Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

We were up and called Sam, VE1YVN, for 5 minutes at 0400 MST or 0700 AST. In other words 7 AM at Sam's radio shack. No contact with anyone. Sam is a retired Navy Chief and his first ship was HMCS MICMAC with call sign CYVN. He chose the three letter suffix of her call sign for the three letter suffix of his ham call sign. If you work him insist on a QSL card. He retired a chief diver and his card has a beautiful photograph and description of one of his first diving helmets.

No doubt you are interested in the figures for this trip and it is a wonder someone hasn't jumped me for them by now.

These are the weight figures that I recorded in Part 6:

Steer Axle 4,440 lbs

Drive Axle 6,880 lbs

Trailer Axles 9,500 lbs

Gross Weight 20,820 lbs

The mileage adds up to this:

Sambro, Nova Scotia to Kissimmee, Florida was 3,586 kilometres

Kissimmee, Florida to Gold Canyon, Arizona was 3,739 kilometres

Therefore:

Sambro, Nova Scotia to Gold Canyon, Arizona was 7,325 kilometres

When you know kilometres times 0.62 equals miles.

Therefore Sambro to Gold Canyon is 7,325 X 0.62 = 4,541.5 miles

So, we managed 11 MPG with this 20,820 lb vehicle. The next time you top up your fuel tank take a glance at the price of diesel. Yep, that's it. Not for the faint of heart is it?

It was an odd day at the park. It was overcast with the temperature in the trailer at 70F with no heat on.

We sat around reading and playing with the computer until the computer installer arrived at 0930. A nice lad. We had him put a 75 ohm plug in the wall to the outside just below the dinette table, and just below Josie's bed when the table is her bed instead of the table. We should have had one installed when the trailer was built. Now we can have computer or use it for cable TV if we like.

After the computer was connected we paid our bills via on line banking. Then transmitted any e-mails that we were unable to deliver. We had lunch and then we went out and drained the tanks and did some more washing around the trailer. The box the computer guy put on the outside was sealed in a silicone sealer and still wet so that was my excuse to quit washing.

Joan, Karen and Bob went to a fabric store for the afternoon and I'm not sure how I managed to get out of that. We put a Christmas CD on the stereo, made a pot of coffee and played with this computer for awhile. They came back from the fabric store about 3:30 PM. It started to sprinkle a bit but even so Joan and Karen went bike riding after we put some air in Joan's tires. Mitch had said her bike needed some air when we put it on the back of the trailer. We carry a small 12 volt air compressor mainly for the trailer's suspension. It does not take long for it to pump up a bike tire.

Joan and Karen rode their bikes for an hour then we had supper. After supper we walked around the park and took a few photographs of the Christmas decorations. They did not turn out as good as we hoped and we deleted most of them.