Day 248 Still in Austin

 It has been raining on Stephanie and Maggie most of the time since they left Florida and today was not different.  Everyone was busy at work which the rain encouraged. There some stress in the morning as we tried to sort out the warranty before the repair people showed up.

After lunch, we got a call and the Saturday repair guy said that he couldn't come Saturday (what was dispatch thinking) but would come in the evening. Dispatch noted that they couldn't promise they would have parts etc. but would do what they could.

At 3.00 the "late next week" place called to day they had a cancelation and could be by at 3.30, (and they had promised parts in stock). So we said sure!!

Three and a half hours later, the persistent, stalwart, problem solving, heroic repair men had replaced the burned out motor, discovered that the whole slide out had been racked and out of alignment probably for a year and we suspect made the warranty company very unhappy with their report (there were a lot of pictures spent and quite some time on the phone).

This is not making us feel warm and fuzzy about the dealer who sold us the RV with the arbitrarily large number of inspection points. No doubt more on that later. We will be scheduling what will probably be a multi-month repair in June...

Had a lovely dinner with our hosts, who continue to be awesomely generous and nice given that we managed to break down on their lawn and invited ourselves to a more extended stay than planned.

It continues to rain buckets.

Day 247 - Austin

 We spent rather a lot of the morning troubleshooting and hunting up mobile repair units (overnight, morning, and poking at it did not solve the problem.  After many, many phone calls we got a vague, see you "late next week", a firm "see you Saturday", and a number of if you can drive it it, we can get to it around May 22nd (or 25th).

So feeling that we were not going to be stuck there forever, and with very gracious hosts, we got some work done and Maggie helped groom the horses.

I scheduled a Lyft way ahead of time for our next dinner appointment in Austin with the nephews, but the Lyft driver bailed on us, 10 minutes out. And then there were no more cars. 

Our saintly host offered to drive us in, and we had a great Texas BBQ dinner. Lyft did come through for the ride home.

Earlier in the trip it was easy (and inexpensive) to rent a car when we didn\"t want to drag the RV around. This has changed. Rental cars, if available, are now expensive. It also turns out that "if available" mostly means not available. Try again in a week or two. Apparently during the plague, all the rental companies sold off lots of their fleets to raise cash, and now don\"t have cars, can\"t buy new ones (chip shortage limiting car production) and demand has soared....  

This also applies to Uber and Lyft we have discovered. much harder to find and more expensive as lots of drivers left, and now suddenly there is great demand.

Still stuck in the front yard....

Day 245 Austin

Today we go to visit a friend from second grade whom I found on the interwebs. Since we still remembered each other from all that time ago, and they graciously said we could park in their driveway, we went for a visit. 

We were meeting friends who had moved from Tahoe for dinner, but we stopped in in the afternoon to have a chat and make sure we were not fumbling around in the dark.

We had a great reunion, and had fun getting reacquainted. Then we pushed out the slide out to get at dinner cloths, and then discovered that it would not go back in. oops. "Austin, we've had a problem".

There was just time to get a Lyft into town, so we did that and had a great dinner catching up with our friends. Then we Lyfted back.  

The morning will tell if this is a big problem or a little problem.....  

Day 244 - San Antonio - Medina River Winery

Mostly today was another work day. We moved at noon from Hidden Valley RV Park to our Harvest Host, Medina River Winery. 

Its a very small winery, but it had really awesome (for Harvest Host) parking with electric and water! 

We tasted a selection of wines, bought four bottles and enjoyed the vista of the wheat field behind us.

Day 243 - San Antonio

Today was a work day. The weather was nice, warm with a good breeze. Tyler and Maggie did school work. There was a bike ride to the grocery store. Maggie played with a very well trained dog. 

Paul and Stephanie went to a lot of meetings and worked on work projects.

I don't think we even bothered to take any interesting pictures. Sometimes you just need to get stuff done and you are in a nice place to do it.

Day 242 - Houston to San Antonio

 Picking up on the current day and working both forward and backwards as it is day 242 and I am on day ~10 working backwards.

We stayed overnight at the Lake Charles East KOA, which was a no-frills campground, which is what we needed for a stop. Had dinner and had a fairly early night after roughly four hour total travel from New Orleans.  Louisiana has a lot of wet land. We saw a fair bit of Hurricane damage.

We broke camp by 10.30 and headed through Houston. Along the way we decided that maybe Sam's Club for petrol wasn't a horrible idea to add to the cheaper fuel arsenal. While I was looking, I found a $45 gift card offer from Sam's which would make the Membership roughly free. And if that didn't work for some reason, it was 5 tanks to profit. And there isn't a Costco everywhere you need one.

Most of the trip I spent trying to figure out where to stay next few days while juggling visiting friends and relatives and figuring out where everyone is located. AllStays again is the winner app.

We have two days at the next stop, so hopefully will get some work and school work done as well as visiting a Great Aunt in San Antonio.

Day 241 - New Orleans

 After a nice breakfast we left the New Orleans RV Resort exactly at checkout (11 AM) and headed to Costco to get gas and have an extended shopping excursion while we met my friend Mordi from grad school (his undergrad). 

We had sort of pinged each other over the years but not had an extensive conversation. Ironically roughly the year he graduated was the year I hurt my back and he was super helpful in finding me a local surgeon (as he grew up in La Jolla) and was important in getting me fixed then. Now 30 years later its my neck and I'm about in as bad a shape as then....

We had a fantastic lunch at Tal's Hummis and tried to sort of catch up on three decades of activity. At least it was a good attempt! We got to meet each other's families and discover that between the four adults, at least, we had a lot of nibbling at the edges of each other's professional activity which was very cool. Also some catching up on what we had heard from other alumni friends.

Mordi had long ago sent us a box of Mardi Gras beads when the kids were little and they are still floating around the house and getting used from time to time for dress up or costumes. 

After lunch we Lyfted back (Uber was congested), enjoyed seeing another neighborhood and the great architecture along the boulevard. Then we finished our shopping at Costco. And then it was time to say goodbye to New Orleans and start the treck to Texas!

Day 240 - New Orleans City Tour

  Today is Hop-on-Hop off Bus day. Since Paul can\"t walk very far, we figured this was the only way we were going to get to see the city. Happily the main office and stop 5 was a reasonable walk from the RV park, so after a quick hot tub to get limbered up (mostly Paul) we made the 10.30 bus. (Its a 1.5 hour tour not counting getting off, so we figured that was about right.)

The tour went thorough the French Quarter, the Garden District, Downtown, the Irish Canal, and the borders of a few other neighborhoods. It was only the second day that the bus tour was up and running which was lucky for us. You could tell, the tree libs kept hitting the bus since it hadn't trimmed them in a year...

The view from the top of the double decker bus was great, you could see down the side streets. I won\"t recount the history here (at least now) but we learned a lot about the city. We went through the site of the 1984 World\"s Fair which was the last time I was in New Orleans. It was the rundown part of town then, now the trendy old warehouse turned into expensive loft condos area now.  My family took the train from St Louis to go to the fair. Apparently they are going to try and increase the train service again now...

We stopped for lunch at the stop we were told had the most restaurants. The Vintage looked like it was serving what we wanted, so we stopped there. We were not disappointed. Side walk dining, great sandwiches, gator poppers, beignets. A classic New Orleans experience. 

Then back on the bus to finish our tour. As my son had managed not to pack any nice pants, and we had noticed the outlet mall on the bus tour, we went back to achieve that shopping chore. Amazingly we found some that fit fairly painlessly. And a we got to gaze at the mighty Mississippi, which we had last seen when it was a fairly short crossing by bridge that we almost missed noticing. 

Our RV site came with a gazebo so we made good use of it for dinner and then crashed.

Day 239 - New Orleans - The French Quarter

We left the KOA near the airport for our Harvest Host Brewery stop. It had been suggested by the KOA that we stop at the Dot's Dinner just down the street (which we discovered was owned by the same family that had the KOA) and it being a classic dinner and we were hungry, seemed like a good plan.

It was pretty much everything we expected, service was friendly, food was classic dinner, ambience was the same. As a bonus we profitably used the time until we could check in at our next spot.

Then we headed for our Harvest Host, Faubourg Brewing Co., a brewery by the river, and it turned out near the Folger's Coffee plant (smelled great!). It was a large brewery, big tasting room, big outside venue for music, nice big parking lot with an RV section. Two downsides, Verizon had no bars of data, and the brewery wifi was down, due to storms. As we had homework and work to do, that wasn't not going to do it. Also, despite being told we could get in and out (At least for a an Uber after 8 PM) but we could not see how that worked. So we moved to plan B/C which turned out to be the expensive RV Resort in the French quarter. That turned out to be the place we wanted to be as it was close to everything and Paul's mobility was pretty limited.

After getting set up, we made reservations at Broussard's, a classic New Orleans restaurant where we made sure we had the full Cajun cuisine treatment. The food was excellent, it was a bit cold for the courtyard but the dining room was very fancy.

Afterwards we walked down Bourbon Street, found both the hotel that my parents and I stayed at when we visited for the World's Fair and Pat O'Brian's where my parents bought me my first (legal purchased) drink. A hurricane. They did not appear to be open when we walked by (as in just closed).

So we continued along Bourbon Street, which was full of people doing what people do on Bourbon Street which slightly scandalized the children, not being used to Fraternity Row about midnight.  We went along about 4-5 blocks to soak up the ambience. Then the kids said we could go home, anytime.

As I was still hobbling along on my walking stick dodging drunk people, I, at about block 5 said, okay, time to call the Uber.  We called, no Uber. Lyft! I said. No Lyft.  Well I said, if we get off of Bourbon Street a few blocks we will have more luck....

5 blocks toward the RV park and still nothing.  10 blocks still nothing, well, maybe in 21 minutes. At this point, we were only 0.3 miles or so from the RV park, and I declared that I was not too tired to keep going. Maggie was providing stability on my left and I had my walking stick on my right. So what if I was pretty much still using a walker a week or two ago, what's a few more blocks.

It took a while but we passed the Covenant House that I had seen earlier, and the police station, and the train station, and I knew we were kind of close, then I saw the building under construction next to us and we were home free.

It was after 11, and that was probably as far as I had walked in the last month in total in an evening, but there we go! Success!! A great evening.

Day 238 - Reno to New Orleans - Family Reunion

Having received grudging clearance from my Neurologist to continue the trip, and a welcome ride to the airport from a friend, Tyler and I hop a plane from Reno to New Orleans. The wheel chair drivers were very nice, Southwest was great about getting me on the plane. The trip passed without much incident.  We arrived at the shiny new New Orleans airport, got our Uber to the KOA I found near the airport, and after three weeks had a family reunion.

Lake Tahoe from the air...

South Lake Tahoe from 20,000 feet

South Lake Tahoe (in the distance) from 7,260' "Where the rest of the Snow is" (tm)

We ordered pizza. and got ready for our big adventure in New Orleans. 

Day 237 - Florida to New Orleans

This is a stub, Stephanie and Maggie had three weeks traveling without the author.

I'll  have to recreate this section this from their Facebook posts. But not today.