Our RV Adventures

It’s all the news here in Texas that due to a recent increase in WuFlu cases, Governor Abbot has dropped the state back down a level, with restaurants going back to 50% occupancy and bars having to close again.

But according to local health administrators, the governor may have jumped the gun. Not only has there been a big increase in testing, but it seems that since hospitals are now back to doing elective surgeries, anybody who comes into the hospital for appendicitis, cancer surgery, a broken arm, etc., and they also test positive for KungFlu, they’re listed as a virus hospitalization. Even if they’re completely asymptomatic.

Lindsey Rosales, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, confirmed to Just the News this week that the state is categorizing every inpatient in the state with a positive COVID-19 test as a COVID-19 hospitalization. 

“The number of hospitalized patients includes patients with a lab-confirmed case of COVID-19 even if the person is admitted to the hospital for a different reason,” Rosales said.

And despite the panic, hospitals are no where close to being overwhelmed.

The number of hospitalizations are “being misinterpreted,” said Houston Methodist CEO Marc Boom, “and, quite frankly, we’re concerned that there is a level of alarm in the community that is unwarranted right now.”

“We do have the capacity to care for many more patients, and have lots of fluidity and ability to manage,” Boom said.

He pointed out that his hospital one year ago was at 95% ICU capacity, similar to the numbers the hospital is seeing today. “It is completely normal for us to have ICU capacities that run in the 80s and 90s,” he said. “That’s how all hospitals operate.

So it seems like once again they’re playing with the numbers.

You can read the entire article here.

And as far as the whole ‘asymptomatic’ thing, it was big news in the last week about the Tyson Foods plant in Arkansas with hundreds testing positive . But when you actually look at the numbers, they tell a different story.

It was only 13% of the employees at two large plants that tested positive, and 95% were completely asymptomatic, i.e. they didn’t even know they had it until they were tested. And even more importantly, there were no hospitalizations and no deaths. You can read that article here.

Another in our Where We Were 3 Years Ago Today series.

June 26, 2017

I May Already Be A Winner . . .

Today was another stay-at-home, rest-up day preparing for when all of Jan’s relatives from Illinois converge on Brandi’s house in Katy.

We’ll go into Brandi’s on Wednesday morning as everyone starts drifting in. Jan’s sister, Debbie and her husband Jim are driving in from Illinois, while their daughter Tana, her finance Curtis, and Tana’s daughter Gwen, are flying in from doing the theme park thing in the Orlando area.

But Debbie and Jim’s son Jason, his wife Laura, and their kids Avery Jane, Ella, and Annisten, along with their other daughter, Christina, have been vacationing down in the Galveston area for the last week

In fact, Brandi, Lowell, Landon, and Miss Piper met them down in Galveston yesterday for fun, sun, and the water.

Jan and I are really looking forward to seeing Debbie and her family, since it’s been over 2 years.

Tomorrow I’m going to lift up the engine cover under the bed and see if I can reach the top bolt on the hydraulic fan motor that came loose last week in Pauls Valley, OK. I bought extra nuts and washers, but I don’t know yet if I can get to it. I guess we’ll see.

I’ve also been  thinking more about my rooftop AC not cooling well while we’re on the road, but works great when we’re parked.

 I think the idea is that air rushing pass the side vents will create a vacuum, pulling in the air from the rear vents.

But that air is normally considered a dead space, almost a vacuum area itself. That’s why race cars can draft behind each other. And also why you see more and more semi-trailers with those foldable flaps on the rear end to smooth out the air flow. Studies show around a 5.5% increase in fuel mileage when they’re used.

So I may try adding some flaps on the sides and top of the cover to see if that helps.

I may already be a winner, or at least that’s what Publisher’s Clearing House is telling me. I entered today for the big drawing for a prize of $2,000,000 up front, $10,000 a week for life, and a new car. Nice!

The next drawing is this Friday, the 30th, so I always wait until the last minute to sign up because I get flooded with emails about the drawing. And now they’re selling a lot of other stuff besides magazines, including pretty much all the ‘As Seen On TV’ stuff, like copper pans, expandable hoses, and cleaning products.

But I might already be a winner, right?

Thought for the Day:

Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.

144 years ago today, in 1876, Lt. Colonel George Custer met up with Chief’s Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and came out on the wrong end of the get-together.

I’ll wager that at some point Custer regretted not bringing along those two Gatling guns he left back at the fort. He thought that they would slow him down.

I was out the rig door about 10:15 and into the pouring rain, and on my way up to the Westpark area to meet up with Brandi, Landon, and my Jan for lunch.

And it poured down all the way out to I-45 and all the way up until I got onto the Tollway and then it pretty much magically cleared up and it was clear driving all the way up to the Cheddar’s there.

Unlike our visit to the Webster Cheddar’s last week, this Cheddar’s is now asking that all patrons wear a mask until they’re seated. Guess this may be a Houston/Harris County thing.

After our usual great Cheddar’s meals, and saying our goodbyes to Brandi and Landon, Jan and I headed back down to the Clear Lake area, with our first stop at the El Dorado Sam’s Club to a prescription and a few other things. Then it was on over to the HEB on the League City Pkwy before finally heading home.

I mentioned a week or so ago that the AAPS (Association of American Physicians & Surgeons) had filed for a preliminary injunction to force the FDA and HHS to force them to release their HCQ stocks. Nearly 100 million doses of HCQ were donated to these agencies, and yet they have not released virtually any of it to the public.

Now, why is this important? Well, this chart tells the story.

As the graph shows, the countries in blue at the top are ones that used and encouraged the use of HCQ, while the countries in red at the bottom did everything they could to hamper its use. And note, these are WuFlu deaths, not just cases.

Why is there even any discussion about this?

During this recent unpleasantness, I’ve kind of oscillated back and forth between using the terms WuFlu and KungFlu, much to the displeasure of a few readers like John and SWMNBN (She Who Must Not Be Named), or as my daughter calls her, Karen.

And the news media was in an uproar because President Trump used the same phrase, and was called ‘racist’ and a lot of other names.

But now it seems that the phrase ‘Kung Flu’ has been used by government agencies for at least 5 years, way before Trump was in office.

Here’s a couple of examples, and an article about them.

So remember, you too can be a Kung Flu Fighter.

Another in our Where We Were 2 Years Ago Today series.

June 25, 2018

West Memphis, AR . . .

We were up at 5:30 this morning and were pulling out of our site at the Tom Sawyer RV Park in West Memphis, AK by 6:15, right on schedule. I had prepped everything the night before so all I had to do was put the key in the truck’s ignition to unlock the steering and disconnect shore power, and we were ready to roll.

This is a beautiful park right on the Mississippi River and we stay here every time we’re in the area.

The reason for all this early bird crap was twofold. One, we wanted to get an early start so we would be traveling in the coolest part of the day. And Two, I wanted to get diesel at the Flying J before we got on I-55 and headed north. We still had plenty enough to make it to our destination with about 250 miles to spare, but we would probably be at or below the point where the generator would shut down due to the fuel level. Which for our 150 gallon tank is about 40 gallons.

Of course since our generator isn’t working, it normally wouldn’t make any difference, but I’m hoping I can get it fixed while we we’re here. I’m going under the assumption that it’s a fuel problem, since it acts like it does when it quits due to low fuel levels.

Plus the fact that when I ran the generator out on its slide and checked, it didn’t show any error codes. So based on this and some Googling about possible problems, I’m leaning toward a bad fuel pump.

It could also be a bad fuel filter, but it was just replaced by RV Mobile Lube a couple of months ago. Now it could be a defective filter, but the generator ran fine for about 5 hours the first day, and then quit after about 30 minutes the second.

So I’m looking at a defective brand new fuel filter, or an almost 20 year defective fuel pump. And the fact that a lot of RV’ers apparently have had fuel pump problems with their generators.

So being a belt and suspenders (literally and figuratively)  kind of guy and wanting cover all the bases, I ordered both a new filter and a new fuel pump from Amazon, and they should be here tomorrow.

I’ll replace the filter first since it’s easier and then go from there. Stay tuned.

By leaving the park at 6:15, I had hoped to be dieseled up and on the road by 7, but due to a slow pump in the RV lane, and the fact that I had to run my card through 4 times since the pump shut down at $75, we finally pulled out about 7:15am. Of course I also went inside for coffee/cappuccinos to go, but hey, the necessities of life, right?

We made our first pit stop about an hour down the road (coffee, OK?) and Jan really surprised me. She said she wanted to drive.

Now Jan used to drive a couple of hours on every trip, but that came to a screeching halt after the Big Blowout of 2015. And she’s never driven since. Until today.

And she did great, driving for about an hour and a half or so, until our next stop. So I guess she’s back on the horse again.

Since like Jan said the other day, the sky was kind of ‘overcasty’, we stayed cool and comfortable with just the fans running, so all in all, a nice smooth trip.

We had called ahead to get our site # so we pulled into the Timber Trails RV Park here in Mulberry Grove, IL about 1:15, went straight to our site, and got set up.

Later, about 5:30, we met Jan’s sister Debbie and her husband Jim at Los Amigos, a local Mexican restaurant. Jan and Debbie spent most of the meal comparing calendars to coordinate all the activities that are scheduled between now and Sunday when everyone leaves.

Tomorrow morning at 9 we’re all meeting at the Denny’s for breakfast, and probably for more comparing and scheduling, too.

Now more Catching Up on the Catching Up:

On Friday as we were approaching Byram, MS and the Swinging Bridges RV Park, I noticed the rig was hitting the bumps in the road a lot harder than normal, so the next morning before we left, I got under the rig to see if what I suspected, had happened. And it did.

The rod connecting the chassis to the air bag proportioning valve had come loose, looking like this.

With this rod not connected, no air gets to the rear air bags, making for a very rough ride. This has happened 3 or 4 times over the last 11 years, usually due to the rubber grommet deteriorating and coming apart. And I keep spares on hand just because of this.

But this time the rod had just pulled out, even though it was still so tight that the rod wouldn’t go back in. So I loosened the hose clamp, inserted the rod, and tightened it all back down.

Now we were good to go.

Now on to Saturday:

I mentioned in that day’s blog that when we got back from Charlie Vergos Rendezvous about 5:15, we found the power was off to the park. Originally we were told it should be back on in about an hour, but that came and went.

Finally about 8:30 I started Googling and found out what power company served our area, and then went to their Power Outage page. It said the outage had started at 4:42pm and would be corrected by 10pm.

What was kind of interesting was that standing outside and talking to some of our neighbors, I was surprised to find how many of their rigs didn’t have working generators, and their rigs were much newer than ours.

But when that time also came and went, I checked again at about 10:15 and it now said 11:45. And that turned out to be a lot more accurate, since the power came back on at 11:37. Cool at last.

Now Sunday:

About 2pm Jan and I drove over to the Cordova area of Memphis to have more BBQ, this time at another favorite of ours, Jim & Nick’s BBQ. We eaten at this one a couple of times on past visits, and even more times back in Alabama, including the original one in Birmingham, and several others with friends.

We always start off with the Hot Link Sausage Plate appetizer, that comes with a delicious homemade Pimento Cheese, as well as some sliced Serrano peppers for a little more spice.

A really good start.

For her entrée Jan had a salad

and the Grilled Catfish, which looked kind of different, but she said was really good.

I of course got the ribs with beans and the collard greens, something you don’t see too often on a menu, But Jim & Nick’s, being from Alabama, know how to make good collard greens. One of my favorites.

Then it was on down the road a couple of miles to the WalMart for a few things, and so Jan could get a haircut. But they were closing and not taking anymore customers.

But we did find a Supercuts right down the road that was still open, so Jan got it done there.

The filter and fuel pump should be in tomorrow, but it may be Wednesday or Thursday before I really have a chance to tear into it. We’ll see.

Thought For The Day:

“No power is exercised with more fervor than small power.” – Mark Twain