Archive for Uncategorized
August 23, 2006 at 9:03 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
It’s 9 pm and all is well. I spent the day in my parent’s house borrowing their Internet connection and catching up on work. Eleanor spent the day sorting clothes that don’t fit Emma anymore, arranging donations, and picking out long-stored jewelry she wants to sell. Emma, of course, spent the day playing with her grandparents, who show no sign of being tired of her so far.
We have hardly been in the Airstream lately. We’re spending all day out or here at my parent’s place on the lake. Since we are showering here, and eating here, I suppose our holding tanks will be good for longer than I thought. And Mary doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to evict us. It’s very convenient being parked a few hundred feet away, and a real money saver too. We haven’t paid for camping since August 13, which helps balance expenses against the $700 in fuel we spent getting here from Colorado.
I called a bunch of people about getting rid of our stuff. We’ve got a few pieces sold, and a few pieces committed to various outlets. The auction house wants our antiques. The eBay guys are meeting us on Monday to see about anything over $50 in value and under 100 lbs. The used furniture guy will meet us after Labor Day to pick over the cheap furniture. And a few friends have put in their bids for various other items. Last night we delivered a couple of nice cherry ladderback chairs to our friends Katie & Guy. But with all this, I fear we still have a long way to go.
The really sunny part of today was hearing from friends in every part of the US. Gunny called in from Oregon to tell about his latest fiasco in his new rig, this time a water pump failure. Rich C called in from Tampa to say he was having a nice time at the same park we used when we were there.
Brett called from Florida also, to catch up on a few things. (Happy birthday, dude!) Bert Gildart called from the highway in New York to say he and Janie will be here tomorrow. They’re in Ticonderoga NY tonight and will be checking out historic Fort Ticonderoga tomorrow morning before they leave, so they are just down the road from us.
It’s great to hear from all our traveling friends once in a while. We were all together not long ago, and their calls remind me of the good times. I don’t know if we’ll see some of these folks for weeks, months, or years, but I do know that we will see them.
This evening after dinner on the deck (and before chocolate cake & Star Trek), Emma and I went out on the road for a little bicycling practice. She’s still a bit wobbly but gaining capability fast!
Now Emma’s in the tub and Eleanor and I are about to head back to the Airstream — our home next door in the neighbor’s driveway. Emma is still a hostage here, so once again we’ll be alone. This is really starting to feel like summer vacation.
August 21, 2006 at 10:36 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Mary has consented to let us a stay a while, and it’s awfully convenient being two doors down from where Emma has been taken hostage … um, I mean, “where Emma is visiting my parents” … so we are here for a couple more days.
We could stay for quite a while. We aren’t using Mary’s electric or water but since we are showering at my parents’ house and not really doing any cooking here, our gray holding tank should be fine for at least a week.
I received a birthday present to myself yesterday: a new Nikon lens for the D70 digital SLR. Back in Colorado I ordered a 55-200 mm zoom to be shipped here, and I got a chance to try it out today on Emma as she played by the lake. This should be a fine addition to my camera bag, especially when we are on nature walks and Eleanor says, “Ooh — get a shot of that bird!”
This evening after dinner we all went out to the local “creemee” stand, an old standby called Uncle Sam’s. Creemees are one of the great summer traditions in this part of the country. Summer is winding down here in Vermont but it’s not dead yet. The four mosquito bites I got on my feet this evening prove that.
Tomorrow Eleanor and I are going to tow the trailer up to Burlington to visit our two storage units. The plan is to park the Airstream right in front of the doors and exchange things. The clothes and gizmos we haven’t used will go into storage boxes, and the items we’ve collected (rocks, a walking stick from Mexico, and other souvenirs) will get offloaded too. Then we’ll go “shopping” among our other stored items to see what we need. It’s fun to shop your own stuff.
The rule about refitting the trailer is that nothing is sacred. Everything that is in the trailer gets considered: Do we need it? Have we used it in the past six months? Are we sure we will need it in the next six months? Anything that flunks the tests gets put back into storage, to make room in the trailer for more useful things. This process also ensures that we expose all the nooks and crannies for cleaning, which is important for keeping dust under control. Other people unload their Airstream after every trip — but as full-timers we don’t get that opportunity very often.
August 19, 2006 at 8:49 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Lou and Larry made us feel so at home in Lagrange that we didn’t feel particularly motivated to leave today! We ended up staying hours longer than we should have, departing finally at 3 pm. Of course, the prospect of spending time on I-90 wasn’t very enticing either — it’s not a highly interesting road through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.
We have passed a small milestone today: 30,000 miles on the Armada. We’ve crossed the country from Atlantic to Pacific and back four times towing our Airstream with it since last October. Our tires are nearing replacement time. We’ve roamed everywhere we could find to go from 200 feet below sea level in Death Valley, up to 11,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies. Except for a small transmission line leak, it has been reliable and completely up to the task. I think it’s safe to say that the Armada has proven its worth as an Airstream tow vehicle.
Since I’m dispensing praise, I should also mention the fine folks at Garmin. We sent our beloved “Garminita” in for repair back in Colorado. Email communications with Garmin were very professional and easy. Once I received an RMA #, I was told to expect the GPS back after 4-5 working days. Instead, Garmin diagnosed it the day they received it, and since they couldn’t fix it economically, shipped back a free warranty replacement the next day! Nice job, Garmin.
Today’s drive brought us through rain and thunderstorms for five hours to Rochester NY, where we are … guess … parked at a Cracker Barrel. It’s deja vu all over again — each one of these places is absolutely identical. Even McDonald’s has more variation. If the parking lot wasn’t different, I’d wonder if we had gone anywhere at all. But I still love ’em for their very cordial overnight parking policy.
Northeast humidity has struck since we arrived in Ohio. We’d almost forgotten how thick the air can be. A week ago we were in the dry clear thin air of Colorado, at 8800 feet. I loved it. Now we are down toward sea level in air so heavy you can drink it. I’ve never been a fan of humidity but I guess we’d better re-acclimate because we are going to be in the northeast for a while.
August 18, 2006 at 10:02 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We are done at Airstream. Today was highly productive, and it’s a fitting end to a long week. The guys in the shop took our trailer in and did the best they could at hiding the damage where the wheel came off.
Here’s a shot as the trim was being removed. The aluminum side sheet was stretched as it was bent by the wheel coming off. This meant that bending the aluminum back would have only fair results. But the alternative was removing the side sheet — a complex job that involves removing several access doors and part of the entry door. I think Airstream estimates this job at about 40 hours of labor.
I decided I didn’t want to put our trailer through that trauma. Also, we’d have to stay for several days to get it completed, and file an insurance claim with our $1000 deductible. It wasn’t worth it for a simple cosmetic problem. So I asked the guys to do the best they could without removing the metal, and they did.
Here’s the result:
You can still see the wrinkle in the aluminum, but the new trim and a bit of caulk help minimize it. Also, we have the new aluminum wheel in place (which means we also have a spare again!) I think I’m going to have to do some cleaning on the trailer to get all my wheels to look this good.
We also got a few other items fixed, like a couple of broken latches and a faulty plumbing vent under the bathroom sink. Overall, there wasn’t much to be done. I told the guys in Service and some representatives of the manufacturing facility how impressed I was with the way our Airstream has held up through 30,000 miles of towing in the last 10 months. They told me, “People really appreciate their Airstream when they use it!”
I didn’t get to go through the factory on this visit, for lack of time. Photos and videos are no longer allowed on the factory tour anyway. But I have posted a bunch of photos of the factory from my visit in May 2004, on the Flickr photo album.
Now we are in northeastern Ohio visiting our friends Larry and Lou. We’ve courtesy parked in their driveway twice before (with Vintage Thunder, our 1977 Argosy), and they always make us feel at home. Emma is learning how to work with the dogs, Zora and Diega, to do tricks, and Eleanor is talking with Lou about homeschooling, since Lou is a former schoolteacher.
Tomorrow, we will begin the last big push across OH, PA, and NY states toward home …
August 16, 2006 at 9:45 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Almost there … another long day but the marathon is nearly over.
Along the way, we stopped at the famous gateway arch in St Louis. Or was it?
… and then we parked for the night by a giant bowling pin. It’s a day for giant fakes, I guess.
I forgot to mention that while in Creede at the rally I met up with David Tidmore of Roger Williams Airstream and picked up our new aluminum rim, hub cover, and a replacement Centramatic balancer. Thus our equipment is once again complete. I just need to get the spare tire mounted on this new rim and put the steel rim we are currently using back into the spare carrier.
David also inspected the lug bolts that I took out of the wheel when we had that breakdown in Green River, WY. The bolt that broke definitely had been overtightened. He showed me the stretched threads — they were easy to see. Interestingly, none of the other five bolts I removed from that wheel showed any signs of thread stretching, so they may have been fine, but I’m glad I removed them as a precaution anyway.
August 15, 2006 at 11:42 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Normally full-timers don’t travel as quickly as we are right now. I always hate these big pushes, because we have to pass dozens of interesting spots. Instead of the relaxing travel style we normally have, it’s rush-rush-rush.
Most full-timers we know don’t do more than 300 miles in a day for any reason, and usually try to cover only 100-150 miles and then stop for a few days. Today we covered 532 miles — the most miles we’ve done in a single day since we started full-timing over a year ago!
But that’s I-70 for you. There’s not much to see along I-70 in Kansas and the speed limit is 75 MPH most of the way. (We don’t tow any faster than 69 MPH, by the way, regardless of the speed limit.) Although I was glad to pass the cornfields quickly, I was disappointed to pass the “Wizard of Oz Museum“. (I love their phone #: 866-458-TOTO)
I’m always aware of when we are traveling through Missouri, whether on I-70 or I-44. It’s the only state in the Union with a sex shop at every exit! No kidding, they are everywhere. I can think of a few theories why there are so many here, but I’d probably better keep those theories to myself…
Since we have only 516 miles left to go tomorrow, we could finish the drive in one more long day, but I think instead we will do 350-400 miles and give ourselves a break tomorrow evening to walk around somewhere. That will leave a short day for Thursday and we’ll get a chance to do more while we are at Airstream’s “mother ship” in Jackson Center.
Since we are on a high-speed leg, you’ll note we aren’t bothering with campgrounds. Tonight we are in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel restaurant, for example. This saves money but more importantly it saves time. Checking into a campground at 8:30 pm is usually a procedure that takes 15-30 minutes, and for what? It’s quicker and easier just to park somewhere for free. We aren’t going to use the campground facilities anyway, so why bother with them?
We certainly aren’t lacking for anything, without a campground each night. The solar panels have given us all the power we can use, so our batteries are full again tonight. I have researched dump stations along the highway using a web site but we really don’t need to hit one. We’ll be fine without any hookups or dump stations until we reach the Airstream Terra Port on Thursday night. Being independent is a big part of why we travel this way, and it’s fun to use the capabilities to their best advantage when we are trying to cover a lot of miles quickly.
August 14, 2006 at 6:44 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The Big Dash East has begun. We hung out in the west as long as we could but it’s time to head home for a while. We’ve got an appointment in Jackson Center, OH (Airstream headquarters) on Friday and that’s 1,656 miles from Creede, CO where we left this morning. So there’s some serious driving to be done this week.
We said goodbye to Rich C this morning, with a big “group hug”, and also bade farewell to a few other good friends in the vintage club. I checked all the tire pressures and lug nuts carefully, and by 10 a.m. we were driving beautiful Rt 149 southeast. What a sweet section of road that is — decorated with green hills, red cliffs, the fast-moving water of the Rio Grande, and old mining towns. It was a nice drive.
We made good time today, thanks to speed limits of 65-75 MPH most of the way. The best news is that absolutely nothing bad happened. Eleanor and I listened to music on the iPod, Emma watched some Scooby Doo, we had stuffed animal fashion shows in the car (I was the judge), and generally the time passed uneventfully.
Tonight we are in Goodland KS at the Wal-Mart. It’s sunny, sultry, and breezy here. We’ll take a walk, do some shopping, make a pizza and watch a movie. The road trip is off to a good start.
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