Staying in touch when you're out of touch

After a few more cups of coffee and some thought, I've returned the cell phone booster.  Here's why:  in order to get the better reception it provides, I'd have to spend about another $100 on cables and connectors.  That would bring the total cost to about $250.

The benefit would be a stronger cell signal in areas where the signal is present, but weak.  That's real, particularly if I were doing business from the Beast or for whatever reason really needed internet/cell connectivity.  But I was out of cell-phone touch for several says at a time on the New Mexico trip, and the world didn't end.  The worst was that I didn't have music to stream.

The more serious problem in being out of touch is if Something Happens.  Something Bad: Broken limb; heart attack; stroke; bear attack.   Now in the worst of these cases, it's simply game over.  The heart stops, and that's that.  Not, all things considered, a bad way to go, in the abstract.  Cell phones are a way to stay in touch, to reassure people that I'm OK, not to worry if I'm a day or so late.  And to get help when I need it.

There's another option here.  Satellite communicators.  A full-fledged sat phone costs on the order of $1000 plus usage fees.  But there's an intermediate satellite technology called "Personal Locator Beacons."  I spent some time digesting this review of the technology; here's the short take.

At one end there's a military-grade communicator which basically has a big red HELP button; press this, and the guys in the helicopter show up.  It has no other function, but it does that pretty well.  No annual fees.  This is the "I broke my leg skiing in the backcountry" device.

Then there are a few other devices which use different satellite technologies and are basically stay-in-touch devices.  Variously, they can send (and receive!) SMS text messages, as well as trigger an SOS function.  They can have interfaces to Google Maps so your route can be seen by others.   They cost about the same as the "true" ELB (Emergency Locator Beacon), they do more, they have annual subscription costs, and they aren't as reliable at getting a message up to the satellite.  Tradeoffs.

So I'm sniffing at this technology.  The two contenders are from DeLorme and SPOT.   In the mean time, the cell phone booster is on its way back.

Downtime activities

It's been quiet here in blog-land. I haven't been writing that much, and (surprise!) people haven't been visiting that much.  I'm turning the corner from recovering from the last trip to launching the next, and what I have posted has been about my plans for that foray.

I did report that Buck's took care of the leaking seal on the differential.  I didn't report what I did about the issue of the leaky kitchen sink faucet: Access to the underside of the faucet is close to impossible. I'd have to take out a good bit of cabinet work under the sink to make space for my shoulders to get in there.  So once again, I punted: I tightened the fitting on the gooseneck faucet, and if I do that, the oozing leak seems to stop.  It's a nuisance, to say the least, but I'll see how it goes on the Wyoming trip and if all else fails I'll take it in to Merrigan's when I get back and throw money at the problem.

This next trip will be the longest I've lived in the rig continuously, and I've been thinking about comfort in daily living.  I've been using the bathtub as a storage bin for awkwardly-shaped things, and decided that if I'm going to be staying at campgrounds with water, I'd like to be able to use the shower from time to time!

So I took an inventory of the available storage in the rig, underneath and and in the main space.  I won't burden you with the details of what's where.  But I did make some decisions.

One involves the electric bike.  I repaired and replaced the damage from the attempt to steal it, and it's back in running shape again.   But the fact is that I simply haven't been using it when traveling.  So this next trip I'm leaving it behind, and I'm putting a storage "rack" on the rear hitch fitting where the bike rack has been.

The extra storage will be a place for some of the things I've been putting in the bath tub and the closet.  There's a major security issue back there: the rack myself can be locked in place pretty securely; the problem may lie in what I carry on the rack.  Given that there is no such thing as complete security, my plan is to (1) put things back there which aren't all that attractive to a thief: the armload of firewood, for example, which is currently taking up a lockable storage bin, and (2) things which wouldn't cost all that much to replace: bottles of oil, brake fluid, and coleman fuel for the little grill and the space heater.  People steal the damnedest things, but in the style of travel I currently anticipate, I won't be leaving the rig behind while I go off elsewhere much.  I think I can secure things on a rack so that when it's parked (for example) in a lot at a life dwelling site, it'll be out in plain sight and require a fair amount of effort to steal something.  We'll see.

About the bike:  I'm considering getting a small hitch put on my small car so that I can transport the thing around town, to various bike paths, for example.  And if that doesn't turn out to be something that I actually do, I'll sigh a deep sigh and put it up for sale on Craigslist.

I got a little folding table to use when I'm seated outside.

This will let me leave the bigger folding "workbench" table at home, and thus out of the bathtub when I travel.  I added to my supply of cam straps so the lightweight stepladder can travel securely lashed to the built-in ladder on the back of the rig.

I got a replacement for the 1999 OEM "city water" connector on the side of the rig.

I got a cool little LED-powered headlamp.

And probably my biggest "upgrade" was a cell phone signal booster: Not for use while I'm traveling, but when I'm camped.  We'll see about this: it requires an external antenna, and the cabling for that may cost almost as much as the unit itself.

Bob Wells swears by this unit, and Bob is Van-dwelling God, so this is an act of faith.  Of sorts.

That's it for now.

Tentative plan for next trip

Lots of if's in this, but in many ways this would make sense:

Leave Tucson Monday May 11
Return Monday June 1

I'm figuring about 3 weeks for the itinerary sketched in the previous post.

This schedule, or something like it, divides data, cash, and credit expenses between two periods.

Mileage would total something like 2700 miles: at 9 miles/gal and $2.50/gal that'd be $750 in gas.
Camping fees at $10 (high) per night for 15 nights would be $150.

Food etc would be as at home, but probably a bit less,  based on last trip's experience.

Nothing firm about this except the overall shape.

REALLY itchy feet!

It's Sunday morning.  I have lots of mundane house chores to do, and desk work from here to there, but I keep getting distracted by reading travel blogs.  This is the way the outbound leg of the next trip looks:



I've stayed before at Willow Springs, Fire Rock, and Dolores.  The others are place-holders: they're about the right distance apart, but that's it.  As you can tell, I'm trying to drive no more than about 4 hours in a day.  That should work for the outbound leg, but I know myself well enough to know that when my sights are on home, I tend to head for the barn in a hurry.

Itchy feet and this blog

Itchy feet:

I've got the next trip sketched out now. Wander north for a lotta miles and more than a week through Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.  At this point the turning-around point may be the Bear Lodge Resort up in the Big Horn mountains outside of Sheridan, WY.  From there, back south and a bit east to see family in Boulder, and then home.  I'm guessing this is about a three-week jaunt.

When?  It may be a few weeks before I can take off.  I'm guessing that the earliest I can leave here is sometime early in the week of May 10.  Probably later than that.  I'm feeling good about the RV: gotta do something about the sink faucet, but other than that it's in good shape.

The blog:

I'm not going to try to make this into a travelogue.  If I tell you I'm going through White Sands National Monument, for example, you can get more information and better pictures than I can take with just a few clicks or taps. That's not to say there won't be any pictures and/or short videos, but the story here will mostly be words.  I can do words reasonably quickly and well, and words burn less of my data allotment than more visual stuff.

As I've said before, I'm not out to monetize this blog or try to pay for travel expenses this way.  I'm not trying to create a "brand" for my "channel."  This is more a way for me to keep in touch with family and extended family so y'all know that I'm still alive and what I'm up to.  

Today I really have to crawl under the sink and see what to do about the faucet.  Really.  Maybe that will be worth a picture!

Go, Buck!

That fluid leak?  A defective pinion seal.  The hot smell? Differential fluid hitting the exhaust system.

Replaced the seal, refill differential, clean exhaust system.  No charge.

THAT's what I'm talking about.

Down time

The rig is in the shop, the detritus from the New Mexico trip is taken care of, and I have a good book going.  So the tempo is pretty slow right now.  That's a good thing, but I do sense some distinctly itchy feet.

The night before I left on the last trip, I discovered that someone had cut the cable which locks the bike to its travel rack.  I put up a picture in this post.  I picked up the pieces, wondered what had happened, and hit the road.

It turned out that there was more damage than I'd seen at first.  When I took the bike off the rack to use it at City of Rocks, other problems became apparent: the quick-release spindle for the front wheel was missing, one pedal was missing, and the little rear-view mirror was cracked.  So it looks like this was a more determined theft attempt  than I'd thought.  This, in my very calm 55+ town home community!  I've replaced the spindle, and I'm ordering new pedals.  And now that I have time to focus on this, a little shaken.  The damage can be repaired, and the expense isn't all that great.  I guess it's easier to understand a theft attempt than random vandalism, which was my first impression.  But still ...

The trip to the shop is because I noticed a fluid leak under the rig in the vicinity of the rear axle.  I wondered if this was from the leaky kitchen sink faucet, but no: it looked, smelled and felt oily and automotive.  I'd had the differential rebuilt before the last trip,  so maybe this was fallout from that job.  Buck has had the rig for a couple of days, now, with no word.  I'm trying not to worry about expense.  Whatever it is, it can be fixed.   The leaky faucet is next.