Great Expectations

I don't know what kind of flower this is but it's a bush that is used for landscaping all over Phoenix.

We went to Phoenix this morning to get horse feed. While we were there we went over to Cabela's and I got a pair of slippers and a shirt, both out of the discount room. With coupons and promotions, I got the slippers for nothing. Then we went back to Gordon Biersch for lunch, and beer for me. Great place. It was 109 degrees when we left Phoenix. Back here it was 95.

This is the bus that we are getting ready for the trip. It is a 1997 MCI bus with a Cummins M11 engine. It has air ride suspension and lots of power, or so I'm told. Right now it is a shell. Nearly all of the seats have been stripped out of it as well as the overhead compartments. At this point we are gathering the components to upfit for the journey. We have a very nice Dometic two fridge that runs on propane. The fridge will be hoisted up and slid through one of the windows to get it inside the bus. All of the windows are also escape hatches and they each can open and swing up like the one in the picture.

 

You can also see some of a couch that is going in. Here is another shot. It folds out to make a bed.

Then we have three bowl stainless steel sink. We're all set for cleaning salmon.

In what I thought was a clever move, we have this Husky roll around tool cabinet to serve as kitchen storage. I assume it will be modified somewhat. There may wind up being two of them.

The bus came with a toilet built in that looks something like the ones in an airplane but it has no valve on the bottom so it's basicly a stainless steel outhouse. We've got a low profile RV toilet to mount over the hole where the seat would go to convert it into something more reasonable. It works better than it sounds. There is also another full size RV toilet that will located in the bath/shower area to be built amidships. We will also have a tub and shower.

The bus has been modified with a combination tank that holds 100 gallons of fresh water, 100 gallons of gray water and 35 gallons of black water. It rests in one of the bottom storage compartments and is currently being plumbed in.

Another modification has been the installation of a cabinet in another underneath compartment that will hold 2 30 lb. propane cylinders, much like you would find on a travel trailer. The fridge actually uses very little propane so we can expect to run it continuously on propane for the whole trip on just one tank.

Since the main AC is driven from the engine, we needed a source of cool for the times when the engine was not running. We have a Coleman Duotherm 15,000 btu unit to be installed in the roof.

A lot of the design is being done on the fly so I don't have details about the whole layout. There will probably be two couches because we need to seat eight people. We also need a place to sleep and one full size bed platform will be built and at least one set of bunks but after that more sleeping room has to be developed. I think I'm getting the couch but if that has to serve as seating during the day, it looks like napping will be tough.

Of course we will also need a way to cook but that riddle is yet to be solved. Plywood has been bought for walls and platforms but no sawdust yet. I'll report on other aspects of the build in a future post.

Settling In

                 This is yesterday's sunset. It gets real pretty if there some clouds to catch the setting sun.

I had thought we might be working on the bus by now but that has yet to commence. Instead, I’m trying to get my body to acclimate to the time and the climate.

The weather has been pretty comfortable so far but it’s going to get warmer. It’s been in the low 90’s but by Tuesday it’s supposed to go to 100. I get up each day between 5:30 and 6 local time. My watch is one of those atomic watch things that’s supposed to reset itself each day from a low frequency time signal in Colorado but so far it has refused to do so. So each time I look at my watch I see Eastern Time. I just subtract the 3 hours and don’t fret about it.

                                                This is the view off the porch in the morning.

The coffee pot is on a timer and the coffee is ready to go when I get up. I get a cup and go out to the entry porch that’s in the shade and sit in a chair and watch and listen to the day opening up. There’s a rooster down the valley that greets the dawn and I can hear the quail in the bush calling out their territory. Sometimes there’s a cottontail or two getting a last bite before heading back into the shade of a bush for the day.

We have three cats out here and they don’t want to be petted. They’re “barn cats”. But they always come around in the morning and they’ll follow us around the yard as we go to feed the horses.

There’s usually not any breeze in the morning and it seems so still. There are few trees and the hills just sit there covered with rocks and brush. There’s no traffic in sight and almost none in earshot so it is very quiet and peaceful.

                                                     This the view I watch in the evening.

We all go to bed at night at 9:00 and by then I’m good and ready. So basically, we follow the sun. We have Dish, but I’m not a TV person so I go out on the back deck at night and watch the shadows overtake the land. The deck looks out over the valley and the tank (pond). I’m staring at perhaps 40 acres of brush and hill with neighbors a quarter mile away or so.

I like watching the wildlife come out at the close of the day. There’re lots of rabbits, both jackrabbits and cottontails. I probably see about a dozen per night. This time I’ve seen quite a few roadrunners. They don’t go Beep-Beep but they do run like the wind. I’ve seen coyotes every night so far. The first night three of them came down the hill through the yard and on to the tank for a drink. There’s only just a puddle left and it will be gone in a couple of days. The other night there were two mule deer does that ventured out very nervously. I think they knew the coyotes were around.

We’re several miles from town and none of the neighbors have those large outside lights right now so it is very dark after the sun goes down. The night sky is brilliant through the dry air. We keep binoculars handy for the wildlife and I can look up and see limitless stars. I ought to see if I can find the schedule for the passing of the space station. I hear about it at home but can never see it there, but here it should be easy.

Under Way Again

Well, it's time to fire up this blog again as another trip is starting. This time will be a little different, though. As most followers of this blog already know, I lost my dear wife, Diane, last November. This past May I journeyed North to hold a memorial service for her. After that, I visited my sister and she and Curley really hit it off. She volunteered to have Curley for the summer and I decided to take her up on the offer. So, Curley is vacationing in upstate New York and I'm traveling solo.

The short version of this trip outline is that I've traveled back to Arizona to join my cousin and her husband and five others of the family in driving a converted bus up to Alaska. We will tour some of the sights in Alaska, headquartered in Anchorage, and then head back via cruise ship and train and whatever else it takes.

I'll try to describe the bus preparation and the trip as it unfolds.

I spent yesterday traveling to Arizona via Delta airways. It's been 10 or 12 years since I've flown and I've learned to view air travel as a giant uncomfortable hassle and I don't look forwrd to it. That being said, yesterday's version was not too bad but still did have its' moments.

I should have anticipated the extent to which technology has invaded travel but I was surprised to receive an email from Delta 24 hours in advance of my departure inviting me to check in on-line. OK, I can do without standing in along line at the airport, so off I went to check in. Then I was surprised to see that I could have my boarding pass in electronic form to be accessed from my cell phone. Good thing, as my printer chose that exact time to run out of black ink. So electronic it is. I had misgivings about the process but it worked like a charm. I used my phone to get to my e-mail pass which had an embedded Q-code that was scanned at security and the gate. Easy-peasy.

I had allowed plenty of time to work things out at the airport so I was left with lots of people watching time. At my gate there was a young family with 3 very young boys. The youngest looked to be maybe 18 months or so. His mother had him in a stroller or in her arms but every time he wanted something he started screaming at the top of his lungs. He wanted something a lot. I figure that my luck would have him seated next to me but then I saw that only he and his mother and the next older boy acutally boarded and they were seated at the extreme rear of the plane, while I sat at about the midsection, next to the engine. Between the engine's roar and the cabin noise and the fact that I removed my hearing aids, he really didn't bother me at all. Even though he screamed all the way to Atlanta.

Those of us who have reduced hearing know that background noise severly reduces our capacity to effectively hear with any discernment. Thus my hearing aids were pretty much of no real use for the whole trip and they rested in my pocket most of the time.

I had a three hour layover in Atlanta so I got some lunch and then settled in for the wait. The noise level in a busy airport like Atlanta is so overwheming. It's kind of ironic that there are so many systems that are trying at the same time to convey some piece of information that nearly none of it gets through. Multiple topics and monitors and languages and volumes and constant paging just present a wall of sound. It reminds me of viewing a Jackson Pollack painting with its' mix of colors. I relied on watching the actions of the people at the gate to get a sense of what to do.

The flight West was pretty good. I was reminded of the downfall of scheduling a flight that departs on a summer afternoon. The high temperatures and building cumulous clouds mean turbulence when climbing or descending and sometimes along the way. We flew at 36,000 feet and still passed some storm cells that were higher yet. I had the window seat just inside the entrance door so I lots of legroom and a view of the passing landscape down below. Although I have been across the nation several times by plane, car, motorhome or motorcycle, I'm always amazed at the variety of landscape as we move West. The lush green of the East gives way to the spare landscape of the West over the miles. The vast areas where there just seems to nothing or next to it. Not roads nor trees nor people. Don't bother to put in cell towers when there's no one to use them. Finally we break over a strip of mountains and there is greater Phoenix laid out below enveloped in a cloud of brown smog.

My cousin and her husband were there to meet me. After a quick potty stop we were off to find dinner. It was 5:30 in Arizona but my body was telling me it was 8:30 so I was ready to eat. A cold beer sounded like a good idea so I suggested a local brewery that I had remembered from being there before. It's called Gordon Biersch and they have several locations around the country. They have great German style beer and great food to boot. So we had a good dinner and then headed back to home base. The trip had a combination purpose for them. They had come to Phoenix to buy horse feed so they had brought their pickup. On the way, they got a call to postpone the feed and transport RV supplies instead. So we wound up bringing back a two door refrigerator, a tub, a toilet and a generator. With all the delays we didn't get home until 12:30 NC time and I was beat. Off to bed.

Now the project is to equip a 1997 MCI bus to serve as an RV for the trip North. Right now it is a virtual shell, waiting for the modifications to make it a livable unit for the duration. That will be the next part of the story. And that will mean pictures.