Archives for 2013

Sep 13 2013

Steep learning curve

Roadtripping is never great when you’ve got too many miles to cover, so I had not expected much from our day on the road from Jackson Center OH to New Florence MO. Usually I arrived bleary-eyed and cramped, fatigued from too many hours of staring at striped concrete, and wondering how the long-haul truckers do it day after day.

But this road trip was a little different. Even though we started late (9:10 a.m.), and despite intermittent rain for the first two hundred miles along I-70, things proceeded smoothly and eventually I was pleased to find that we were in St Louis right on schedule. Sixty miles further west was our goal: an offer of courtesy parking with our friends Stevyn and Troy.

Like a lot of courtesy parking offers, this one was over a year in the making. It takes a while to swing by any particular spot in the USA, and even though Stevyn had tempted us with colorful descriptions of a bucolic country paradise, I wasn’t sure when we’d next by driving through Missouri to take advantage of the stay. But it was well worth the wait, because we found pleasant hosts at a peaceful little homestead atop a hill surrounded by forests and fields, and a grassy spot to park the Airstream (with 30-amp power nearby).

There was only one problem: getting up the driveway. Stevyn had advised that there were two hills along their gravel driveway, and I thought it rather odd that she suggested All-Wheel Drive or 4WD might be helpful. How bad could they be? We soon found out.

The photo really doesn’t do it justice. You have to look closely to see that there’s a point at which the road disappears from view because of the first drop-off (I can’t call it a hill, since it seems closer to a cliff). It was so sudden and shocking that I tried to brake the Airstream to a stop, but it slid over the loose gravel surface and continued down the hill anyway. There was nothing to do but release the brakes and keep steering as we plummeted down what I later estimated at a 20% grade.

It was a mistake to lose the momentum, because at the bottom we faced another hill of equal steepness. The AWD system in the Mercedes was flashing yellow warning lights on the dash to let us know that the highway-oriented performance tires were slipping in the gravel, but fortunately the diesel engine produces great torque and with four wheels pulling we still climbed steadily to the top.

(A side note here: Anyone who still thinks our car’s 3.0 liter V6 turbodiesel is “underpowered” is invited to pull a 7,500 pound trailer up this hill from a stop with your tow vehicle.)

At the top of the hill we found Troy waiting by the side of the road with words of wisdom: “You have to drive it like you own it.” Sage advice indeed, since ahead of us was yet another nearly identical slope, and I immediately knew what he meant. Full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes.

We climbed the second hill as well, and found ourselves in a tiny paradise. Again, the photo doesn’t do justice the scene. Imagine being parked on an 80-acre hobby farm, on grass and beneath a large shady tree. Nearby is a vegetable garden overflowing with produce.

Chickens and peacocks are roaming around. To the east is a pasture with a dozen or so head of furry cows. A lovely house is across the driveway, with an outdoor patio that has a view to the ponds, and a firepit. Trails head off across the meadow and into the woods, and the sun is shining on a perfect late summer day.

It has been quite a while since we had weather so perfect that every window and vent in the trailer could be opened. The vent fans blew out the hot air that had been trapped in the Airstream during our low tow, and filled the interior with clean country air. We slept with the windows open, and I even opened the one by my head just so I could hear the crickets all night long.

It didn’t take much to convince us to stay two nights instead of just one. This morning we had breakfast with the entire family (nine in total counting us, which consumed quite a bit of the egg-laying output of the hens). I got some desk work done in the morning, and then while Eleanor and Emma were working on school I got a tour around the property from Troy in their 4WD utility vehicle. I also popped into the car to store this location into the “Favorites” of the GPS. The rest of the day we just spent talking, petting the farm cat, playing with the dog, and chilling out in the shade of an oak tree. Eleanor used the opportunity of the afternoon to make up a huge and complicated salad for everyone to share at dinnertime.

We could stay here very comfortably for a while, but we know we need to get moving west. The big rain system that has flooded parts of Colorado will be here in a couple of days. After considering the options we’ve decided to drive through it (via Kansas) and arrive in Colorado hopefully around the time the storm system is exiting. So in the morning we will hit the road just to cover some miles, and leave this lovely stop behind, at least for now.

Sep 11 2013

Two days in JC

Trundling over to Jackson Center, Ohio, is a pretty routine experience for us these days. We get here every year, and sometimes twice a year. And yet, it’s still sort of exciting to visit the home base of Airstream, talk to the people, watch the guys working in the Service Center, and see all the Airstreams coming and going.

Sixty miles out from the plant we started to see other Airstreams along the road, and pulled over in convenient spots for lunch. By the time you get to Jackson Center, which is a small village far from city lights, the Airstreams seem to become as numerous as the soybean & corn fields.

Coming here this week has been quite a different experience from our annual Alumapalooza week. For one thing, it’s very quiet. Only about eight Airstreams are in the Terra Port, and there’s no line at the service center parts desk nor anyone in the Wally Byam store most of the time. I liked it. But still, we never fail to run into someone we’ve met before in the Terra Port. This time it was Jim and Linda and their two cats.

The other thing that is different is communications. Verizon and AT&T are terrible here; non-existent inside the metal buildings and marginal everywhere else. At Alumapalooza we rely on professional-grade handheld radios to keep the staff in touch, but during this visit we’ve just had to act as if it’s 1980 and cell phones haven’t been invented. I haven’t been able to successfully receive a call since I got here, although I can place them if I stand outside in the 93 degree heat (with plenty of humidity).

Ah well, technology will find a way. In this case I discovered that I could make very good Skype calls from the air conditioned Service Center lobby using their wifi, and the rest of the time I just told people to email me instead. That’s good enough for a couple of days.

Our primary purpose in being here was to have a few meetings with Airstream staff, but also to pick up some parts. The Safari’s silver beltline and propane tank lid look just awful as a result of UV exposure, so I bought replacements for those as well as a few of those small parts that are so necessary but you can never find on the road when you need them, like various sizes of rivets.

(I got up early this morning and installed the replacement propane lid before the heat built up outside. The job involves drilling and riveting, and took about 30 minutes not counting the run to the parts dept. to get another size of rivets.)

One of the Airstreams I spotted here was Wally’s “gold” Airstream, a semi-famous trailer that we wrote about in the Summer 2006 issue of Airstream Life. It’s a 1957 tandem axle custom that went to Mexico and Africa on some of Wally’s last caravans. The anodizing process used to give the trailer its gold color was never really ideal, and would deteriorate periodically leaving the trailer looking pretty awful, so this time Airstream decided to paint it gold instead.

The new paint job looks just spectacular and should last quite a long time. If our trailer starts to look ratty (many years from now) and we want to keep it longer, I’d seriously consider a silver paint job on it. I’ve seen other ones and if it is done well it looks great.

Jackson Center is a very quiet little village these days. There’s not much here to do, but people are still making an effort to keep the village alive. The Elder Theater just successfully completed a Kickstarter to raise $25k to get a digital projector and so the town’s one-screen old-school cinema will be able to continue. The Verandah, the best restaurant in town for years, was closed but now is advertising for staff again, so we have high hopes for its return soon.

This may be our last night in a convenient full hookup spot, so we’ve made the most of it. That means running the A/C, watching a movie on the TV, taking long showers, using the microwave, making repairs, and even a late-night final laundry run.

We’re done with work now, so it’s time to move on. Tomorrow we are going to make the major sprint of our trip, hopefully ending up somewhere past St Louis MO by the end of the day (over 400 miles). That’s a big one for us, and we’ll be starting early to make the most of the day.

Sep 08 2013

Back into the routine

Sometimes the best part of a long drive is the chance to think. The road through the Adirondack State Park region of New York is scenic and winding, but also familiar, so as we meandered through on our way down to the I-90 tollway and Eleanor and Emma became engaged with their books (and in Emma’s case, Nintendo games) I had the chance to explore my own thoughts without much distraction.

At first I was mostly concerned with “feeling out” the Airstream. Sitting for a long time means little surprises can crop up, and although it towed as nicely as ever and my pre-flight checks turned up no problems other than rusted hitch pin (which I replaced), I was on alert for anything unusual. We weren’t even one mile down the road before I realized something odd was up with the braking; the trailer wasn’t stopping as well as normal.

At first I assumed it was rust on the brake discs, but after the rust wore off there was still a feeling that the trailer wasn’t braking as hard as it should. I also got a bit of a sideways push on hard braking, which is sometimes a hint that the Hensley is not aligned perfectly straight. That happens when the hitch is removed and re-installed, but we had already aligned it on the way east in May, so the theory didn’t fit. The hitch alignment is a “set and forget” sort of thing. You don’t need to re-align it unless you remove the hitch head from the trailer, but just to be sure I stopped on level ground and tweaked the adjustment a couple of times.

That didn’t seem to fix the issue. I realized the off-center push would sometimes happen to the left and sometimes to the right, which actually suggests that the hitch head alignment is fine. (A minor off-center push in either direction is normal, caused by uneven road surface when you are coming to a stop.) But I never had any type of push before, so what was up?

After about 80 miles of towing and fiddling, I realized the cause in a “DUH!” moment. The Prodigy brake controller had somehow gotten set to a lower maximum voltage. This reduces the braking action, which allowed the Airstream to push the Mercedes a little, and thus allowed the Hensley to articulate to one side or another in a stop depending on the slope of the ground. I checked and the Prodigy was set to a max 8.8 volts where it should have been set to 10.0 volts at least (on our trailer, yours will likely be different). I have no idea how it got altered, since the setting can’t be changed without the trailer attached, and the Mercedes hasn’t towed the Airstream since early June.

Once I corrected that, we had the normal sensation of the trailer brakes leading the car, which prevents the “Hensley bump” and returned the confident braking feel I’m used to. Other than the brake issue, the Airstream seemed to be perfect, which was great.

That’s not to say we don’t have “squawk list” of things to attend to. The silver beltline trim around the lower body edge has faded to chalky white, and in one place has peeled loose. I’m going to get a big roll of the stuff and replace it (an easy job). The plastic propane tank lid is deteriorating from UV exposure and although it’s only cosmetic damage, I’m tired of looking at it peeling up like a bad sunburn, so I’ll probably replace that too. Both of these items can be picked up at Airstream when we drop in next week. We’ve got two more Hehr window gears that are stripping and I only have one spare, so I will be ordering more of those soon, too.

Lest we die of boredom with the I-90 NY State Thruway slog, we detoured up through Rochester NY and to the shore of Lake Ontario for an overnight stay at Hamlin Beach State Park. It was a well-reviewed park, with manicured green lawns and good access to the shoreline, with nicely forested campsites in several loops. Being the week after Labor Day, it was barely occupied. Since we arrived at sunset, the entrance gate and offices were all closed, but a friendly staffer passing by said to just grab a site and pay in the morning. I appreciated his helpfulness, although we would have done that anyway.

After a long period of sitting, the Airstream did experience some internal discomfort in its black water holding tank. The motion of a couple hundred miles of towing stirred up things inside the tank and the result was a pretty awful smell from the plumbing vent when we stopped. The antidote is easy, a triple dose of enzymatic tank chemical and plenty of water—the travel trailer equivalent of Pepto-Bismol.

Two days of towing has brought us to Lou & Larry’s home near Cleveland. This is the best courtesy parking spot in the entire USA, with full hookups, wifi, level ground, and lots of hospitality from our hosts. We’ve come here many times over the years. This time Larry took me to a real camera store—quite a rarity these days—and then his daughter and our friend Loren took us to Cleveland’s Westside Market.

When we are in cities it’s a big treat for Eleanor to hit the markets like this. There are a few in the USA that always are worth a stop, such as Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market, Boston’s Haymarket, and Seattle’s Pike Place Fish Market. Cleveland’s Westside Market is definitely on that list.

For me the attraction is both the food and the architecture. I love looking in the glass cases at the abundance and variety of food, but I often spend as much time looking for photographic subjects in the buildings themselves. Westside Market has a nice feature in its tiny upstairs gallery that gives a great view of the hustling activity below. The building looks almost like it was re-purposed from an old train station, like the Musee D’Orsay, and I love just looking at the fantastic arched ceiling.

Eleanor of course scored a few interesting things that will pop up on our table in the next few weeks. I don’t know exactly what she bought; I’d rather be surprised.

For now, we can’t seem to eat much of our own food, since Lou & Larry keep hosting parties every night. Last night we had a birthday party for a relative, with about 14 people attending and countertops buried in tasty stuff, and tonight we’ve got more guests coming for corn on the cob and whatnot. We just try to calmly accept the constant flow of friendly faces, meals, and conversation. This is what you have to put up with sometimes when you courtesy park.

Sep 05 2013

Squeezed on time

We are hitching up this morning.

Those words are always fun to type, because they mean that something new is about to start. On this particular trip we are reprising stretches of road that we have traveled before, departing from summer base camp in Vermont and heading west, but still there’s a little shiver of anticipation. Anything might happen.

Of course along the way we’ll visit favorite stops, but on the NY State Thruway there’s not too much of that. And we are pressed for time (I’ll explain why in a moment), so the major change-up in the trip will be our overnight stop. Gradually, we are visiting every state park and interesting campsite within 10 miles of I-90 and Route 8 (in the Adirondacks), and I like doing that.

The trip was supposed to start a few days ago, and end in early October, for a leisurely 4-5 week tour of the USA on the way back to Arizona, but now it has been squeezed to less than three weeks. For over 3,000 miles that means longer towing days that I’d like, and shorter stops, so some compromises in the trip plan are needed.

The squeeze started when my orthodontist dangled the prospect of having my braces removed eight months earlier than planned. I have an appointment Sept 27 to do the penultimate check, and if all is well, they braces will come off a couple of weeks later. After a year and a half of these things I’m eager to get rid of them, but I do want to say to all “older” people reading this that I am extremely glad I went through the trouble. I plan to keep my teeth for my entire life, and this was a good investment, and a real quality-of-life improvement. Braces aren’t just for kids anymore.

It’s funny, when you are an adult with braces, other adults want to talk about teeth with you. When I was at Alumafandango in Oregon I was approached by two people: the first said, “I’m so glad you’ve gotten braces!” and then proudly showed me her straight and lovely teeth. She was well into her 50s and had just recently gotten her braces off.

The second person was a man in his mid-30s, with a very crooked set of teeth and new braces. His teeth reminded me of mine, before I started orthodontia. He said he’d been embarrassed by his teeth most of his life, and was hoping the braces could correct the serious issues he had. It was a nice feeling to show him my teeth and tell him confidently that he would be happy he made the choice. So now you know what I really did at Alumafandango: I compared teeth with other people.

The second part of the travel squeeze resulted when my brother and I were talking about a grand motorcycle tour we had planned up to the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec. Various schedule conflicts made that trip impossible, but then we seized upon the idea of a quick two-day tour up past Quebec City. We checked the weather, checked the BMW motorcycles, checked our calendars, and decided that still there was time to do it. So we launched on Tuesday and came back Wednesday night.

It was a tough trip but a great experience. The weather was completely the opposite of the forecast (cloudy, cold, windy instead of the balmy sunshine we had been promised), and we got rained on for about 30 minutes on the way back through Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. I was chilly much of the time despite wearing six layers on top, and the temperature just kept dropping every hour. Steve’s bike had a clutch cable failure in southern Quebec, which we had to do a “field repair” on in a parking lot, and we lost so much time in Quebec City traffic that we didn’t manage to complete the tour we had planned.

By most measures it was a disaster. But I had a good time anyway. I got to practice a lot of motorcycle skills (like bumper-to-bumper traffic in Quebec City, and riding in the rain), I did my first really long trip ever (over 600 miles), and I had lots of time to experience the zen of motorcycle travel, with the machine thrumming beneath me and the wind whipping by. There were bright spots too, beautiful scenery in the rolling hills and river valleys, the chance to eat poutine with roast beef, a couple of days offline in a land where everyone speaks French, and a peek at the first golden maples of fall up in the far northern regions of Vermont.

It was one of those trips where the telling of the story afterward helps make up for the discomfort of the experience. No doubt the story will get better with time.

So that’s why our Airstream trip has been shortened. We still have no firm trip plan, other than to stop at Lou & Larry’s house in Ohio and probably drop in on Airstream as well. It’s most likely we’ll barrel across the country after Ohio, since the stuff we want to do is mostly out west, in Colorado and Utah. The weather is ideal this time of year for high-altitude outdoors fun in those areas, and I really would like to get back to some of my favorite national parks. Hopefully, we’ll be able to make more out of less, by carefully picking our stops. I’ll be documenting the trip as we go.

Aug 22 2013

The smarter Airstream

Last week Elon Musk (of Tesla and Space-X) released his vision for the Hyperloop, a sort of Jetsons/Futurama-style pneumatic tube system for shooting people up the California coast at incredible speeds. I’d sooner squeeze myself into a hamster’s Habitrail than that claustrophobic nightmare, but I do admire the spirit of Musk’s proposal. Knowing he wouldn’t personally be able to execute on the concept, he released his plans to the world in the hopes that someone else would take it forward.

In keeping with that spirit, I am going to tell you about the next big idea in travel trailers. Before I begin, I should acknowledge that this is not my original idea (neither was Musk’s; it was an advancement on an old idea). My good Airstream friend Brian first suggested this, and then I pushed it forward in conversations with Tom (an automotive expert and Airstreamer), and then I realized two things:

I’m no Elon Musk
It’s a pretty wild idea

But I like it, and I hope you will too. Here’s the elevator pitch: Imagine an Airstream that is impervious to sway or loss-of-control issues, can park itself in a campsite, has huge electrical power capacity, and actually improves your fuel economy when you tow it.

It’s possible. The giant 85 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery used by Tesla for its ground-breaking electric cars is the key. It’s patented technology but it is based on readily available lithium-ion battery cells that are getting cheaper all the time. The battery pack is heavy and flat, so it fits in the bottom of the Tesla and lowers the center of gravity. Having a low center of gravity is a big part of the reason why the car handles extremely well and doesn’t want to roll over.

Let’s fit one under an Airstream frame (OK, some frame mods would be required for this), and also instead of the basic trailer axle, we fit in the electric motor and regenerative brakes of the Tesla too. (See image below of a Tesla Model S electric motor, brakes, and battery platform.)

Up front, we have a very clever ball coupler that replaces the standard one. This coupler senses the pressure of the tow ball so it can inform a microprocessor whether the trailer is being pulled by the tow vehicle, is coasting, or (going downhill) is pushing the tow vehicle. It’s kind of like a smart surge brake. Sensors at the wheels also provide information about the direction of travel, by measuring the difference in wheel rotation.

All of this 21st century cleverness means that when the Airstream is being towed in a straight line, and the tow vehicle is pulling hard, the Airstream can contribute some power. Not enough to push itself out of control, mind you, but just enough to help compensate for the natural aerodynamic resistance of the Airstream, and thus restore some MPGs to the tow vehicle. So perhaps your 20 MPG truck gets 20 MPG even when towing, instead of 10 MPG. That would be nice.

When turning, backing, or coasting, the Airstream would act like an ordinary trailer, just spinning its wheels. When slowing or stopping, the regenerative brakes would put a little power back into the big battery. Those brakes would be plenty strong and much more reliable than standard trailer electric drum brakes.

Now, a “smart trailer” like this would know if it was swaying or otherwise misbehaving, and it would be independently capable of correcting it. Say goodbye to sway problems forever. Likewise, it would be able to stop itself very smoothly if the coupling came loose, or the breakaway switch were activated.

When you get to camp, there’s another really nice perk. Disconnect the trailer at a convenient spot and then use a handheld remote control to self-drive the Airstream right into your campsite, or a parking space. This may seem science fiction, but in fact this technology is already in use in Europe with the Reich Move Control (start watching the video at 5:16 to see an Airstream doing this). No more need to stress out over backing up the trailer into a tight spot.

Recharging is no problem at all. If the campground has electricity, plug into the 50-amp connection and the battery should regain about 30 miles of range for every hour you are camped. One overnight stay, and you’re charged up for another day of power-assisted towing.

Or, if you haven’t used up the battery pack during towing, it’s a huge house battery. The standard pair of wet-cell batteries in an Airstream provide less than a kilowatt-hour of usable power. The Tesla battery holds 85 times as much!

This system could even enable a sort of “Holy Grail” for people who really want to make RV’ing “green.” You could potentially tow a self-powered Airstream a couple hundred miles using an electric vehicle such as the upcoming Tesla Model X. Zero petroleum, zero emissions, and a free recharge at night while you camp. On a typical 200-mile tow that’s a cash savings of about $60-85, more than enough to pay for a really nice campsite.

Of course, the campgrounds might get wise to this someday, and charge an electric surcharge. I wouldn’t be surprised, but still it’s much cheaper to “fuel” an electric vehicle than any fossil-fueled vehicle.

This idea is definitely half-baked. There are huge cost issues here, no question. The battery pack alone would be in the $10-20k range. Right now nobody in the RV industry is going to explore this because they know that nobody will buy it.

Also, there could be drastic regulatory issues. Does a trailer change classifications with the Dept of Transportation once it is self-powered? What sort of regulatory barriers might exist? I haven’t looked into any of that.

So I humbly present this idea to you, solely to spur your thinking. Realize that the way we do things today will change. Someday our practice of driving fume-belching trucks pulling “dumb” trailers will be as much a part of our past as steam locomotives. Somebody is going to reinvent the RV’ing industry, when the time is right, and I just hope I’m here to see it.

In fact, I want to be part of that future, so if anyone is planning to do some work with this idea, please bring me in as a consultant. I want to be the first guy to go on an all electric camping trip, 200 miles from home with my “smart” Airstream trailer. Don’t you?