My last estimated date of departure was July 23rd, but I missed it. I had to wait around for a final medical appointment for my back, but beyond that I am delayed because of some last minute work on the Defender and having to deal with some of the very things I look forward to escape from by taking the trips in the first place. But soon, I will start the formidable task of packing 13 different “rooms” (containers) and from there it will be four days before I can hit the road. Anyway, with temperatures near 100 in DC, even if I had been ready to go yesterday, I probably would have postponed my departure because of the heat. In a day or so, I will assess what damage was done to my itinerary and plan accordingly. And I will leave only when I am ready to leave.
Donner’s allergy is breaking out pretty badly despite his medication. Fortunately, he’s not scratching himself so I will try to manage his situation on the road with showers. With luck, perhaps we will not be driving through anything that triggers his allergy, although we might have to trade that for flies in Labrador and mosquitoes in Alaska. Back in 2011, I decided to cut short the trip at Thunder Bay, Ontario, because of Leben’s allergy, and if I have to do that again on this trip, so be it.
I have been monitoring Donner’s handling of road trips by way of our weekly trips to his swimming in Middleburg, especially in this oppressive heat. He seems to be tolerating it well, and alternates between his front seat with the AC and his rear seat. He has more room in the Defender than I do, and my two AC vents are closed off to give him twice the cool he would get otherwise. I wonder if he realizes what a good deal he has compared to those two LA backyards he was relegated to on a chain for his first four years. Frankly, I don’t care if he does or not.
Took the Defender in for installation of the great new Badger II roof this past week and I have been testing it out since, trying to figure how I can make it work with our setup. I think I got it. Both sides from the driver’s/passenger’s windows on back and the rear roll up nicely, letting lots of fresh air in as we drive. To make sure noting flies out, including Donner, as he did in March when he saw a dog he wanted to play with, nearly getting himself killed, I took apart a large dog cage and installed the several cage-panels into the sides and rear of the Defender. There is a gap of about six inches on each side of the rear cage, enough room for Donner to squeeze through, so after trying four options, I found a solution to close those gaps with netting. Watch for photos along the way.
Tomorrow I will order the satellite phone, which means I am getting close to leaving. I prefer the Iridium although it does not send emails with the latitude and longitude coordinates of my location, at least not that I know of. Whenever I am in a really remote location, which is not a lot, I will sat-phone the coordinates from my Garmin to my home voice mail announcement message. “Hi, this is Ed,” my message will say. “ I am at 50.044153N-89.095224W. Leave a message. Thanks for calling.” That, by that way, means:
This, by the way, was an actual remote location we stumbled upon on during OTR4 in 2011, and I do mean remote. But the lousy sat-phone I rented from Rent-Cell (Atlanta) failed, so no one knew where I was. Fortunately, nothing happened except that I never rented from Rent-Cell again when he no only refused to refund anything for this loss of service, but also cheated me out of my deposit. Of all my road trips, this was the only negative personnel experience.
One of the thing slowing my preparations down is trying to integrate the new stuff I bought to reduce the trip’s irritations into my gear. I have to be careful not to take the old stuff as a backup as I am limited by space and weight. In fact, anything new I take along means that something has to go. One thing I know will go for sure is my library, since I don’t think on any trip I even finished one book, but dragged along many. I’ll probably waste a couple of hours trying to decide which book to take. But that’s better than lugging along a dozen books that will go unread. Maybe I’ll take along two books, a Russian novel and my Russian dictionary. After all, one rule for the trip is to try to take things that serve at least two purposes.
One time-consuming task I just about finished is setting up Donner’s radio-collar in case, God forbid, he gets lost. I probably spent six hours on this, and I am still not there yet. Of course, despite this task, I pray that he does not get lost, but if he does, I pray that he has the r-collar on, that it is turned on and fully charged, and that the hand-held device to track him is fully charged. This will be a priority in my daily charging tasks.
Speaking of daily charging tasks, in 2000, during OTR-1 with Sonntag, I took nothing that needed charging, no cell phone, no computer, nothing and the trip was a roaring success. Now, there are 16 things I have to charge, many daily. I had to make up a checklist to make sure I forget nothing. This is probably going to add 30 minutes a day to my chores, and sometimes I wonder if it is worth it, or what having these devices is doing to our brains. Here’s the checklist.
I just discovered today that my portable vehicle battery charger is not recharging. Oops. I should have tested this weeks ago. Had to order a new one today, for arrival Tuesday.
That’s it for now. Now, back to my chores here so I can get on the road.
ED
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