California, Here We Come

A beautiful day for a road trip

Before we could cue up Willie Nelson and On The Road Again, we had to finalize some equipment.  First, one side of Pooh's windshield had developed two large cracks during the New Jersey rough-road experience back in July, and needed to be replaced.

Pooh gets her right eye replaced

Second, our readers will remember that on two previous excursions, we had major brake failures.  We have been determined to avoid this scenario again, and so we bought an auxiliary braking system for the Geo Tracker.  It sits on the floor in the Tracker, and hooks onto the brake peddle, and basically works by inertia . . . it senses slowing down, and then pushes down on the Tracker brake peddle.  This relieves pressure on the motorhome brakes.  

RVI Brake System

The whole system is simple, and works flawlessly, except for one minor problem.  It needs its own 12V dedicated outlet, and our old, old Tracker couldn't supply the power consistently.   Of course, we did not discover this problem until we had pulled away from the storage lot and headed out onto Ulmerton Road.  Two miles up the road, the auxiliary system beeped that it had lost power.  So, we pulled over, reset the thing, and scratched our heads as to what happened.  After it happened a second time, we returned to the storage lot to consult with our excellent mechanic Ken (whose owns the storage lot and has his auto repair shop there). 

Ken took pity on our predicament, and installed new wiring and a dedicated 12V outlet right on the spot.  But, the whole procedure delayed us by about 3 hours, and we did not pull out of Pinellas County until about noon.  But leave Pinellas County we did ... with the wind at our backs and the Ipod set to lots of twangy country music, we finally headed for California.

We know the route by heart:  go north on I-75 to the Santa Monica Freeway (otherwise known as I-10), and head west.   On The Road Again faded into California, Here I Come and Pooh started making tracks again.