Congestion, or lack thereof

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Sparky

I have now been commuting 14 miles each way to my office for three full weeks. The office itself provides exactly what I need: a fast internet connection and a desk and chair. The people there are friendly, though it is clear that they still consider me a curiosity (why would a software guy need a month-to-month office?). The accountants there never got around to producing a lease, so it is the purest form of tenant-at-will: I can leave whenever I want to go. So that is all working out just fine.

The biggest surprise so far: the commute. No matter when I go into the office or return home, there simply isn’t any congestion.  At least not the kind of grind-your-teeth-and-watch-the-pedestrians-zip-by congestion that snarls Boston for at least four hours each day.  The worst congestion that I have seen was actually on the Saturday before Christmas: cars backed up trying to get into a shopping center.  My commute (via Monterey Road, CA 85 and the Almaden Expressway), has a few traffic lights which typically account for about 5 minutes of the trip time.  But the entire 14-mile commute usually takes less than 20 minutes either way: an average speed in excess of 50mph!  Over 60mph if you take away the traffic signals.  Compare that to my 5.5-mile Cambridge/Medford commute which typically took 30 to 40 minutes for an average speed of about 10mph.

That, on the surface, is very good.  But the other day, while enjoying my congestion-free trip into the office, I heard a news story about how the new San Jose light rail system is one of the least successful new transit lines in the nation, attracting less than 1% of the pool of commuters.  No doubt that the car is still king in California, but there is also no doubt that there is simply no incentive to park my truck and ride the trolley (not that it is really an option – my office is a mile from the nearest station).  The transit stations are in the middle of the freeway and the few riders who I see waiting there look damn cold.  Why leave my warm cab for that?  My truck commute is faster, warmer and cheaper (with free parking at the office and just about everywhere).  Even in downtown San Jose the cost of parking all day is just $7,  In Boston transit is a real option – one that can get you to your destination faster and cheaper than a car.  No chance of that happening here.

So while I admire the lack of congestion and, more generally, the quality of the roads (Storrow Drive would be a cow path here), I can’t help but wonder if Massachusetts is actually being “greener” than California, simply by making car travel so unpleasant that people actually choose to ride public transit.

Now if the MBTA could figure out how to provide a congestion-free commute…

 

Categories: CA, Places, Routes | 2 Comments

Merry Christmas y’all

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Sparky

No, they don’t say “y’all” out here in California. But maybe we picked up a little Southern Drawl in Texas?

We will be having a quiet Christmas in Patience.  We will sit next to our electric fireplace, sip egg nog and open the presents that surround our tiny tree.

Electric fireplace

Gifts around our tree

Then we will sing a few songs and spend a lot of time thinking about how much we miss y’all.

We hope your Christmas is at least as nice as ours. And we hope you have a great 2013.

Categories: CA, Places | 2 Comments

Mail mess

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Sparky

If any of you have a driving need to mail something to us, our address for the foreseeable future is:

9750 Monterey Rd
Coyote Valley RV Resort
Morgan Hill, CA 95037

Don’t make the same mistake I did, which was use Google to get the ZIP from the address given on the park’s web site: 9750 Monterey Rd, SAN JOSE.  Google understands that address and even shows a nice street-level photo of the park.  But the ZIP it gives is 95103.  I used that ZIP on two critical mailings: our Escapees mail forwarding and our 1-800-PET-MEDS order for Cha-Cha’s pain medicine.  Despite the fact that Google understands the address and that our Garmin GPS has no trouble finding the park when that address is provided, the US Post Office and UPS both seem to be convinced that the address does not exist.  Our pet medication order got returned to the UPS sorting facility.  UPS was kind enough to call me and I explained exactly where the RV park was.  They promised to retry.  But they didn’t.  The package was returned to Florida.

By this time I had realized that some kind of confusion existed (though I had already received three or four shipments from other vendors, with no problem).  I corrected the address both for the mail forwarding and the pet medication.  The solicitous person at 1-800-PET-MEDS promised on Tuesday to ship the medication overnight via FedEx, gratis.  Long story short: it arrived on Saturday.  I was relieved to get the box as Cha-Cha has been without his pain medication for nearly 2 weeks.

But when I opened the box it contained no medication – just the pill pockets that I had added to the order on a whim.

So we are now two weeks into our stay at Coyote and have received no forwarded mail and no pet medication.

If you sent us a Christmas card… thanks.  But we probably won’t get it.

Categories: RV Living | 1 Comment

Living small

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Sparky

We are now settling into Patience for full-time, everyday living (as opposed to traveling across the country living).  It is mostly ok, but is very different than living in a four-bedroom house.  Some things we miss:

  • The yard.  Strange though it may seem, the thing I miss most is the yard.  Not so much for me as for the dogs.  They are rarely off their leases now and Grace is going stir-crazy.  She needs to let loose every now and then.  Our yard in Medford was large enough to let her reach warp speed.  She would do a couple of loops at full throttle, then fall over, panting, with a smile on her face.  Of course it was also nice for me as I didn’t have to walk them three or four times a day.
  • Comcast.  As much as I disliked dealing with Comcast and paying that exorbitant bill every month, it was WAY better than the cable service that we get now at the RV park.  There are only about 20 channels and the picture is fuzzy.  I have to think about getting a dish.
  • The washer and dryer.  Going to the laundromat every week is still not fun, just as it wasn’t fun when I was a student.
  • Our bed.  The mattress that came with the RV was too hard and too thin, so we added 3″ of memory foam.  Now it is too soft.  Neither of us sleeps well.  I thought we would get used to it, but I’m not so sure anymore.
  • The dishwasher.  I am adding this for Jett because she does all the dishes (hey, I have offered but she is particular about how they are done).
  • The cooktop.  The 3-burner propane stove in the RV cooks ok, but one of the burners doesn’t light automatically and the top is slippery, so pans have a tendency to slide.
  • Extra storage space.  Living small means that we can’t buy the 24-roll paper towel or the 48-roll toilet paper packages at Costco.  Actually, we pretty much can’t buy ANYTHING at Costco because there just isn’t any room.  This is compounded by our inability to find a supermarket that we like.  Safeway sucks and the prices at Nob Hill are ridiculous (12-pack Coke on sale for $5.50? Who are they kidding?)
  • The softball.  It isn’t softball season yet, but I know when it comes I will miss it terribly.  This will be the first year since college when I didn’t play softball.

Some things we don’t miss:

  • The weather.  I can’t say that we have seen much good weather in California (we have frost on our windows this morning and it is supposed to be mostly rainy for the next week), but it is still better than the weather in Massachusetts.  Snow here is rare (it hasn’t snowed a measurable amount in 10 years).  And I trust that it will improve soon.
  • The home expenses in Medford.  Living small means living less expensively.  Now that I am working I should be able to save quite a bit each month because I don’t have that huge mortgage to pay.  Rent and utilities at the RV park will be less than half of what we spent in Medford.  While we have to buy propane during this current cold weather, it is nothing compared to what we spent on natural gas to heat the house.  And how much electricity can we use when we rarely exceed 30 amps total consumption?

I can’t say we like the current RV park (Coyote Valley RV Resort) very much. We haven’t made any friends yet. The weather hasn’t helped as very few people are outdoors doing anything, but there haven’t been a lot of activities and the staff hasn’t been very friendly. The biggest negative, however, is its location on a divided highway.  We have to do a long U-turn (about 2.5 miles extra) if we want to go south.  And the trip home from my office is 2 miles longer than the trip to the office because I have to go a mile past the park and make a very tight U-turn.  Very annoying.

But we will be here until Jett gets her cataract surgery and fully recovers from that.  Probably 3 months, at least.  So we still have time to settle in more and learn how to live small better.

Categories: RV Living, RV Parks | Leave a comment

GTW surprises

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Sparky

I have now had a week post-GTW to think about the experience. I find that some of the things that were most memorable about the adventure were the things that surprised me. Such as:

  • The trip was wetter and cooler than I expected.  As Jett noted the other day, “I expected to be wearing shorts the whole way.”  Me too.  I really thought that fall in Tennessee, Texas and the southwest would be warmer than it was.  It really wasn’t all that different that what we would have experienced in Massachusetts.  We wore jeans about 80% of the time.  Of course those violent storms in California and Oregon were not typical, but added to the overall disappointment we felt with the weather we encountered.
  • The landscape can change very quickly.  I was struck by how rapidly the countryside changed from green rolling hills to flat scrub brush as we traveled west in Texas.  Or how we could travel for hours in the San Joaquin Valley in California, then suddenly be in rugged mountains.  And, of course, the dramatic transition of the Grand Canyon where you walk up a normal-looking small hill and are suddenly confronted with a gaping hole in the ground.
  • There sure are a lot of different types and brands of RVs out there.  I should have kept a tally of all the different names we saw on RVs – it would have been in the thousands, I think.  And almost none of them were Open Ranges.  We saw, I think, one Open Range trailer and four Open Range fifth wheels.
  • Our fifth wheel was not as durable as I expected.  We certainly didn’t plan on replacing all four tires – all less than 3 years old and all with less than 1,000 miles of wear.  We also didn’t expect to have four slide cables break.  All of those things supposedly had service lives that should have easily carried through to the end of the GTW but didn’t.
  • Speaking of unexpected expenses, I was shocked at how much we spent on food.  I still don’t understand how we could eat more while traveling than we could at home.  I will have to keep a close eye on that and see if it stabilizes now that we are more settled and are aware of the problem.
  • We used XM radio very little.  I expected that we would spend our time on the road listening to country music or 60’s oldies.  But we mostly passed the time listening to books on tape (CD actually).  Now that we are settled I am listening mostly to news radio during my commute (which is less than 20 minutes, BTW).  I think the XM subscription was a waste of money.
  • I haven’t used either the golf clubs or the bicycle as much as I thought I would.  I golfed once and rode the bike twice.  Again, now that we are settled maybe I will use them more.  But with the short, cool days it doesn’t seem likely that I will use them much for a while.
  • Jett never really got used to hauling the fifth wheel.  Every travel day was a white-knuckle day for her.  I was hoping that she would relax on the GTW and enjoy the ever-changing view, but the idea that we had that 39-foot trailer behind us prevented her from enjoying the scenery.
  • There are some REALLY nice RV parks at casinos.  Arguably the best park we stayed at (twice) was Seven Feathers in Canyonville, OR.
  • RVers are a pretty friendly lot.  I am not really surprised at that, I guess, but some of the people we met on the trip made it more enjoyable.  Perhaps I am more surprised that we didn’t run into more jerks.
  • Living small is not so bad.  I was describing our fifth wheel to one of the accountants yesterday and he was amazed that we could live – with two dogs yet – in 400 square feet.  But it is entirely possible and is actually pleasant.  Mostly.

We are already thinking about how we are going to get back to MA next summer.  One current thought has us traveling in a series of 1-week hops, with me working during the week and then traveling on the weekend.  It would probably take us 8 or 9 weeks to make the trip back to MA if we go in a fairly direct path.

So the planning for the GTE (yes, the Great Trip East) is already underway.

Categories: GTW | 2 Comments

Back in the saddle

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Sparky

I am back at work again. It was a busy week in many ways. I went into the office – a room in a suite of accountants – on Monday without being certain that I had an office. I had a verbal agreement but no lease. It turns out that I did, in fact, have an office, but no lease, just a handshake. Fine with me. I paid a month’s rent ($350) and settled in to try to start working remotely.

Getting connected to the Oracle VPN was easy once I used the right software (which was NOT the software recommended by Oracle IT). Getting into the Windows servers was easy, so long as I logged in as a generic user rather than myself (more on that in a minute). Getting into the Linux servers was a little harder as I had to download another piece of software. But I got that figured out by late Tuesday.

I was able to use the generic accounts to do some useful work, but the inability to log in as myself became an increasingly more serious problem as the week progressed. I got an IT guy in Cambridge to look at the problem and he determined that it was a password synchronization issue that had to be solved at the Oracle end. So Oracle IT is on it now, but the week ended without me being able to be myself.

Very annoying.

At the end of the week my new computer arrived, so on Monday I can do the computer setup stuff all over again. Fun.

Categories: Work | Leave a comment

GTW Hop 37: Gilroy, CA, to San Jose, CA

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Sparky

19 miles via US 101 and local streets.  Cumulative distance: 6,184 miles.

GTW Hop 37: Gilroy CA to San Jose CA

This last hop of the GTW was less than 20 miles and was made simply to move Patience to her winter resting place: the Coyote Valley RV Resort which sits on the border between San Jose and Morgan Hill. I will describe the park in more detail later, but will say now that the back-in site we were given was a BITCH. Between the steel post guarding the electrical panel, the curb at the office and the bushes lining the site, it was damn near impossible navigating into the space. It took about 6 tries. But we made it.

Our home for the past 4 nights was the Gilroy Garlic USA RV Park in Gilroy (“Garlic City”), CA. No, it did not smell like garlic, thank God. It was a nice park with a lot of long-term residents, including one family with four home-schooled kids who didn’t seem to get a lot of schooling – they were out riding their scooters pretty much all day long. Living in a trailer with 4 children? Sounds like a little corner of hell to me.

We used the four days to, as Jett says, “put pins back in the box.” In other words, recuperate. The last 3 weeks have been grueling and we needed some R&R. However, we did go out to dinner one night at the Claddagh Pub and Restaurant in Gilroy, which turned out to be one of the best Irish restaurants we have ever experienced. It is family-operated, so our server was the son of the owner. Very nice, friendly place. They were sponsoring a “Secret Santa” benefit for some local disadvantaged kids, so naturally Jett signed us up. We went shopping the next day for Steve, a 16-year-old boy who wanted pajamas, socks and chocolate. What? No videogames or CDs?

Anyway, if we like Coyote Valley (a big if… Jett already dislikes the staff) we will be here for 6 months. So if you want to write us, out address is:

Coyote Valley RV Resort
9750 Monterey Rd, #68
San Jose, CA 95103

Watch for changes, though, as I can’t be sure yet that we will be here for the entire 6 months.

Thus ends the GTW. I will do a post-mortem later, I think. I hope you have enjoyed the trip.

Categories: CA, GTW, Places, Routes, RV Parks | 1 Comment

Budget review

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Sparky

We have now completed two months of our semi-retirement and it is time once again to see how we are doing on sticking to the budget.

Not well.

The bottom line is that we have exceeded our budget by almost $6,000 – almost 38% more than we planned to spend. The largest component is in the “D” (Diesel and Rig) category, due to the well-documented problems we have had with the rig, plus the slightly higher-than-expected diesel costs, lower-than-expected gas mileage and greater-than-expected distances traveled. Other significant overages were in “H” (Health Care) due to higher-than-expected COBRA costs and unplanned dental expenses, “M” (Miscellaneous) due to clothes and debt service costs, “X” (Extras) due mostly to visiting Las Vegas and “E” (Entertainment) due largely to our splurge on the first-class train tickets to the Grand Canyon.

But the big surprise was “F” (Food) where we exceeded our budget by more than 100%. I think we spent more on food while traveling than we ever did in Medford. I will have to adjust this budget item for next quarter as it is obvious that this one was just not estimated well.

And maybe we are eating too much or too well.

Here is the breakdown of overages for the first two months:

  • D – Diesel and Rig …………………………. $2,100
  • F – Food ……………………………………….. $1,400
  • H – Health Care ……………………………..    $950
  • M – Miscellaneous ………………………….    $550
  • X – Extras ……………………………………..    $370
  • E – Entertainment …………………………     $330
  • C – Campground ……………………………     $220

The good news in this list is that campground fees, entertainment and, most importantly, rig expenses, should be substantially reduced once we stop traveling.  The health care expenses should also be low for the next six month while I return to my job with benefits.  But food?  Gotta eat.

The bottom line is that we haven’t done very well at sticking to the budget.  I am going to have to take a close look at the budget again before we can say with certainty that it is feasible to continue this lifestyle.

Categories: GTW, Preparation/Planning | 2 Comments

Winning the spam war

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Sparky

The deluge of spam (2,200 per day at its peak) has been reduced to a trickle (less than 200 yesterday). I accomplished this by blocking just 18 IP addresses. That mean that a very small number of purveyors of spam accounted for about 90% of the messages.

Jerks.

Categories: Fun Facts | Leave a comment

GTW Hop 36: San Jose, CA, to Gilroy, CA

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Sparky

31 miles via US 101 and local streets. Cumulative distance: 6,165 miles.

GTW Hop 36: San Jose CA to Gilroy CA

I think this dance is called the “South Bay Shuffle:” up to San Jose, down to Gilroy, then, on Sunday, back up to San Jose to complete the GTW. This hop was to retrieve Patience from the RV repair place (after paying a $960 ransom – all labor) and put it in a place where we can all rest for a few days before I return to the workaday world.

We stayed at the Hotel Elan which was adequate at best. The dogs loved it, but Jett didn’t much care for the loose toilet seat and the mysterious stains on the walls. A little Luminol spray probably would have lit the room up like a Christmas tree. It is no accident that the second offering that comes up when you Google “hotel elan san jose” is “hotel elan prostitution.”

But it’s all part of the adventure, right?

The dogs enjoying the king-size bed

Crappy crapper seat, Hotel Elan

I settled on the office space that is in San Jose, 14 miles from “home.” It isn’t ideal, but is the best choice as it provides furniture and internet, which gives me two less things to worry about. I also ordered a new (refurbished, actually) computer that will be delivered next Tuesday, so I should have the basics to get me working again.

One thing that has surprised me while traveling the San Jose freeways is the lack of congestion. We were able to deliver Patience to the RV repair place at 9am on a weekday morning by traveling 20 miles up US 101 – a major commuting route – and never once dropping below 55mph. That, to me, is simply amazing.

It rained yesterday (what else is new?), but the forecast is for sunshine for the next week or more, with high temperatures in the mid- to upper 60’s. We are very much looking forward to a little sunshine.

Next up: finding transportation for Jett. We will probably buy a cheap car, but not until the new year. In the meantime, we may rent for a few days, to give her wheels during the week.

4 days and one more hop to finish the GTW.

Categories: CA, GTW, Places, Routes | Leave a comment