Our RV Adventures

Another early morning.

Thank goodness for coffee.

And after stopping by the Post Office, I headed over to my client’s office in Pasadena.

I wanted to be sure that I got all the outside cable pulling done today, since it’s supposed to be cold and rainy tomorrow. And as it turned out, things went better than expected.

I got all the cables run, both inside and out, connectors installed on all cables, all cables tested and hooked up, and two VOIP phones hooked up. All in all, a good day.

Tomorrow all I should have to do is mount the wall boxes, tie up the cables, set up the remaining two phones, and then, best of all, submit my bill. We’ll see how it goes.

Finally leaving the client’s I got home about 4:45 only to leave about 5:15 to meet everyone for a last get-together dinner at Cheddar’s up in Webster. This is probably our last chance to see everyone before we leave on Saturday. Our next get-together is hopefully going to be in Illinois this coming August when we have a family reunion at Jan’s sister Debbie’s.

Coming home, we stopped off at Kroger’s for some stuff before getting back to the rig a little before 8.

Another long day, with another one coming up tomorrow.

And here’s another segment of our trip to Newfoundland in 2009.

More tomorrow. . .

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Thought for the Day:

On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

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Icebergs and Puffins…Not!

Posted on September 6, 2009

After availing ourselves of the free breakfast at our hotel, we headed out for the 280 mile drive to Twillingate, an island peninsular north-north west of St. John’s.

Twillingate is known as Iceberg Capitol of the World and has boat tours to see them, and also puffins and whales. And we wanted to see them all.

But on our way out of St. John’s we stopped to take some pictures of the town. It’s a very quaint town of about 100,000 people, with brightly colored buildings, and, of course, the beautiful backdrop of the countryside.

And St. John’s has its own version of the icon statues we’ve seen in other towns. In this case, it’s an mermaid perched on an iceberg. Here’s an example.

On our way out of town, and talking over our schedule, we decided to stay an extra day if we could. So I called the RV park in Louisbourg to see if they could accommodate us for another day. When they said they could, I then called the Ferry to see if we could move our return trip from the 8th to the 9th. No problem. Five minutes and it was done. Aren’t cell phones wonderful!

Along the way, Jan finally had a moose sighting. It didn’t appear scared at all. It just stood there like a statue.

About lunch time we stopped at place called “Mary Brown’s Famous Chicken and Taters”. This is a Newfoundland chain that seems to be everywhere here. The ‘taters’ are fried potato wedges. I’m not sure it would beat “The Colonel”, but it was good.

After lunch we drove across the street to a combination gift shop/visitor’s center, where we had another moose sighting. This time it was a whole family. And, again, they seemed strangely unafraid of us. It was like we could have just walked right up and petted them.

A while later we stopped at a scenic pull-out to stretch our legs and take in the view. Noticing one of the telescopes you see at these spots, I walked over to take a look.

And I was surprised to see who the manufacturer is.

I know this family, or, at least, I think I do. I assume they still own it, since it’s the same name.

I took piano lessons in the late 50′s, early 60′s from Dot Cain. Her husband owned this company and they must be doing good, since I see them everywhere, and now in Canada, too.

Small World!

Along the way we saw a lot of interesting flora.

Arriving in Twillingate, we found a small, neat fishing village with a lot of local charm and atmosphere.

On our way into town, we stopped at the place that offers the boat tours to sign up for a tour tomorrow morning. And were very disappointed to find out that both the icebergs and the puffins had gone south for the summer. All we could see were whales and dolphins.  Bummer!

We decide to pass, so went to check into our hotel. While we were registering, the manager, John, said “Susan, come out here. These people sound just like you!”

Turns out the reason she sounded like us is that she’s from Houston too. She was here visiting the manager and his family. She lives in The Woodlands, and also worked at Johnson Space Center, like me, although she was just starting about the time I left. We even worked in some of the same buildings at JSC.

Another Small World moment!

After getting set up in our room, we took a drive out to Crow Head, an area at the tip of the island, that juts out into the North Atlantic, with some spectacular scenery just as the sun was going down.

Coming back to the hotel, we had a very good meal at the restaurant, and then turned in after a long day.

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Got up early this morning, about 9am. (Well, it’s early for me)

First things, first…COFFEE!

I had a busy day planned with a first stop at Fry’s Electronics to pick up 500 ft of CAT5e Ethernet cable, assorted connectors, wall boxes, wall plates, and an 8 port Wireless Switch. Then it was on to my first client.

As usual he had a laundry list of things that needed fixing so it took me over 2 hours to cover everything. His HP Laser Printer is toast and will have to be replaced, along with an XM radio antenna that had its cable chewed up by a vacuum cleaner. You never know what you’ll run into in this business.

About 1:30 I headed over to my new client’s office in Pasadena. I wanted to get as much of the outside cable-pulling done before it gets cold and rainy on Wednesday. And as it happened things went pretty smooth and I got a lot of the job done.

I headed back to the rig, stopping off at the house to pick up the mail, specifically a Priority Mail envelope from Nick Russell.

Getting home about 5, I checked in with Jeannie and Eldy concerning our dinner plans for tonight. Jeannie was out getting groceries, but as soon as she got back, we headed up to Webster to eat Floyd’s Cajun Seafood. It’s one of our favorite places and we always enjoy showing it off.

After a great meal, Jeannie and Eldy headed back to the RV park, while Jan and I stopped off at Fry’s right across the street. It turns out the the wall boxes I bought this morning weren’t going to work so I traded them in for a different kind.

We finally got home about 8:30 after a long day.

And to think, I thought I was retired.

Thought I’d leave you with the 2nd day of our Newfoundland trip in 2009.

More tomorrow. . .

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Thought for the Day:

You can never have enough friends, horsepower or ammunition.

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A Rough Night at Sea…

Posted on September 5, 2009

After finally falling asleep about 1 am,  we woke about 7:30.  It was a rough night.  People coughing all night, people snoring, people talking in their sleep, etc.

About 8 am we headed down to Deck 5 for breakfast at the Cafeteria,  stopping off to go outside on Deck 6,  for a great view of the ocean.

After breakfast,  we went to one of the many lounges to spend the morning.  Jan settled in to read and I found an outlet to plug in my laptop.

Our ferry,  the “Joseph and Clara Smallwood” is 587 feet long and can hold 1200 passengers and 350 cars,  RV’s,  and semi’s.   We’re 200 miles out in the North Atlantic,  and I have both WiFi Internet and cellphone service.  This ship is really something.

But being built back in the 1990′s, i.e. ‘pre-laptop’,  there are not enough electrical outlets in the lounges for everyone.

They were also showing movies on big screen TV’s.  We watched ‘Night at the Museum’,  “Shrek II”, and others.

Around noon we headed back to the cafeteria for lunch of soup and sandwiches.  And then after lunch we moved all our stuff down to Deck 5 so we would be closer to our truck on Deck 3 when the time came.

We docked about 2:30 pm and were called to our vehicles about 2:45.  We were told not to start our vehicles until it came our time to move,  and then we started up and moved out…not.

Actually,  I turned the key and only got a ‘click, click, click’.  Dead battery.

I still don’t know what the problem was.  None of my lights were left on.  Anyway,  I wasn’t the only one.  Two other vehicles needed a jump start, also.

Finally,  we were off the ship and on our way.

We decided to head south down the peninsular to drive what is known as the Irish Loop,  though we only did a half-loop since we wanted to get back to St John’s to get a hotel room before dark.

And now some pretty pictures of our drive. This is Tors Cove.

These next photos were taken along the Irish Loop.

And I’m glad we did come back a little early, because we had to try three hotels before we found a room.

While we were hunting hotels,  we saw Montana’s Steakhouse and thought we’d give it a try later.  And we did.  And it was good.

Tomorrow…Twillingate!

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