On The Road with Jim and Pat

Global Warming?

OK folks, I don’t mean this to be a political rant. However, I will make a couple of statements and then drop it. First, I REALLY don’t like Al Gore and his approach to a lot of things including global warming. Secondly, I hope that everyone recognizes that there are two, very divided, schools of thought/research on the subject. When I suffer from the extreme cold, my frustration always gets out of hand.

So, why in the heck did I bring up the subject. Well, the temperatures dropped below zero here last night and we have a forecast of extended very cold weather including several days where the lows will be below zero. We live in Colorado, so I guess we should expect that.

However, I have to keep working on the bus to get the engine back in and get ready to get the heck out of this cold weather. I have a great shop, and even installed in-floor heating. Problem is, I have never been able to afford the solar panels for the system.

I have a natural gas “torpedo” type heater and that takes the edge off the cold in the shop. Our bus has an indoor/outdoor thermometer in it. When I went out to start working a bit after noon yesterday the interior of the bus was 50 degrees (I keep the thermostat set on 50 since it is virtually impossible to “winterize” all of the complicated water system). The outside thermometer was reading 27 degrees (shop temperature). After running the heater for several hours, the shop temperature got into the low 40s. I wear my Carhartts and it is not too bad. My feet get cold from the cold concrete, but I can work for 3-4 hours before I have to give up.

Enough of the complaining. I am making slow progress on the bus. I am taking my time switching components between the engines to make sure I have the best parts of the two. It will take a couple more days to finish getting everything installed and getting it ready to stuff back in the bus. I switched air compressors (large air compressor for the air brakes) and turbo on the engine since they were new from when I first installed the other Series 60 engine in the bus. They are heavy and cumbersome, but I just try to take my time.

Perhaps the worst job was getting the transmission installed. It weighs about 650 pounds and everything has to be perfectly aligned. The picture shows the engine and transmssion on the dolly I use to roll it into the bus. The combination weighs about 3500 pounds.

Once the engine/transmission is in place, it will take a few more days to get the rest of the components (plumbing/electrical/etc) in place.

I sure hope it warms up a bit

That is all for now.

Let’s catch up on a few things. First of all, it is difficult to write this blog when we are not on the road – after all, it was intended to be a travelogue! Secondly, things have been quite hectic and writing this post always seems to be a bit low on the priority list. So the following are a few things that have been going on. Family. We have been catching up on spending time with our girls and their families. We have had some quality time with the two youngest granddaughters. Two of the grandsons called to ask if I would take them to the junkyard (is the Pope Catholic?). We had a great time at a wrecking yard that specializes in cars out of the ’40s and ’50s. We made a great day of it. We have had to stay in touch with one family via phone, because of schedules and various bouts with colds/flue/etc. We did have a really fun lunch with our daughters to celebrate their birthdays. It was just like the old days – just the five of us. We still love to get together with all the family, but this was a very special day. Work. I have been very upset with our web hosting company (Earthlink). I finally decided that we had to migrate all of our personal and business web sites to another service. We chose Go Daddy. They seem to be a good service with domestic support. We have been able to reduce our monthly cost by about $50. The project was huge. I have had to set up a new credit card processing company and rebuild the e-store for rvsafetysystems.com. Rebuilding the e-store will take a lot of time and will take place over the next few months. Earthlink support for web hosting was not bad at first (several years ago) but is now staffed by offshore folks who barely speak English and don’t have a clue. Worse yet they don’t care. For the past several years, they have occasionally lost some of our email. Fortunately we have it backed up with a different service. Bus. Those of you following our engine problems will recall that we had a problem with the engine that got progressively worse. In July, the problem became bad enough that we had to park the bus. I removed the engine and took it to the local Detroit Diesel dealer. What should have been an $8K rebuild ended up being quoted at $15K. That was way more than we could scrape together. I bought a recently rebuilt engine and then attempted to get my engine back from the dealer. The wanted $2K for about 4 hours labor to tear the engine down. The following was a post I made on one of the bus bulletin boards – it details the most recent events. The Shepherd engine saga continues. Stewart Stevenson is no longer holding my engine for ransom!!! Those of you following the horror story about my Series 60 engine problem, will recall that I bought another used engine in Ogden UT. This engine has 200k on a documented DDC dealer rebuild. However, I needed to get my engine back from SS. I had taken it down there expecting to pay for “Step 1” or “Step 2” rebuild. The damage turned out to be worse and the final estimate was over 15K. I then tried to get the engine back, but they wanted almost $2K for the tear down and inspection. In truth they had started work on the engine and were trying to recoup some of their costs. I have been negotiating with them for the past couple of months. Finally, I made a proposal that they keep the block and head as a core (thus they could benefit from their work) and I would get almost all of the other equipment (ECM, turbo, air compressor, shallow pan, clutch/flywheel, etc) plus all of my special fabricated parts. They agreed and said that they would call it even. I was amazed at their offer. Maybe the branch manager got tired of my emails and phone calls. So, I ended up with $2-3K in parts and no bill to pay! The turbo, ECM and air compressor were new when I installed the engine, so I really wanted to keep them. Now, I have all of my parts and the FUN??? begins. Getting all the wiring and accessory parts assembled will be a bit of a challenge. The accessory configuration of the two engines was quite different as was the ECM “cab” wiring. Plus it has been so long that I have forgotten where some of the bus electrical and plumbing connections go. Nobody said this hobby was for the faint of heart. Since I made that post, I have been able to work with the dealer to obtain all of the sensors from the engine (as backup). I am installing the parts and getting ready to stuff the engine back in. Hopefully it will be back in the bus later this week. That catches us up on the big events since my last post.

Snow, Snow, and More Snow!

During this period while we are not traveling, I will be writing a few miscellaneous blogs. You probably noticed that I uploaded my travelogue from my 2006 China trip. I did that partly as a response to a blog that my daughter Judy writes. @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>We are very proud of the job she does with that blog, and you may want to take a look (here).

A couple of days ago I wrote about the fun times we had in our VW bus. I had hoped to post of picture of our bus, but they seem to be buried somewhere.

Today I am going to post about our big October snowstorm. We have snow storms most months of the year somewhere in Colorado. In the Denver area it is not unusual to get snow in October. What is unusual is to get over 40 inches!! That is the number recorded in the Evergreen/Conifer area where we live. The photo to the right is our deck. Parts of Denver got over two feet! Unfortunately, it was an upslope storm and the Denver Airport (located quite a ways east of Denver) only got 7 inches and that becomes the “official” snowfall recorded.

We had left Monday to spend a couple of days with one of our daughters and her family. The live about 30 miles from us, but we decided that staying with them would give us extra time with the granddaughters (Madison 6 and Molly 4). We were scheduled to be “parent helpers” in both of the girl’s classes. On Tuesday we went to Madison’s piano class before she went to school In the afternoon we went to her class and had a great time.

That night it started to snow. By the time we got up Wednesday, it had snowed about a foot and most schools were closed. Molly was devastated that her class had been canceled and Grandma/PaPa would not be helpers that day. However, Madison and Molly got to build the snowman as shown in the photo. That was the first day of the snow — it snowed another foot after the photo was taken.

It continued to snow very hard Wednesday and we decided to stay another day so that the roads to our house would be better. Thursday it was still snowing, but we decided we would try to make it home. We live at 7500 feet and it is a pretty steep climb up from Denver. We had our two wheel drive PT Cruiser, but it does not do too bad since it is front wheel drive. We made it all the way home and buried the poor little car in the entrance to our driveway (see photo).

Last week I had thought about replacing the mower on the tractor with the scraper blade (not a fun/easy task). Well, you guessed it – that did not get done. So, yesterday I “plowed “the driveway with the mower. Actually it did OK. It got the snow down to just a few inches and I was able to move the car up to the front of the garage.

The photo to the right is our ’56 Chevy buried under the snow.

That is all for now.

Eagle Rally Epilog I wanted to mention a fun activity at the Eagle Rally. One of the Eagle bus owners has a VW bus that is re-powered by a small Ford V-6 (I think Capri). I had seen it at one of the other Eagle rallies and it really brought back fond memories. In 1979 I bought a VW bus (camper) with no engine and rebuilt it so that we could travel as a family. When our three girls were small, we planned three long distance trips so that they could see the country and experience traveling in this wonderful country. The first two trips were made in the VW camper bus. The first trip was to California in 1980. We saw many of the typical tourist locations in the LA area as well as other great locations in California (Hearst Castle, Big Sur, etc.). We made that trip with a somewhat stock engine in the bus. It was a slow trip when we encountered any sort of hill. Never-the-less, we had a ball. One of the fun stories on the California trip was that our youngest daughter Judy (9 at the time) bought a huge Micky Mouse doll which was bigger than she was. On the way home our three girls had to share their space with this fourth “person” and Judy’s two sisters were not happy! Our next trip was to the East coast so that we could experience quite a bit of our country’s early history. In preparation for that trip I converted the VW bus to a Ford Pinto engine. Not just any Pinto engine, but one that had been warmed over a bit. On that trip, the bus just flew! Unfortunately it was 1981 and the national speed limit was 55 MPH. Fortunately, some of the eastern states turned a blind eye to the new speed limit {grin}. I sold the VW bus after that trip and I kind of regret it yet today. It was one fun vehicle! Back to the VW bus at the rally. The owner knew my story and offered to let me drive the bus (with 5 passengers) when we went to tour the Boeing surplus store and other locations in Wichita. It took a bit of getting used to, since the throttle tended to stick and the shift linkage was a bit sloppy. However, it really brought back fond memories. I drove the first leg of the trip and the owner drove the rest of the way. He could make that thing fly! The passengers (I was sitting on the porta-potty) were bouncing around as we drove through Wichita. I wanted to take a picture of the VW at the rally, but he left before I could get to it. The hosts of the rally sent a CD and it had a picture where part of the bus was visible. I have attached that photo (cropped). Until we are back on the road, I will continue to post a few stories that might be of interest to our readers.
VW Bus with Ford Engine

Hello from Evergreen, CO

Tuesday morning October 6, 2009 (Third travelogue of this trip) Sunday we drove a bit over 400 miles and ended up in Springfield, CO. Our day did not start well. When we travel on these trips, we carry quite a bit of luggage that contains Pat’s Stampin’ Up! Supplies for her classes and I have to take a lot of files. Saturday night I loaded several bags in the truck so that I would have an easier time on Sunday. Well, it rained during the night and it was pouring rain when I got up. I thought I had re-sealed the topper so that it would not leak, but I checked as soon as I got up and found quite a bit of water leaking in. I made a quick trip to Wal Mart and got a box of trash bags to put each piece in. Then I started to load the last of the luggage and the cart decided to take off. It overturned and dumped my backpack in a large puddle. That bag had not one, but both of my computers in it! The backpack was pretty soaked, so I did not fire up either computer until they had at least 24 hours to dry out (I don’t think they got all that wet, but we did not want to take a chance). We tried to make it to a town that had a Holiday Inn so that we could have a good room. We needed to be settled in in time to watch the NHRA races. We finally had to settle for Springfield which only had three motels and all of them were straight out of the ’50s! I was very discouraged about the room which had two standard size beds and two straight chairs. It turned out to be an acceptable room that seemed clean. The worst part was the races were rained out and the telecast was mostly clips from previous races. Yesterday our trip was not too bad. We started out in fog, but it cleared up and the rest was nice weather. We arrived home mid-afternoon. The service truck did pretty darn good on the last three trips. It is not a great highway truck, but it performed fine (except for the 10 MPG). I had added cruise control and that really helped with the longer drives. We put right at 4,000 miles on the truck in the last three trips. From now on, it will make the trips being pulled behind the bus. We stayed in Shawnee for several extra days so that I could make a presentation to the Prevost Owners Group. They had a rally with about 60 beautiful and expensive coaches based on Prevost bus chassis. Many were probably sold new for close to $1 million dollars. I had a good group and can only hope that will translate to sales in the future. I felt kind of honored, as they only have vendor presentations by invitation. Now, let’s go back and pick up a few items from our stay in Oklahoma. When we first drove around Shawnee, we saw several horse sculptures that were painted in very artistic patterns. I have attached a picture of one that was at the Sonic Drive-Inn. It turns out that the city established a program as an art project that helped to build civic pride, and benefited local charities. It was a part of their centennial celebration (http://www.shawneeok.org/HorseInTheCity/default.asp). Pat had heard that there were thirty horses in the project. BTW, I heard from a good friend who noted that I must have found some sort of time machine, as I had us departing Goddard KS on 10/21 which has not occurred yet {grin}. I have corrected a couple of those dates. That is just proof that you should not write these blogs when you are wiped out. In the last post I talked about our tour of the Oklahoma City Memorial. I only wish that I could find words to describe how moving the memorial and museum are. I have posted some pictures of the memorial. This finishes up this travelogue. We do not plan to travel until we have the bus on the road. I plan to devote the next several weeks to getting it running again. Assuming that everything goes well, we are looking at two options. The first is to head to Florida for a large Bus Rally and a racing components trade show that I thoroughly enjoy. We would depart Evergreen in late November. The bus rally is ends on New Year’s day. However, we need to be on the west coast in early January. That is a ton of miles and probably does not make economic sense. If we just head to the west coast, we will leave right after Christmas. I will try to make at least one post in the interim to let folks know how the bus project is going. That is all for now.

One of the decorated horses in Shawnee.

A map of the area around the bombing

The same area showing the memorial

The Memorial Reflecting Pool

Close up of the Field of Chairs
(the bases are illuminated at night)

Hello from Shawnee, OK

Saturday evening October 3, 2009 (Second travelogue of this trip) I simply can’t believe it has been so long since I posted the first travelogue of this trip. Lots has happened since then. We left Goddard, KS on Monday 9/21. We are staying at the Holiday Inn Express (map). If you look closely at the map (zoom in) you will see a big building just to the west and that is a huge Wal Mart. That makes it very handy to do quick shopping (just like when we are in the bus). Tuesday we started setting up for a regional FMCA rally at the fairgrounds. The actual show was Thursday through Saturday. We did just OK in sales, but had lots of good leads. If any of those come to fruition, our sales will increase significantly. Part of the issue is that the sales tax here is 8.5% and that really gets folks attention on large dollar sales. Several folks said that they would order on the Internet and pay shipping. I did two seminars that were reasonably well attended and Pat did two craft classes. Her first one was full, but the second one was at 8:00 in the morning and that was too early for some of the ladies. It was about half full. Monday (9/28) we drove to Tinker Air Force Base (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_Air_Force_Base). It is a huge (9 square miles) aircraft maintenance facility and has over 26,000 military and civilian employees. There we met up with some good friends who were staying in the “Fam Camp” (map) Many military bases have campgrounds that are available to active or retired military. This campground was very well laid out and would look like a good commercial campground. The campers are charged a nominal fee (about $12 at this location for full hookups). That fee is about 30-50% what you would pay for a commercial campground. In addition, they have full use of the facilities including the base exchange which is like a fully stocked Wal Mart. The prices are lower than public stores and they do not have to pay taxes. Our friends barbecued steak and we had a great time. Getting onto the base was a real challenge. We had to travel around the outside of the base to a check station where we had to show our identification, truck registration, and proof of insurance. We then had to drive back to the gate close to the Fam Camp and undergo a full vehicle search (hood open, all utility doors open, etc). At least we felt secure. Tuesday I worked in the room and took Pat to a close-by casino. This whole area is basically Indian reservation. Wednesday we went back to Tinker and toured the base with our friends. From there, we went to nearby Oklahoma City and toured the Oklahoma City National Memorial and museum (http://www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org). This is located at the site of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. This was the terrible bombing that killed 168 innocent people including 11 children in a day care center in the building. The remains of the building have been cleared and a beautiful reflection pool and “Field of Empty Chairs” that honor those killed. There are 168 chairs arranged by the location and floor where the people were at the time of the blast. The children who were killed are marked with smaller chairs. I will post some pictures on the next blog (too tired tonight). The museum was very well done and extremely emotional. It included a recording made at a Water Board meeting in a building adjacent to the bombed building. By the time we left the museum we were emotionally drained. We returned to Tinker and had another cookout. I will continue our Oklahoma stay in our next blog. Tomorrow we will head home. It is about 700 miles. We will probably take two days to get home, but we are wiped out and may take three days. That is all for now.

!– @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –> Hello from Goddard, KS

Sunday evening September 20, 2009 (First travelogue of this trip) We are at the Express Inn in Goddard, KS (map). For the past couple of days we attended the Eagle International bus rally at Afton Lake. We left Evergreen Wednesday (9/16) in the late afternoon. We had debated about even attending this rally, since our bus is still not running. It is not nearly as much fun at these rallies when you have to commute from a motel to the rally. The bus is a place to relax and makes it convenient at the rally. Not so when you are staying several miles from the rally site. We stayed Wednesday evening in La Junta at a Holiday Inn Express (not one of the better ones). Thursday we drove about 350 miles to Goddard. We took US 50 most of the way. It is an interesting drive, since you drive through several small towns. Most are small farming communities. Many look like they are not doing well economically. Once we got into Kansas, it seemed like every small town had huge grain silos and giant feedlots. We normally travel on the interstates, since we are usually on a tight schedule. However, we found the drive on the two lane highway to be interesting and enjoyable. We arrived in Goddard late in the afternoon. We quickly checked in and unloaded the luggage and then drove to the rally for the group dinner. Friday, the guys went to the Boeing Surplus Center and then to “The Yard” (http://www.yardstore.com/about.htm). Both are “candy stores” for “overage kids”. At the Boeing store, I stalked up on a large number of very high quality drill bits at $2.50 per pound!! The Yard has to be seen to be believed! They have a tremendous amount of surplus aluminum and nuts and bolts, plus all sorts of specialized tools. Saturday we went with most of the group to the Kansas Underground Salt Museum in Hutchinson, KS (http://www.undergroundmuseum.org/index.php). This is a tour of an active salt mine and the tour takes place 650 feet below ground level. It was very interesting. That night we had another group dinner. Today we went back out the to rally site and said our goodbyes as the folks pulled out in their great Eagle buses. Tomorrow we head to Shawnee, OK where we will be vendors at the regional FMCA rally. That is all for now.
Eagle Bus Conversion Rally at Afton Lake

Hello from Evergreen, CO

Tuesday morning September 8, 2009 (fourth travelogue of this trip)
Well, obviously we are home. I left out a couple of things in earlier posts for this trip. On the way out to Salt Lake we started seeing smoke in the Dillon, CO area. That is really scary, as that area has been devastated by pine bark beetle and well over half the lodge pole pines have been killed and are very dry. It turns out that it was from the huge fires in California and to a lesser degree ,some fires in Utah. When we stopped in Green River, UT the smoke was pretty thick. After that we did not notice it as much, even though the fires were still going strong. Perhaps it was the fact that we were further north coupled with the wind direction.
I had mentioned that I would show a picture of the SilverLeaf Glass Dash. It is the ultimate upgrade for those who want to know what is happening with their engine and related components.
I finished the installation a bit after noon on Saturday. I made a quick trip up to visit another bus nut in Ogden and then got back to the hotel in the late afternoon. As mentioned in the last post, we went to the Cheesecake Factory for our anniversary celebration dinner. We have learned to split an entree and then each order a piece of cheesecake. Even then, we took about half of each piece of cheesecake home with us.
I have to talk about our hotel in Salt Lake (the Airport Inn). As I noted last time, we stayed there a few weeks ago. While it was definitely not fancy, it seemed like we could live with it for a few days. Our room was very strange. It actually surrounded the elevator on three sides! It was quite large. The carpet needed to be replaced, but the rest was just fine. It seemed clean enough and that is really what we want. It was located right across from several FBOs (locations that service and store small planes). We took walks most every night and had fun watching planes take off and looking at the small planes.
Sunday we headed towards home. We took I 80 up the hill out of Salt Lake and then took US 40. I wanted to take the two lane home, as it can be more picturesque. That night we stayed at a great Best Western in Craig, CO. Monday we left US 40 at Kremmling and headed towards Dillon, CO. There we stayed with our daughter and here family in their townhouse. This morning we left Dillon early and drove home.
We will be home for a bit less than two weeks and then head out again. Unfortunately not with the bus. We are still very undecided what we will do for an engine. After the next trip, we will stay home until we get the bus back on the road.
Thats all for this trip.
SilverLeaf Glass Dash

Hello from Salt Lake, UT

Saturday morning September 5, 2009 (third travelogue of this trip)

I am writing this on our 45th wedding anniversary. Boy how time flies!!!

We are at the Airport Inn right at the Salt Lake airport — @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>(map). We stayed here when we were in Salt Lake a few weeks ago. It is a moderate hotel that is sufficient for this trip. We have a fridge and micro wave and a large room – all for less than $60. That includes a cooked breakfast!

We arrived here Tuesday (9/1). I have been working on an installation of my system for the past three days. I did not quite get finished yesterday, so I will have to spend a couple of hours this morning. The installation has gone well, but it is more complicated than most because of some options that we installed. The folks that own the coach are quite handy and have been helping out doing some of the work. That has really worked well. They are great folks who are full timers (live in their coach full time) and take great pride in their “home”. It is a 1997 Newmar Mountain Air that they have kept in immaculate condition.

Later today I hope to visit a friend in Ogden and then Pat and I will be going the the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate our anniversary.

Have to keep it short so that I can get to work {grin}

Hello from Green River, UT

Tuesday morning September 1, 2009 (second travelogue of this trip)

I am combining two trips. As noted in our last blog, we were in Douglas WY last week for a double install (my system and a SilverLeaf glass dash install). This week we are headed to Salt Lake for an install of my system in a motorhome.

The two installs last week went well. The SilverLeaf install was pretty straight forward. A SilverLeaf technician flew in and did most of the installation. I helped were I could but it was primarily a training session for me. I will try to post a picture of the dash in the next blog. My installation involves a great deal of work under the coach to run tubing and wires. It was a real challenge for this installation, as we could not get the coach very high due to soft soil. Worse, the soft soil was covered with very sharp gravel and that really made crawling around an issue and I ended up with a lot of scrapes on my back.

We did not get to do any sight seeing in Douglas. It is a very small town. The folks that we did the install for took us out to dinner several times and that was a lot of fun. The wife spent a lot of time with Pat doing stamping and just generally having fun. It ended up that she signed up as a demonstrator.

We left Douglas on Saturday 8/29. On the way home we stopped at two of our daughters to have quick visits. On Sunday we went to the third daughter’s home and visited with her family. Pat did a stamping party on Sunday and I did a bunch of work to get ready for this trip. Kind of hectic!

We left Evergreen yesterday morning and stopped here in Green River. We are staying at the same Best Western hotel that we stayed at on our trip to Salt Lake last month. We are again driving the service truck. As has been the case for the past month, we are sure missing our bus!

That’s all for now.