Our RV Adventures

A while back I talked about some of the societal changes that may be lurking in our future as a result of the recent WuFlu pandemic.

Some of them are obvious, like working from home and remote schooling. But others are more hidden because they’re connected to others, sometimes several layers deep.

A personal example is our daughter Brandi. She’s a Commercial Insurance Broker with a large national firm with expensive office space in the Westheimer and Beltway 8 area. Brandi’s been working from home for a couple of months now, while our grandson Landon was remote schooling from home also.

Originally her company said that they would be working from home until August. But now that’s changed and they will not be coming back until sometime after the first of the year. And the company is looking at permanently downsizing their office space by 30%, because they like this way this is working out.

And Brandi likes it too. She’s said several times how many money she’s saving on gas, tolls, lunches, clothes, etc., all the expenses of a full-time job and commute. And a lot of parents now working from home on a permanent basis are also looking at home schooling their kids, since they’re home with them.

Not remote schooling, but actual home schooling. There are a number of free K-12 online homeschooling curriculums available with excellent credentials. And more and more parents are, and will be, utilizing them.

One thing interesting is that parents that are already homeschooling find that their kids are testing above grade level, and they’re only spending 4 or 5 hours a day in their studies. No homeroom, no changing classes, no rollcall, etc., all make a difference.

But you also have to look at the fallout of these simple changes. Less commuting means less gas sales, less tolls, and less restaurants sales, just for a start. And then less commercial office rentals, less janitorial services, less electricity used, etc.

And on the homeschool front, more homeschooling means less children in public schools, less government funds coming to the school, less teachers needed, less school buildings needed and new ones being built. Also less busing, less drivers needed, and so on and so on.

And some people are talking about what’s going to happen to NYC. Rents there, commercial and residential, are the highest in the nation, and the WuFlu shutdown has shown many companies that maybe they don’t need that expensive office building, and it’s shown many workers that, if I can work from home, maybe I don’t need to live in the city in that $3000 per month, 600 sq.ft. walkup. Maybe I live upstate where I can rent something 3X as big for half the money.

And maybe it’s a reflection of this that May rentals in NYC are down 62%.

It’s going to be interesting to watch how all this falls out as the changes ripple down through our lives.

Jan and I headed out this afternoon, first for brunch at Snooze, Jan’s Avocado Toast and my Eggs, Bacon and Fruit.

Then it was off to the barber shop to get my first post-WuFlu shearing, though it was more beard than head hair, because . . .  you know.

Several articles have come out in the last couple of weeks following up on research from China seeming to show that O+, and O- people are less likely to contract the WuFlu, or if they do, are more likely to have little to no symptoms.

This article gives a nice summary of the whole thing.

Almost 50% or the U.S. population is either O+ or O-, which looking back, corresponds very well with the approximately 50% of the population who show

In April, not long after the pandemic began, the genetic testing firm 23andMe began using its testing services to help scientists better understand how genetics may play a role in why some people who contract the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, develop severe infections, while others present only mild or moderate symptoms or have no symptoms at all.

More specifically, type O blood may be protective against the novel virus. In fact, early results indicate that people with type O blood are between 9 and 18 percent less likely to test positive for COVID-19 when compared to the other blood types.

“These findings hold when adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, ethnicity, and co-morbidities,” the company noted, adding that there “appeared to be little differences in susceptibility among the other blood types.”

And if you want to dig a little deeper into the dirty details, you can check out this article.

The upside of this for Jan and I is that we are both O+.

Another in our Where We Were 11 Years Ago Today series.

June 11, 2009

Pizza and Solenoids…

Well, we left the park in St. Augustine about 10:30 am heading north.  We had planned to stop for lunch north of Jacksonville and then head another 100 miles further north to overnight at a KOA park just south of Savannah.

The stopping for lunch part went just fine.  We stopped at Boston’s Pizza, a chain that we first discovered in Dawson Creek, BC, Canada.  Later on, we found them in Whitehorse, YK, Canada, and Fairbanks, AK.

We ate at the one in Fairbanks regularly when we were there for 5 months last year.  They have great pizza, probably our favorite.

Since it was warm, we left the generator running the AC’s to keep Mister and Emma cool and comfortable.

As I said, the stopping for lunch part went just fine.  However, the heading further north part didn’t go so well.

When we got ready to leave the restaurant, the coach wouldn’t start.  Or rather, it wouldn’t crank.  Everything seemed to be fine, otherwise.  No error messages or warning lights.

I even tried the Aux Start system, in case the engine batteries had run down for some reason.

Our coach has 6 batteries.  2 12 volts batteries provide the starting and engine power just like the single 12 volt battery in your car. (big diesels require more starting power than your car).

Our coach also has 4 big 6 volt batteries that power the coach when we are not plugged into shore power.  Normally these two battery systems are completely separate.  However the Aux Start button lets you use the coach batteries to start the engine in case the engine batteries are dead.

With no luck.

I then checked the voltage at the engine batteries while Jan tried to start the engine.  The voltage did not change.  This told me that the starter was not pulling any current.

Normally when you start your car, the battery voltage will drop significantly while the engine is cranking.

After taking to Cummins Diesel to confirm that I hadn’t missed anything obvious,  I started checking out the starter system.

First, I had Jan try to start the coach while I listened back by the engine.  I heard fuel and lift pumps starting up, and other noises, but no starter or Bendix noises.

Luckily we were in a large shopping center parking lot, and not by the side of the road.  And since we had been parked for an hour, both the engine and the pavement underneath were cool.

Next I crawled under the engine and checked the voltage at the starter while using a walkie-talkie to tell Jan to try to start the engine.

No voltage.  This told me that the starter wasn’t getting any power.  It also meant that the starter itself probably was OK.

Next I checked the voltage at the starter solenoid that controls the power to the starter itself.  Again, no voltage.

I then tried to check the two smaller wires that feed the signal from the key switch to the starter solenoid.  One of the wires was on top of the solenoid that I couldn’t easily reach, but when I touched the one that I could reach, it came off in my hand.

The ring terminal that was used to the connect the wire to the screw terminal was broken.

A ring terminal looks like this.

Mine was broken right at the base of the circle inside the plastic crimp. The plastic was all that was holding it together.

Things were looking up.  There was a really good chance that this was my problem, and it was something I could fix.  Maybe.

The problem was that I really didn’t have a lot of room to work in.  The wire was only about 3″ long and I needed to be able to splice a longer wire with a new ring terminal to it.

If that didn’t work, my fallback plan was to hold the wire on terminal by hand while Jan started the engine.  This would get us on the road since the wire only needed to be connected while starting. not running.  However I would have to do this every time we started the engine, until I could get it fixed.

Bummer!

It took about 15 minutes of struggling, but finally I had the new wire spliced in and connected to the solenoid terminal.

Crawling out from under the coach and going back into the coach, I crossed my fingers and turned the key.

Rumble…rumble…Brarummmmm!

So only an hour and a half late we were finally on our way.

Two uneventful hours later, we pulled into a nice site at the KOA park in Richmond Hill, GA.

We’ll only be here one night, so it was nice to have a long pull-thru site so we didn’t have to unhook the toad.

Tomorrow we head out for Hardeeville, SC for 4 days or so to spend some time in Savannah, GA, and in Beaufort, SC, where we used to live.

Thought For The Day:

“Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late.” – Jonathan Swift