July 2006: VA, WVA, and Washington DC

25 July 2006: We took a night tour of the DC monuments last evening returning after midnight, so we just lazed around today and did tons of laundry. Tomorrow, we'll venture out to the Spy Museum.

23 July 2006: We enjoyed a short trip into Annapolis MD with my niece Melanie and her fiance Shane. Henning ate his first crabs. This morning, Tom called an RV repair man to come fix our water pump which works but does not shut off automatically. Later today, we'll take the DC Metro to the National Mall.

22 July 2006: We ventured out to the National Air and Space Museum's Steven E. Udvar-Hazy Center today. Tom and Henning enjoyed seeing the planes more than I did; however, we did enjoy the IMAX films, especially Fighter Pilot. Henning's response to this film: "Good action shots, propaganda." Tom said it's a recruiting film for the Air Force. More nachos for Henning for dinner! A thunderstorm brought us a breeze and a rainbow.

21 July 2006: Henning arrived safely from Germany on Wednesday. Yesterday, I took him on a tour of the local area here in Laurel-College Park where I grew-up and graduated from high school and college. He was not impressed as his high school is inside an old castle. ;-) Today, Tom and Henning put the new tires on the RV successfully, in the blasting heat. The dangerous heat wave continues ...

19 July 2006: Tom wrote the following summary of the past two days. We're both ready to give-up the Rig and buy a house; houses don't have tires blow-out in a heat wave.

What an adventure!

Okay, let's start with the day BEFORE we left Morgantown.

I went out to check the air in all the tires and found one of the truck tires was flat. I pumped it up and found the leak. It was the outer right rear tire, so we probably ran over something on the edge of the road.

No problem, I'll just drive into MoTown and get it fixed. How hard can it be? Problem is that the tire should be spin balanced, and it is a large tire: 19 1/2" rim. TireLand on the Mileground? Nope, cannot spin balance it. Summers: they do truck tires so they must be able to handle it. Nope. The Ford dealer? Nope. TireLand does all their tires, but try Eddies on Green Bag Road. Nope, they cannot touch it. But try Sankbeil in Dellslow.

Sankbeil cannot spin balance, but they have a product called Edge that they put into semi's tires. It is a powder that balances a tire as the truck is driven. Sounds okay. I tell the owner, Jeff Sankbeil, to go ahead. As a kid is putting the tire back on, I ask him if he put Equal in. He says no, but he lined the tire up with where it was as best he could. And I notice that he has scratched the chrome rim up pretty badly. If I weren't so pissed, I would have had them take the tire back off the rim and put the Equal in. So, I'll get it balanced in the DC area. Hmmm, looks like the plug the kid put in the tire is coming out; gotta get it re-patched, but from the INSIDE this time!

Okay, now we start our drive to DC. While going over the Garrett County mountains I decide that I'm having to step on the brakes too hard. Under the dash is the brake controller for the trailer. I reach down and twiddle the adjustment so that the trailer does more of the braking. Ah, much better! I don't think any more about it for quite a long time. In fact, I forget that I did it.

Around Hancock MD we have a blowout. We get over onto the on ramp and get roadside assistance from our Good Sam Emergency Road Service; great folks! So, three hours later we are once again underway on our only trailer spare. Wonder why the tire blew???

Sixty miles into the 93 miles from Hancock to Cherry Hill Park we blow another tire. SHIT! We get off onto exit 22 from I-270 around Hyattstown, MD. We call Good Sam. About 45 minutes later they say that a towing company will be there in an hour. Meantime a MD motorist assistance guy rolls up. Says that the towing company is pretty bad and will not be able to bring us a tire anyway. Suggests a tire service company; we do it, get a tire, and are happy with it ($550 out of pocket later). Hmmm, the guy says that this is the last tire of this type that they have in stock (this particular tire can be very hard to find in stock anywhere).

While waiting to get the tire fixed, I'm wondering why the tires blew. We have towed over 20,000 miles without a tire failure. We have driven longer steeper mountains in higher temperatures. So what's different this time???? SHIT! I adjusted the brake controller! In making the trailer do more than its share of the braking, I was also making it generate more than its share of the heat. The higher temperatures on this very hot day were deadly. I backed off the adjustment to where we normally run. Maybe we can get to the campground without another blowout.

But now we have four compromised tires. After being subjected to over temp, they cannot be trusted. We drove VER-R-R-RY SLO-O-O-OWLY the last 36 miles including a section on the DC Beltway. A nail-biter of a drive as we waited for another *BANG*. We made it to the campground just before the office closed at 10:00 PM last night. Then, I had to back-in in the DARK. We do not often have to back-in and we never drive after dark. Hooked up, filled water, showered, in bed around midnight. Of course I'm awake at 4:30 this morning anyway.

So: today I start looking for tires, check out the damage to the trailer (exploding tires are very bad for anything that gets in their way), and arrange for oil change for the truck and to get the tire balanced or re-repaired. Oh, and Henning is arriving at Dulles this afternoon.

I think Kay and Henning will be doing some touring without me as I get this mess cleaned up.

Sure am glad to be parked for a few days!!!

18 July 2006: Yesterday, Tom woke-up to a flat tire on the truck. He had difficulty finding a place here that could repair such a big tire. When he did find a place, they were not able to balance the tires because they did not have big enough equipment. Guess we'll take care of that in the "big city." I spent Sunday playing with hummingbirds and yesterday playing with butterflies. New photos will be uploaded tonight or tomorrow morning. We're on the road again heading to the Washington DC area where we will fetch Henning at the airport tomorrow.

13 July 2006: Thunder rolls and downpours continue ... While we had a break from the rain yesterday, I wandered around the campground playing with my new Canon PowerShot SD 630 Digital ELPH camera. It's much lighter than the other Canon PowerShot A520 and I do like the larger display window which is also the view finder. One problem is that the battery pack will only last for about 80 photos. I'll have to buy another one and keep one charged as a back-up. I did find some new wildflowers, Indian pipes and maybe a "Heal-all" plant that was used to soothe sore throats back in the old days. Tom remembered this weed-flower as having a sweet taste. And speaking of Tom, he woke me up in the wee hours of this morn' to tell me that he does not want to live in the Morgantown area. He wants to explore the Colorado Rockies first, fine with me because I've always wanted to live in Colorado. We talked about what to do IF I get an EP job in Europe. We'll store the RV and sell the truck. We'll need something to live in when we come back and the RV will store OK, but the truck won't. We want a different truck anyway with a hauler bed. Tom's off to work on his brother's computer and visit his folks. I'm staying here to recuperate from a bug. Maybe I should chew on some of that "Heal-All" plant.

12 July 2006: A thunderstorm and an orange salamander greeted us at our campsite in WV this afternoon. Tom just loves getting soaked when setting up the RV (NOT!), although he'd rather get wet than bake in the hot sun or freeze in bitter cold. We all prefer camping in the trees over sitting in an open field in the hot sun. We have no Internet connection here in Sand Springs Campground, although we've been told that WiFi is coming soon. We'll visit the Blue Moose Internet Cafe in Morgantown later this week to fetch and send mail and catch-up on the latest current events. I love my iPod! I listented to it most of the trip when I wasn't driving. When I was driving, I was on the look-out for deer, counted five along the sides of the roads, and new wildflowers. Butterfly weed, yellow sweet clover, and teasel is quite abundant now. I also saw some red trumpet vine, lots of orange daylilies, and flowering yucca plants that grow natively here. This week, we'll visit with Tom's relatives. Sally says she has lots of hummingbirds for me to photograph and I'm sure that her butterfly weed will be attracting lots of butterflies, too. Time for the telephoto lens. And in the wee hours of this morn', Tom wants a house. When will we ever decide what we want to do and where we want to live?! Tom's missing his Oregon Coast because of the heat and humidity of the East Coast summer. I hate air conditioning blowing on my neck and shoulders. I still like the idea of living in Germany or Europe before investing time and money into a house. Let's see what the daylight brings ... More rain, and we usually want a house when the weather is bad. It's not fun maintaining the RV in downpours. We both still think that the Morgantown area is a good place to buy and build because it has great hospitals, a university, and an airport, three essentials in our planning. The area is growing and land is still reasonably priced in today's real estate market. We'll look for land again in October then next summer. If DoDDS calls with the EP job in Germany, we'll take it and have Tom's brother Bob manage our property and drive Ruby while we're away. That's the plan for today anyway ...

08 July 2006: Tom has been a busy boy learning Ruby for Rails, a software program. I've been busy doing whatever, just daily living. Now the crunch is on to get ready to travel to WV on Tuesday.

04 July 2006: I spent the entire day completing an online application to teach again in DoDEA-Germany. Before we buy land and build our earth-sheltered home, we want to live in Germany for a few years. I lived in the Frankfurt-Heidelberg area from 1991-1995. This would be good for our finances and for our spirits. Great photo-ops, too. Of course, I know my family won't like this idea because Germany is even farther away than Oregon! But, we need to live our lives while we are able to do so. Tom's Mom Sally agrees. I appreciate her support and enthusiasm for our nomadic lifestyle. Happy 230th birthday, USA!

03 July 2006: Over the weekend, we spent a night at my sister's farm-orchard in Shenandoah, VA. It was hot and the work is never done on a farm. I'm glad that my sister Candy and her husband Phil have fun working. That kind of "retirement" is not for us.

I have received two early birthday presents: an iPod from Tom and a new Canon PowerShot SD 630 Digital ELPH camera from myself. Now, I have two new techie toys to learn how to use.

Tom and I are considering traveling to SC in November to visit the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge. I have never spent any time in SC and the NWR there should provide for some great photo opportunities. It should still be warm enough and let's hope the hurricane season will be over by then. If not, we'll have to stay further inland.

I just finished James Patterson's book, 4th of July, an appropriate choice for this time of year. It was another exciting who-done-it solved by the Women's Murder Club.

A thunder-boomer just passed through here giving the plants another long drink of water and knocking out power. We have the generator, but the power usually returns quickly after such short storms. Not this time! Power was out for almost 8 hours. We took a drive in search of the Swinging Bridge Restaurant where buffalo burgers are served. We got there too late today, but we'll try another time.

When we returned, we did turn on the generator to cool off the RV before going to bed. I smelled something funny. We investigated, but did not find out what it was until today when I moved the trashcan. The trashcan was blocking the exhaust pipe from the generator. The exhaust fumes burned holes in the plastic trashcan and we're very lucky that they did not start a fire or blow-up the propane tanks. Another OOPS in our growing list of RV'ing mistakes! When running the generator, be sure that the exhaust pipe is open and nothing is in its way to prevent breathing in exhaust and burning down the RV.