Our RV Adventures

Well, I had planned to take one last shot tomorrow at fixing my rig’s oil leak problem, before I break down and take it to a diesel shop. Longtime friend Rudy Levitt recommended a private shop up in the Channelview area so I gave them a call a couple of days ago to get some more information.

But since I’ve already got a filter and the gaskets (I’m using two this time) I wanted to give it one more try. I’m still looking at whether or not I’m going to use any kind of sealer or gasket maker on it, other than just soak the gaskets in oil. Several people have recommended The Right Stuff by Permatex, but I keep going back to the fact that there was no sealer of any kind on the original gasket, and it lasted for 18 years. But I’m still thinking about it.

But we’re looking at pretty much 100% rain with widespread flooding all weekend, so maybe next week.

I mentioned last week that I had to replace the HD on my main desktop computer at work. The old one just up and died. It was backed up, but I decided to rebuild it from scratch using a 1TB HD that I already had.

But when I came in to work today, the whole computer had died. It had power and lit up, but no video output at all. I did double-check the power supply, but found all the voltages OK.So I’m looking at a bad video card, bad motherboard/cpu.

But since this is 5 year old computer, I just went onto Amazon and ordered a Refurbished Dell for $400 with a 3 year warranty. And it’s faster than my old one.

But now I’ll have to set it up all over again.

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And here’s some more of Europe trip.

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Paris To London in 90 Minutes . . .

5/19/2019

It’s become pretty obvious to me, and probably everyone else, that there’s no way I’m going to be able to catch up with the cruise blogs before we get home next Sunday.

For instance, the last four days in Paris, we were out the door by 8am and didn’t get back to the hotel until 10-11pm. So no time to even do a regular blog, much less process all the photos.

So I’m going to get back to doing a daily blog of our time here in London and then started catching up on the older blogs when I can.

This morning we were up at 6am, at the hotel restaurant for breakfast when it opened at 7, and out the door when our ride to the train station showed up at 8am.

We were taking the Eurostar High Speed Train, from Paris Nord, the same station we came into on the Thalys High Speed Train from Amsterdam last week.

Our train is the one on the left.

These stations are huge with no porters or luggage carts to be found. So Jan and I, and everyone else, were dragging our suitcases hundreds of yards, and then up an escalator, no elevators to be found either.

So I would send Jan up with her small carry-on, and then send her big suitcase up behind her. Then I came up manhandling my two bags. Luckily someone at the top helped her get the big one off and to the side.

Then it was another couple of hundred yards to our check-in point where they actually scanned our tickets. Next we all queued up and went through two sets of Customs, French Border Exit Control, and then 10 feet away, British Customs. The French just checked and stamped our passports, but the British bunch x-rayed our luggage, checked our purses and bags, and wanded us.

What was kind of funny was that we were not checked for anything when we got on the train from Amsterdam to Paris, since it’s all part of the EU. The last time we went through any type of customs inspection was after we landed in Frankfurt before we left for Budapest on April 26th.

Then while we were waiting to board I found a Currency Exchange to get rid of the last of my Euros. So far we’ve cycled through four currencies, US Dollars, Hungarian Forints, EU Euros, and now British Pounds. And somehow I seem to get poorer every swap.

Actually we pretty much only have the cash for tips and the occasional place that doesn’t take credit cards. I’ve never had a problem with using any of our three cards over here.

When we finally boarded it was back down the escalator to the platform, but we found an elevator this time so it was a lot easier. But then it was another couple of hundred yards to our assigned car, which was #5. And when the train stopped, we were standing next to car #25. This is a long train.

Astonishingly these trains are over 2500 feet long. That’s almost half a mile.

Wow!

After dragging our luggage up the steps, we stowed it away, large bags in the area between the cars and the small carry-ons in the overhead racks. On both this train and the one from Amsterdam to Paris, we were warned not to leave our small bags with the big ones due to luggage thieves.

The trip actually takes about two and a half hours, but you gain an hour from France to England, so effectively 90 minutes.

But this ride wasn’t as nice as the Thalys train from Amsterdam. Not only was it not as smooth, the well-advertised Wi-Fi didn’t work either. And I don’t know what the roof was made of, but I was never able get a GPS signal for the Speedometer app on my phone. And I’m not talking under the English Channel either, but out in the countryside.

But it worked just fine on the train from Amsterdam, clocking speeds up to 311 kph, or about 194 mph. The Eurostar is supposed to be just about as fast, but is only allowed to go 160 kph, or 100 mph in the Chunnel.

We got into London’s station about 11:30, and again dragged our suitcases another couple of hundred yards to the end of the platform where we found our driver waiting for us, holding up a sign that said, WITE, Gregory. Well, at least the suitcases were his problem now.

I’m beginning to think that it would be easier to just throw everything away except the clothes on your back when you travel, and just buy new stuff when you get to your destination.

An hour later we were checked in and in our room.

And after doing a little unpacking and catching our breath, we headed down to the hotel restaurant for lunch. And what’s the first meal any new visitor to England should have?

Fish and Chips, of course.

Really good, and a really nice restaurant,

with a very nice view out the window.

But they don’t have Coke Zero, and don’t even think about asking for Iced Tea. They get a horrified look on their face liked you have bad-mouthed the Queen, and then they start stuttering.

And I don’t know what the problem is with even getting ice in your water or soft drink, but they must be rationing it or something. When they brought my Coke, I got a glass with three small cubes at the bottom. Then when we asked for some ice to add to the luke-cold glasses of water we were given, our waitress came over with a glass with six cubes in it, and then spooned out three to each of us.

Back in our room, we unpacked some more, looked over our tour for the next day, The Total London Tour, and then since we’d been up since 5:30, we took a nice long nap, waking up just in time for, what else but dinner.

We decided to dress up a bit for this, but Jan really outdid herself.

It’s hard to believe she’s kept me around for almost 52 years.

Jan had the Lasagna, which she said was OK, but wasn’t seasoned very well.

We’ve noticed that a lot over here, that most foods aren’t seasoned as much as we’re used to.

But my Chicken Curry was delicious, and had a multitude of flavors.

For dessert I had the Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Whipped Cream,

while Jan went old-school with Chocolate Ice Cream.

Tomorrow it’s up early again for Buckingham Palace, the Changing of the Guard, the Tower of London, and more.

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Thought For The Day:

If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun. – Katharine Hepburn

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Does Chase Bank know something we don’t?

Last night I logged into the Chase Bank app on my phone and deposited our Stimulus Check. And a few minutes later I got the usual emails saying it had been received and credited to my account.

Now normally, unless I deposit a check early in the morning, it’s the next day before the funds are actually available. But then this morning I had an email alert from Chase saying that they had put a one week hold on the funds, but didn’t say why.

So I put in a call to Chase Bank Customer Service to find out why. And I quickly found out that due to the WuFlu, they don’t have any Customer Service. Or at least anyone that you can actually talk to. It’s all canned questions and answers, none of which covered my problem.

But later in the afternoon, I went back to my account and found the funds were now available, so I guess they finally figured out that the U.S. Government is still somewhat solvent.

Iceland is having great results from HCQ

Florida, which has over 151,000 people in nursing homes, many times the number in New York, has 1/7 of the deaths, 745 to over 5300. Why is that?

This new survey completed on March 27, 2020, reported 6,227 physicians in 30 countries found that 37 percent of those treating COVID-19 patients rated hydroxychloroquine as the “most effective therapy” from a list of 15 options.

And apparently a number of doctors who want to prescribe HCQ for the WuFlu, but are being prevented from doing this on an out-patient basis by state rules, are just prescribing it for other diseases like lupus, malaria, hypertension, etc.

The World Health Organization’s chief scientist, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, says, “I would say in a four to five-year timeframe, we could be looking at controlling this.”

And that’s even with a vaccine. Yikes!

And now there’s this.

DOD study raises tantalizing question: does flu shot increase vulnerability to coronaviruses?

Just another reason for me not to get the flu shot.

Finally here’s a great short video from Kevin James of King of Queens fame, predicting what might be coming our way sooner than later.

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It’s Five Countries, Not Four . . .

Scenic Cruising 5/1/19

We left Budapest about 6pm last night heading for Vienna, Austria, a 24 hour trip. So with today our first day at sea (at river?), I decided to spend some time exploring our ship.

The Sun Deck is on the roof and runs the entire 443 foot length of the ship.

Besides a covered area, there’s a herb garden,

and a small 4 hole putting green golf course.

And thirteen laps around the deck equal a mile, good for working off all the delicious food they serve on board.

At 10am there was a mandatory safety drill. And by mandatory, I mean when they count heads and you’re not there, they come looking for you.

You’re supposed to show up on the Sun Deck wearing the life vest that’s stored under your bed. Each deck has their assigned spot to gather, with a crew member holding up the red ‘lollipop’ with your deck number on it.

Once everyone was accounted for, and we were checked to see if our life vests were on properly, we were done for the trip.

Unless we actually sink. Then we can pretty much just walk to shore, since in many cases there’s only 6 feet of water under the keel.

Later in the morning we got the Wheelhouse tour that we signed up for earlier.

And it’s like a big video game, complete with a joystick for steering the ship.

And it’s an all-digital ship.

The 3 black and white gauges across the top show the position and power of the bow and stern thrusters. The ship has 2 bow thrusters on either side, and 4 double-propped individually-steerable stern drive systems like this.

The bow thrusters look like louvers on a window AC and can be pointed forward, rearward, or anywhere in between. Which means that the ship can just pull up to the dock and then move sideways into a space only a little larger than the ship itself. Like here.

And one of the neat things is that the captain doesn’t have to worry about controlling all this individually. He just moves the joystick in the direction he wants to go and the computer does the rest.

Neat!

The 3 larger screens underneath are, from left to right, a GPS mapping program, the radar, and a screen that tracks the identity of other ships on the river.

What’s not apparent at first is the low clearances the ship encounters going under many of the bridges, sometimes less than 1 foot. And this is with the Sun Deck flattened.

Everything on the Sun Deck, and I mean, everything folds down.

The railings, the chairs, the canopies, everything. Even the wheelhouse retracts.

Note the hydraulic scissors jack underneath it from this angle.

But it’s a two part retraction system. First the top, windowed part slides down, which means you can no longer stand up inside. Then the whole thing drops down into the opening underneath.

At this point if the captain actually needs to see out visually, he can pop his head out through this skylight opening in the row.

But if something goes wrong with this system, it can be deadly.

This took place in 2016 on the Freya, another Viking ship. I don’t know exactly what happened, but the two officers were killed in the collision with the bridge.

We had heard that our ship was completely booked up with the maximum of 190 passengers and 50 crew members, but according to the numbers posted in the wheelhouse, we only have 179 passengers onboard.

Our cruise is listed as touring 4 countries along the way – Hungary, Austria, Germany, and Holland (The Netherlands). But we also travel through Slovakia, but we don’t stop, so I guess it doesn’t count.

In case you missed the memo, Czechoslovakia no longer exists. It broke apart in 1993 after the fall of the Soviet Union into the Czech Republic and . . . Slovakia.

Who could have seen that coming?

Passing through the capital of Bratislava along the Danube we came across the Bratislava Castle. Well, Doh!

Though parts of this structure date from the 13th century to the 16th, there have been fortified settlements here since 3500 B.C.

And it what we see a lot over here, there’s a new, modern hotel less than a mile up river.

A little past that, we came across the Devin Castle.

This castle was first mentioned in literature in 864 A.D. so it’s even older than that, with a lot of its original stonework.

Dinner tonight was as delicious as we’ve come to expect, with Baby Greens Salad,

Weiner Schnitzel, Jan’s favorite,

and the famous Sacher Cake for dessert.

On the VPN front, my ExpressVPN is working great, with an unexpected benefit.

If I Google sometime without using it, most of the search results come back in German. However, if I VPN through a server in Dallas, Google thinks I’m in the US and everything’s in English.

Neat!

We’ll see how long it takes to get this posted. And I’ll try to get another one up ASAP.

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Thought For The Day:

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