Blue Ridge Parkway

August 31, 2009
I made it back to Asheville, NC today. It was a long journey. Today on my flight from Denver to Charlotte the guy sitting next to me kept "spilling" over into my seat. I guess I should have read the fine print that said I was paying for only half of a seat and not a whole one :). It did get annoying and I really don't like strangers touching me that much so the window became my friend...I was sitting very close to it the whole 3 hour flight. We were just about to land in Asheville when the plane suddenly pulled up and the first thought that came to my mind was "NO"! Well, I can't do anything about it but pulling up means we have to fly around the airport and do another approach. I guess ATC had us coming in to close to a "heavy" (747 or similar). It added about 15 to 20 minutes onto our already delayed flight because the GPS had to be reset back in Denver after we all boarded. The flight from Charlotte to Asheville was a quick 20 minute hop and the guy next to me on this flight decided that he was going to fan me with his papers every time he turned a page in his magazine...what a treat (not really). We got our bags and went out to get a taxi since the truck is still in the shop. The taxi guy said it was a really slow day and he had been sitting there since 2:00pm (it was now 6:15pm) so he was glad to see us and glad that we needed a ride. I hope to get the truck back tomorrow.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 26, 2009
This morning I took the truck to an alternator shop (basically the only one in town). I pulled up to the place and wasn't sure what to expect. It was on a small side street and the building didn't look like much. I started looking around and noticed a lot of alternators lying around which is a good sign. I met the owner and he was really nice and smart, I love talking to smart people. They make me feel like I'm not speaking a foreign language. We discussed the truck and had the typical "what does this thing do" conversation. He said “lets take a look under the hood” and I said “OK, but you aren’t going to like it”. Taking out 3 alternators from a diesel engine and testing them and then reinstalling them is no small task. I would not want to be the one to do it. After about 30 minutes he ended up giving me a ride back to the hotel so I didn’t have to wait for a cab, which was appreciated. The car conversation was about all of my travel and how much I’m home, or not, how long I’ve been doing this job and how old I was. I just laughed. I told him my age and he said “oh, I would have guessed younger” I said “yeah, that is what most people say”. I got out of the car and said “I’d tell you to have fun but I know you won’t so good luck” he laughed. I’m glad the truck is out of my hair for a couple of days and I hope the guy can fix the truck by Monday/Tuesday morning. He said that sounded like a reasonable date to have it done so we’ll see.

I am flying back to Denver tomorrow and will be there for the weekend. I hope to be back out here on Monday or Tuesday next week and then the truck will be working so I can finish Blue Ridge Parkway!

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 25, 2009
Today I spent the morning on the phone with the company that build our truck trying to figure out a power issues. The voltages are dropping really low when we have our strobe lights running during collection and the alternators are not kicking in to recharge the batteries. I could also hear a belt slip every once in a while. I think I ruled out the regulator so we took the truck to a Ford shop to have them look at the belts etc... and they said that the belts and tensioners looked fine and they thought it was an alternator and something was shorting out. I found an alternator shop in town that can work on our truck starting tomorrow, which is great. I'm dropping it off in the morning. We have three alternators on that truck and the oldest one was installed in December of 2007 so I'm guessing that is the one that is going bad. We'll see. I was explaining the truck to the alternator shop guy and he said "you have three alternators" and I said "yes, it is a specialized truck" and he said "do you know how much money you have in alternators on that truck" and I said "yeah, a lot" and he said "you have more money in alternators in your truck than most people spend on a car". I don't know if I'd go that far but I did tell him it was a million dollar truck. I hope he can get the work done and i'll be grateful because getting those alternators out is the worst job. There is not much space to work under the hood.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 24, 2009

We got stuck in a traffic jam today and this time it wasn't because of a bear. Some semi flipped his rig on it's side on the interstate. It took us an extra hour to get to our destination. It turned out to not matter that much anyway because the roads were even more wet today. It wasn't supposed to rain!!! I don't get it, there is something fishy going on here and I think it is a black cloud over our truck. The truck is also having some power issues again. We spent a good 3 hours trying to figure it out and the verdict is still out on that one.

I took a sunset photo outside my hotel window. It was nice to see after a crazy day.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 23, 2009
Blue Ridge Parkway is defiantly getting on my last nerve. It hasn't been raining much over the past few days but the middle section of the parkway we still need to collect must be getting rained on every night. We drove 2 hours up there again yesterday only to be disappointed. The southern sections are dry but we have to collect the sections in order so until the middle section is dry we are out of luck.

I do have one story for the day. We got pulled over by a park ranger who decided that he was going to pull us over on the parkway where there was no pullout or place to pull over and he was going to use his siren! Are you kidding me! I guess he missed the memo that we were at the park. Most of the time I'm fine with people asking us who we are but this guy, in my mind, was inappropriate/unsafe. We are clearly a work truck and pulling over a million dollar truck on a 2 lane road with no place to pull over is pretty dangerous. I had no choice but to stop there and ruin the file we were collecting. The ranger really had nothing to say except "I wasn't sure who you were, you are with the DOT or something". Really! I think he just wanted to use his siren and put his hand on our truck because he had to touch it when he walked up, which for some reason I found extra offensive (or I'm just overly protective). I explained to him what we were doing and he said "well we don't usually like to have work done on the weekends that will hold up traffic". OK, here comes the good part....we were collecting a 12 mile section where the posted speed limit is 35 and we were going 35mph while collecting! I guess the ranger really meant to say that he didn't want us to make people go the speed limit on the parkway. I told him we were sorry but it has been raining and we had to get the work done and we work on the weekends all of the time. He said "I understand" and the whole thing ended with him saying "enjoy your stay". Uhhhhhh. We ended up junking the file we were trying to collect since the roads were still wet under the tree cover and we left anyway. The whole thing would have been much better/more safe if he would have waited so we all could have pulled off the road and not have to stop in the driving lane on the parkway!

After we left we washed the truck and did some laundry and then went to see Inglourious Bastards the movie. That was not my pick, David. It wasn't all bad. There were some good parts and Brad Pitt by far did the best job with his character. I did laugh a couple of times but I could have done without the violence. When violence is tied so close to what could be "reality" it really isn't for me.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 22, 2009

Today was a pretty good day. We drove South down the parkway collecting the small routes as we went. We ended up at Great Smokey National Park. It was nice to get down there but we still have a lot to collect on the parkway itself. The sun came out today and only a few sprinkles hit the windshield which was a welcome change from the past few days. Today we found a couple of locked gates and the "master" key we were given for the park didn't work. That was super frustrating, expecially finding that out on a Saturday. We will have to swing into headquarters on Monday and see what is up with our key and try to get one that will work. We also got stuck behind a guy pulling a pop-up camper who refused to go over 35mph on the parkway. The posted speed limit is 45mph. I guess now I know what it feels like to be stuck behind us when we are collecting but really...this guy was not driving a work truck, I think he just wasn't comfortable driving his own rig. I had to take a photo...

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 21, 2009
I realized today that I may never get to leave Blue Ridge Parkway. The rain is really a "downer" and is creating a major delay. We didn't go out in the truck today because of the rain. I worked in my hotel room for 10 hours today. I guess it is like a bigger cubicle. I got a lot done so I'm happy about that but there is always more to do.

Couple good stories for the day...
I took a short break for lunch and went down to the lobby to heat up some leftovers. Got back to my room and couldn't get in. I was annoyed because I just had my keys changed yesterday but I went back downstairs to the front desk and asked her to fix my key. I went back up to my room and still couldn't get in. I just about lost it. I just wanted to get in my room and get back to work and eat lunch. Luckily a maintenance guy witnessed my dilemma and said "let me help you". Good thing because I was super frustrated. He tried his key and nothing would work. Turns out the battery in the door card reader died. Can you believe that! Just my luck. After putting up with a truck that has power issues now my hotel room door has power issues. The guy had to let me in with an old school turn key rather than the credit card key. They soon came back to change the battery.

We went out to the truck to go to dinner around 6:00pm and sure enough the truck wouldn't start. I realized the fridge was left plugged in and we hadn't driven all day. We can usually leave it overnight but leaving it overnight and then all day drained the battery. Luckily my big purchase while I was in Hawaii last year with the truck paid off again...a battery jumper pack. I learned that David has never jumped a car before...really David? So I showed him how it was done :). We were rolling in no time.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 20, 2009
Today I slept in until 10:30am. I can say I haven't slept in that late for a really, really, really long time. I guess my body needed it. We drove to some routes this afternoon that are close to town to see if they might be dry and no luck, most were still wet. We collected one ramp that was dry and then the down pour started. This rain is really setting us back. The only good thing about the rain is that I had some down time and I got to see a movie this evening. We went to The Orphan. It was really good and worth the $9.00 to see it. Although it might not be for those who get scared easily (Jeff, you missed out). David and I went and we both enjoyed it but he did jump in his chair once...yep I saw that. What a crazy ending! It was nice to do something "normal" for a change and not work on the truck or think about work.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1148204/
or
http://orphan-movie.warnerbros.com/

The photo attached is of an old building that is near some of our routes in Asheville. It is a cool building but there is no indication outside of what it used to be used for. These days it is located across the street from a nursing home.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 19, 2009

Not much changed today. It was wet in the morning and then a big storm came in around 1:00pm. The roads are drenched again. We only collected about 1.3 miles today...sad. We did stop at Price Lake quick and I took a few photos before the rain moved in. Looks like tomorrow will also be a wash but things are looking up starting on Sunday! I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 18, 2009
Today started out with a visit to Firestone. It turns out that the nail in our tire almost "went through the other side" (not sure what that means) and because of the way the nail went into the tire we needed to have it replaced rather than have it patched. It took 1 1/2 off of our morning collection time. We then drove 2 hours north to get to some routes we needed to collect. We found that 3 of them were still wet so we collected a few others and sure enough it started to rain on us. We were able to drive out of the rain going south and we collected 5 more routes making the total for today 10 routes, but the total collection mileage was only 3.93 miles...not good. While we were driving I noticed a sulfur smell in the truck again. I looked at the voltages and they were up to 16, which is very high. They should be around 14 volts when we are driving. Turns out our regulator went bad but we did have a spare. It would have been easy to replace if it wasn't bolded in behind the grill on the front of our truck. It took us an hour to take the front of the truck apart, get the regulator out and put everything back to "normal". We did loose one screw in the abyss of the chassis but luckily we also carry plenty of spare screws :). The whole thing wouldn't have been so bad but anything that makes me have dirt under my nails for the rest of the day I could do without. It was not a clean job to undertake. After we were finished we were on our way back down the parkway.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 18, 2009

Today was an OK day but overall disappointing for me. It started out with me finding a nail in our front tire....uhhhh. I'd rather still be in ignorant bliss. We were able to collect today but not in a very logical order due to rain. That means there is a lot of backtracking that needs to be done. We decided to go on a short hike to pass time while the roads dried out. We went to some falls, photo is posted. It was a nice easy hike but it is pretty humid here so it felt like we walked more than we actually did. The parkway did get more scenic today with more mountains and less farm land to look at. We also passed the Linn Cove Viaduct on Grandfather Mountain, photo posted. It was an engineering marvel of the day (abt. 1935) and it's construction caused almost no environmental damage. We got to the hotel around 9:00pm and I'm pretty worn out.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 16, 2009

I am looking forward to the day when I can write in this blog and the title will be something other than "Blue Ridge Parkway". I hope to be at Great Smokey Mountains by the end of the week!!! I'm not sure how different that will be since it is basically an extension of Blue Ridge but I'll let you know.

Today was a pretty good day it started out with thick fog so that took about an hour off of our morning and it ended with the typical afternoon showers. We did manage to collect about 103 miles today which is pretty good when you have to go 35 mph or slower. We had to collect a section of parkway that was closed to the public. We didn't know why it was closed but we soon found out that it was because of a massive rock slide. It was really cool to stand there an look at it...a photo does not do it justice.

We had to GPS a parking lot this morning, or what the park service wants to call a parking lot. Really? When the majority of the surface is grass growing up through old asphalt I think it is time to repave or let go. I attached a photo. There were plenty of bugs hanging out in the "parking lot" though. Spiders, bees, caterpillars and other things I'm sure I don't want to know about. I attached a photo of a caterpillar that decided to take a ride on Jeff or the GPS unit on his back and it ended up in our truck.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 15, 2009
I am forever grateful for the shop in California that shipped the isolator to us. The miracles of UPS! We got the new isolator around 9:15am and installed it in about one hour...not bad considering it is in a really tight spot that is not easy to get to. We were on the road around 10:30am and drove back to the parkway. We collected all day with little problems! The truck did act up once but it was after driving for 2 hours without collecting, we were in transit to another route. It took about 5 minutes for the truck to get back on track and then we were off again. It was a really good day today. I'm hoping the truck is fixed for at least a week :).

I didn't really see anything exciting today just a couple deer. Oh, some guy in a campground said he thought we were searching for mines...he didn't say it like that, forgot exactly what he said but I had no idea what he was talking about. I just smiled at the guy, shrugged my shoulders and said "we are collecting pavement data" and that was pretty much the end of it...weird. After he left I asked Jeff what he was talking about...I guess he meant land mines and he was joking but the joke went over my head...sad. Long days of driving can really make your brain go numb.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 14, 2009

Got up this morning and hit the road at 7:00am. We drove to Winston Salem, NC to have the truck worked on at a Ford Shop. We were sure the A/C was the problem yesterday but today we were proven to be wrong. I guess the A/C was a trick because it sucked up the bad air in the vents and circulated it throughout the truck. We spent all day troubleshooting the problem and I think we found the real problem...a bad isolator. There was redish brown ooze on the top of the isolator by one of the posts (photo posted) and the smell was still very strong by the ooze. It seems to always be our luck that we need to order parts at the last minute on a Friday. We spent 3 hours driving around town and calling places to find an isolator. Most people in this town said "what is an isolator" and we knew that was a bad sign. We called the distributor in Texas and put in the order and the lady called us about 20 minutes after we put in the order to tell us she just missed the UPS guy. That was a huge disappointment. This led to another hour of frantic phone calling and we finally found a place in California that had one is stock and could still ship it to us overnight!!! Wow, we just made it! We didn't get any collection done today but it was a full day of troubleshooting. Tomorrow we will install the isolator (which is not a fun/easy job) and hopefully be back on the parkway.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 13, 2009

Today started off with wet roads but we were able to collect around 9:30am....not bad. We had some collection problems in the morning that I would consider "minor" right now. We lost frames on one of our forward facing cameras a couple of times and we got a chainage error a couple of times, both errors caused us to stop the files and start again. Those things are annoying but we can deal with it. About 1:00pm we ran into rain. Since this park is so spread out we were confident we would drive out of the rain, which we did. However, on our way to another route I started smelling a really bad smell in the truck that I've never smelled before and then I saw white smoke...great! I knew the smell wasn't a belt, it wasn't the brakes, it wasn't an overheating battery...I had no idea. We got out of the truck and looked things over and saw nothing obvious. We drove about 15 miles to a Ford dealer, which happened to be near our hotel, and talked to them about the issue. They were nice people but little help at that time. I called a guy from the company who made the truck and told them what happened and he said I think it is your air conditioner. Sure enough our air conditioner is busted and smells terrible. I'm pretty sure I lost another day or two off of my life having to breathe that stuff in. Since we are in such a small town access to parts is limited. Tomorrow we are driving to Winston-Salem, NC to a bigger Ford dealer. They can hopefully work a miracle in a short amount of time and get us back on the road.

On a good note we did get about 4 hours of collection in this morning, not great but I'll definitely take it. We finally crossed the VA/NC state border and I took a quick photo of the sign. I was also able to get a photo of one of those black butterflies we see everywhere along the parkway. I'm not sure what they are but they are everywhere. I also took a photo of the typical scenery in this area...some nice black cows in a field along the parkway.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 12, 2009
The good news for the day is the truck is fixed! The new cable worked like magic. We had a bit of a delay this morning because we thought we were going to get the cable by 10:30am but we didn't get it until 2:30pm. The roads were wet in the morning so we couldn't have collected anyway. By the afternoon the roads were dry, the cable was installed and all went well. We didn't start collection at 4:00pm and we ended around 6:45pm. We had to stop collection because the sun was low in the sky we were getting bad sun glare in our images, we had to call it a day.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 11, 2009
We had to calibrate our DMI (distance measuring instrument) this morning since we got the tires rotated last week. The calibration can usually be done in about 3 runs but today it took us about 9 runs. I guess that was a warning sign as to what the rest of our day would be like....not so good. We actually did collect one good route along the parkway but that was where our good day started and ended. Roughness stopped working again. After taking out our laser computer several times we realized that we had "newer" spare timer cards but our truck has an older cable so "new" and "old" don' t mix. A small oversight by those who put together our spare parts box. So, we didn't have the part we needed to fix the truck. We are now at the mercy of FedEx. We should get the new cable by 10:30am tomorrow. We are also going to be fighting the weather this week. There is a chance of rain everyday this week. The storms are supposed to be random and scattered so planning for them is impossible. When it starts to rain our work day ends.

Blue Ridge Parkway

August 10, 2009
I'm now back on the road after a very short week at home in Denver. It was nice to recover a bit and have a break from the truck. Today was a very long day of travel. I got up this morning at 3:00am (MTN), left my house at 4:00am and arrived at our Hillsville, VA hotel at 7:00pm (EST). The only delay was from Washington Dulles to Richmond. There was a runway closure at Dulles and it took the air traffic controllers time to reorganize all of the airplanes. It set us back about 20 minutes and the airplane was very hot inside during our wait. Everything else went smoothly. We will start collection again tomorrow and I am hoping for a better trip this time with less van problems. I'll keep you posted.

Home but with little rest

August 3, 2009

OK, so I know this is a travel blog but since this entry involves a car I'm going to pretend it qualifies as a legitimate posting. Some of you already know that Denver had a really bad storm hit the West side of town on July 20th. From what I hear it didn't last much longer than 10 to 15 minutes but it caused a lot of damage. I've lived in Colorado for several years now and have been lucky enough to avoid the damaging storms but my time is now up. My car ('06 Ford Escape) suffered some pretty bad hail damage from that storm (I was in Virginia). All of the insurance companies have big tents set up around town with big trucks that say "disaster relief". Today I got to visit one of those tents. There are a lot of cars that have hail damage but from the 4 other cars I saw in "my" tent I must say my car looked the worst. Most cars had small dents while I got mostly deep dents. I am not as upset about it as I thought I would be. It is nothing a check for just over $7,000.00 won't fix. The more annoying part is that is it just another thing I have to fit in during my few short days at home. I posted one photo but really no photo does the damage justice. It is hard to get a good photo without crazy glare.

On a work related note, my program is in the process of purchasing a new data collection vehicle. Today at the office I started looking at proposals submitted for a new truck. I am very excited and after we get a new truck hopefully my blog won't be filled with breakdown entries :) ! It will still be another 5 months or so before we get a new truck but I'm happy the count down has started.