Home Again

Tuesday: We left Pismo Beach about 08:30. Drove North on Highway 101. Stopped for a rest break and Breakfast North of Camp Roberts at a rest stop. Our next stop was in Gilroy at the Camping World Store. I had a few rebate checks to use so we used them up. One thing we got was a chair rack for the RV ladder so we can take our chairs out of the back of the car. The car was just too crowded with the bikes in the there as well.
We made arrangements to pickup Dawn at her apartment in San Jose as we came through. That was a little more difficult than usual because her street is closed for construction work. It's difficult enough with all the traffic diversion curbs they've installed in the area. With Dawn on board, we arrived home a little after 4 pm. Nice trip, though we wouldn't have missed most of the snow. The Durango, Co train trip in the snow being the main exception.

We all drove up to San Bruno to pickup my laptop from Comp-USA. It's been patiently waitng there for over a month now. The four year warrantey expired a few days after I turned it in to them. The laptop power supply had died. They've been good about replacing the whole computer on day two due to a hard drive failure, replacing the hard drive again a couple of years later and replacing the DVD/CD drive about 6 months ago. The only real problem is the two weeks they keep it each time. This time was a bit upsetting though. The only problem was that the power supply module (the ugly black wart that's always in the way) had died. The computer started up properly with the battery but, of course the battery was now dead and wouldn't charge with a dead PS. So why did they find it necessary to restore the hard drive in the repair process? Now I get to restore all my programs and files from backups and re-install all the non-factory programs. And then there's all the time to make it look and feel right. So I'll be unnecessarily busy for the next month or so getting the computer back to they way it should have come home. I'm not happy, except for having my computer back in working order. Actually, it's probably a good thing to clean it out, I just didn't want to have to do it.

We had dinner at Neil's restaurant in Burlingame since we were nearby. It's a favorite local beanery.

Some statistics: This trip totaled 3,404 miles lasting 38 days. We used about 440.4 gallons of gas totaling about $1327.23 for an average fuel cost of 3.01/gallon and 7.9 mpg. We also used about 27.6 gallons of LPG costing about $86.20.

Wednesday: We relaxed today. Didn't do much unpacking, just enjoyed being home. When we arrived, the car gave us more trouble. Like several of the most recent stops, I had difficulty re-engaging the driveline disconnect. In addition, if wouldn't start again like last Novemnber in Santa Fe. Oh Boy! I left it alone yesterday. Today I went out and got it into gear. A little silicone spray lube helped, but didn't fix it. The starting is still intermittent, mostly not.

I worked on restoring the files to my hard drive. I'm glad I setup Memeo on the computer and have mulitple automatic backups (external HD, Jump drive and an online backup service). Now the real test of how good the backups really are.

Thursday: The toad went to the repair shop today. It's nice to have a good shop familiar with the car.

I setup my office in the RV. It's nice and quiet there and has a good view. A couple of weeks ago, the router in the RV for Internet access lost its security settings. I've been using it without them since then, waiting until i returned home to fix it. I restored all the settings and it's working well but no reason for why it lost them? May die again and then it would be replaced.

Friday: I went to a TSA business meeting in the morning.

Lou picked up the car form the shop. They did the regular servie on the car, repaired the starter and lubricated the driveline disconnect. Turns out that the starting problem is just an intermittent connection to a harness on the transmission switch assembly. The switch that was replaced in Santa Fe was probably good. Volvos seem to have a lot of these connector problems. The other car has a connector under the hood to wiggle if it won't start. That one is an ignition problem this one is a cranking problem. The mechanic show where to wiggle it to make it work. The lubricated driveline disconnect runs more quietly but we'll find out how well it re-engages on our next trip. Older cars are fun.

Saturday: Lou and I went over to Pleasanton to the fairgrounds for the Orchard Supply Hardware "How-To" show. It's free and we haven't been to one in a while. Not much new to be seen. We'll go again in about five years. I picked up a cold or alergy attack.

Sunday: I called Kaiser about my allergy attack or infection. My eys are red so here come the antibiotic eye drops.

We looked at cats at a couple of Pet-Smarts. We're on an active hunt for a replacement cat.