Our Excellent Adventures

Flick up, flick up. Flick up.

Flick down.

Flick down.

Ahhh, I have matched the speed of the person in from of me. No foot on the throttle. In fact the feet are moving to Huey Lewis.

I love driving by stick. Cruise control on the Sprinter. The little arm that sticks out from the steering wheel on the left. Set it for 65 (my speedometer reads about 2 miles high), sit back and enjoy. It will control most hills, up and down (9999 mpg says the Scan Gauge) and give you the chance to do some dancing - or at least aggressive foot taping.

If you don’t use cruise control, you should. I think it is one of the most effective ways to control mileage and it gives you a bit of freedom.

I’m getting thirsty. The road is smooth, cruise control on - think I can get to the refrig? It is right behind me . . . just a little more . . .

As Sprinter owners know, our sliding door is much larger than most and so is the opening. Sometimes you want to keep the opening smaller . . . camping with mosquitoes, don’t want the sun shinning on your carpet, cabinets or couch, don’t want everyone in the parking lot to see inside . . . lots of reasons.

That is why Sprinter has an option, code GXQ SLIDING DOOR TWO-STAGE OPENING/CLOSING, that allows your door to open part way. Sportsmobile also rigs a pin and cable up to stop the door from opening. I wanted it but they talked me out of it - thank goodness.

In the picture you will see my solution. Just a normal tennis ball though it would be a little better if it were a flat one. Every time I am loading the sun is glaring down on the back of part of cabinetry - I have about 2 feet that sticks out into the door space. I know the sun can fade things quickly so I started looking for a solution. One of my main criteria for solutions is that it comes from my garage without a trip to buy something. Looking around in the garage, next to the hardly used tennis rackets, I found this.

There ya’ go!

Scan Gauge’s have been mounted in many places but for me, this was the best place to read it in most cases. I did use the Velcro that came with it which so far has worked fine.

To connect it to the OMB and still be able to close the fuse box door, you need to remove the OMB and let it hang loose. You can see one of the screw holes where the OMB was fastened down.

This view from the side shows where the cable comes out of the pillar. Removing the pillar is easy. It is held by three or four snaps. There is a tab at the bottom that to disengage it you need to pop the speaker cover off.

Once the pillar is out cut a small opening for the Scan Gauge cable along the bottom edge. Run the cable up from the OMB connector. Put the pillar back with the cable in place and snap the pillar into place. The rubber molding on the door side of the pillar must be over the pillar edge. To do this, I ran my finger down the inside edge of the molding.

What can you do with only 88 hours to go before departing to the Land of the Midnight Sun? I want to be careful not to peak to early. I could easily be packed and just sit in the driver’s seat for 87 hours but the neighbor’s would talk . . .

• Still have to clean up my fishing gear. I am carrying some light tackle to hopefully catch some trout for lunch along the way. The big fish I’ll just buy and say I caught it.
• No languages to practice. The Rosetta Stone didn’t have any course for the tribal languages of the Yukon or Alaska.
• A friend from one of the Sprinter forums was “nice” enough to send me a link to the newspaper talking about this could be Alaska’s coldest summer ( http://www.adn.com/life/story/473786.html ). Thanks a lot! Just when I was picking out which shorts to wear! Hey, it will just make for better stories around the campfire (barbecue) when we get back.
• I have also been following (from their forum) some of the Sportsmobile gang that are up north. Everyone is having a blast!
• Do you want to see what life is like on the ferry? Go here and you can watch some short videos.
• Twiddle di dee, twiddle de dum . . .
• Oh yes, my wife has been busy getting all her work done so she can leave for a month so she hasn’t packed anything. Lucky her! She’ll get all the excitement on Tuesday night!
• I am still trying to figure out how much wine, gin, etc. I can carry through Canada. I hate the metric system!
• I am sure the price of diesel fuel will drop $2 or $3 dollars a gallon on September 1 - about when we are do back.
• I am going to buy mukluks for all the grand-kids - if they still make them in Alaska and not China.

Cocktail time.