Tucson Gem Show & Hope Depot

This morning we went to Gem and Mineral show at the Tucson Convention Center. It's enormous, there are people from all over the world displaying their wares. Both of us were astonished by the number of minerals for sale and how much they cost. Since we know zippity doo-dah all on the subject of minerals, we couldn't tell what was a reasonable price and what wasn't.

The blue ones are from Afghanistan. They export many minerals. They were running $18 a gram, so they were fairly expensive.

This is a little rock, notice the price.

The fossils are always interesting.

Check the prices on the necklaces. We can't imagine roaming around the country with this much expensive stuff. Every year someone is robbed.

A 68 pound hunk of turquoise which someone had carved. It's pretty impressive.

Bracelets which required a lot of work to create.

There were wood workers displaying wood and mineral bowls. Very pretty, exquisite work.

Then it was off to Home Depot to order an over-the-range microwave/convection oven. It's very frustrating, how little the big box stores actually stock. We have done all of our research on line, and now have ordered the thing site unseen. I hope we like it. Aren't these cute? One can buy pre-planted, pre-caged tomato plants and bring them home.

Now we are off to do laundry. One wonders how two people mess up so many clothes.

Riding Fantasy Island - Shaft & Lone Cactus

Beautiful day today, just spectacular. We rode Fantasy Island with friends of ours, all of whom ride faster than I do. It was good to be pushed to ride faster than normal, from a training perspective, but unnerving from a bicycle fishtailing on the sandy trail perspective. The rubber side of the bike stayed down and I was happy about that.
This is along the trail somewhere. The piece of paper is a notification that giant holes will be dug in the desert to see if it drains well. Tucson used to survive on ground water, but the pace and degree of development have depleted the aquifer. If Fantasy Island is suitable, water from a treatment plant will be poured on to the desert (that's a gross simplification) and allowed to percolate down to the aquifer. The notice assures us that mountain biking will not be affected by this activity. In one sense it might be good, the area is State Trust Land and is for sale. If it becomes an aquifer recharging area, that might take it out of the for sale category. It's an absolute gem of a place to ride, it would be sad if condos sprouted there.

If you refer back to my post of last March, you can see the Shaft in its former gnarly glory. In the interim, someone has flattened out the ruts on the down hill section, installed concrete blocks and back filled with sand. One goes down much faster now, however I still did not clean the left turn. I tend to target fixate on that tree with the Ford tail gate in it.

I saw two cows today. She did not offer to charge us as we rode by, and we were happy about that.

In other news, a miracle occurred and our RV extended warranty company approved the claim for the melted multiplexer boards and associated labor. This is not the same thing as actually paying, we shall stand by to be amazed. I would like to go on record thanking the staff at Premier RV who have wrestled this issue into submission. Much of their time went into dealing with this.
We may go to the Tucson Convention Center Gem & Mineral Show tomorrow. Or we may be out looking for a new over the range microwave/convection oven. One activity will provide interesting pictures, the other will not.

New Camera

Greetings Earthlings. Today saw the purchase of a new camera. It's this model. I lusted after the cmos processor last year, but didn't want to pay the price for the camera. This year, Canon has cascaded their high end processor in to most of their point and shoots. The camera gives me 8X zoom. Good things come to those who wait.
Look how sharp the palm tree fronds are on the right side of the photo. That's hand held at arm's length in low light. Pretty groovy.

The highly saturated color setting.

When walking back to the RV, I stuck the camera up in the air and took this. Again, low light, very sharp palm fronds.

The Arizona state legislature never ceases to amaze me. A bill has made it out of committee that would allow college students to carry guns on campus. The university administration doesn't want this, the professors don't want this, the students don't want this, and the police don't want this. However, one nutbag legislator wants this. It's really creepy being in the dairy section of Walmart with someone packing heat. The thought of a campus full of young people whose frontal cortexes (corti?) have not fully matured wearing guns just boggles the mind.
Other than that, we have not much of interest to report.

Gates Pass

Interesting weather day here in the Old Pueblo. We left the RV park at 9:00 for the breakfast ride. We endured survival conditions, 45 degrees. Four of us wore a lot of clothing; tights, jackets, undershirts. I wore wool socks, and they were nice. Going in for chow was very brisk. On the way back it was still cool, but by the time we arrived back in the park at 11:00 we were all cooking. After changing in to warm weather gear we headed out towards the west side of Gates Pass.

It's the first time this year I've ridden it. We all made it up. It's short but very steep. Good ride, I'm tired now, and sunburned. Jim looks like Larry the Lobster, and I once again have a sunglasses tan line.

Mountain Biking and Traffic Events

Hola! Happy Friday to us all. We rode out at Fantasy Island today. Snake Dance to Rez Loop and then Fire Loop. I made all of the washes. It was good to ride today, I've been having negative thoughts and too much self doubt, but today reinforced that I can, too, ride well.
On the way back, west bound on Ajo to turn south on Mission, we encountered this accident. The kid on the left (who looks like he's 12), appears to have merged into the big red truck. I felt really badly for him. Last year, at this time, car accidents were accompanied by Border Patrol; the immigration bill said that traffic stops were valid reasons to check immigration status and deport people. Since the courts struck it down, we don't see so much Border Patrol at accident scenes.

Today's RV lesson is this. Do NOT run the microwave/convection oven, space heater, hair dryer and all the lights in the RV at once. It pops the breaker on the inverter, which takes out all of the 110. Please make a note of this.
Did we all see in the news today that Jeff Novitzky (of the FDA) dropped the case against Lance Armstrong? Great goo-gobs of money, spent for no apparent reason.

Riding & a New Phone

We rode yesterday and today on the road. Both days were just delightful, involving a stop at the Starbucks near the UofA. This is from today, with our bikes leaned against a wall.

I have recently moved my seat forward, which has helped with the discomfort associated with sitting on a bike, but it has increased the pain in my left shoulder. It's always something.

The office manager at Premier RV is working the issue of McMahon's not sending the insurance payment to First Extended. Progress has been made with getting money transferred from the crooks to the insurance company. No word yet on whether the giant bill from Premier will be covered, since technically we were not insured at the time.

I bought a smart phone today, an Android from Verizon. Learning to use this puppy may become a full time job. I was able to add my top 4 contacts to the home page, but later on, they vanished. One wonders where they are. So, now I have joined this century with ownership of a phone that is smarter than me.

Other than that, I have nothing to report.

Perfidy and Malfeasance

Greetings maties! Just when we thought it was safe to come out of the burrow, we discovered more perfidy and malfeasance perpetrated by our friends at McMahon's RV in Palm Desert, CA.

We've had the RV in for work, and we provided Premier RV with our receipt, and our policy and our brochure for First Extended, which is our extended warranty provider. Problem is, First Extended has never heard of us. It would seem that McMahon's accepted our check for the extended warranty and then kept the money. They did not send it in, and we do not have coverage at the moment because they kept the money. I can not tell you how angry I am at these people. I knew they were snakes, but I did not realize they were in the business of theft, which is what this is. They've had 4 months to transfer payment to First Extended and they have not done it. So, tomorrow, we'll be back at Premier, on the phone to the Head Finance Weenie of McMahon's starting the laborious process of making them do the right thing. I have such a headache.
So, for those of you entering the glamorous world of Class A ownership, here is another pitfall of which you should be aware.
The really cute mammal in the picture is a round tailed ground squirrel.

We're Home

I took this last night. It was a pretty spectacular sunset.

We're back in the RV. We have no clear root cause. If I were running a post mortem for a computing system crash, I'd say we're going to WFR it. That's pronounced woofer, and stands for Wait For Recurrence. So, there you go, and Bob's your uncle.

A New Hike

We had planned to bike today, but neither of us is sleeping well in the hotel, between the noise, the suboptimal pillows, and the constant thoughts of "what if they can't fix it". So we were tired. Plan B was to hike Pontatoc Trail, but upon arriving at the trail head there were no parking places. It's surrounded by a neighborhood that has invested much money in no parking signs. So we went elsewhere.
The trail head for this hike is off Ina. It's Pima Canyon. It was a delightful hike. It's not a ridge line hike, but there is much to look at.

There is a slow moving creek. We sat on a rock in the shade and had a nosh, it was quite nice. We're going to have to start moving earlier, it's warming up here. Remember, my personal comfort zone is between 68 and 72 degrees F.

This was cool. The big bright round thing is the sun. Those of you in the GPNW may not have seen this for awhile. The straight white line is a contrail. The dark line to the left of the contrail is the contrail's shadow being cast on the clouds. If you look right around the sun from nine o'clock to noon positions you can see pink and green clouds. They were more evident in person, but not as much for the camera. I'm amazed that I got any sort of picture, aiming the camera right at the sun.

Jim is off to ask the RV people what, if any, progress was made today. I did not go. Too much time in the car causes me to become car sick.

Day Three of the RV in the Shop

Greetings maties! Gather round and listen to our tale of woe and unhappiness. Today is day 3 of having the RV in the shop. This place would not have been my first choice to repair an electrical disaster. I think they're excellent for TV installations, cabinet work, flooring and the like, but not weird power stuff.
Exhibit one: There are 3 multiplexer boards in the panel. Two of them were fried on Tuesday. Wouldn't you think that it might have occurred to the techs to pull board number three and look at it? If two out of three are fried to a crisp, wouldn't you look at the third? Apparently not. They discovered that number 3 was toast this morning. Its replacement will be here tomorrow.
Exhibit two: Great whanging goo-gobs of electric current were required to fry the boards. Where does that volume of power come from? The alternator. The owner told us today that the only source for that much power is the alternator and they were in the process of removing it to send it out for rebuild or replacement. If they knew this, why did they not do this on day one?
So, we're unhappy. They may have it done tomorrow, but it's not likely that we'll be able to drive it away as the extended warranty people will want to come out and look at it first. That will not happen until Monday at the earliest.
This has been trying on so many fronts. One of the reasons we really resisted buying a Class A is because of exactly this type of situation. There are so many power management systems on board; there is shore power, generator, batteries, inverters, converters, 12V. 110V and etc. Jim and I are not engineeringly inclined people because we haven't needed to be. Until we're further down the learning curve, we have to rely on the repair people, and many of them do not deserve the trust placed in them. If this shop is able to positively identify the root cause of the problems then we can go forth happily. If not, then we're in the position of not really being able to trust the RV.
So, that's where we are as of Thursday night. The good news is that we have clean clothes and we got our bike helmets out so we can ride tomorrow.

It's Always Something With the RV - Part 2

A scene from Sunday's hike, back when we were happy and carefree, unaware of our impending doom. How was that? Ominous enough?

We took the RV in to Premier RV today for 3 minor fixes, and to obtain a quote for cabinet work. HAH! Double HAH HAH HAH!!!!!!! We got there, and the engine wouldn't shut off. We called Monaco from the parking lot and they said it's either a bad ignition switch or a bad ECM relay. The guys at Premier decided to back the coach into a service bay before trying to kill the engine. Good thing.
Techs swarmed the battery bay and the front bay full of wires. We were asked if we had the full schematics for the coach and we set about looking for them. After I had gone through the manuals we keep at the front of the RV, I got up and walked to the back to see how Jim was doing with his search. I walked through a cloud of smoke the smell of hot electronics, and said to Jim, "I think we're on fire." Reader, if you own an RV, fire is the word you never, ever want to hear in conjunction with your coach. Two of the multiplexer boards in the cabinet in the bathroom just cooked themselves. COOKED!

So that is how our day started. They spent several hours trying to identify the root cause for the failure of the engine to stop running, immolation of the multiplexer boards and a general WTH? The solution proposed by the tech is that an incorrectly wired circuit for the docking lights in the dash was the cause. We are having trouble buying it. The amount of electricity required to fry that board did not come from the dash. We don't know what caused it, and we probably won't ever know.
So, tonight we are sleeping at the Hampton Inn out by the airport. Parts are being shipped from around the country, and maybe we'll get the RV back tomorrow, but I doubt it. At this point we will find out if we bought an extended warranty from a good company or a bad company. Some vendors are better about paying than others, so we'll see.
So maties, this is today's report from the glamorous world of full time RVing.

On the Road in Tucson

This is not something one sees on the road every day.

But hey, this is Tucson. We were just stunned that it wasn't dripping body parts as it went down the road.

Cool cloud formations tonight.

Images from Jim's Trip to Seattle

Here is Jim's Mom. She just got her hair cut. It was down to the middle of her back and she was sick of it. i think it looks cute short. She's 97.

I copied this from the Seattle Times website. If SOPA passes, my website will probably go dark due to my borrowing of copyrighted material. I did give photo attribution. Anyway, the is highway 202 between Fish Hatchery and Snoqualmie Falls. This is a road we ride a lot in the summer. Technically Jim didn't see this, but I thought it was a very evocative picture of the area during Snowmaggedon.

This is off the back deck at May's house.

Click this one to enlarge. I like the way the lights are so yellow in the house windows.

There is a new memorial on Bainbridge Island to the Japanese-American citizens who were deported to the internment camps during WWII. This was one of the more shameful chapters in American history. Jim said it's really well done and worth a ferry trip over to see it. We'll be back up in April, and will take more photos.

Sunlight on the city.

Thus ends Jim's trip to the frozen north and his narrow escape from Winter Blast 2012.

Status of Seatac and Snowmaggedon - updated

Winter weather update 1/19/12 10:20 a.m.

One runway/taxiway at Sea-Tac is open for arriving and departing flights. Another runway is open for departures. Please check flight status online or contact your airline for any flight delays.

So far, Jim's flight is showing on time. They're on their third gate change, but they do have a plane on the ground. Yay. He reports that they are de-icing with vigor.


Kim in Issaquah reports that they have no power in the RV park. She plans to bury bottles of champagne in the snow, for medicinal purposes only. Our friend Don in Manitoba has been reporting temperatures of -40C. MINUS 40. I'm not going to tell you what it's doing here, that would be cruel.

Update: Jim has been sitting in the airplane for two hours. One of the baggage doors broke and had to be fixed. Last time I spoke to him, they were waiting for de-icing. I don't know if they're going to leave today or not. Poor baby, he's hungry and he wants to go home.
Update: They've pushed back from the gate, maybe he'll get outta there, and back to this.

Snow in Seattle

I got this off the King5 web site. It's a pretty cool picture. The GPNW is in the grips of Snowmaggedon! I'm hoping Jim gets a flight out tomorrow to return to warmer climes.

Later the Same Day

Beautiful day! Just gorgeous. I hiked about 5 miles, did the usual plus a little more.

When were first learning the trails in the Tucson Mountain Park, this was our landmark. It's visible from just about everywhere and we'd use him to navigate. We call him the Tiki God. He looks like a Tiki, doesn't he?

Then, after all this loveliness and happiness, the wretched TV finally died. There's no more sound. So aggravating, just makes me want to throw it through the window. So, now I'm back to the little TV in the interim. There's a definite trip hazard on the floor.

Overhead I have secured the coax, so that is not a hazard. I really really want this resolved.

This ends my reportage for Tuesday in the Old Pueblo.