Early Thanksgiving
Posted by bronson Tue, 22 Nov 2005 18:34:00 GMT
Some pics from the feast. This was definitely worth hurrying back for.
Niagara Exposed!
Posted by bronson Tue, 22 Nov 2005 18:04:00 GMT
Niagara falls really is beautiful.
Except that when you turn around, this is what you see:
It’s definitely worth stopping for an hour or two. The “Behind the Falls” exhibit should be called “Beside the Falls.” This picture shows how close you can get: a small opening at the end of a long hallway. How disappointing. However, they do have a deck that offers a stunning view of the base of the falls. Too bad they try to sell you a fake photo with you green-screened directly in front of the falls. Was the deck worth the $10 Canadian? Maybe. Just barely.
Unfortunately Maid of the Mist was closed for the season.
Cross-Country
Posted by bronson Tue, 22 Nov 2005 17:13:00 GMT
The cross-country trip went off without a hitch. It wasn’t as hard as I’d thought it would be. It didn’t have many photo ops though. I’ll take the Southern route next time.
Best state to drive through: Utah
Worst state to drive through: Nebraska
It was really windy and really icy heading off the summit in Nebraska so I stopped for a few hours in the middle of the night. When I got started again I saw around 25 crashed trucks and 8 autos all the way into Des Moines. Not a single one looked like an injury crash. They all just spun off the road. It was a a tow truck driver’s dream.
I ended up in Illinois a day early so I got to visit Chris Love and meet his girlfriend for the first time. Is the Bible good literature? What do taxidermists want done with their bodies when the die? I need to figure out a way of seeing them more often.
How to make a banzai road trip more tolerable:
- Eat well. This is the most important. Fill the car with bottled water, fruit, crackers, anything to help avoid fast food. Two McDonald’s meals is enough to put me right to sleep.
- Sleep whenever. If your eyelids feel heavy at all you’re probably not safe to drive. Pull over and snooze for a bit. When you wake up an hour or two later, you’ll be back to 80%.
- Change up the entertainment. Get a gigantic MP3 player and load it up with everything from the Foo Fighters to books on tape. Too much of one thing is not good for mental awareness.
- Avoid overusing caffeine. Sure it’ll get you the next 100 miles in comfort but the 300 after that will be hell.
Gas station stops: 13
Total spent on gas: $453.44
Mileage: 16.8 MPG. Ouch. Sorry, environment.
Gas price (min avg max): $2.08 $2.31 $2.70
Mapping software under Linux
Posted by bronson Mon, 14 Nov 2005 16:00:00 GMT
(notes) A quick rundown of the mapping packages that I’m aware of. None of these quite serve my needs but Roadster looks very promising.
- gpsdrive: raster-based maps. Downloads maps from Expedia so they look nice but you pretty much require a full-time internet connection. With some effort you can use the Blue Marble satellite data set from Nasa but then you lose the street names. Development appears stalled.
- roadmap: vector-based maps. Useful but the GUI and the maps it generates are fairly ugly. Development appears stalled.
- navsys: Has a very useful car-friendly GUI. Excellent bearing and satinfo display on the main page. Development is slow but still appears active.
- GMap: Looks promising. Requires Mono.
- Roadster: Produces the most beautiful maps I’ve seen, better than Expedia and Google maps. Might be stalling…? GPS stuff is currently broken.
In-flight entertainment
Posted by bronson Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:08:00 GMT
The car computer somewhat works one day before leaving on the long trip. I should start documenting it.
First, I didn’t like any of the existing Epia cases that I could find. They’re too big, too flimsy, or too hard to work on. The case that’s running Trestle would never ever stand up to the vibration in a car. So I figured I could make what I wanted out of $30 of plastic and $10 of brass fasteners.
Here’s a picture from a few weeks ago: the case under construction on the dining room table. Behind it is the cardboard mockup I used to figure out dimensions. So far I’m happy with the result. A solid, compact, open-flat case… I think somebody should manufacture this.
I miss my home.
Posted by bronson Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:40:00 GMT
And my baby. Taken 3 weeks ago, the day before I left.
Fuel pump solved
Posted by bronson Wed, 09 Nov 2005 20:17:00 GMT
Brennan and I took a look a the fuel pump over the weekend. It’s trivial to diagnose when you’ve got the right tools.
The big problem? Over a year ago, I pulled the center console to install a motorized radio antenna (got rid of the worthless radio antenna embedded in the rear window heating element). When I replaced the console, I pinched a wire underneath one of the rear mounting bolts. Apparently it took a year for the bolt to wear through the insulation… Then it started blowing 10A fuses for two weeks, then it blew 30A fuses for a week, then it died for good. My fuel pump, replaced with almost 200,000 miles on it, was probably still running fine.
Two strange things remain:
The fuses would only blow when the motor was under 2000 RPM. If I could get it started without blowing the fuse, I could drive all day by keeping the engine racing. I can’t explain this at all… There should be basically no difference in voltage across the pump at 500 RPM vs 2000 RPM.
Replacing the fuel pump DID completely fix the problem for two weeks. I figure the old pump was drawing a lot more current than the new one, making it more likely to blow a fuse. But, this too seems rather strange. Short circuits can be really finicky beasts.
That explains why I was blowing the fuse so regularly. Except… wiring the pump to the dome light would have fixed this, no question. I should have been right back on the road. What happened? While replacing the fuel pump (in fading light, using a screwdriver and scissors, head spinning from the gas fumes…) I didn’t see that there was a tiny plastic cap over the outlet on the new pump. I managed to jam the cap into the fuel hose, stuffing it up for good. Brennan and I pulled the fuel filter and found that the pump works but there’s no pressure in the line. Blocked line. I would have figured this out if I’d had a fuel pressure gauge. You just can’t pull a fuel filter with a screwdriver and scissors to check. You need wrenches.
So, it was operator error. Twice. How humbling.
If I had removed that 4 cent part before I jammed it in, I would have probabably made it to Winters. At $300 for the truck and $120 for the vandalized tire, it was a pretty costly mistake. Arg! On the other hand, I loved visiting the Hills. Carter got to help fix the Rover and use tiedowns to tow things with his tricycle. It was a great weekend.
Read more...
Real men don't slash tires.
Posted by bronson Sun, 06 Nov 2005 07:15:00 GMT
Why did my left rear tire get slashed some time on Wednesday? It was parked near Brennan and Eve’s house on a nice suburban street. Where do these lowlifes come from?
Then somebody, possibly the same person, phoned the police on Thursday asking to have an abandoned car towed. My car. That I’d parked there Tuesday morning. Since a car must remain a week before it gets towed, the caller clearly lied about how long I’d been parked there.
A few days ago, while unsuccessfully replacing the fuel pump, I found one of Brennan’s business cards under the floor mat and chucked it onto the dash to throw away later. The cops investigating the complaint saw the card and called Brennan. They said that if the card weren’t there, the Rover would have been towed on Friday afternoon. A few hours before I returned from Winters. The license plate is on the car, the registration is current, why can’t they just call me? Why does random coincidence have to save my butt?
Thanks to the police, I do know who called in the complaint. Mr. NextDoorNeighbor, it’s pretty stupid to give anonymous tips from your home phone! I don’t know if you are the person who slashed my tire, but I do know that you are the person who lied about how long I was parked there. I admit, I’m baffled. You don’t seem like the sort of person who would perjur himself over such a petty thing. Were you just having a bad day or something?
Unfortunately, you’re lucky. I need to leave for Tehachapi tonight and won’t be back for at least 6 months so I don’t get to confront you about the lie. If you DID slash my tire, I can only hope that karma pays attention to what you have done.
Now I’m 0 for 2 in the justice department. Criminy.
It's not the fuel pump.
Posted by bronson Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:50:00 GMT
- 12:30 pm Oct 31: stop at the Valencia Shell for gas.
- 12:35 pm: blow too many fuses trying to start the motor. Replacing the pump motor had appeared to fix the problem but apparently only for a week. Luckily - 1:00: Buy a new fuel pump.
BP is in Valencia.
Stranded in Valencia, unpacking the car
(including gas welding rig) to access the pump. - 3:00: replace fuel pump. Still blowing fuses. That must mean that the fault is between the fuse and the pump.
- 4:00: Wire fuel pump to the rear dome light. Yes! The fuel pump now works fine. Fuel rail pressurised. But the car still doesn’t start. There must be some other device critical to the engine hanging off that fuse. I need to replace it. Go buy more fuses from the Shell station.
- 5:00: Now everything is blown. The plastic on the new fuse has melted and bubbled but still flows current. Dawning realization that Shell has sold me a defective fuse. Something else in my electrical system is now blown instead of the fuse. That’s a show stopper. What a Halloween.
Darkness is falling. I need to be in Winters tomorrow. Despair!
- 5:30: Start calling around. U-Haul costs $360.00. That’s hard to justify, especially because I’ll be stranded in Winters at the end of it. The nearest minivan is in the Burbank Airport. I need to move all my stuff so a sedan just won’t do.
- 7:00: Enterprise has a truck! $70.00/day, unlimited mileage. Fantastic.
- 8:30: Visit Eve and Brennan for an hour.
- 9:30: leave Bakersfield for Tehachapi to grab the trailer.
- 10:30: There is a lock on the trailer (for good reason – there’s a crazy woman who wants to steal everything up here). But no key for the lock. So… Take the hitch apart. It was a stunningly beautiful night up there. Mountain breeze, stars everwhere.
- 11:30: All hooked up, time to leave.
Arriving in Bakersfield at first light. - 1:30: Arrive in Valencia. The 3 hours of sleep I got the night before are beating me about the head. Pull into a parking lot and crash in the truck.
- 3:30: Wake up. Load the Rover onto the trailer. After struggling to use axle straps as a come-along, a guy shows up with a $50 portable winch. A few minutes later, the Rover is loaded. I gotta get me one of these.
- 4:30: Leave for Bakersfield.
- 5:30: Drop the Rover in front of Eve and Brennan’s.
- 11:00: Arrive in Winters. Now it’s time to start moving. Ouch. But, given the circumstances, the last 24 hours have gone pretty well.
Lessons:
- The Coleman Cold Heat soldering tool sucks ass. It’s got no thermal mass. It can melt solder, but it can’t make it stick to anything. It’s about as effective a soldering iron as a cold monkey wrench. Save your $15.00.
- The Silverado has a great engine but awful seats and suspension. Talk about swampy. I’m getting afraid that the SUV-addicted American car industry is going to have to learn the lessons from 1973 all over again.
Update: Added the photos.
