We live in an 8’x35′ little house on wheels with much of that room taken up by a big honking engine and the driver’s area.  Though the lack of living space is partially offset by typical RV design, in that every piece of furniture has storage compartments, it is still imperative to maintain a “reduce and clear out” mindset lest we become overcrowded by “stuff.”  We did a pretty good job of cutting our possessions down to something close to minimalist before we moved into the motorhome, but our underbelly storage is rather crammed, the is closet nearly full, and all those aforementioned furniture cubby holes are mostly occupied.

Accordingly, we have continued our reduction efforts. Since moving in, I guesstimate that we have cleared out about 10 cubic feet of items, mostly by selling them off: half a dozen eBay items and two 30 pound propane canisters sold at RV parks.  We gave away a two gallon sports cooler to the park host at Amistad, and have a large plastic shopping bag of items waiting to drop off at the next Goodwill or Salvation Army spot.

We are also trying to use a “one in, one out” rule: If we buy a thing, something else has to go away.  During our recent enforced stay in Odessa, TX we went on a bit of a shopping spree to fill in our winter clothes and footwear gaps.  I took home two pair of shoes, two shirts, two pants, a windbreaker, and gloves.  So I got rid of three pair of shoes, two shorts, two shirts, one hat, and a pair of old gloves.  Last month we bought a stackable set of RV/Yacht type induction ready pots and pans, and now we have the remnants of our old non-stackable, non-induction ready pans on eBay.  Today we went “sand sledding” at Monihans Sandhills State park, and rather than rent two little sleds for $10, we bought the two-person toboggan for $12.50, and when we were done for the day we sold it to a young man for $5.   No net increase in items.

Though we half expected to hear about another delay, 5 Star Diesel came through for us today with a repaired and road ready Big Kahuna.  We caught a shuttle from the hotel out to the repair facility, and went through the transmission and other issues with our main mechanic, Cory.  The transmission shifts smoothly not only between reverse and forward, but our long-standing top gear problem appears resolved as well.  The ludicrously expensive solenoid relay assembly replacement also resolved a significant compressed air leak, allowing us to come up on air a lot faster than pre-break down.

They did tell us to keep an eye on the oil pressure as by their experience it is sitting at the lower end of the acceptable range, and if we find an old Detroit Diesel specialist we should ask about getting the two oil pressure regulators tweaked to give us a bit more pressure. The overall bill for the entire venture was… expensive, pushing us noticeably below the 50% point of what we set aside as reserve for bus repairs and renovations.

Though we weren’t happy about the bill, which included 40 hours of labor, we at least generally accept that it took them a lot or work to troubleshoot, manufacture special parts, and repair the bus.  What we can’t accept is their cleanliness standards when it comes to the treatment of client’s vehicles.  Perhaps this is the added risk of getting work done at a big rig truck specialist rather than an RV repair shop, but the first thing we noticed upon climbing into The Big Kahuna was a grime, grease and oil covered passenger seat, with additional stains on the driver chair and armrest.  Seriously, how hard would it have been to prevent this?  Two sheets covering the seats?  Look, these may not be our favorite chairs or colors, and yes we intend to replace or recover them eventually, but seriously? We got the front office involved and they did the right thing, immediately contacting a specialist mobile upholstery cleaner.  These guys:

So Joe and his partner from Advance Cleaning arrived within 20 minutes, but expressed skepticism about the their ability to clean such a thick amount of what was likely oil and grease based grime from this type of material. They set to work, however, and in about an hours time had restored the chair merely to pre-break down color, but to my eye it now looks even cleaner than the other, unstained chair of this pair.  So big ups to Advance Cleaning of Odessa, TX, we will be Yelping and Google reviewing you as soon as we can.

Since we did not get out of Odessa until after 5 PM, we elected to stop at Monahans Sandhills State Park, less than 40 miles west of Odessa, rather than push on to Balmorhea State Park or Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  We will assess in the morning how to proceed, as we have discovered two cracks in our potable water piping that will need fixing before we go much further.  Though we drained the water tank and system prior to getting towed from Big Bend National Park, the bus piping has a lot of dips and bends and I don’t think we got all the water out of the lines before we had nearly a week of sub-freezing temps in Odessa.  I have not decided if this is something I want to repair myself, have a mobile RV guy come out and fix, or swing into an RV shop in Pecos, the next town on our general route.

Two days ago we posted our hope that The Big Kahuna would be ready for the road in a day, possibly two.  That hope proved, as we secretly suspected, overly optimistic.  This morning, even as we waited for our taxi to arrive and take us to 5 Star Diesel, the service manager called to report continuing transmission problems.  Though they had road tested everything on Friday and all looked positive, further testing resulted in ongoing transmission sticking when shifting between reverse and forward gears.  So as of now they have accomplished the following:

• Repaired/adjusted throttle linkage (original problem that got us towed here)
• Replaced both drive shaft u-joints (pointed out by wrecker driver)
• Replaced solenoid switch assembly with manufactured new one (long-standing problem, also aggravating our compressed air leak problems)
• Replaced oil pressure sender (old one was sending incorrect oil pressure to gauge and alarm)
• Changed transmission fluid (still tracking down the actual leak)

So… we are still in Odessa, and as a minimum we will be here another two days, though or concern is that it will be even longer.   As such we are redoubling our efforts to make the best of it, if that makes sense.  During our first week in Odessa, though we scored a great deal on an equipped suite, we didn’t really accomplish much other than catch up on this blog and do some laundry.  I guess we had not really accepted and committed to our stay; it might not have been real to us as we kept thinking we would be out tomorrow, and then tomorrow, and then tomorrow.

We are trying to make up for that a bit now. We can at least do two things here that some people, those of an unnecessarily critical mindset, those without the perspective to see what is important to us, well, those people might say these things are frivolous, even counter productive. Nay I say!  Nay!  These things are important!:

1. Filling in our one dimensional, Miami-oriented wardrobe, one that is abysmally unsuited for anything other than very warm weather.  Additionally, my footwear consists of flip flops, dress and semi-casual shoes, and one ragged pair of Saucany running shoes with holes spreading in multiple spots.  Totally unsuitable for hiking and other rugged outdoors activities.  So we have been hitting the discount clothing stores and sales racks to fill in our sartorial gaps, particularly those that will get us in a more rugged, boondocking mindset.  Yes, I know, the less enlightened will simply call this “spending money because they are bored” but that is just not true! We need these things!  Plus we managed to keep the whole two day spree under $275.
2. Catching up on TV shows that we have missed during the last few months. Without cable or high speed unlimited data internet we have missed the new seasons of Justified, Downton Abbey, Archer, Walking Dead, The Americans, House of Cards, and probably a few others.  Again, the less expansive, the more judgemental among you might dismiss such things as trivial, even frivolous, but as we mentioned as far back as December 2013, we are TV people, believing that we live in the golden age of quality television shows.  Besides, we fully anticipated being hooked up with satellite TV by now.  Sure, we convinced ourselves that we didn’t really miss it, but every time we would run across an ad for one of our shows we would cringe a bit inside.  We may have saved three months worth of satellite costs, but there was a tv sized hole in our souls.  So now we playing catching up, starting with Walking Dead.

We will see where we stand on Monday, hopefully back on the road and on the way to various phenomenal national parks.  Until then we will hang tight here in whatever affordable, military discounted, breakfast and WiFi included, cable TV providing hotel we can find.

We have a somewhat more positive report from 5 Star Diesel Repair today.  They were hampered by the sub freezing temperatures during the last week and did not really make much progress until Monday.  Since then they have troubleshot and repaired the throttle linkage problem and replaced both driveshaft u-joints.  Yesterday they confirmed that the solenoid activation assembly for the transmission is shot, or as the service manager explained: “tits up in the rhubarb.”  Once again, pardon the technical speak. Unfortunately this solenoid proved very difficult to source, so they had a local shop manufacture it, which involved hours of work on aluminum billet, wiring, compression line fitting, etc.  That translates into mucho dinero, but we don’t have a lot of choice at this point, and it has been a long-standing problem that needed addressing.

If all goes well, they will have it installed tomorrow morning, which will then allow them to road test and see if it actually fixed the reverse gear sticking problem and maybe even the top gear problem.  Fingers crossed.

As of this morning we have exhausted our Marriott points at the Residence Inn, but considering everything that was included we got a great deal of value from those points.  With Marriott reward points the fifth night of a five-day stay is free , plus WiFi, breakfast, and half of our dinners were included in the relatively low cost.  All good things come to an end, and this afternoon we had to switch to a TownPlace, also a Marriott property, since they had an excellent military rate that could not be matched by the other chain properties. Because of the oil boom of the last half decade, Odessa is way short on housing and hotels, and they are surprisingly expensive here.  Fortunately our dedication to loyalty programs saved the day.

NB: Some financial advisors (cough Suze Orman cough) would not approve of some of the vaguely controversial money related recommendations below.

A little over three years ago, when I wrote for a group blog oriented on politics and culture, I posted an article equating the extraordinary benefits of airline, hotel, and other loyalty programs to the rather esoteric field of online roleplaying computer game structure.  Don’t think about that too hard, please. The point was to demonstrate the benefits one could get from the loyalty programs and to convince people to consider using some of the well established tips and tricks to gain maximum rewards.

Our recent forced stop in Odessa, TX necessitated a hotel, which I obtained using a portion of the rather large cache of hotel points built up during the years of my extensive business related travel. Specifically, six nights in a Residence Inn, normally $119 per night, which I got for 10,000 Marriott points (valued at maybe $80) per night.  This week we also “purchased ” business class airline tickets to Hawaii using some of the American Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines points from the same cache.  We could do this because for the decade between 2004 and 2014 I was flying international at least half a dozen times a year, some years twice that, with associated hotel stays, on the government dime.  With that pace of travel it was complicated but very much worth it to remain a bit obsessive about working the marginal lines of the airline and hotel loyalty programs.

Now that I am retired and my flights and hotel stays are much more limited, it’s is not so critical to stay on the edge of the programs, and the core principles that served me so well then are not nearly so critical:

1. Never fly in a plane, sleep in a hotel, or rent a car without signing up for and getting credit in the associated loyalty program.
2. When feasible concentrate your flying, sleeping, and renting into a primary company and a back up. This will entail a bit of research to determine which programs best meet your travel patterns, and where your value vs. loyalty cut off point is.
3. Utilize the incredible variety of free offers out there to build miles and points in your primary and back up programs. E.g, some insurance companies give points just for allowing them to give you a quote.  Most airlines have dining rewards programs where all you do is register your credit cards, and if you eat at a partner restaurant, you get extra reward points.  Two examples among hundreds.

Though I still generally follow them, without the frequent business travel there is not nearly so much of a benefit behind these principles, especially the second.  There are, however, two additional principles, techniques that provide the same advantages now that I am retired as when I was working, though they are not for everyone:

Use reward program credit cards for every conceivable purchase, including recurring bills that allow it, such as utilities, cell phone, car insurance, etc., and align specific spending to the credit card offering the greatest reward return in that category.

We have all seen the plethora of credit card commercials offering some percentage back in cash or points for your spending (“What’s In Your Wallet?”)  I use cash for almost nothing, and thus earn tens of thousands of loyalty points just for paying my bills and buying necessities. Financial advisors, at least those focused on advising struggling people how to clear debt and get themselves on a stable financial track, do not merely balk at such a proposal, they may even make getting rid of credit cards one of their core and mandatory steps.  Dave Ramsey comes to mind.  And he is not wrong.  Until you have firmly established as habit the paying off of monthly balances before the due date and treat the credit card as if it were cash, i.e., you don’t use the existence of the credit card and its bonuses as an excuse to buy something you otherwise would not, then you should be wary of making credit cards your primary spending method.

Circa 2004, this was not me.  Before Rose and I got married I was pretty happy-go-lucky with the spending and bill payments.  This drove Rose insane.  Once I got her out of the ward, I improved my bill payment process and locked it down such that I have not paid interest or a late payment in years. After several years of clear bill payments, sometime in late 2010 I made the full on switch to credit cards for everything, and not just the traditional store spending and automatic bill payments: I bought a used car on my MasterCard, paid part of my son’s college classes on it, every possible thing unless they charged an additional fee for using the card.

The additional element of this method is to take advantage of the category bonuses many cards offer. My Chase Ink Business Visa gives 5% back for telecommunications (cell and cable bills) and office supplies.  My AmEx Simply Cash offers 3% back on gas.  Chase Freedom and Discover It have a quarterly rotating set of 5% bonus categories.  Does this sound too hard to track?  I carry five cards, and keep the categories straight by writing directly onto each card in white correction fluid, covered by clear tape, for which categories I should use them.  This process has paid off handsomely, though not nearly as much as the next technique.

“Churn” the reward point credit cards, but again, only if you have established a pattern of paying off the balance due every month and are strongly committed to doing so in the future.  

Though most credit card television commercials tout the spending cash back bonuses, the real money is in the sign up bonuses.  You have probably thrown away hundreds of such offers on flyers in your mailbox.  Citibank, American Express, Chase, Barclay, Bank of America, they all sponsor credit cards, often in partnership with specific airlines or hotels, that will grant you tens of thousands of “reward points” or “miles” or whatever their preferred currency terminology allows, just for getting the card and meeting a reasonable minimum spend, usually around $3,000 in the first three months after activation, though some require as little as $500 or even just a single purchase.

Since 2010 I have applied for and received 1 million airline/hotel points (estimated value $15,000) plus $650 in cash bonuses from 25 credit cards, the overwhelming majority of which involved no annual fee or waived it for the first year.  Along the way I have cancelled 18 of them, usually a month or two before the annual membership fee was due. The remaining seven either have no annual fee, are still a few months away from the need to cancel, or they provide some intrinsic benefit that warrants retention despite a modest annual fee.   Some examples:

• In 2011 I applied for two Citi American Airlines cards, an AX and a Visa, that provided me 75K AAdvantage miles each after spending about $3,000 on each card. Those $150K points can get me six domestic round trip tickets in coach, or just under two first class transcontinental international flights.  They cost me nothing.
• In 2014 I received a targeted mail flyer offer for a $300 statement credit on a no annual fee American Express Simply Cash card.  That turns out to be worth… $300.
• In 2013 I applied for a Chase Marriott rewards card, granting me 70K in Marriott points, 60K of which have paid for our stay in Odessa.
• Between 2012 and 2014 I obtained three different credit cards granting a combined $105K in Hawaiian Airlines points, which just paid for my wife’s business class ticket to Hawaii with plenty of points left over.

So what’s the catch?  What is the business model that incentivizes the large banks to offer such rewards?  They count on two things:

1. A significant percentage of applicants will not pay off their bill every month, resulting in interest charges.
2. A significant percentage of the applicants will never use their acquired points, or will use them on something that is of limited value to the holder and almost no cost to the credit company. E.g., magazine subscriptions.

We pay the bill every month, and we use those points for upgraded international and trans-ocean flights and upgraded stays in high end resort hotels.  Sometimes it really is that simple.  It’s not a scam or a get rich scheme; it’s simply financially responsible people using, to maximum effect, the legitimate offers proffered from large corporate banking organizations and their corporate hotel and airline partners.

I know what some of you are thinking: But what about your credit score?  Doesn’t applying for, much less receiving, half a dozen credit cards a year damage your rating?  Short answer: Not really.  Longer answer: The proprietary credit score calculations from the three major credit ranking organizations are complicated, but they all boil down to a couple of overwhelming considerations: Do you pay your bills on time and do you have a high ratio of unused credit to debt?  There are a few other factors, such as average age of active accounts and, yes, number of credit applications within the last year, but if you have been paying your bills regularly for three years running with no major delinquencies, and you have a lot more available credit line than actual debt, then the very minor and temporary ding of a few credit applications will barely register.  In fact, if you receive several credit cards, all with multi-thousand dollar limits and a starting balance of zero, you have likely offset the temporary application hit because you significantly increased your unused credit ratio.

So for the last four and a half years I have “churned” the loyalty point and cash rewarding credit cards: applying for, receiving, meeting minimum spend, receiving the bonus, paying off, and then cancelling about six credit cards a year. Outrageous? I know churners who do 15 to 20 cards a year.  I consult the numerous loyalty program bloggers before applying, such as Million Mile Secrets or The Points Guy.  I am selective.  A $50 dollar or 10K point sign up bonus doesn’t get a second thought; with few exceptions, if the offer isn’t worth at least $150 in equivalent point value, I usually dismiss it.

This weekend, as I had to expend some of our points cache for the Odessa hotel and our Hawaii tickets, I was reminded that it had been six months since my last credit card churn. Accordingly, I researched and then applied online for a carefully selected set of six cards. I was approved for two, denied one, and three gave me an automated “needs further review” type response.  As this was not my first churning rodeo, I immediately called the reconsideration line for each pending and denied card, resolving the three penders with some additional information or paperwork.  It turns out that the My RV Mail forwarding address we established can play havoc with the automated address confirmation algorithms of the credit agencies.

The one denied card was part of Citi’s tightened criteria, in that I applied for two personal cards from them at the same time, and they only allow one at a time.  Had one of them been a business card, it likely would not have been a problem.  And so despite a vastly reduced annual income since I retired, which I did not fudge on the applications, I still received five of six applied for cards, worth 185K loyalty points and two free nights in Hyatt hotels.  I call that a bargain, though not the best I ever had.

I think this is a worthwhile regular series for ShellOnWheels.  As new full-time RVers, we don’t bring much of anything new to the RV blogger community, but the loyalty point game is something I worked aggressively for nearly five years, and that may be rather uncommon among us.  So… got questions?

Sometimes you should just stop where it looks right:  After leaving Iron Horse RV in San Antonio last week we headed west, intending to stop for two nights at Seminole Canyon State Park near Comstock, TX.  Seminole Canyon was not something particularly on our wish list, it was merely a convenient half way point between San Antonio and Big Bend National Park, and along with Kickapoo Caverns and Devils River, was one of three parks in the general vicinity we considered.  We didn’t even have reservations.  As we drove over the trestle bridge crossing the Amistad reservoir, we looked down and noted a small group of RVs camped on a ridge overlooking the lake, and thought to ourselves, “ourselves, that looks truly beautiful, with plenty of space between each rig, fantastic views for all, and we should check it out.” So we pulled over, consulted the google, received too much information to sort while idling beside the highway, turned around and followed the circuitous and non-intuitive route Rose found back to the camp site.

Amistad National Recreation Area: The signs informed us we were in the Governor’s Landing RV site within the Amistad National Recreation Area.  We pulled in and consulted the first human we spotted, who turned out to be Miguel, the volunteer camp host, who informed us it was no hook-up dry camping for $8 a night, though pit toilets and potable water were available within the camp and a dump station a couple of miles down the road. Perfect!  Since we had just spent two nights hooked up at Iron Horse, we had plenty of fresh water, fully charged batteries, and empty sewage tanks, so a night or two here would be no problem.  The entire camp has only 15 RV sites, with maybe half suitable for something as long as The Big Kahuna, and nearly half of those already taken.  We selected the most level of those with a north-west facing view of the lake, I dropped Rose off to maintain our claim on the site while I went back to town for generator gasoline and critical supplies (beer).

Setting up camp is a lot faster when you don’t have to worry about any hook-ups, so within a few minutes we were already enjoying the rugged views of the former quarry. We took a stroll down to the lake, had a fine outdoor grilled meal, and generally fell in love with the place.  So much so that our planned one night stay turned into three.  We occupied our days with short and easy hikes around the area and a couple of short dips in the rather cold lake.

We left after three nights, stopped up the road for the always agonizing full fill up of our diesel tank and to dump our sewage tank at one of the other RV areas within the Amistad National  Rec Area.   All in all we highly recommend this area for a short stay.  The price is right, the environment and facilities decent, and if you are looking for an easy stop off Highway 90, you can’t beat it.

Big Bend National Park:  We pulled into the Rio Grande RV Village 47 miles deep into the Big Bend National Park.  Our rig is not suitable to get to the other RV camping areas within the park, one of them requiring very sharp switch back turns or simply having too small of sites for us.  The Rio Grande site offered two options: dry camping for $14, or full hook-up sites for $35.  Since we had spent three days dry camping, we elected the full hook-up option, which in hindsight was a bit of a mistake.  Whereas the dry camping area was a beautiful set of loops with trees and plenty of space, the full hook-up area was a parking lot with each rig right next to one another.

The park itself, however, was amazingly beautiful, and offered a variety of options to entertain us.  Given the time we had to stay, we passed on the short hike to the Mexican border crossing area, which would have offered us the choice of wading across the shallow area of the Rio Grande or taking the $5 ferry, followed by a short hike or $5 burro ride into the nearby small town.  Instead we took a seven mile loop from our rig to a hot spring sitting at the edge of the river.  It is difficult to describe how fantastic the views are, and I am not sure our pictures can do it justice.

While hiking the various trails near the border you will stumble upon various little caches of trinkets, apparently made by Mexican artists who cross the border at night to put their wares along the trial, along with an honor system collection jar, which they collect after sunset.

We stayed two nights, dumped tanks, and headed out to Balmorhea State Park where we had reservations.   Of course, if you read the last entry on our breakdown, you know we didn’t make it, and ended up spending a third night in Big Bend, only this one beside the road at the edge of the park.  At least it was free.

The Distance: We drove the bus a whopping 1,832 miles in February for a two month distance total of 3,131 miles since leaving Key West at the beginning of the year.  If you look at our Where We Are tab, you can see the increased distances between stops in February compared to the clustered stops in January.  This of course means we had to spend more on gas… and after two additional “opportunities” to fill up our ginormous tank we were able to get a couple more gas mileage estimates, both of which suggest The Big Kahuna gets closer to a flat 8 mpg than the nearly 9 we calculated on our first fill up this year.

The Places: 11 stops as we worked our way out of the Florida Panhandle and westward. We had a fantastic stay in Alabama, a nice quite stop in Mississippi, a glorious Mardi Gras experience in Louisiana, and a series of stops in Texas at state and national parks and, sadly, two visits to mechanics in different Texas cities.

The Budget: We blew it.  No other way to say it, we are $400 over for February, and considering how tightly we squeezed under our planned budget threshold in January, we are over for the year so far.  The causes?  We had to fill up The Big Kahuna twice this month, and despite the low Gulf Coast and Texas diesel prices, that means we spent about 50% more on diesel than our benchmark plan of $450 per month.  We also denied ourselves nothing during our Mardi Gras stop near New Orleans, dining out every night and some of the days as well, and we are finding that the restaurant line items of our entertainment budget are a big killer.  We had some mechanical repair bills this month as well, but most of those costs were taken out of the money we set aside in 2014 for repairs and renovations.  We got hit with the unexpected Texas State Park annual pass, and the fully expected National Park annual pass as well.  The good news is that we cut our RV Parking line item down to $636 for the month; way less than the $996 in January, but still well in excess of the what we hope to get it down to once we incorporate longer periods of boondocking out West.

The Drama: As mentioned above, we had two multi-day stops at mechanics in Texas.  In San Antonio we sought to address three long standing problems and one new one, whereas our ongoing stop in Odessa resulted from a true roadside break down, though now that we are in the shop, we plan to get a few additional long standing problems taken care of us well.

The Improvements:  Despite our mechanical problems, we are making progress on our lengthy punch list of repairs, renovations, and enhancements, with the vanity top and faucet in our bathroom being a great start towards a full bathroom remodel.  We sold our last car, Bad Kitty, allowing us to temporarily eliminate auto related expenses until we get around to buying a tow vehicle, probably a Jeep.  Lastly, we continue to reduce and eliminate unnecessary items, opening up living and storage space.

Breaking Down: We have been radio silent the last several days due to complete lack of cell coverage while in Big Bend National Park, complicated by the RV center shutting down their WiFi sometime before our arrival for reasons only hinted at by the employees. We were looking forward to catching up the blog, Facebook, Instagram and all other methods of modern communication about our stops in the Amistad National Recreation Area and Big Bend as soon as we left the park. We got what is, for us, a relatively early start on our way towards Balmorhea State Park when, as they say, disaster struck. We were about half way down the 47 mile road that takes you out of Big Bend, coasting down a moderate hill when I noticed that the gas pedal seemed to have no effect on the engine.  After barely cresting the next hill we found ourselves restricted to a fast idle, with a top speed of 14 mph on a level grade.

I spent some time, and pardon the technical language here, “fiddling with the engine,” before coming to the conclusion that our throttle linkage was broken, but I could not see where.  Lacking cell service, we flagged down a passing vehicle and asked them to notify the rangers of our situation.  We idled forward another 25 miles, reaching the park’s entry point visitor center and ranger station, but we could not quite crest the hill leading out of the park, dashing our hopes of just idling all the way to the nearest town, Marathon, to get mechanical assistance.

The Insurance: We borrowed the land line at the station (thanks Ranger Doug) to call Progressive, and let it be said that their commercials have definitely stuck in the consciousness of many Americans, because at least two people in the visitor center were able to tell me the phone number was obviously 1-800-PROGRESSIVE.  We had some initial difficulty getting sorted out due to the lack of an easy call back number, but I eventually received assistance from one of the supervisors in Progressive’s roadside assistance division, and, as the kids used to say, OMG totally awesome!  This woman spent hours working our case, and after exhausting all possible mobile mechanic options (plenty of mechanics, just none that were both willing to travel that far and willing to work on our old diesel) she arranged a wrecker from Fort Stockton, about 100 miles away, since no tow companies in Marathon could handle our large vehicle.

We agreed to stay the night on the side of the road and get picked up first thing in the morning rather than have the wrecker arrive at sunset and tow us in the dark for four hours.  She then spent hours trying to find a repair shop since the insurance clause apparently mandates that the tow must be to the nearest suitable facility capable of making the repairs, or words to that effect.  Based at least in part on the advice of the wrecker driver, she authorized a tow all the way to Odessa, 195 miles.  The tow bill was over $2000, and Progressive covered it all.  The lesson for us is that a roadside assistance rider is a must have, especially for large motorhomes. I suspect if our bus were a lot newer, then Progressive might have been able to convince a mobile mechanic to come out and look at the throttle linkage.  Of course then we might not have found out about our bad U-joint until the drive shaft dropped out. Overnight, Roadside: You could say the break down occurred in the worst possible place: no cell service and 50 miles from the nearest town, and you would not be wrong. But we were stopped right next to a ranger station, on solid ground, in a beautiful national park with excellent scenery, holding plenty of gas for the generator, and experiencing one of the clearest and mildest weather nights of the week.  We cooked steaks, had cocktails, went for a stroll among the hills, woke up at 5 AM to admire the extraordinary star-filled night sky, returned to bed and slept in until the wrecker arrived shortly after 8 AM.

Repairs?: Robert, from Barbee Wrecker Service, spent a couple of hours hooking us up. If that sounds a bit long, consider that in addition to lifting and securing our more than 10 ton bus, he also had to disconnect the drive train and remove the drive shaft, which, on our 52-year-old bus, turned out to be a bit tougher than he expected.  After a four-hour tow we arrived in the mid afternoon at 5 Star Diesel Repair.  We informed the service manager that we wanted him to look at four issues, in priority: throttle linkage, U-joint, reverse gear solenoid relay, and top gear “reluctance.”  You might remember that we had hoped to get the latter two long-standing issues addressed in San Antonio, but when that plan fell through we rejiggered our schedule to allow for a full week stop in either Albuquerque or El Paso so that Stewart & Stevenson or Freightliner could take a swing at them.

Since we are in the shop now, but one that, unlike Iron Horse RV, does not let us stay overnight in their lot, much less have electrical and water hook ups, our best case scenario goes something like this: We stay two nights in a local hotel while 5 Star Diesel fixes both the throttle linkage and u-joint, then we take the bus to a state or private RV park for the weekend, returning to 5 Star on Monday for them to fix the transmission related issues during the week.

Yeah, that is probably too much to hope for given that as of 11 AM today, Friday, they had not yet taken a look at our bus, promising only that they would start some time in the afternoon.  I don’t blame them; when we pulled in yesterday they were warned that the Big Kahuna would probably not get any attention until sometime today, the temperature was 19 degrees this morning and it snowed last night thus aggravating their ability to tow vehicles from the lot into their facility. Honestly, if we can get the two primary repairs done and at least some progress on the transmission related ones by the end of next week, then we will feel a sense of victory.

For now we are safe and snug in a the Odessa Residence Inn, having spent part of yesterday’s ride in the wrecker pulling up all of our hotel loyalty program accounts and comparing rates for all the options. Usually the major chains are pretty competitive, but in this case the Marriott properties offered far and away the best deals.  We have asuite with full kitchen, free WiFi, complementary breakfast and, most importantly, an excellent heating system given what we woke up to this morning.

We left Miami Beach with quite a bit of planned work undone, including repairs, upgrades, and renovations.  Thus we are carrying around a pretty lengthy punch list of items we hope to get taken care of along the way during short stops in various places, just as we did with the tires in Apopka, FL  And as one might expect when you take a 52 year old vehicle that has not seen much recent use on a multi-thousand mile journey, new issues crop up.  We have had some difficulty getting recommendations for reliable shops that are marginally on our route and are comfortable working on our old bus, or at least on any engine and transmission related issues.  Fortunately the RV blogger network can usually provide guidance if not outright answers, and last month Eric and Brittany from RVWanderlust posted their immense satisfaction with work they had done at Iron Horse RV in San Antonio.

So followed a series of emails and phone calls, a slight adjustment to our schedule, and we pulled into their shop on the outskirts of the city this last Wednesday, and to our surprise happened to catch Eric from RVWanderlust at the shop getting some additional work done as well.  We met the owner, Daryl, and as expected, he took a pass on the transmission work, strongly advising me to go to a specialist for that, such as Stewart & Stevenson.  But despite their slam packed schedule they were able to fit us in for a couple of days of work, asking for my top three items and number four if they could get to it:

1. A new development, a slow dieself fuel leak pointed out last month by the mechanics that changed our tires, and that I feared was actually seeping from a weakened weld or seam on the tank itself.
2. Air leak on a braided metal compressed air hose near the transmission, very slow, but needed to be addressed.
3. Install our custom vanity and faucet, thus upgrading the bathroom and resolving a slow water leak in the old fixture
4. Replace all the reinforced rubber hinges on the under bus storage compartments, one of which had already completely seperated, and the others were not that far from it.

To our relief our assigned mechanic found the diesel fuel leak right away, and it was merely the rubber portion of the fuel line and connection point, not the tank itself.  He also found the air leak and got a new one manufactured by the next day.  The vanity top install took a while since it involved removal of the old stuff, removal of door trim to get the new vanity into the bathroom, installation all new plumbing fixtures under the vanity, and caulking the edges.  They progressed faster than expected and were able to move to my number four request, knocking out all but two of the storage door hinges using the special hinge material I had found in the parts bins that came with the bus.

To make this an even better stop, Iron Horse had an open spot in their on-site RV hook up lot, so we were able to stay with power, water, cable TV, and limited wifi for no extra charge, offsetting the repair costs somewhat.  We stayed two nights, and Carlos finished up the last of the door hinges first thing Friday morning, allowing us to get on our way with a full day ahead of us.

All in all I can say this was a great experience, especially how fast Iron Horse was able to get us in and out despite their full garage.  It was a bonus to meet Eric as well.  We headed over to Steward & Stevenson but unsurprisingly they could not fit us in on a Friday, so we will head on down the road and pick up work earlier in the week at a shop in El Paso or maybe Albuquerque.  We celebrated a succesful stop by giving the Big Kahuna a bath at a truck wash center.

 

My maternal grandmother, Lottie, had a good number of siblings, which inevitably means a large number of cousins (first, once removed) that I probably met and certainly heard plenty of stories about growing up.  But as best I can recall I had never actually met one of my mother’s and aunt’s favorite cousins, Geoff.  Uncles Harold, Dickie and Leonard? Yes. A dozen other aunts and cousins on that side of the family? Sure, met them all during annual trips to my grandparents in Lexington or the great grandparents place in Martinsville, VA.  Cousin Geoff? Surprisingly, no, best I can figure.  

So encouraged by mère and tante, while in route west we detoured south and remedied that family gap with a stop in Galveston, TX.  We parked at Galveston Island State Park, a lovely place when the weather cooperates, backed up on salt marshes. Day 1 was fantastic, day 2 we hunkered down all day since it rained near continuously, and day 3 we were able to get together with cousins Geoff and Missy. They took us to a fantastic restaurant, Monument Inn, and we feasted on a couple of dozen raw Gulf oysters (yes, I know, I can’t get enough) and various fish including a delicious blackened catfish with crab and crawfish sauce.  I also had my first Hopidillo IPA from Karbach Brewery in Houston, the best local IPA I have had since we started this venture.

Galveston Island State Park is quite nice, with electric and water hook ups, a nearby dump station, a reasonable price (thought with a caveat about the Texas State Park fee structure), and the option of parking either gulf ocean side or bay side.  We elected bay side and do not regret it: honestly I think we had way better views and a bit of protection from the wind on day 2.  The RV camping loop is quite well organized: its like a traditional wagon wheel layout but with all the spokes slanted at a severe angle, making it very easy to back into with only a minimal amount of turning.  Given how many times I have had to brush up against tree branches and whatnot while trying to cut an acute angle into a tight spot, this was a real blessing.