Wordless Wesdnesday
Author Archives: Dick
Road Trip XVI-4
My first stop on Thursday was in Burlington, just an hour south of North Puffin. It was marvelous because I turned in all my !@#$%^Comcast gear.
The folks in the store (two “greeters” and two reps) were nice, helpful, and had me out the door in minutes. The people in the Florida Keys store are just as nice. I wonder how we can teach corporate to work that well?
I left Saturday morning for California.
In our prior episode
The freezer and “house battery” works a treat, so far, but there is a problem with the charging system. I was wandering along through Addison County when I saw that the truck voltage had dropped to 11.5. “Self,” I said to myself, “this is not good.”
I invoked OnStar and a very nice fellow told me there is nothing wrong with the truck. He found me Faulkner GMC, a dealer in Harrisburg.
The Faulkner service department was open and “wall-to-wall” busy but they fit me in anyway. The tech did a full multi-point checkup and said, “There’s nothing wrong with your truck.”
He printed out a Technical Service Bulletin. It seems I’m not the first person to complain about this issue.
TSB #07-06-03-009D Information on Voltmeter Gauge Fluctuation
“Some customers may comment that the voltmeter is fluctuating between 12 and 14 volts on their full size pickup. Starting with the 2005 model year, … trucks are equipped with a Regulated Voltage Control (RVC) system” that turns the charging system off in “fuel economy mode” to save gas.
It’s worse when hauling a camper/trailer because the house battery tells the RVC that it doesn’t need any juice.
The nice folks at Faulkner washed my truck and gave it back in under an hour.
No charge.
The fix is simple. Use Tow/Haul mode which bypasses the RVC system or turn on the headlights which puts enough extra demand on the system to increase the generator output. I turned on the headlights.
I continued on over the “blue route” toward New Stanton, PA.
I haven’t driven the Lincoln Highway through western Pennsylvania in decades. US 30 was a lovely, lovely ride over some of the nicest, smoothest road I could pick. West of Harrisburg it is twisty and hilly and the trees are colorful right now and there were only a few traffic lights.
SWMBO will be happy to learn that I did not buy the Lincoln Outlet although it was for sale and I did stop to look.
There was a Free Colonial Trial at the Franklin County Jail. Downtown Chambersburg was in the middle of an Apple Fest free family street fair art, food, crafts, music and kids’ activities, and carnival rides.
I could “Check Your Batteries” at the Franklin Fire Department but mine were working fine and I think they meant smoke detectors, anyway.
Latrobe is home of my fourth favorite brewery (Rolling Rock); I discovered it is a much larger city than I remembered. I saw a sign for an Art Center just three miles thataway, but I drove three miles thataway and never found it, darn it.
I checked in to a motel in New Stanton and headed on to find Mingo’s bridge, a cute little Henry bridge. This isn’t the Burt Henry Covered Bridge over the Walloomsac River near Bennington, Vermont, nor the span in Washington County, Ohio. The historic Henry Covered Bridge in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, spans Mingo Creek. It is designated as a historic bridge by the Washington County History & Landmarks Foundation.
After that, I drove 57 miles to Indiana, Pennsylvania, for 16 ounces of 6.6% North Country Local 66 (“brewed exclusively for Pig Iron”) red IPA and about a pound of pastrami on a classic Burgh sammie.
Sunday, I continued on to California by all the back roads. Holy Coffinlids, there are a lot of dead there. I passed three cemetaries and Howe and a private mausoleum on the way in.
Political commentary:
I drove the length of Pennsylvania Ave in California and found not one Hillary Clinton sign.
In fact, I drove the length of Pennsylvania and saw nothing but Trump/Pence. I saw two anti-Clinton billboards, one with Pinocchio’s nose, and heard one anti-Clinton radio ad. That was it in a state the media thinks will go Democrat.
This is a small, scientifically unvalid, sample but it is interesting nonetheless.
Every house coming into California is anchored on the side of a mountain. I would not want to plow their driveways. The city itself was very depressed with houses in deferred maintenance and small streets.
In two days, I drove through Indiana, California, Washington, Ohio, Indiana, and the Yukon where there are “Live Girls” and “Free Beer.”
I’m relaxing in West Lafayette, Indiana (the state), today. I have met three horses and a deaf German Shepherd, talked about teaching, told a lot of lies, and I have been to Menard’s where I bought a barn sash.
Road Trip XVI-3
Thursday was de day as opposed to D-Day which is much more important. The Puffintruck has left on an adventure.
UPS tracking finally found the replacement freezer after its hurricane delay. It should have arrived some time late afternoon Tuesday, only one day after the original plan, since our regular UPS driver’s route has us just about the last delivery of the day.
I saw the UPS truck at the Post Office (did you know that UPS delivers to the Post Office? They have for years) on my way back from Swanton before noon.
Uh oh.
I stopped, blocking traffic and rolled down the window.
“Have you been to me yet?” I asked.
An unfamiliar face leaned out. “Who are you?”
I told him the address.
“Oh, yeah. I just dropped it off and picked up the return. It’s in the truck.” He pointed at the cavern behind him.
“Wow. Thank you!”
In a fit of pre-planning, I had pre-positioned the tractor with the return freezer box in its bucket right in the driveway where it was unmissable and it worked! The driver dropped the new one in the tractor bucket right where the first one head been.
I eventually muscled the freezer into my truck and taped its insulating box around it. Plugged it in and turned it on and it works. It came down to zero in reasonable time and held the temp without running as much as the first one seemed to.
The replacement freezer seems to work much better so I loaded it up Wednesday for the real test. It passed with flying colors. I loaded my suitcase and fuschia footlocker. Filled up the truck with all the stuff going back to South Puffin and pumped the tires up to 44 psi.
I finally left about noon on Thursday, on schedule but an hour later than I wanted to be. In the rain.
Vermont needs the rain. We have more beach than we’ve ever had because the lake is soooooooo low. I spoke to a lady at a gas stop who had just been up the Connecticut river and didn’t need a paddle; she could walk on the rocks. It didn’t rain enough. This little band of showers was done and gone in a few hours. It ate my shorts in gas mileage while I drove through it, though.
The foliage colors are coming along nicely. The higher elevations are near peak but even down along the Champlain Valley is vibrant, even with lowering skies. A beautiful ride.
I spotted this lowrider sport truck at, of course, a truck stop along a Vermont Highway.
The rain had pretty much stopped by then, a good thing for me.
The freezer and “house battery” works a treat, so far, but there is a problem with the charging system. I was wandering along through Addison County when I saw that the truck voltage had dropped to 11.5. “Self,” I said to myself, “this is not good.”
I pulled over, turned off the truck, popped the hood and the tailgate, and opened the battery box looking for smoke. No smoke. The freezer was humming along happily. No smoke under the hood, either, so it appears I didn’t blow anything up. I repeated that twice more before simply flipping the switch and finishing the day with the freezer running on the house battery.
OnStar says there is nothing wrong with the truck. Liz Arden says “See, I told you you should have installed that big, honking solar panel!” I says, “I see a stop at a GMC dealer in my near future.”
Not much else of note happened on this first leg. Lila has lost her Australian accent — (Lila is my GPS). The new one dumped the nice Aussie in favor of a bland American voice and has a slightly different idea about routing. She wanted me to go to Bethlehem via Maine which I thought was stretching the idea of road trip a bit.
We did alright, Lila and I, once I convinced her who was right and then as long as I actually turned where she said to instead of turning the other way. I did that a couple of times and it extended my trip a bit. I still averaged 22 mpg on the “dry” leg.
I had a nice meal, good visiting, and have the truck plugged in to the house.
Life is good.
Next stop. California and Indiana and I won’t even leave Pennsylvania to do it.
Wordless Wednesday
It’s Columbus Day, Dammit
Today was “Indigenous Peoples Day” in Vermont. Gov. Peter Shumlin (D-VT) made the proclamation this morning but for only this year, his last in office. He replaced what the country knows as Columbus Day.
It annoys me there are no indigenous peoples left (actually, there are no indigenous peoples almost everywhere in the world). The ancestors of the current Second or Third or Fourth People we celebrate as indigenous were (probably) nomadding around here before the white man settled in but they likely did to the Red Paint people what they say the Europeans did to them.
It annoys me more because our politically correct friends choose to tear down the real history to put in place their belief structure.
I think it should be Interlopers Peoples Day.
Looked at through the lens of history, we’re all Interlopers.