Orlando, and other than a truck stop on I-75 there are no other good stopping opportunities along the way. Louise said it was appropriate, since "Chief" is my qualification under the new Red Cross relief structure.

There was a decent Mexican joint in the shopping plaza here, although they would not serve us any beer or wine on a Sunday night. In addition to doing a little shopping in the store, we also picked up The King's Speech at the Redbox, which is a wonderful film. I had seen most of an edited version on my flight to Birmingham back in April, but it was new for Louise, and I enjoyed it a second time, without the redactions.

No sooner had I posted the blog and started the engine yesterday, than Angel went and threw up. This of course, right after we had the discussion between us about how well she was doing and that we were confident in leaving Tallahassee, before clicking "book now" on the Disney reservation site. We decided to press on regardless, because Orlando certainly has plenty of veterinarians, and one isolated barf among the many indicators of overall improvement did not really make for a crisis.

Fortunately, she made it through another night without throwing up, and she's been continuing to eat fairly normally, so we are hopeful that she is continuing to improve. In a few minutes we'll continue on to Fort Wilderness. I'm hoping we get assigned a site with enough gap in the trees to get online.

A mouse for an ailing cat

2011-12-04T09:26:00.000-08:00

We are at the Walmart on the east side of Tallahassee (map), just ten miles from the Walmart on the west side (map) where we spent last night. We wanted to give Angel another day of observation before deciding to move along and away from the Northwood Animal Hospital. There are four Walmarts in town, and only one prohibits overnight parking -- the one closest to the vet, natch.

We had a nice dinner Friday night at the University Center Club, which is in Doak Campbell Stadium at FSU. We've been there enough times now that we know right where to park Odyssey, at the campus shuttle bus station near the stadium. After dinner it was only a short drive to the Walmart on the west side, a familiar stop for us (as is this one).

We spent most of the day in that lot, keeping tabs on Angel. She's actually eating now on her own, which is an excellent sign, although we are continuing with the subcutaneous fluids. By mid-afternoon we were pretty convinced she was on the mend and that we could leave town, but with this other store just a few miles away and on our route anyway, an extra night of insurance was an easy choice.

After another couple of meals and a return to her "normal" behaviors, which include supervising whenever either of us is in the kitchen, and waiting right by the front door, sometimes trying to dart out, whenever I walk the dog, we are now comfortable heading away from the latest vet. I spent this morning looking at maps.

We've already missed the annual Nordhavn open house in Stuart, which ended yesterday. So we will continue to slow-roll to that general area to look at whatever boats might be there whenever we arrive, and I am hoping by rolling slowly enough another couple of interesting boats might show up, at the end of the annual southward migration down the ICW. In the interim, we thought we might try to spend some time in Cocoa Beach, to catch up on the backlog of projects around the house.

Looking at the maps this morning I noted that we'd be going right through Orlando on the way to Cocoa Beach, and while it's only been a year since our last visit with the mouse, this is the cheapest time of the year at Fort Wilderness, and the holidays are always so festive there, even if you never enter a theme park. I just finished making a reservation for arrival tomorrow and departure on Friday, at a relative bargain of $64 per night for a full hookup site. We'll do our usual trick of spending all day Friday in the parking lot outside the campground, which will give us a full four days at Disney World.

There is no point in arriving at Fort Wilderness too far ahead of the afternoon check-in time, since sites are often not yet ready. So we'll have all this afternoon and most of tomorrow to get there, which will put us somewhere between Chiefland and Belleview tonight.

Conservative cat

2011-12-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

We spent last night in the parking lot at the Northwood Animal Hospital (map). They had asked us to drop Angel off first thing this morning, but the closest parking spot is across town, and I did not relish the thought of trying to navigate the bus in rush hour traffic to a clinic where even getting into the parking lot was dicey. So we dropped by last night around 5 and asked if we could just park overnight, and they agreed. Getting into the tiny lot involved going through the parking lot of a sign shop next door, facilitated by the fact that they were already closed and the lot was empty.

After leaving Angel with the vet this morning, we had to clear out of the lot to make room for other customers, and so we headed to the Tallahassee Mall just a few blocks away, with its enormous lot. The mall is breathing its dying gasps, and already featured over at deadmalls.com (a site I frequent as we encounter dead malls around the country). As a side note, what looks like a shopping center on the satellite view across from the vet, a tempting place to park, was in fact Tallahassee's first enclosed mall, but, having died back in the 1980s, is now leased entirely to the State of Florida, which fills the lot to the brim.

When we pulled in to the mall lot we positioned ourselves in what looked like an unused part of the lot (map), near a long-vacant anchor store, but close enough to one of the working entrances that we could wander in and kill some time. We ended up spending a couple hours in the mall, including the half-hour call from the vet which I took sitting on a pleasant bench. We walked back the length of the mall to the bus to get ready to pick her up, and spotted an enormous line snaking around the mall from the Barnes & Noble, one of the few going concerns here.

What could this be, we asked ourselves? An incredible holiday deal on the Nook? Nope -- it turned out to be the book-signing tour for Glenn Beck. Apparently, he has a loyal following in Florida's capital. Of course the tour's Prevost entertainer coach was stationed outside the store (generator humming, even though this weather does not call for any air conditioning -- I don't think these entertainers have even a single operable window). The sea of cars belonging to conservative talking-head fans spread as far as the eye could see, engulfing Odyssey in what we thought to be a little-used part of the lot.

We got lucky -- the parking space immediately in front of Odyssey was vacant when we walked up, and I immediately put a couple of cones out to keep it that way while we packed up and ate our lunch. The lunchtime entertainment was watching the dumpster truck retrieve a dumpster for the Guitar Center store that had been positioned in the same general part of the lot, one of our clues that this part of the lot was unused. The onslaught of cars ended up blocking the lifting slots and he had a mighty struggle to retrieve it. Beck's coach pulled out just before we did, and we realized that we must have looked like part of the tour. Too bad we already gave away our Obama bobble-head that used to live on the dashboard.

We had to take our chances in the State of Florida lot to pick Angel up -- no way to get back into the vet's lot in the middle of the day. We got a few odd looks, but no one disturbed us for the half hour we were there. That was long enough to pick up the cat as well as another ream of paperwork for her file, plus some extra cat food, injection needles, and yet another prescription.

The ultrasound did not reveal any conclusive reason for the recent illness. Interestingly, one of her kidneys is less than half the size of the other one, which accounts for marginal numbers on some of the blood counts, but the complete set of tests seems to rule out kidney disease as the root cause here. There is some enlargement of the pancreas that may warrant some follow-up, but that would required a surgical biopsy, so we are holding off until we see how other treatments progress.

The new script is for Mirtazapine, which in humans is used to treat depression, but in cats is an appetite stimulant as well as an anti-emetic. They gave her one pill in the office, and the first thing she did when she got back to the bus was to eat a few dog kibbles -- the first food we have seen here eat voluntarily in over a week. Normally we would not let her eat dog food, but we are at the point where any nutrition is a good thing. We are going to continue with the antibiotics, since urinary or GI tract infections are one possible explanation for the symptoms, and increase the subcutaneous ringers to 100cc daily. If we don't see more improvement by mid-day tomorrow, we might stay right here in Tally so we can follow up with the same clinic.

In the meantime we'd already decided to spend at least tonight here, and so after we wrapped up at the vet we came here (map), to a coin laundry not far from our club in town. When the laundry's done, I made dinner reservations at the club, which is actually inside the university's football stadium. After dinner we'll trundle over to one of three convenient Walmarts here in town for the night.

On our way into town we had thought about dining at the club last night, but after securing permission to stay at the clinic we didn't want to then run around town. Instead we walked over to El Jalisco Mexican restaurant just a couple blocks away, and were surprised to find it jam-packed. The food was quite tasty and it was a friendly place, with half-price draft beer to boot, so it was a good choice.

Room with a view

2011-12-01T08:52:00.000-08:00

We are parked at a roadside turnout on Cape San Blas (map), south of Port Saint Joe, Florida. This spot was listed in our Days End directory, and we figured if it did not work out for any reason, we could just continue another eight miles or so to the state park at the end of the peninsula, which has a $27 per night campground.

This turns out to be a great spot, with panoramic views of the gulf on one side, and Lighthouse Bayou off Saint Joseph Bay on the other. It's very remote here, and I saw more stars last night than I have in quite some time. There are no services for miles in either direction, and I grilled a nice steak last night for dinner.

Just before checkout time at Henderson Beach I called the vet, and the thyroid test had just come in. It was negative, which meant no return visit and no change in treatment plan. The next step, should things not improve, would be an ultrasound, and there are no ultrasound clinics in the Destin area. Thus wrapping up our Destin visit, we checked out of the campground and headed east on US98.

Making our way through Panama City turned out to be a slog. We're sorry they bulldozed the Elks lodge there last year, as it would have been a great stop, right on the water downtown. With no boondocking allowed anywhere in town, we did not even stop, and continued on to Port Saint Joe. This spot is a bit off the main route, requiring a short detour on Florida 30, but then it is only four miles from that scenic route.

We made it here right around 4:15, which would have given us just enough time to make the state park before closing if we needed it. But it seemed fine to us and we settled in for the night, enjoying a sunset over the gulf before dinner. Angel even seemed to be improving a bit, showing more alertness overall and mostly tolerating the food we were cramming into her.

Unfortunately, the off-label anti-emetic injection that the vet had given her wore off yesterday afternoon sometime, and just before midnight she managed to spit up a good amount of what we had given her, including some of the antibiotic pill. That suggests we need to go to the next step, and find an ultrasonographer to look into her abdomen.

As much as I'd like to stay on the coast a while longer, the next major city to the east is Tallahassee, where there are at least two veterinary ultrasound clinics. So we will turn inland at Apalachicola and head toward the capital, in the hopes of scoring an appointment sometime tomorrow. We also have a club in Tally, and perhaps we can have dinner there tonight.

Photo: The view from our windows over the Gulf of Mexico.

We did not get far

2011-11-30T08:41:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-26T13:11:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-18T13:25:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-15T10:13:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-14T07:10:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-11T11:36:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-09T14:08:00.001-08:00

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

2011-11-07T06:44:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-06T06:16:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-11-05T08:01:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

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.

And the hits just keep on coming

2011-10-31T11:48:00.000-07:00

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:

IRS Verification of Federal Tax ID # for the Importer of Record
Power of Attorney and Federal Tax ID that will verify/match the POA
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
Country of Origin: where the item or part was manufactured (not necessarily the shipped from location)
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

2011-10-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-22T12:57:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-13T16:45:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-12T16:57:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-12T07:07:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-04T09:28:00.000-07:00

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.

School's out

2011-09-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

We are at the Old York Elementary School in Branchburg, NJ (map), where until Saturday the Red Cross relief operation for Hurricane Irene was headquartered. While the operation started at the Red Cross chapter in Tinton Falls, we moved here nearly two weeks ago, as I described in my last post. This school closed at the end of last school year, after 61 years of operation (it opened in 1949 as Branchburg Elementary), and the township's Board of Education donated the use of the space to us for the relief operation. It's been a little strange going to "class" every morning, and having all the bathroom fixtures a bit lower than normal.

The technology department was quartered in Mrs. Barry's art classroom, complete with pottery kiln.

Louise and I are the only ones still here; we just helped the FedEx guy put the last 2,000 pounds of equipment on the truck less than ten minutes ago (it is ten till four as I am typing). This morning, the copier rental company came for the two donated copiers, and the Board of Ed did their final walk-through on Friday, before the operation was even over. We have all three sets of keys, and we'll turn them over in the morning before returning our rental car at a nearby Avis.

We've now been deployed for nearly thirteen weeks this season, and we're going to take a little time off. We're planning to attend Trawler Fest in Baltimore in a little over a week from now, and after that I am slated to teach three days of classes at the Bus Conversion rally in Chattanooga.

Since we found ourselves unexpectedly in the northeast, we're trying to get some visits in with family. We had a very nice visit over lunch last week, on our day off, with my folks, who met us halfway, and we plan to do so again tomorrow before we turn our car in. And we are eager to see my young nephew (really cousin) whom we get to see only once a year, if that, before we miss his childhood altogether. My cousins live near Glens Falls, which is a long way to take the bus for just a short visit, but they will be coming south for the Army game this weekend.

We'll meet in the middle at my aunt and uncle's house, whom we are also eagerly looking forward to seeing. We're planning to be there sometime Wednesday afternoon, and I am hoping the school district will just let us stay here for another night after we turn the keys over tomorrow. That will be the end of our free ride on power, though, as our cord is actually running in through a window -- there is not a single outside outlet on this building.

With any luck my uncle and cousins will be available all the way through the weekend, and we'll start heading towards Baltimore Monday or Tuesday. In addition to Trawler Fest, there are a couple of boats for sale in the Maryland area that we'd like to check out, and we'll try to make appointments for that either right before or after the show.

Louise is going to take the downtime afforded by my teaching schedule to fly to California for a quick visit with friends and family. The best available schedules at reasonable fares are round trip out of Atlanta, and so we may head directly to Atlanta after Baltimore, and I would then head back up to Chattanooga from there. Alternatively, I may rent a car in Chattanooga and drive Louise to Atlanta for her flight, although that would make for a very early morning.

After we depart Atlanta on October 22nd, when Louise returns, our calendar is a big question mark. We will go back on deployment availability, as hurricane season runs all the way through November, so remaining in the southeast is a strong possibility. The Fort Lauderdale boat show is the following week, and we might head in that direction if nothing else calls us.

Now that we are officially finished here, I plan to spend the next two days catching up on sleep and emails. I know I owe a lot of people responses -- I just can't get to all of it while we are deployed. I am hoping we can just stay parked right where we are, as we can use the downtime before having to move the bus.

Same storm, different state

2011-09-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

We are in Branchburg, New Jersey. I last posted here just before Labor Day, thinking that we were very much on the downside of the operation and that I would be posting here again in perhaps another week, just as we were ready to leave. As it turned out, things took a weird turn at 8:30 Tuesday morning, and we've been running flat out ever since. This is literally the first break I've had in which to post, and our first full day off since we left Florida on August 23rd.

On Tuesday morning I learned on a conference call that the technology leadership on the New Jersey relief operation for Hurricane Irene was transitioning out on Sunday. That would leave a leadership void on an operation that was relatively large, still had lots more work in front of it than the North Carolina operation, and was in a politically sensitive area. After the conference call I volunteered that we could move up to the New Jersey operation to fill that void if it would help out, knowing that I had capable people in North Carolina who could finish out the operation there.

It took the Disaster Operations Center (DOC) less than half an hour to call me back to arrange the details. They needed to hear my plan for coverage after our departure, and brief me on the sensitivities of the New Jersey operation. We agreed that we'd remain in North Carolina through mid-day Thursday to wrap some things up and complete the transition, and arrive in New Jersey before the end of the day Friday, to give me a full day of overlap on Saturday with the individual I would be replacing.

We spent the next two days wrapping up documentation and transitioning the NC operation to our teammates there, as well as training them on the handful of arcane tasks that only come up at the very close of an operation. We had a final dinner with the team, and Thursday morning I removed the temporary wiring that had been feeding Odyssey directly from the electrical panel. By 2pm we were on the road and heading north.

We had set a goal for Thursday evening of Stafford, Virginia, just south of Quantico. There was a Wal-Mart there with easy access to a couple of dining options, and satellite imagery showed good parking. Unfortunately, when we arrived we found that they were expanding the store, and more than half the parking lot was fenced off for the construction. It was too tight and high-traffic for comfort, and we decided to press on to the next Wal-Mart north, on the other side of Quantico, in Dumfries.

It was just then that the remains of Tropical Storm Lee caught up with us. While we had been dry for the entire drive up to that point, the heavens opened just as we got back onto I-95, and we pressed forward in driving rain that eventually slowed the entire freeway down to 25mph. It took us nearly an hour to go the 20 miles to Dumfries, where we parked and then fixed ourselves dinner in the bus. Around 9:30 or so the rain let up enough for me to run into the store for a few items, including coffee for the morning, as we were completely out.

Friday we slogged through DC and Baltimore rush hour traffic, making for a nearly six hour drive to Tinton Falls, New Jersey where the relief operation was running from the regional Red Cross chapter office. En route we made a lunch stop at an Olive Garden near Newark, Delaware, and we stopped for fuel on the NJ Turnpike, so that we'd be well covered if we needed to run the generator. We were fortunate to have found a dump station in Virginia on Thursday, so that half-hour chore was already behind us. It was almost 4pm by the time we arrived.

Fortunately, the chapter had an open gravel area in back where we could park Odyssey, and a 20-amp outlet just inside the door we could use, so we were all set for the time we were in Tinton Falls. We pulled the bus around back just as the lot was emptying out for the day. There is a WaWa market just across the street from the chapter, and no fewer than a half dozen Italian restaurants within two miles, so it was really a very nice spot, if not for the mosquitoes in the grassy area next to us.

No sooner had I gotten my feet firmly planted in New Jersey than plans were afoot to move headquarters. The relief operation's role along the Jersey coast had more or less wrapped up, and the rain that Lee dumped on the state exacerbated conditions mostly in the northern and western parts of the state. So our continued operation out of the Jersey Coast Chapter would mean we'd be in their hair as well as a bit too far from the bulk of our operations. By this point, we had already established a distribution warehouse in Edison.

I took over the technology department on Sunday and by Monday morning the facilities people were already out signing a lease on some donated space here in Branchburg. By Monday afternoon we had set a move date of Tuesday evening. By 9am Wednesday we had completed the move, deploying two satellite dishes for connectivity, backing up and moving the server, and redeploying around 50 computers and a half dozen printers.

The move was not without its glitches. We took down the satellite dish, our backup connectivity in Tinton Falls, at 11am, and loaded it, along with as many other pieces of equipment as could then be packed away, onto a rented box truck, to get a head start in Branchburg. The box truck left HQ just after noon, and we sent half the team to Branchburg as well, mostly by car. Not even half an hour had passed before my phone rang -- the box truck had hit a low railroad trestle, shearing the top off.

Neither of the guys in the truck was injured, and the equipment was fine, as it was arranged along the floor and not stacked to the top. But it waylaid the equipment for hours while we scrambled to find another truck to offload the gear, and I had two people who had to wait with the truck for five hours while the rental company came with a tow truck to get it. I had been keeping the Emergency Communications Response Vehicle (ECRV) on standby at the Tinton Falls HQ, since we sent the satellite dish to Branchburg, and when the accident happened I had them stow their dish and roll over to Branchburg to get it on line. We also have some cables, power strips, extension cords, and other material on the ECRV, so the guys who were already in Branchburg waiting for the box truck could at least get started.

When all was said and done, it only cost us an hour or so, since the long pole in the tent had always been moving the server, anyway. We had scheduled an early HQ shut down in Tinton Falls, 5pm from a normal HQ closing time of 7pm, so that we could back up the server before loading it into the box truck on its second trip. By this time, though, the replacement truck was stuck in return traffic and could not make it back to Tinton Falls when the backup completed at 6:30. Louise was able to score a Chevy Traverse SUV that, by lucky coincidence, was being returned to the transportation department just at that moment, and with the seats down the entire 300-lb, two-case server setup fit in the back, along with a handful of cables, cords, and other critical items. Louise drove the server straight here, with the truck following a good hour later.

We had everything wrapped up by 2am, when I locked the building and set the alarm. Other than myself, I let the guys who had started at 8am loose around 11pm or so, and the bulk of the team, who had come in at 11am, stayed until nearly 1:30. The last thing we finished was to bring the satellite dish on line that we had positioned on the roof, which under normal circumstances would have been the first thing to be completed. I opened back up at 6am so we could finish getting all the laptops back on line, and when folks started coming in to HQ at 9am everything was working. Of course, the technology staff were all dragging by early afternoon, and we called it a day at 4pm.

While moving a headquarters like this is old hat for many of us, we had a lot of first-timers on this operation. An HQ move is a rite of passage for disaster technology staff, and it was an eye-opening experience for most of them. This is one of the things that differentiates us from the IT department of any given company with a headquarters this large -- we can plan a move in one day and execute it in a few hours, with little impact to the users. We can do (and have done) this every few days for a month or more. And we can spin up a 100-station headquarters operation from scratch in a matter of a couple of days. Our manager in DC likes to call this "speed to scale."

Now that HQ is fully operational and things have settled down, we've released the ECRV back to its home base and we're rotating staff through days off. By the end of the weekend we will have downsized considerably through the normal attrition of volunteers on fixed-length deployments, and we'll be down to the core group of die-hards who are available to close down the operation. With any luck, we'll all be out of here in two weeks, and we'll be able to make our Trawler show in Baltimore.

The "sensitivities" that I mentioned earlier have made this operation somewhat stressful for me. I've been cleaning up mistakes since I arrived and it turns out that the guy in charge on the ground has had some previous conflict with our leadership at the DOC, putting us in a precarious position. I'm hoping to be back to my normal self after a nice day off; the folks who have worked for me before have already commented, and my fear is that the folks who have not are not getting the leadership they deserve.

Irene relief update

2011-09-04T08:23:00.000-07:00

It has been a little over a week since I last posted here, and I haven't had a spare minute in that time to do so. Today, headquarters has the morning off, and so we got a chance to sleep in (till 8 -- whoo hoo.) I'm using the remaining couple hours to blog and catch up on email, and Louise is braving the wilds of a WalMart full of after-church shoppers to buy groceries. We'll head back to the office in just a few minutes.

We are still parked at headquarters in Wilson, NC. The photo above shows how we are tucked in neatly to an alcove, shielded on three sides by stores, and partly shielded on the fourth by a pony wall. While we have to live with the trash dumpsters, two of which are off-frame to the left, and the somewhat unpleasant smell, we do have 6kW of power here, as well as water and access to a sewer manhole where we can dump our tanks in another week. I topped off the water tank this morning.

This is also where we rode out the storm, although we were facing the other way to keep the windshields to leeward, and thus taking up much more of the alcove and blocking access for the cartage trucks. I promised the facility manager we would be out of the way of the trucks, and she was amazed we were able to do so. I suppose I would not have been able to park Odyssey this way six years ago, when we had not yet figure out all the tight-quarters handling quirks.

The operation director rallies the troops, two days in

As you now know, Irene weakened and turned further west just before landfall here, and the result is that the damage in North Carolina is far less than had originally been expected. That's a good thing, because the Red Cross is already pulling volunteers out of here to staff the operations in Louisiana and Mississippi for Tropical Storm Lee. For a while it looked like Hurricane Katia might again threaten the Carolinas, but most of the models now having it turn out to sea before reaching the coast.

That said, we did have enough damage here to open a whole bunch of shelters and no fewer than five kitchens. We've been sending teams into the field nearly every day to install or support computers, printers, and radios at the kitchens, and now we are supporting the ongoing casework in the field. Most of the kitchens will be closed by the end of the holiday weekend, but we'll be here at least another week or two to support the rest of the activities.

Early on, we sent a two-person team to New Bern to install a computer in the kitchen there and drop off another computer for the Damage Assessment team. We've been sending the Prius that I mentioned in my last post on some of these field calls, as it has great mileage and a very capacious cargo area with the back seat down.

And so it was that the Prius was in New Bern, in between deliveries, when the crew slowed down for a police officer in the road with his lights flashing. The Sherwin-Williams truck behind, them, however, elected not to do the same, plowing into them and totaling the Prius. Fortunately, the headrests did their job, and other than shaken up and a bit sore, our team members were OK. The same can not be said for the laptop that was with them.

We're not certain, but we think that after the laptop was ejected from the car, it was then run over. Even so, it actually booted and everything seems to be working except for the screen, which is now a sort of Calder-esque modern art. Of course, there was no data on it anyway, since we were just delivering it. I connected it to our projector to determine that it was still working, and I was impressed.

With the operation not nearly as large as originally planned, there is now a big push to get it shut down in the next few days. The hope is that we will be mostly wrapped up by the end of the week, and if all goes well, we'd then be shipping our gear back in next Monday's FedEx. We should be back on the road early next week, to points unknown.

Postscript: While I managed to type all but the previous paragraph this morning, and get the photos uploaded, we had to run to the office before I could post. I couldn't find even five minutes to finish and post during the day, and so here I am at 9:50pm, after coming back from dinner with our management team, finishing up.

North Carolina Hurricane Irene relief

2011-08-31T10:29:00.000-07:00

A local ARRL fellow took this photo of me hard at work in North Carolina. Our headquarters was a childcare facility in its previous life. The entire room is painted this lurid lime green. At least my desk is away from the incredibly amateur paintings of clowns, balloons and super heroes in the back hallway.

No complaints, though. We have running water, mostly working air conditioning, and lockable room to store our equipment. That's about as good as it gets for distaster relief work.

Riders on the storm

2011-08-27T14:06:00.000-07:00

We are parked at Red Cross headquarters in Wilson, North Carolina. I arrived with Odyssey yesterday morning, after an hour's drive from the interim headquarters location in Raleigh. Louise followed much later in our Red Cross rental car, which turns out to be a hybrid, a Toyota Prius, as she first had cell phones to deliver all over the eastern part of the state.

I have time to update the blog today, uncharacteristic for this stage of the operation, because the worst part of the storm is hitting us now, and everyone is sheltering in place. For most of the headquarters staff, that would be the pair of hotels they are occupying across town from here. For us, it is Odyssey, and so we are the sole Red Crossers here at HQ.

I'll catch up by filling in the blanks from my last post, which I dashed off before we hurriedly hit the road. I left off on Wednesday by saying that we were in a frustrating waiting game, while the Disaster Operations Center (DOC) in DC figured out where we'd be needed, if anywhere, for hurricane Irene. Folks at the DOC were already pretty frazzled trying to play the chasing-Irene guessing game, and it did not help any that they were all still rattled from their very own magnitude 5.8 earthquake on Tuesday. We were probably not helping by pressing them for answers, sitting as we were in a truck stop with no power.

Shortly after I posted, we resigned ourselves to waiting another day to hear anything, and made the decision to pack up and head over to Crooked River State Park. That was just a dozen miles from the truck stop, and had plenty of RV spaces with electric power for $33, which starts to look very attractive when it costs $45-$50 per day to run the air conditioning with the generator.

We were just about ready to leave when my phone rang. It was staff deployment, telling me I had been assigned as Technology Chief to the Richmond, Virginia operation. Since I'd heard that a Chief had already been assigned to that operation, I asked deployment about it and they informed me that I was closer, and the other individual, who lives in Texas, would be held in reserve for Tropical Depression 10, which at the time looked like it might develop into a threat to interests in the gulf (it has since turned to sea and will not make a U.S. landfall). Fine by me, because we really needed some kind of deployment orders to get back on the road.

Before we left, I called the DOC to let them know that I had been reassigned to Richmond, and the Technology folks seemed at least a little surprised by that. And, of course, they confirmed that Louise would not be able to take a Technology assignment in Richmond if I deployed there as Chief. When they learned that we were really much closer to Raleigh anyway and that we'd rather work together in Technology on the same operation, we were both reassigned to North Carolina, with the original individual going to Richmond.

While I would have enjoyed going back to Richmond, since we set the "hot site" there up ourselves a year ago, and previously worked an operation there shortly after we started with the Red Cross, North Carolina was really a better choice. But it was nearly 4pm by the time this was all sorted out and we hit the road, and Raleigh is a seven hour drive from where we were parked.

Once we were on the road we called long-time friend and the assigned Technology Manager in Raleigh, David, to let him know our status and work out an arrival time. We settled on sometime Thursday morning. Based on that, we had our sights set on a fuel stop in Florence, where we would also overnight -- a choice of four Pilot/FlyingJ locations. We stopped for dinner in Walterboro, where the GPS said there was a Ruby Tuesday but where we also found a pair of local establishments, and chose to eat at the Glass House Restaurant, which was passable but a little rough around the edges.

The idea had been to break up the evening's drive a bit with a dinner stop in the middle, but after a frustrating day, a late start, and a hunk of prime rib settling in my tummy, I started running out of steam as night fell. We ended up pulling off the highway an hour shy of the fuel stop, at a TA truck stop in Manning, SC. We got parked and settled in for the night and called David to work out a specific arrival time.

The outcome of that discussion was that we'd need to be there before noon if at all possible, which led us to conclude we'd either need to leave by 7am, or continue on to our originally planned stop before turning in for the night. With the amount of time it takes to fuel being something of a wildcard -- some pumps are three or four times faster than others -- we decided it would be best to get the fueling behind us before the night was out, and so we headed back out onto the road, after nearly an hour stop.

It was the right choice, because we got not only slow pumps, but also ones that would not pre-authorize very much fuel. As I posted on Thursday, we ended up authorizing two pumps (one on each side of the bus) three times each. In hindsight, I should have taken the cards in to the fuel desk to have them do it, but sometimes that process can take longer than just dealing with the robot a couple of times in a row. It was also disappointing that we could not get any water, given how tight the schedule had become. After fueling we settled in for the night -- again.

We got an early start Thursday, after a quick update here, and figured to be in Raleigh by 11:30. We decided to hold off on water until after our arrival, so we had no stops except for bathroom breaks -- I definitely do not have a three-hour bladder. When I went to start the bus, however, I got a lot of clicking before it cranked fully, as if the start batteries were low.

Now, this has been happening for the last few days, getting a bit worse each time, and I've been compensating as needed by bridging the house batteries in. It's a bit alarming that the start batteries are having so much trouble, considering we just replaced them a couple months ago, but I was guessing maybe just a bad connection at the batteries or one of the connection posts, and I figured to look at it when I got the time. But this time, even bridging the house batteries in did not fix it right away, and the big Detroit struggled mightily before lighting off.

By this time I am thinking there is some extra resistance in the cable between the batteries and alternator, which not only carries the charge current to the batteries, but also the starting current to the starter. Fixing that is going to be a major project, involving removing the hatch under the bed, and we're on our way to a disaster, so we just press on. We'll only need to start the engine a few more times before we're settled, after all.

About half way to Raleigh we stopped at a rest area on I-95 so that Mr. Micro-Bladder can use the rest room. When we got back to the bus, the starter did not work at all -- not even a click. Uh-oh. Bridging the house batteries did not help, and a quick check of all the gauges and computer read-out did not reveal any likely culprits.

Louise started the process of calling Coach-Net, our towing service, to either get a mobile mechanic or a tow truck out to us, while I crawled under the engine with the voltmeter and a two-way radio. A few minutes of diagnosis revealed that the start solenoid was not closing to provide current to the starter, and in my pre-disaster, get-there-now fog, I concluded that the brand new starter solenoid that the starter shop put on the starter when we were at Choo-Choo must have failed.

When Coach-Net finally recommended a tow as the best option, a gargantuan nail-biting undertaking with this bus even for the five miles to the nearest shop, I decided to jury-rig a solution while they are arranging the truck. If I can at least get it started once, we can avoid the towing hassle and get to the shop under our own power.

It's impossible to reach the lugs on the solenoid by hand without removing lots of stuff bolted to the engine, or near it. But I can see it from the engine bay door, and I ended up building a bolt-on-a-stick arrangement with a length of PVC pipe and some nuts and bolts from the parts box, intending to short the lugs by threading the stick through the various bits that are in the way. Of course, this has to be done without shorting the hot lug to the nearby ground, and it was vaguely reminiscent of that children's game popular in my youth, "Operation."

After spending ten minutes digging out and collecting the parts, drilling the holes in the pipe, and putting in the bolt and nuts, I was ready to thread the "forceps" between the patient's, umm, parts. That's when I noticed the loose wire hanging down in front of the fan belt, as I was carefully scoping out how to avoid said belt while the engine started.

That loose wire was previously affixed to a pressure switch in the fuel line. This switch cuts off the starter circuit whenever fuel pressure is above a certain point (5 psi, I think). The idea is to prevent an attempt to start an already-running engine, as well as to cut off the starter after the engine catches, even if the start button is still activated. With the wire disconnected, the starter can not engage at all.

The end nut on the threaded post on the switch was gone, so apparently, the nut rattled off some time ago, and the ring terminal has been slowly working its way off, causing the increasing struggling during starting, until one time it finally came off altogether. The switch was replaced when Choo-Choo put the engine back, since it had been bent during the removal, and perhaps the nut was not properly torqued.

Our most loyal long-time readers will detect a pattern here. Apparently we can not drive hundreds of miles to a relief operation without some kind of mechanical problem befalling the bus en route. Like the time we wore a tire down to the belts and had to have it replaced, chipping the windshield the same day. Or when the power steering pump blew its seal and dumped gallons of steering fluid into the engine oil sump.

In any case, I am glad I did not have to finish my game of Operation, and getting the coach started was just a natter of reattaching the starter safety switch wire. Nevertheless, we were at the rest area for over an hour, on what was to be a three-minute potty stop. We called David several times throughout the ordeal, second only to Coach-Net. We waved off the tow truck before leaving the rest area, or course.

Headquarters in Raleigh was a hotel near the airport, and we simply parked around back for the night. It was cool enough to leave the A/C off while we were in the office for the day, and we ended up only running the genny for a few hours so we could have some cool and dry air while we slept.

By the end of the day the facilities folks had secured a headquarters in Wilson. The original thinking had been Greenville, but after looking at the forecasts, it was decided that perhaps that was too close to be safe. At least here we are an hour closer to the coast than in Raleigh, yet far enough inland that we did not have to worry about assets being inundated by surge.

As with so many Red Cross headquarters, this one is a vacant retail store. It is in a shopping center with other stores, so we don't have free reign over the parking situation, but we worked it out with the landlord and security to park Odyssey in an area where the dumpsters are located for a cluster of stores. In addition to having direct access to the back door to headquarters and its main electric feed, the area is walled on three sides and provided us a nice lee from the worst winds of the storm. We managed to run a 20-amp extension cord out to the bus before we settled in for the night.

This morning we had to load up the Prius with some equipment needed by the operation while they bunkered down in the hotel today, and when we got back we worked on whatever wiring and cleanup we could do in HQ with no network access, as winds were already too high to deploy the satellite truck. The small crew that came with us had to return to the hotel by 2pm, when the shelter-in-place order from operation management became mandatory.

Just before that time I was able to hard-wire my 10-gauge cord into one of the electrical panels, and we now have 30 amps going into the inverter, and another 20 amps available for the water heater or a second air conditioner if needed. The regular 20-amp extension cord is running the air compressor, so we are pretty well set for power. We had filled our water tanks at the hotel in Raleigh, but there is also a spigot here if we need it.

In another hour or two, the bulk of the storm will have passed, and tomorrow we will be back in full swing. The satellite truck will be here at 7am to get on-line, and there is an all-hands meeting at 8. I expect we will find out then what the full scope of the operation will look like.

Photo by bass_nroll, used under a Creative Commons license.

Irene micro-update

2011-08-25T05:20:00.000-07:00

We are at the Pilot truck stop in Florence, SC (map). They had the cheapest fuel we'll see, at $3.659, and we put in 140 gallons last night when we arrived, in a very frustrating experience that involved swiping three different credit cards six times at two pumps. Nevertheless, we are now fueled and have what we need for whatever Irene throws at us. No water here, though, so we'll have to fill our tank at a later stop.

We had new deployment orders by late yesterday afternoon, and we are now heading for Raleigh, North Carolina. We are due there before noon today. That's all the update I have time to write, at the moment.

Hurry up and wait

2011-08-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

We are in Kingsland, Georgia, at a Petro truck stop just off I-95 (map). We made it less than 200 miles yesterday before Red Cross staff deployment called to tell us NOT to continue to Columbia, SC. Between 4 or so when the official deployment orders came through, and 6:30 or so when they called back, the NHC released its 5pm forecast update, adjusting speed, intensity, and track to more or less take South Carolina out of the danger zone.

We knew this could happen, and, frankly, we were somewhat surprised they had even deployed us yesterday. We had figured (and previously been advised) that deployment decisions were likely to be made on Wednesday, which is one reason we felt confident making boat plans for Tuesday and Wednesday. No matter; we understand the dynamics in DC and their anxiety to get assets into position ahead of time, before storm-induced travel disruptions make it difficult.

So it was really not a surprise to be waved off, but by this time, we'd been driving all out and were already in Jacksonville. Unfortunately, we had already passed the point where it would have been convenient to make our way to the Orange Park Elks, where we had stayed on our way south and where we could have had 50 amps of power. The deployment center was clear that they were putting the travel on hold, but that I am still on standby, making it likely we will have to continue even further north, so it also did not make any sense to backtrack.

We stopped at an Olive Garden north of town to have dinner and assess our options. With the Elks in the wrong direction, and the Wal-Mart next door to the Olive Garden posted No Overnight Parking, we determined that the next legal parking along any sensible route was here in Kingsland, right across the state line. We checked at the Wal-Mart first, but it, too, is posted no parking, and ended up here with the truckers.

Given that the outside temperature and humidity is still driving our need for air conditioning, we also looked at several RV parks along the way, and even the state park down the road from here. The least expensive of those options is the state park, at $33 per night, plus another dozen or so miles of driving for another $10. At $4.50 an hour, we can get nearly ten hours of generator run time for that kind of money.

I'm pleased to report that the new batteries held their own, running a single roof air from when we parked just before 8pm until perhaps 3am when the generator started. And that's despite me having bumped the low-battery cut-out up nearly a full volt just as a precaution. The generator ran for less than three hours, and we ran it again for half an hour this morning to cool things down after airing the bus out in the coolest outside air we'll have all day.

Now it is a waiting game. Since I am on standby, they can call at any minute and tell me to proceed to Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, or New York. Leadership teams are already in place in North Carolina and Virginia, having been mobilized at the same time we got the call for South Carolina. And New England is too far for us to be able to reach in reasonable time and mileage.

The alternate possibility, much less appealing to us for a variety of reasons, is that they can call me today or tomorrow and take me off standby altogether. At that point, it would become a matter of waiting until post-landfall to see if we are needed and thus recruited by whichever of the operations actually becomes a going concern and can use our help. The biggest issue with this is that we have no authorization to move until we are recruited, and post-landfall, if they recruit us for, say, Raleigh North Carolina, it will be a mad scramble for us to drive all the way there at the last minute so we can be there when we are needed.

The waiting game can be frustrating, indeed. This will not be the first time we spent the day in a Petro truck stop waiting for deployment orders. And while the batteries are adequate to run air conditioning overnight, when it is relatively cool outside, as the day heats up we are going to either have to run the generator full time, or find someplace to go with a power outlet. Officially un-deployed, neither is reimbursable. Even getting our mileage reimbursed for yesterday's scramble will be a challenge if they take me off standby.

The snake in today's photo was lounging behind the bus both times I walked the dog last night.

Carolina bound

2011-08-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

Just a very quick update here because we are under the gun. The Red Cross called this morning and we are being deployed to South Carolina for a possible landfall there of Hurricane Irene.

I've just spent the last fifteen minutes contacting various people and waving off all the plans we'd made for the next couple of days, including three boat viewing appointments and tonight's cruise out of Fort Pierce with our friends. Instead we are buttoning up the bus and getting ready to head north. Our destination is Columbia, although it is not unheard of for that to change even while we are under way.

From this point forward we will be very busy, and it's unlikely I will be able to post much on the blog until things settle down, unless the storm misses us entirely. We will both try to tweet as we are able, and my Twitter feed cross-posts to Facebook, so you can keep up with us on either of those sites.

For anyone who is expecting to hear from us over the next few days, you likely will not, at least until we get some time off.

I Dream of Jeannie

2011-08-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

We are in Cocoa Beach, Florida. No map link today, in consideration of the privacy of our host. Suffice it to say that we are within walking distance of the beach and perhaps a dozen restaurants, and, in addition to 50 amps of power, we also have access to a pool and hot tub. We've been enjoying our stay very much, and it is very generous of our friend here to provide us with this spot.

We arrived Sunday afternoon, met our host, blog reader Dave, and settled in. Dave runs a business here in town and so we have not seen much of him since that first afternoon, but we have plans for dinner together tomorrow night. After settling in we walked to a nearby Italian place for dinner, and oddly enough we walked to yet a different Italian place on Monday night as well -- I guess we were making up for having to miss the one in St. Augustine. Both restaurants were excellent, and the prices were actually quite reasonable.

We've been swimming in either the pool or the ocean every day. The surf here is bigger than many other parts of the Florida coast, owing I assume to the relatively flat sand here resulting from the impact of Cape Canaveral on the littoral flow. So splashing around in the ocean has been a bit more of a challenge than we've had up till now. It also makes Cocoa Beach the surfing capital of Florida, which is similar to saying that Great Gorge is the skiing capital of New Jersey -- to a California transplant it's, "Eh, big deal." Nevertheless there is an endless string of surf shops along the main drag, including an enormous Ron Jon that is open 24/7 (not, as many assume, the original, which is in Ship Bottom, New Jersey -- really).

We did have dinner one night at Coconuts on the Beach, sort of the quintessential beachfront dining experience here, and one of the few spots near the beach with free motorcycle parking. Cocoa Beach has metered every parking space within two blocks of the beach, at a quarter for ten minutes. They charge to park at the pier, and even the beachfront city park charges $5 for the day. If you want to visit the beach, park instead at the Brevard County park just another couple blocks south, accessed via "I Dream of Jeannie Lane" in homage to the TV series set (but not filmed) here in the 60s.

For the most part, we've been able to walk right in anyplace we've gone, and the town has been relatively empty this week, even now as the weekend is upon us. I can only imagine what it is like here when it's busy. It's been great, because we are not in anyone's way here, and the gawkers have been relatively few. And this is a great time to be here, when the ocean feels refreshing, and the sea breeze makes the evenings pleasant enough to sit outside. We set up the deck and have been enjoying the sunset the last few evenings, and we can see a slice of ocean from here as well.

I've gotten a few things done around the house, and we replaced the speedometer cable on Louise's scooter, which broke a month or two ago -- the replacement just came in the mail package we had sent to us here. But mostly I've been at the keyboard, among catching up on email, trying to line up boat appointments, being a little behind on my technical articles for the magazine, and helping our friends at Technomadia design their new electrical system.

Between driving the bus and driving the computer, my neck and shoulders have gotten progressively stiffer over the last few weeks, notwithstanding the fact that we both had massages at a local massage school when we were in Jacksonville. So today I rode down to one of the massage places here in town to get them worked on. The technician was skilled and the price quite reasonable, and I may go back for another session before we leave.

In the course of lining up boat visits and contacting friends in the area, we managed to land an invitation for an evening cruise out of Fort Pierce on Tuesday evening. This is a night piloting skills development session for the local Power Squadron; the instructors are friends of ours and a couple of the students bailed out at the last minute. They're also doing a shake-down cruise on a different boat Wednesday morning and have invited us along on that as well.

Those invitations more or less set our schedule, and we will leave here Tuesday morning. I've lined up an appointment to look at a boat in Vero Beach on our way down, and we'll land in Fort Pierce shortly before our evening cruise. I'm hoping we'll just be able to spend the night at the marina, but if not, there is a KOA a few blocks away.

I'm also trying to line up appointments to look at two more boats, in Stuart, Wednesday afternoon. It's possible that we'll have to push one or both of those off till Thursday, but that puts them in jeopardy of being preempted by what is now Investigation Area 97L, but will by Wednesday no doubt be Tropical Depression 9, and soon thereafter Tropical Storm Irene. It's too early to tell if the U.S. will be threatened, but at least some of the models as of this morning were showing a projected track right over Florida.

In the meantime we are going to relax and rest up while we can, and enjoy our last three days here in Cocoa Beach.

Photo by spatlan, used under a Creative Commons license.

Approaching the coast

2011-08-14T10:19:00.000-07:00

We are at the Elks lodge in St. Augustine, Florida (map). We've been here several times before, but this is the emptiest it has been, with only a single other rig in the lot. There are perhaps ten hookups here, for $15 per night.

We did not feel the need to visit St. Augustine, but this was the only reasonable parking with power between Jacksonville and Cocoa Beach. There is a nice state park on the coast, but it was full for the weekend. Two other state parks had plenty of space, but they are in hardwood hammocks and have length and height restrictions. We might fit, but we were unwilling to take that risk with no backup plan (they are south of here).

Once we got parked, Louise found a nice Italian place for dinner. However, by the time we were ready, the heavens had opened and we were deluged by a thunderstorm. Rather than even take the scooters out, we walked over to the covered Tiki Bar here at the lodge and had burgers for dinner. The lodge also does a nice Sunday breakfast spread, so we had two meals in a row there. The scooters are still in the bay.

Shortly we will be rolling to Cocoa Beach.

Photo by minds-eye, used under a Creative Commons license.

Endless suburbia

2011-08-12T13:25:00.000-07:00

We are parked at the Elks Lodge in the Orange Park neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida (map). Having already made the decision to head towards the middle of Florida's east coast, Jacksonville is a natural stop, and this lodge has 50-amp power for $15 per night. We also have an affiliate club in Jacksonville, and we needed a stop in suburbia after two weeks on the Georgia coast, devoid of big-box stores.

And suburbia it is, an endless array of the aforementioned big-box stores, chain restaurants, strip malls, real malls, and the like all the way from here to downtown Jacksonville a dozen or so miles away. All things considered, a single night here would have been fine to get our errands done before moving back to the coast where it is more scenic, and a tad cooler.

Now that we are in Florida, this is no longer high season -- that's winter time here. So many state parks, for example, have plenty of vacancy. The coast is the exception, though, with oceanfront parks filling to capacity on weekends as locals try to beat the heat. So we will be in Elks lodges at least until Sunday, and this one was as good as any for a few nights, especially with the new 50-amp pedestals (our guide listed it as only 30).

As it turns out, we have a reader who has a private 50-amp site in Cocoa Beach, right on the strip and just yards from the water, and he has offered us parking starting Sunday. It's a very generous offer and we are looking forward to spending a few days in this vibrant beach town, taking in some of the local dining and cooling off in the ocean. Between here and there is one more Elks lodge with power, in St. Augustine, and we'll spend tomorrow night there, thus making this one a three-night stay.

As long as we were here, Louise found us a nice massage school a few miles north with $30 massages (one hour), and yesterday we rode up there mid-day. It was in the 90s when we left, but in the 100s when we returned. The massages were wonderful, but after the hot ride we did not want to again ride nearly 20 miles (the scooter route) into downtown for dinner, so we will do that this evening instead.

Being here in the land of chain restaurants, we took the opportunity to use up some of our discounted restaurant gift cards, and we rode to Carrabba's on Wednesday and Olive Garden last night. We've been buying these at 20% off using Discover Card points, so they are a great deal, and we always know it is only a matter of time before one of these restaurants is a convenient option.

In the meantime, tropical waves have been spinning off the coast of Africa in rapid-fire succession, and we've been keeping an eye on the weather charts. At this writing, only Investigation Area 93L seems to have a chance of reaching the U.S., but not before the end of next week. A lot can happen in that time, and we intend to carry on with our loosely organized plan.

Right now I am trying to line up appointments to look at boats in Vero Beach and Stuart, and those appointments will dictate when we move along from Cocoa Beach. I would guess sometime around Thursday.

Photo by Bob Jagendorf, used under a Creative Commons license.

Jekyll and Hyde

2011-08-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

We are at the campground on Jekyll Island, Georgia (map). The campground is owned and operated by the Jekyll Island Authority, a state agency which manages the entire island, technically a state park. We have a 50-amp back-in site for $32, plus tax, and barely working wireless internet -- there are no gaps in the trees to get the satellite on line.

We also paid $5 just to get onto the island -- there is a toll booth at the end of the causeway. But now that we're here, we had no trouble getting everywhere by scooter. When we arrived we thought we might stay three nights, but we've already seen most of the island, and we decided when the office opened today to just pay for two. The office had been closed when we arrived, and the camp host collected only for one night.

We rode over to the closest restaurant last night for dinner, the Driftwood Bistro, on the northeast end of the island. Dinner was tasty and surprisingly inexpensive, including the bottle of wine on special for $10. En route we rode past the enormous Clarion Oceanfront resort, shuttered since January, when the operator bailed. The empty property was being guarded by a pair of State Patrol cars, a side effect of state ownership of the land.

We then rode around the entire northern half of the island. The main road along the eastern shore is closed just north of the main cross-island route, on account of construction on the new convention center. We cut back across to the west side just abreast of the historic Jekyll Island Club Hotel, and briefly rode through the grounds before continuing north to the campground.

This evening we have dinner reservations in the dining room at the hotel. We have low expectations, especially after our relative disappointment at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island under similar circumstances. But the property has such historic interest in its own right that we don't want to miss it. BTW, today's post title stems from the efforts of Henry B. Hyde, who was responsible in large part for the early development of the club property.

This afternoon we plan to try out the Summer Waves Water Park on the island. There is a discounted rate after 3, and the park closes at 6, which gives us just enough time to make our dinner reservation. We'll tour the southern half of the island on our way to the park.

Tomorrow we'll check out by noon and head south to Jacksonville. An Elks lodge there has 30-amp pedestals for $15 per night, and it will give us a chance to eat downtown at our affiliate club. We'll probably spend at least two nights before continuing south.

Photo by Mr. T in DC, used under a Creative Commons license.

Skidaway getaway

2011-08-08T08:07:00.000-07:00

We are at Skidaway Island State Park, in Savannah, Georgia (map). We arrived Friday afternoon, and, as promised, they gave us a 25% discount at registration. That was partly offset by the fact that they charged us $5 apiece for gate passes for the scooters -- most states have been willing to count our pair of scooters as a single "car." Still, it was a good deal.

When we rolled into the campground we were astonished at how empty it was. In addition to the four camp host sites, there were perhaps only half a dozen other sites occupied, and we had our pick of the campground. We had a map showing where the 50-amp pedestals were, and drove all of the loops which had them looking for a place to get on-line. We found nothing but very narrow gaps in the trees, and after unsuccessfully attempting one promising 50-amp site, we then drove the two loops which had only 30-amp pedestals.

Here we found three or four sites with enough of a clearing to get on. Surprisingly, we also discovered that each site has not one, but two 30-amp receptacles, on opposite legs, in addition to a 20-amp. I have an adapter for just such situations that lets us use both 30-amp outlets simultaneously, and we've been able to comfortably run everything on the coach. Had I known up front, we could have saved an hour of fiddling around in the other loops and started right away with one of the sites with better look angles.

It's a lovely park, and being so empty it feels almost as if we are alone here, just as we like it. Not far from the park entrance is the tony retail enclave of Skidaway Village, here to service The Landings, and we had a nice dinner at the little restaurant there Friday night. There is also an IGA grocery, with the biggest wine department I have ever seen in such a small store. Even though the whole "village" is maybe two dozen store fronts, four of them are banks, and the largest building in the joint, save maybe for the IGA, is Merrill Lynch.

That may say something about Skidaway Island residents, whose homes we could not see because the entire island is behind gates. There are basically two public roads on the whole island, one of which leads here to the state park, and the other to the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. There is no public access to the shoreline, and the nearest beach and boat ramp is on the other side of the bridge across the ICW. I am told that The Landings is the largest gated community in the world.

Saturday evening our friends from Savannah came and picked us up, and we had a great evening with them. They moved to the downtown historic district from Wilmington Island just a month ago, and are still in the process of moving in. But their new townhouse is just steps away from some nice restaurants and bars, and while we were walking around we ran into at least two "ghost tours," including one operator using converted hearses to carry their charges. We're looking forward to visiting them in their new digs in cooler weather, when we can enjoy walking in Savannah's wonderful downtown area all day long.

As nice as it is here in the park, without being able to enjoy the outdoors, Savannah holds little for us at this time of year. Since our friends are mostly busy, between their lives and finishing their move, we will move along. Yesterday over brunch at the Omelette House, just across the causeway, we had a long discussion about where to head next.

Long-time readers will know that even $30 per night, what seems to be the going rate for hookups in state parks here on the coast, is more that we typically like to spend unless we are really enjoying the area or have a very specific objective, such as a visit or a meeting. I once wrote here that the $18 per night we were paying in downtown San Jose was steep, which prompted at least one reader to express surprise. And so it is that we've decided we need to move to an area where there are some less expensive options, or else get out of the heat altogether so we are not needing power every night.

Getting out of the heat, given the current weather map, would be a long drive indeed, and while we'd love to head back to California or the inter-mountain west at this time of year, it is basically incompatible with our commitment to the Red Cross to be available during hurricane season. Regular readers may remember that, at this time last year, we were holed up in Fort Walton Beach with a $10-per-night power outlet, just waiting.

So, counter-intuitive as it may seem, we are heading to Florida. It's warmer there, to be sure, but at least we can find more Elks lodges with relatively inexpensive power outlets. Thus having made the Florida decision, and being as we are on the east coast, our attention has returned to boats.

As it turns out, there are at least three trawlers listed for sale on the east coast of Florida that meet most of our objective criteria. As long as we are in the neighborhood, or at least close, we've decided to go have a look. These will be the very first boats that we've looked at outside the circumscribed confines of a boat show, which really advances our seriousness to the next level. At the moment, I am contacting listing brokers directly for showings, but soon we will need to contract a broker of our own to act as buyers' agent, since some brokers will not show a boat without one.

The boats in question are in Daytona Beach, Vero Beach, and Stuart, and that now defines a plan and destination for us. We are in no rush, and so will head in that direction in our usual leisurely manner. Today we will leave Skidaway Island and head to Jekyll Island, where camping is equally expensive but at least there are a few attractions there. We'll spend perhaps two nights before moving south, if we like the park enough.

Cheapest camping this month

2011-08-05T08:32:00.000-07:00

We are at the Camping World store in Pooler, Georgia (map), outside of Savannah. The store here has four 50-amp hookups for customers staying overnight; all four spaces were occupied when we rolled up yesterday afternoon, but within 15 minutes one of them opened up, and another one cleared a half hour later. We went into the store and dropped $18 on some miscellaneous items, making this the cheapest spot yet this month.

We came here yesterday, rather than anyplace more scenic, to see what Tropical Storm Emily had in store for us. By the time we got settled in, though, the National Hurricane Center had already issued its last advisory on the storm, declaring it to be merely a remnant low. With no threat from Emily and nothing else on the radar, we're free to settle in for a few days, so I just made a reservation for the next three nights at nearby Skidaway Island State Park. They have plenty of space, and we could have just rolled in, but the web site suggests there might be a 25% discount in August, and the person who answered the phone at the park said she thought we'd need to have a reservation before they could honor the discount. We'll see how it goes.

After we arrived yesterday we deployed the dish, only to find the satellite modem dead. Wow, déjà vu all over again -- the last time we stayed here, we were also working on the satellite modem. The inverter had tripped off on our way here, which sometimes happens when one of the A/C compressors starts, and apparently that took out the power supply to the modem. I didn't figure this out until the backup modem I replaced it with had the same symptoms; swapping in the spare power supply fixed it. Oddly, the supply tested good with the voltmeter, so the failure is load-related.

Last night we also noticed that, despite 50 amps, we were pulling power out of the batteries to run the A/C, even though we were not nearly at the incoming limit. It took me a while to figure out that the charger thought the batteries were overcharged. I need to adjust some settings, and possibly move the temperature sensor, which was causing an overcompensation in the reading.

Biker scum

2011-08-02T07:41:00.000-07:00

We are at Edisto Beach State Park (map), in the town of that name on the South Carolina Coast, and across the marsh from Edisto Island. If the map is to believed, the barrier island we are on is actually Edings Island, but the state park spans the marsh. We are in the older beachfront campground, but there is also a campground across the marsh under tree cover and appropriately named Live Oak.

While Live Oak has 50-amp pedestals (and more availability), the beach campground has pedestals with one 30-amp and one 20-amp circuit. Today in the high 90s the 30-amp is struggling to keep up, and we are calling on our new batteries occasionally to keep us cool. The air compressor is plugged in to the 20-amp, which helps. Still, it is nice to walk right to the beach, and we'd never get on line under the tree cover at the other campground.

It's a bit pricey here, at around $30 a night with tax, but it's still a lot better than the $48 we paid at James Island. Plus it is right on the beach, and there are a Piggly Wiggly supermarket and three restaurants in walking distance. Nevertheless, we took the scooters out right away, and we had burgers for dinner across the street at McConkey's Jungle Shack Sunday night. We wanted a glass of wine with dinner, but the blue laws got us again; we cooked in yesterday, but, had we known, we would have done it the other way around.

Edisto Beach is much more laid back than either the mega tourist destinations of Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand, or the upscale enclaves of Kiawah Island to our north or Hilton Head to our south. It's a 20-mile trip here from US-17, the main route along the coast, and it is a small island. There is one resort on the island, the Wyndham, which also sports the island's lone "fine dining" restaurant, a term I use loosely here, Grover's. Our plan was to eat there tonight.

Yesterday morning we rode the eight mile loop around the island to check out the sights, and we decided to do a drive-by of the restaurant. No dice: the Wyndham is one of those vacation-ownership affairs operated by a Homeowners' Association, and they ban motorcycles from the property. So with no way to get to Grover's, and also not wishing to reward this sort of discriminatory behavior by spending money, we'll eat instead tonight at one of the half dozen other, more casual, restaurants on the island. Not a one of those is a chain, by the way, unless you want to count the Subway inside the lone gas station on-island.

The Wyndham appears to be the only motorcycle-unfriendly place on the island, and it does not even front the beach or marsh, so Edisto Beach remains in our good graces. The state park is lovely and the relaxed feel of the whole island suits us, so we are likely to return here someday. In marked contrast to, for example, Hilton Head, where it's impossible to go anywhere by either motorcycle or RV, and to which we have sworn never to return.

The beach here is clean and pristine, and we've been swimming in the ocean every day. We wear our river shoes, because there is a continuous line of broken shells along the foreshore, the only obstacle between the luxurious sand of the beach and the smooth sandy bottom starting at the low tide mark. It is said that Edisto Beach is one of the best for shelling in of South Carolina. Because the beach is the nesting ground for loggerhead turtles, lights are banned on or near the beach from May to September, making it also blissfully dark here; even the Piggly Wiggly keeps its sign unlit.

I had originally booked three nights here, to make it worth the 40-mile round trip detour. We like it so much, though, that today I rode over to the office and extended for another night. We have no real plan for where to head next, and we are keeping a wary eye on Tropical Storm Emily, what became of Investigation 91. If the Red Cross does not send us anywhere for Emily, we'll continue to head south from here. We have friends in Savannah and it would be nice to see them if we do not get deployed.

Moving South

2011-07-30T13:33:00.000-07:00

We are at the James Island County Park, just across the Ashley River from Charleston, South Carolina (map), and within the city limits. It was just a seven mile scooter ride to the Harbour Club downtown for dinner last night.

This is a very nice park, but expensive, at $42 per night plus tax, bringing our total for two nights to more than $96. That said, it was better than anything we could do in Myrtle Beach once the state park booted us out. I'm sorry that we were not able to get another night or two there, but it was certainly not worth $60-$75 that the commercial parks wanted, even if some of them featured a "lazy river" pool.

Huntington Beach was also sold out, and prices are sky high this time of year all the way to Pawley's Island. Before we left the state park we called down here to see if things were a bit better, knowing we also had a club in town. I think we could have saved a few more bucks at one of the commercial parks here, but we almost always prefer a public campground.

The sites here at least have a bit of separation, although on short notice we had to take one that adjoins the site next to it, intended for parties needing more than one site. I think I've counted around a dozen people in the fiver next to us, including at least five adults, two toddlers, and children up through their teens -- I guess they are really leveraging the $48 per night investment. They've been fine neighbors, though.

In addition to the campground, this park also has a mini water park called the "Splash Zone," with a couple of slides, a lazy river, and some other splashy stuff. It's an additional charge, discounted to $9 for campers, or $7 after 3pm. I was hoping to partake this afternoon, but a thunderstorm rolled in just as we were donning our suits. Too bad, as I was hoping to cool off after another hot day in the tunnel working on the batteries.

Of course, the new terminal adapters I bought had to have just a slightly larger diameter post than the ones on the batteries, and I could not simply install them. One of the cables had enough length to pull the end into the tunnel, where I could work on it with a round file until it fit the new terminal. The cables on the other connection were all very tight, and there was no way to enlarge them without taking way more of the bay apart than I wanted to.

Fortunately, after hunting around in my miscellaneous parts kit, I found an old terminal adapter with the proper size stud, and used that instead. That was only half the battle, though, as it was very difficult to find an orientation of the post adapter where I could get all three cables onto the two studs without conflict. I ended up having to rearrange three of the battery jumpers, and I installed the adapter no fewer than three times in three different orientations before I found a position that would work. Both the adapter and the terminal post looked a bit mangled when I was done, as they are both lead, which is quite soft.

I also had some trouble getting the dress panels in place, and after studying it for a while, I discovered that the batteries were not snugged all the way into the compartment. Several more cranks of the wrench on the lower retaining bar got them in far enough for the trim to go back on. Now that all the battery connections were finished, I also reconnected the Vanner equalizer and the solar charge controller, both of which have been disconnected since the start of the project.

With the power shut down and the batteries off, I also took the opportunity to remove the battery switch, open it back up, and switch in the better parts from my original switch. Those consisted of the keyed hub and the outer case, including the lever retention spring. I think this replacement switch now ought to give us many more years of service, although I need to replace the plain nuts, now holding the case together, with Nylocks.

New stud, left is much shorter than the old one, right. Much longer item in the background is actually the tie-down.

In the course of finishing up the battery project, I came across the older battery stud that had pulled out of battery number 6. There is even still a bit of lead on it, where it oozed into the opening on the ring terminal. I set the old stud down on one of the battery posts next to the new one -- it's actually quite a bit longer. Not only do three terminals no longer fit on these new studs, I also noticed that with just two on a stud, the end of the stud is flush with the top of the nut; ideally, one would like at least one thread proud of the nut for a proper connection.

We took only two nights at this park, to get us past the heavy demand of the weekend. Now that we know what it's like along the coast in high season, I made a reservation for three nights at Edisto Beach, the next state park south of here. They had a 37' site in the beachfront campground available starting tomorrow, and I'm certain we will fit. At $27 per night it is a relative bargain, and it will give us power for the air conditioning while we relax a bit and watch what Investigation Area 91 in the Atlantic is going to do.

Photo by Adam Foster | Codefor, used under a Creative Commons license. No, we aren't going that far south.

Assault by Battery

2011-07-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

We are at the Myrtle Beach State Park, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (map). Wow, is it ever crowded here. The last few times we've been in this area, it has been off-season. Right now we're in the middle of high tourist season, although, oddly, signage at the park does not indicate the bag limit. With things so crowded, we actually made a reservation, uncharacteristic for us. The best I could do on short notice was two nights, and so we will be checking out tomorrow, unless another space opens up.

I had some, uh, reservations about this, since the very first time we came by here, we had barely pulled into the entrance from the road when we stopped short, thinking the trees were too low. Indeed, at that time of the year, there may have been some low-hanging growth that made it look like that, but, in any case, we were too nervous about it to forge ahead, and so we backed out onto the highway and headed south to Huntington Beach, near Murrell's Inlet. We've avoided this place ever since.

In hindsight, that was our very first pass around the country and only our fourth month of living aboard, and we'd already had several problems with low trees in the generally RV-unfriendly east. We did not have nearly the experience we have today with judging tree height or the relative damage potential of low-hanging foliage, and certainly not nearly the experience I have now in backing Odyssey out of bad situations -- we did not want to get a quarter mile down the road only to be stopped in our tracks. Nowadays, backing up a thousand feet just doesn't seem like that big a deal.

I did check the park's web site, and asked around on the boards about low trees. I even called the park, and the ranger who answered said she had never heard anything about low tree problems, and that they got tractor-trailer deliveries all the time. As it turned out, we had no trouble at all, and nothing we passed even seemed low enough to cause us to break a sweat. What a difference nearly seven years makes.

Five of our old batteries out.

We pulled in rather late because we did not leave the parking lot of Carolina Energy, the battery distributor, until almost 7pm. We arrived there shortly after I posted here, between 10:30 and 11:00. I had figured it would take me an hour or so to disconnect all the cables and remove the hold-down brackets, and it would take someone from their warehouse and myself maybe half an hour to get them all out an onto a pallet. Maybe another half hour or so to load the new ones into place, and a couple hours to hook it all back up, so I had figured to be there perhaps four hours or so.

Ha. I should know better by now. For starters, the tie-downs did not come quietly. The nuts are so close to the walls that neither a socket nor even a box-end wrench would fit them, and it took forever to loosen them with an open-end, one sixth of a turn at a time. Then I discovered that two of the cables were attached to a pair of terminals that I simply could not reach with all the batteries in place, so they would have to come out in stages.

Some of the cables and tie-down hardware. Yes, that's my foot sticking out of the tunnel.

The biggest issue, though, was that two of the batteries had to be lifted in place about an inch, then rotated, in order to remove them from behind the inverter. Now, these puppies weigh 167 pounds each, and the only access is crouching in the tunnel, over the steering box and between the wheel wells, that leads from the driver compartment to the motorcycle bay. There's barely room to get your hands onto the batteries, let alone lift something that awkward and heavy from that kneeling position. Ultimately I had to lever them up using my Gorilla Bar, then cram large sockets from my socket driver set underneath them.

Eventually I was able to get all eight batteries loose, and Tony, the warehouse manager and lone employee on duty at the shop was kind enough to come out and help me four separate times to remove them. On top of the other issues, the nylon rope handles kept getting caught on the tie-down uprights. One of the handles had to be cut off to get the last battery out.

The inimitable Tony, hauling off an old battery and taking a call at the same time. Some of the trim that had to be removed is on the left.

Getting the new ones in also proved something of a challenge, although it was actually a bit easier since they redesigned the handles. However, this was the part where I really needed the help -- there is just no way one person can boost a battery that heavy up on top of the wheel well while crouched in the tunnel. It took both of us, working from opposite sides, to push each battery up onto the shelf. I sent Tony away between each pair so I could spend some time wiggling them into position, and also getting the impossible-to-reach cables on the back ones. Again, he came out at least four more times to help me get them in.

How I spent my day. Tony is kneeling in the scooter bay behind me.

When I was removing the old batteries, I found another stud terminal post that had pulled right out of the lead. I had this happen when we were at Choo-Choo Garage a couple weeks ago, and so it was no longer all that surprising, but this clearly happened sometime in the last year or so, and we have no idea, really, how long that battery has been "disconnected." Tony tested all the batteries for me, and this one actually tested "good" and at 77% charged, about the same as the other good ones, so the stud was probably touching enough for the battery to be helping at least a little, but with two of these terminals having been damaged, I was now very nervous about tightening the new terminals, especially after Tony told me the number one issue that leads to terminal failure like this is under-tightening the nuts.

Tony had a booklet with the torque specifications. They listed "120 lb/in" or "162 N•m". Now, I don't know what "lb/in" means in regards to torque (it turns out to be a misprint), but 162 netwon-meters is 120 foot-pounds, and I took out my torque wrench an dutifully dialed that number in. Somewhere in the middle of tightening the very first terminal I realized there was no way this could be right -- that's a lot of torque, and I remembered the stud that came right off in my hand when I overtightened it just a little. I stopped and went inside to ask Tony.

After we both scratched our heads for a while he called Trojan, and Stacy the tech rep there said the correct torque was actually 120-180 inch-pounds, which is 10-15 foot-pounds. Quite a difference. She quickly admitted that the metric numbers in the booklet were simply wrong; whoever published them did the conversion from foot-pounds instead of inch-pounds. It does not look like I damaged the terminal, as I realized it pretty early on. But if that stud pops out in the next two months, I'm going to ask Trojan to warranty the battery; I put the rep on notice when we spoke, and she agreed that, yes, Trojan had incorrectly specified the torque in their own published materials.

My torque wrench doesn't actually work at values that low, so I had to hand-tighten everything by feel. I'll be looking for a small wrench that reads in inch-pounds in the next couple weeks so I can re-torque them to spec at some point. In the meantime, I am going to inspect all the terminals every month or so for a while, until I am comfortable that none is going to pull out.

Once all the batteries were back in place, I set about putting on the rest of the cables. Two of the sixteen terminals have three cables each, while most terminals have just two and two of the terminals get only one. When I went to install the two groups of three, which are the penultimate connections to be made in the whole process, I discovered that the studs on these new batteries are just a couple millimeters shorter than the old ones. I simply could not get the flange nuts to engage even a single thread of the studs. I know on the old batteries that they not only engaged, but that the stud post was flush with the top of the nut when it was tightened.

Upside-down flange nut. I had to tighten it with channel-locks.

We could not really get under way until I had all the cables connected and the batteries back on-line, and by this time the shop was closed. That's when I realized that the very part which could help, the stud-adapter clamp for the automotive post, which I had installed during the stud failure at Choo-Choo, was still clamped to the old battery, now locked in the shop. Ultimately I was able to jury-rig the system by flipping two of the flange nuts upside down, which allowed at least a couple of threads to engage. Today I ran out to Wal-Mart and bought a pair of stud adapters, and in the morning I should be able to finish the job correctly.

We're happy to have a working set of batteries again. In addition to Larry from Carolina Energy coming through with a decent price on these, at just $450 a battery plus tax and fees, or 10% off their original quote, Tony was the star of the show. This company does not do drive-up service or installation, and Tony could have just told me to take the batteries over to Camping World or wherever to get help with them. But he went well above and beyond the bounds of good customer service to help me with these, and I could not have done it without him. Today I dropped by the office with a restaurant gift card and a bottle of his favorite beverage as a thank-you.

I mentioned that Tony tested the old batteries for me. He had to fake out the tester, as it did not really have a setting for 8D-AGM, but he found a setting that worked. The tester unsurprisingly found four batteries to be bad and need replacement, numbers 1, 3, 4, and 5. More surprisingly, it found the other four to be "good," three passing as-is and one needing charge. One of the passing batteries was number 6, the one with the broken-off negative stud. I suspect these batteries were actually marginal, but in the end it's irrelevant, because four bad ones meant the whole bank needed replacing -- you don't want to mix brand new batteries with half-used, four-year-old ones. Oddly, there was no rhyme or reason to which ones were bad and which good, although three of the four were in the lower half of the bank.

Odyssey's battery layout.

By the time I got the last cable on and the inverter fired back up, we had been at the shop around eight hours. We ran the generator for most of that time, with a jury-rig bypass in place to keep two of the air conditioners running the whole time. I crammed all the dress panels and the rest of my tools into the tunnel, we loaded up the scooter that had to come out for access, and headed off to the park, arriving here just after 7.

It was all we could do to unload the scooters and go to dinner. Louise found a nice Italian place fairly close by, Angelo's Steaks and Pasta. And then yours truly, Mr. always-up-to-the-wee-hours, fell face down in the bed at 10pm. This morning I was so sore from crouching in the tunnel all day I could hardly move. I made the one trip to Wal-Mart today and otherwise have been inside in the air conditioning licking my wounds -- those batteries kicked my butt. I'll try to finish the project in the morning when it is a bit cooler, and in a few minutes we'll ride over to the beach and jump in the ocean.

Battery day

2011-07-27T06:54:00.000-07:00

We are at the Camping World in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (map). As last time, all the spaces with hookups are taken by rigs that look not to have moved in many months; we recognized a couple from our last visit in October. I would say that the notion there might ever be a pedestal available for customer use here is a snare and a delusion.

No matter, since an ongoing rainstorm that has not stopped since we arrived has dropped the outside temperature into the 70s. We survived fine all evening with no A/C, and we put one unit on the very lowest setting overnight so that it would not be too humid to sleep. The generator auto-started twice, and we got a bit more time between runs once I set the LBCO down to 22.2 from where we normally keep it, 22.6. No point trying to preserve the batteries now.

We were hoping to just walk next door to the Days Inn, wherein I noted a Mexican restaurant on our last visit, for dinner. However, we noticed the sign had been eliminated and concluded the restaurant was no longer in business. With it still pouring outside, we elected to drive the bus over to a nearby local establishment, Serafino's, and have a look at the battery place on the way.

We ended up parking (with permission) at the gymnastics studio next door because the lot at Serafino's was a bit tight. We had a pizza, which was excellent, and the wine was a 12 ounce (really) pour for $6. We chatted briefly with owner Dan, who was very pleasant. It is off the beaten track, so they get few tourists in there, but we can highly recommend it. It is a classic pizza-and-Italian joint, with a pool table, a couple of arcade games, and a handful of tables, and featuring a large counter window where to-go items are picked up. We'll definitely be going back whenever we stay here at CW, as it is an easy scooter ride.

This morning I emptied out the tunnel, and in a few minutes we will be heading over to Carolina Energy Distributors to get our batteries.

Photo by Matthias Rhomberg, used under a Creative Commons license.

About those batteries

2011-07-25T13:47:00.000-07:00

I heard back from the battery dealer, and it looks like we will not be able to pick them up until Wednesday. After checking on the camping situation on the coast, which is slim pickings at this time of year, we decided to just spend another night right here at Lee State Park.

In the meantime, regular reader Rod left a comment on this morning's post that I think merits an answer here in the main text of the blog. Rod writes:

I am certain that customers requiring eight 500 amp-hour AGM batteries don't come along very often for battery vendors. Since the price of this seems to be at least a dollar an amp-hour, I am curious as to the number of cycles that can be expected with your bank. I read that discharged 80 percent, one could only expect 400 cycles. That would be $10 a cycle which seems quite high. Perhaps the trick is to never discharge below 50%. Just curious. ...

First, let me correct the numbers: the Trojans are 230 amp-hours (AH), some of the other batteries we considered were as large as 260 amp-hours (although that seems a bit optimistic for me for an 8D), and they averaged around 245 amp-hours in the 8D size. That makes our bank of eight a total of 920 amp-hours (at 24 volts; remember these are 12-volt batteries). That puts the cost per amp-hour at about $4.24 for our 24-volt system; it would be $2.12 per amp-hour for a 12-volt system.

That's about the going rate right now for AGM batteries. You might find a lower per-AH cost for batteries that are in a more common size (8D is not a very common size for traction batteries), but mostly, batteries of all types are a commodity item and the price fluctuates broadly based on supply and demand. Cost of materials does also enter into it, and lead and other components of these types of batteries, also commodities, have been rising steadily over the past few years. By way of illustration, most vendors wanted to charge me about $60 more per battery without a trade-in, so my used, fully depleted 8Ds are worth that much just in recycling value.

Now, to answer the question, the number of cycles, as you note, depends heavily on the depth of discharge (DoD). Some reputable manufacturers actually publish a chart or graph plotting cycle life vs. DoD. For example, the chart on the last page of this document, from Trojan, shows that Trojan AGM batteries can deliver nearly 2,000 cycles at 40% DoD, dropping to 1,000 at 55%, 450 at 80%, and fewer than 300 cycles at 100% DoD. Charts from other manufacturers are similar, and one can extend the summary results of these charts really to most brands of AGM battery in the same size range.

Armed with this information, it is possible to do some optimization of discharge/charge cycles to maximize the value, rather than the lifetime, of the batteries. For example, while phenomenal cycle life is available by keeping to within only, say, 25% DoD, the fact is that putting the last 25% of energy back into the batteries takes way more power than putting the first, second, or even third 25% of the energy into them. Lead-acid batteries, like many other things in engineering, follow what we like to call the "80/20 rule," wherein putting the first 80% of charge into the battery takes 20% of the power, and getting that last 20% into it takes the other 80%. Any given battery will not be those exact percentages, but you get the idea.

For this reason, most of us put that last 20% in, a process called "topping off," only when the cost of power is very low. Typically, this is when we are on shore power, provided as a fixed part of the cost of a camp site, for example. Many of us choose to stop the charging process at about 80% state-of-charge (SoC), or in other words still at 20% DoD, when charging from a costly source such as a diesel generator, where the cost to run can be upwards of $5 per hour.

If you know the number of cycles vs. DoD, from a chart such as Trojan's, and the charge absorption profile of the battery, and the capability of your charger, and the cost per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to supply that charger, you can completely optimize the exact DoD to be routinely using in order to minimize the "cost per stored kWh" for a given set of batteries.

That's all well and good, but for RVers in the real world it's not that simple. That's because our discharge needs, charging capabilities, and cost per recharge are highly variable. Ultimately, we end up with a different DoD for almost every cycle. Even boondocking for two weeks in the desert, where you'd have the most control over when to start and stop the charge process in each cycle, the fact that most generator auto-start systems can only work on voltage and not actual DoD will mean that you are not controlling the process precisely enough.

I'd love to tell you how many cycles we got out of this set of Trojans, but I simply can't. Most battery monitors, ours included, simply can not keep enough history. What I can tell you is that our meter counts up to 1,999 cycles, and we're well beyond that. However, it also shows that our "average" DoD is a mere 20 amp-hours. That's because 20 amp-hours is deep enough to cause the meter to start counting, and so even if we stop the bus for an hour to get a bite to eat, or go shopping, or whatever, we'll get a 20 amp-hour cycle, as the main alternator will very quickly charge that amount back up while we drive.

Even as we sit here today, connected to a 30-amp pedestal, we are racking up 20 AH cycles. We have our inverter max input dialed down to 24 amps, but when two air conditioners cycle on at the same time, we are drawing 26-28 amps, plus whatever else we are using, and the inverter supplements it from the batteries. That can draw the batteries down 20 AH before an A/C cycles off, dropping the load below 24 amps and causing the charger to start recharging the batteries, and the cycle repeats ad infinitum.

This same meter also tells me that my greatest DoD since we installed these batteries was 877 amp-hours, or a whopping 95% of capacity. (Shortly after that episode I adjusted the LBCO on the inverter to prevent this from happening again.) In practice I can tell you that when we are boondocking for multiple days, we draw the bank down to about 75% DoD and charge it back up to about 75% SoC, so we are using about 50% of the total capacity, and this happens over and over again, with a cycle time of about two days in temperate weather, or a mere half day (12 hours) if we are running an air conditioner.

When we drive every day, in temperate weather, the generator never runs, and we drop to about 20% DoD while parked, and recharge to 100% SoC while driving. Without a complete history of the last four years, I can't say with conviction how many of our cycles are the 75%/25% variety, how many are the 20%/0% variety, and how many are the 10%/0% variety that the meter likes to count.

Doing some back-of-the-envelope math, though, I can make some guesses. Completely ignoring the 10% "blips" that the meter likes so much to count, I would guess conservatively we have over 2,000 cycles on these batteries. I would further guess the average net DoD of those cycles to be in the 35% range, or right between the 20% sort when we drive and the 50% sort when we boondock. That's consistent with Trojan's life cycle prediction for these, which shows about 2,500 cycles at 35% DoD.

If my guesses are correct, and adding in some of those 10% cycles for good measure, we've gotten (and replaced) about 650,000 amp-hours, or over 15,000 kWh from this set of batteries. That works out to a cost of about $0.25 to "store" a single kWh of power. This is in addition to anything it might cost to generate that power, and might be compared to the nationwide average cost of grid power, about half that amount. So on an RV, even "free" electricity (say, from solar, or included in campsite fees), stored for later use, costs more than grid power at a typical fixed structure.

That's a very long-winded answer to your question, but it is a source of much confusion and a topic on which I often spend a good deal of time in my seminars. This is one of the reasons I often have to caution people with unrealistic expectations about "free" solar power, or installing large battery plants in preference to an appropriately-sized generator. There are many good reasons to have a large battery bank, but cost savings is not a slam-dunk; it varies widely by circumstance and you really need to do the math.

This provides a good opportunity to reflect on our current mode of travel, "power pole to power pole." As long-time readers know, we don't generally do this and it is not our preferred way to live. Mostly it is something we do when we are traveling through hot or humid environments and we need air conditioning full-time, a sort of travel we generally avoid unless we have a specific destination, such as a Red Cross deployment, or a conference someplace, where we need to be.

For many RVers, though, this is standard practice, and while it is not our own preference, it makes perfect economic sense. This is especially true for those who are not full-timers, and who use their rigs for a couple dozen nights each year. You can buy a lot of $30-$50 camp sites for what a good set of batteries will cost, and when you're done camping, that camp site investment does not require any ongoing maintenance. This, too, is something I discuss in the seminar.

When all is said and done, there is not a single one-size-fits-all answer for the right balance among batteries, inverters, generators, solar, and power-pole usage for all RVers. Our set of choices is almost the right balance for us. If I were in the market for a generator today, I would buy a 6.5 kW as opposed to the 15+ kW unit we have now (and which came with the bus). But I would definitely not trade in my large battery bank, and the flexibility it buys us, even though it costs us about a grand a year.

Photo by mikeysklar, used under a Creative Commons license.

Alone at last

2011-07-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

We are at Lee State Park (or State Natural Area, depending upon which map you consult) near Bishopville, South Carolina (map), about a half hour west of Florence. While each site has a spigot and a 30-amp pedestal, the campground is otherwise rather rustic, in a stand of tall conifers with dirt roads and dirt parking pads. We are the only ones here.

There is one other rig a half dozen sites down, but no one is in it and it has been vacant since we arrived yesterday afternoon. There was also a large fiver here when we arrived, but they must have pulled out early this morning. A number of reservation tags on the posts suggest a few sites were occupied over the weekend. I suspect this park rarely fills up.

The park is listed as suitable for rigs up to 36', but Odyssey had no trouble making it around the loop (twice) and would fit in almost any site. Our biggest challenge was finding a site with a tiny gap through the trees in the right direction to get the satellite on line; we're far enough from anything here that our cell phones have no data access, and even voice coverage is spotty. We had no shot from the first site we tried, necessitating the second trip around the loop. Here in Site 13 we have probably the only shot there is to our bird, at 83W.

The campground has a whole separate loop for equestrian use, but signs at the park say it is closed due to an unsafe electrical issue. The barricades look permanent and old; we'd guess the loop has been closed for years. They moved some horse corrals close to this end of the main loop for equestrian use.

It's lovely here, if a bit hot, and a few bucks cheaper than some of the other parks in the system (and certainly the ones on the coast). I was thinking of staying another night if the batteries are not going to be ready, but we were just notified that our mail has arrived in Murrell's Inlet, so we will likely move along to the coast today so we can catch up with it. I have an email in to the battery distributor to see if we can nail down the delivery date.

Photo of a yellow rat snake in the Congaree Creek Heritage Preserve by Hunter-Desportes, used under a Creative Commons license.

Park hopping

2011-07-24T08:52:00.000-07:00

We are at Sesqui-Centennial State Park, in Columbia, South Carolina (map). Once again we have a pedestal with both 30 and 20-amp outlets, more than enough to run two air conditioners as needed and keep us cool. Last night we rode the scooters the 12 miles into town to have dinner at the Capital City Club. With the heat index still over 100, it felt like a much longer ride.

As we have moved further into the flatlands, the heat index has increased. Our goal now is to get to the coast, where things are just a tad cooler. We could make it all the way there today, but we are always nervous arriving at a tourist area in high season on the weekend, even Sunday, as we might have difficulty finding a suitable parking spot.

Instead we are aiming for yet another state park, just west of Florence, for tonight. Tomorrow morning I will check in with the battery dealer to see when they expect the batteries to arrive in Myrtle Beach, and we'll plan our next stop from there. With any luck, they will have them on Tuesday, and we'd shoot to be on their doorstep Monday night.

On our way out of town this afternoon, we've arranged to meet up with some friends for lunch, just a mile or so from the park. With the batteries fully charged we should be able to run the A/C long enough to keep the pets cool while we eat.

Photo by ,zenera used under a Creative Commons license.

Ah, Paris ...

2011-07-23T07:38:00.000-07:00

We are at Paris Mountain State Park, just north of Greenville, South Carolina (map). We chose this spot because it was close to our route, offered 30-amp power, and is an easy scooter ride to downtown Greenville, where we have an affiliate club. It's not possible to reserve a single night, so we had to take our chances on a site being left when we arrived, but, as it turned out, the same two 40' sites that showed on ReserveAmerica were still available when we pulled up.

It was hard to leave the relative cool of 3,500' behind. It was very pleasant and in the upper 70s when we readied Odyssey for departure from Ralph Andrews County Park. We got a relatively early start for us, leaving before lunch time, in order to snag one of the last two spaces here before the weekend crowd showed up. As it turned out, however, the road had other plans for us.

We had an uneventful, if a bit challenging, drive back out of the park and down the very steep grade back out to 107. That highway, which seemed a bit narrow and windy to us earlier, now felt positively luxurious after the park road. Indeed, after a few more miles it in fact widened and straightened as we approached Cashiers.

At Cashiers we turned east onto US-64 and encountered a steady stream of traffic heading the other direction, we assumed denizens of Greenville and environs heading into the hills for the weekend to beat the heat. We soon understood, as we passed a never-ending series of golf courses, high-end resorts, rental villas, vacation homes, and yuppie restaurants stretching all the way from Cashiers to Rosman and encompassing the very resort-intensive areas of Sapphire and Lake Toxaway. We even passed an Outdoor Resorts, the posh Class-A-only motor-coach condo, and spied several high-end Prevost conversions in residence. I suspect the transients there are paying something more than the $16 we dropped at the county park, but they do have more restaurant choices.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of Lake Toxaway we came around a corner to a line of stopped traffic. A volunteer firefighter was directing traffic around an accident scene, with single-lane traffic control. He let all the cars in front of us go and then stopped us, informing us we were too large to fit what was left of the one lane. We had to park for half an hour, along with a large fiver behind us, while they directed traffic around us. We were amused when at least a few drivers, apparently thinking we were the problem, pulled right back into the lane in front of us, only to come face to face with a fire apparatus right around the corner.

Having lived many places where traffic is heavy and law enforcement overburdened, we are accustomed to the mantra "move accident vehicles from the traffic lanes." Washington, for example, as well as some other states, even post this on signage along the freeway. This is because too many drivers, after having some minor fender-bender, believe erroneously that when law enforcement arrives they will want to see the vehicles exactly where they "came to rest" in order to determine fault. In practice, the very first thing a now-annoyed and frazzled officer will do is move the vehicles out of traffic -- using a push-bar if necessary.

So we were greatly surprised (and mildly annoyed) when we walked around the corner to see what amounted to a minor fender-bender -- a zero-injury accident involving a vehicle that transgressed over the center line clipping another vehicle "head on." Both vehicles looked to us to have been capable of moving under their own power, or at least being pushed by a half dozen beefy firefighters. They were now both mostly in one lane, with one car perhaps two feet into the other lane, which is where they were sending all the traffic. It also looked to me like we'd have no trouble getting around this, and the fact they sent at least one 40' straight truck through around us confirmed this, but it was still relatively cool out and we were in no hurry.

The firefighters steadfastly refused to move these two vehicles, claiming that they absolutely had to wait for the highway patrol to come to investigate. Sheesh. After half an hour, a tow truck showed up, but no highway patrol. The tow operator, being a paid professional with other obligations (the fire department was all-volunteer and clearly eager to be working) merely marked all eight wheel locations with fluorescent green pavement marking paint, then promptly dragged the vehicles out of the roadway. Sanity thus restored, we were again on our way.

Our planned route had us turn south onto US-178, which North Carolina did not bother to mark as such, but which was clearly marked at the other end, in South Carolina, as "not recommended for trucks -- use alternate route." Oh well. I got a good workout at the wheel, and Odyssey made it with no real trouble, but we might have gone around if we had known. From where 178 meets SC-11, we planned to take SC-288, Table Rock Road, straight across through Pumpkintown to Marietta, just a short distance north of this park.

What we did not know was that there is a 10-ton bridge about five miles east on 288. We got a little over a mile of warning about it, which was not enough to avoid having to drive almost right up to it to turn around, at a side road which would have taken us north to Table Rock Park, except it, too, had a low-limit bridge. We ended up backtracking the full five miles to SC-11, which was a superhighway compared to everything else we'd been on, and taking that all the way to US-276. It was well past 2 when we finally arrived, and we were relieved to find spaces still available.

We scheduled our dinner reservation at the Commerce Club for 8pm to avoid the worst of the heat, and the temperature had dropped to the low 90s by the time we headed off on the scooters. We had a wonderful meal on the 17th floor, overlooking both the city and the hills, and a very pleasant ride in both directions on a series of back roads recommended by the park ranger. These were not only free of traffic, but also wound their way through enough tree cover and other vegetation that the ride actually felt cool. Other than a minor snafu getting both scooters out of hock at the parking garage, it was a perfect evening.

Today we will continue on to Columbia, where we have another affiliate club. We are hoping to squeeze into the state park there for another 30-amp pedestal.

Photo by Miles Davis (Smiley), used under a Creative Commons license.

Unscheduled stopover

2011-07-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

We are at the Ralph Andrews County Park, on Lake Glenville north of Cashiers, North Carolina (map). We are in a "full hookup" site for $16, between two trailers that have been here so long they no longer have wheels. The power-and-water only sites, $2 less, are nicer, but it would be a bit of a struggle to get into them with a couple of low trees, and we'd have to dance around to get the dish on line -- worth it if we were planning to stay a while, but not for just one night.

We had actually planned to be here last night. However, after passing through most of the National Park and finding it very pleasingly cool at the higher elevations, we decided to tough out one night without air conditioning at the Smokemont Campground, at 2,200' elevation and right off US-441, the main park road (map). Most of the campground is under tree cover, but the check-in rangers gave us a nice site in the RV loop that had enough of a clearing to get on-line.

Unlike the TVA and state parks we had just visited, where $20 bought us power and water as well as access to bathhouses with hot showers, the same $20 in the national park gets you a place to park. There are bathrooms with cold running water and flush toilets, but no hot water. There are no showers anywhere in the park, so we gave the tenters a wide berth; many looked to have been there at least a week.

It was a bit too hot and sticky in the bus when we first arrived, so we had our dinner outside on the picnic table, where it was quite pleasant. At least we could have our glass of wine there, too, something not allowed at the TVA or Tennessee state parks. Before dinner we took our chairs over to the creek and sat with our feet in the water, very refreshing. We saw several people with inner tubes, but the water was actually quite cold, and the flow was such that a straight tube shot downstream was not really possible. The RV loop actually has a number of creekside spots, but they were all taken when we arrived.

After dinner we rode our scooters 20 miles back up the hill to Clingmans Dome to catch the sunset. We both walked about halfway up the steep trail from the parking lot to the observation tower, and I did the rest on my own. (My plantar fasciitis really dislikes steep downhills, so while I can ignore my thighs complaining on the way up, my feet will ache for days after the walk down. -Louise) The view was stunning, and we both caught the last of the sunset from the parking lot. It was 20° cooler there than when we left the campground, and I needed to bundle up for the ride back down.

We stayed until the noon checkout today and then got back on the road. With less than 50 miles to this spot, we debated skipping this stop and heading in to South Carolina for tonight. The heat wave is just catching up with us, though, and here at 3,500' it is a good deal cooler than it will be when we come out of the mountains, and we opted for one more day at elevation. Tomorrow night we should be somewhere near Greenville.

Yesterday's drive into the park was about as I predicted, slogging through Pigeon Forge. We came in from a different direction when we did the park by motorcycle, and managed to avoid this world-class tourist trap. I think we were just about passing the Titanic when I announced that we were in "Cheesemageddon," which gave Louise a chuckle. We managed to escape without stopping, or hitting any wayward tourists. A similar but very much more low-key set of cheeseball attractions awaited us on this side of the hill, as we drove through the Cherokee Nation. We'd seen this side before, and some of the older attractions actually have a Route-66 sort of charm to them.

We had a nice drive through the park, but it was equally nice to get away from the endless attractions and souvenir stands on the outskirts and back to a more normal (for us) mode of back-road travel. North Carolina 107, which brought us here, is wide and well graded as far as Western Carolina University, in Cullowhee. After that it narrows considerably and becomes hilly and twisty for a good stretch, reminding me of the lyrics to C.W. McCall's "Wolf Creek Pass." There were sections where it was impossible to keep Odyssey completely between the lines.

Once we turned off 107, things got even steeper, and the coolant temperature hit 205° before we made it to the summit. Still, that seemed subjectively much better than previous performance on similar grades, and we also had nary a problem coming over Newfound Gap in the park, at 5,046'. Admittedly, the speed limit on 441 on the Tennessee side of the grade is just 35mph, which is about what we have to slow to on the steepest grades anyway.

We are still on schedule to be in Myrtle Beach by Monday night, in the hopes that the new batteries will be ready sometime Tuesday. Between now and then, we will be driving through the worst of the heat, which will give both our cooling and electrical systems quite a workout. At least I won't have to worry about damaging the batteries.

Cavorting with Some Dammed French Broad

2011-07-20T07:29:00.000-07:00

We are at the TVA's Tailwater Campground, on the French Broad River between Kodak and Sevierville, Tennessee, just downstream of Douglas Dam (map). This is a lovely spot, with power and water for $20 per night, and we snagged a primo waterfront site when we pulled in. There is a dump station, a boat ramp, and a bait shop with snacks and sundries just upstream.

The TVA also operates a similar campground at lake level, adjacent to the dam, called, appropriately, the Headwater Campground, a bit further from the road. If we planned to stay a few days we would have chosen that one instead, so we could swim in the lake. (Tailwaters are way too cold for swimming, as the penstocks draw from deep within the lake. Also, the tailwater can be somewhat dangerous due to sudden dam releases.)

We ended up staying four nights at Norris Dam. Sunday night we rode into the town of Lake City and had dinner at a nice Mexican restaurant there. It was really the only dining option within scooter distance of the dam that was not fast food. We also spent a half hour or so in the pool at the park's west area, $4 for adults, $2 with a camping receipt, but free between 5 and 6pm.

The Investigation Area I mentioned in my last post turned into Tropical Depression 2 and thence into Tropical Storm Brett; however, it immediately made a right turn and headed straight out to sea. So when Monday morning rolled around, I turned my attention back to another of our pressing problems, our battery bank. Even before the battery switch failed, the capacity of the bank has been dropping rapidly over the last few months. The batteries are over four years old, and have more than 2,000 cycles on them, and now our nominal 920 amp-hour bank is behaving more like one with less than 200 amp-hours. Right now in the heat, when we need air conditioning full time, the problem is particularly noticeable.

I had hoped the temporary bypassing and repair of the failed battery switch would give us enough capacity back to deal with this at a more convenient time. Like, for example, after hurricane season, or when we are closer to Arizona, the epicenter of competitive battery pricing. While fixing the switch has helped a great deal, there is no escaping the fact that the batteries are just done, and so Monday I started calling every battery distributor in the southeast looking for decent pricing on replacements.

The best deal I found is on a set of Fullriver batteries, at $483 apiece (with exchange) in Miami. These are the batteries I'd really like to have, and if they had the ones with button terminals we'd be on our way to Miami. Unfortunately, Fullriver has changed over to "L" or flag-style terminals, and we'd have a lot of work to do to change our cables over, which are set up for stud terminals. They also offered me a set of Dekas for $426 each, which are alleged to have the same terminals we have now.

The next best quote is on a set of Trojans, which are what we have now, so I know absolutely that they will fit in the rack and the cables will fit the terminals. They are asking $500, but I am trying to get them to quote a lower price, considering the $600 we'd save on the Dekas would more than cover our fuel to Miami, and the Deka is a higher-capacity battery. We can pick up the Tojans in either Fort Mill or Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Fort Mill is closer, but it should be a few degrees cooler on the coast, and it is just a nicer place to be, in general. So by the end of the day Monday we had made the decision to head for Myrtle Beach, and we pulled up stakes yesterday afternoon. The Trojans are not in stock, and won't be there until next week anyway, so we have plotted a very leisurely route. Even if we had a fully working set of batteries, in this weather power hookups are cheaper than the generator, so we are zig-zagging between state parks, county parks, and TVA, all with $20 (or under) power hookups.

Speaking of batteries and switches, as long as we had another day of downtime at Norris, I took the opportunity to swap out the failed battery switch for the replacement I had refurbished while at Choo-Choo. After I got it out and all our air conditioning back on-line, Louise helped me drill the rivets out and we had a look at the failure.

As I expected, the plastic ring that moves, by means of a pair of pins, the brass wiper on and off the contact pads had crumbled into pieces. This is how the switch failed in the closed position. Beyond that, however, there was also a blob of metal that had literally melted off one of the pads and welded itself to the wiper.

This meant that if the wiper was moved even so much as a millimeter from the position in which this occurred, the mating surfaces would no longer be in contact and all the current would flow through the small spot where this blob was now touching the pad.

The good news is that the keyed hub is in better shape, and the lever friction stop is undamaged, so I can swap these parts into the refurbished switch I am using now. I might even try to grind the blob off the wiper and use that, as well, if I can get it flatter than the other one. I think by making these changes, the refurbished switch should serve for the life of the bus. Disconnecting the batteries to change the switch is a pain in the butt, so we'll make the final repair when we have the batteries out for replacement.

Today we will pick our way through the tourist traps of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, then make our way south through the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's a shame the weather is not conducive to staying there a couple days; it will be Odyssey's first visit, although we've done much of the park ourselves when we came through years ago on our big touring motorcycles.

Relaxing on the Clinch

2011-07-17T07:42:00.000-07:00

We are at the Norris Dam State Park (map), at the eponymous dam on the Clinch River, about 20 miles or so from Knoxville, Tennessee. The dam itself is actually owned by the TVA, the very first dam in the system and one of the first projects of Roosevelt's New Deal. The state park occupies the upstream shoreline of the lake for miles on either side.

We are in the smaller East Campground, closer to the dam. Power pedestals here sport a 30-amp and 20-amp receptacle, which have been keeping us quite cool and comfortable. Yesterday we rode over to the larger West Campground, quite a ways away, where we noticed the sites had additionally a 50-amp receptacle. That area is also more wooded and we would have had more jockeying to do to get the satellite dish on-line. All sites also have water spigots and are $20 per night, which is a bargain for power in this weather.

We finally wrapped up at the Choo Choo Garage Wednesday afternoon. Tuesday we were actually able to move the bus, and we looped around the parking lot to pull it into the bay and over the pit, so the coolant could be changed and everything inspected from underneath. We discovered a power steering leak, which turned out to be a bad hose. Everything was back in place by the end of the day Tuesday, and Wednesday morning we went for a road test.

We just did a quick dozen miles or so on the freeway, climbing a moderate grade in both directions. Everything worked well, and an initial seat-of-the-pants assessment of the cooling system suggested a significant improvement. I noticed steering fluid dripping at a check stop, but that turned out to be from a small pool of it trapped on a motor mount. Another old problem was also back with us, namely that the compressor unloads every half minute or so. When we got back to the shop we pulled back over the pit.

Joel spent several hours Wednesday diagnosing the air problem, which ultimately turned out to be a combination of a bad check valve and and undersized air line. He was able to clean the valve, and the shop had the proper line in stock, so the problem was fixed for good by mid-afternoon. In the meantime, all the air dumping and filling had caused the perennial leak in the left front leveling check valve to return, a problem I had just dealt with the day we left Mississippi. No better time to deal with it than over the pit, and Joel was able to find me a used check valve lying around the shop that we were able to adapt, using bits and pieces he had in his little pile of parts, plus two fittings and some tube I bought at the hardware store down the street. With luck, that will be the end of having to crawl into the wheel well to rebuild that valve.

That took us nearly to the end of the day, so we spent Wednesday night outside the shop, in the wash rack. Louise and I spent a couple hours Thursday morning with the pressure washer trying to get the bus clean. The back was so covered with grease from the oil leak, however, that we ruined the scrub brush. Don and Joel rescued us with chemicals, products called "Dun EZ" and "Purple Power," which not only got the grease off the back, but also cleaned up the brush. The wash rack also houses the dump, in typical bus-garage style, so we were able to empty our tanks before we left.

Louise had made arrangements to meet her brother and sister-in-law and their daughter as they made their way from Roan Mountain, near Smoky Mountain park, back to Houston. Their route took them past Chattanooga, but we were eager to move on, so arranged to meet instead in Knoxville for lunch on Friday. That gave us a chance to have dinner Thursday night at our club there, but the only decent parking option was the Elks lodge a few miles away, which had no power. So we lingered at the shop, where we still had 20 amps, until we had just enough time to fuel and make a quick stop at Camping World on the way to Knoxville.

Fuel was $3.69 a gallon at the Mapco station between the shop and the freeway. The dispenser was incredibly slow, though, and would only let me buy $100 at a shot, so we quit at $200. Camping world was just across the highway, and our stop was necessitated by having to purchase a new 30-amp-to-50-amp "dogbone" adapter. The one we'd been using came with the bus, and was at least 20 years old. Still, it was working OK until we arrived at the shop.

Unfortunately, the shop had only 20-amp duplex outlets, and Mike lent us an adapter that converts a duplex receptacle into a 30-amp trailer outlet. In hindsight, I should have just used my 15-to-30 adapter, because the orientation of the duplex receptacles meant the adapter was "upside down." This meant that, instead of hanging straight down, our 30-amp adapter had to dress upwards from the outlet, then hang down to the side. We tried to secure it in that position somehow, but it ended up with the weight of the cord on the tangs. After three weeks of non-stop 20-amp draw in near-100 temperatures, the hot tangs melted through the old rubber, and the plug was not a pretty sight when I removed it. I suggested to Mike that he flip the receptacle over, and gave him the melted plug for show-and-tell.

We made it to Knoxville just in time to take the scooters out and make our dinner reservation. The Elks lodge was pleasant enough, and downtown Knoxville was very interesting -- we'd like to return in cooler weather and spend a few days. At least it was cool enough by the time we arrived that we could go off to dinner without leaving the A/C running, and we were also able to spend Friday morning as well as go off to lunch without it. It was too humid for sleeping, though, and we had to run one unit overnight on low. In better days, our batteries would have easily handled that task, but they are now so bad that the generator auto-started four times overnight, running for just an hour each time.

After saying good-bye to Louise's family, who were trying to make it back to Houston in just two days, we spent the next hour or so looking for someplace nearby with a power outlet. We knew we could be comfortable without it if we got high enough into the hills, but here in the vicinity of Great Smoky Mountain National Park, we reasoned that most of the campgrounds, even the fairly primitive ones, would be full up for the weekend now that it is high season. Louise started looking at state parks, and this one, closest to Knoxville, is far enough in the opposite direction that they seldom fill up. At just $20 per day, it is cheaper than running the generator.

We paid for two nights, last night being the second. But with no concrete plans to go anywhere else, we're going to purchase another night when the ranger rolls around. We have our eyes on Investigation Area 98 off the east coast of Florida, so we certainly don't want to go any further north or west just yet. There is a public pool over on the west side of the park, so perhaps we will go for a swim later today. In the meantime, I am still cleaning up the project bits and pieces leftover from the shop visit. Today I should have all the hatches dogged down, so we can stow the rest of our gear.

Sweet sound of a purring two-stroke

2011-07-11T15:59:00.000-07:00

Today we started the main engine. It fired right up, and other than a minor leak in the power steering system, quickly resolved, all seems to be well. Clearly Joel is confident, since they put the tailgate back on this afternoon. The cooling system is filled with plain water, in preparation for a good flush over the pit before we put all new coolant in, per the recommendation of the radiator shop.

In the meantime, I spent most of the day in the generator bay, trying to get the enclosure and ductwork back together. Yesterday I managed to replace the old and crappy wire-type hose clamp on the leaky coolant hose with a standard worm-drive type. That seems to have cured the leak, although only a long load test will tell, something I can't do with the exhaust just millimeters from the shop door.

We did not get a chance to test the transmission today, as we did not actually move from our position, in which we have been for three weeks. And while we did not actually finish everything up today, I am hopeful that tomorrow things will be buttoned up enough for a road test. If that goes well, we should be able to leave sometime Wednesday, for parts unknown.

My last few posts here have generated a lot of comments, many expressing either sympathy or, perhaps, disbelief. I want to take a moment to address this. While, to some, these sorts of posts may seem to be nothing more than an exercise in whining, I write up all of our mechanical tribulations for two reasons. The first is that, for whatever reason, the mechanical issues and repairs posts are enormously popular with our readers -- more on this in a moment. The second is that, just like a ship's log book, this blog is the record of everything we do with, to, and on this bus, and we often find ourselves needing to go back to our own posts to verify what has or has not happened in the past. For example, while we have been here at this shop, I have gone back to several posts from the two times we had the engine rebuilt, as well as the time the power steering pump was replaced, and of course the posts about our original discovery of the end-plate gasket leak. All of those references yielded valuable information for our current circumstance.

About that popularity... I would like to think that most of the readers who are fascinated by these posts are learning something from them. In my fantasy, readers are looking at these mechanical issues, seeing how we deal with them, and that is giving them the confidence to strike out on their own, knowing that all these sorts of problems are manageable. Some, I hope, are actually gleaning a technical tidbit or two, while others are seeing that there are resources all over the country to help even those of us with weird, out-of-production, custom-converted rigs get things fixed.

Of course, I could be way off base. It's possible that the popularity of these posts is a kind of schadenfreude -- "Gosh, hon, look at all the trouble Odyssey is having. Boy am I glad we bought a Bluebird/Monaco/Newell/Marathon/YadaYada coach that has no problems whatsoever (cough, cough), and, even if it did, we can just go to the dealer and slap down our Visa card and get them fixed."

In any case, I want to assure our readers that we are fine, and we consider all that has transpired in the last three weeks to be par for the course -- part and parcel of owning a 27-year-old weird German bus. I haven't seen the bill yet, but when all is said and done here at Choo-Choo Express, it will not have cost us even as much as one year's property taxes from when we lived in a condo in California. In fact, when we are done here we will have spent the better part of a month, and we've paid nary a cent for rent and utilities, even though we have been helping ourselves to power, water, and sewer. Again, back in San Jose that would have been perhaps a $2,000 expense for the month -- a good bite out of our shop tab right there.

Sure, I'd rather not have had to do this. But in the grand scheme of our lives, it is but a minor annoyance. As you may know, we are contemplating moving from Odyssey onto a boat, and I have every reason to believe that boat ownership will be more of the same, except with higher shop rates. No way are we ready to trade this lifestyle for "the American dream," complete with property taxes, utility bills, pesky neighbors, and, of course, all the same plumbing/electrical/Internet/whatever problems that even homeowners must navigate.

One of the television programs I have taken to watching on occasion is a show called Holmes Inspection on HGTV. Perhaps that is my own form of schadenfreude. It is a good reminder that there are "conventional" homes with even bigger problems than an orphaned quarter-century-old German tour bus. In a day or two, we will be back on the road and enjoying the life of travel that we love so much, and all of the hard work of the last few weeks will fade into the background.

Photo by Godfrey DiGiorgi