Well, we’re in Phoenix and safely ensconced in La Casa Del Monte. We hadn’t planned to be here until Thursday but the drive across I-10 in Texas and New Mexico went so smoothly we made much better time than planned. That whole section of I-10 is brand new and glass smooth.
We drove 8,480 miles in 47 days, but we spent 9 days at the Norton Rally and 10 days at Brother Greg’s. Plus 2 days in Charleston, 3 days in Savannah, 2 days in Alabama, 2 days in Baytown, Texas, and one or two other longer than overnight stays here and there. So figure 19 days of actual travelling. That works out to be 446 miles per day but that’s way too high as we normally only drove about 300 miles between camps, so to heck with the statistics.
The best parts of the trip for me were: The time I got to spend with my brothers in Virginia, seeing the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum and friends Brian & Dian in Alabama, walking around Savannah and seeing the areas used in the movie “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”, riding the Beast in Baytown, Texas, and showing the Alamo and River Walk to Cheryl in San Antonio.
The driving was trauma free until yesterday when we entered Arizona and almost got clobbered twice. The first time was by a huge gust of side-wind that moved the whole rig, truck and trailer, sideways off the road and onto the shoulder. It was the most amazing and scary thing I’ve ever encountered. It felt like the truck was sliding on ice and I had no steering. It scared the heck out of me. The second time was as we passed through Tucson during rush hour and a crazed, frustrated race car driver wannabe switched from the far left lane through the next to left lane, and into my lane almost sideswiping the truck. I swerved to the right to avoid him and luckily he saw me and swerved back to his left and again luckily, there was no one to the right of me as I had no time to do a check-see before I reacted. So I live to write the tail.
This year’s technology addition to the truck and trailer was a tire pressure monitoring system. Eight small sensors were screwed onto the tire stems and they reported the actual tire pressures to the read-out module in the truck. So as long as I could glance down and see 8 black tires displayed on the screen I knew all the tires were within the hi/low specs (truck front tires 60, rear tires 70, and trailer tires 80 each) I set for them. If a tire had lost some air it would have set off beep-beep warning and the tire indicator image would blink. If a catastrophic failure (blow out) had happened the alarm would be shrill, loud, and obnoxious indicating pull-over right now! I bought the system because having a blowout on the trailer was my worst nightmare during the last three trips. A ripped up blown tire can destroy the whole side of a trailer in just a matter of seconds without the driver even knowing there was a problem. So the new system really took a load off my mind.
Next year’s technology addition will be a rear facing video camera. I backed the rig into a lamp post while trying to turn around in a too small parking lot I got myself into through sheer stupidity and impatience. The camera wouldn’t have kept me out of the lot, but it might have kept the lamp post a bit safer. I should send them a check. Ha! Ain’t gonna happen.
I finally got the Alamo photos out of my camera’s internal memory and frankly they are not that great. I will post the only one worth looking at. A bigger, better camera is on the list for next year’s vacation.
I will encourage Cheryl to write some words about the trip.
For now,
Happy to be home Frank.
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