From Outlaw to On the Bayou

We are anchored in Big Bayou Canot, just off the Mobile River, due east of Saraland, Alabama (map). We might as well be a hundred miles from Saraland, where we've spent more than one night in the bus -- the river betrays no trace of civilization here save for the CSX railroad bridge.


CSX rail bridge over Big Bayou Canot.

That bridge has a storied past. In September of 1993, a Warrior and Gulf towboat, the Mauvilla, pushing a six-barge tow, inadvertently turned up Big Bayou Canot in heavy fog instead of continuing in the Mobile River navigation channel. The towboat had no compass, no charts, and an inexperienced (some would say incompetent) pilot at the helm. The barges struck the bridge, knocking the poorly secured center span out of alignment. Eight minutes later, Amtrak's Sunset Limited struck the bridge at 72mph, killing 47 and injuring more than twice that many.

Louise and I took the Sunset Limited years later, and I remember staring down at the bayou as we crossed, thinking about that horrific accident. It's a bit strange to be seeing it now from the towboat's vantage. One CSX train has passed since we dropped the hook. The Sunset Limited no longer passes this way; the New Orleans to Orlando leg never having been reinstated since Hurricane Katrina closed the tracks.


Vector docked at the Arthur Outlaw Convention Center. Austal shipyards in the background with some of the new Littoral Combat Ships.

We spent a lovely two nights in Mobile, docked at the Outlaw Convention Center, right downtown (map). We had the entire dock to ourselves, and we've set a new record for the largest cleats we've ever had to use to tie up Vector. There is no power on the dock, but it is just steps away from historic Dauphin Street with several great restaurants and a few shops. A free shuttle bus makes a 20-minute loop around the downtown area, and this morning we used it to get some provisions at the grocery store, the last we'll see for perhaps a week.


The biggest cleats we've used to date. Our 3/4" line looks like string on these.

I had really hoped to stop in at an old favorite of ours, the Bienville Club on the top of the RSA building, also only steps away, with a panoramic view of Mobile, the rivers, and the bay. We were sorry to learn the club went bankrupt a couple of years ago, and the space now houses Dauphin's restaurant. We had dinner there Saturday for old times' sake, on their more reasonably-priced happy hour menu. The food was good and the view is the best in Mobile, but the prices on the regular menu are steep.

Yesterday we walked Dauphin Street to breakfast at the excellent Serda's Coffee Company, and again to dinner at Delphine's pizzeria, also excellent. In the middle of the day we tackled a project, involving a roll of Textilene fabric that Louise had delivered to her in Pensacola. Specifically, we made and installed more exterior window coverings.

The boat came with Textilene covers for all the windows in the pilothouse. They make a huge difference in keeping the heat out on a sunny day, and now that we are traveling in the south in the summer, we've been putting those up at every stop. They are getting a bit shopworn, and I need to replace a couple of the snaps.

The large windows in the salon are not a problem for most of the day, because they are shaded by the boat deck, which overhangs them by two feet. But in late afternoon, as the sun angle gets lower, we are often hit with a blast of heat radiating from the blinds, which, while well-insulated double-cell construction, just can't keep up. A year or so ago, Louise made a square Textilene shade that we can secure to the boat deck and rail to provide a bit of shade, but it's been only partly effective and is unusable in more than a few knots of wind.


Louise showing off her handiwork. I drilled 14 new holes in the boat...

We decided to make one large cover that would span all three windows on one side of the boat, and then mount snaps on both sides so we could use the cover on whichever side was sunny. Louise sewed the enormous cover, and I installed the snaps into the reinforced corners and edges, and the mating parts onto the boat. It came out really nice, and so far it's been helping a lot.

Louise had some fabric left over as well as a surfeit of snaps, so she also sewed a cover for the port side galley window. This window does not benefit from the boat deck overhang, so a cover here is a real help. The fabric leftovers were such that she had to piece the cover from three sections, but it still looks great and it, too, is helping to keep the boat cool.


Both new covers in place on the port side.

After our grocery run this morning, we contemplated spending another night. The convention center is convenient to downtown and the security staff was friendly and accommodating. When we arrived we were able to connect to their WiFi as well, which was fast in comparison to most. That disappeared yesterday afternoon, though, as the center prepared to host the annual General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, and they switched all the access points over to that use. Amusingly, we are missing right now the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, which we attended several times in the bus, this year in Columbus, Ohio. We peered into the convention center and had General Assembly flashbacks.

With our fast free WiFi gone, and no power on the dock, we opted to use the last of the flood to get a few miles upriver instead, knocking a couple of hours off tomorrow's trip. From here we will not see another dock for the next hundred miles, and the next one a hundred miles beyond that. Access to provisions will be limited, and I expect to be out of Internet coverage for a good deal of the trip. It's possible you will not hear from us until Demopolis, Alabama, nearly a week away.

Tonight we're having leftovers, which happen to be jambalaya. I can't think of a more fitting dish to be having here on the bayou. In the morning we will weigh anchor, and by day's end we will be off the Mobile and somewhere along the Tombigbee River, where anchorages are few and far between.

Two Million friends on Facebook

Once again I am a day late (I have often stated I try to post from every new location), and my excuse this time is an unexpected visit in Memphis yesterday with good friends.  This morning finds us at the Walmart in West Plains, Missouri (map).

We arrived in Memphis Saturday afternoon after a fairly short drive from our digs in Hamilton, but not until after I had rebuilt the water pump two more times.  Unfortunately, the symptoms are still with us, even after putting in a half tank of water at the Mississippi Welcome Center, where we also availed ourselves of the dump station.  While we were passing through Mississippi, we also put in 100 gallons of fuel, enough to get us to Kansas City where it will be somewhat cheaper.

We parked in an undisclosed location just a few blocks from the Crescent Club, in East Memphis near Germantown.  We had a nice dinner in the bar, as the dining room had been rented for a wedding.  Notwithstanding Memphis' reputation for nightlife, especially on a Saturday night, we actually made it an early evening, settling in for the night in our stealth parking spot.

No sooner had I sat down at my computer than I noticed a couple of posts to Facebook from our friends Mark and Mary Million who were just across town from us on Beale Street.  I knew Mark had just wrapped up the Isaac relief operation in Hattiesburg and was heading home; what I did not know was that he had a rental car that needed to be returned in Memphis.  Mary had come down to meet him and make a weekend of it.  Had we known they would be in town, we might have angled for a parking spot downtown so we could meet them on Beale Street.

They, of course, did not know we'd be in town either, and when we finally connected on Facebook Saturday night, the best we could do was to plan for brunch Sunday morning.  They met us at a big-box parking lot not far from where we spent the night, and we went to the Blue Plate a few blocks away for a hearty breakfast.  The place is packed on Sunday mornings, but we only waited a half hour to be seated.  It was great catching up with them; regular readers will remember we spent a week in their driveway in June.

The Millions were spending another night in Memphis, but we needed to get rolling, and we got under way after saying our goodbyes around 1pm.  We left Memphis on Interstates 40 and 55, but turned northwest off I-55 onto US-63 in Gilmore, Arkansas.  Eventually the huge breakfast got to us, and we ended up taking a nap at a truckstop in Jonesboro, next door to the Post plant. The smell of toasting breakfast grains drifted in through the window as we snoozed.

In Imboden, US-63 joins with US-412, a route we had taken on our touring motorcycles a dozen years ago.  The road is better suited to bikes than buses, and I got my steering workout for the day.  We were again on new ground from Hardy to Mammoth Spring, where we briefly retraced our route from 2009 as we headed north to Thayer.  The grade and alignment on US-63 improved in Missouri, and we had an easy drive the rest of the way to West Plains.

As challenging as the driving can be, the Ozarks are simply beautiful.  We are not yet in fall color here, but the temperature has been dropping rapidly.  Last night it got down to 45 degrees here, and today I am back in long pants for the first time since finishing our relief operation in Orlando.  It's hard to believe that less than a week ago we were running the air conditioners 24/7 and I was jumping in the pool daily.

Today we will continue northwest on US-63 until it meets US-60 in Cabool, which will take us west to Springfield.  From there we will again head northwest on MO-13, and I expect we will end our day somewhere between Collins and Osceola.

Park hopping

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 ...

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.

We now return to our regularly scheduled program

That program, of course, is never-ending bus maintenance. It has been a long day, but we are now well-parked at the Elks lodge in Anniston, Alabama (map), with 30 amps of power, so we are cool, and I have a glass of wine next to me.

As I wrote on Wednesday, Louise had given her notice for Saturday so that we could possibly make it to our conference in Charlotte when it starts this Wednesday. She was actually all wrapped up before noon, and the nice young woman who had taken the kitten that Louise rescued came by around 11:30 to drop off the pet carrier we loaned her. I had Odyssey all prepped for departure, complete with filling the water tank, and we were rolling by 1pm, giving us plenty of time to make our planned fuel and dump stops en route to Birmingham.

We put 125 gallons of diesel in at $3.64 per gallon, a record low of late, at the Spaceway Truck Plaza in Meridian, the very same place I had been fueling the rental car on my few visits. Alabama has free dump stations at their rest areas and we took care of that chore at about mile 40. We rolled into downtown Birmingham right around 6 and parked just down the block from our club there, so we could catch a nice Saturday evening dinner. By 9 or so, we were parked for the night at the Wal-Mart just a few miles east (map). That's when the trouble began.

As Louise wrote while en route to Jackson, the house batteries have been acting up, not holding a charge. We've been presuming that they are simply at end-of-life, as they are now four years and over 2,000 cycles old, about the life expectancy of a set under our usage conditions. We had lots of trouble keeping the air conditioning running while we drove across Mississippi, and, at some point, we detected a burnt smell coming from the battery/inverter tunnel. The ammeter that shows current running between the chassis system, where the alternator is, and the house system, where the large battery bank as well as the inverter and air conditioners live, was also jumping all over the place. Perhaps, we thought, there is something more going on here, such as a loose connection in the battery bank someplace.

At the end of a long hot day, with outside temps still in the mid-90's, and the tunnel well past the century mark from the inverter working hard, was not the time to be monkeying around in the tunnel looking for battery problems. We set the electrical system up to run the rear A/C from the inverter and then autostart the generator as needed so we could at least be a bit comfortable while we slept. We had left everything off except the fans while we were at dinner, as the pets actually enjoy it a bit warm.

The A/C would only run ten minutes or so before the generator started (it is designed to go eight full hours), then the generator would only run ten minutes or so before deciding the batteries were full. Hmm. We changed the absorption timer to an hour and went back to bed, but, ultimately, we ended up running the generator most of the night. At one point, the battery voltage dropped so low that the inverter shut down and lost all its programming.

This morning we pulled everything out of the tunnel and I spent most of the day crouched inside working on the problem. As it turned out, the 400-amp battery disconnect switch had gone bad -- I discovered the problem because it was too hot to even touch. The heat generated by the bad switch connection melted the heat-shrink and some of the slit loom on the main battery and load cables, and fused the switch contacts together so that when I operated the lever to the "off" position, the switch was still "on." That forced me to disconnect a whole lot more pieces in order to remove the switch.

Unfortunately, the switch is a one-piece unit of riveted construction, so even looking inside to see if I could fix it would have been a challenge. I will eventually drill out the rivets to see just what happened, but in the meantime, I needed the switch intact so I could use one of the enormous terminal posts as a junction point to get everything reconnected. Some kind folks on the bus conversion board pointed me to suppliers for replacements, and it looks like I can order a new one for $145 or so. Of course, I'll have to go through the same shenanigans once again when the time comes to make the swap.

In the meantime, bypassing the switch seems to have cured most of our electrical/battery ills. The batteries are still four years and 2,000 cycles old, and won't hold nearly the charge they used to, but it is no longer critical. We were able to run one A/C for an hour and a half on the batteries today with an unknown charge state. After we give them a good soak tonight on shore power, we will see how well they do.

Sad to say, however, that our problems did not end there. Right after we got parked, I noticed the left front air bag was way up, and now from experience I know this is a leaking check valve. Too hot and tired to deal with yet another problem last night, we just dumped all the air from the system and spent the night down on the stops; fortunately we had a mostly level spot. Today around 2 or so, after I finished the battery project that I started at 7:30am, I crawled into the wheel well to rebuild the check valve yet again. One of these days, I need to convert that air line to SAE fittings so I can just replace the fancy, unobtainium German valve with a $15 item from a truck parts joint.

To top it all off, right after I noticed the air bag issue, I also found a pool of oil under the engine. The other issues are just minor annoyances in the scheme of things, but this can be a show-stopper. We've been dripping oil for a good 3,000 miles, and way back in March, we had the drip looked at in Bakersfield, at Delaney & Ahlf. They seemed to think it was coming from the end-plate gasket, and even suggested removing the alternator and tightening the bolts back there to maybe slow it a bit (though they did not have the time to do the work for us).

Back then, the leak was leaving maybe a silver-dollar sized stain on the ground at every stop. What I saw last night was much larger than that, and today while I was running the engine I counted two or three drops per second, whereas when I last checked it was more like one or two drops per minute. At this rate, we'll be going through a gallon every couple hundred miles or so. This could, in fact, be a leaking end gasket getting worse, but I am actually hoping that this increased flow really means the leak is somewhere else, such as in the crossover pipe, or the blower supply line.

Realistically, this is not something I can work on myself. Even finding the leak will require a pit or a lift, and taking oily bits off the engine is frowned upon in most parking lots. We need a shop. Right now, the big question looming for us is whether to divert north from here to Chattanooga, where we know of a good two-stroke shop with a decent shop rate, or continue on to Charlotte, attend our meeting, and deal with it later. I am sure this will occupy our dinner conversation; we'll be heading out shortly to one of the places about a half mile walk from here.

Gratuitous kitten photo by Louise. Kitten video coming soon!

In the Wolf Den

We are at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds, in Raleigh (map). The fairgrounds has plentiful RV sites with 30- and 50-amp full hookups for $25 per night. That's steeper than our usual fare, but not bad in an RV-unfriendly town. In addition to the state capital, Raleigh is a university town, being home to the NC State "Wolfpack," and college towns are notoriously hard for parking.

We had a nice drive from Greensboro Tuesday afternoon on US-70, which brought us all the way to Raleigh and the Elks lodge off Lead Mine Road, where we had planned to stay. Our guide said they had two 30-amp spaces for $10 a night, and the Elks parking Yahoo group had a couple of posts with more detail about how to access the lodge.

When we pulled in, however, we were accosted by an extremely rude individual, a member we presume, who informed us that parking was no longer permitted there. I went inside to check with the manager, and, sure enough, a reckless RVer who caused thousands in damage has ruined it for everyone else (that's no excuse to be rude about it, though). There is no longer any RV parking at the Raleigh lodge.

As Raleigh has forbidden RV parking almost everywhere else in town, this left us few options. Fortunately the fairgrounds was convenient for us, and it's been hot enough that having unlimited power for the air conditioning has been a bonus. It was a short two-mile scooter ride to Louise's cousins just down the road, with whom we had a nice visit. It was another two miles beyond that to one of our two clubs here in Raleigh, the Cardinal Club, where we had a very pleasant lunch today on the 28th floor, overlooking the Capitol and a vast panorama of verdant forest, so so it would appear from that lofty height.

With our visit done, we are eager to move out of the high-rent district, and so will be moving on shortly, after availing ourselves of the "full hookup" aspect of our site. We checked in this afternoon with our Red Cross handlers in Washington, and, given how close we are, they'd like us to head up to the "hot site" in Richmond, Virginia (about three hours from here). We had all the arrangements made to meet up with our "big boss" there tomorrow morning, right up until we all found out that this is the weekend of the Nascar race, and the track is literally across the street from the hot site. Qualifying will be tomorrow, and the race will be on Saturday, making the facility all but inaccessible between the traffic and the cops directing it. While our Red Cross badges will get us around the cops, none of us wanted to battle thousands of crazed Nascar fans driving to and from the track.

What we decided on instead was a plan to slow-roll toward Richmond, with the idea of being there perhaps Monday sometime and spending a few days there. A very slow roll, because in the next few days what is currently Atlantic Investigation Area 92L might become some kind of storm, and we may well have to reverse course and head south or southwest. After consulting our myriad directories we found an Elks lodge in Rocky Mount, NC with power for $10 a night, and that's close enough to where we are now for us to be settled in well before Louise has to teach her class tonight.

If Rocky Mount turns out to be suitable, we'll likely spend a couple days there, at least until we know what 92L and/or Tropical Storm Igor are doing.

Duke of Earl

Just a short update tonight -- it's late, we've had a long day and are tired, and tomorrow will be an Early morning. We are at a truck stop off I-75 in Valdosta, Georgia (map), en route to US-84.

Yesterday afternoon we unofficially consulted with our leads at the Red Cross Disaster Operations Center about whether we should perhaps reposition ourselves a bit further east, in case we might be needed to respond to Hurricane Earl. It's always a dicey proposition to move ourselves like this, since it costs us real money (we do not get reimbursed for any mileage until we are officially deployed), and we did not want to drive a few hundred miles if they had other resources on hand to deal with it. The answer yesterday afternoon: sit tight, we have plenty of time before the Friday landfall, and no decisions have been made.

9:30 this morning the phone rang, inquiring if we could be in Raleigh by tomorrow evening if we were officially deployed to do so. Still no problem, and we started packing up, a process that took extra time because not only were both scooters still out, but the deck was set up, and I had three eBay items to pack and ship before we left Destin. It was nearly 1:30 by the time we rolled out of the Elks parking lot. Mind you, with no official deployment orders yet, this is still just us leading our usual nomadic life, by heading east.

We did not even make it two miles before the phone rang again, asking if we would be available to go to Boston. By plane. Logistically speaking, that's difficult, and we basically said that one of us could go to Boston, but the other would have to stay behind with the bus and pets -- Louise was not willing to drive the bus all the way to Boston without me, and, in this particular instance, they did not want her without me. After fifteen minutes of noodling through logistics, we agreed that if we were asked to do so, we could try to make Boston by Saturday, meaning someone from the DOC would have to be there ahead of us to cover for me. Still, it would mean 30 hours of driving across two and a half days, a brutal schedule.

We were almost to I-10 (it turns out to take over an hour to reach I-10 from Fort Walton Beach via Destin) when we got word that they found someone else to cover Boston, so we were off the hook, and we went back to our Plan A of heading towards Raleigh. That gave us a little more breathing room and we decided to stop at our club in Tallahassee for a nice dinner.

The club is at FSU and is staffed mostly with students from the hospitality school. With this being the very start of the school year the servers are very green, and despite our exhortation that we were on a tight schedule and wanted faster service than the usual very laid-back, nearly 2-hour affair that normally constitutes dinner at these clubs, we still ended up sitting there for well over an hour, even though we took our dessert to go (12-layer chocolate cake, and we only made it through half our single slice, together, tonight). In hindsight, the club stop was a mistake, albeit a delicious one, because it cost us perhaps 90 minutes beyond what a "normal" dinner would have, and we'd be much farther into Georgia tonight.

Tomorrow morning we will resume heading towards North Carolina. With any luck we will get some official deployment orders in the morning. If we do not get deployed to Earl, Gaston is not far behind, and has the potential for a U.S. landfall.

Photo by The Brain Toad, used under a Creative Commons license.

Hot at the Hot Site

We are at the Red Cross disaster "hot site" in Montgomery, Alabama. No map link today for security reasons. Long-time readers know we have been here before.

We arrived here just a little before 4pm yesterday, early enough for someone from the local chapter to come over and let us in. Good thing we stopped by, because about a quarter of the computers pre-positioned here were off line for one reason or another, and that means they could not be remotely upgraded or managed by headquarters. We were able to fix all but two, with an additional two unusable because the screen back-lights had gone out.

The building here has a lone 20-amp receptacle on the outside, and while we did run the genny for about an hour after we arrived, that outlet has been keeping us mostly cool since then. In fact, we decided to just spend another night here, since we still did not know by mid-day if we were standing down from Bonnie yet. It was 99° here in the heat of the day, and it has been a mighty struggle for the lone air conditioner we can run on such a small power feed to keep up. I've had the air compressor off most of the day, bumping it on briefly every couple hours while I switch the air conditioner to fan-only, otherwise the inverter trips about every other time -- that's how hot it is here. The oppressive heat has had us pinned down inside the bus all day, with the awnings out and the blinds drawn.

Still, it's hard to complain about a "free" power outlet. And if we actually had to run a relief operation out of this building, there is enough power inside for us to pull a full 50-amp, 240-volt circuit. Without access to the building when we are ready to leave, though, I could not make use of the inside service. The building also has a water spigot and an outside sewer access, so we could settle in for the long haul if we had to.

We were able to wrap up everything we needed to do yesterday evening, so we did not need to call anyone today to let us back in. And we still had plenty of time to make it to dinner at the excellent Capital City Club downtown, atop the Regions Bank building. It was quite warm when we left for dinner, and we started riding over there in our shirtsleeves.

Unfortunately, the heavens opened into a torrential downpour as we were about half way there. We both have all the gear needed to ride in almost any weather, including this kind of rain, but with the temperature well into the 90s, we neglected to bring any of it, and so we had to turn back home and strip out of our wet clothes. In about half an hour the storm had passed, and with dry clothes on and proper rain gear with us just in case, we made our way back to the club for a nice dinner, just about 45 minutes behind schedule.

With Bonnie having fizzled completely, and being a bit too far away from the dam failure in Iowa (although we were just a few miles from there barely a week ago) to be considered for deployment there, tomorrow we will resume our planned route south to Fort Walton Beach. It's about a four-hour drive, but with no convenient power pedestals between here and there, we're just going to push all the way through. It's too hot anyplace north of the state line to want to linger, and the beachfront is anywhere from five to ten degrees cooler.

Photo by StewBl@ck, used under a Creative Commons license. And because those are some cute dogs.

My Bonnie lies over the ocean

We are at the Elks lodge in Birmingham, Alabama (map). We have not seen a soul since we arrived yesterday afternoon; the lodge has limited hours, and the property, while large, is rather run down.

We had a nice stay in Huntsville, and we ended up extending our stay there at Monte Sano State Park until yesterday morning. I managed to get several errands done, including topping up the reserve oil reservoir and changing the engine air filter. We also had a nice dinner with the parents of one of our close friends from California, who live in town.

We never made it to our club there, because they are in the process of moving from their downtown location to a new facility out at one of these newfangled mixed-use malls called The Bridge Street. They're closed until September, so we'll have to catch them on our next visit. We did end up eating right next door to the old downtown facility, at a place called The Chophouse. It was quite nice.

We enjoyed riding our scooters around Huntsville. One thing we noticed right away is that it is a good ten degrees cooler at the park, which is not only heavily wooded, but also about 1,000' higher in elevation than most of the town. We never did make it to the space center; after I learned that you can't actually see any of the Marshall Space Flight Center, I lost interest. I've already seen two real Saturn-V rockets, so seeing either a standing mock-up or a set of test stages was not reason enough to brave the heat or the crowds. The fact that the place sports both a drop-tower amusement ride and an exhibit on Star Wars (the movie, not the missile defense system) speaks to the highly commercialized nature of modern science museums, and I prefer old school.

Last night we had a nice dinner at the Summit Club here in Birmingham, with a panoramic view of the city. But we have been eying the tropical system in the Caribbean that started out as Investigation Area 97, had morphed into Tropical Depression 3 by yesterday morning, and was upgraded to Tropical Storm Bonnie by the time we arrived here. Before we left Huntsville the Disaster Operations Center called us to check on our status.

Although we had planned to leave here this morning for Montgomery, where we have more dinner reservations, we've been holding here in case we were sent to Baton Rouge, rendering Montgomery a bit out of the way. Bonnie unexpectedly sped up this morning, however, meaning it will not have as much chance to intensify over the gulf, and we are not being sent anywhere, as yet.

Absent direction to go to Baton Rouge, we will resume our plan to continue to Montgomery today. The Red Cross has a "hot site" there and we will check in on that facility while we are in town, which means we'll need to be there early enough this afternoon to pick up the key at the chapter.

With any luck, Bonnie will fizzle out to mostly a non-event, although I am afraid on the current track that it will churn up a lot of the spilled oil from the Deepwater Horizon.

Hot night in Music City

We are at the Elks lodge in Madison, Tennessee (map), a suburb of Nashville. We hadn't remembered it until we were already in the driveway, but we'd visited this lodge three years ago, under similar circumstances. By which I mean it was hot and we were looking for a power outlet.

If we had even a glimmer of a memory that we had been here once, I could have checked the blog, and read there that even though the guide now says this place has a 30-amp outlet, it really just has a couple of 15-amp outlets on shared circuits, put in by amateur electricians. This is, after all, the reason I write so much detail here in the blog, for our own reference later. Not to bore you, as you may at times suspect.

Back then the temperature was about ten degrees warmer, and unbeknown to us until the next day we were also having some wiring issues with the air conditioning, and we quickly determined the ratty-looking 15-amp outlet was not going to keep us cool overnight, and so we bailed out immediately. This time we figured 15 amps would get us by for a day, and we paid the $10 "donation." The outlets are so poorly wired the grounds are open, and the bird's nest of Romex^® is so long that we're only getting 99 volts here at the bus after our 50', 10-gauge cord. But that's enough to keep one air conditioner running full time, and we've been mostly comfortable. The lodge says they're putting in some real RV spaces with pedestals this year.

We came here so we could have dinner in downtown Nashville at the City Club, atop the Fourth and Church Tower. Dinner was excellent as usual, and after dessert, with temperatures just a few degrees cooler after sunset, we rode the scooters around Printers Alley, along the waterfront, and back up 2nd. On a warm Thursday night, the streets were packed with tourists and the more popular clubs had lines out on the sidewalks. We were a bit overdressed for the weather, or we might have strolled a bit. On a side note, I fail to understand why anyone would travel all the way from wherever to downtown Nashville, and then eat at Hooters or Joe's Crab Shack and go clubbing at the Hard Rock, when there are so many original restaurants and clubs here. To each her own, I suppose.

Yesterday's drive was quite pleasant, along mostly country roads. We left Columbus on state route 58, and zig-zagged our way into Tennessee on 339, 97, 94, and 121. That put us on US-79 in the middle of Kentucky Lake, and there is a lovely state park right there at the bridge called Paris Landing. We drove in to look at it, and filed it away for a future stay. We wanted to make Nashville last night, and state parks here tend to get crowded coming into a summer weekend. The park had a nice marina, too, so perhaps we will return someday in a boat.

Today we spent three hours on Red Cross conference calls, part of our ongoing curriculum development work. Now that it is past 1pm, the lone air conditioner is struggling to keep up, running as it is on 83% voltage. We'll be leaving in a couple of hours for the short drive to Christiana, south of Murfreesboro, to visit our friends there.

Talkin' 'bout China Grove

We are at a Wal-Mart in China Grove, Texas (map). OK, technically, we are in San Antonio, but we are just over the line from China Grove, which we drove through yesterday. And, yes, it's that China Grove, of Doobie Brothers fame.

Once again we've come a bit further than I had expected. We had a pleasant drive yesterday, with the weather finally warming up a bit. It is a part of Texas few people see, but we enjoy it. However, this particular route has few stopping options. Other than a free city park in Cuero, which was really too early to stop, the first decent place to overnight was a picnic area along US-87 west of Stockdale. That was just 45 minutes from here, though, and we decided to keep moving so we would have some dining options and be able to pick up a few supplies. It was a nice picnic area, though, and we've noted it it for the future.

This morning we will try to have lunch at the Plaza Club downtown, assuming we can find parking, before heading west on US-90 to the Rio Grande. We've already done the San Antonio tourist thing some time ago, having seen the Alamo and done the river walk. Louise's video of the river walk is here.

NOLA roll-by

We are at the Hollywood Casino in Baton Rouge, Louisiana (map). We have a great spot right on the Mississippi, with a view of Port Allen across the river and the I-10 bridge downstream out one side, and the Louisiana Capitol tower out the other.

We really enjoyed our drive yesterday. Long Beach and Pass Christian, hard hit by the storm in 2005, are coming back slowly. The Wal-Mart has been rebuilt, set back from the coast by another hundred yards or so. What used to be the parking lot is now open space buffer. We did not drive up to see if they reinstalled the No Overnight Parking signs; with the coast still largely undeveloped, it's hard to imagine there is yet the sort of problem that had caused that policy to be instituted.

After passing into the Stennis Space Center buffer zone, we veered left to continue on US-90, rather than taking the much more traveled 607 over to I-10. The stretch of 90 from there to New Orleans is a lonely and forlorn highway, with a series of deteriorating bridges that we dared cross only when devoid of other traffic. It passed through some of the hardest-hit areas, completely flattened by storm surge that was trapped between the Mississippi delta and the gulf coast, with nowhere else to go. Pearlington, Mississippi and Louisiana islands like Petit Cocquilles and St. Catherines were wiped out, and today only a sprinkling of reconstructed homes stand here. Piles of debris and the remains of shotgun shacks still line the bayous.

Coming into St. Bernards on the outskirts of New Orleans, the road becomes Chef Menteur Highway. Many neighborhoods along here have been repaired, but the businesses in many cases have not. We rolled past the ghostly shadows of fast-food restaurants long abandoned, and entire shopping plazas still fenced off four and a half years later, ironically still sporting the names and logos of businesses long shuttered.

Odyssey is too much of a challenge in the French Quarter or even the CBD, and the garden district is out altogether due to low trees. So we rolled through town on US-90 as it transitioned from Chef Menteur to Gentilly to Broad, eventually turning onto US-61 which is Tulane in town but becomes Airline as it rolls west into Jefferson Parish. Even along these streets, we expected to see evidence of Mardi Gras in full swing, along with post-Super Bowl "Who Dat?" elation. Frankly, it was all very sedate and we saw virtually none of this.

I have always wanted to go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, and leading up to this visit I had been looking forward to at least spending one night and taking in one of the world-famous parades, not to mention visiting our friend. However, as we arrived in the city in the early afternoon, it was literally just 42° outside. The parades start at 6:30, well after sunset, and we knew it would be in the mid-30s. While we do have all our winter clothes with us, of course, standing on a crowded street in near freezing temperature, watching a krewe who would surely also be suffering, was not an experience either of us relished. On top of which, given that all "normal" RV parking in the city is booked solid well in advance, we'd need to stealth park miles away, then make our way to a viewing spot via a very cold scooter ride. Even trying to hook up with our friend under such circumstances was questionable, and we decided just to move along.

Baton Rouge, a town with which we have more than just a passing familiarity, was the next sensible place to stop. In addition to having this nice casino as a known stopping option, we also knew we had a reciprocal club in town, and we thought we could get our "free" meal in for dinner. The Camelot Club is just a mile from here, and we thought we'd take a cab if it was too cold to walk. Stopping in Baton Rouge instead of New Orleans would also mean a much more comfortable drive today, as we are over an hour closer to Beaumont here.

When we arrived here in the lot, after a 20-minute traffic wait due to a train blocking the driveway, Travis from security came out of the watch tower and directed us to this great spot. I don't know if that's SOP for RVs, or if Travis was just amused by Odyssey, but, in either case, we were very happy to have his help. After we got parked and squared away, I called the club for dinner reservations.

We are a dozen days too late; the Camelot Club dropped out of the Signature dining program on February 1st. They would have been happy to make us a reservation at full price, but we were looking for the freebie that we supposedly get with our $25 monthly membership. If we were just going to pay full price for dinner, we didn't want to have to trek a mile away for it, and so we just wandered over to the casino and ate in their steak house, which was actually quite good. Prices were what one might expect for a casino steak house, but the wines by the glass were actually surprisingly reasonable. It was cold enough by the time we finished that we had the shuttle bring us back across the parking lot.

In a few minutes we will roll back through downtown and cross the Mississippi. We will be in Beaumont this evening to have dinner with some friends there. The forecast says it will be in the 50s -- break out the short sleeves!

Get thee to a Cookery

We are at the Flying-J truck stop in Gulfport, Mississippi (map), along I-10. Despite dire warnings of overnight sleet and snowfall, it has only been raining, and the roads are clear.

We got off to something of a late start yesterday. We made reservations for lunch at the Bienville Club in Mobile for 11:30, which was as soon as they opened. We arrived downtown by 11:15 and were very lucky to find a 40' on-street parking space at the edge of the central business district, on Royal Street in front of the post office, just past where the meters end. I pulled up to within a few feet of the car in front of me, to leave plenty of clearance for the post office's driveway behind us; they have tractor-trailers turning in there all the time, and most states require 10' or so of clearance at driveway entrances. The street was narrow, so I also pulled to within mere inches of the curb.

Lunch was excellent. Mindful of the time, we chose the buffet as a somewhat faster option. From our seats on the 34th floor, we had a great view of the giant Austal shipyards to the east, with the battleship Alabama in the background. To the south, we could see hundreds of RVs underneath the enormous I-10 interchange; the city opens this area to RVs each year for Mardi Gras, but the spaces are sold out years in advance. Mobile, not New Orleans, originated the Mardi Gras tradition in the US. The whole town is decorated for Carnival, and the club was no exception. Even the napkins were purple, gold, and green.

When we came back out, we were stunned to find a car parked immediately behind us. There wasn't really enough room for one there, of course, and he had pulled up within a couple feet of us due to the driveway. Now we were hosed -- with only a couple of feet on either end, just inches to the curb, and, to make matters worse, a telephone pole blocking my tail swing, all we could try to do was back and fill dozens of times to get out. However, 24 ton bus, plus highly crowned road, plus low-angle back and forth movement equals all three axles jammed against the curb.

By this time we had an audience consisting of dozens of postal workers as well as everyone from Turner Manufacturing across the street. Louise checked in with both places to see if the miscreant car owner could be located, but no such luck. And, of course, this could well be someone working downtown who just came back from lunch and parked for the rest of the day. We surely did not want to be stuck in Mobile until the end of the work day.

With few other options, I fashioned a ramp of sorts out of sections of 2x4 that we carry, to paraphrase Foghorn Leghorn, "for just such an emergency." By driving forward just a few inches onto the ramp, I could then cut the front wheels left, and roll the right front wheel onto the sidewalk when I backed up. Once the wheel was firmly on the sidewalk, I moved the ramp to just in front of the right driver, cut the wheels right, and pulled forward as far as I could. This brought us within millimeters of the phone pole, but now I could crank the wheel left as I backed up, just clearing the car. Fiddling with the ride height controls kept the bus from tilting into the phone pole or landing hard parts on the sidewalk.

Dancing the bus out of that parking space took us nearly 45 minutes, with nothing to show for it other than scuff marks on all three right tires. We have no idea whether our impromptu audience was appreciative or not, as we cleared out of there just as soon as we were free. I am now thinking of making a sign for the back of the bus that reads, "If you park us in, we will back right through you." In hindsight, I am sorry we did not get some photos or video of the process, but we were both very focused.

Our very next scheduled stop was Dodge's Fuel on US-90 in Gautier, just over the bridge from Pascagoula. We loaded up on diesel for $2.499 which, I thought, would be the lowest price we'd see from here to Tucson. Of course, that meant we'd see diesel for $2.479 just two blocks further west, but, still, this was a real score. We put in 215 gallons, which takes a long time through a single automotive-style dispenser. Further complicating matters was the fact that the dispenser shut off after the first $300, so I had to wait in line for them to reauthorize it. All of that added up to a fuel stop of over half an hour.

Between the parking fiasco and the long refueling stop, we began to realize that making New Orleans in plenty of time for Louise's class would be a stretch. Our only chance would be to give up on the scenic US-90 route, bail back up to I-10, and bomb straight there. Even then, we were unsure of what the parking situation would be, or even if we could arrange more reliable Internet access in time for the class. By the time the next turn to I-10 rolled up, we had decided to give up on making New Orleans, and take our chances overnight with the storm.

That freed us to continue on our scenic route, and drive in a much more relaxed fashion. But we still needed to find some WiFi somewhere; if the evening precipitation reached predicted levels, our satellite could easily be knocked off-line right in the middle of Louise's class; with over 20 students counting on her, that would be a serious problem.

After our maiden crossing of the new Ocean Springs-Biloxi bridge, we immediately turned into the Isle of Capri casino. We know them to be RV-friendly, and their RV parking area has about the best view of any of the Biloxi casinos. Unfortunately, try as we might, we could not find a WiFi signal anywhere in the lot. We pulled back out onto 90 West, wardriving through the rest of Biloxi. We passed a couple of open networks, but the confluence of an open signal, a legal parking spot, and access for a 40' bus never happened, so we continued on to Gulfport. Along the way, we passed an odd combination of brand-new homes and businesses, prime ocean-front lots still forlornly vacant and for sale nearly five years post-storm, and half-destroyed structures that look exactly as they did when the surge receded. Only the casinos have returned to business as usual.

We did find a waterfront casino in Gulfport with access, RV parking, and a glimmer of a wireless signal, but we could not get the WiFi to work reliably from where we had to park. Running out of time to get Louise squared away for her class, we reluctantly gave up on the coast, and headed north on 49 to the I-10 corridor, where we knew there would be a Flying-J with pay-for-use wireless. Oddly, the Garmin GPS knows nothing of Flying-J by name, but does have their restaurants listed -- Flying-J's restauarants are always either "The Cookery" or "The Country Market." This one is a Cookery, but the Garmin amusingly had it as "Cockery" instead.

We sprang the $5 for WiFi for Louise's computer, which of course guaranteed that the satellite never lost signal all evening. We also caved in to the dark side and bought a couple slices apiece of pepperoni pizza for dinner; Flying-J bakes them in-house and they are surprisingly good. We're in the RV parking out front, rather than our customary choice of the truck lot, to get the best WiFi signal, but this also made for a shorter walk to and from the counter in the downpour.

Today we will return to the coast and finish our scenic drive along US-90, destination unknown. We are having second thoughts about going to a Mardi Gras parade in sub-40° weather, especially if we'd have to ride the scooters over to it from a parking location that we have not yet vetted.

Back into Winter

We are at a Wal-Mart in Tallahassee Florida (map). This is a familiar stop for us, having been here at least twice before. It was in the low 30s when we woke this morning; I'm starting to miss south Florida already.

Even though Tally was only a couple hours from where we started yesterday, we wanted to grab a subsidized lunch over at our reciprocal club here, on the FSU campus. Also, we knew this Wal-Mart would make a good stop.

At this moment, I have NASA TV on, watching the count for the Atlas-V launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory. This is the launch we ruminated about staying in Titusville for. It is looking like we made a good choice, as high winds at the site are threatening to scrub. It's already been postponed to the middle of the one-hour window; we'll have to leave for the club just a few minutes later, so if they postpone to the end of the window we'll miss it. I'm watching the count because I am curious whether we might catch a glimpse of the vapor trail from here. I'm not holding my breath, because we are a long way away, and the launch azimuth is a bit south of due east.

Around 11 we will roll over to Doak Campbell Stadium on the FSU campus for lunch, after which we will head west to Pensacola and our next fuel stop. We should be somewhere just shy of Mobile tonight, and in New Orleans tomorrow night.

Photo by Phantom_Cameron, used under a Creative Commons license.

Relaxing in the Keys

We are at the Florida Keys Elks Lodge, on Tavernier Key just south of Key Largo (map).

We ended up spending a third night Friday at the Isle Pompano Casino. After carefully studying our various guides and web sites, we could not come up with any overnight options between there and here that made sense, and it was only a hundred miles between the two. So we just had a relaxing day at home yesterday, digesting the enormous dinner we ate at Farraday's on Thanksgiving. (The line for the buffet was enormous, but we sauntered right in to the steakhouse and were seated immediately.)

Louise did take her scooter out Friday and trundled off to do laundry while I fiddled with computers most of the day. I'm still trying to get one of my two Gateways to a point where I can sell it. Then, having made the decision to stick around one more night, we were able to squeeze in our complimentary dinner at the Tower Club in downtown Ft. Lauderdale, which was a painless 20-minute ride away on Broward County's transit system. I will say the downtown bus station is a little rough around the edges, but it was just a five block walk to the club from there.

We did finally get to sample the buffet yesterday, as they serve breakfast on the weekends, just $5 with our Isle One players club cards. Long time readers of this blog know that we don't really gamble, but we always sign up for the players' club when we arrive at a new casino. The card alone often yields a dining discount, even if you have not earned any points, and many casinos give you cash or gaming credit when you first sign up. A handful of casinos require you to belong to the club in order to park overnight.

After breakfast, we loaded up and headed south, stopping briefly in Ft. Lauderdale for 150 gallons of diesel at $2.719, the best deal I could find on Gas Buddy. (We later passed a pair of $2.699 stations, on US-1 well south of town, but even so, we did great -- most stations in the south Florida area are running well north of $2.80 a gallon, and we've seen as high as $3). We landed here around 4pm, in plenty of time to enjoy the sunset from the dock with a glass of wine.

We have a nice site here with a view over the water, and there are only three other rigs here, including the camp hosts. A marked contrast to our last time through, well into the busy season, where all ten sites on the bay side were full up, and they offered us a tight space on the highway side of the lodge, which we declined. They tell me it will get busy in January, and many Elks stay a month or two. There is no long-term rate, so that's at $30 per night, but I suppose $900 a month is a good price here in the Keys at high season, right on the water.

Today we will continue south to Bahia Honda State Park, where we were able to get only a single night's reservation. We'll try to arrive right at or a little before official check-in, and stay right through check-out tomorrow. We are thinking about pulling the scooters out and riding the ~35 miles into Key West tonight for dinner.

Breezing through Tampa

We are at a Wal-Mart in Tampa (map). As I wrote yesterday, this store is marked No Overnight on my list, and is so posted in most of the lot, but when we called to ask, they told us it was OK. When we arrived, security directed us to a section of the lot near Dale Mabry that was not posted, adjacent to a fenced-off empty lot where Tia's TexMex restaurant once stood. It was quiet enough here, and darker than the main lot.

We took a lone scooter out to ride the two and a half miles to the Centre Club for dinner last night. Dinner was quite tasty, and while we were there we were reminded that many of these clubs are serving Thanksgiving dinner. While that would not be included on our super-duper free meal every month plan, it's definitely an option in case we don't come up with anything else.

Shortly after we returned and stowed the scooter, I was out walking the dog when a news van with a TV crew from local channel 13 news showed up in our little remote parking lot. They deployed their 50' antenna mast and microwave dish, so I knew they were setting up for a live shot. I tuned the news in on the TV; it turns out the live shot was of the shopping center across the street, for a reporter doing a lead-in and then wrap-up on a previously taped segment on unemployment (seasonal retail jobs, it seems, are way down this year). What a waste, we thought, to deploy an electronic news-gathering van for two and a half minutes of talking head, that could easily have been shot in the studio. Fittingly, featured in the center of the shot was the still-illuminated store sign for now-defunct Circuit City.

While we were at dinner we received a phone call that threw something of a monkey wrench into any attempt to develop concrete plans. One of our dear friends has been hospitalized in California with complications from cancer. We are awaiting further word as to whether he will even be lucid enough to recognize us before deciding whether to fly out there for a visit.

While we had been considering perhaps settling in someplace pleasant here in the Tampa Bay area for a few days while we figured out plans for Thanksgiving, scuba, and bus maintenance, we are now motivated to cross over to the other side of the state. That's because most of the less expensive flight options are out of Daytona, Palm Beach, or Ft. Lauderdale, and this will put us closer. Besides, we need to end up there anyway. In a few minutes we will start rolling in that direction, angling down towards Lake Okeechobee.

Photo by Marcus Q, used under a Creative Commons license.

Charmed, I'm sure

We are at the Wal-Mart in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina (map), just east of Charleston.

While only some 70 miles from where we started yesterday in Murrells Inlet, we stopped here because it is the closest legal parking spot to downtown Charleston, about seven miles away, and we wanted to have dinner last night at our affiliate club in town, the Harbour Club.

We found a stealthy corner of the parking lot, which in this instance is chock full of signs warning about securing valuables, of all things, and unloaded the scooters. Louise trundled off to the laundromat, while I went into the store for the inevitable restocking visit. This store was unusual in that it was recently turned into a "SuperCenter" (Wal-Mart's term for a store with a full grocery department) and the grocery area is arranged along the back wall of the original store footprint. Smaller than the usual SuperCenter, but they had everything we needed.

We had a nice ride into town over the fancy modern Ravenal bridge. The Harbour Club is just a block from the waterfront and two blocks from the Charleston City Market. The whole downtown was hopping on a pleasant Friday night. After a very nice dinner at the club, we walked through the lovely waterfront park with its wading-allowed fountains, then rode around the historic town, from the market all the way down to the battery on Bay Street, across the south end to the Captain of the Port, then back across town on South Battery to Meeting Street for the trip back up to the market and town center before heading back up to the bridge.

Charleston is perhaps the epitome of genteel southern towns, and we really enjoyed our ride. Even though it was after dark, most of the immaculately kept houses along the southern end of the peninsula are well lit; many are historic, and a handful are now guest houses of one type or another. We're adding Charleston to the list of places where we need to return by boat, so we can stay closer to town and explore for several days.

This morning we will again head across the bridge, this time in Odyssey (her second crossing, having done this route five years ago) on our way to Savannah, Georgia, where we will visit some friends. They actually live halfway to Tybee Island, so our challenge this afternoon will be finding a place to park; on our last visit, their condo complex was not yet finished and we were able to park on-site, but that is not an option this time.

Photo by Willie T. Neckbone, used under a Creative Commons license

Minor diversion

We are at the Sam's Club in Raleigh, North Carolina (map). Raleigh was not really on the most direct route to the coast and more pleasant temperatures, but we knew that would be a two-day drive anyway. But it was only a 20-mile diversion, and we realized we have a pair of reciprocal clubs here and we could probably eek out a free dinner if we stopped.

We had hoped to stay at a small truck stop a bit closer to town, where the two downtown clubs would have actually been within walking distance, just about a mile. As we pulled in, though, there seemed to be a preponderance of shady characters lurking about, and no sooner had I stopped to scope out the best place to park than we were panhandled. It felt to both of us like not the safest place to leave the bus unattended for a few hours, and to top it off, the small truck parking lot was essentially a giant mud puddle, which would have made coming and going in our dinner clothes less than pleasant.

We decided to move along, and this Sam's was the closest backup option. From here we had to scooter into town, so we discretely extracted Chip. We were glad there was plenty of room for us here; by the time we had to wave off the truck stop, it was sunset, and we arrived here in the very last vestiges of twilight -- old Raleigh is the last place I want to be wandering around in the bus looking for parking after dark, as low thick trees are everywhere.

We're still keen on getting to the coast south of here, and so it was a very quick stop. We had a nice dinner at the Capital City Club last night (the Cardinal Club turns out not to serve dinner), and this morning we will be getting an early start, with the goal of Murrells Inlet, SC, where we remember a nice state park.

Parked among the horse trailers

We are at the Mississippi State Fairgrounds, in Jackson, Mississippi (map).

We chose this site because it is just a six block walk to our club downtown, where Louise took me for a nice birthday dinner last night. Although while we were paying our camping fee for the night, the guy advised us not to walk out of the fairgrounds -- "too dangerous." When I pressed him further on this, he just reiterated that he certainly would not walk here. We got told the same thing in Montgomery, one capital further east.

We normally ignore these sorts of dire statements, but, as a precaution, we made the decision to leave a few minutes early to walk the outbound trip in the last of the daylight. Rarely have we seen such a clean city -- there was not a single graffito or piece of litter the whole six blocks, and the route took us past a phalanx of gorgeous old buildings, including the old capitol building (now a museum, and under exterior renovation) and the governor's mansion.

Dangerous. Bah. We passed an internet cafe full of yuppies, a couple of people walking home from work, and one moderately crazy destitute person talking to himself. We are convinced, although we would that it were not so, that when these kinds of people tell us a place is "dangerous" it really means that we will encounter people of a different color. Wow, that must be dangerous -- "that man's not my color, he's, umm, the same color as ... the President of the United States." Very dangerous.

I know we are a bit jaded. I grew up in the New York City area, where one develops a sixth sense about what constitutes real danger when walking down the street. Louise has lived enough places to know the difference. And we get the impression that some of these folks who are so paranoid about their own cities have never been to New York, or Detroit, or LA, where you can get shot for wearing the wrong colors in the wrong neighborhood. I would guess there are some rough parts of Jackson -- hoodlums are hoodlums, regardless of skin color. But the capitol district doesn't appear to be one of them.

We had a lovely drive yesterday on US-80. West of Cuba, AL and the state line, US-80 follows I-20 fairly closely, and we have noticed that when a US highway and an Interstate are that close, not only do we usually have the highway to ourselves, but it is often more of a country road than a highway. Relics of roadside businesses long decimated by the Interstate make for interesting scenery, but some of the infrastructure is not up to modern standards.

Thus it was that, for example, I had to slow to 20 or so to avoid destroying the CB antenna on a 13'-6" railroad bridge. I was not so lucky, though passing an SUV on a very narrow two-lane bridge. I had Odyssey squarely in the "middle" of our lane, which meant my left mirror was hanging directly above the double-yellow. If I had been passing another 8' or 8.5' wide vehicle, I would have adjusted for this, slowed a bit more, and moved to the very right part of the lane, putting the right mirror over the bridge rail, and the right wheels perilously close to the curbing.

I saw no need to do so for a mere passenger automobile. Why he felt the need to crowd the left side of his lane, we will never know. But that's what he did, and our mirrors collided at a combined closing speed of over 100mph. We got a barely noticeable scratch, the mirror folded in somewhat, and the little stick-on convex mirror I had put on four years ago got knocked into oblivion. We had to stop in the next town to fold the mirror back out properly. I have no idea what happened to the other bloke's mirror, but I hope, in any case, it was enough to convince him to drive in the center of his lane next time he crosses a narrow bridge, especially with an oncoming heavy vehicle.

A couple dozen miles east of here, I started to get nervous about arriving too late to get a spot -- we had called earlier in the day, and were informed that the camping was nearly full due to the Paint Horse show and one other event going on here -- and so we hopped on the freeway for the final twenty minutes. We also chose to bypass the Flying-J in Pearl, in favor of swinging past there this morning; it's only a couple of miles east. We need not have worried; the fairgrounds are immense, and, with the shows going on, they told us we could park more or less anywhere.

We drove around until we found a light pole with an available power outlet, close to the pedestrian gate we needed to get to dinner. Many eyes were upon us as we circled, and so I also had something of an audience as I repaired the power outlet, a hokey affair hanging loose from the panel on a piece of NM.



It turned out to be disconnected at the breaker, which was a simple fix, but then my tester revealed hot and neutral were reversed (probably why someone had disconnected it). Two quick twists of the screwdriver were all it took, since the deadfront was long since missing from the panel, presumably to facilitate temporary power arrangements for events.



Today we are ruminating about the route west. The deep freeze that has gripped most of the country has blanketed Texas in cold, and we are considering swinging even further south than our previous plan of staying more or less in the I-20 corridor. If we do, we may well hop on our old friend the Natchez Trace Parkway, which will bring us south to Natchez, and we can pick up the familiar US-190 corridor west of Alexandria, LA. That would take us through Livingston and Austin and onto the I-10 corridor through west Texas. Warmer, but we've done it several times and would like to try something different.

Thump, thump, thump

We are at the Wal-Mart in Greenville, South Carolina (map).

We got a late start out of Greensboro, because we had some shopping to do. Not finding everything we needed at Wal-Mart, we drove across the street to Lowes -- we needed some hardware to secure the new fish tank while under way. We ended up buying lunch from a hot dog vendor in the Lowes parking lot, and it was after 1 by the time we were rolling.

For whatever reason, I was pretty tired yesterday afternoon, and I was ready to stop somewhere halfway between here and Charlotte. As we were researching stopping opportunities, however, we discovered we had a dinner club here in Greenville, and so we pressed on a bit further.

We were hoping we might just be able to park on the street downtown -- sometimes these city centers are deserted on the weekends, and we actually parked across the street from a club in the Chicago loop once. When we rolled past, however, there were police cars everywhere, with lots of traffic. We discovered there was an event going on at the nearby Bi-Lo center, which I later learned was the Monster Jam, a monster truck event, I believe.

This Wal-Mart was just a few miles away, and we pulled a scooter out to make the trek back in to town for dinner. The ride back was a little chilly, but it's still quite a bit warmer than we were at the beginning of the week. We had a nice dinner, 17 stories above the city.

Now that we're finally warming up, and our next deadline is more than two weeks away, our attention is returning to various problems we need to resolve. Chief among them is the tire situation. Somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 miles ago, we replaced the worn steer tires, which had lasted barely 40,000 miles, with expensive Goodyears. I really did not expect, at that time, that we'd run nearly another full two years without fixing the bent tag axle.

But here we are, two years later, and the tag axle is still bent. The bent side already ate its way through a brand new Firestone in just over a year and less than 25,000 miles. And we're certain that the screwed-up axle geometry is also having an effect on the steer tires. Alignment is probably also an issue, although we had everything aligned right after the axle got bent, but we really don't want to try to align it again until the axle is fixed.

In any case, we are right back to where we were two years ago, with the steer tires so cupped that it feels like we are driving on the stone wheels from the Flintstones. In addition to rattling our teeth out, I'm worried that the constant thumping might be wearing the kingpins and bushings. So the time has come to do something about it.

My first choice, of course, would be to fix the bent axle, align all three axles, and put six new tires on (the tags are probably fine). And I will be searching in the next few days with renewed vigor to find someone who can change the axle, but I am holding out little hope, since we haven't found anyone yet in two years.

Failing that, we can put another set of new tires on the steers. I'm reluctant to do this, because the current situation will cause them to start cupping within just a couple thousand miles, and, once a tire is cupped, the cupping only gets worse over time, even if the underlying cause gets corrected. Alternatively, we can put the Firestones from the tag on the steer axle, and move these to the tag axle, on the grounds that the tag has a smaller effect on handling and vibration through the coach.

My last option would be to get some used tires for the steer, although this makes me nervous. That said, if I get new ones before fixing the axle, I intend to get the cheapest tires I can find. No point in spending money on high-mileage tread and long-life casings for a tire that I now know will last barely a year and 20k miles or so.

Today we will continue southwest to Atlanta. Even though we continue to head south, this route takes us along what is more or less an isotherm, so we don't really expect to get much warmer now until we are in far west Texas. If that proves to be an issue, we may ajust our route further south, from our planned I-20 corridor to closer I-10.