We've been taking a lot of video and stuff on our day trips, trying to get back into recording our adventures as we hope to make a neat one of the trip with the kids at the end of the month. However, we have been having problems with the 5K video from the newest GoPro. Christian had been using proxies in order to edit his videos but at some point, they stopped working or the program wouldn't use them or something. It's been a while since we have upgraded his computer, so during Prime Day, we ended up ordering a new mother board, processor, memory and fans for his computer. Later, we ended up getting him a new power supply as well. Maybe next year or so we will be able to get him a new video card as well, but this new system is at least useable for now.
The XJ got a transmission oil change, tope engine clean and new spark plugs. Everything seems to be running well now and sounding great except it doesn't start up right away when the engine is cold. We are hoping that it is just a matter of retraining the computer since we haven't driven it at all since it was parked and had a bunch of things changed on it.
We went on one last day trip the week the kids were supposed to get out of school. This time, we were supposed to go on a trail to Surprise Canyon, but when we got there, we decided to just go explore the Inyo Mountains instead. When we got there, there were a bunch of idiots doing the Badwater 135. It's supposed to be one of the world's hardest races. 135 miles from Badwater (the lowest point in the Continental United States) to Whitney Portal (the trailhead for the highest point in the Continental United States), during one of the hottest times of the year. Anyway, they were running up our road. The sides of the road was covered in their "support cars." And there were a bunch of other volunteers or media people standing around in the middle of the street when we got there. We were pretty irritated.
At the same time, we saw a bunch of F-18 fighter jets diving into the Northern Panamint Valley. We ended up taking a side road towards where they were doing that, but by the time we got through the throng of people and aired down, they finished their diving approaches there and it was getting seriously hot. My Shemaugh wasn't doing enough for me. I wasn't feeling too good and I wasn't trying to run some insane race through it. We ended up airing back up the Jeep and heading back up into the Inyo Mountains where we were headed before we got side tracked by all the people. It was a lot cooler up there. It was such a relief!We didn't have an exact trail or destination. We were just exploring to see what there was out there and maybe see if we can find the back road to Cero Gordo. We checked the maps after we got back and figured that we just barely missed it. The road we were on would have taken us there but we thought that it was going too far in the wrong direction, so we turned around to try another branch of the trail. The GPS coordinates showed that the right branch of our trail that would have taken us where we wanted to go was just around the corner from where we turned around! We ended up at an old mine where the road seemed to stop.
We turned back and took another side trail to see if it would take us back to the highway as it was getting late and we didn't want to get back as late as we have been from these day trips.
Our road took us into the Santa Rosa Flats which was really nice. We startled some coyotes as we drove by but it was beautiful and no one else besides the coyotes were there.
Eventually, we made it back out to the road, only to once again, run into the folks running the race towards Lone Pine and the end of their race at the Mt. Whitney trailhead. We had originally thought to go into Lone Pine to pick up dinner, but as the runners would be running along parts of the 395 to get there, we decided to just head back home and maybe pick up a snack somewhere along the way.
--------
At the end of the semester, one of Caitlyn's professors offered her a position as a TA next semester for the class she was finishing. Caitlyn was kind of on the fence about accepting the position. It's a business class, not computer science and apparently Caitlyn had her before in a lower level business class. As she aced them both and remembered Caitlyn from her first class, she must have liked her enough to offer the position to her. After much contemplation, she finally got back to the professor about accepting. I think she was secretly hoping the professor offered the position to someone else already. She was a bit apprehensive about the amount of reading she would have to do to help grade papers and being a TA in an upper level business class where the students may be older than her. Christian and I thought it would be great experience for her and knew that it would be good for her resume and possible other jobs as the professor is a department head and can get her more hours or positions if she was interested. She is also concerned about her work load next semester and didn't want too many hours, just in case, but she will have a job and some income, which will be good.
--------
The kids' last day of finals was on Wednesday. They finished packing and cleaning and headed out Thursday morning. They landed in St. George by late afternoon and spent a bit of time with Austin and his family. They got to go swimming.
 |
| Pictures courtesy of Caitlyn |
The next morning, they stopped by to see their Aunt in Mesquite. While they were there, Christian looked up the road conditions for them and found that there was a major snafu on the 15 outside of Nevada. It was actually completely closed in a couple of places. The worst was a semi-truck carrying lithium batteries that was on fire near Baker. It had actually been burning since 6:am with no end in site. We had to have them leave and take a round-a-bout way home.
However, just outside of Las Vegas, they had some car trouble. Emily's Jeep was running rough and her check engine light came on. It was 110 degrees F out and Emily had to go out and troubleshoot her Jeep as our young girls were stranded on the side of the road outside of Vegas! We were so stressed out. Luckily, Christian gave her a code reader and they were able to figure out the problem. There was a problem with the intake air temperature sensor and Christian had her see if it was loose or disconnected. He had to located the general area for her by searching on the internet. It was indeed disconnected. The idiots at the Jeep dealership that did the work on her engine reconnected it it but obviously didn't snap it in and it jostled loose. We were so stressed out. To add insult to injury, her aunt had stocked them up on cold drinks and she had a giant lemonade on her door. When she went out in the heat to frantically figure out what was wrong with the vehicle, it got knocked over and spilled all over the footwell on the driver's side so it was all a sticky mess for the rest of the trip.
After she reconnected the IAT sensor, the car ran fine but she couldn't clear the code. She cleaned up the car as best she could at the time and they basically had to take the 95 down through Nevada and then across on the 62 through 29 Palms. That's the simplified explanation. They actually had to switch on many roads to get back. Luckily, they were in the car together and one can help navigate while the other drove. Christian and I were on pins and needles and couldn't do anything except sit at our computers, monitoring their progress home for the rest of the afternoon/evening. Their shortest day of driving ended up longer than the day before!
No comments:
Post a Comment