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      This month started with a vacation. :) We took a 7 day cruise on Norwegian Cruise lines out of Houston to the western Caribbean. Houston is so far inland that we thought that we would meet the cruise line people at the Houston airport and be bused to the ship somewhere on the coast. But it turns out that Galveston Bay, located on the east side of Houston, is a major sea port with access to the Gulf of Mexico. Who would have thought? The cruise was excellent, although the ports of call weren't much. We have been on so many cruises by now that in our opinion, when we take a Caribbean or Mexican cruise, the ship is really the destination for us and the ports of call are pretty much incidental. That's why we try to always pick the biggest, newest ships to cruise on. They really are like a floating five star all inclusive resort. We really like cruising a lot and recommend it to everyone. It's a great vacation value. We typically pay less than $100.00 a day each for a cruise.

      http://www.vacationstogo.com/

      A couple of months ago the LED readout on the instrument panel on the steering column of the RV started going bad and was becoming hard to read. So I called the Workhorse chassis guys to see about getting it fixed. They told me that because the instrument panel is driven by a mini-computer, it cannot be fixed by local dealers but had to be removed and mailed back to the Workhorse factory in Ohio for repair. Since that sounded like a time consuming process I asked them if there was a place in Houston to get it fixed. As luck would have it, they recommended a GMC car/truck dealer that is 15 miles from the dock where our cruise ship sails from. That was absolutely perfect. It gave us a place to leave the RV for free while we were cruising. It also gave us a place to get the 60,000 mile maintenance done on the Chevy Malibu that we tow, not to mention a place to leave the car for free too. How perfect is that? Couldn't have been better. So I called them and made the appointment to have the work done on both the RV and the car.

      We dropped the RV and car off on a Saturday. The dealership is a huge, brand new facility that has new car sales, used car sales, a service department for cars and trucks, and a GMC parts department. All in all, a very impressive dealership. Texas sized. The whole place is extremely well lighted 24 hours a day and they have music speakers attached to every light pole. We learned later that the cost of concrete to cover the facility was more than a million dollars. The service department is closed on weekends so we left the keys, instructions of what we wanted done, and our email address in the drop box. The email method of communicating with the service manager worked great. Every night I checked my email at the ship's cyber cafe and we were able to effectively get all the work done that needed to be done. However, on Thursday it became apparent that the cluster they mailed to Ohio would not be back before the end of the cruise. So I asked if they could move the RV to someplace near enough to an electrical outlet so we could plug the RV in with an extension cord and live in it over the weekend. They could, so we did. On Monday morning when much to everyone’s surprise, the cluster did not arrive, we found out that the cluster was still at the factory in Ohio and wouldn't be back until Thursday. Yikes!!!

      Fortunately, when we arrived at the dealership the fresh water tank was mostly full and the two waste tanks were mostly empty. So by maximizing our use of the bathrooms in the dealership, and minimizing our use of water in the RV, we were able to make it through the week. By about Tuesday the salesmen were used to us padding around the lot in our robes and using their restroom facilities. Sleeping at night reminded us of Alaska since it was always light 24 hours a day on the lot. The only difference is that in Alaska we didn't have LOUD music playing. Since they worked two shifts, the music on the light poles was only turned off between 2:00 AM and 6:00 AM. We stayed at some unusual places on lap number one. The car dealership in Houston is now at the top of the list.

      The paranoia over terrorism continued to plague us. Everywhere we go we find access restricted, or denied, to what used to be popular tourist attractions. The reason is always given as "security concerns". But that’s not true. It’s really because management has been looking for an excuse to stop having to deal with tourists, or the lawyers have scared management into stopping the tours. Government facilities and factory tours are the worst. The most ridiculous was our experience at the Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston. The $18.00 tour has been so watered down that I wish they would just stop the thing all together rather than waste people's time and money. It was pathetic. And to top it off, they took Polaroid pictures of everyone before the tour. What a joke. I can’t contain my contempt for those clowns. Sometimes I wonder who is winning the war on terror.

      Since we spent so much unexpected time in Houston, we decided to skip the back roads and stay on I-10 and I-8 to get back to San Diego. The scenery on the trip across Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona was quite a bit different from the run across Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. But Cindi and I really like the desert, and western history, so we never tire of the "wide open spaces". As is our custom, we stopped at every visitor center that we happened upon and asked them what they recommended we see in the area. In West Texas we stopped at a really excellent museum that was dedicated to the 40 year period of the great cattle drives after the Civil War. It was tremendously interesting, we learned a lot about the cattle drive era, and I’m sure we will be back to learn even more about this period.

       http://www.thewildwest.org/cowboys/wildwestcowboyfacts/230-cattledrivestraildrives

      We stopped in El Paso for a couple of days. El Paso is a true border town. Mexico is so close you can throw a rock across the Rio Grande River and have it land on solid ground. The Mexican side of the river is lower in elevation than the American side so it’s easy to look across and see the neighborhoods closest to the river. The difference between the two countries is astounding. While we were there I got a chance to play a round of golf in the famous West Texas wind. I expected the day to be a disaster, but I had one of my best rounds ever. I love those days.

      Crossing southern New Mexico we stopped for a couple of hours at a mining ghost town. It’s the only thing at an off ramp on the I-10 freeway. There is nothing else for miles. The whole place is privately owned and is being run by a girl in her early 20’s, by herself, because nobody else in her family wants to live there. We found that to be a uniquely American story.

      In Tucson, Arizona we stayed at the nicest RV Park we have been in so far. Some of the RV spots had private Jacuzzis right on the site. I also had a chance to get another round of golf in. Happy days.

      By the time we got to Yuma, AZ we were so anxious to get back to California that we only stayed 2 days instead of the planned 4 and spent the other 2 days in San Diego. From there it was "home" to the RV Park just north of Temecula that we started from.

      So now lap number one around the country is officially in the books. We had a great time and enjoyed every minute. We started on 04/04/04 and returned on October 27th. That is REALLY FAST for as far as we went. And we never want to go that fast again. But I'm glad to report that Cindi and I spent every minute together in our little tin can and never once got tired of each other’s company. We are very happy together and can't wait to start lap number two in April. Living in such a small space has been really easy. It’s such a carefree life style.

      Lap number one took six months...

      we went 13,838 miles, the largest single chunk was to Alaska and back,

      Cindi drove every single mile,

      we

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