Day: September 23, 2010

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Urban Dry Camping Has Its Pluses

My computer battery ran out of juice mid-afternoon. I was going to recharge it with the house battery since it’s sunny out and the solar panel compensates for the computer’s draw. Then, I realised that there’s a Starbucks across the parking lot. I bought a Venti-sized drink to give myself as much legitimate time as possible at the café and stayed forty-five minutes, long enough to buy me 3.5 hours of computer time. I pulled this same trick earlier this summer when I was camping in Whitehorse and needed a place to plug in my camera.

I didn’t even use their wi-fi; my aircard is just so speedy down here. I need to start watching my bandwidth usage now that I can stream video and download at warp speed!

(I do have to say that surrounded by netbooks and 13″ laptops, I came to realise just how big a 17″ model is!)

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Location, Location, Location

Wanting to have as little manoeuvring to do as possible tomorrow morning, I Googled directions to the repair place so I could go check it out and figure out ahead of time the best place to unhook the car.

The address of the repair place, Elite Auto, is 2655 Enterprise. I stepped out of the rig, looked at the nearest street sign, did a double take, and then looked at the address of the nearest building. 2958 Enterprise. I’m literally two blocks away and one street light away! Enterprise seems to be a busy road and rather narrow, so I’m glad I scoped out the place since I now know I’ll need to use the entrance to the business next to the repair place so as to best position myself to unhook the car. So long as there aren’t any cars around me tomorrow, getting out of Walmart should be easy.

One odd thing that came out of yesterday is that it was my second best gas mileage day to date (with the best being on the drive between Brandon and Regina; ie. flat prairie with the wind at my back where I hit 12MPG). I did nearly 750 kilometres on the tank yesterday and I’m still not in the red, but the gas gauge is right next to it. That tells me I have about 40 litres of fuel in the tank, putting my MPG at a 11, which I think is probably amazing for a huge vehicle towing through mountains.

I don’t want to go into the repair shop being so low on fuel, but neither do I want to go fuel up; the fewer times I need to stop, the better. So, I bought a 20L jerry can and will fill up Miranda manually. One can should bring her up to about a quarter full (60L on board total, out of a total 200L), which is a respectable amount, and more than enough to get me to Osoyoos. I haven’t decided yet where my 20L tank is going to live. I have a 5L one mounted to the motorhome ladder, but the 20L tank isn’t going to fit. I think it’ll end up in the kayak!

Today, I’m just chilling out a home and getting some work done. I got quite a bit of interior damage yesterday from all the bumps and sudden stalls, so I need to prioritize what I should work on first. For example, the retaining rods in my bookcase ripped right out, so they need to be glued back into place and putty applied to the tears to make them less apparent. I also lost my shower door; the top pin jumped out of the hole and then the door bounced off the bottom pin! The door has quite a dent near the top, but otherwise seems okay, and I need to find a way to secure that top pin! Besides that, I had a lot of things fall out of cabinets and make messes, so I need to clean up. Thankfully, there doesn’t seem to be anything major I need to deal with.

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At Walmart’s Mercy

People shop early in Kelowna! By the time I got up at 8, manoeuvring out of the parking lot would have been a real challenge. I popped the hood and saw nothing amiss, then started Miranda. She purred and idled beautifully, but I didn’t try to put her in D and move out of the spot.

First order of business was to see how Walmart would feel about my staying a day and second night here if I had to, and then to find some help. No sense wasting time here if they were going to make me move on.

Walmart required some groveling, writing a letter to management, leaving a note on my dash, and promising to spend oodles of money here. I wish I could have actually spoken to management and laid out my case: why make me move to an RV park when the garage I found is literally only a couple of blocks away?

The first place I called this morning was the Ford dealership. They couldn’t accommodate a 31′ motorhome. I’m learning to not take no for an answer and pushed the lady to refer me to someone else, which she did.

I called these other folks and gave only the bare bones story to secure an appointment. They can see me at 8AM tomorrow, which is perfect since it’ll enable me to manoeuvre out of the Walmart parking lot before it’s choked with cars.

The man I spoke to asked for a bit more of the story and told me I surely have one of three problems, all of which are at the top of my list, too: leaky or loose hose, clogged fuel intake, clogged air filter. If it’s a best case scenario, which is that there is no actual problem except a sensor that needs to be reset, I’m looking at $73 bucks with tax. Otherwise, I’m probably looking at a $122 job with tax. Worst case scenarios aren’t even worth considering at this point.

He told me “There’s no reason to panic, this is likely something minor!” and I had to smile since I haven’t been panicking. I know enough about the causes for a check engine light to not be worried about a super costly repair. I’m just still pissed off that this had to happen in the middle of nowhere in some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen!!!

Once I have had Miranda looked at and know that I can hit the road, I will decide if I’m moving to the RV park early or not, provided they can accommodate me.