Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Looking forward to being somewhere else

A good friend just told me that if you owned a farm in Nebraska and a home in Hell then you’d be well advised to sell the farm and just stay home.  I’ve seen nothing in the last week that would make me disagree with that assessment.  Nebraska may not actually be the arsehole of the world but you can definitely smell it from here.

I took my last two years of high school in Regina and thought that was the worst place on earth.  The incessant wind blew me out of Regina as soon as high school was done and I have only gone back to visit since.  But the Regina wind has nothing on this place.  This wind will suck the life out of you and blow sand in it’s place.  You can constantly taste the grit in your teeth and no matter how often you shower you can always feel the dust in your hair.  Tomorrow we’ll put this dump in the rearview mirror and none too soon as far as I am concerned.

Its too bad – the park we’re in is nice enough.  Its got a pretty little lake that spends most of its life whipped into a frenzy but its still a pretty spot.  We’re kind of sheltered here with big old trees all around us but even so the bus is rocking and not from any activity inside it.

(later)

I just get a little crazed when I’m in a big wind.  Now that it’s dark outside and the bus isn’t rocking and shaking it doesn’t seem so bad but I’ll still be glad to have this place behind us.  It turns out that the equipment isn’t ready at the next location – surprise surprise – so we’ll take our time heading over to Reno.  We’ll probably end up spending a few nights in Salt Lake City on the way.

When the wind finally settled down to a mere gale force I finally went outside and changed the fan drive belts.  We’ve been running on 2 out of 3 belts for a long time now.  For some reason the last set of belts that I put on gave me a lot of trouble.  One belt in particular insisted on running inside out or on it’s side for most of it’s life.  Eventually it ate itself up and one day I found it draped over the hitch when we stopped somewhere.  I don’t think the fan really needs three belts to drive it but evidently somebody at Prevost thought it did so who am I to argue with them?  I just kept forgetting to get a new set of belt but yesterday I finally remembered and today I got them installed. 

I also checked the oil bath level on the tag and steering tires as well as tire pressures.  The inside dual on the curb side has a habit of running low and sure enough its low again so I think tomorrow before we leave I’ll take off the valve stem extension.  I’ve changed the tires and changed the valve stems and still the same tire keeps losing air so the only thing left to change is the valve stem extension.  I don’t really like valve stem extensions anyway but they make checking the tire pressure and adding air a whole lot easier.  However in this case I think my extension is causing more trouble than it is preventing so its going to have to go.

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