Day: November 16, 2012

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Steady As She Goes into St Clair, PA

What a great day on the road!!! I love my new rig!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have found NO disadvantages with my new setup so far, except my truck having worse fuel consumption than did my car.

I now have:

-a slightly less fussy towing system (yes, a review is forthcoming)
-improved braking power (I actually don’t notice any difference, but I like the idea that my heavy toad is slowing down on its own)
-a steadier rig that drives straighter and truer
-an improved turning radius
-not an iota of loss in my RV’s engine power or gas consumption! Miranda has no idea the truck is back there!

This trip feels almost like a do over for me. My rig is not only in great physical shape, but has many improvements. Self-employment has offered me more mobility. I feel as giddy as I did when I left Quebec in 2008, as though all the past failures and setbacks never happened, except that I get to keep all that knowledge and experience.

One of the things I’m working on is managing my stressors, the biggest one of which is getting fuel. I would get so worked up over finding the ‘right’ gas station that I would drive till the gas gauge needle was deep in the red and I absolutely had to use the next service station. Now, I’m making an effort to stop before the critical point so that I can exit, look for a good option, and move on if I don’t find one.

I was just about in the red when I hit Hazleton this afternoon. The first exit had tons of fueling stations, so I got off, picked the best looking one, and realised only after I was committed that getting out might require a slightly tighter turn than I could make with a toad. I looked at the turning space and experience told me that the turn would be super tight, but doable. Well, my new tow bar allows for slightly tighter turns than did my old one and the truck just swung around as smooth as can be!

This wasn’t a great fueling stop, however, because I ended up having to go through very steep-hilly and under-constructiony Hazleton to get back onto I-81S. But with only 30KM to go, I was feeling very good and glad to be landing just before dark.

With 6KM to go, traffic ground to a halt in a construction zone and it took half an hour to drive the last 6KM to the exit, with another 6KM to go down a steep, twisty road in growing darkness. Was I glad to arrive feeling very zen into that construction zone and to know that the steep and twisty grade was ahead of me! I pulled into the Walmart at bang on 5’oclock. By the time I came out of the store with permission to park, some fresh ravioli (I put homemade red sauce in the fridge to thaw today), mozzarella, cheesecake, and crudités to tide me over till dinner, it was pitch dark out.

The weather is noticeably better than yesterday. I was comfortable walking across the parking lot in my fleece hoody while at this time yesterday, the hoody, winter coat, tuque, and gloves were unable to ward off the chill. It’ll be cold overnight, but nothing like yesterday.

Mmm! I think my casserole is ready!

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Saratoga Springs To (Almost) New Jersey

I’m at the last rest area before the New York Thruway ends in New Jersey and I will be shooting west towards Hazleton, PA. My ETA is early for a Walmart, so I’m taking a long charging/lunch break here.

I forgot that I didn’t tow in the spring (LOL) so I was a bit taken aback that my Thruway toll was $20.80!

It was beyond bitter cold in Saratoga last night, dipping to at least -10C. There was a rime of frost over my vehicles this morning. Even if my batteries were behaving properly, I could never have kept the rig at a comfortable temperature all night. I instead did the long johns + tons of blankets + two CAT heaters method of getting through the night. I read till about 10:30PM then slept soundly till six (an excellent night for me). I switched the electric blanket on for a bit (it draws 3A), then waited for day break to turn the furnace on to warm the rig enough to make getting underway a non-excruciating event.

I don’t like to have breakfast right away at any time, so it made sense to just dress and go, then stop for breakfast at a rest area. I left the door to the cab from the house closed so that I could get heat while driving.

There was a lot of traffic between Saratoga and the Thruway, then barely any. If there aren’t been so much construction, it would have been a thoroughly forgettable and easy drive. My destination for today is the Walmart in St Clair PA. Tomorrow, I’ll aim for a Walmart in Fredericksburg. And Sunday, I should make it to Hampton Roads by early afternoon.

I know that RV specialists are going to scoff at what I’m going to say next and give me 50 billion reasons why what I’m saying breaks the law of physics or something, but having a toad makes the whole rig steadier. When I was driving around without the toad, my rear end swayed something fierce and the RV felt like it was bouncing up and down the highway. Now that I have a toad again, the driving feels much smoother and I’m not getting blown as easily into the shoulder when being passed by a big rig.

I stopped at another rest area to check the state of my batteries. The solar charger was registering a full charge at 13 volts and change. The battery monitor agreed that I had 13 volts and change but said that I was at only 77% capacity. The inverter turned on (not connected to anything), told me it was reading 13 volts and change, screeched, and turned itself off, just like the old one did when it was trying to handle too big a load (I was drawing on a couple of amps from the fridge). I turned on the RV engine and all three monitors reflected 14 volts and change, confirming for me that there is nothing wrong with the connection between the house batteries and the mechanism that allows me to charge while driving.

So it looks like everything is working as it should except for the most crucial part of my system, the batteries. They are more than four years old, have been subjected to extremes in temperature, and have low amp hours. My experiment is complete. New batteries are in order.

The wifi on the Thruway isn’t working today; I tried to get on with my iPad at every one. I’m now on my computer using my cellular connection. There was a man sitting next to me here and he asked me how the frell I managed to get online and that he had tried at every rest area so that he could sign up for work tomorrow. It was a bit more of a sob story than that, but nothing I haven’t heard out of the US in the last few years. I turned on wifi sharing and asked for his phone. It refused to connect to my network, but my iPod had no trouble. So I kept his phone and handed him the iPod. He spent all of five minutes doing what he needed, handed me back the iPod, and said in a choked voice, “I made the deadline to sign up for work tomorrow! Thank you! God bless! Happy holidays!”

I can’t tell you the number of times before I got internet on the road that I wished a random stranger would share their connection with me. I was so happy to be able to do this today for him. Macs rock!