Tag Archives: I-275

2014/01/13 (M) Prevost-Stuff Show

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The Tampa Convention Center waterfront plaza, Tampa (FL).

The Tampa Convention Center waterfront plaza, Tampa (FL).

We spent most of the day and evening traveling to, attending, and returning from the Prevost-Stuff Show at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida.  Prevost-Stuff.com is part of the Prevost Owners Group (POG) owned and operated by Jamie Bradford.  We have been POG members for a few years now but this was the first event we have been able to attend.  The Prevost-Stuff show is strictly used Prevost coach conversions.  Jamie organized the show starting last year to run for the two days immediately prior to the Tampa RV Supershow at the Tampa Fairgrounds because the Supershow only allows new units to be displayed.

TCC Beer Pavilion and Fish Sculpture.

TCC Beer Pavilion and Fish Sculpture.

Before heading to Tampa we stopped at the CVS Store in Williston to purchase an electronic pass for the Florida Tollway System.  We purchased a SunPass Mini, activated it via the website using Linda’s cell phone, put an initial balance on it, and mounted it to the inside of the car windshield behind the mirror.  We planned to use the Tollway for part of our trip to Tampa and did not want to be bothered with stopping to pay cash tolls.  We also knew that we would want/need to use the toll roads as we traveled around Florida over the next few months and the SunPass is both more convenient and slightly less expensive on a per toll basis.  A quick stop at the Williston post office to mail a flash drive full of photos to Bus Conversions Magazine editor Mike Sullivan and we were on our way.

View towards Tampa Forum arena from TCC plaza docks.

View towards Tampa Forum arena from TCC plaza docks.

Rather than take I-75 to Tampa, which we have already done once when we went to Arcadia, we headed to the west edge of downtown Williston and picked up US-41 S.  We stayed with US-41 S through Inverness to Brooksville where we took FL-50 over to the Tollway, FL-589, and then headed south towards Tampa.  Our Garmin nuvi 465T GPS was rather persistent in trying to route us away from the Tollway until we checked the settings and discovered it was set to “avoid toll roads.”  From there on it steered us through the convoluted Tampa freeway system, onto the surface streets, and directly to the entrance to the Tampa Convention Center parking garage.

TCC east entrance stairs.

TCC east entrance stairs.

The Prevost-Stuff show was in the West Hall at the Tampa Convention Center.  It was free and open to the public but there were no signs announcing it, almost as if it was an invitation only event; and in a sense that was true, the only real marketing being through the POG and Prevost-Stuff.com websites.  Much to our surprise, the first person we met as we entered the hall was Joe Cannarozzi, our mobile mechanic.  I knew Joe was in Florida for part of the winter, but wasn’t sure just where.  It turns out that he is staying at an RV park an hour or so south of us.

TCC east upper entrance level.

TCC east upper entrance level.

There were at least 30 units on display, all used and all for sale, with a roughly equal number of H3s and LeMirage / XL / XL2s.  All of them were very nice, of course, but most of them were not to our taste (too fancy).   Almost all of them were not in our price range either, so that made it a lot easier to not buy one : – ) (We agreed on the drive down not to make an impulsive purchase.)  I did, however, see a few interesting “features” that may eventually find their way into our coach.  I forgot to take my camera so the photos in today’s posts were taken with my smartphone.

TCC West Hall lobby.

TCC West Hall lobby.

The best part for me was the Prevost reception at 5:30 PM.  I got to meet several people including the owner of AAP.  AAP is the company that now handles Cruise Air units.  It was good to know that they are still available as our coach has three of them.  I got some suggestions from him about what we might do to reduce the noise when they are running.  We also met Jamie Bradford, the owner of the Prevost Owners Group (POG), and Dale Farley, who handles administration for POG.  Jamie said that in addition to the New Orleans rally he is planning for March, he is planning a rally in East St. Louis for the last week in September.  The RV park closes after the third weekend in September but remains “open” for another week for exclusive use by the POG rally.  He will have room for 90 coaches.  I have no idea what it will cost, and I am sure food will be an issue for us, as always.  St. Louis, however, is our home town and we not had the coach down there yet, so we’ll see.

TCC West Hall entrance, Prevost-Stuff Show

TCC West Hall entrance, Prevost-Stuff Show

Finally, we met several folks from Prevost, including:  Gaetan Bolduc, Eng. (president/ceo), Steve Ziegler (national sales manager for conversions shells), Martin –?— (factory product manager), and Bill Jensen, national service manager (conversion shells).  I now have faces and business cards to go with the names.

A whole row of Marathon conversions.

A whole row of Marathon conversions.

I had a chance to talk to Martin about the lack of availability of rubber seals for our awning windows and describe how we were able to get new ones made.  I offered to supply them if they have any other customers who need them : – )  I also got to discuss our intermittent speedometer/odometer problem with Bill Jensen.  Bill agreed that it sounded like we had a wiring problem somewhere after the engine and transmission computers and told me that the two wires of importance are numbers 16 (speedo +) and 20 (speedo ground).  He also indicated that the coach probably does have a “speed switch” and that it is most likely located in the electrical bay above the tag axle on the driver’s side.  The purpose of the switch was to disable the kneeling feature on a seated coach above 5 MPH.  The speedometer wires are “looped through” the switch, however, and it is a potential failure point.

A pair of late model, lightly used, Prevost H3-45 conversions.

A pair of late model, lightly used, Prevost H3-45 conversions.

By the time we left around 6:30 PM it was dark and Linda’s hip was bothering her so I drove home.  Our GPS got us to I-275 northbound, an easy, straight shot west from the Tampa Convention Center parking garage.  I-275 merged into I-75 N.  We exited at US-27 W in Ocala and were home before 9 PM including a brief fuel stop along the way.  Heavy and persistent rain was forecast to start sometime after 9 PM and go through the night, but we made it back to the coach before it started raining.  I took care of some e-mails, posted my blog entry for yesterday, and called it a day.

2013_10_13 (N) A Fork In The Road

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We spent a quiet night with only an occasional car passing by.  Someone nearby must have a pack of dogs and fed them around 6 AM as I heard them howling in the distance.  At first I thought they were coyotes, but it wasn’t the right kind of howl.  We finally got up around 8 AM to cool temperatures and light fog.  I checked the house batteries state of charge (I really need to get the Magnum ME-ARC remote panel installed up in the house) and it was 71%, not bad for having powered the coach for 8 hours.

Sunrise at Acres of Land near Richmond, KY

Sunrise at Acres of Land near Richmond, KY

A nice sunrise lit up the bedroom and by 9 AM the fog had burned off as we ate our breakfast of Linda’s homemade granola with fresh bananas, orange juice, and a cup of coffee.  This morning’s coffee was the Breakfast Blend from World Markets that Kathy brought to our open house.  It was delicious and already ground.  We generally grind our coffee beans, but it’s always nice to have ground coffee on hand, especially when we only want to make a couple of cups.

We had 186 miles to travel today, and check-in time at Tremont Outdoor Resort was 1 PM, so we targeted 10 AM as our departure time.  We left a little after 10 and took KY-876 east back to I-75 and continued south towards Tennessee.  Just after crossing the border we started down a long, steep grade but had to come to a complete stop before reaching the bottom.  We sat still, or moved along very slowly, while police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, and emergency management vehicles sped past us on the right shoulder.  We eventually had to move to left as the accident was in the right lane, and got the ire of an SUV who apparently felt we had cut them off.  Sorry.  It was an accident scene everyone in the right lane had to move to the left.  Here’s a tip for folks driving cars: when a semi or large RV puts on its turn signal, you might want to consider letting them move over.  These are large, slow vehicles and they need your cooperation to operate safely.

When we reached the accident scene there were two motorhomes on the side of the road, one with a towed vehicle that had the driver’s side smashed in, and a small white car that had been rear-ended and squashed pretty bad.  We tried to move through the accident zone as quickly as traffic allowed, but were not able in that short span of time to surmise just what had happened, other than something bad.

The rest of the trip to Knoxville was uneventful although traffic was heavier as cars and trucks cleared the accident scene and tried to make up for lost time.  We finally left  I-75, picking up I-275 through the city to where it was supposed to join up with I-40, which we thought we would take west and shortly thereafter pick up US-129 headed south towards Maryville.  That was the plan.  Remember plans from a recent post?  The Knoxville highway system is complex, and we were following the directions on our Rand-McNally RVND 7710 GPS while Linda double checked what we were doing on her Samsung Galaxy III smartphone.  Everything was fine until we came to a literal fork in the road and the GPS failed to tell us which way to go.  Intuitively we needed to go to the right, but that exit sign said “Downtown” and that didn’t seem right so we took the exit to the left and ended up…downtown.  Not just downtown, but on a very steep hill going up where we had to stop at a red light.  I don’t know what the grade of this hill was, but the bus was barely able to get moving from a dead stop.

On the plus side, while we were stopped there, a man crossed the street wearing a nice suit and bow tie and smiled and waved to us.  Also on the plus side, Sunday afternoon traffic was very light, so we didn’t have any further difficulties driving the 1.8 miles through the University of Tennessee campus back over to US-129 southbound.

At that point we were back on plan.  Just north of Maryville we picked up TN-35 which links up with the E Lamar Alexander Parkway, US-321 / TN-73 eastbound, which continued on as TN-73 and took us to Townsend.  Although the road got narrow and twisty in places, it was a pleasant and pretty drive.  All told, the accident scene and the Knoxville sight-seeing delayed our arrival at the Tremont Outdoor Resort by about 45 minutes from what the GPS originally predicted and we pulled in around 2:30 PM.

We turned off of TN-73 and crossed a bridge over a small river to enter the resort, at which point the GPS alerted us that we exceeded the weight limit of the bridge.  There were no weight limits posted  on this bridge, so we are not sure what that was all about.  We pulled up to the check-in area, scraping the top of the coach with the low over hanging branches that they assured us on the phone they did not have, and Linda went in to take care of the paperwork.  I could see from the driver’s seat that the roads in this RV park were not generous and might be problem.  When she returned with the map we unhooked the car and drove the route they wanted us to take to our site.  Right.  There were trucks parked where they shouldn’t be, and a maintenance golf cart by the restrooms that block part of the road.  I backed up and took the left fork in the entrance road, pulled up the tag axle, and made the hard left in sections B & C of the park.  From there I made a hard right, scratching the passenger side of the coach on some low pine/fir branches, finally got lined up, and back down into our section and into site B3.

The reason I mention all of this is that when we call to make a reservation we are very, very specific with people about the size and weight of our coach and specifically ask about overhead obstructions such as tree limbs.  (We always call, never book online, because of this.)  People consistently tell us that “you won’t have any problem” and it is, quite frankly either an ignorant response (they have no idea if we will have a problem or not) or they just plain lie about it.  I am also convinced that when we tell them we are 8.5 feet wide, 40 feet long (closer to 60 feet with the car in tow), 13 ft 2 inches tall, and weigh about 41,000 pounds those are just numbers that don’t mean anything to them.

But we got parked, leveled the coach, shut down the engine, and “made camp.”  I pulled out our Kenwood TH-F6 HTs (small hand held ham radios known as handi-talkies) and gave Lou, K9LU, a call on the previously agreed frequency of 146.550 MHz.  He was monitoring the frequency and came right back to my call.  Lou is the founder of the SKP Photographers BOF, and the organizer of the photography workshop we are here to participate in.  We went for a stroll around the RV park, as we usually do when we first arrive, and eventually made our way to Lou and Val’s 5th wheel where we had a nice chat.

We skipped lunch today, so Linda started dinner preparations when we got back to the coach.  She improvised a dish of diced potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, onion, and garlic, seasoned with basil and pan fried in a little bit of olive oil.  She served it with a side of broccoli and glass of red wine.  A couple of hours later we had some more of the wonderful blackberry pie we bought on the Fulton Farm Market on Friday.  I will be sorry to see the end of that pie, it really has been that good.

Since we are here for a digital photography workshop, I presume we will have more photographs to post over the next few days, but not today.

 

2013_08_27-28 Babysitting And Our First RV Visitors

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Linda has signed up to babysit our youngest grand-daughter, Madeline, on Mondays so our son and daughter-in-law can attend to their professorial duties at the University of Michigan.  (Our step-grand-daughter, Katie, is 16 and does not need a sitter.)  However, Linda sat on Saturday the 17th.  This week she sat on Tuesday because of our Monday dental appointments.  Next week she is going to sit on Tuesday because Monday is Labor Day.  Like I said, she is babysitting on Mondays.

We both left the house early, Linda for Ann Arbor in rush hour traffic and me for Dearborn in rush hour traffic.  As retired people we are not supposed to be in rush hour traffic; it tends to spoil that special, relaxed mood that is the hallmark of the happily retired.  Morning rush hour traffic headed south on US-23 into Ann Arbor is always bad.  Morning rush hour traffic headed into the northwest suburbs of Detroit on I-96 is always worse.  I was late for my 9 AM dental appointment, but only about 10 minutes.  I won’t be making any more 9 AM appointments in that part of town.

When I was done at the dentist in west Dearborn I headed for Ann Arbor, looking forward to spending some quality time with my grand-daughter.  As I was nearing Ann Arbor I got a call from W. W. Williams in, where else, east Dearborn, letting me know that my special order part was in.  Life really is all about timing.  I continued my journey to babyland.  When I walked in the front door, Madeline was sitting up in the middle of the living room playing with Grandma Linda.  She turned, looked at me, and started crying.  You can’t take anything an 8-month old does personally, but it wasn’t quite the reception I was hoping for.  She got herself all worked up.  Linda tried feeding her, but she was not to be consoled, so we took her for a walk in her very spiffy stroller.

We peeled back the sunshade so she could turn her head and look up at me, which she did frequently.  She stayed calm for the whole ride, and even babbled for a while, apparently satisfied that I was at least doing something useful.  Or perhaps I am less scary when viewed upside down?  As soon as we got back to the house, however, she got herself all upset again.  Having no other plans for the afternoon, I made my exit and drove back to Dearborn to get the special order part for our bus.  Linda told me later that Madeline settled down as soon as I left and had a nice lunch.  It won’t always be that way, of course, and it’s not a contest to see who wins.  Eight month olds are spontaneous, irrational beings, and you just have to accept that and work with it as best you can.  That’s why she has parents, aunts, and grandmothers.

By the time Phil was done working on the driveway on Monday evening he had mixed 14 tons (yes, that’s 30,800 pounds) of sandy silt into and on top of the 6 inches of 21AA road gravel that forms the top layer of the pull-through driveway.  What we really needed at that point was a good, soaking rain and starting late Tuesday evening and overnight into Wednesday we got our wish.  The rain helps the fine particles work their way down into the gravel and lock it together to form a dense mass that will not spread out when driven on, even by a heavy vehicle.  At least that’s the theory.  I drove on it again with the car Wednesday morning and it seemed to be packed pretty hard.

The first test of the pull-through driveway came when the UPS truck showed up with our Centramatic dynamic wheel balancers for the bus.  He pulled the truck right up on the pull-through driveway and backed it out with no difficulty.  That was a good omen.  The next test came when Ed & Betty arrived around 1:30 PM in their Tiffin Phaeton motorhome.  They unhooked their car just after pulling onto our street as I needed them to be able to maneuver the RV to get it parked.  They were also going to have to back out when they left and you cannot do that with a car attached to the rear end of the rig.  I met them at the end of the street, led them to our house, and got them positioned to turn into the pull-through driveway.  Betty drove their car and parked it in our regular driveway.  Ed gave me one of their walkie-talkies and I guided him in to the pull-through driveway with voice and hand signals.  Their motorhome tires did not even leave visible tracks!  Finally, success.  Their rig has 6 tires and weights about 33,000 pounds, so the weight on each tire that is similar to our bus, except that our front tires carry a couple of extra thousand pounds each.  Once they were parked and settled they came inside and we quartered a small, round watermelon and had that as a light lunch/snack.

We had the pull-through driveway built for our own use as a convenient place to park the coach while we load/unload it.  We installed an electrical outlet so that we could also run the refrigerator and maintain the batteries while it was parked there.  We plan to eventually have a “bus barn” to store it in, but for now the pull-through drive is where it will live when we are home.  That meant that we might also want to run the air conditioners while it was parked, so we installed a full “50A” RV electrical service since that is what our coach is designed for.  We also had in mind, however, that it would be nice to have RV friends be able to come for a visit and have a level place to park with some nice shade and decent electrical service.  We also have water available, but we do not currently have a way for folks to dump their holding tanks.  We eventually hope to be able to dump ours using a macerator pump connected by a garden hose (reserved for that use only) to a fitting on the first septic tank.  We can’t use a normal gravity drain hose because we have to pump the tank contents uphill to the septic tank lid.  If we get this to work, guests could do the same as long as their rig is equipped with a macerator pump.

Some of the RV clubs we belong to allow members to list their home or place of business as available for no-cost overnight stays.  FMCA calls these “Stop’in Spots” and the SKPs include them in a list of free and low-cost camping.  There is also a program called “Boondockers Welcome” that our friends Butch and Fonda joined.  We are members of Harvest Hosts, but can’t be a host site as we are a residence not a business.

Ed and Betty originally planned to stay two nights, but they are on their way to some temporary work at the Middleton Berry Farm, a pick your own (PYO) operation east of Ortonville, Michigan.  They have worked summers there for some years, usually during the strawberry season.  At one time they owned a strawberry farm in upstate New York and were the secretaries of the National Strawberry Growers Association.  Ed has a PhD in plant pathology and has done extensive extension service work as a plant pathologist.  The owners of Middleton Berry Farm needed Ed & Betty’s assistance ASAP as the raspberries have come in very well this year.

We did our usual first time visit thing and gave them a complete tour of the house, yard, and bus.  We got to see their motorhome as well, and spent some time trying to tune in over-the-air TV stations with their roof antenna.  The only station we could get was FOX out of Detroit, so Ed turned the system off and put the antenna back down.

Ed and Betty are pretty avid cyclists and have a pair of very interesting tricycles.  They are Spike models made by Trident Trikes and purchased from Craig and Linda Current of http://www.boomersbentsandbikes.com in Florida.  It’s a two front, one rear wheel design with disc brakes all around.  The two front wheels steer and the central structural member is hinged to allow the rear wheel to fold up between the two front ones for storage.  They got the 24-speed gearing option.  I test drove Ed’s and Linda test drove Betty’s and we both found them very comfortable.  Linda can’t ride a bicycle because of occasional balance problems related to her loss of hearing in her left ear, so a tricycle or quadcycle is her only viable option.  At this point in my life, I would just as soon have the stability of a 3-wheeler as well.  Another alternative for us would be a side-by-side 2-seater, which might be a lot of fun, but would probably preclude either of us going for a solo ride.

We sat and talked like old friends and enjoyed a bottle of Pinot Grigio.  Eventually Linda and Betty set about making dinner.  Betty had prepared a “vegan cheese” out of cashew nuts and served it on Saltine crackers.  It was very good, and it reminded Linda that she had purchased a vegan cheese book on our last Holistic Holiday At Sea cruise, but had not yet used any of the recipes.  Linda prepared a nice green salad.  The main course was quinoa with mushrooms and Swiss chard.  She served it with a side of fresh corn, cut off the cob.  We opened at bottle of the 2009 Egri Merlot to go with dinner.  This wine is a little sweet for red wine aficionados, but it is one of the few red wines I will drink.  It lacks any hint of tannin, and is full-bodied enough to stand up to the earthy grain/mushroom/greens dishes that Linda often prepares.  After dinner we sat on the back deck for a while and continued to enjoy our Merlot.  The mosquitoes appeared about the same time we were ready for dessert so we went back inside and enjoyed the last of vegan chocolate cake Linda had made on Monday served with fresh strawberries.  It was still as moist as when she baked it and you would not know it was vegan.  We washed it down with the end of the Merlot, which also goes very well with chocolate cake and strawberries.

The rest of the evening was a free- and far-ranging conversation about life, travels, kids, health, careers, and interests.  We looked at maps and old copies of Wilson’s Free And Low Cost Camping directories and talked about getting large rigs into National Forest campgrounds, which Ed and Betty have done successfully on numerous occasions.  Being full-timers, they are by necessity knowledgeable and skilled when it comes to finding places to park for the night.