Made it home for a few days

July 31, 2009
I finally made it home at 9:40pm (11:40pm Eastern time)! It was a very long day.

While I was still in Richmond this morning I called the shop we dropped the truck off at last night. They said they looked at the weight stamp on the door and it was 8,000 lbs and their lift could only handle 10,000. I told them that 8,000 was not 10,000 and their lift should be fine and I explained that I had our truck officially weighted prior to going to Hawaii and it is not over 9,000 lbs. The guy tried to make excuses but bottom line is that they didn't want to do the work. Some places don't want to risk touching our truck, which is fine as long as they are honest about it. So the tire rotation and balance has yet to happen. I took the truck to a Ford shop that claims to have a lift rated for up to 16,000 lbs. If it isn't one thing to deal with it is another.

My flight from Richmond to Washington Dulles was more eventful than I wanted it to be. I can usually handle a lot of turbulence and not mind but today was really bad. When we left Richmond the weather had not gotten to Dulles yet but by the time we were about 10 minutes away from landing the storms developed rapidly over the area and we felt every bit of it. I can handle a few pockets of air but when the plane keeps dropping and then goes up and comes back down and you hear the engine roar louder... it is not that comforting. When we landed everyone looked sick but we all started clapping. I was however one of the few lucky people that didn't have any flight delays. Due to the crazy weather both Dulles and Denver had long line at the service counters because people missed their connecting flights. I am glad to be back after a trip full of van attitude and humidity.

I won't be back out on the road until August 10th ish so you probalby won't see another blog entry until then.

Fixing the truck, still in Richmond

July 30, 2009
Another day fixing the truck. It was productive but again the humidity is really terrible. I'm going home tomorrow (finally) and can't wait to get back to Colorado where the humidity is never really noticed. The truck seems to be working OK again. We still have the typical issues with the old systems we have but we can deal with it. As long as the major things work we are happy. We decided to go to downtown Richmond to check out the Capitol. We got there late so it wasn't open but it was still nice to walk around. We didn't stay for long because there was a storm moving our way with really dark clouds.

We took did take the truck to a tire shop over lunch time (I won't say which shop) to see if they could rotate our tires. Why is it that workers don't know how many pounds their car lift can handle? That is crazy! When I asked him over and over if they could lift our truck he said "I don't know until we try it"...really? He said the lift is only rated for 6,000 lbs and I said our truck is just over 8,000 and he still said "maybe we can do it but I don't know until we try". The outcome is obvious; they couldn't lift the truck so we had to take the truck to another shop that hopefully knows more about their equipment. We'll see if I get a call in the morning with bad news.

Fixing the truck in Richmond, VA

July 29, 2009
We drove 4 hours to Richmond, VA today. It is very, very humid here and working on the truck in humidity can be very draining. We made some progress today but we have lots to do tomorrow. We are working on pavement camera, shore power (outlet power) and roughness issues. We went to Napa today and that store does sell isolators...who knew! Our trip to Home Depot will be tomorrow morning. Those seem to be our two most commonly visited stores for parts when the truck needs repairs.

Blue Ridge Parkway

July 28, 2009
I knew it would happen sooner or later. The truck has given up on us. Today was supposed to be the perfect day, no rain, collect more miles, little problems...didn't happen. It was one of the worst days for the truck. For some reason this afternoon we stopped getting roughness data but the truck didn't tell us (we usually get an error) so we kept collecting. Later we realized...no roughness data...30 miles down the drain and time wasted. In the 5 years I have had this job I've never had this issue occur with no obvious fix. We also have a pavement camera that is acting up and our quick fixes are not fixing the problem anymore so we need a new camera. These issues are pretty big so we have to end collection in Blue Ridge for now and drive to Richmond tomorrow to fix our truck.

I didn't get any good photos today so I'll post some of the photos I took of the errors in the truck. The middle image is normal and the top image shows a crazy error with the numbers. The blue image occurred when shutting down a computer...blue screen of death maybe?

It's all in a days work.

Blue Ridge Parkway

July 27, 2009
I realized today that I started this blog at a really bad time in my travels. Blue Ridge Parkway is the largest/longest park we have to collect so there will be a lot of blog entries from this park. I am trying to post things that happen each day but I hope that since I'll be at this park for some time you all don't loose interest.

Nothing major happened today as far as work goes. We were able to work today despite rain in the area but we had to stop around 3:00 due to wet roads. That was OK because we still had an hour drive back to the hotel and some work to do when we got to the hotel. There was no sulfur smell in the truck today so that was also a plus.

I've seen several animals along the parkway. This place has a ton of black butterflies/moths with blue tails. I haven't been quick enough to get a photo of a living one yet but they are everywhere. There are also woodchucks everywhere. No luck on getting a photo of one of them either. There was a near miss yesterday where one almost got squashed by our truck, luckily it was able to escape. The usual deer are around. I saw a dead turkey vulture on the road yesterday. It was weird because turkey vultures are not usually seen on the ground, or on/near a road. It must have been eating something before it's life was ended but I still can't imagine that a car didn't scare it away...weird. Today we saw a black rat snake in the middle of the road. Both Jeff and I would have put money on it being dead. I felt bad because I didn't want it to continually be run over even if it was dead. We went around a loop and when we got back it was gone! We were both shocked! The snake really looked dead but I guess it wasn't...good for it! I was able to get a photo of another black rat snake we saw later in the day. Unfortunately I wasn't fast enough with the camera to snap a photo when the snake was on the side of the road so the grass photo is all I got.

I tried the panoramic option on my camera today for the first time. The photo turned out pretty good. The photo shows the clouds building in the area.

Blue Ridge Parkway

July 26, 2009

Another day, more miles down the parkway. We were only able to collect about 34 miles today. The sky was pretty dark and it started to rain very hard around 1:00pm. The rain held off much longer than expected though and I was happy to get 4 1/2 hours of collection in. I was looking forward to having a more relaxed afternoon but it didn't happen. On the 30 mile drive back to the hotel the truck started to smell like sulfur again. That means a battery is overheating. We spent the afternoon troubleshooting and trying to narrow down the problem. We think we have it narrowed down but I'll get a second opinion tomorrow from the company that made our truck. It was a long, dirty afternoon and a long 77.5 hour work week.

The only photo I took today was of a small cemetery out in the country. I thought the fence/wall was photo worthy, it is different.

Blue Ridge Parkway

July 25, 2009
Every day people look at us funny and some ask us what the truck is and what it does, 4 people asked us today. One guy said very loudly over the roar of the diesel "hey mam, what is a road analyzer"? He was reading the label on the truck. I walked over there rather than yell back and explained we collect surface pavement data that includes rutting, roughness and video. I don't get much more detailed than that unless they ask more specific questions. He said something like "oh, so you know when to rip them up" and I said "yes, but we only work in the national parks and we were collecting Blue Ridge Parkway right now." He replied "oh, I'd be in heaven with that job". I just laughed. I'm pretty sure what he really meant to say was...If that truck never broke down, it never rained, and I worked 9-5 then I'd be in haven with that job. This week could be an 80 hour work week for me and sleep does not include as many hours as I'd like.

We collected a crazy route today that went up Sharp Top Mountain, elevation 3875. It was once thought to be the Virginia's highest peak. An interesting note: inside the Washington Monument in DC there are state inscribed stones on the walls. The Virginia stone came from this mountain. Anyway, the route is a narrow 2-way, one lane road. Typically 2-way and one lane don't go together. Luckily this route was closed to the public but an unlucky guy gets to drive tourists to the top of this thing every day/hour in a bus. Luckily the bus driver was at the bottom of the mountain when we got there so we could talk to him. If we would have met on the road (one going down and the other going up) it would not have been pretty. We ended up following the bus driver up the mountain. Two big vehicles at the top in a small parking lot was pretty crazy but we all made it. Jeff and I decided we wanted to go to the very top to the lookout...how far can 1,500 feet really be anyway. We decided to run up to the top and get some quick photos. Needless to say running uphill was not the smartest idea I ever had and it is times like this I am quickly reminded I still have exercise asthma. I did finally make it and I did get some photos, although I'm sure people could hear me gasping for air a mile away.

The visitor center near the James River has a cool walkway under the parkway road. I posted a photo because I thought it was different and pretty cool. You can see the people on it but I didn't get a chance to walk on it.

The truck has been pushing through the past few days with no real breakdown issues. We have had some collection errors to deal with that causes re-runs. I'll take those errors any day over changing an alternator belt!

Blue Ridge Parkway

July 24, 2009

We started Blue Ridge Parkway today. It is the largest/longest park we have to collect.

Here are some statistics: Total miles = 469.1, Maximum speed = 45 mph, Minimum drive time (non-stop) approx. 16 hours, Year started 1935, Year completed 1987.

We collected about 152 miles today. Sound like a lot? It felt like a lot. I forgot to bring toothpicks to hold my eyes open so I admit they did close a few times, but I wasn't the driver today! When we collect our max speed is only go 35 mph so the 16 hours non-stop drive time doesn't apply to us. We also have to stop and collect small on and off ramps and campgrounds along the way. I'm not sure what else to say about this park right now other than it is really long and not that exciting. Oh, they do have some really cool looking trails along the parkway. Some of them are short (like 20 minute hikes) and I saw one was along an old railroad bed. That would be fun but I'm stuck in a truck so....this is my entry for the day. We did get out of the truck quick to get a couple of photos. The one posted was taken from the Greenstone Overlook.

Shenandoah National Park

July 20 to 23, 2009

I made it to Shenandoah National Park. I've heard from many people "it is pretty over there" and I wonder...really? How is it any different than Colorado or other mountains I've seen. Well, I was pleasantly surprised. This park is really nice, which is kind of weird because it is basically a really long North South running road but some how it works. There are several overlooks and you can see for miles. One way it is different from Colorado because these mountains are all covered with trees. The highest point in Shenandoah (Skyline Drive) is 3680 feet....I guess that explains the tree cover. We are only about 75 miles West of Washington DC (who knew) and I must say I've seen a lot of places and this area is a place I wouldn't mind living.

We stayed in the park at the Big Meadows Lodge which was a different experience. Typically we stay outside of the park in a city so we are in civilization (Internet, phone, TV, food, etc...). This time I thought we should stay in the park so we wouldn't have to drive so long to the hotel. It was nice and felt like we were really experiencing the park. There was no Internet so that took a little adjustment but it was worth it. Although, it seems to be consensus that the reservation agency for the lodge (who are based in Phoenix, AZ) and the on-site lodge workers don't communicate very well. My reservation and deposit wasn't the only one to be messed up and it took quite some time getting it right, actually I'm still not sure it is right, so be aware of that if you ever come here call the lodge directly and bypass Phoenix :).

I have seen several animals here: black bears, deer, rabbits, black snakes (one I almost stepped on), a skunk, and the usual birds and bugs. None of the animals seem afraid of humans and they will stand around and eat and ignore you. Usually animals will run when they hear the diesel truck but not at this park. I was able to get some really close photos of the bears and the skunk...don't worry my camera has a zoom and for the bears I was in the truck!

It has rained a lot here but we have been very lucky that it didn't really delay our work. We had some routes to collect that only needed video, not pavement data, so we can collect those when the road are wet. That kept us busy since they were very spread out around the park and we did get to see some remote areas while collecting those routes. Other than that I'm pretty worn out. I worked 34 hours by the end of the day on Wednesday...this will be a nice overtime week, but very draining.

Made it to Virginia

July 19, 2009
We drove another long day today; Elizabethtown, KY to Front Royal, VA. We arrived around 6:45pm Eastern time. This town is pretty small but it is at the northern end of Shenandoah National Park. We are spending one night here and then staying down in the park for a few nights. Not much happened today except there was a big traffic jam on the interstate but thanks to the GPS we were able to take a side road to bypass the mess.

Moving right along...

July 18, 2009
Just when I thought we were going to have a "normal" day the last 15 minutes of our travels proved me wrong. Things started off well, we finished our work in Ozarks, took a short hike to Round Spring, ate lunch at Jolly Cone (a good ice cream stand) and headed east. It was a long day but we made it to Elizabethtown, KY around 8:30pm Central/9:30pm Eastern. It was only about a month ago that we were about 30 miles south of here working in Mammoth Cave! Anyway, we were getting off of the interstate to find a hotel and I noticed a bad smell in the truck. I asked Jeff "Does it smell in here" and he said "yep". It turned out that one of the computer system batteries was overheating, smoking and smelled like sulfur. The strong smell filled the truck and I'm sure I lost a few years off of my life breathing that in. We pulled into the 3rd hotel (this town is booked) and finally found available rooms and unhooked the battery. What a way to end an almost perfect day. Tomorrow we will be heading further east to get to the northern end of Shenandoah National Park.

Ozarks National Scenic Riverways

July 17, 2009

My sun burnt feet from yesterday are still "burning" and my left foot is swollen :(.

Today was much, much cooler and almost no humidity. I was a nice change from earlier in the week. Today turned out to be a productive day after a very frustrating morning. Now that the alternator issue is fixed it was the computer systems turn to give us trouble. We started at 8am and by noon we only had 3 routes collected...not good. Things stopped working/communicating then we had pavement issues to deal with, time after time. It was pretty frustrating and I found my self chanting "I love my job":) . After the truck got all of the issues out of the way in the morning we were able to get in a full afternoon of collection. We didn't get to see any cool sites today but we did get a lot of work done. We should finish this park tomorrow and we are heading East.

Ozarks National Scenic Riverways

July 16, 2009

Today was a long day but more productive than yesterday. Our 160amp alternator ended up having more issues than we had hoped so we drove to Poplar Bluff, MO to a heavy duty truck shop. They did a great job fixing our truck, even though it did take several more hours than I had hoped. Since the waiting room had no TV, a couple chairs from the 70's and smelled like bathroom cleaner we decided to take a few walks. It was good to get some exercise but today was another very hot/humid day and my feet got sun burnt. After the truck was fixed we left the shop around 2:30pm and drove back to Van Buren. We discovered that it had rained there while we were in Poplar Bluff so our routes were wet. We were able to find a handful that were dry enough to collect. I'll take what we can get. A little progress is better than none but our big accomplishment for the day is getting the truck fixed. We did find some time to go to Big Spring, it is really pretty.

Ozarks National Scenic Riverways

July 15, 2009

Today was full of fixing the truck, heat and getting dirty. Our goal was to calibrate our computer systems, which has to be done every few months but did it didn't go as planned. A few months back we had an isolator go bad that allowed us to plug the truck into a wall outlet to make the computers work rather than get power from the engine. Knowing the isolator was bad we had a back up plan but the back up plan didn't work as we thought it would so calibrating took us 6 hours rather than one hour. We also had to change an alternator belt which is a really difficult and dirty job on our truck. It is really humid here so even when you are standing around you are literally dripping. It was a long day and now it is raining...down pouring actually. Looks like we will be in this town longer than we had hoped. I'm sure tomorrow will be more productive for us :).

Ozarks National Scenic Riverways

July 14, 2009
Got up this morning at 6:00am in Denver and took the shuttle to the airport. To my surprise I was only picked up 3 hours prior to my flight rather than 4 hours! Flew to Memphis with only had a 10 minute departure delay. We then drove up to Van Buren, MO. There isn't much up here and the river seems to be what keeps this place running. I'll post more after we start work tomorrow and explore the area.

Colonial Parkway

April 13 to 17, 2009

The Colonial Parkway is a 23 mile long scenic byway that links Virginia's historic triangle of Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown. It began at Jamestown in 1607. It ended and began anew at Yorktown in 1781. OK - that is all the info you get from the park brochure :).

This park was pretty cool. I wasn't sure what to expect but after seeing an exhibit about Jamestown at one of the Smithsonian Museums in DC it was cool to see the real thing.

On-going archaeology at the 1607 James Fort excavation...

They found ruins of an old furnace used to melt glass. They recreated one and had a demonstration going on while we were there.

Washington DC Area

Jan. 13 and April 20, 2009
Over four months I spent in the Washington DC area. There area consists of several parks: National Capitol East, National Capitol Central, Baltimore Washington Parkway, Suitland Parkway, Greenbelt, Rock Creek Parkway, Clara Barton Parkway, George Washington Memorial Parkway also not far out of town is Prince William Forest Park and Fredricksburg.

Some highlights of driving included passing the tour bus' of rappers Flo rida and Bow Wow.

Some of the "lowlights" of the area included the crazy hotel in Greenbelt deleting me from their system while I was staying there...what? Finding a place to park the truck is always a challange in big cities. The truck had a bad isolator which created several headaches at various times. While collecting Baltimore Washington we needed a pilot car to help keep the speeding traffic from running us over since we go 35mph and the speed limit is 55 or 85 depending if you follow the posted signs or not. Our truck had some power (isolator) issues which caused a few turn arounds along the parkway but to top it off the warning truck that was following behind us lost a belt! I think some of our luck rubbed off. The park contact said he could have driven that truck to Florida and back a couple of times with no problems but when we come around the truck looses a belt and is out of commission.

Overall, I'm proud to say that we made through collection with no accidents or scrapes. The traffic around DC can be pretty crazy, although there was one near scrape it was avoided...just as a side not I was not driving :).
During our early days in the area we were "lucky" to witness the biggest snow storm the area has had in years. Again, for us a good work day depends on dry roads so this meant more sightseeing opportunities for us. We tried to take advantage of being in our nation's capitol and see all that we could. We were able to check most of the monuments around the area and also go to places like: The National Archives, go up in the Washington Monument (March 26), tour the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (March 26), tour Arlington National Cemetery (April 20) and see Arlington House (home of Robert E. Lee), tour the US Capitol (a couple of times, March 26), spend the day at Mount Vernon (March 19), attend a Washington Capitals Hockey Game (Feb. 18), attend a show at Ford's Theater "The Civil War" (April 17). What a list and in between collect all of the paved roads in the parks mentioned above! All of the sights were great but one of may favorites was the musical "The Civil War" at Fords Theater. The performance was awesome and the venue is hard to beat. Mount Vernon probably took 2nd place. I didn't think we could spend all day there but we did and the time flew by. Another "event" that tops my list was seeing the trio of Marine One helicopters flying in the sky. When there is a group of three that means the president in on one of them. It was an awesome sight, and well worth taking a cab to a restaurant that turned out to be closed. It is wasn't for the walk back we would have missed it!

Gettysburg National Military Park

Jan. 6 to 11, 2009

We arrived in Gettysburg on 1/6/09, we woke up to rain and freezing ice on the truck the morning of 1/7/09. Not a good thing when a good work day depends on dry roads. However, this time I was excited to have time to explore. Gettysburg is one of my favorite parks because of it's history and because of the ghosts, yes ghosts. We drove around the park a little and then decided to check out the cyclorama and museum. If you are wondering what a cyclorama is you aren't alone. I found out it is a circular painting of a battle scene from Gettysburg. They didn't have photos back then so paintings were how they saved their memories. Some info about the cyclorama...it remained in private hands until the 1940's but the building didn't have any temperature or humidity control so the painting deteriorated until the new cyclorama center was completed in 1962 as part of the Mission 66 program.

The ghost adventure started the evening of 1/9 when we decided to go to dinner at the Farnsworth House. It is one of the most haunted bed and breakfast locations in the USA. I wanted to see a ghost but I wasn't expecting to smell the horrid smell that seemed to surround our table. I kept wondering if it was the food and then the 3 of us would make sure it wasn't us (because sometimes working in the van doesn't make you smell like roses). The smell was like a dead animals or really, really bad stinky feet. We never did figure out the source of the smell. I had a good meal: peanut soup, spoon bread, ham with grape sauce, yams with brown sugar....yum.

In the evening of 1/10 we decided to go to the Farnsworth House for a "haunted tour". It was very entertaining and the smell from the night before all of a sudden became clear. The first thing the tour guide said was "be aware of not only what you see but what you hear and SMELL". I started laughing and am convinced that the horrid smell was a ghostly smell from during the battle days. It is said that during the time of war people (living) had to walk around covering their mouth and nose due to the bad smell of death.

We also stayed one night at the Gettysburg Hotel, which has a history of being haunted. As I typed away on my computer in the hotel room I heard something that sounded like a fly buzz by my ear. I looked around but didn't see anything, so I looked by my window thinking I'd see the fly tapping on the window but no luck. I'm convinced this was a ghostly sound of artillery fire, it came out of nowhere and sounded really loud.

As far as truck adventures to, during our time at Gettysburg we ended up having a bad network hub, had castling with rutbar sensors, and we lost an alternator belt which we tried to change but something was wrong with the tensioner so we took it to a shop. When I asked the mechanic if it was hard to change, expecting him to tell me something was wrong with the tensioner, his only reply was "yeah, it took two of us to do it"....thanks for the info! :)