The Schedule

For those of you who have been asking, here is our schedule as of now. It is not final, but it should be pretty close.

Home Again

We got back from Carol's in one piece. I think we are in pretty good shape. I took the RV to the dealer with a list of repairs to be done and instructions to do whatever had to be done for a safe trip.

While we were at Carol's we stayed in the RV (a combination of our wanting to use the systems and Carol's having 2 cats). Water and electric were no problem, but we had a full sewage (black water) tank. I realized after we got home that there were several sites in Connecticut that we passed right by that had free dumping. Live and learn. I now have the location of every dump site in the US.

We both love living in the RV. We'll see what happens after 8 weeks.

Oh, yes - Judy still hasn't driven the RV!

Passover in Lexington

Every project needs a trial run. This weekend we brought the RV up to Carol's in Lexington, Mass. We were in full travel mode: we towed the car, had bikes on the rack, and had Ziggy with us. We wanted to find any problems before we were 3000 miles and 8 weeks from home.

The first surprise - a pleasant one - was that towing the car did not make driving much more difficult. But when we got to Lexington the car battery was stone dead. We need to leave the car's ignition switch on so the auxiliary braking system can work. We were told that it wouldn't be much of a drain on the battery. WRONG! On the way home I will make sure everything in the car is turned off, but I have already ordered a solar charger that I will keep plugged into the dinghy.

What else? Oh, yes. I had flushed out the water system from its being winterized. I did not realize that the water heater had been drained and the plug removed. By the time I figured it out I was soaking wet and really irritated. There is also a bad connection for the city water so we are running off internal water for the weekend.

I finally found the CD changer for the RV's radio on eBay. I got it installed just before we left, and it seems to work fine. I also got the Sirius satellite radio module for our GPS navigation system. It works only marginally with the antenna mounted in the windshield, so I will probably have to have the dealer install it in the roof. So far I am not overly impressed with Sirius, but I suspect that it will grow on me when we are in the boondocks where the only choices on radio are Jesus, Rush or country.

We are still learning some of the systems, but I think we have learned enough to be ready to go once we give the dealer a list of a few things to be repaired.

One minor problem -- Judy has never driven the RV except during the initial test drive! Am I going to be driving every day, all day?

Ziggy seems to like the RV life and does not mind staying alone as long as we take her for walks. She really likes "quality time."

Only 6 weeks 'til we shove off!