Some pictures from the road trip
Seafever
Tue 16 Feb 2010 15:24
Joe and I left Halcottsville about 5:30 AM on the
14th. Lilly and the girls left a few hours later to drive to Pelham where they
would spend the night at Lilly's friend Sharene's house, before flying out of
LaGuardia the next day.
Their trip was saved from discomfort/disaster by
Jeff Slauson. As they were leaving town, they stopped at the post office
and Isabel rolled down her car window to drop a few letters into the
box. The window motor broke and the window was half open. A 20-degree breezy
drive to Pelham would not have been pleasant. Jeff, who was across the street
working on the Grange, came over and spent 45 minutes tearing the door open and
manually cranking the window up. Thanks so much, Jeff!
Joe and I drove about 16 hours Sunday and 12 hours
Monday, including rest stops, and a couple of hours driving around Roanoke
Rapids, NC, looking for a spare-spare tire, after one of the trailer tires
blew out and I replaced it with my only spare. I didn't want to go the
remaining 600 miles with no spare, so I drove to the Firestone store, where they
were just locking up. They sent me to Walmart. Walmart didn't have the right
tire; they sent me to Tractor Supply. I didn't really think Tractor Supply would
have what I needed, but I asked anyway. Yes -- a 175/80R13 already mounted on a
rim. My lucky day. Now if I can get the original spare fixed, we'll have two
spares, a much better situation.
The Suburban pulled beautifully and was a smoother,
more powerful tow vehicle than our Nissan Pathfinder It gets about the same
mileage towing, unfortunately -- 11-12 mpg.
Here's our flat tire. It was such a nice thing to
change the tire in 45 degrees and bright sunlight. I was very glad it happened
in North Carolina and not New Jersey.
Here's the South Carolina rest stop where I slept
in the boat. At 9:30 PM there were a couple of RVs and a few trucks all the way
at one end, so I chose the other end and had about a football field-size patch
to myself.
During the night dozens if not hundreds of trucks
pulled in, packing in around me like sardines in a can, and running their
engines all night. I was tired enough that I slept through it all, more or less.
. . Here it is at 5 AM as I walked Joe and got ready to
leave.
Joe was a very good passenger. He was a little
mystified as to what the heck we were doing, but he mostly napped, and got up to
look around every now and then.
Now we're in Miami. This morning was cold and rainy
as a front blew through. We've pulled a lot of sailing stuff of the boat and are
now laying in our heavy supplies lowest down. We don't really see a crossing
window until Saturday or Sunday, so we're not in a rush. Maybe we'll put the
boat into the water Thursday and get used to it all over again.
