I HATE WINTER

So the plan was that I was going to get up early, fire up the Aqua Hot, (diesel furnace) let it warm up while we had breakfast & then we were going to do the final packing for our departure tomorrow morning. I didn’t get up all that early but it wasn’t late either, went out and flipped the thermostat up and listened. I only have experience with one Aqua Hot but if they are all like this one its no problem to tell if they are running. This one ROARS when it is running. This morning it kind of mumbled. Not good.

Sure enough it went through its start cycle a few times and then showed a start fault. I buggered around with it until I got cold but no joy. Did I mention – it was -30 or worse here this morning – I didn’t actually look at a thermometer until noon and it was only -22 then. After breakfast and more buggering around I finally gave up on the Aqua Hot and plugged in the block heater. I also dragged out my 75,000 BTU construction heater and stuffed it up against the rear bumper. Then I went to town and bought some Melt and dumped that in the tank. And I hooked up the boost charger & plugged in the battery blankets and put a magnetic heater on the pan. The first rule of cold weather diesels is “always park the noisy end closest to the electric panel”.

I managed to wait until about 12:30 and then gave it a shot of go juice in the little SS hole. And the big 8-92 lit up first turn so that was the first good thing that had happened. Then I thought I might as well try the Kubota cuz it had been getting all the waste heat off the construction heater. And like all good Kubotas it lit up right away too. So I let both the engines run for about an hour and then tried the Aqua Hot again. Sure enough that time it started roaring too.

Then we waited for about an hour so the worst of the chill was off and started the last minute packing. There was quite a pile of "stuff" by the back door waiting to go to the bus. We're going to stop for a while at an orphanage in Navajoa - maybe give them a hand with construction. We asked them what they needed and they said bedding & towels. What a bit of good luck - we just happen to have a bunch of bedding and towels that are surplus so we had all that packed into about 6 garbage bags which made the pile look even bigger than it really was. It took about 3 hours but we got everything stowed away in various nooks and crannys. Its really amazing how much room there is in the bus. The front bay is FULL but most of that is the stuff for the orphanage so we will get rid of that as soon as we get into Mexico.


Yesterday Marilyn took G II for his shots & checkup. As far as we can tell all that he needs to do to get into the US is look alive. He's pretty good at that but we went ahead and got his shots and a certificate saying that he has his shots. My guess is that no one will pay him 2 seconds of attention at either of the borders but time will tell. The shots really hit him hard - he was pretty dopey yesterday and - most unusual of all - not hungry. Today he sort of has his appetite back but he's still pretty dopey. We can't skin him and make him into a rug and import the rug to the US. It appears we can skin him in the US, tan his hide and export him as a rug but bringing him in is completely verboten.