A long way from West Virginia

I’ve travelled a lot in the last 4 days.  Wednesday morning I woke up in Moorefield, West Virginia.  I had one last breakfast in the delightful little coffee shop that I had found on the south side of Moorefield and then headed north toward Pittsburg. 

I let the female navigator inside Microsoft Streets and Trips talk me through the route she had selected.  I had previously let her navigate me to Annapolis but was forced to give her an unflattering name on the way through Washington DC.  She did better on the mostly open terrain between Moorefield and Pittsburgh but fell down severely on some of the interchanges right in Pittsburgh.  Before I left for Annapolis I found a cheap inverter at Wallyworld which was just barely sufficient to keep my computer working on the road.

The famous New England fall colours were just starting to appear – in another week that trip will be really spectacular.  It was still a pretty pleasant drive and certainly a lot more relaxing than it was on the way south in the dark with no GPS. 

I got to the airport well ahead of my flight time and got checked in.  I had been sitting at the gate for a while before I realized that nothing was happening at any of the gates.  As I started paying attention to the conversations around me I began to realize that the airport was in fact completely shut down.  I have no idea where the staff goes during a shutdown but they were gone.  There wasn’t an official soul to be seen anywhere and it continued that was for over an hour and a half past my flight time.  That left me in no doubt about making my connection in Chicago.  I had barely an hour on the schedule to make my Chicago connection so losing an hour and a half before I ever boarded the plan didn’t seem like a good thing.

The storm that had shut the airport down finally blew over as quickly as it had arrived.  It was a clear sunny day when I drove into Pittsburgh and it was just as nice when we flew out.  Of course when I checked the departures board in Chicago my flight wasn’t even listed anymore.  I looked around for a United counter and couldn’t find any with real live human beings but did find a bank of computers that purported to be service points.  The computer was relatively easy to figure out and it quickly informed me that I had been rebooked to the following morning at 6:00 AM. 

In addition, rather than flying direct from Chicago to Regina I was now booked through Denver.  I didn’t really relish the idea of catching a 6:00 AM flight – it was already around 7:00 PM so a 6:00 AM flight pretty well meant a night in the airport.  So I kept looking and finally found a United counter with real live humans behind it.  After a long wait in line I was able to get rebooked for an almost immediate departure to Denver. 

I won’t bore you with the added details of how I finally arrived in Regina a full day late.  Nor will I dwell on the fact that my bag had a nearly zero chance of actually travelling on the same flights as I did and sure enough it didn’t.  I finally made it back to Buchanan in the late afternoon on Thursday.  Then we dashed around doing the things that Marilyn hadn’t been able to do alone so that we could get back on the road to Lethbridge.  I got the alternator that Marilyn had purchased installed and got the wiring right eventually.  When we did get on the road the improved power output was a welcome improvement over what we had been putting up with.

We’re now in one of our Holiday Trails membership parks in Lethbridge where I am doing a Growsafe installation at the Ag Canada Research Station.  We’ll likely be here most of this week and perhaps into the next week but as long as the damnwind doesn’t blow its pretty pleasant here.

East coast report

I’m a long way from home in more ways than one.  Wardensville, West Virginia is only 90 miles from Washington, DC but it lives in a different time.  It’s like stepping back 50 years when you drive into town.  The guy who runs the research centre where I’m doing this installation says that it’s only in the last 2 years that they have had a restaurant in town that would take credit cards and I don’t have any trouble believing that.  We’ve been eating lunch every day at the VFW where the daily special runs $5 or $5.50, depending on the day and it’s a full meal. 

Last Tuesday I left Marilyn and Jorgito in Buchanan and drove the mighty cubevan into Regina.  I only killed one snake on the trip down to Melville – got two on the trip north a couple of days earlier.  I love those signs on 21 highway down the east side of Alberta that say “watch for rattlesnakes”.  I watch for them alright – how the hell else are you going to run over them if you don’t see them and anticipate their movements?  Fortunately all I had to kill Tuesday night was garter snakes.

Wednesday morning I was at the Regina airport shortly after 6 AM for a flight to Chicago.  By the time I got through all the pseudo-security bullshit and the customs nonsense in Chicago I nearly missed my connection to Pittsburgh.  Customs was the worst but when I looked around the room it wasn’t hard to tell why it was taking so long.  I wouldn’t have let 90% of them into the country if the decision had been up to me.  I could have speeded things up a lot but nobody asked for my assistance.  The first ones to go would have been everyone with BO – that room was the foulest smelling place I’ve been in since RJ and Jared shared an apartment in Saskatoon.

When the baggage carousel in Pittsburgh stopped turning it shouldn’t have been any surprise to me that my bag hadn’t arrived.  I barely got on the plane in Chicago so the don’t-give-a-shit baggage handlers could hardly be expected to have got my bag onboard.  Fortunately the lost baggage office was conveniently located next to the carousel and staffed with a reasonably personable “Lisa”.  She started filling out the form and didn’t throw a fit when I told her that the boarding agent in Regina had kept my luggage claim tag.  By the time I was done in her office she had determined that my bag was in fact still in Chicago having arrived at the gate too late to be boarded with me.  She thought it would likely come to Pittsburgh on United’s 7:30 flight so I went off to pick up my rental car and then came back to confirm that my bag was going to arrive at 7:30. 

Lisa was gone and the door was locked but after a while Leslie lumbered onto the scene.  She confirmed that my bag was scheduled to arrive at 7:30 so I reluctantly settled in to wait for it.  I had carefully selected a flight that missed Toronto and got me into Pittsburgh so I could drive down to West Virginia in daylight but now I was stuck with a drive in the dark.  I had also forgotten to bring an inverter to power my computer while it was running the GPS which turned out to be a major error.

I didn’t get out of the airport until around 8:00 by which time it was completely dark.  I tried to use the computer sparingly but it seemed like every time I turned it off I promptly went off course.  A couple of times when I turned it on I was a long way off course and had to recalculate the route completely.  I know I went through some really pretty scenery but I didn’t see any of it.  I kept thinking that somewhere I’d run across a WalMart where I could pick up a cheap inverter but didn’t see one until I arrived here in Moorefield.

Today I took the day off and drove over to Annapolis to look at a boat.  I was pretty sure we didn’t want to buy it, mainly because it’s on the wrong coast but it is priced right and it’s a 49 foot Defever so I figured I should look at it anyway. 

My height continues to be our greatest challenge to buying a boat.  This one has the same wonderful engine room that I have come to expect on a Defever and it has an inside helm in the salon which is my preferred design.  It also has covered side decks which I am sure are a wonderful feature - - - for people who can walk under them without constantly ducking.  I don’t think we will use a flybridge a whole lot but I couldn’t stand up on this one so not using it would have been a lot more likely. 

The broker was a likeable sort and we had a good visit.  He had priced cross country transport for a similar boat so I got a price point for that eventuality although I don’t think it is practical for the price range we are considering.  The broker had priced moving the boat on it’s own bottom to Texas and then loading it and trailering it across the west to Vancouver.  I have already priced Dockwise transport from Florida to Seattle.  The Dockwise trip comes in around $35,000 and the combination water/land trip comes in around $25,000.  On a $300,000 boat those numbers might make sense but on a $100,000 boat they don’t work.

Annapolis harbour was a fun place to hang out so I wandered around a bit and had lunch there.  Then I headed back west but on the return trip I routed myself right through the heart of Washington.  I’ve been there enough times to sort of know my way around but today was the first time I’ve had time on my hands and been able to drive around enough to feel like I could find my way without a map. 

Some fools had “organized” a World Peace Day at the foot of the steps to the Lincoln Memorial and at the risk of giving them publicity that they clearly don’t deserve I have to comment. 

I think it is an exaggeration to say there were 12 people in the audience – the real total may have been as low as 8.  I suspect that 4 of them were the sister, brother, brother-in-law, etc of the dude in the suit that was the invited guest.  I walked the length of the pool to get away from the saccharin lyric peace songs set to popular tunes like Yellow Submarine and He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.  By the time I returned to the west end of the reflecting pool Mr. Suit and Tie was introducing his illustrious career as a UN diplomat.  I kept on walking over to the Vietnam Memorial and mercifully the nonsense was over by the time I got back to the Lincoln Memorial.  I take comfort from the knowledge that even in a city as famous for it’s lack of common sense as Washington there were so few fools who think that world peace can be achieved by singing silly songs and listening to self important idiots talk about all the wonderful things that they have done.

Many more miles behind us

The boat that we were so excited to see turned out to be an incredible disappointment.  I ended up telling the boat broker that put us onto it that I considered it a dock queen, nothing more than a floating condo and that I was very disappointed that he would have shown it to us knowing what we intend to do with it.  It was no doubt a very nice vessel in it’s past but it has now been so extensively butchered as to render it unseaworthy. 

After we got over the disappointment of looking at the first boat we spent the next three days looking at more suitable vessels.  We even came within a whisker of making an offer on one of the boats we looked at.  We had initially looked at wooden boats, then ruled them out completely, then considered them again and would have made an offer on a Monk McQueen if it hadn’t been for the advice of Peter Leech.  Peter is the father-in-law of one of Marilyn’s nieces and a former partner in Grand Yachts of Coal Harbour, Vancouver.  We spent about 4 hours with Peter and his wife on Wednesday and at the end of that time he had convinced us that for our purposes we need to find a fibreglass boat. 

Late on Wednesday we finally got around to liberating the cubevan from it’s storage yard in Chilliwack. We’d been having so much fun looking at boats that we just hadn’t got home early enough any day up until then.  As it turned out we picked a pounding rainstorm for our pickup time.  The Malibu tarp had come undone so we redid that in the rainstorm and took the van back to the campground.  Around noon on Thursday we headed for Kelowna. 

We had a good visit with Marilyn’s brother Fred on Thursday evening and with her other brother, Dan on Friday morning.  Fred loaded us up with garden produce and home canning which we have been enjoying as we travel.  Today we met up with Dick and Olive, a couple that we met in Mexico close to 15 years ago now.  They were well into their 70’s when we first met and they are still driving to Mexico so they are our travel mentors.  They live in Comox but were visiting friends in Alberta.  We met them on the side of #3 highway in Fernie and cooked dinner for them.  Then we continued east until we got across the Saskatchewan border.  We’re in the rest area at the Welcome to Saskatchewan booth outside Maple Creek tonight.  Tomorrow we’ll be back in Buchanan for a couple of days and then I need to fly out to West Virginia for a few days. 

We’ve been everywhere

I’ll fill in some details with another posting but we’ve been around in the last week.  When I posted about the Walmart idiot we were on our way to Andrea and Mike’s wedding.  We spent a couple of days in Canmore reuniting with various members of Marilyn’s family and then moved into Calgary for the actual wedding last weekend.  They had a morning service which neither of us had ever seen but it worked out well.  The weather was threatening but it gave them sunshine for the (very late) nuptials and an OK evening for the garden party at Mike’s parents.  They probably saved a lot on beer because it was really too cold to drink beer that evening.

The wedding was Saturday – on Sunday morning Judy’s sister was celebrating a special birthday (the number of which we won’t mention) so she invited the whole family for dimsum.  We were back at the same restaurant that she and Jim took our kids to for their first dimsum experience and it was very good.  After the breakfast we went up to Mike and Andrea’s house for a brief visit at which time we dropped off Marilyn’s cousin Cohl who had been staying in the bus with us during the wedding.  Then we pointed the frenchy-bus south towards the Coutts border crossing.

We got sent inside at Coutts which prompted flashbacks to our ordeal at Sumas last winter but this time was different.  They made us wait for about an hour while they pretended to review our file but mainly I think they were just making us wait.  Their benches were much more comfortable than the ones at Sumas and they had TV – tuned to Fox no less – so it could have been a lot worse.  My advice – if you plan to get hassled going into the US then do it at Coutts rather than Sumas.

By the time we got out of customs it was dark so we only went as far as the Pilot in Shelby.  We’ve spent the night in their parking lot many times on our way from Nipawin to warmer places in December or January.  On Monday morning we made a leisurely trip over to Havre and got settled into the Havre RV Park by noon. 

For anybody planning to travel to Havre by RV I have some simple one word advice: DON’T.  The Havre RV Park appeared to be the best game in town and it was crap.  It was “managed” by whoever happened to be on duty at the neighbouring gas station and “managing” appeared to consist of coming around once a day to kick out anyone who was over their time limit.  The garbage was overflowing, the sewer didn’t work, it backs onto the highway, all the connections were on the wrong side – I could go on but I won’t.  Just avoid Havre completely if you are travelling in an RV because this one seemed to be the best game in town.  We spent 4 nights there – they actually tried to kick us out after three nights but Marilyn went toe to toe with an idiot and won because she had written proof that we had paid for 4 nights.  It sounds like even that was a near thing though because the idiot had an idiot-helper who tried to convince Marilyn that 4 nights meant 4 nights but only 3 days – whichever was less apparently.

I got NARC’s new Growsafe equipment running, more or less.  We’re still having some QC issues with various components but I think we are gaining although some days its hard to tell.  By supper time Friday there wasn’t anything left that I could do so we headed back toward the border and this time pretty well got waved through by Canadian Customs.  We figure we’re due for another ordeal soon because we’ve had several fairly easy crossings lately.

We made a brief stop in Airdrie for Alison and Camiel’s big BBQ on Saturday evening.  One of their staff had volunteered to roast a whole lamb on a spit so we had to be there to see that and there are many of their friends that are mutual friends so we had a great time reacquainting with them.  Then yesterday morning we were back on the road headed for Vancouver.  We had pretty decent travel weather – not hot but not pissing rain either – most of the time anyway.  We arrived in Chilliwack around 9:00 last night and parked on the Wallyworld lot for the night. 

Today we have a boat broker lined up to show us a boat that I have been watching online for a couple of years now. 

Colossal, mind numbing stupidity

I’ve lived long enough to know that there are a lot of stupid people in this world.  They in fact likely outnumber the intelligent folks.  Obviously that depends on where you draw the line between stupid and intelligent.  No matter how you draw that line the fact remains that you never know when you might get hit by a bout of stupid.  They can come out of the blue when you least expect them.

We were leaving Nipawin last week when Marilyn mentioned that one of the back tires on the trucklet looked soft.  When I stopped for my early trip walkaround sure enough the rear driver tire was soft.  So when we stopped a few miles later in Tisdale to fix the previously mentioned rock chip I also blew the tire up.  It turned out that we had a slow leak that needed to be topped up every two or three days so no big deal.  I decided that I might as well replace both rear tires so didn’t bother fixing the leak and when we got to Drumheller I headed over to Walmart to buy a pair of tires.  No luck – Walmart in Drumheller doesn’t have a tire shop.  Walmart has sort of become my tire shop of choice because they don’t gouge – everybody gets the same pricing no matter where you buy the tires and they usually have enough staff on that you don’t have to wait unduly.  But I checked the local tire shop in Drumheller and they confirmed that they were ready and willing to gouge the tourist so we waited until we got to Walmart in Airdrie.

We pulled into Airdrie yesterday around noon and immediately got unhooked in the Wallyworld parking lot.  I drove the truck over to the tire shop and walked in.  The guy at the counter had a tag on his nice little blue coat that said “Department Manager” so I thought “this has to be good – I’ve got the main guy.” And then WHAMMO BLAMMO out of the blue comes the galactic sized bolt of stupid.

Mr. Manager asked me the standard questions – tire size, vehicle, etc and said he had 4 255 70/16 tires.  That’s all good – I’ll take two please.  No problem, they be this much and then it came.  “Because its on a 4 wheel drive vehicle we will mount the tires on the rims but we won’t mount the rims on the vehicle”.  “Say what???”  “We’ll only mount sets of 4 tires on 4 wheel drive vehicles”.  “Since when?  I’ve bought 2 tires from Walmart in the past?”  “Oh its not a Walmart rule – the tire manufacturers won’t let us do it because it could damage your transfer case.”

By this point I had kind of recovered from the shock of being hit by the bolt of stupid and I had realized that I was dealing with a fool.  Since the fool was in charge of the tire department it didn’t seem like it would be useful to talk to his manager so I said I thought I’d look around town a bit. 

But this was no ordinary fool – he dived right in again.  “You won’t find anybody who will do it for you.”  Yeah right I won’t …………. “WANNA BET??” sez I.  Oh no, he didn’t want to bet.  “Well then SHUT UP.”  If there’s any galactically stupid fools reading this they should take that old adage to heart – better to remain silent and be thought a fool rather than opening your mouth and removing all doubt.

Not surprisingly the next tire shop I stopped at was more than willing to mount two tires for me but didn’t have any 255-70/16s in stock and when I got to Ukrainian Tire they booked me in immediately, mounted the tires and sent me on my way.  They did warn me that Transport Canada advises people to mount a new pair of tires on the rear rather than the front but father told me years ago that he would rather handle a rear blowout than a front and that has always made sense to me.  It occurred to me though that if Transport Canada has an actual advisory about mounting pairs of tires on a vehicle then even the morons at Transport can’t be concerned about mounting pairs rather than fours.

Still raining

It rains wherever we go.  It even rained in Nipawin while we had the windshields out.  Not much mind you but it rained nevertheless.

Marv got our windshields changed and I think he actually got them sealed up so they no longer leak.  The original glass that was in the bus when we bought it leaked and when Robbie at P.A. Northern replaced it that glass also leaked but based on our travels today it looks like Marv’s glass is leakless.  Time will tell and this bloody rainy summer will certainly give us lots of chance to test it.

After we got the glass in we hung around Nipawin waiting for a tire to arrive at O.K.Tire.  It still wasn’t there at noon on Friday so I finally had to pull the pin in order to be in Saskatoon in time for a haircut.  I’ve had the same woman cutting my hair for over 30 years now and I’m not really interested in training a new one.  She won’t commit to how much longer she will cut it so we’re kind of going haircut by haircut now but so far she hasn’t made any retirement plans.

We weren’t 20 miles out of Nipawin on the way to Saskatoon before we took a rock dead centre in the driver’s windshield.  There’s a couple of patched spots on the road between Nipawin and Tisdale and we had the misfortune to meet a Grade A asshole driving a Super B right smack in the middle of that stretch.  I was pretty well stopped by the time he got to us but he was going as hard as he could and he threw a great bloody rock right square at me.  I even saw it coming but there was bugger all I could do to avoid it.  I’d have cheerfully throttled the miserable prick if I could have caught him but instead I pulled onto the parking lot at the mall in Tisdale and did a pretty good repair.  There’s still a little bit of a spot visible but its about the size of a pinhead so its not too noticeable. 

Yesterday we drove down to Regina to visit father.  He looked pretty good – bruised a bit from his frequent skydiving episodes but otherwise healthy.  He wakes up and thinks he needs to get up to do something – lord knows what – so he proceeds to get out of bed and of course lands on his beak.  He hasn’t been able to walk reliably for several years now and hasn’t been able to walk at all for the past year but he conveniently forgets that.  Wascana doesn’t want to restrain him but they are really struggling to come up with any other alternatives.  They’ve got a gym pad beside his bed now for him to land on.  Yesterday they had elevated his feet for his nap.  I suspect that was so that it was harder for him to get sitting up which would be the necessary first step to crawling out of bed.

Today we headed west with a stop in Alsask on the way out of the province.  I had 6 quarters of land to look at which I did wearing my rubber boots because it was pissing rain the whole time we were there.  Then it cleared up while we drove to Drumheller and then socked in for a good old fashioned thunderstorm while we were setting up.

This place is another of our Holiday Trails membership parks.  It doesn’t look like much when you arrive but its one of the nicer places we have ever stayed.  Even when the storm was blowing this afternoon I had the awning out because we are so well sheltered under all the trees.  Its still pretty full with summer campers but I expect they will start leaving tomorrow because the little cake snatchers have to be back in school pretty soon now.

On the road again

We’re in Humboldt for a 2nd night.  Marilyn has a meeting here tomorrow morning and I had a couple of files here.  We had a pretty easy go of it getting our Saskatchewan inspection done.  The Frenchy-bus is almost 30 years old now but the repairs it required to pass its inspection cost me less than 1/3 of what the repairs to the 2005 Exploder cost. 

We had a busted tailpipe which took about 24” of SS flex pipe to repair and I’ve got a tire on order that we will put on tomorrow.  Other than that we are pretty well perfect mechanically.  The tire probably would have passed but I don’t like the looks of it so I’m going to replace it anyway.  I ordered a bunch of brake parts delivered to Darrel’s shop because I was so certain that we would need to do the drive axle.  As it turned out the rotation on one side of the drive axle was 80 degrees – the other was 65 degrees – I’m allowed up to 140 degrees.  My front linings measured 11/16” and we debated whether to call them 11/16 or 3/4.  New linings are 3/4” thick and these have been on the bus since we bought it.

Now we’ve got a complete set of brake parts stored in Darrel’s shop and I intend to put them on next spring anyway.  That will certainly be the last brake work that we ever do on the bus.  Our windshields passed but I’ve got a set of glass sitting in Darrel’s shop and we’ll put them in tomorrow night.  Prevost glass is so cheap its hardly worth repairing it.  We’ve got one long crack on each side plus the normal complement of stars and chips.  I’ve repaired most of them over the years but its replacement time now. 

The tailpipe must have been coming apart for a long time now.  I can hardly hear the engine running anymore & I can’t hear the Jakes working at all.