Our RV Adventures

Jan and I met up with my client and his wife at the Luby’s Cafeteria in Webster about 2:30, our first time at a Luby’s in years, and that was at the one over by NASA that’s now closed.

Our meal, especially the veggies, was pretty good, but probably not go-back-again good. Cheddar’s is better, and cheaper, actually. But we did have a really good time with Myron and Cindy, and hope to do it again soon, maybe on a regular basis.

Then it was on back down to the HEB in our area for a few things, and then home for the day.

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Where Did It Go?

A Miracle! Only 23 Americans Tested Positive for Flu Last Week Compared to 14,657 Cases Reported Last Year at Same Time

During the second week in January, 23 people tested positive for the flu in the United States.

More than 14,657 tested positive for the flu during the same time last year, before the coronavirus pandemic took hold.

“It’s crazy,” Lynnette Brammer, who leads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Domestic Influenza Surveillance team, told The Washington Post. “This is my 30th flu season. I never would have expected to see flu activity this low.”

In yesterday’s blog, Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun . . . I mentioned about how Dr. Fauci says that we should all be wearing two masks instead of just one.

But another infectious disease expert, Dr. Michael Osterholm, ironically Fauci’s replacement on President Biden’s team, disagrees.

In an interview this week, Osterholm said Fauci’s recommendation to wear two masks at once to stop viral infections made no epidemiological sense.

“Masks, as they’re defined, work in two ways,” Osterholm said:

The first is in regards to how that masks fits. How well does it fit around you? It’s like swimming goggles. They don’t usually leak through the lenses they leak through the seal around your eyes or face.

N95 respirators, which are worn by relatively few people compared to cheap cloth masks, are designed to filter out viruses through a “very tight face fit” combined with “electrostatically charged” filter material that traps viruses even as the “pore size lets air travel through easily,” he said.

Doubling up masks – even N95s – defeats the purpose of their design by redirecting air to “blow in and out along the sides” instead of through the material, according to Osterholm: “Double masking could be a detriment to your protection.”

And From A Doctor on Twitter:

Masks – it’s binary:

If you don’t have COVID – it’s theatre, can’t stop spread.

If you do have COVID – your body has decided it needs to expel it from your body to survive. You say “No, body! I prefer to breathe it back in over & over, maximizing my chances of lung infection.”

And anyway, here’s a Danish study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine,

“Researchers in Denmark reported on Wednesday that surgical masks did not protect the wearers against infection with the coronavirus in a large randomized clinical trial,” the New York Times reports.

The study is perhaps the best scientific evidence to date on the efficacy of masks.

To conduct the study, which ran from early April to early June, scientists at the University of Copenhagen recruited more than 6,000 participants who had tested negative for COVID-19 immediately prior to the experiment.

“Our study gives an indication of how much you gain from wearing a mask,” Bundgaard said. “Not a lot.”

And even the esteemed Dr. Fauci seems to go and forth on this. He noted back in March on 60 Minutes. “When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet. But it is not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is, and often there are unintended consequences; people keep fiddling with the mask and touching their face.”

So if one mask won’t work, then two won’t work better?

And now it’s off to the camps.

Calgary police take travelling woman into mandatory isolation, but refuse to tell family where she is

Trudeau announced Friday morning all returning travellers into the country must go to a government isolation centre where another COVID-19 test will be taken. If a passenger tests negative, they will be allowed to return home for a strictly-enforced another 11 days. Those testing positive will be taken to another government facility for the rest of their 14-day quarantine.

And it will cost you about $2000 for your stay in this ‘isolation facility’.

When the pastor’s wife arrived at the airport she was immediately taken into custody and transported to a location unknown to her husband, where she will be held for between 11 and 14 days. Again, at her expense.

The real kicker to all this is that she had taken a CoVid test earlier that morning that was negative, but the Gesto . . . er, authorities refused to recognize it, and hauled her off anyway.

But’s what’s really strange is how they jumped the gun. As I said, Trudeau didn’t announce the new rules until late Friday morning. But the woman was arrested early Thursday evening.

Her husband said that if she had known about the new rules, she would have just stayed where she was.

And here’s a story about another abduction.

Red Deer mother in tears as son taken to undisclosed isolation centre

Coming soon to an American city near you?

What I wonder is if they’re also locking up the air crews that fly the planes in? They’ll run out of crews pretty soon if that happens.

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Thought for the Day:

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” – Mark Twain

 

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January 31, 2011

So foggy even buzzards won’t fly . . .

9 Days and Counting . . .

We woke up this morning to such a solid blanket of fog that we could hardly see the bayou in front of us. We left the rig about 9:15, stopping by the park dumpster to drop off some garbage and do a little shopping while we were there. You remember Dumpster Shopping, don’t you?

Found this really nice painting that may end up in our granddaughter’s room,

and this nice hanging plant that we decided to leave for another shopper.

Heading down FM 517, we passed the vulture roosting area, only to find that the weather was so socked in that even they weren’t flying. They were just sitting around on buildings and signs in the area. Must be a real help to have vultures perched on the roof of your restaurant.

We got to the storeroom a little before 10, picked up the rental truck, got my mother’s washer and dryer loaded up and were ready to roll. I couldn’t find a place to take them, so I just put them out on the street before the trash pickup today.

And according to our daughter, everything was gone this evening when they got home. Gone is gone.

We were running short on time to get the rent truck back, so we immediately headed down to League City, stopping off at the Raceway to top off the diesel tank, and getting the truck back with about 20 minutes to spare.

Next up was lunch at King Food for a big bowl of Hot and Sour Soup, certainly the weather for it. We’re really going miss this place when we hit the road. Along with several others, as far as that goes.

Then we stopped off at a client’s to drop off about 4000 address labels for his next mail-out.

After that we went by HEB to stock up on some of their coffees to take on our travels this year.

Next was Office Depot to pick up some ballpoint pens, and a large file box to hold some of my mother’s papers that we kept out of the storeroom.

About 2pm we met Chris and Linda at the storeroom to finish transferring the last of my mother’s stuff into our other storeroom.

Finally we were heading home with only two more stops.

The first was Kroger’s for Lotto tickets and then Starbuck’s Cinnamon Dolce Lattes from Starbucks.

A few minutes after we got home, Eldy and Jeannie showed up so I took over a bottle of Joint Juice for Jeannie to try,

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Thought for the Day:

The trouble ain’t too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right. – Mark Twain

 

 

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January 31, 2014

Floored . . .

Well, the floor project is officially under way.

Before Chris got here, I had cleaned everything out and unbolted the chairs from their pedestals. The flooring on the left side of the screen is a test piece I laid down to see how it would look.

The first thing we did was pull the chairs and put them outside, where Mister decided he was going to spend the day camped out in one of them.

We then started going over the floor inch by inch, pulling up any of the missed staples that originally held down the carpet, and pounding out any bumps.

Chris also did a really good job getting the rest of the carpet out from under the steering wheel and cleaning that area up.

At this point I realized I must have had a brain fa . . . eh, fade. I sure seem to remember pulling up the pedestals last time to get the carpet out from under them. But it quickly became obvious that they didn’t come up. In fact I even called American Coach to be sure.

I had thought that the pedestals were held done by lag bolts into the plywood flooring.  But as it turned out, they’re held down by large bolts with nuts underneath the chassis, that can’t be reached. Oh, well.

Next I started patching the bolt hole depressions with Plastic Wood. These are the bolts that hold the plywood subflooring to the chassis.

Once we got all the prep work done, we knocked off for the day. We’ll start fresh tomorrow laying down the flooring and cutting around the obstacles with a jigsaw.

With a little luck we’ll be able to finish up then.

Stay tuned. More to come.

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Thought for the Day:

If everywhere you go there’s a problem, guess what?

 

 

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January 31, 2016

RV Checklists . . .

Since I did absolutely nothing yesterday to prep for our travel today, Jan and I were up about 6:45am to a start on things, especially since we planned to head out about 8 to have breakfast at the Conroe Cracker Barrel.

I normally start marking things off on my checklist the night before we travel. But because we spent the afternoon having fun (and dinner) with Janice and Dave Evans, and it was dark by the time we got home, I got nothing done.

But after 8 years of RV’ing, we’ve pretty much got it down to a science, so in about an hour, everything was done, except to crank up, unhook power, bring in the slide, and roll.

Getting to CB only a little after 8am means no wait, unlike showing up later in the morning or early afternoon. And since we’re not in any real hurry, we had a nice, leisurely breakfast, getting back to the rig about 9:30. And after wrapping things up, we pulled out of the site. with Jan following me in the truck down to the Activity Center where we hitched up and headed out.

When we came back from Cracker Barrel, the weather was sunny, but I noticed while I was hooking up the toad, that it was changing. Clouds were rolling in and the temperature was dropping. And we encountered the change out on the Interstate too.

The winds really kicked up with enough strength to make it an interesting drive, to say the least. This was not a very relaxing trip at all.

About 30 miles down I-45, we stopped at the Pilot/Flying J, to take on some diesel. Unlike the other one on our route, out in Brookshire, this one has 6 straight-in RV pumps, and an easy out when you’re done. And since I was using the Pilot RV Plus Card, I got my usual 8 cents a gallon discount off the cash price. But there was a problem.

The first pump I tried was running at about 30 seconds per gallon, meaning that 120 gallons would take me about an hour. After reporting the problem inside (probably a clogged filter at the pump), I switched over to the pump on the driver’s side, and finished the fill-up from there. This one was doing a gallon in less than 5 seconds.

Back on the road, we finished up our wind-blown trip and pulled into the Colorado River Thousand Trails about 1:30pm. And although we’re in a different site from the last time we were neighbors, we ended up right next door to our friends, Vance and Bonnie Clegg.

For dinner tonight we finished up the remainder of last week’s chili, putting it over rice with cheese and tortilla chips. Really good.

I mentioned earlier about using a checklist. In fact I’ve use a program, an Android app, called RV Checklist for years. A free app, it comes with a number of pre-done rv-related checklists, including an RV Departure checklist, an RV Arrival and Setup checklist, and a Camping Preparation list

The Departure one looks like this.

But you can also make your own personalized ones, which is what I did. And it looks like this.

And when I check an item off, it turns green like this.

Over the course of a number of travel days, I wrote down every step needed for Jan and I to get ready to roll, most of mine outside, and all of Jan’s inside. The list has saved my rear a couple of times, usually because I was interrupted in the middle of things when someone came over to talk.

We also have one labeled RV 2 Motel Checklist, that was honed in 2012 when we stayed in a motel while our rig was in the shop in Las Cruces, NM. Every time we found something we’d forgotten and had to go back to the rig, it got added to the list.

And over the years we added and deleted other stuff to make it work for us.

Finishing up, in yesterday’s blog I was talking about how the Potatoe Patch’s ‘Throw’d Rolls’ aren’t as big or thrown as far as Lambert’s. Well, as it turns out, one of our readers, Joan Scott, left a comment that might explain the reason behind that difference.

Joan said she used to be the Insurance Underwriter for Lambert’s and that they have seen a fair share of lawsuits from their ‘throwed rolls’. It’s really hard to believe that someone could be injured by a soft, fluffy yeast roll.

A few years back, I think it was the Sikeston, MO Lambert’s location, I saw a roll come arcing overhead, right through the hands of the father, and hit a young boy in a highchair right in the face with a soft ‘plop’. The kid who also had his hands up trying to catch it, just laughed and picked up the roll from his tray and started eating it.

I think some people just want to sue.

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Thought for the Day:

“I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.” – George Mason, Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 4, 1788

 

 

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January 31, 2017

Counting The Days . . .

Today was Jan’s first day on a gate in a week or so. As it stands right now she’ll work today, Tuesday, and tomorrow, all on day shift.

But since I’m on night shift, that means that we’ve got to trade the truck back and forth. So when Jan came in this morning at 5:30am, I took the truck back home, until I came in at 5:30pm. Then Jan went home.

But what this all boils down to is that if Jan doesn’t work Thursday then she still has to come back to the gate and pick me up at 5:30am. Poor baby.

Tomorrow while I’m home during the day, I’m going to see if I’m stuck or not.

When we first got here a week and a half ago, I recounted how the owner of the first RV park we tried got mad because we left ruts in his grass sites. Well the park where we ended up also has grass sites, and since the ground was wet after all the rain we’ve had, we’ve sunk in some.

So tomorrow I’m going to put some large mats down in front of the rear duals and see if I can pull forward onto them. If so I should be OK until we leave on the 15th, even if we get more rain. If not, I’ll have to rethink the whole thing.

Of course it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve parked somewhere and then found ourselves stuck due to heavy rains before we left.

Back in 2008 we were at the fairgrounds in Sioux Falls, SD, and while it was dry when we got there, it rained for the last four days flooding the RV area. After trying to get unstuck myself I finally had to call our roadside assistance service to get me out. They send out a winch truck who was able to pull me forward about 30 feet until I was on the road. A real mess.

Two weeks from today is our last day on the gate. Then we’ll leave Cuero and make the 85 mile trip over to the Colorado River Thousand Trails in Columbus for two weeks so we can get our doctor stuff out of the way.

It’s going to be a busy time until we head west.

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Thought for the Day:

Search engines can only access .03% of the Internet. So where the heck is the rest of it hiding, and what are they doing out there that they don’t want us to know about?

 

 

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January 31, 2020

Sweet AND Spicy . . .

Since I worked yesterday, I was off today, a 3 day weekend. I went in yesterday because my client wasn’t going to be in at all and didn’t want to leave the office manager alone all day.

I spent this morning making the hotel reservations for our upcoming Alabama trip. Necessary because we’ll be driving the truck rather than our oil-leaking rig. In addition I also canceled our RV Park reservations for that trip.

Although back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, I used to drive straight through to Birmingham every month to visit my mother, we’ll take things a little slower this time and spend the night in Slidell LA along the way. Actually both ways, going and coming back.

Since we liked our stay at the La Quinta in Luling back last November, I found a good deal on one there. As I mentioned in the blog at the time, I found out that, although I thought I got a good rate through Expedia, I found that when I re-upped for more days, the in-house rate was $10 cheaper. And several readers told me that they often found the same thing.

So I checked online first and then called the La Quinta directly. But this time the Expedia rate was about $8 cheaper than the in-house one. And I did ask for the best rate.

And I found the same thing with our Extended Stay Hotel in Montgomery and our Day’s Inn in Athens. I didn’t yet make our coming home reservation since that date is not nailed down yet.

About 1:30 we headed up to Webster with our first stop at Snooze for lunch. We were interested to find that they had new menus, and a few new dishes. But the one that caught my eye was their Bacon But Different.

It’s an order of their Tender Belly Bacon that’s rubbed with brown sugar, cayenne, chili flakes and drizzled with black pepper maple syrup.

Sweet AND Spicy, and really delicious, and I’ll definitely have it again.

After our Snooze, I dropped Jan off to get her toesies done while I drove on over to the Ace Hardware in Friendswood. My computer chip key for our 2004 Dodge Dakota is showing its age. And its circuitry.

The rubber coating covering the parts on the key fob was beginning to wear off, exposing a corner of the circuit board. So I figured it was time for a new one.

I checked with both O’Reilly’s and AutoZone and they both said I had to go to the dealer. But when I checked with the local Dodge dealer I was quoted $245 for a new key.

Ouch!

But I remembered from a year or so ago that Ace Hardware advertised that they could duplicate computer keys, so off I went.

And once I got there I was testing my new key in about 15 minutes. And even better it was only $80. A nice savings.

And they said all Ace Hardware’s around the country should be able to do this.

Tomorrow night we’re heading up to Pearland for Tony Booth’s Birthday Bash, an annual Country Music Get-Together with a lot of old friends.

Really looking forward to it. And because it goes so late there’ll probably be little or no blog tomorrow night.

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Thought For The Day:

Have you ever wondered if the dollar bills in your purse or wallet were once in a male stripper’s thong?

I bet you’re wondering now.

Have a nice day!