Update from M/V Golden Princess

It has been a very long while since I posted here, so this will be a lengthy post with a fairly major update. Before I get into the details, though, I should say a few things in advance, by way of explanation.

One of the dirty little secrets about my posts here is that I tend to use the Internet to check things like spelling of proper names, correct accentuation of foreign vowels, historical facts, and that sort of thing. Because I am typing this entire post off-line, and will have to up-load it without benefit of all that checking, it may include quite a number of such mistakes. Also, things that I would normally make into hot-links will remain plain text. Once we are back in the states, as time permits, I will try to come back to this post and fix any errors and/or insert some links. In addition, we have photos to go with some of this text, but at $0.50 per minute (for a very slow connection), it is prohibitive to upload them here aboard ship, so we will also add those in upon our return. I'll post a note and a back-link here in the blog when this post gets updated.

As long as I am on the subject, I'll say a few words about accessing the internet. Here aboard ship, access is available through the ship's satellite system. This works much like our own system aboard Odyssey, except it is a larger dish, on a gyroscopically stabilized platform. The throughput is affected by the ship's position as well as weather (just as our system is), and it is also being shared by the entire ship, including the cruise line's own administrative traffic. This makes the connection painfully slow most of the time -- think regular dial modem speeds. WiFi access to this system is available in a handful of spots around the ship, at a flat rate of $0.50 per minute.

The ship also has a couple dozen public computers for access, at $0.75 per minute. Since moving into a higher-category stateroom in Valparaiso, access through these computers has been included in our fare. Unfortunately, they are set up such that only basic web browsing is available, with no access to files of any kind. So I can't, for example, copy this post onto a memory card or disk, and then upload it through the public computers. (The machines do have memory card readers, but they can only be used to attach photos to emails using a dedicated built-in program.)

From Buenos Aires to Valparaiso, we made extensive use of internet storefronts in each port. The most we paid was US$4 per hour in the Falklands, with rates of about US$1 per hour common in Latin American countries. Phone calls from these stores were also quite reasonable, with US$0.10 to US$0.50 per minute being the range for calls to the US (by contrast, satellite calls from the ship run $8.95 per minute -- yipes!).

Let's move on to what we've been up to these last three weeks. I've tried to keep a few notes on what we've done at each port visit or at-sea day, which I will relate here briefly. Whereas the blog displays in most-recent-first format, I will share these items in chronological order from the top down, starting where we left off in:

Buenos Aires

The afternoon after my last post, we went on a tour of the Parana River delta. We left the hotel by bus, where our guide pointed out various neighborhoods of the city. We passed many interesting residential districts whose names I no longer recall, save one, the Olivos district, where we passed the presidential residence (not to be confused with the Pink House, which is strictly an office). Eventually, the bus dropped us at the beginning of the coast railroad line, which is now essentially a tourist train using light-rail type equipment. The line runs along the west bank of the Rio De La Plata, which is really a very wide estuary that forms the border between Argentina and Uruguay.

We got off the train at San Ysidro, where the station adjoins a modern shopping plaza. We opted for a light lunch rather than shopping, after which our bus picked us up and shuttled us over to the canals, where we embarked our launch.

The tour through the canals and river system that make up the delta was quite interesting, showcasing an eclectic mix of structures from the summer homes of the fabulously wealthy to the shacks of subsistence fishermen. The area reminded me of the Louisiana bayou country, with everything from mail to groceries to gasoline being delivered by boat. A very different side of the Buenos Aires ex-urbs that we are very glad to have seen.

The next morning found the four of us crammed in to a tiny Renault with a driver/guide for a city tour. Louise's folks had asked for a large car, and they promised to send one which would accommodate six -- I guess the average Argentinian is a lot thinner than the average American. Nevertheless, other than being squeezed in, it was a nice tour. It was raining and we mostly stayed in the car and rode around through the various parts of the city, seeing the Pink House (although the infamous balcony was covered over due to renovations), the Cabildo, the Colon Theater (also partly covered, as well as closed, due to extensive renovations), the Obelisk, and the upscale waterfront neighborhoods. We stopped at the Recoletta, where we did get out to walk through the famous old cemetery with its ornate tombs. (And, yes, we did see the tomb of Evita Peron, which was festooned with fresh flowers.)

After returning to our respective hotels, we grabbed our bags and made our way to the pier by taxis. Embarkation was quite chaotic -- there were three ships in port all at once, and I think the passenger facilities were overwhelmed. In addition to our own vessel, Golden Princess, Holland America's Rotterdam and the MSC Sinfonia were also tied up, which meant over 5,000 passengers moving through a terminal facility that could handle less than half that number comfortably. Once we got our baggage checked into the screening system, things moved along more smoothly, and we were on board our ship and in our stateroom in less than an hour. We had our luggage shortly thereafter, but others were not so lucky. We cast off a full two hours late due to port delays involving the luggage, and some folks didn't see their bags until midnight.

On board M/V Golden Princess

Rather than diving into a long explanation of our ship and its amenities and staterooms, I will come back here and put in some links to the Princess site and maybe Cruise Critic (or you can surf over there yourself). Suffice it to say this is the biggest ship we've ever embarked, and it took us a day or two to get familiar with it. We ended up with a great stateroom location, amidships on the starboard side, just a few steps from the elevator and stairs, and just one deck down from the pools and the buffet.

It also took us a couple days to get our dining arrangements squared away. We had originally requested "traditional" dining, which means a fixed seating time and an assigned table. Now, we are accustomed to dining alone, just the two of us, and so we had also requested a table for two. Little did we know that since unveiling "Anytime Dining" a few years ago, Princess no longer provides any two-tops in its traditional dining venues. We ended up at a table for eight, with several very nice Brits. But this was not at all what we wanted, and we switched the very next night to Anytime Dining, with the result being that the Brits needled us, in a good-humored sort of way, every time we ran into them for the next week.

The upside to Anytime Dining is that, just as it says, you can show up any time. Also, on those handful of nights when we might want to join my in-laws for dinner, it's a simple matter to show up as a foursome instead of the two of us. The downside is that you have, potentially, a different waiter and assistant waiter every night, and the consistency of traditional dining, whereby the waiters have figured out by the third day or so what you like to drink, how you like your steak, and how you take your coffee, is lost. Also, two-tops are popular and limited, so there is often a wait for one, involving those vibrating pagers that one finds at, say, Olive Garden.

After a day or two of bouncing around the various dining rooms (and receiving, I must say, some of the worst service I have experienced on the high seas, a close second only to NCL America), we discovered quite by accident that it is actually possible (though unadvertised and kept very low key) to request a fixed table assignment in the Anytime Dining room, particularly for the less popular later seating times. So we've had a dedicated table for two with a very good waiter since about our fourth day, and it has been quite nice. Everyone from the assistant waiter all the way up to the Maitre d' knows us by sight and sometimes by name, and the service has been decent since.

Montevideo, Uruguay

The cruise from Buenos Aires to Montevideo involved "merely" crossing the Rio de la Plata. Easier said than done, as the entire trip was in a narrow buoyed channel dredged into the shallow estuary. In fact, we were an hour late, between the departure delay and the restrictive channel. Upon arriving, the captain announced that some tours would also be delayed or detoured because none other than US President George Bush was scheduled to arrived that afternoon, and the city was gearing up for widespread demonstrations.

In fact, our city tour rolled into the main square just before the barricades went up, and so we had no trouble seeing all the sights, including the old walled city center, a remnant of the old wall and gate, the legislative palace complete with color guards around the founding documents and beautiful stained glass windows and frescoes, and an interesting mix of old and new architecture throughout the city center. After the city proper, our tour continued into the countryside where we had lunch and wine tasting at the Juanico winery. We bought several bottles of Merlot for ourselves (long since gone), and a couple of bottles of Tanat, a varietal of French origin that is not grown in the states, to give as gifts.


Stained glass window from the Legislature building in Montevideo

After departing Uruguay and clearing the estuary and into the open sea, we had two very relaxing days at sea where we allowed ourselves to just unwind and finish recovering from the jet lag. A wonderful, if pricey, couples massage helped with that process. By the end of the second sea day, however, I had the makings of a terrible cold, caught, no doubt, on the airplane. That did not stop the young, perky entertainment staff from tricking both of us into participating in the Tina Turner look-alike contest. This involved putting on a Tina Turner wig and a sparkly mini-dress (over our clothes), going out on stage in front of about a hundred people, and lip-synching to Proud Mary while holding a banana standing in for a microphone. The contest was totally rigged, with three female participants and myself, where beard and all I won hands down by audience "vote." People I had never met were greeting me in the corridors for a week as "Tina." Our only regret is that Louise was also in the contest, and so was not able to photograph the public humiliation for posterity. I'm sure someone has photos of me in a Tina Turner outfit, but we haven't met them.

Port Stanley, The Falkland Islands


No one had ever even heard of this remote outpost until Argentina invaded it in 1982, precipitating a naval war with Great Britain that was front page news for weeks. (Even back then it was a factor for the cruise industry, as Her Majesty's Navy immediately commandeered RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 for use as a troop ship.) Today it is peacefully back in British control, although Argentina still maintains a sovereignty claim. Unexploded ordnance and land mines still dot the countryside and there are large areas cordoned off, though we saw none.

It turns out that M/S Rotterdam was following us move-for-move on this itinerary, and both ships anchoring off Stanley, along with the M/V Hanseatic, made for 5,000 or so people flooding the port, twice again the local population. The three ships vied for the eleven (!) buses and two dozen taxis on the entire island. The lucky few who booked early managed tours by four-wheel-drive out to one of the penguin rookeries on the island, spotting Emperor and Magellanic penguins. We settled for walking around the town, which is easily accomplished in an hour or so, seeing the post office, Christchurch Cathedral, and the lone grocery/general store where I bought cough drops for my developing cold. Interestingly, I could not get my international phone cards to work anywhere on the island, whereas I had no problem in Latin America.



Sean attempts a phone call in Port Stanley. Oh, the British-ness of it all. (Sorry I couldn't get this to load right-side up!)

Cape Horn

Cape Horn, or Cabo de Hornos, is an island. Nevertheless it is considered the southernmost point on the South American continent. It's a small island, and we circumnavigated it in about 45 minutes. Rotterdam did so as well, but we chose opposite directions, so we passed her mid-circle with horn-blowing and fanfare. It is impossible to land here, but from the ship we saw the small military weather station, the huge Chilean flag, and the Albatross sculpture that is billed as the southermost monument in the world.



While "rounding the Horn" is generally associated with violent seas, they were dead calm on the day we circumnavigated, and we are told that they have generally been calm for several years.

Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

From Cape Horn we made our way to the Beagle Channel which separates the large island of Tierra del Fuego from the group of smaller islands (including Cape Horn) to the south, and along the channel to the lone city thereupon, Ushuaia. Tierra del Fuego is divided between Chile and Argentina, and Ushuaia is just east of the line, in Argentina. Ushuaia has the distinction of being the southernmost city in the world. Before 1914 and the opening of the Panama Canal, it was a thriving seaport, vying with Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan for traffic passing between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Here we took a cruise on a small launch along the Beagle Channel to view wildlife on several small islands. We saw huge numbers of Imperial cormorants, South American sea lions, and several varieties of terns and gulls.


Pile o' sea lions in the Beagle Channel. Yep, they smell bad.

Our short cruise left us some time to walk around town, and we took advantage of cheap internet and good phone rates to catch up. The theme of the entire town is "Fin del Mundo," the end of the world.



Ushuaia's port

Punta Arenas, Patagonia, Chile

After departing Ushuaia we sailed west along the Beagle Channel and past several large glaciers, then continued overnight through the western part of the Beagle Channel, nearly into the Pacific, then north through the Canal Cockburn and Chilean fjords to the Strait of Magellan and Punta Arenas.




After tendering ashore in Punta Arenas we took a bus tour to a penguin colony, where thousands of Magellanic penguins (also known as jackass penguins) come seasonally to molt. This was the very end of the season, and so the number of penguins was somewhat smaller than at the peak of the molting, but still we saw hundreds. We also spotted some ostrich-like birds which were possibly rheas or maybe emu, and, surprisingly, a number of very pink flamingos.



Chilean Fjords

After departing Punta Arenas we sailed west through the Strait of Magellan and back into the Pacific overnight, then proceeding north parallel to the Chilean coast. Sometime in the morning the winds whipped up to over 100mph, hurricane force, giving our very tall ship quite a bit of heel to starboard, and a bumpy ride as well in the 15-18' seas. Our scheduled route had us come back into the relative protection of the fjords around midday, which provided some relief, but we were then to proceed north through the fjords and back out into the open ocean late in the afternoon. The captain decided to wait out more of the storm in protected waters, and so we were treated to a spectacular unscheduled detour down the Estero Peel to El Brujo glacier. This tidewater glacier rivaled many we have seen in Alaska, and we even witnessed some minor calving. With the ship more or less stationary at Ventisquero Brujo, the MOB (Man Over Board) fast rescue boat was launched with a photographer and videographer aboard to get some dramatic shots of Golden Princess in front of this breathtaking glacier.




After the surprise sightseeing detour, we continued north through the fjords and back out into the open ocean just before midnight, with mostly calm seas and little evidence of the storm that had pummeled us in the morning. We sailed north parallel to the coast overnight and most of the next day, entering again into the fjords at dinner time.

Puerto Montt, Chile

Morning found us anchored in the Bahia Puerto Montt off the Golfo Ancud. We tendered in to the town of Puerto Montt, which is something of a local resort area. From here we took a bus ride out past Llanquihue Lake and the resort of Puerto Varas, with views of the Osorno volcano (bearing a striking resemblance to Fuji) on our way to the Petrohue river. Here we had a whitewater rafting trip down the river, which was billed as Class III but I would judge as Class IV- or III++ at the water level on the day we did it. Quite an adventure, and one of the real highlights of the entire trip so far.






At the end of our raft trip, we were served a small snack that included a Pisco Sour, the local fire-water of choice throughout Chile. Pisco is a type of brandy made locally (Chile being quite renowned for wine grape production) and a Pisco Sour is just what it sounds like, Pisco and sour mix. We later discovered in the grocery store that there are actually many flavors of bottled mixes involving Pisco. Tons of the stuff is bottled, but almost none is exported.

A Chilean submarine was in the anchorage as our departure approached, and I was surprised to hear them hail us on the radio (I was monitoring the marine channels on my amateur handheld). The conversation was entirely in Spanish, presumably with our Chilean pilot, and I could not make out much, but I at least heard them ask where we were going. Golden Princess is the largest passenger ship ever to visit many of these ports, and locals, tourists, and authorities alike have been fascinated by our presence almost everywhere.



Valparaiso, Chile

After another full day at sea off the Chilean coast, we docked at Valparaiso, which was technically the terminating port of our first cruise. As in-transit passengers, we did not have to leave the ship, and we enjoyed a nearly empty ship for a good part of the day. We did change staterooms between cruises, so we spent part of the morning waiting for the accommodations department to come move our things. All our hanging garments were moved en masse on a trolley, so we did not have to fully re-pack and unpack our suitcases for the move.

Valparaiso is an industrial port city, with not much in the way of tourist activity.




We did have the option to visit Santiago, but it was three hours each way by bus (not including the three hours or so of tour), and we decided that nothing worth seeing in Santiago could entice us to spend nine hours in a tour bus. Talk about a busman's holiday.

Instead we enjoyed having the ship mostly to ourselves, and we also disembarked just long enough to walk across the street to the local mega-supermarket, Jumbo/Easy. Jumbo is best described as a cross between a Wal-Mart supercenter and a high-end supermarket, while Easy is a cross between Home Depot and Best Buy. Aside from the lack of any English signage, we could have been standing in any megastore in the US. But we were here on a mission: wine. The Uruguayan Merlot had only lasted to Puerto Montt, and we needed reinforcements.

We purchased a range of Merlot, Malbec, Syrah, and blended reds, with none more than about US$4 and a couple of Merlots that were about US$1.65 each. We came away with seven bottles of wine for less than $20. (At this writing, we've consumed all but one, and, frankly, the $1.65 Merlot has been the best of the lot -- we should have bought a whole case worth.) In hindsight, I'm sorry we didn't also buy a bottle or two of Pisco Sour (or Pisco-something), since there was a whole aisle dedicated to it, and some could be had for as little as US$3 a bottle. At any rate, a serious wine lover could get hooked on this country.

Coquimbo, Chile

After embarking some 2,200 new passengers in Valparaiso (400 of us continued on from the first cruise), we sailed overnight to the port of Coquimbo. Coquimbo adjoins the city of La Serena, and they have essentially grown together into one city. Here we took another bus tour, out to a national preserve containing 1,000+ year old petroglyphs. The cultures that created these were wiped out long ago, along with their history, so not much is known about the origin or meaning of the symbols (as far as we could make out from the tour).



We also toured another local winery in the Limari valley. On the way out of and back into town, we could see the enormous Cross of the Third Millenium, as well as a very large and modern mosque. Our guide told us that there is almost no Muslim population here, but a mayor interested in ecumenical outreach had convinced someone to donate the money for its construction. The same mayor was in the process of doing the same thing for a synagogue when he was indicted on unrelated corruption charges, thus ending his grandiose outreach program. We later learned that the King of Morocco was either in town or just about to arrive for the dedication of the mosque, suggesting that the money came from that realm.

Arica, Chile

After yet another relaxing full day at sea, we arrived in Arica, the driest city on earth. This part of Chile is in the Atacama desert, with average yearly rainfall of less than three millimeters.

The city is dominated by El Morro, a large hill right next to the port. Atop the hill is a military museum, and a large statue of Jesus, dedicated to peace. Arica once belonged to Peru, and was ceded to Chile in the War of the Pacific, a subject of some sensitivity to Peruvians even today. One of the stipulations of the peace treaty called for this statue to be erected on this spot, with one arm outstretched to Chile and one to Peru.

We once again had a bus tour here, which included a visit to the top of El Morro, along with the site of some geoglyphs (large icons drawn onto hillsides with contrasting rocks), and a museum containing relatively recently discovered mummies as well as other native artifacts.



At the geoglyph site, we also had an up-close and personal visit with an alpaca that was fetching tips for an enterprising local.



Our tour ended with a visit to the local cathedral, which was designed by Gustave Eiffel (of Tower and Liberty fame), prefabricated in Europe, and erected on the site. It turned out, unsurprisingly, to be identical to the church of the same provenance that we had visited in Santa Rosalia, Mexico.

I also had a chance to walk the broad paseo, or pedestrian plaza, downtown. The entire town was hopping, as our visit just happened to coincide with that of the Chilean president, in town to bestow upon the city a status as its own "region," Region XV, a status roughly akin to statehood. Consequently, the day was declared a holiday, and the entire population, it seemed, was downtown to witness the presidential speech and the attendant parade and other festivities. It lent quite a festive atmosphere to our visit.

Puerto General San Martin, Peru

After yet another full day at sea, we docked at a pier quite literally in the middle of nowhere. Puerto General San Martin (named after a general, not a saint) is a deepwater port surrounded by desolate and forbidding landscape. The nearest city of any size, Pisco, is 45 minutes away. We opted to skip Pisco, and instead took another wildlife cruise, which departed from the small hamlet of Paracas, a 20 minute drive around the bay from our berth. Ironically, the speedboats passed within a hundred yards of Golden Princess on their way to our destination, Islas Ballestas.

Islas Ballestas is sometimes known as a poor-man's Galapagos. We saw thousands of cormorants -- guanico, common, and red-footed -- as well as Inca terns and boobies (but not the blue-footed kind). We also saw hundreds of sea lions, including a large beach full of nursing young. We even saw penguins, even though we were now in the tropics and thought we had seen our last pengin in Punta Arenas. The Humbolt penguin is tropical and makes its home here. The islands are entirely covered in guano, which is commercially harvested under government supervision every three years or so.



Tourists in their warm-weather plumage



Inca terns



Flat top of this island is black with thousands of cormorants.



Humboldt penguins



Sea lion up close and personal



Sea lion nursery

On the way out to the islands we saw the candelabra geoglyph, a rock carving some 180 meters tall and 55 meters wide of unknown age and origin, resembling a candelabra.



Callao/Lima, Peru

Our last call in Peru was the port of Callao, now seamlessly intertwined with Lima. We did not take a tour here, opting instead to travel by taxi to a handful of interesting spots. We saw the high-rent district, Miraflores, complete with high-end shopping mall, the Larco Mar, that was indistinguishable from any high-end mall in the US. Right down to the branded restaurants, including Hooters. We also stopped at Plaza San Martin (again, named for the general), and walked along a broad paseo lined with shops. This neighborhood caters to visitors, but the Peruvian kind, not us. We did muddle our way through buying some aspirin in a local pharmacy, and sampled Inka Kola, a local soft drink that gave Coke such a run for its money that Nestle took notice and bought them out. It's yellow in color, with a flavor that I can't possibly describe here.




Zoom in to see Sean waving from our balcony, second row down, just port of midships.

This was an overnight stop for us, mostly to wait for the return of a handful of passengers that opted for the three-day trip to Machu Pichu. We mostly stayed on board after our three-hour jaunt into town. Apparently, some of the crew took shore leave after their long work day was over, and partied well into the night. Our waiter was among them, and was struggling through the day when we saw him at dinner time.

On to Ecuador

At this writing, we are at sea, en route to Manta, Ecuador. After that, we will have a line crossing ceremony, whereupon Louise and I will trade our pollywog status for that of shellback after some as-yet unknown form of hazing. But, hey, I lived through the Tina Turner contest. Stay tuned.

Bienvenidos a Buenos Aires

We are slowly recovering from our jet lag in BA. Just a few short minutes to post here from a local internet cafe, so I'll just make a couple of quick observations:



BA is eerily similar to New York. It's almost as large, with around eight million people, but I'm talking about look-and-feel. The architecture and conditions in the outlying districts remind me more of the Bronx than anyplace else in the states. Downtown is a bit more like a smaller US city, with the highrises a bit shorter and more spread out.


Sean at a Buenos Aires internet cafe


There is a striking absence of Japanese cars. All the cars here are European brands: Peugot, Renault, Fiat, Mercedes. I have not seen a single Toyota, for example. Honda is definitely here, in the form of motorcycles and scooters, but no cars. Oddly, we've seen a number of Honda step-throughs that are more motorcycle than scooter, with a foot shifter and a foot brake in the usual places, and large-diameter wheels. I'm a bit envious -- they don't sell these in the states.



Our hotel is well-situated, across the plaza from the main train station ("Retiro") and just a few blocks from the pier. Right in front of our window is the Torre de los ingleses, or Englishmen's Tower (renamed after the Falklands war, but that's what everyone still calls it).



Last night we had a most excellent dinner at a local establishment right across the street, Las Nazarenas. Argentina is no place for a vegetarian: the main fare was beef, and lots of it. We split three dishes among four of us, and still some meat ended up going to the dogs (we hope) afterwards.



This afternoon, we will take a tour involving a short cruise up the river on a motor launch, and a train ride. Tomorrow morning, we will try to do a city tour before embarking our ship.

Two to Tango

We are off to Buenos Aires, starting point for our South America cruise. Our bags are packed, the pets are safely ensconced at various friends' houses, and Odyssey is buttoned up and secure in the pre-arranged storage location, which, as usual, we are not disclosing here in the blog (so no map link today).



Last night, we emptied the fridge for the first time ever -- what a chore. And dinner consisted of the last steaks in the freezer and whatever veggies we had left. All in all, we didn't have to throw too many things away. As our good friend Charles posted here in the comments, it's probably good to do this every so often anyway. We did find a mustard jar that had gone to the dark side...



In a few minutes we will head off to the airport in the very same car we rented there a week ago. Having learned our lesson the hard way in Atlanta, we did make certain to keep all the pets crated while shuttling them around: they hit us with a pet cleaning charge the last time we did this.



Our cruise does not actually depart until Thursday, but it will take us until about this time tomorrow morning to get to Buenos Aires, and we'll need the other two nights to get over the jet lag. Besides being nearly an eleven hour flight (and that doesn't count the domestic leg from here to Dallas, and the layover), Argentina is five hours ahead of us here in California. I do hope we are "with it" enough in those two days to see some of the sights -- I have an aunt from there who was kind enough to send us a list (thanks, Aunt Graciella!).



Our cruise itinerary will take us from Argentina to Uruguay, the Falklands, around the Horn, back to Tierra Del Fuego and Punta Arenas, then up the coast of Chile. In Valparaiso, we technically change from one cruise to another on the same vessel, and we will change cabins (we took pot luck, so our cabin on the second leg is not even assigned yet). That leg will take us the rest of the way north along the west coast, all the way to San Francisco, by way of Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, and finally, our old friend the Mexican Riviera.



Between now and our return, I expect our access to the internet to be sporadic and possibly low-speed. We will make a best effort to check email every few days, but will not be answering any but the most urgent until we return. Also, I may not have a chance to update the blog at all. Our cell phones will be off and out of service after we leave Dallas tonight, and I don't expect to even be able to check voice mail until we return.



In other news, we had a visit Saturday from long-time blog reader "Spyderman." Unfortunately, we were racing out the door for another appointment, and so it was a very brief encounter. Hopefully, our paths will cross again at a time when we are not so rushed.



See you all mid-April!

Getting squared away

We are at the Elks lodge in San Jose, California (map), a frequent stopping point for us when we are in the bay area. And, even though we were just in the bay area a couple months ago, we are here again because, as I wrote at the end of January, we will be taking a cruise from South America that ends here. Between now and our departure, we are taking the opportunity to get some projects done, and get the coach squared away for its longest-ever lay-up since we hit the road 30 months ago.

The secure storage facility we will be using does not provide power, so, as usual, everything will be powered down except for critical loads such as the alarm system. Our new solar panels should take care of keeping the batteries topped up and the alarms and monitors running. A big question mark is the fridge. On past jaunts away from the bus, we've either been plugged in, or we've been gone only a week or so, which is within the capability of the batteries alone to run the refrigerator as well as the other items.

This time will be different, in that we will be gone too long for the batteries to do all that work without help. One option is to leave the generator on Automatic, which will let it start as needed to charge the batteries if the solar does not keep up. The other option is to empty the fridge for the first time in two and a half years, and shut it down for the duration. I'm leaning towards this latter option, since there is a risk involved any time an engine starts and stops unattended.

One of the projects I am hammering through right now is the full checklist for a long lay-up. We've had the idea all along that we might have to do this, even including such features in the coach as remote disconnects for the chassis batteries. It's just that, until now, we've never had to actually execute such a plan.

We did manage to make suitable arrangements for the pets, with the dog going to one set of friends, the fish tank going to another, and the cats going to an acquaintance who is in the cat rescue business. We hope the arrangements for all of them will be a bit less stressful on them than the usual kennel fare. Healthier, too, we would figure.

Speaking of projects, this has been a frustrating week on the vendor front. I've been arguing all week with the glass insurer about getting the window replaced. They really have no clue what they are dealing with, and can't understand why we can't just drive in to Bob's Auto Glass and get this done. By the end of last week, I think I had them convinced that the work had to be done by a qualified bus garage, and the glass had to come from Neopart. But this week, they called back and insisted that Safe-Lite was going to do the work, just as soon as they could find the glass. It's been two days, and they still have not gotten back to me with a schedule or a shop. Also, you may recall, our upper glass was put in by an automotive glass shop, with disastrous results. If Safe-Lite is going to do this, we're going to hover over them and supervise, to make sure they do it right.

The other vendor I've been fighting is Verizon Wireless. Over a month ago, Louise ordered herself a new phone, responding to a promotional email that said she qualified for a discounted replacement (we are long-time customers). Well, fine, she ordered it on-line, and eventually got a message from Verizon saying it had shipped, and we've been waiting for it to show up in one of our recent mail drops. After a month with no phone, we went back on-line to check on it, and followed a link over to FedEx with the tracking number.

According to FedEx, Verizon got a tracking number assigned and sent over billing information, but never actually shipped a package. Louise asked me to take care of it, so I called Verizon.

That was my first mistake: they won't do squat without the subscriber's permission (which makes sense), so they had to call Louise (who was out shopping) to verify that I could do this. Fine, but then they insisted on keeping her on the line during the whole process, which took 40 minutes (really)!!!

Silly me -- I thought I was just going to explain that they neglected to ship the item, and they were just going to type a few keystrokes and re-send the order. But nooooo.... First, they told us that they shipped the item, and it was returned to them (I later called FedEx and verified that, no, the item never made it into the FedEx system). Then they strongly implied that this was somehow our fault, specifically that there was no one "home" to sign for it.

Now, I've been doing business with package services for years, and I know for a fact that they try at least twice and usually three times to get a signature, they always make contact with the recipient by leaving a note, and they update the package status on the website with each delivery attempt. Furthermore, our mailing address is a mail-receiving service, which is always staffed during business hours. FedEx, UPS, etc. know this -- it's not really possible for a FedEx driver to show up at PostNet and decide "oh, I guess they're not home -- let's return this to sender."

I tried to explain this to Ms. Customer-Disservice at Verizon, but she was having none of it. Verizon could not possibly have made any kind of mistake -- the problem must have been at the customer end. OK, so can they just re-send it?

No, of course not. We need to completely re-do the order, from scratch. On the phone, where what took five minutes on the web mushroomed into 40. Oh, and, by the way, the price on that phone has increased, do you still want it? I hit the roof -- this has got to be the worst customer service I have ever experienced in the business, and I've been in the telecommunications industry for a long time. It reminded me of that snippet that made the rounds a while back, of some guy who taped his call to AOL to terminate his service (Google it -- it's hilarious and sobering at the same time).

I have to say that, if Verizon's network wasn't so vastly superior to every other carrier out there (and/or our no-longer-available National Single Rate plan was available elsewhere), this call would have been the last straw and I would have dropped our Verizon service right then and there. But I sucked it up and finished the process -- after supervisor intervention, we got the original price and the phone re-ordered. Once we have it in hand, I will be sending a formal complaint to Verizon about their crappy customer service in general, and in particular about one Cheyenne Sgheiza, who just doesn't get it that even big companies make mistakes and maybe sometimes, the customer just happens to be right (I have no illusions that anyone still believes the customer is always right).

In stark contrast, FedEx (who knows where its bread gets buttered) was extremely accommodating in researching the issue. After confirming what I already knew from the web site, they put me on hold while they called the originating center to find out if any items had come from Verizon with unreadable bar codes or other possible explanations for the package bouncing back to Verizon from FedEx without capturing tracking status. Then the two of us had a good laugh about Verizon incompetence and how they had tried to blame the customer for a shipping problem that we both knew was on their end.

OK, I'm done ranting for now. I think I'll have another cup of coffee...

Bleaky day in King City

We are in King City, California, at the San Lorenzo County Park (map). We stopped briefly yesterday at Delaney & Ahlf, who were too busy to work on the ECM. Tim Ahlf did agree to make some calls to Detroit Diesel to see if he could get any advice on our particular symptom, and I hope to hear back from him next week.

I thought about stopping at Valley Power just down the street, but we were done with Bakersfield and so we just continued on down the Rosedale Highway all the way to CA-33. We decided to jump over to 101 on 46, rather than slog up the central valley, and we ended up here, in King City. This is a nice park, although a little too commercial-RV-park for us. The place is mostly empty, though, so it was peaceful and quiet. This morning, it's been raining on and off, and even hailed for a short while.

We will leave in just a few minutes for San Jose, by way of Gilroy (where we will make a quick outlet-shopping stop, as we both need a few items for our upcoming cruise).

On another note, yesterday's post here was "rejected" by Blogger, who claimed some sort of system problem. I tried three times before giving up, with no results. Of course, I learned only later that all three tries did ultimately post, so apologies to anyone who got three of yesterday's update in their RSS feed.

Bakersfield

We left Death Valley yesterday, following our usual route through Trona and the Searles Valley. It is a steep climb out of the park on CA 190, and we plugged up the hill at somewhat less than 40mph. Coming down the other side was the opposite story, and we had to disengage the retarder several times due to transmission fluid overtemp warnings.

The Panamints had a light dusting of snow on top from a storm on Monday, and they were spectacularly beautiful as we drove past them.

We stopped for the night in a parking lot adjacent to the motel here in Bakersfield where our friends were staying on their route home (map). We had a nice dinner with them at a nearby Mexican restaurant.

This morning we will head over to local Detroit Diesel shop Delaney & Ahlf, to have the ECM looked at again. We have no appointment, so it's hard to say how long we will be here.

Sunset at Sunset

We are at the Sunset campground in Death Valley National Park (map). This is our first time in this spot, since our preferred digs over at the Furnace Creek campground were sold out for the holiday weekend. It is essentially a large dirt lot, with paved roadways and some concrete parking bumpers to delineate the "spaces." We took a nice end space close to the main road, for easy access across the street to Furnace Creek Ranch, where our friends are staying.

We arrived here Thursday, and had a nice quiet dinner at the Furnace Creek Inn. We rode the little scooter up the hill, and the best it could do with both of us aboard was about 25 or so. But we hit 40 on the way back down!

Our plan was to host a dinner here for everyone tonight, but it turns out several people were planning to ride over to Death Valley Junction to take in the show at the Amargosa Opera House. So by consensus of the group, we did dinner here last night instead. Louise made a big pot of pasta and a large salad, and I made a cherry sauce for the store-bought cheescake we had for dessert. Our friends Dale and Joan brought some flank steak and veggies to grill as well, but the regulations in this campground precluded them from using the Weber they brought with them. Dale was able to squeeze everything on to our little gas grill by staging it in waves, so all worked out in the end.

Dinner was quite tasty, and folks hung around chatting for a good hour or so afterwards. We seemed to end up with all the leftovers (including most of the beer we bought -- not sure how that happened), and cleaning everything up took the better part of another hour. Looks like we're set for dinner now for another week (thanks, Dale and Joan!).

We may try to catch the show ourselves tonight, if there are still tickets left. And tomorrow night we have a group reservation for dinner at the Inn again. We're planning on staying in this spot until Tuesday morning, when we will head over to Bakersfield, where I hope to have the engine ECM looked at again.

Speaking of the ongoing problems, we have once again cracked our lower windshield, a much more pressing matter than the upper one since we are behind it while driving. Ironically, we would not be dealing with a full crack and a windshield replacement right now, had it not been for the insurance policy on it. Allow me to explain:

As you may recall, Tuesday morning found us at Government Wash in the Lake Mead Recreation Area. Tuesday afternoon, we drove from there to Las Vegas, by way of Lake Mead Boulevard, state route 147. This road is well paved, with a limit of 55mph, and a few patches of construction. Apparently, 55 was not fast enough for some folks, and we were passed regularly by a variety of vehicles. Well, at some point a full-size pickup truck whizzed past us and we heard a thwack like a rock striking the glass, but we didn't see it fly or hit. In fact, to Louise, it sounded like it maybe hit the plastic bodywork below the glass. Absolutely no damage was visible from inside the cockpit.

When we stopped for the night in Las Vegas, we looked over the windshield from the outside, but did not see anything unusual. Perhaps it was the lighting condition at that time. The next day, though, we saw a clear "volcano" chip, less than dime-sized, at the very top of the windshield, where it would not be visible from the inside.

We immediately called the insurance carrier that underwrites our glass policy, which came with the fancy Diamon-Fusion coating we bought for the windshield back in August of '05. I explained very carefully to the call-taker that the windshield was hard to replace, and that we really, really wanted them to get the chip filled right away, to keep it from spreading. My pleas were completely lost on her: she repeated the corporate mantra that it takes 24 to 48 hours for them to respond to a glass repair. Now mind you, we were in Las Vegas in the middle of the day in the middle of the work week. We could easily have just driven over to any convenient glass repair and had this done. But we can do nothing until they approve it, and they have a process to follow.

After reminding the call-taker of the urgency, I informed her that we would be heading to Pahrump, and perhaps they could get someone to look at it there without further delay.

We drove to Pahrump without incident, and when we retired on Wednesday night, the chip was stable and still the size of a dime. I had not heard anything further from the insurer, Nations Auto Club, or their glass contractor, Safelite. Too bad, really, because once again, we could simply have had this chip filled in Pahrump on Wednesday. Of course, we awoke Thursday morning to an 11" long crack, emanating from what had been a small chip just the day before.

I called Nations back and informed them of the further damage, and that they now needed to get a new windshield on order. Of course, these folks haven't the first clue what this is going to involve -- in their minds, we're just going to drive in to a Safelite facility, and they are going to order a stock piece of aftermarket glass from a catalog, and just pop it on in. I spent an hour Thursday afternoon trying to explain the glass replacement process on a German-built Neoplan to various Nations and Safelite people. They are still clueless. Nevertheless, they finally got off their duffs long enough to send us over to Action Auto Glass in Pahrump (gee, why couldn't they do that one day sooner?) to have it looked at. (They will not authorize a replacement until a glass repair professional has said it is irreparable.)

Now it is hurry-up-and-wait, with the crack growing longer all the while. When they finally figure out how much the glass will cost, they will need to get several layers of management involved -- and they still won't understand that automotive glass shops can't do this work (after all, it was two different automotive glass shops that screwed up the installation of our upstairs glass, which now needs to be replaced due to improper installation techniques).

Back when we bought the Diamon-Fusion coating, before we knew they were just going to turn around and buy a third-party insurance policy, we had very carefully explained to the salesman what would be involved should the windshield ever break. He acknowledged everything we told him, and was insistent that we would have no problem with any claims under the warranty. So we shall see now how well they respond.

In the meantime, the coach will be laid up for a month anyway while we are cruising South America. Fortuitous, since the glass will likely have to come from Germany, typically a two- to three-month lead time. We'll also need to find someone who can install it, which will be tricky. If we can swing it, we will try to line this up to coincide with the upper windshield replacement, somewhere around Nashville.

On Tuesday, I will start calling around again to make sure the wheels are in motion.

Irony Department

Sean's discussion about the broken windshield reminds me that there is a discussion on the Bus Nuts Online bulletin board where several folks advised us to keep Odyssey on the paved road if we want to avoid damage. This was in response to Sean's request for recommendations for a welding shop to repair the tailpipe after our Big Puddle episode.

I will point out that the repair to the exhaust was about $500. Repairing the windshield, which was damaged while driving at the speed limit on a paved state highway in dry sunny weather, will be on the order of $3000. Because we have insurance, we won't be out of pocket that amount, but we know the cost because we replaced the windshield in November 2005. It was broken in almost identical circumstances: a rock thrown up on a paved Interstate in good weather.

So, we'll be increasing our driving time on unpaved roads as part of our cost reduction plan.

Photo catch-up day

Our free campsite at Government Wash on Lake Mead.

 

Reader Jim requested some pictures of the BLM free camping area near Lake Mead. These are of the Government Wash area. It is criss-crossed with dirt roads and lots of flat spots to park a rig. The water is quite a ways down from the bluffs, but an easy hike. We saw RVs of all stripes out here, about 1/2 mile from where the pavement ends on Government Wash Road.

 
 
  

Pahrump

We are at Terrible's Town Casino in Pahrump (map). There are actually several casinos here in town, but most either have their own for-fee RV park, or else don't allow rigs to spend the night. Terrible's has a big lot and is welcoming, even though they do have another casino several miles out of town (the "Lakeside") that has an RV park.

In any case, it was convenient and peaceful, with about a dozen rigs scattered around the lot. We did try to give them some business by going in to buy dinner, but there was a 2.5 hour wait for a table, owing to Valentine's Day. We ate at home.

We stopped here because we had our mail sent to the post office in town. That turned out to be next to an Ace Hardware, which had a few things I needed, including a 12' extension ladder that collapses down to 2'. We also loaded up on groceries here in town -- we're hosting a dinner for about a dozen while we are in Death Valley.

Tonight we'll be in the park, and we have our fingers crossed for a late cancellation that will get us in to the Furnace Creek campground.

We can see Paris from here...

We are urban stealth boondocking on the Las Vegas strip (map). As I've written here before, it's possible to do this if one is discreet, even though it is widely reported to be impossible, even in guidebooks like Casino Camping. This is our first attempt at it, though, as the last two times we came through, we stayed in commercial parks (the Silverton, now defunct, and the Oasis). Having to take a shuttle bus to get to the strip, and being chained to its schedule, was a pain, and for one night of passing through, we just wanted to be able to walk to dinner.

We had actually planned to park in the back lot of the Tropicana, next door to the old San Remo (now Hooters Casino), a location that has been known to be accommodating in the past. Yesterday morning, though, we met our "neighbors" at Government Wash, Richard and Susan, who suggested this spot. They were very nice folks, living in their Foretravel. Richard had actually come over the previous evening, seeing our engine doors open, to ask if we were having any trouble or needed any help. I was up to my arms in the genny bay trying to change the oil, a messy, frustrating process that was making me cranky (topped off by the fact that the fancy drain valve I bought to simplify the process in the future turned out to be the wrong size).

This lot, which doubles as a through street between Flamingo Avenue and Harmon Street, actually belongs to Bally's and Paris Las Vegas, which, like the Flamingo and Caesar's Palace across the street, are part of the Harrah's empire. There was one other rig already here, and several semis parked for the night. We were very self conscious and tried not to attract any attention, but Odyssey does that all on her own. As we left the coach to walk to dinner, one of the armed Bally's security officers, on a bicycle, came over to us. He asked all the usual questions about the bus (is that a two-story?), and where we were headed, and we asked if it was OK to park there for the night. We got a pleasant "yes" and directions on how to get into the casino from the back lot (not obvious). No guarantees for the future, of course, but at least this time, Bally's security was RV-friendly.

We had a very nice dinner (if lackluster service) at Venuto, an Italian-themed restaurant in the Flamingo. I stayed at the Flamingo on my first trip to Las Vegas, some 35+ years ago. Back then, the joint still held vestiges of the place Bugsy Siegel opened in the middle of the desert, and there was nothing else out here except for Caesar's Palace across the street. Bugsy wouldn't be able to even find the place, let alone recognize it, today. The landscaped courtyard was the only thing I found even vaguely familiar.

Our plans to wander the strip a bit, do some people watching, and maybe see the pirate spectacle in front of TI (which has been completely revised to a more adult theme from when we last saw it a few years ago) were thwarted by the weather -- it was cold and damp when we came out of dinner, and it started raining shortly thereafter. So we just spent a quiet night at home.

It's sunny and pleasant this morning, so maybe we'll wander around a bit before we head out. Our destination today is Pahrump, just a couple hours west of here and about the half-way point to Death Valley. Our mail should be waiting for us there, under general delivery, and we'll need to stock up on groceries for our Death Valley stay.

A good dam drive

We are at Government Wash (map), a free boondocking area in Lake Mead National Recreation Area. We're just one road over from where we stayed two years ago (almost to the day). Almost everything I wrote back then is still applicable today -- the approach to the dam was impressive, all the Wackenhut people needed to eyeball Odyssey, we are staying on what ought to the the shore, except the lake is even lower than it was then, and we can see the glow of Las Vegas and the vertical beam of light from the Luxor. About the only thing different was that the dam was much quieter, since we (deliberately) crossed on a weekday.

Yesterday we had a relaxing drive from our quiet BLM site to Kingman, where we stopped for more diesel and water at Flying-J, and to pick up oil and a filter for the genny at Napa. By 2:00 we were at our friends' house, about ten miles north of town (map).

I spent about an hour playing around with his Pro-Link, trying to get meaningful information out of our ECM. I had to jury-rig the wiring, since he did not have the adapter for my diagnostic connector, but, after some fiddling, we got it to read. Unfortunately, his Pro-Link turns out to have a problem, in that it would hang periodically for no reason. Sometimes I could get three or four keystrokes in before it would hang up, other times I could get maybe a dozen (and sometimes none at all). Each time I would have to power-cycle it and start over.

I copied down as much information as I could, and I did make some progress. Peter learned something too, which is that his Pro-Link is faulty. It had been doing the same thing to him on his rig, but the Pro-Link people were telling him that the wiring in his rig was faulty. Odyssey was the first independent confirmation that it was the Pro-Link that was to blame.

There are a couple of setting screens that I might have tried fiddling with on our ECM, but I was not comfortable writing ECM data with the Pro-Link acting up. So I gave up after an hour or so, and we spent the rest of the afternoon kicking tires and telling lies, as they say in motorsports circles. They were very gracious to let us park in their spacious driveway for the night, and also to drive us into town where we all had a nice dinner.

We left this morning around 11 or so, leaving enough time for the detour in case the Wackenhuts decided to turn us around. With no such problem, we arrived here with plenty of daylight remaining, and managed to get the generator oil changed before it got too cold and windy to do much else. Tomorrow, we will pressure-wash the coach, relax a bit in this lovely location, and then head in to Las Vegas for a night.

Out of Phoenix

As Louise has already written, we are parked on some empty BLM land (map), less than a mile from a $10-a-night BLM campground, which appears 80-90% full. We are just off US93, between Wickenburg and Wikieup (look those up on Wikipedia).

We did, indeed, buy a scooter today. We almost bought the leftover '05, but they sold us an '07 for just $200 more. In researching the bikes on the 'net last night, we learned that some performance improvements had been made in '06 (bigger carb, different ECM) that increased top speed by about 5mph (from just over 37 to just under 43), and the '07 was also a better color for us. Between those factors and the slight improvement in resale value by being two model years "younger," the pair of C-notes seemed worthwhile.

So we are the proud owners of a 2007 Honda Metropolitan 49cc scooter, color blue and white (officially, "Sapphire").

It fit quite easily in the bay, being (without mirrors) a good inch and a half lower than the lowest point in the bay ceiling. Despite it being much smaller than the Suzuki which previously occupied that spot, it is enough different that we had to completely re-engineer how everything else, particularly the two bicycles, went into the bay. Completing the paperwork, setup, and walk-through at the dealer took nearly two hours, and getting the bay loaded almost again that long. It was well past two in the afternoon when we finally left North Valley Motorsports.

Tomorrow, we will head through Kingman, stopping just the other side to hook up with fellow conversion enthusiast Peter Broadribb, who has generously offered use of his Pro-Link. I am hoping to gather enough information to figure out why I am not getting mileage data on my VMS engine display, or at least enough to get help from SilverLeaf with it. We are getting speed data now, for the first time in three years, and I had hoped that the VMS would simply provide the mileage numbers from speed and time figures. The engine information display also shows zero miles and zero hours on the totals stored in the ECM.

Burro Creek boondocking

A lovely free campsite on BLM land off US 93. A mile further down this road is a developed BLM campground called Burro Creek which has water and a dump station. Since we need neither, and the campground is fairly full, why pay to park right next to someone else?

 

Scooter fever

We finished up yesterday afternoon at All Coach and Truck Repair. They did a pretty good job of bending our pretzeled exhaust back into shape, and making a new heat shield for under the bumper, to replace the one we folded in half. They also used their Pro-Link to re-enable our VSS signal. Total bill was $500, and they were very professional and accommodating.

We did not want to overstay our welcome in their parking lot, but it was also late in the day, so we just boogied over to Casino Arizona (map) a dozen miles to the east, where we had spent several days a couple years ago. We had a nice dinner in the buffet, which was as good as we remembered. And, on the way over, our speed readout was working perfectly, so my fix in Tucson was dead on. Now if only I can figure out why the mileage display is not working...

Today we stopped by "our" restaurant downtown, which is still under construction at the corner of First Avenue and Van Buren Street. We're looking forward to the opening, and hopefully more success than the Tempe location, which closed its doors last year. With luck, the new store should be open by the beginning of April.

Tonight we are parked in a dirt lot next to a Honda motorcycle dealership (map). After much reflection, we've decided to add a 50cc step-through as a "replacement" for Louise's motorcycle, which is still in Houston. I put that word in quotes, because this is something of an experiment: if it doesn't work, the step-through will get sold, but, if it does, we'll get Penelope running again when next we are in Houston, and put her up for sale.

The idea here is that we don't use the motorcycles as much as we'd like, in part because of how much effort it takes to unload them from the bay, and store them again when we are ready to leave. In fact, we have a three-day minimum rule: unless it's an emergency, the bikes don't come out unless we are staying someplace for at least three days. So we are hoping that a 165-lb step-through with a low center of gravity will be enough easier to unload and load, compared to the 365-lb Suzukis, that we will take it out and use it more frequently. Also, it takes both of us to load the Suzis, whereas either one of us should be able to single-hand a scooter. And the final kicker, and the reason we are looking only at less-than-50cc models, is that we were told by Mexico's Banjercito that we can bring in a 50cc scooter in addition to both the bus and the full-size motorcycle, which would have averted the situation that left us one bike short in the first place.

We've been doing a bit of research, and one of the brands we had been leaning towards was Kymco, a Taiwanese manufacturer who sells scooters and some quads here under their own brand, and who has been OEMing small quads for all the major powersports labels as well. Kymco is one of the few step-throughs with both large-diameter wheels (a safety issue) and deliberate saddle space and footpegs for a passenger. So after our restaurant visit, we hauled up here to north Phoenix to visit the one and only Kymco dealer in town, and the largest in the state: AZ Desert Sports.

We test-drove and fell in love with their Agility 50 model, which has a driver backrest that flips down to become a passenger seat, really a perfect setup for how we would use the bike. Alas, it turned out to be two inches too tall to fit in the bay. We even spent a good hour with Gary, the shop's owner, and the other Gary, the mechanic, noodling through ways to lower the bike, or cut down the bodywork, etc.. None of the solutions was particularly easy or appealing. It was really very hard for us to walk away, especially after all the work the two Gary's had done to try to accommodate us.

Which brings us here, just a half mile away, to Northern Valley Motorsports, the Honda Dealer. Honda has two scooters that would work for us, the Ruckus and the Metropolitan. The Metro is lighter, and has that classic Vespa-esque styling, and we are leaning toward that model. Plus, they have a leftover '05 on deep discount. We arrived here just before closing, though, with no time to give it a test-fit into the bay. So they are graciously allowing us to spend the night here in their overflow lot, and we'll give it a try in the morning.

It remains to be seen whether we drive away from here with a scooter on board. In part, it will depend on whether it fits in the bay. It will also depend on how well the dealer will sharpen his pencil on the price.

Whatever the outcome, from here we will head northwest on US93 to Kingman, and on to Hoover Dam and Las Vegas. We will stop just north of Kingman to visit with a fellow bus conversion enthusiast, who happens to have a Pro-Link and is willing to help troubleshoot the remaining data issues with our DDEC ECM.

In for post-puddle repairs.

We are at All Coach and Truck Repair, a bus garage in Phoenix (map). We had an uneventful drive up from Beaudry in Tucson, with stops to fill the fuel tank (the Flying J in Eloy had the cheapest fuel we will see until we leave California in April) and stock up on groceries.

Barry from All Coach took a look at the exhaust, and seems confident they can repair the damage in short order. They also have a Pro-Link, and we will have them re-enable our VSS to see if my repairs in Tucson will have fixed that problem. And, while we're at it, we will have them look at our front-end shimmy and maybe the hubs as well.

I rerouted at least part of the TPS sensor return wire while we were in Tucson, and we experienced no throttle drop-out on the drive up, so I am hopeful we have that problem licked. (It was intermittent, so there is really no telling.) I also rebuilt the left front ride-height valve while we were there, which was leaking, and that seems to have done the trick.

We are in the lot for the night, among a fleet of Prevost tour coaches that operate out of this location. A limo company also shares the lot, with a fleet of super-stretch Hummer H2's. They will start on us tomorrow morning at 7am (ugh).

After the exhaust "incident," I posted a request for shop recommendations on a couple of the bus conversion bulletin boards, which is how we ended up here (thanks, Sammy!). These boards are great resources, and I spent a lot of time there while we were converting Odyssey. That being said, my post prompted a flurry of criticism for taking our coach on dirt roads and fording streams.

To which I say: pound sand. We didn't build this thing so that we could see an endless ribbon of Interstate, countless Wal-Mart parking lots, and a stream of identical cheek-by-jowl RV parks with a panorama of Fleetwoods and Winnebagos as far as the eye can see (no offense meant to those who drive either of those brands). We built it to see the entire country, much of which is not accessible via paved roads.

Now, one could argue that we should have started with something more off-road-worthy, such as the Oshkosh airport crash tender that was the foundation for Draco, the vehicle whose picture Louise posted here a week ago. But everything is a compromise, and we chose a coach that had the interior space and physical layout that suited our full-timing needs, understanding that it would place some strict limits on where we could venture.

Part of the compromise that we made was knowing that we would take Odyssey wherever she could physically go, and that there would be a price to pay for that in wear and tear (and, sometimes, towing).

I guess this sums it up:

Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in one pretty and well preserved piece, but to skid across the line broadside, thoroughly used up, worn out, leaking oil, shouting GERONIMO! -- Bill McKenna

When Blogs Collide

We just had a visit from Rich Luhr, the editor of a nifty magazine called Airstream Life. He is camped not far away from us here at Beaudry RV and noticed our wifi signal ID, which is "Odyssey." We chatted only briefly as we're trying to get an early start toward Phoenix this morning.

Rich keeps his own blog, Tour of America, which has a link back to us. I (Louise) read his blog, he reads ours. We both read Tioga and George. This blogging-fulltiming world is rather small. What Rich may not know is that in a previous life, I was also a publisher (I worked for, then owned, then sold Information Publications,) so the universe just shrank even further!

We hope to run into Rich again on the road and have more of a chance to trade stories.

The Big Puddle

As Sean promised in the last post, here is a short video of Odyssey plunging through a small water crossing in the Coronado National Forest. Click here or on the photo below to launch the video. (Having trouble seeing our videos? Try accessing them directly on the Blip.tv site by clicking here. The videos are available in other formats there. Apple users may want to try the Flash Video format.)



If you listen closely toward the end of the video, you can hear a metallic scraping, which is the sound of the exhaust outlet hitting the mud. We think this is the result of the bus "porpoising" as Sean hits the brakes. The wall of water completely blocked his view out the windshield and there were three cars waiting to ford the stream, so braking seemed like a good idea. Otherwise, gently coasting to a stop would have been the best plan. Here is the formerly rectangular sheet metal:



And here is one of the shattered halogen headlight bulbs. Hot light + cold water, not a good combination.

 

Goodbye, Mexico

We made it out of the forest yesterday without getting stuck, but not without incident. The giant puddle that we powered through on our way in inflicted some casualties -- as it turns out, in both directions.

Whenever we get ready to pull up stakes and leave a spot, even if it was just overnight in a parking lot, I start up the engine, turn on the exterior lights and flashers, and do a walk-around inspection. I'm looking for unsecured items or doors, tire tread or sidewall damage, leaking fluids, inoperative lights, and that sort of thing.

As I did my walk-around yesterday, I noticed both headlamps were out. Oddly, selecting high beams caused both to come on briefly and quickly flicker out. I guessed it had something to do with crossing the puddle on the way in, but we were anxious to make it back out in the warmth of mid-day, and give ourselves plenty of daylight if we had a problem, so we just made a note of the headlight problem, turned them off, and proceeded to leave.

When we arrived back at the puddle, I selected my path though, brought Odyssey all the way up on the air bags, and got ready to hustle through again. Louise got out to double-check the puddle depth, spot for me, and, given how things went the first time, video the experience for posterity. The spotting part turned out to be necessary: she had to motion to some oncoming traffic to stop well short of the puddle, so I would have room to clear on the other side.

I got my running start and plowed through again, and all seemed fine as I stopped alongside an appreciative audience. When Louise caught up to me, though, she had bad news: as I powered out and away from her, she noticed we had pretzeled the tail pipe. She clambered aboard and we drove a short way down the road to a spot wide enough to stop comfortably for an inspection.

Sure enough, Odyssey's lower angle-of-departure compared to her angle-of-approach, combined with the different geometry of the wash's banks, meant that the rear had slammed down onto the bank harder in this direction. I can't tell if we just hit the sand, or if there was an inopportune rock at that spot in the puddle, but the last foot of the weird, rectangular exhaust pipe was folded back on itself (for reasons unclear to me, the last foot has always been physically separate from the rest of the system) and hanging down below the bumper by one forlorn screw. Worse, the other two feet of heavy-gauge duct was crushed, and I could not spread it open with my crow bar.

There looked to be enough pathways through the flattened mess for some exhaust to escape, so we felt we could continue on with a keen eye on the engine gauges, and an easy foot on the throttle. Removing the loosely hanging section was a different problem: with the metal folded on itself, there was no access to the remaining screw. We ended up cutting through it with our two foot bolt cutters.

We made it the rest of the way down the washboard road without further mishap, having more thoroughly secured everything than we had on the ride out. Back on the freeway heading towards Tucson, though, we kept hearing a rattle or flapping noise, and, after pulling over twice, I noticed that one of the plastic trim pieces that constitute Odyssey's front lower bodywork was loose. It's been held on, on one side, by only one bolt for some time now, and either the puddle or the washboard caused the riv-nut holding the bolt in to come out completely. I secured the loose side with gaffer's tape, and we proceeded to Beaudry RV in Tucson, in whose large RV park we hoped to lay up for a day or two to lick our wounds.

It turns out the the enormous Tucson Gem Show was still in progress, and Beaudry RV Resort, huge as it is, was full. We pulled out our guides and set our sites on the Desert Diamond Casino across town (map), where we ended up spending a very pleasant and quiet night, and had a nice dinner in their restaurant. On the way to the casino we encountered a Home Depot, and spent an hour or so in their parking lot repairing the loose front bodywork, with ready access to a source of parts.

Yesterday Beaudry had told us there would be space today, so we came back here mid-day. We splurged and are in one of the high-zoot jacuzzi sites, with a nice patio, private hot tub, and hedges on either side to separate the neighbors (map).

This afternoon we disassembled enough of the front to get to the headlamps, noticing in the process that one of the polycarbonate rock guards had snapped in two, sacrificing itself to save the headlamp lens. We have spare guards, but we were able to re-fit this one, which should give us a bit more service from it.

Once we got the bulbs, or what was left of them, out of the headlamp assemblies, the cause of the problem was clear: the headlamps were on when we drove through the puddle (we always turn them on when driving), and enough cold water must have splashed back into the lamp assemblies to contact the hot quartz envelopes, causing them to shatter. The low-beam filaments then burned out immediately, and the high-beam ones days later, when I flipped them on after I noticed the low-beams were out. Lesson learned: turn off the headlights and let them cool before fording streams.

Fortunately, I carry spare headlamp bulbs, and we used up both of them today. I will have to order fresh ones to replace the spares; they are 24-volt items and not available in retail stores.

As long as we had the headlamps off, I took the opportunity to replace the 12-volt bulbs in the fog lamp housings (part of the OEM headlamp assemblies) with 24-volt ones, a project that has been languishing in the "to do" box for quite some time, as just getting into the headlamp assembly is a fairly major project (much more so than it should be). These bulbs are more expensive and harder to find than the common 12-volt models, but they have slightly higher wattage, and, more importantly, we have only limited 12-volt circuit breaker capacity in the front wiring box, and moving these to the 24-volt side gives us back some capacity for other 12-volt loads.

I also spent a good deal of time tracing wires, looking for spares to fix our intermittent throttle-position problem, and for the wiring error that has our vehicle speed sensor disabled.

Tomorrow we will call around to see if we can find a welding/sheet metal shop to make us a new exhaust duct and splice it to the muffler, and continue the great wire hunt. I've also found a local source for a drain valve to replace the oil pan plug on the generator -- it's due for an oil change, and I want to get something in place to cut down on the messiness of this operation in the future.

When we first headed toward Tucson over a week ago, we had hoped we would be here a few days and then move on, heading back down to Mexico for a week or so before we had to be in Death Valley. The extra time we spent at Williams, combined with longer visits with our friends here, had pretty much squeezed that down to a slim hope of a quick jaunt back across the border for a few days. With these latest setbacks, Mexico is off the boards, which frees us up to take our time, and spend a few extra days taking care of some of these long-delayed projects.

Speaking of saying goodbye to Mexico, while we were out working on Odyssey, a couple rigs pulled in with Fantasy Tours caravan stickers, so we surmised one of their caravans crossed the border south of here today or maybe yesterday. One of the rigs was missing the entire front left corner from the floor level down to the ground. Everything was gone -- headlight, turn signal, bumper, and whatever compartment was below the driver's feet. I figured him to be having a worse week than we were.

We have at least one more night here at Beaudry, and from there we will play it by ear.