On The Road with Jim and Pat

Hello from Evergreen, CO

Wednesday evening – April 20, 2016   (fourth  post of this travelogue)

Our trip from Silt back to Evergreen was uneventful – until we got home.  The roads were all dry on this leg of the trip.  Just before we got to the house, we saw this snowplow in the ditch.

When we got to the house we parked the rental care in the neighbor’s driveway so that we could plow ours out.  The snow was amazing.  The 45 plus inches had compacted to about 2 feet of heavy wet snow (see photo).

Pat’s brother came all the way from Elizabeth to help with the clearing effort.  By the time we got here, he had cleared a spot for the car (he put his truck there since our car was safe).  He then shoveled a path to the house so that Pat could get in. 

I fired up the tractor and started to plow, but the engine was not running well and died often.  For the next couple of hours I did some pretty heavy duty troubleshooting.  It turned out that the main fuel line was clogged (never would have guessed that one). 

Once the tractor was running, clearing the driveway was not all that big of a deal.  I was able to plow where the cars are parked and the sidewalk and that really saved me some backbreaking work. 

That is all for this post and this trip.

Hello from Silt, CO

Sunday evening – April 17, 2016   (Third post of this travelogue)

I have been checking the road reports for the last two days.  Our first thought was to go I 80 to avoid the high passes on I 70.  Every time I looked at the Wyoming road reports, there were increasing areas of road closures.  My guess is that they got a ton of wind and that caused blizzard and drifting conditions.  In contrast, I 70 reports were not too bad this morning.  So we set a goal of going US 6 to I 70 and driving to Silt, CO.  We are staying at the Holiday Inn Express in this small town (see map).  Silt is a few miles west of Glenwood Springs.  We drove about 350 miles today.

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BTW, if you get our blog via email, you will not see the map.

We have been watching the Weather Channel since we got to the room.  Colorado is certainly the major subject.  As of this time, they are reporting 45.5 inches of snow in Conifer.  We talked to our neighbor and she thinks that we probably got that much as well.   

It is about 165 miles from here to the house.  I will check the road reports and we will leave as soon as we feel comfortable with the conditions.  Our rental car is front wheel drive and the tires do not look all that aggressive.  Once we get to the house, we will park in the neighbor’s driveway and I will attempt to plow the driveway with the tractor.  I think it will do fine, but this is the most snow that I have plowed with this tractor.

That is all for this blog.

Hello from Salt Lake, UT

Friday Afternoon – April 15, 2016   (Second post of this travelogue)

After our last post, Pat looked at the picture of the beautiful canyon and said that it did not come close to capturing the beauty of the area.  It turns out that we lucked out on the weather.  Since then, it has been cold, windy and rainy.

We are staying at the Holiday Inn Express next to the Convention Center (see photo and map below).  This used to be the Shilo and a few years ago it was converted/remodeled into a very nice Holiday Inn Express. 

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Yesterday was the first day of Pat’s convention.  Stampin’ Up! has drastically changed the format.  They are really not having the convention as we knew it in past years.  Instead they are having what is called “OnStage Live Event”.  In my mind it is a mini-convention and they are held in different places around the world.  With the change in format, the attendance is around 900 demonstrators as compared to as many as 7000 several years ago.  That said, there is no lack of enthusiasm and the demonstrators seem to be having a ball.

Last night was a special dinner event for the top level demonstrators.  Pat invited me to attend with her.  It was held at an amazing hotel not far from where we are staying:  The Grand American Hotel (see picture).  The hotel was completed in 2002 but was built in a 19^th century style. 

A 2002 WSJ gave great detail about the no expenses barred approach to building the hotel.  Below is one paragraph from that article:

Completed this winter (2002) after five years of construction, the massive Grand America is more reminiscent of the grandiose 19th century than the cost-conscious 21st. Its 350,000 square feet of granite were quarried in Vermont, ferried through the St. Lawrence Seaway and across the Atlantic to be painstakingly cut in San Sebastian, Spain. Then, the granite was shipped back via the Panama Canal and train to Salt Lake City. About 155 full-time painters worked with tiny brushes to detail the hotel's woodwork.

The complete WSJ article can be found here.

The dinner was amazing (both in taste and presentation).  The entertainment was billed as dueling pianos and they were great.  It was a mixture of good music, audience participation and comedy.

Sunday we will head home.  We would normally travel back on US40 at a somewhat leisurely pace.  However, Colorado is predicting huge amounts of snow in the mountains and a ton of rain in the Denver area.  US40 is not a good choice for those conditions.  The choices are retracing our route, going I70 in Colorado or I80 to Cheyenne and then down I25.  We will probably have to make that decision Sunday morning.

That is all for this blog

Hello from Springville UT

Wednesday Morning – April 13, 2016   (First post of this travelogue)

This is the first post of our trip to Salt Lake for Pat’s Stampin’ Up! convention.   I emphasize the “our” because we have not travelled together since our August 2015 trip to Iowa: Iowa trip travelogue.  It is sure fun to get on the road together.

For this trip I had enough points to pay most of the rental car fee, so we are driving a Nissan Sentra.  That is a good thing since both our “normal” vehicles are like us: “old and creaky” {big grin”}.  The car is fairly nice to drive, but it has a CVT transmission and that is a bit disconcerting (engine speed all over the place).

We left Evergreen Monday in the late morning.  It had snowed the night before and it was predicted to snow in the mountains on I70.  That turned out not to be a problem.  There were some very slight flurries, but no road problems.  We drove about 200 miles to Grand Junction and stayed in the Holiday Inn Express. 

I had chosen that stop so that we would have plenty of time for the next leg of the trip.  If you follow our blog at all, you might recall a trip I made to Page, AZ for an NTT assignment:  Page trip travelogue.  In that travelogue I documented an amazing drive on Utah 128 down to Moab, UT.  Pat was not able to go on that trip, because her dad was having serious medical problems.  I decided that the next time I was headed in this direction I would take Pat on that road.

It turned out to be a beautiful sunny day and our journey was nice and slow so that we could soak up the amazing scenery.  I have included one photo to show how beautiful the area is.

We had hoped to drive to Price but the Holiday Inn was booked full.  As a result we made reservations at this Holiday Inn Express in Springville (see map below).  We are only 50 miles from Salt Lake, but this gives us a very leisurely day before Pat’s hectic activities. 

Hello from St Louis, MO ** Times Two

Thursday evening – April 7, 2016   (First post of this travelogue)

I have been in St Louis the past two weeks for NTT assignments.  Both assignments were on-site classes held at the Pfizer.  I am staying at a Holiday Inn Express about 7 miles from the Pfizer plant (see map):

Hello from Baltimore, MD

Thursday evening — March 23, 2016   (First post of this travelogue)

I am in Baltimore for an NTT assignment.  This was a public class held at the La Quinta (see map below). 

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This is my favorite class to teach:  Mechanical Drives.  To make it even better I much prefer the public class as opposed to our on-site classes for just one customer.  As it turns out, all of the students (6) work for Anne Arundel County.  The class was from Tuesday though today.

NTT has upgraded their Mechanical Drive and Shaft Alignment trainers.  As a result our lab manuals needed to be updated.  I was retained by NTT to write the lab manual for both classes.  It turned out to be a pretty big assignment.  I did all the photo documentation as well as the text.  Our Mechanical Drives lab book is 65 pages.  This is the first class to use the “production” version of the manual and it seemed to work well for the various exercises.

The students were great in this class and that make the teaching effort so much better/fun.

The teaching assignments for NTT have really dropped off the past year or so.  On one hand, that is not all bad since it allowed me to do a lot of work on my projects.  However, the loss of income is significant.  It turns out that this is the first of three consecutive classes that I am teaching.  For the next two classes I will be at Pfizer in St. Louis teaching Mechanical Drives the first week and Shaft Alignment the following week.  Maybe more work will be available and that will give me the option to balance work and play {grin}

Tomorrow morning I will fly back to Denver. 

That is all for this trip.

Our 2006 Inaugural Bus Trip Part 8

Posted: Thursday March 24, 2016

Some of you may get this blog via email.  That is easy to do by filling out the subscription on the right hand column.  If you like to follow our travels that is a convenient way to know when we post something.  We only post when we travel and there are times that it is several weeks between posts.  If you subscribe you will not have to check in to see if we have left the house {grin}.

The downside to email subscription is that you get to see all the mistakes I make.  With the blog I can go back and change my error, but that is not possible with the email version.  The changes are almost always editorial and really don’t affect the main content of the blog. 

For some reason I have had a terrible time getting my dates correct on the past seven posts.  It is corrected on the blog, but email readers will wonder if I have lost what little bit of brain power I have left!

Now for the last installment of the 2006 inaugural trip:

Hello from Rifle CO.

Tuesday evening April, 11 2006.  Eighth travelogue of this trip.

Well, we are nearly home (about 175 miles to go).   So far we have traveled right at 2400 miles in the bus and 3-400 miles in the Durango.  The bus has done very well.  We had an air hose develop a hole in it today (pretty easy to fix) and the engine warning lights went on.  The lights scared the heck out of me, but our electronic gage system (on our laptop) quickly told me that the low water sensor had “shot a code”.  Simple solution was to add some antifreeze (had some with me) and then add some distilled water tonight.  I guess that I must have done my homework OK, since we have not had any major problems.  OR , maybe, it was because I loaded the bus with lots of tools and parts.  I guess that is like buying insurance that you hope you never have to use.  OR, maybe it was just plain dumb luck.

The Durango did not do as well.  It started to run funky in the middle of Death Valley.  I looked up the records and determined that it had not been tuned up in 50K miles!  I bought some spark plugs and that helped.  I need to change a couple of other things.  The old girl has hung in there pretty well mechanically for 110K miles.

Friday we watched the races from the camping area.  Pretty darn comfortable.  Saturday we watched the qualifying from reserved seats close to the starting line.  Talk about noise and vibration, there is no way to describe top fuel racing.  At lunch time, we went to the Gates’ hospitality area at the Schumacher racing compound and had grilled Salmon!

Sunday we watched the first two rounds from the stands.  We watched the last two rounds from the campground area (the noise/heat/vibration got to be too much).  Before we went to the campground, we again had lunch at the Gates area and this time we had grilled chicken and wild rice.

The races were great and the folks who won were among our favorites.

Monday I had to ship another order.  I got back to the campground around 10:00 and we got ready to hit the road.  However, we first did a very short trip to the parking lot of the racetrack so that I could go in and watch some testing by the fuel cars.  That gave me the opportunity to say hi to a few more friends and watch the cars launch right from the starting line.

Yesterday we drove to Richfield UT and stayed at Camp Wal Mart.  The drive from Las Vegas to Richfield is absolutely stunning.

Today we drove to Rifle.  Again, we believe this to be one of the most picturesque drives in the USA. 

Tomorrow we get to pull the big hills on the way home. 

We have been gone for just over 5 weeks.  It is a good thing that I have documented our travels, because the trip has kind of been a blur.  Without question, we have really enjoyed ourselves.  There were times that we got to relax, but most of the time we were on the go –obviously doing fun things.  We look forward to being home, but I would bet that we will be looking forward to our next trip within a week of setting foot on our property. 

Our 2006 Inaugural Bus Trip Part 7 

Posted: Wednesday March 23, 2016

Well, if anyone made it through the first 6 parts of our 2006 inaugural bus trip travelogue, you  are to be commended for your tenacity {big grin}. 

I have often stated that our blog was more for our benefit that to “entertain” others.  We have had a ball reliving this amazing trip.  We also find it hard to believe we crammed so many fun activities into a five week trip.

So, here is the seventh installment of that travelogue – one more to go.

Hello from Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Thursday evening April, 6 2006.  Seventh travelogue of this trip.

In the last travelogue, I mentioned that we were waiting for our mail to arrive.  Well, it did and the Postmaster (lady) forwarded it to someone who had a name somewhat similar to ours (not real close).  The short end of a long story, is that the folks she sent it to returned it to her and it was schedule to arrive after we had to leave for Las Vegas.  We told her to just return it to our house.  What a frustration!

As we waited for the mail to arrive (before we knew that the lady screwed it up), we decided to stay in the same campground until it was time to leave for Las Vegas.  It is a great campground with very nice folks and a great swimming pool.

Friday we went back into Pahrump.   Pat did some gambling and I chased a few parts.  I also worked on the computer in the car to kill some time.  We then went to a great (but rather expensive) Friday seafood buffet.  It was probably one of the best we had been to.  On Monday we went back into Death Valley and toured some more.  Folks had told us we really missed a great side road drive called Artist’s Pallet.  It was absolutely beautiful.

For several years, I have corresponded with a fellow IHC nut who comes to Death Valley each year.   He had sent us his itinerary each year, but we never could work out getting together.  On a whim, I emailed him and he was in the area.  He had planned to arrive in our campground on Sunday (4/2).  I got to meet him later on Sunday and talk a bit more to him and his wonderful wife on Monday night.  He was a school teacher/administrator for many years and retired about 10 years ago.  He has post Polio  syndrome (not sure that is the exact description)  where people who had polio when they were young have a recurrence of the symptoms in later years.  He is basically confined to a electric scooter. 

He invited us to join them and some other folks on a four wheel tour of the south western corner of Death Valley.  It was just like a Ghost Town Club tour with Bob Brown leading and doing the narration.  The girls will probably recall Bob, with his magnificent voice, glorious command  of the English language and unbelievable knowledge of the areas we toured (unfortunately, Bob passed away this past year).  Anyway, we had a great guided tour of some of the most beautiful part of the valley.  As a thank you, we took them out to breakfast on Wednesday just before we left for Vegas.  They wanted to take us on another short tour, but we just did not have the time.

We left for Vegas about noon and got to the race track area about 2:00.  I had received a fairly significant order from our e-store a couple of days earlier and needed to process/ship the order.  That turned out not to be a terribly difficult effort.  We processed the order as if we were at the house, printed the label and got the box ready to ship.  We unhooked the Durango and I drove about 7 miles to a UPS service center.  I had been told that if you have an account with UPS, they don’t care where you ship from.  Turns out that is the case.  We had planned to carry some inventory in order to process orders on the road and this was the first chance to see how the system worked. 

We are now camped at the track.  It is a great facility.  There are no utilities, which is not a problem for us.  Our bus is about 50 yards straight out from the finish line.  I can walk a short distance to a fence and see the races.  Today I bought some head phones that have speakers for my scanner and a built in AM/FM radio.  The track broadcasts the public address system on an FM frequency and I have all the NHRA radio frequencies in the scanner.  You talk about racing overload!!!

I went into the track today to scout out all the team locations and look at the vendor products.  Gates was nice enough to furnish Pat and I reserved seat tickets for both Sat. and Sunday (about $100 worth of tickets for each person) and special VIP passes for one of the hospitality areas. 

Las Vegas Motor Speedway is a Bruton Smith built facility.  He is famous for building fantastic racing facilities.  This one is among the best.  It has a NASCAR track (held a Cup race a few weeks ago), a fabulous drag strip facility and a special dirt track for sprint car races.

One other thing I should mention about our location is that it is located close to the end of the runway at Nellis Air Force base.  It is like an air show with all of the great looking military aircraft flying over.

We brought the motorhome here a couple of years ago, and vowed to come back.  We are planning a trip for an Eagle Rally and trade show in the fall that will put us back in this area again for the fall race.  I suspect we will plan on coming again then and maybe take a side trip back to Death Valley.  Having the bus running is offering us a great deal of flexibility and a chance to be part-time gypsies!!

The weather turned nice today, but for the last couple of days it has been rainy and rather cool.  It is expected to be nice weather for the races.

We will leave Las Vegas Monday (unless the racers stay over to test on Monday – I would like to watch that) and plan to get home about 4/13.  Since we are traveling I70, Mother Nature might have a say about our exact timing.

Our 2006 Inaugural Bus Trip Part 6  Tuesday March 22, 2016

The following post was made from Shoshone CA.   This was our first visit to Shoshone, but not the last.  We love it there.  It is so quiet and laid back.  We often said that a visit to Death Valley would have been very low on our bucket list.  Turns out it is an amazing place that a person could take many days to explore. 

I have attached two photos from the campground.  One of the photos shows the hot springs pool.  It is not all that hot, but the water circulates at a very high rate and it is very clean.  The campsite is not much to brag about, but it was quiet and very low key.  Besides that, we don’t care much for fancy campgrounds

Here is post 6 of that wonder 2006 trip:

Hello from Shoshone CA.

Thursday evening March 30, 2006. Sixth travelogue of this trip.

Well, this is supposed to be the relaxing part of the trip and to a degree it is.  We got to the campground in Shoshone around noon Sat.  We did some general work on the internet and then went into town for a nice dinner.  When I say town, that is a stretch.  The population is 100 according to the sign and the whole town is owned by one person.  The campground is very quiet and nice.  We chose it because it had a hot spring (from the book), but it turned out to be a very nice, fairly large swimming pool fed by a warm spring.  The temperature is said to be about 92 degrees, but we think it is a bit colder than that.  We have been in the pool several times and it is great for both of us, as I can swim laps.

Sunday we toured Death Valley.  Our first thought is that it would just be a desert.  It turned out to be one of the most beautiful places we have been.  The terrain varies with every curve in the road.  Salt flats, snowy mountain ranges, gorgeous rock formations, and the list goes on.  It was simply fantastic.  We even got to tour an old ghost town.  Death Valley is famous for two major items.  The first is that it is the lowest point in the US (282 feet below sea level) and borax mining with the ore being transported by the famous 20 mule team wagon trains.

Death Valley has a special memory for me.  My dad used to draw a “cartoon” for the Kansas City Star (and other papers) called “Wherezit”.   I think I still have the US Registered Trademark papers for the name.  In any case, I have often recalled one of his items that asked the question:  In what state is the highest and lowest elevation located? (and had the wording that said something about them being within 50-100 miles of each other).  At that time there were only 48 states and the answer was CA with Mt Whitney (14,494) feet and Death Valley (minus 282 feet)

Monday we went to a very fun place called the China Ranch.  In the middle of this mostly desert, sequestered away in a canyon, is a true oasis.  The ranch is famous for raising dates.  There are probably 100 date palms, some dating back to 1920.  They produce thousands of pounds of dates each year.  They are famous for their “date shakes”.  We went two days and had date/banana shakes and they sure tasted great.  We also bought several of their date/white chocolate cookies (also great).  The owner is the postmaster at the Shoshone Post Office.  I have talked to her several times about the history of the ranch. 

Tuesday we went to Pahrump NV which is about 30 miles away.  We scouted out campgrounds, had lunch, and Pat dropped a few “electronic coins” in the slots.  We were not impressed by Pahrump.

The reason we are scouting out campgrounds is that our favorite campground in Primm NV is now closed.  We want something in NV (for the slots).  We are now thinking that we may go north a bit to Beatty NV.  I have an internet friend that is there and we may get a chance to me him.  That would also put us close to the north east entrance  to Death Valley and we may go back into the park to see a couple of thing we missed and to see if the wildflowers will come out after the rain.

Did I mention rain?  Death Valley averages 2 inches per year, and for two days this week it rained a bunch and was pretty cool.  I would guess we got at least ½ of an inch – probably more.  When I read this to Pat, she said I should add that the weather here has been beautiful.  It is in the high 70s during the day and quite cool in the evening.  Overall, a very special place that will be on our “must return” list.

Wednesday we each did a bunch of catching up on business items.  Today I finally got around to installing the tire pressure monitoring system and did a couple of other items on the bus.  The bus continues to function very well.  We have not discovered any significant problems.  There are some things that need work when I return, but nothing that affects our trip.

The pool has been fun and has given me some business related contacts.  One person owned a trucking business and we talked at length about my engine and transmission and he wanted to know more about our tire pressure monitoring system for his trucks.  Today we met the neatest couple who live in northern CA where they are completely self-sufficient (no phone or electricity).  Her business is making hats and we think she does very well.  I would urge you to visit her website:  www.gottahaveahat.com.  Her hats are fantastic and I need to put one on my wish list.  We did a lot of talking about small business and she said that her business took off after she advertised on Google.  The following paragraph contains the details and the action we took.

Today, I talked to some folks who have established a pretty successful online business.  One of their key growth factors was advertising on Google.com.  It seems to me to be very effective.  I set up three categories:  fire extinguishers, Doran tire pressure monitors and my EG-400 fire detection system.  The program is pretty simple.  I entered key words for each category.  If someone types in that key word, my ad will show up at no cost.  If they click on my web link, I pay $.30 with a total cost limit of $10. per day (both can be modified at any time).  To try it, type in "engine fire" in the search engine and you should see my ad.  I can move the ad up the list by committing to more money per click.  I get full statistics of each hit and which key word/phrase triggered the click.  Seems pretty slick to me.    

Judy sent our mail to general delivery at the Shoshone post office.  If it shows up tomorrow, we will probably move to Beatty.  If not, we will stay her a few more days and maybe commute to Pahrump to get Pat a gambling fix.

Our 2006 Inaugural Bus Trip Part 5  Sunday March 20, 2016

Here is post 5 from our 2006 inaugural bus trip:

Hello from Barstow CA.

Friday evening March 24, 2006. Fifth travelogue of this trip.

Well, we survived the FMCA trade show.  Our sales were OK, but we always hope for more.  We sold a bit over $2500.  The profit from those sales would probably pay for the cost of the booth ($700).  I guess we can rationalize that our sales are increasing at each show, but they need to be at least 4 times where we are now to break even.  Oh well, we are having fun and maybe the sales will come.

The show had 2800 motorhomes in attendance, which is down quite a bit from past shows.  We had two very strong competitors for two of our products, so that affected our sales as well.  I had hoped to sell more of my units, but I did have very good interest and several folks mentioned our product coverage and/or ad in the magazine.  As I toured the show, I think the next thing we need to work on is the appearance of the booth.  Nick, if you are reading this, I will really be picking your brain as we travel to Atlanta – fair warning.

The evening entertainment was great the two nights we went.  Debbie Reynolds still has a huge amount of talent at 73 and really belted out some great songs.  Last night Bobby Vinton wowed the audience.  He played several instruments and sang most of his hits.  He really knows how to work the audience.  Both were very fitting entertainers since the membership is heavily skewed towards the over 55 age group.

Speaking of members, the vast majority are driving at least mid range motorhomes ($400K) with probably 25 to 30% driving units that are over $500K.  They seem to us to be rather tight with their money.  One guy talked about his motorhome and trailer (with $250,000 show car in it) and would not buy a tire monitor system unless I paid the tax!  They are so different from the bus conversion folks, but we have to address that market somehow.

Today, I had the bus weighed by a special service that weighs each side of each axle to get the full picture of the tire and axle loading.  I had adjusted the axles of the bus (uses very special rubber springs that are adjustable) and it appears that I did a pretty good job.  None of the loads exceeded the ratings and everything was pretty well balanced.  The bus was loaded pretty much the way it will be most of the time and our total weight was 36,550 pounds.  And that does not include the Durango.

Pat had made reservations for tonight at what seems to be a great hot springs in Shoshone CA which is about 60 miles from our direct route to Las Vegas (sounds well worth the detour).  The campground is $20 per night and that include use of the hot springs.  We got started later than we wanted, and then ran into horrendous traffic getting out of the LA area.  We decided to park here for the evening (of course at a Wal Mart) and then go in tomorrow.  That will let us pull the huge climb up to Baker CA in the early morning.  The engine is running very cool, but the heat from the turbo is causing the air going into the engine to be warmer than I would like.  It is not a huge deal, but I want to keep the temperature as low as I can, and I will work on a solution when I get home.  I have a temporary solution I will rig up for our climb up the west side of Eisenhower tunnel.  If that is the worst problem I have, I will be tickled pink.  Things have been going so well, that it is scary.    

Shoshone is at the southern entrance to Death Valley.  We will tour a bit while we are there.  If the hot springs is what we think it will be, we will probably stay there several nights.  As you all know, Death Valley can be very hot in the summer, but right now, Shoshone weather suggests that it will be in the low 80s during the day and low 50s during the night.

From there we will stay a few days in Primm NV.  We both like that location since Pat can gamble, and I don’t have to endure all of the glitz of Las Vegas for too many days <grin>.

Today we made our reservations for the campground at the drag strip in Las Vegas for the big national event (April 6-9).  The campground area (no services) is located so that we can see the strip from a hill not too far from the bus.  I talked to a friend at Gates and they are going to comp Pat and I tickets for Sat. and Sunday plus admittance to the Gates hospitality suite.  It should be a ton of fun.  From there we will take a few days getting home.

I guess you can tell that we are getting close to the “slow motion” part of the trip and we CAN’T WAIT!!!