Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Yesterday, Lisa got out the torque wrench and tighten the lug nuts on the spare tire for the Rolling Stone and then lowered it off the jack. Some of you may remember that we had a tire more or less shred itself (I think we were lucky to get home) and that we had put the spare on. We did not lower the jack, planning to replace the tire soon (we did not). In light of my minivan being in the shop in Sparks, we figured we might be able to use the RV to take us back and forth; however, it looks like the tires have other ideas.

The spare was clearly low on air. Lisa measured it at 50 psi when the rated pressure should be 80 psi. So we drove the RV (not exceeding 25 mph) over to Pilot. There we found that their air pump cannot fill tires above 70 psi, and after $2 and five minutes, it wouldn't even get to 60 psi. We gingerly made our way home, and Lisa looked more closely at all of the tires.

( Not Ideal )

These tires are sufficiently old, and the sun sufficiently hard on tires even when you don't drive the vehicle this often, that Lisa says we should not drive the RV very far, and when we do we should do so at low speeds. This means we'll need to replace five tires (including the spare). I'm leaning toward trying to buy tires from TireRack.com (which has a warehouse at the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Park, with a discount for picking up from their will-call), and then have the tires mounted by a shop locally. There are several tire shops around us here, so we just need to ask them if they'll mount tires that we bring them and how much they would charge.

Our first choice would have been Hanneman Service, but their tire-mounting machine is broken and they do not intend to fix it as it's not part of their core service these days. I'd rather give the money to people with whom I've worked before and who I trust, but we'll see if one of the other shops (one of which is within walking distance) will do the work.

So I reckon we're looking at around another $1000 in vehicle work. Tires are expensive, and getting more expensive. On the bright side, TireRack.com does show you the country of origin of each kind of tire, although you can't filter by it, so you have to look at each tire's entry. It's better than just taking pot-luck at the tire store.

Nevada requires vehicle owners to replace their license plates periodically, and this year is the year for which the Rolling Stone was due.

( Old and New )

Yesterday, I installed the new rear plate (applying the registration sticker to the new plate, of course). I tried to install the front plate, but I couldn't get the screws holding it in place to come out. When Lisa is on her feet again, we'll try again, as we think it's going to require getting under the RV and reaching in behind the bumper to hold a nut in place.

Today, Lisa and I removed the damaged tire from the Rolling Stone. Lisa plied the tire wrench and I jacked the RV up high enough to remove it. This is the first time that I've ever had to remove one of the tires myself with the jack stored underneath the sofa-bed in the RV.

( One Bad Tire )

None of the other wheels show any significant wear. I'm concerned about such incredibly uneven wear, so once we have the tire back on, I plan to take the RV into Sparks to have them check out the suspension and alignment.

As we were starting for home on Friday afternoon, convoying because we'd collected the Astro from the latest round of air-conditioning repair (which is still holding as of Sunday, thank goodness), Lisa reported an issue with the Rolling Stone. She was driving the Astro and we communicated using our amateur radios. Lisa informed me that the right rear tire seemed to have a large bald spot on it. Had it been before closing time at Big O Tires (it was not), we would have gone there to see if they could replace the tire right away, but in this case, we just went home. I kept my speed down to 65 mph, but I generally do that anyway because the RV does not handle that well above that speed.

We forgot to check the tire when we got home, and on Saturday morning, I went to refuel it before gasoline prices go up again. While doing so, I checked the tire, and I was horrified at what I saw.

( That's Not Good )

Our plan is to replace this tire with the spare, then take the ruined tire back to Big O in the Astro and have them replace it. (With gas prices increasing again, the 20 mpg Astro is a better vehicle for this than the 8 mpg RV.) It might even be covered by their warranty.

I'm just happy that the tire didn't suffer a catastrophic failure while we were on I-80 between Reno and Fernley.

Yesterday I was able to get away from Day Jobbe just after 1 PM, which is good because we had a bunch of errands in Reno-Sparks, many of which had to be done before 5 PM.

( Here, There, and Everywhere )

I wish that we'd paid closer attention to the hand-truck we'd purchased from Grainger. As we removed it from the van, we realized that one of its wheels was bent. And even closer examination showed that it was really flimsy: far more so than we expected, and certainly not something that we'd feel comfortable using for its purpose of moving heavy propane bottled. Maybe on a smooth floor within a warehouse, but not pushing it down the street for the 1 km or so to the place we buy propane. So this afternoon about 12:30, we made another trip to Sparks, this time just to return the cart. The folks at Grainger were very nice about it. They acknowledged that when all you have to go on is the picture on the website, it's hard to tell what the item really is like, and so they processed the return without question.

I had an appointment for a haircut at 3 PM today, so we needed to go home again right away. Fortunately, Grainger is in the Sparks industrial area on the east side of town, so it's much easier than if they were in South Reno or something like that. We got back home at 2:30, and I had plenty of time to walk to my barber's shop and get my hair trimmed.

There are still a bunch of things I need to do, and a rapidly-decreasing amount of time to get them done, but we'll get there in the end.

Today, Lisa and I started the day recording the talk-to-camera portions of the next episode of Railway Legends, Myths and Stories. Our plan was to do the recording in the wee hours of the morning when it was cool enough that we could turn off all of the fans. Accordingly, I went to bed before 6 PM last night. At somewhere around 11:30 or so, my phone blew up on my bedside with an Amber alert down in Las Vegas. I guess all of Nevada is considered to be Las Vegas. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't able to get back to sleep, so after more than an hour of tossing and turning, I got up and started my day hours early.

For a variety of reasons having to do with trying to get computers and backup devices configured, we didn't get started recording as early as we had hoped, but we did manage to get it done just before sunrise. I got breakfast from the Wigwam and got ready for a meeting of CanSMOF. Not too long thereafter, I got a call from the auto repair shop in Reno that was working on the RV. They said that they had managed to replace the catalytic converter that someone sawed off the Rolling Stone, we suspect when we were gone for nearly the entire month of December for Worldcon. We could come and pick it up today. I checked with Lisa, and she agreed that we could go do it today and probably get a few other errands done.

The board meeting and the additional meeting of those of us who will be at Chicon 8 went longer than planned. We did not get away from the house until after Noon, which was annoying. After a short stop at Staples to turn in more empty ink cartridges from the Westercon printing (they limit you to ten cartridge returns per month, so we've been slowly trickling them back into the system), we drove to the auto repair shop and I paid the $1400 repair bill. We then convoyed over to near the air conditioning place that had worked on the Astro, as I'm hoping that the repairs are under warranty, as it seems unlikely that the coolant should be gone already less than two months after they repaired the system. The AC shop isn't open on weekends, but I'd spoken to them about this last week, and they have a night drop. Because of the way the streets are configured around that area, Lisa stayed with the RV and I drove the minivan over to the AC shop. After dealing with a phone call that I got just as I was parking at the shop, I filled out the paperwork and dropped the envelope with a set of keys to the Astro into the night drop slot and walked back over to the RV and Lisa.

We had a "birthday discount" coupon from Cost Plus World Market, so we went there next for some shopping that took longer than expected because there were a lot more people in the store than we thought there would be. Eventually the queue cleared and we were able to check out, and we thanked the checker for still wearing a face mask and told her not to take any guff from anti-maskers.

Next was Action Camera, where Lisa looked for some things she wants for the Worldcon trip to go with the equipment she'll be using to record the Worldcon Business Meeting. She didn't find what she wanted, so we'll have to see if we can find it online and get it here in time. We leave for Chicago two weeks from today.

Our final planned stop was grocery shopping at Raley's, but the accumulated delays were too much for us. Both of us were beat, and we agreed to cut the trip short and head home. At least the air conditioning on the Rolling Stone works. The trip into Reno in the un-air-conditioned minivan was unpleasant.

Waiting in the mail for us today was the postage order, so we should be able to finish up the last of the Westercon program book mailing tomorrow and get it into the mail by Monday. I'm glad that I don't have another early morning alarm set for tomorrow.

I seemed to have working air conditioning in the Astro on the drive home, but as of yesterday, there was nothing. I don't know how that happened; presumably another coolant leak developed, somehow. After work, I determined that I did not have enough envelopes to complete the Westercon 74 program book mailing. Inasmuch as I had a substantial Staples store credit (for all of the stuff we bought pre-Westercon) and also today was unexpectedly cool and rainy, I decided that I'd better make the trip to Reno now, before it heats back up again tomorrow. I don't know when I'll get a chance to get he minivan back into the shop, though, as the Rolling Stone is still in a shop in Reno waiting for a replacement catalytic converter.

As I mentioned, when we finally got the Astro from the air conditioning repair shop, we traded them the Rolling Stone, as its AC was also shot. The initial estimate was similar to the Astro's. Today, however, they called me back to tell me the bad news: as they started working on it, they found lots of little bits of metal in the pipes, which was an indication that the system was more or less shredding itself. Replacing the compressor and all of the other affected hardware is a lot of parts and a lot of labor. The new total estimate is $2900.

They started talking about rushing things to get it out sooner, and I told them to do the opposite. I don't need the RV just now, an I'm leaving for Tonopah a week from tomorrow for a trip that will keep me away for more than a week. So they can make this a low-priority job and take their time with it. If they need to set it aside for a more urgent task, they should do so. In particular, I don't want them to charge me for storage, which their signs say they will for vehicles left with them for too long. They seemed okay with that, so I don't expect to have to deal with this until after we get back from Tonopah.

My credit card is starting to glow in the dark. On the up side, that's more Amtrak points for future train trips.

This afternoon after I got off work, Lisa and I saddled up in the Rolling Stone and went to Reno to swap the RV for the minivan, which they reported had been repaired. There was some confusion about them taking the RV — they seemed to think I meant a gigantic Madden-cruiser bus and they won't work on those, but when they saw it, they agreed it was just a big van. I paid the $764, we traded keys, and Lisa and I set off on other errands.

( AC Full of Hot Air )

The shop also confirmed what we feared regarding the roar coming from the Rolling Stone — someone had stolen our catalytic converter. They sawed it right off, probably for the valuable metal it contains, not for the part itself. We speculate that this might have happened while we were away at Worldcon, as they would have had an entire month to do it. We'll deal with trying to get that replaced at an exhaust system specialty shop after we deal with the air conditioning system issues on both the Astro and the RV.

Nevada requires your odometer reading when you renew your vehicle registration. I realized when I renewed the registration on the RV that it had barely moved in the past year. Due to rounding, I reported one more mile than last year, but that was because we moved it from the rear driveway to the front once when we were doing some work where we needed the space, then moved it back a few days later. It's not a great idea to leave a vehicle sit that long, so after work yesterday, I decided to see if the Rolling Stone would start, and if it would, take it for a short drive.

With only a slight hesitation, the vehicle started with a roar. A loud roar. It was much louder than I remember it being the last time that I drove it. With some hesitation, I set out to stretch the RV's legs a little bit.



I did this "loop" of Fernley, which included slow side streets, medium speed main streets, and 70 mph freeway driving between exits 46 and 48. The RV performed fine, having no problem getting up to speed, but it was really loud. I pulled it back in front of the house. (Lisa suggests that it's best to move the vehicles around periodically lest nosy neighbors think you're harboring derelict vehicles and complain to the city.) When idling, the engine sounds more or less normal. There was no sign of smoke or other vehicular distress.

Lisa suggests that the muffler might have rusted through from a year's accumulated moisture, despite our dry climate. We'll check that out soon, and if necessary get the muffler replaced, which is annoying but not a crisis. It will, however, cost a bunch of increasingly expensive gasoline to drive the Rolling Stone (which wasn't living up to its name for the past year) to Reno for the muffler service.