Archive for August, 2008
August 15, 2008 at 11:41 pm · Filed under Roadtrips
Last night was possibly the noisiest night we’ve spent in the Airstream. After a 400 mile drive (way over budget, but we’re trying to make up for leaving Jackson Center late), we pulled into a Wal-Mart that had long spaces especially for RVs and tractor-trailers. I’ve never seen that before at a Wal-Mart.
We figured it was logical to pull in between a couple of big rigs, in a sort of modern-day circling of the wagons, but that was a huge mistake. The rigs ran their diesel engines all night long, and they came and went noisily in the wee hours of the morning. We turned all three Fantastic Vents on, which masked the sound reasonably well, but I still woke up at 3 a.m. from something ““ probably the cold symptoms ““ and could not get back to sleep. I ended up responding to emails from 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., and then getting back to a fitful and uncomfortable sleep.
I hate having colds. My brain works at about 2/3 speed and the whole world seems to be a bit foggy. There’s also the usual symptoms that nobody wants to see or hear: the drippy nose, the froggy voice, the snurking sounds. I drove just two hours in the morning and then turned the keys over to Brett for the rest of the day. He did fine, owing to a couple of years of owning a 31-foot Sovereign himself. I’ve never allowed anyone to tow our trailer before, but Brett is pretty handy with vehicles and so there were only a few moments when I had to close my eyes in terror.
Given my repellent condition, it was not the best day to go visiting, but we were directly on a path past Bill Thomas Camper Sales, a leading Airstream dealer and supporting advertiser. Neither Brett nor I had been to see their new facility, so we stopped in and met with Glenn Thomas for an hour. Nice place, and of course they had lots of shiny new Airstreams for us to crawl around inside. I was interested to see that they have five full-hookup spots in their lot, very convenient for an overnight stopover from I-270 in Wentzville, just west of St Louis.
Since having our disc brake pads replaced in Jackson Center, the brakes have been so-so. That’s because they need a little use before they “wear in.” The new rotor also had a burning smell for the first few hundred miles, which is normal. About halfway through our drive today Brett suddenly noticed the brakes grabbing much more strongly, to the point that we had to turn down the voltage on the Prodigy brake controller. At first he thought that something was wrong, but it was just the pads wearing in.
Not long after, they settled down and the stops became very smooth and effortless. Now the brakes are at their very best, just like disc brakes are supposed to be. I’d forgotten how good they can be.
We have since crossed into Kansas. Facing a long dull ride on I-70 again, we took our friend Joe’s advice and detoured to try Route 56. This road follows the original Santa Fe trail, and historic markers are everywhere. A portion goes through the Flint Hills and the tall grass prairie. It will take us longer to cross Kansas this way, but we have some time to spare since we hustled across Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.
Our stop tonight is at the eastern end of Rt 56, on the shore of a small state fishing lake. There are about four primitive sites for camping here, and no rangers, no fees, no amenities. Nobody is here at all, unless you count the kayaker I spotted on the lake this evening. Finding a beautiful quiet spot like this is an experience you only get when you take the road less traveled. I’m already glad we chose to skip the seductive, straight and smooth I-70, for the sinuous and scenic Rt 56.
August 14, 2008 at 9:53 pm · Filed under Tips & Ideas
We’re on the road from Jackson Center OH heading west. Our last meetings wrapped up at 11:30 this morning. We packed up, topped off the propane, dumped the tanks, filled the fresh water and took on 14 gallons of regular unleaded.
In this phase of our travel, fuel is by far the largest expense. Over the next few days we’ll cover about 1200 miles to Denver, which will cost about $450 in fuel at current prices. Anticipating this, I switched credit cards a month ago to cut the cost.
Many gas station chains have credit cards that give you a discount of 3% to 5% on fuel, but they only work at their gas stations. Since we travel nationwide, that’s not very useful to us. In Tucson the predominant gas chain is Circle K, in Ohio we see a lot of Speedways, out west we see BP and Sinclair and ARCO, in some places we see Texaco and Shell, or the big boys: Exxon and Mobil. It’s impractical to carry a card for each individual chain, so I found a card that gives me a discount at all of them.
The card I chose is the American Express “SimplyCash Business Card.” I think they have a similar one for consumers called BlueCash. I use it to pay for all our fuel, and I get 5% (not five cents, but percent) rebated to me on the next credit card statement. So the gas at Marathon that was posted at $3.75 per gallon really costs us $3.56. No matter where we go, we’re getting the cheapest gas in town.
Five percent isn’t a huge amount, but it feels good to save anything on gas these days. We typically save $2-3 per fillup. Hey, every bit counts.
Brett gives Emma her first chess game in the Airstream service center
Rob Baker (of The Vintage Airstream Podcast) and family pulled into Airstream’s Terra Port as we were readying to depart. Rob has a very nicely restored 30-foot 1958 Airstream Sovereign Of The Road. I got a quick peek inside before we had to go. Beautiful Zolatone paint inside, Marmoleum floor, and birch cabinetry. Since they’ve never been to Jackson Center before, we gave them the quick rundown on things to do in town (and a few places to avoid). It would have been fun to stay another day with Rob, Zoe, and the kids, but the road was calling.
Tonight we are doing our usual cheapskate thing on long drive days: the scenic Wal-Mart Supercenter off I-70 in Illinois. I’m amazed we made it this far given how late we left, and also considering that I now have a cold. I don’t want to name names, but a certain visitor to our trailer from Florida whose initials are BG seemed to have brought it with him. He lost his voice entirely yesterday and spent the day whispering through all our meetings, and today I am sharing the joy with a sore throat, headache, and congestion. Still, with some Tylenol and Sudafed we made it over 300 miles. Tomorrow we have another long-ish day planned, and then we’ll slow down for a while to explore some of Kansas.
August 13, 2008 at 11:39 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
You’ll never guess what today is. But if you do, for bonus credit you can guess how old I am. There are subtle clues contained in this blog entry.
Eleanor made a very fine cake in the trailer, which we enjoyed last night ( a day early). Making a cake in the Airstream’s tiny oven is a significant feat in itself. First of all, it’s a small space, and RV ovens are not known for their BTU power or temperature accuracy. Also, you have to be sure the oven is perfectly level, in order to have an even cake. That may not coincide exactly with leveling the rest of the trailer. Eleanor is a master at this now and so her cake came out fine. We shared slices with some of the managers at Airstream today, which made us fairly popular.
Things in the trailer have been busy each day as we work around each other in the small space. Outside the trailer things have been even busier, with meetings and such things going on all over the factory campus. We’re going to have to extend our visit into mid-day Thursday.
One of the projects took up half the day today. Brett and I were allowed into the archive room, where an absolute treasure trove of Airstream photography, films, and documents are stored. Some of this stuff hasn’t seen the light of day since it was originally produced decades ago. I was specifically looking for archive photos of the NASA astronaut transporter (the “Astro Van”) and the Mobile Quarantine Facility (MQF) used to isolate astronauts returning from Gemini and Apollo missions. We found plenty of those, and then dug into a lot of other great history.
One find was a whole file folder containing prints of Cornelius Vanderbilt posing in front of his Airstream at the Ambassador Hotel in Chicago. This photo shows Cornelius with Dorsey Conners, a Chicago TV personality and daughter of a famous organized crime boss. I like the photo for the character, but also for the style of the times. It was probably a big deal for Cornelius Vanderbilt to come to the Ambassador in his Airstream, and even a bigger deal for the local celebrities and business heavies to get to pose with him. Cornelius had definite ideas about what “Airstreaming” meant in the 1950s, and he did a lot of it, from devastated post-war Europe to the parking lot of a Chicago hotel.
While we are here, we embarked on a project to lighten the trailer and clear up some clutter that we picked up in Vermont. We boxed a lot of books, magazines, fabric, and miscellany (like my old laser printer) to ship to Tucson via UPS. All told, we shipped 98 lbs of stuff in three boxes. It’s nice to see the unneeded weight depart, but even nicer to have the space back. Some of those items had nowhere to be in the trailer, and were starting to take over floor space.
Emma has been relocated from her bedroom at the back of the trailer to the dinette, which she finds novel. Brett has her bed while he’s visiting. That means every night we have three bedrooms set up. Walking down the hallway I feel like I am in a Pullman coach, with every berth filled with somebody reading a book before bedtime. Rather than feeling crowded, it feels exciting. It will probably be even more exciting when we get moving along I-70 tomorrow afternoon, heading to our next stops in Missouri and Kansas.
August 12, 2008 at 8:38 am · Filed under Tips & Ideas
Our trailer service is done. The bottom line was $1500, with ceramic brake pads all around, one replaced rotor, axle alignment, a new bumper, straightening and repainting of the rear scrapers, and a few small parts.
Today at the Airstream factory Brett and I will be running around trying to meet with various people on the staff, and conducting a few interviews for future articles in Airstream Life. One interview was done yesterday afternoon, with John Huttle. He’s the head of Airstreams “B-van” division, which includes the new Interstate 3500 touring coach being produced in a separate building across the street from the main assembly building. We took a tour of the assembly process (not part of the public tour, sorry) and were quite impressed by the complete redesign of this new little motorhome.
I need to do several follow-up interviews today and over the next few weeks to get together a good story about this completely re-designed product. That article should appear in the Winter 2008 issue of Airstream Life.
Since the bulk of the day will be filled with business tasks, I am going to take the opportunity to share with you a few good links which have been passed on to me by blog readers recently.
Andy writes: “For one brief, er, it would have been a shining moment if it was the daytime, an almost Airstream is the trailer that appears in the trailer (couldn’t resist that one) for the Disney movie ‘Bolt.’ The shape of the trailer (travel-trailer, that is) is definitely Airstream, but the side details look a bit different, like there’s a recessed waistband or something. The travel trailer appears about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way into the movie trailer.”
Al wrote in a comment yesterday that there was a recall on valve stems going on. I haven’t yet verified if our stems are in the recall, but here’s the link for more information about that.
Brad writes in from Oregon to tip me off to a good article about the rising ukulele phenomenon. (Registration may be required to view this article.) When the New York Times covers it, you know you’ve made the big time, right? Hey, even Warren Buffet plays the uke. He thought it would get him girls. (Hey Warren, it didn’t work for me either.)
Some fellow full-timers, Jim and Debbie, have been keeping a blog of their travels for some time. Since the travels of Bobby & Danine (“A Year About”) have come to an end, their blog will be replaced on the Airstream Community page of this website with Jim & Debbie’s “Dreamstreamr Odyssey.” But I still advise anyone planning to take an extended tour in their travel trailer to read the archives of A Year About. It’s fun to read about their adventure and very informative as well.
Deb and Jim have been particularly helpful in advising us on methods and concerns related to obtaining good nationwide health insurance for full-timers. Deb has written up a short article on that subject, which contains useful information for anyone trying to figure out individual health insurance while traveling.
That ought to keep you busy while I’m running around Jackson Center all day. More later. Let me know if there’s a photo you want me to try to take while I’m here.
August 11, 2008 at 11:46 am · Filed under Maintenance
Things start early at the service center . At 7 a.m., anyone who is ready to go will get hitched up to a green John Deere tractor and hauled into a service bay — it’s first-up, first served. We rushed around to get all four of us up and out, and when we were more or less dressed, I went over to the service desk to tell them we were ready. Two minutes later, the tractor was hitching up.
I knew we were going to face some heavy expenses related to the scrape I had last January on the way to Quartzsite, and the recent bumper tweaking in New York. The guys here felt that the bumper would be hard to straighten, in addition to needing welding, and probably would never be quite right again. After considering options, I finally decided to go with a new bumper ($337 – ouch). The old bumper, covered with irreplaceable stickers that memorialize our travels, will be shipped to our home base for permanent display in the garage. In the photo at right you can see what an Airstream looks like without any bumper at all.
The other repairs planned were relatively minor. We had the replacement valve stem on the tire that went flat yesterday, bending the rear scrapers straight again, replacing some trim and the bumper compartment cover ($79), and the Dometic refrigerator recall kit (free). But there was a surprise as well.
When the tech took off the spare tire we had hurriedly put on by the side of the highway yesterday, they saw that the disc brake rotor was completely shot. The disc brakes have inner and outer brake pads, which are supposed to slide on a bolt so that they both apply evenly and wear evenly. This particular set of pads seized up so that only the outer pad was wearing, and it wore out so completely that it scraped the rotor beyond repair.
That added a lot to the repair list. We pulled all the other wheels off and found no similar problems, but the front axle’s disc brake pads were wearing more than the front, and it seemed time to replace those pads at least. I decided to replace all of the pads so we wouldn’t be doing this job again soon. The semi-metallic pads we have been using have lasted about 20,000 miles (not bad). This time we are installing ceramic pads, which should last even longer. So the bill has been increased by the cost of eight ceramic pads plus a complete hub/rotor assembly. This is going to be an expensive day.
Well, we’ve always tried to maintain the Airstream to a high standard. We have to, because we use it so much. I’d much rather do preventative maintenance here in Jackson Center than have to find some place along the way in an emergency.
The good news is that the tires all look perfect. I was worried about losing another tire to belt breakage, since we’d had several failures of that type last year. So far, the wear looks good. Still, I’ve requested the service center to check the axle alignment before we go.
As I write this the work is ongoing, so there may be more to it than I know right now. I’ll post another update tomorrow.
August 10, 2008 at 10:52 pm · Filed under Maintenance
A quick blog entry tonight because our Internet is spotty tonight …
We left Lou & Larry’s with some regret today, and lots of apologies for not planning a longer stay. We always seem to whiz through and next time we’ll try to stay longer to explore things in their corner of Ohio. We picked up Brett at Columbus’ airport, because he’ll be traveling with us for the next week (for business reasons), and then towed over to Jackson Center OH, where Airstream is still cranking out new shiny trailers after many decades here in the soybean fields.
The excitement of the day was incidentally received along I-270 somewhere in Columbus. The Doran 360RV tire pressure monitor starting beeping and showed that the right front trailer tire was suffering a rapid de-inflation. In other words, a flat was imminent. I pulled over to the shoulder immediately because the tire was already at 23 psi and I didn’t think we’d make it to the next exit.
The quick stop saved the tire. It was very low but still in one piece when we stopped, rather than shredded into lots of expensive rubber parts. The problem turned out to be a bad valve stem. Doran recommends using metal stems, but three of ours are currently rubber. One failed rather abruptly (leaking around the base of the stem), and if we had not had a tire pressure monitor it would have likely come apart and possibly damaged the trailer in the process.
Brett and I executed a fairly quick tire change right there in the shoulder, which is always disconcerting as cars and trucks rush by at 65 MPH. All went well, and 80 miles later here we are in J.C., with one more item on our service list for tomorrow.
By tomorrow we should also have the password for Airstream’s free wifi, and I won’t have such difficulty posting the blog. At the moment I am using my Verizon card, which works sort of in the Terra Port.
August 9, 2008 at 10:04 pm · Filed under Places to go, Roadtrips
From Penn Wood to our next visit was only a three hour drive along I-80, through the alternating rainshowers and sunshine that I’ve begun to accept as normal. As roadtrips go, it was unexciting but at least convenient: straight down the highway and no need for fuel stops along the way.
I was surprised to find that I-80 passes right through a national park I’d never heard of: Cuyahoga National Park. If I’d seen this during research we would have tried to fit it into our schedule. The park doesn’t have camping but it does have two visitor centers (which means it likely also has a Jr. Ranger program). I made a note for next time. We seem to get through Ohio at least once a year, and visiting our friends Lou and Larry has become part of a regular routine as we head west.
So that’s where we are: parked in “our” spot alongside their house, with an extremely convenient full hookup. (I suspect they let other people use our spot when we aren’t here, but they haven’t admitted it yet.) Unfortunately, Lou and Larry had a family gathering to attend on Saturday, which drastically curtailed our visiting time. We spent the morning with their daughter Loren touring downtown Oberlin instead.
Oberlin, beside being known for its downtown college, takes some pride in the fact that it was a key junction of the famous “underground railroad” which protected escaped slaves in the mid-1800s. The sculpture above, which is visible on South Professor Street, symbolizes that historical role. All students have been welcomed to Oberlin College regardless of race since 1835. In 1858 town residents rescued an escaped slave who had been taken by “slave catchers.” This incident, documented here and in many other places, is claimed to have sparked the Civil War.
This evening the thunderstorms returned, thus maintaining the streak of having no more than 24 hours without rain in the past couple of weeks. Ohio has not been exempt from the exceptionally wet summer this year. Around town we can see how the corn is coming in spotty due to being drowned by rain, but it isn’t half as bad here as it is back in New England. We’re getting calls from people back in Vermont who are wondering when the rain and gloom will stop. From the weather map, it doesn’t look like things will improve much anytime soon.
All this rain has made me extremely glad I went to Colin’s shop for a leak test last month. It only takes a little while for a leak to cause major damage to the subfloor (and in turn, structural integrity) of an Airstream. One of the leaks that were found in that visit was letting in a surprising amount of water. I made a video which explains where the leak was, if you’re curious. Also, the repair to our front compartment that we received at Colonial Airstream in May, has been tested and proven good. We’ve towed through several heavy downpours and the front compartment has remained absolutely dry.
We’ll be at the Airstream factory in Jackson Center OH for several days this week, starting tomorrow night. A couple of friends have called to say they might be there too, which I’m hoping for. Jackson Center is a very small town with not a lot going on, but we usually manage to have a good time when friends show up in the Terra Port. Perhaps we’ll get really lucky and it won’t rain, too.
« Previous entries ·
Next entries »
