Our RV Adventures

My day started early with a 9:30 panic call from a client who was leaving at 1 pm for a business meeting out of the country and both of her laptops were messed up. She was hoping I could get one of them working before she left.

Nothing like waiting until the last minute.

It took about 3 hours of going thru the system before I finally got one of the them working and she left for her meeting a happy camper. The 2nd laptop will have to go back to the dealer since the hard drive is dead and it’s still under warranty.

I finally got home about 3:00 pm and tried to get some more stuff done on the rig. I did manage to get the drain plug loose on the water heater, but since I didn’t have time to shut and drain the hot water I left it at that until tomorrow.

After a nice nap, Jan and I headed out about 5:30 to meet Brandi, Lowell, and Landon at Texas Tea Room up in Friendswood, a place Jan and Piper checked out a week or so ago and really liked. Unlike most tea rooms they were also open from 5pm – 9pm Monday thru Friday. But we found out tonight that this is the last week they will be open at night. Apparently they just didn’t get enough business then.

Too Bad. We really like the place and it’s easier for us to go at night.

About 7:30 while we were on our way home from the tea room, Nick Russell called to discuss a problem he was having with Microsoft Live Writer posting to his blog. Nick’s been under the weather lately, but it was good to hear that he’s feeling somewhat better.

On a disappointing note, I’m sorry to report that I did not win the $355 Million Mega-Millions prize last night. Two tickets, one sold in Washington and one in Idaho, split the prize.

Bummer! I would have been happy with even a 3 way split.

That’s about it for today.

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Thought for the Day:

“Politicians, like diapers, need to be changed often…usually for the same reason.”

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Today was an errand day, with a long list of things to do and people to see.

But first we started out with Spicy Chicken Sandwiches from Wendy’s. This is one of our favorite sandwiches, and their new Natural-Cut Fries are pretty good too.

Our next stop was at a client’s office up in Clear Lake. He was supposed to have some files for me, but he hadn’t picked them up yet. So I told him I’d come back by after I ran some more errands.

But first I went across the street to a former client’s Air Conditioning company to use a vise in his shop area. I had a piece of electrical conduit I needed to cut with a hacksaw, but I needed to hold it steady to do it.

After that we drove over to Sam’s Club to pick up some vitamins and other stuff. Then, since it was close by, we drove over to the house to check our mail.

Then it was back to the client’s to try again. And luckily this time he was back with the files I needed.

Jan wanted to get her hair done so our next stop was at the TGF Hair Salon over in Kemah. The place was pretty busy so it took a while, but I had a book to read so I was good.

Before heading back to the rig, we stopped off at Kroger’s for some groceries, and also, some Mega-Millions Lotto tickets. The total has risen to $330 Million, so I had to get a piece of that action.

We got back to the rig about 4:15, but without much time to rest.

Since tonight was Bingo Night, we left a little after 5 to drive over to Monterey’s Little Mexico in Dickinson to meet Bob and Maria for dinner, before she and Jan headed down to La Marque for bingo. Leaving there I dropped Bob off at his house before heading back to rig.

Only to get back and find the power off at the park and the surrounding neighborhood. Of course everything in the rig was still running fine on the batteries and the inverter.

The power finally came back on a little before 8 pm, and then about 9:30 I headed down to La Marque to pick up Jan.

She won again, but only $25 this time. But then maybe I won the Mega-Millions tonight so it really won’t matter.

I’ve reposted the follow-up to yesterday’s Washington D.C. visit, chronicling our tour of the U.S. Capitol, and the other part of Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.

More tomorrow…

Thought for the Day:"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt."– Bertrand Russell

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Planes, trains, and spaceships…

Posted on July 8, 2009

Well, we braved the DC Metro Rail line, and survived.

We started out with breakfast at the Silver Diner, a place we had noticed right down the road from our RV park.

It looks like one of those old-fashioned roadside diners that looked like it was made out of stainless steel.  It even had the jukebox music selectors at each table.  And the food was very good.  We will probably eat there again some morning.

We then drove over to the Vienna/ Fairfax Metro Station and caught the Orange line into Metro Center, switched to the Red line (that’s the one that killed 9 people a couple of weeks ago) and ended up at Union Station.

Union Station, built in 1908 and remodeled several times, is very impressive.  Besides having 3 levels of train tracks, it’s pretty much a shopping mall inside, with shops, restaurants, hotels, and tour agencies.

We ended up at Union Station because we wanted to take another Old Town Tolley Tour, like we did in Key West,  St. Augustine, and Savannah.  We plan on completing our set by taking their other tours in Boston and San Diego as we travel.

So we did the tourist thing, seeing all the usual sights…

The U.S. Capitol,

The White House,

The Washington Monument,

The Lincoln Memorial,

The Supreme Court,

The National Archives, where the original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and other famous documents are stored.

After we made the tour bus loop, we rode it back around and got off at the National Air & Space Museum, the other side of the Udvar-Hazy Center that we visited the other day.

We got to see a lot more ‘original’ planes and space vehicles this time.  But the next picture isn’t one of those.

Below is a mockup of the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander as it sat on the moon.

This is a mockup of the Hubble Telescope.  The Shuttle just finished up a repair mission that should keep it working for a few more years.

This is the M2-F3 Lifting Body.  One like this is what you saw crashing at the beginning of the ’6 Million Dollar Man’ TV show.  There was a pilot inside that ship and he survived, and they didn’t have to put him back together with bionics, either.

This is the real thing.  It’s Burt Rutan’s SpaceShip One that won the $10 million X prize in 2004 for being the first private ship to make it into space.

This is Chuck Yeager’s X-1 rocket plane that he piloted to break the sound barrier for the first time in history.

This is the X-15 rocket plane, the world’s fastest and highest flying aircraft, at Mach 6.72 (4534 mph)  and  67 mile high.

This is the original Apollo 11 Command Module that the astronauts used to return from the moon.

This is the German Me-262 jet fighter.  It was the first really operational jet fighter.  There aren’t too many of these left.

This is another item I have personal experience with.  It’s a GE J79 jet engine.  I spent a lot of time pulling these things out of and putting them back in F-4 Phantoms at Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort, SC.

This is the Ford Tri-Motor.  Who know Ford used to built aircraft?  Although these started flying in 1928, they were still flying them in South America when we lived there in the early 1960′s.  The ones we flew on down there only had 2 engines, not 3.  The center engine had been removed and the two wing-mounted engines had been replaced with more powerful ones from the DC-3s.

This is another plane I worked on.  It’s an A-4 Skyhawk, except mine were for the Marine Corps, not the Navy.

This is Charles Lindbergh’s original ’Spirit of St. Louis’, in which he made the first solo, non-stop flight from New York to Paris in 1927.  For this, he won $25,000.

This is Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Vega that she used to make several record-setting flights, before she left on her ill-fated flight in her Lockheed Electra in 1937.

This is the original 1903 Wright Flyer that the Wright brothers used to make the first sucessful powered flights in 1903.  The one we saw at Kitty Hawk a few weeks ago was a replica.

This is a Tomahawk cruise missile. It can be launched from plane, a ship, or a submarine, travel over 1500 miles, and then fly through the exact window you aimed for.

This is a Predator UAV complete with Hellfire missiles.  These are being used in Iraq,  Afghanistan, and Pakistan today.

This is Voyager. Designed by Burt Rutan, and flown by his brother, Dick, and Jeana Yeager, in 1986 it was the first plane to fly around the world in 9 days without refueling or stopping.

And, of course, what spaceship display is complete without the NCC-1701, the Starship Enterprise. This is the original model used in the ’Star Trek’ TV show in 1966-1969.

Tomorrow Jan and I plan to see the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of American History.

Another fun trip on Metro Rail…

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