I’m sorry that I’m behind on posting, here is a Readers Digest version.
The Big Adventure has left the holding pattern. During the break Kari and I had a couple minor adventures. We made a couple trips to the cabin between here PT sessions landing at Silty Slough International. Her knee was coming along great and her PT therapist was talking about PT being finished. That was until she decided to go moose hunting, jumped into an airboat and injured it. She went to the doctor on Sept. 19 and he was not happy. He said from now on his discharge instructions should read “No moose hunting.” He just glared at me like I made her go moose hunting with me. I don’t even hunt. I’m too lazy to hunt, it is too much work after you shoot something. Kari just sat there and let me take the heat. The Dr. said for her to go home put the straight brace on, leave it on, and rest for two weeks on and come back Oct. 3.
Friday September 7, 2018
On Sep 7 I decided to get on EBay and look for a different truck. I found a 2014 GMC Sierra in Tennessee. I called the owner, talked about it, and made a deposit. He agreed to hold it for me for two weeks until I could get down there. My friend and neighbor at the cabin Roger Phillips had already volunteered to go with me for the drive back from Indiana after Kari recovered. I don’t think he planned on all the logistics to follow. The plan was to fly from Anchorage Thursday morning spend the day in Seattle with maybe a Boeing factory tour or a trip to Grizzly Industrial in Bellingham to fondle all of the tools and machinery there. Then we were going to take the non stop to Cincinnati at 1130pm. We will be traveling on passes, me as a retiree and Roger on a buddy pass. Since I retired my boarding priority had gone from the top of the heap to the bottom of the barrel. There has to be an empty seat to get on the flight. I don’t understand why Delta wants to take all of the paying passengers first. Once again I like the socialists approach that the government should pay for everyone to fly for free and since it is free Roger and I would like to be in first class.
Wednesday September 19, 2018
Wednesday afternoon I flew out to the airstrip at Bentalit Lodge that is close to Roger and his wife Myra’s house. It is short and narrow for my Bush pilot experience so I made one trip to bring Myra to town to do some business then took her home and picked up Roger.
Thursday September 20, 2018
Roger and I got up at 3am and drove 50 miles into the airport. We were planning on the 6am flight to Seattle but no seats. We hang around for the next Seattle flight still no seats. So we decide to go back home and take a nap. I think we went back to the airport to try for the 9pm to Minneapolis, but no chance.
Friday September 21, 2018
I checked the loads last night. The 6 am to Seattle and Minneapolis look bad so we sleep in. We showed up for the 1pm flight to Seattle no chance, 3pm flight no better. Back home. I couldn’t tell Roger that there were seats on the 6 am flight that I decided not to try for. I didn’t follow my non rev rule, if you are not at the airport you will never get on. Back to the airport to try for the 9pm to Minneapolis, no chance. We hang out for the 1am flight to Seattle. Chance
Saturday September 22, 2018
The plan now is to go Anchorage-Seattle-Minneapolis-Cincinnati. Plenty of seats showing on all flights. The reason Cincinnati is that I left a Jeep airport car that Jeremy and I share in the DHL pilot parking lot on another adventure in May. I’m pretty sure it has been towed but I need to go check. Jeremy would like it in Atlanta when he goes for 757/767 training in October. We got on the flight to Seattle and arrived about 5am. The flight to Minneapolis has filled up so we elect to go to Atlanta and plan to fly back to Cincinnati. Same tune again, we arrive in ATL in the afternoon the Cincinnati flight is full so we change to a flight to Indianapolis. Arrive in Indy rent a car and drive to Cincinnati. We checked into the Holiday Inn at the airport and drive over to check on the Jeep. The Jeep is right where I left it. I unlocked the door with a spare key that I wasn’t sure if it was the correct one or not when I left home. I left the other set in North Judson since I was sure I would be returning there when my truck was repaired.
The interior light came on, a good sign. The battery was too weak to turn the engine over. A trip to “The Wall Mart” and a cheap set of jumper cables did the trick. We turned the rental in car and headed back to the hotel. It has been a very long day. Thank you Lord for a safe trip!
I’m happy to be finished with air travel for this adventure. I was telling Roger about a pilot that I was in training with on the 747-200. He would go home to Utah and hobo on freight trains all around the West. I Googled it, there is a whole culture of hoboes that post there adventures. If we had a train from Alaska to the lower 48 I would try it. Anybody up for an adventure? For now Roger and I will just have to be Sky Hoboes.
Sunday September 23, 2018
The plan is to drive the Jeep to Chattanooga today, pick up my new truck tomorrow, drive both to Atlanta, drop off the Jeep for Jeremy and then drive the new truck north. Sounds reasonable, but I have Google, I know everything. So I was thinking….I know working without tools again. There is a van that goes from the Atlanta airport to Chattanooga every hour. Its quicker than flying. So we are going to save a day and drive the Jeep all the way from Cincinnati to Atlanta today and take the van back to Chattanooga. Good plan. We stopped in Chattanooga and dropped our bags at the hotel. It is after noon and we are hungry so we stop at this BBQ joint before we leave Chattanooga. They have license plates from everywhere nailed on the walls. None from Alaska. We tried to trade Jeremy’s Alaska license plate from the Jeep for lunch but they wouldn’t deal. As we were leaving a guy noticed the plate on the Jeep and asked if it was for real. I said it was a rental. “Oh”
Traffic is really bad in Atlanta and this is Sunday afternoon. Another reason we like Alaska. Roger says that our population density is 1 person per square mile. I think I have some extras in my square mile. The sad thing is the extras probably voted for Lisa Murkowski after she lost in the primary and did a write in sham to get elected to the senate as an Independent Democrat.
We dropped the Jeep off, took Uber over to the airport, caught the van with one minute to spare and headed for Chattanooga. I was paying for our ride at the van terminal and arranging for Uber to our hotel. Roger was having a smoke and figured out that we could have parked the Jeep there for up to 30 days. Jeremy could have picked up the Jeep on his way to training. But we would have missed the drive to Atlanta and the van ride back and would have the $88 van fare and gas money to spend on wine. It has been a long day, but I’m sleeping with one eye open. I think Roger wants to kill me.
Monday September 24, 2018
The guy I’m buying the truck from picked us up at the hotel and drove us to his place in Cleveland, TN. We looked it over really good and it looks OK. We take it for a test drive. I can’t believe how much nicer it is than my 2006 truck that’s back in the shop in Indiana. We finalize the deal. He is a private seller so he doesn’t have temporary license plate for us. We try at the DMV but they want to charge sales tax. I try at a used car dealer but he can’t so we head up I-75 for the Holiday Inn Express at Tipp City, OH. I made an appointment to have the truck rustproofed at Krown Oil Rustproofing in Anna, OH at noon tomorrow. Roger is on his phone setting up a family get together tomorrow evening. Pretty good day except for the rain.
I’ll be in touch.
Thank you Lord for another safe day!
Blue skies!!
I’ll take a break from the posting for now.
Tuesday September 25, 2018
Sep 25 Tues. This morning we can sleep in a bit. Breakfast at Cracker Barrel. There is a tool place in Troy OH that I want to stop at and lead Roger astray. I know Kari has paid him a wad of money in advance to keep me out of those kind of places, so he has some spendable cash for tools.
We head on up to Anna, OH for the rustproofing. The owner there is very nice and wants to know all about Alaska. They did an excellent job. We continued on to Findlay OH and I was asking Roger about a hotel that I stayed at when I was in high school. It was my first flight on an airliner. We went from Indianapolis to Philadelphia and picked up a Cessna 172 that Skinny Long had bought. Stopped in Findlay on the way back. The hotel is gone but a gas station is there with the same name.
We checked into the Holiday Inn Express and found a couple tool stores. The evening get together was fun meeting all of Rogers family. About 20 showed up on short notice, pretty good. We parked right out in front of the police station then remembered we didn’t have any license plates. Rogers daughter and family followed us back to the hotel and continued the visit. Short day today. Short drive. Time for a nap.
Thank you Lord for family and friends.
Wednesday September 26, 2018
We are up early and ready to go. Roger knows all the back roads in this area so we avoid all the town cops since we don’t have any license plates. We took a short side trip and stopped by a vocational high school that Roger graduated from. His picture was on the wall of fame but they remodeled and the person that knew where everything was had the day off. We ended up on the Ohio Turnpike at Bryan, OH. I remembered a RV Surplus place at White Pigeon, MI that I wanted to stop at. They had all kinds of treasures for sale. Aluminum sheets and extrusions, you name it. We have a truck with a short bed no trailer yet. We must come back. On to North Judson and the Long’s. They are away when we arrive so we throw a couple loads of laundry in. Jim will never know and won’t add it to our bill. I need to pick up my old truck but don’t want to go up to the Region without plates. Come to think of it that is a common thing in the Region. Anyway we need to get some supplies to install a boiler for Jim, so we incorporate a ride to Crown Point into the trip. The boiler place is closing first so we stop there. Turns out the guy that is helping us has a cabin not too far from us at Talkeetna, Alaska and was just up there last week. Small world. He was probably one of the paying passengers that got our seat on the airplane on our way down. On the way home we met Sue and the Blocks for fish at LaCrosse. Back to the Long’s for a Baileys and a nap.
Thursday September 27, 2018
Sep 27 Thur We are up early again. First we need to go to the NAPA store for breakfast. Jim usually doesn’t go out for breakfast because it takes too much time. I usually need something from NAPA every morning and swing by the Blue Jay Cafe or Fingerhut bakery for breakfast. Rod and I did the same thing when we were here last month. Roger and I visited with our friends at NAPA. After that I can’t account for the rest of the day. I think we went to Mark Bailey’s to look for more treasures to take back to Alaska. We started to work on the boiler. Roger can’t figure out how he got roped into installing a boiler. I can’t figure out how either of us did, but I guess it will go toward our lodging bill. The install is going pretty good. I’m glad Roger is here, he made it go fast. We did as much as we could today. We had to order a pump yesterday that will be in tomorrow. Mark is going to pick it up. We are joining him and his family for dinner. It is good to get to see our granddaughters again. Back to Long’s for a nap.
Friday September 28, 2018
Sep 28 Fri We went to NAPA for breakfast and got a compression gauge to verify that the compression in the trucks #3 cylinder was 0 and it was. After checking further we think it is an exhaust valve. I didn’t want to work on the truck anymore that’s why I bought the newer one. But I need to do something with the old one. It is worthless the way it is now.
After much thought and loss of sleep I have come up with a plan to recoup my expenses for the truck repairs and possibly turn a reasonable profit. As soon as the truck is repaired I am going to order another trailer and go to Georgia to pick it up. I need to find somewhere that sells plastic straws that are made in America. Hopefully I can go direct to the factory to pick them up.. Then I’m going to head for California where they are illegal. A trailer load of illegal plastic straws should bring a pretty penny on the black market. Anyone up for an adventure? Any investors?
After I sell the straws. I don’t want to go to Alaska with an empty trailer. I was thinking about going down to the border. I figured since ICE wasn’t using all those cages anymore I could buy them surplus. I’m always looking for a deal. It turns out they don’t have any, the cages were another fake thing that shows a little boy in a blue shirt in a cage in a studio. There were only a couple cages for photo props. Anyway if there had been cages I was going to haul them to Alaska, catch some bears and haul them down to the animal rights people so they can learn about bears first hand. Then maybe they will quit trying to tell us what to do with them up here in Alaska.
Then I was thinking the next time I go to New Hampshire I could take a load of 32 ounce plastic cups and sell them in New York. I’ll have to be careful there, the Mafia may already be in that gig.
I need to quit daydreaming and get to work on the boiler before Roger fires me. We must be doing a good job. Jim cooked us a great steak dinner.
Saturday September 29, 2018
This adventure is dragging. Time to head north tomorrow. We loaded our treasures in the trailer. Roger worked on the boiler and I worked on taking the valve cover off the right side of the truck engine. Late in the day we were ready to test the boiler out but only got it to fire one time. We have had enough fun for the day so it is time for dinner and a nap.
I’ll be in touch.
Thank you Lord for another good day!
Blue skies!!
Sunday September 30, 2018
Sep 30 Sun. North bound and down, we’ll sort of. We woke up early, packed our bags, and loaded the final things in the trailer. Roger got the boiler going, but we told Jim to cut some wood just in case. Jim and Sue were at a pancake breakfast so we took off without paying our lodging bill. I need some things at the RV surplus place in White Pigeon, MI now that we have the trailer. It’s only a hundred or so miles or so out of the way. It is a short day and we are invited to Mark’s for a late lunch and visit with the granddaughters. We have a room reserved at Wisconsin Dells for the night. Going to meet our good friend and neighbor on the river, Al Gaszak. The trailer is putting a dent in our fuel mileage. We were getting 22 mpg without it, now pulling an extra 10,000 pounds we are getting 11 mpg. I bought some aluminum extrusions at the surplus place to mount the solar panels. Rod and I purchased some unistrut earlier in New Hampshire but these will work better. They are 24 feet long and fit into the trailer nicely. We are on the road again for Valparaiso and lunch. Mark cooks a lot using the Sous Vide method. You vacuum seal the meat and put it in a tank that has an electric heater with a very accurate temperature controller. You can cook beef at 138 degrees for hours and it never gets over medium. The long cook time makes it tender. Costco burgers were the best ever. I want to try it with an aquarium when I get home. Do you think 138 degrees will kill the fish? After the meal I need a nap, but we get on the road again and soon we are in downtown Chicago. Traffic isn’t too terrible but not what we are used to in Alaska. In a couple days we will be back on the Alcan and the traffic will subside. A few hours and we are at our hotel in the Dells, Al is there and we have a good visit. We plan on breakfast at Crackerbarrel in the morning. Time for a nap.
I’ll be in touch.
Thank you Lord for a good trip and good friends!!
Blue skies!!!
October 1, 2018
Wisconsin Dells-Minot ND. We are up early to meet Al for breakfast at Cracker Barrel. We had a good visit and now it’s time to head North. We pass Camp Douglas and Volk Field. I ferried a 747 once in there in the middle of the night. We made a stop at Tomah to visit a Papa Murphy’s that Roger built. We couldn’t leave without a container of unbaked cookie dough. I highly recommend it. Kari and I had stopped next door on a previous trip for coffee. I also slept in my truck in the Walmart parking lot just down the street on a couple other trips. Small world.
One thing we have noticed since we started driving in Indianapolis many days ago, every town we went through almost every factory and business had big help wanted signs. These were good jobs, machinists, welders, you name it. It is amazing what a tax cut will do for jobs. Some of the jobs interested me, but I wouldn’t want to work for any of these rich business owners that were the only ones to benefit from the tax cuts. It would only make them richer. I will just stay where I am, do with less, buy a few less bottles of wine, and less tools. I really don’t need the health insurance and 401k benefits that a lot of these jobs offer. I have Medicare but that is another post.
Then I got to thinking about the big corporations that got a huge tax cut. After I thought about it…..corporations don’t pay any taxes at all anyway. When you buy a loaf of bread, an airline ticket, a new car, who do you think is paying the taxes. You don’t think Ford or GM the airline or Walmart just magically pulls some money out of the hat for taxes to keep the government running do you? You.. we the end user pays all taxes. How many times is that loaf of bread taxed? From the farmer that grows the grain, but before that the fuel that he uses. Before that the tax that the tax the State of Alaska charges the oil companies for our oil. (Thank you by the way to all you want to be socialist, every time you fill up your car think of me, you are helping to pay me to live in Alaska and to keep our State Income Tax 0%. I like certain aspects of this socialism thing as long as it benefits me. Please let me know before you run out of money so I can come up with another plan.) The delivery of the grain to the mill. That guys taxes. The wrapper that the bread is in. The payroll tax for the grocer. Property taxes for the bakery and the store. Oh, I forgot about Social Security and Medicare Tax. It goes on and on and on. I’m just guessing that about 90% of the price you pay for that loaf of bread is taxes. Not only that, you are buying the bread with your after tax dollars unless you are on some type of assistance and then the other tax payers pay for that too. So any tax cut at any level is good for almost everybody.
Ok less thinking and back to the trip. On to Fleet Farm at Hudson, WI for fuel. There is a great German restaurant here but we do want to take the time out of our busy day to stop. I always say “Stick with the fat boys we know where to eat.” There is a used tool place, Tried and True Tools in Minneapolis that I would like to visit, but since I didn’t take one of those jobs from the rich company, I don’t have any spare change for tools. On to Fargo and another stop at Fleet Farm, their fuel isn’t any cheaper but they give you a free bag of popcorn with a fill up.
Time to head North to Grand Forks. I put on my tour guide hat now as we pass the tallest structure in America. KVLY-TV tower at Blanchard, ND. It is clear and we can see it about 15 miles west of the interstate. It is 2063 feet tall. We continue on through Grand Forks and Devils Lake, soon we are at Rugby, ND the 18th largest city in ND, population about 2900. Rugby is famous for being the geographic center of North America. I remember flying out in this area in the early 80s in a Republic Airlines Convair 580. I think the trip went from Minneapolis to Brainerd, to Bemidji, to Thief River Falls, and on to Devils Lake then back the same way all in one day. I remember that Devils Lake had a quonset hut for a terminal. I also remember asking what was at Thief River Falls. Answer… Arctic Industries…. What’s that?…. Arctic Cat snowmobiles…What’s that?….I guess I must have learned by the time I made it to Alaska in 1995. I’m a fast learner. I would like to have a new Arctic Cat snow machine, but that would make one of those big corporations richer and they might give some of my money to the Democrats so I will just ride my Ski-Doo that is made in Canada…that’s right snow mobiles are called snow machines up here. Down south they ask what kind of sled do you ride. Up here a sled is a freight sled that you pull behind a snow machine.
Sorry to get sidetracked reminiscing and educating you outsiders on the proper Alaskan terms. Oh, outside is another one. It is not outdoors, it means you are going outside…leaving the state.
On to Minot and the hotel. There are a couple good tool places here but we are here late and I know Kari is paying Roger to leave early. Time for a nap.
I’ll be in touch.
Thank you Lord for a safe journey!
Blue skies!!!
Tuesday October 2, 2018
Minot ND-Lloydminster AB. We were hungry when we woke up so we headed over to Denny’s. The waitress brought our drinks. Roger and I both said thank you. She replied, “No problem”. We talked about how that just burns our ass, the proper response is, “You’re welcome.” Not, no problem. That insinuates that we may be a problem or it’s a problem for her to wait on us. I guess we are just old school. I thought about putting a big tip on my copy of the credit card receipt so I would feel good about myself. The service was OK so we left her a decent tip anyway. We head north out of Minot and join US 52 for the border. That is the same US 52 that runs through Lafayette, IN. Where I got my first speeding ticket in 1969. While I’m reminiscing, I remember flying the Oak Ridge Boys to Minot to play at the state fair in the early 90’s in a DC-9. It takes about an hour and a half to get to the border. I’ve been through Canadian Customs at least 75 times flying and driving. Normally it is no problem. Where do you live? Do you have any alcohol or fire arms? How long are you going to be in Canada? Are you leaving any goods in Canada? What’s in the trailer? Have a good day, drive safe… and you are on your way. I have crossed at this location at North Portal at least 25 times, no problem. Well once with 2 trucks and trailers and my wife…but that is a whole other post. This time the officer handed our passports back, said to pull the truck and trailer over to a parking spot and come inside. Roger and I are thinking what did we do in our past to be detained. Maybe it was the speeding ticket in 1969, after all we’re on the same highway 52. There was only 1 immigration officer working and about a dozen people waiting, mostly for work permits. We took a number and had a seat, 1 hour goes by and they haven’t called another number, another hour maybe 2 more numbers. Roger and I are now thinking that Nancy Pelosi has leaked some allegations about us after reading some of my previous post. After almost 3 hours our number is up. The agent handed us our passports and said that we checked out and she would need to look in the truck and trailer. We waited inside while she checked our bags in the truck, only opened the front door on the trailer, couldn’t figure how to open the back ramp. She came back in and asked what all that junk was in the trailer. I said it’s not junk, those are treasures. Roger kicked me. Then I told her 75 solar panels, a laser cutter,……. Ok, you are free to go. Drive safe. We are only behind schedule 3 hours. Just across the border is Estevan, billed the “Energy Capitol of Canada”. There are several strip mines along the road with huge shovels, the big ones that you can hide a dump truck in the bucket. One interesting thing is there are power plants very near the mines. What a concept ship the coal anywhere over an electric wire instead of a train. My uncle in Hazard, KY has been in the coal business all of his life. He says burning the coal is the worst thing to do. There are about a hundred different compounds and minerals in the coal that are way more valuable than the BTUs you get from burning coal. Lots of oil wells dot the landscape, squirting oil into the Keystone or some other pipeline headed south. This area is booming from oil for about the next thousand miles until we pass Ft. Nelson, BC.
All of a sudden this thought just shoots into my head. We have just made it across the border into a foreign country that has a booming economy. Help wanted signs all over. There has to be a way I can take advantage of this. Maybe with the free health care I can get my rotator cuff done or surely there has to be some free handouts available. Maybe I can get a job that pays cash and make some tax free money. At least I won’t be contributing to Trumps thriving economy. Yes, the one that Barry is taking credit for now. Barry if you really believe that, your head is so far up your ass you are going to turn yourself inside out. But wait…..Houston we have a problem….we don’t have any children with us to get the free ride ticket. I guess it is on to Alaska and the good life.
On the way we pass through Moose Jaw, Saskatoon, and The Battlefords. All along here are farms, so big you can’t even see how large the really are. There is farm machinery here that makes the Midwest farm equipment look like Tonka Toys. I remember in the late 70s picking up a load of drive shafts in Rockford, IL in a Cessna 310 and taking them to the Stieger Tractor factory in Fargo. Man was that a heavy load. I had never seen such big equipment back then. The big machinery hadn’t made it to the Indiana farms yet. Now you see them in the scrapyards along the way just looking like small toys. Reminds me of Willie Nelson’s “City of New Orleans”. …graveyards of the rusted automobile. Days gone by.
Through The Battlefords, I’m going to Google it sometime and find out why the two towns are called that, then on past a gigantic Husky Oil refinery and into Lloydminster, Alberta. It is right on the border of AB and Saskatchewan. We have a room booked at the Holiday Inn. It is late and we had to hunt around for some food and a couple glasses of wine. I would like to have made into Edmonton, but since Nancy Pelosi delayed us at the border with false allegations this is the best we could do for today. Time for a nap.
I’ll be in touch.
Thank you Lord for keeping us out of jail!
Blue skies!
Something happened to the rest of the post in this adventure. I think FB deleted them because I made a remark about Barry Obama.
The View from the Outhouse 