Laptop problems

Today is Tuesday and I'm laptopping you from a friend's home in Weslaco. My laptop is in Ottawa undergoing a stress test on its new motherboard. I'm told if the machine is still happy tomorrow morning they will ship it to me - 2 days guaranteed. Well I'm not so certain about the 2 days, but think I should have the machine back by Monday.
After all it's not the end of the world as we managed to travel quite successfully in the past without access to the Internet. In fact paper maps work great. Al does miss reading his Globe & Mail. And I must confess that I'm sorry to have let down my fellow travellers.
'Tis hot here in Weslaco. Wind is such that we've had to retract the awning. Dogs are living in airconidtioned splendidor while we are visiting. No pets are allowed in this park. We are presently staying at the Llana Grande, about 5 min from the Mexican border in a wonderful campsite - overflow area where manufactured homes will be put someday. The lots either side of us are empty meaning the dogs have lots of room to run, roll and chase sticks. And I have a pool, hottub etc. almost totally at my personal disposal just steps away.
Hope to post lots of pictures when the laptop has returned.
Oh yes, I can't seem to access my email for some unknown reason and I'm not inclined to troubleshoot. Replies will come, just not today.

Monday the 16th

Monday, Feb16th, 3 degrees C
A leisurely start today. And I get to have a homemade capuccino, always a good thing. We were cosy warm last night under our down comforter. Well OK it was a bit nippy on the nose. Dogs are happy in the trailer. Unfortunately now that we are on the road again, Gypsy is panting.
We stop off for gas in Nacognoches - $1.879. Free wireless is not to be had. The laptop continues to shut down unexpectedly at an ever increasing rate, rendering it almost useless for navigation and communication. Thank goodness the cell phone is functioning properly.
I forgot to wish everyone a ‘happy family day’. Now why would that be of any importance to me who is in Texas? Well I just called Carman to get the phone number for Eurocom, the manufacturer of my laptop. There 1-877 number doesn’t work here in the States. Anyway I have the number but of course they’re busy celebrating this holiday and won’t be open until tomorrow. Another stroke of bad luck.
I'm sitting at the main corner of Coldspring, opposite Elaine's where we just had a wonderful lunch. I'm using their wireless to post this quickly. Pictures to follow on another day

Feb.15th

Sunday the 15th, 3C and hazy
Gas now advertised at $1.75/gal.

Grocery shopping at 8am. Where? Where else - WalMart Super Center, Al’s favourite store in the US. Prices of fresh produce and vegetables are certainly higher than back home. Today is Sunday meaning you can’t buy beer or wine in Arkansas. No matter, it’s only 150 miles to the Texas state line. We’re stocking up as tonight will be our first in the RV.
No post to the blog as the laptop is acting up, shutting down unexpectedly (power supply or the 12v converter) or the screen messes up (video card). I’ve ruled out the former; nothing I can do to ‘test’ the latter. Something is perhaps overheating. My patience is waning for sure.
Gypsy’s panting in the back. Have no idea what is upsetting her. Until today she’s been a happy camper so to speak.
From the highway Al spots a campground advertising propane, so we detour to fill up. I learn that the seedpods I collected earlier at a rest stop are from the sweet gum tree, one of the first to leaf out. If you look closely, you can see the large buds that will soon produce very large leaves.
Just a few miles north of Hope I spot a long hillside covered in daffodils. It is not unusual to see clumps of them in the ditches. Shortly after a very large highway sign announcing that this is the birthplace of Bill Clinton.
We stop for lunch at a local smokehouse, rated #1 barbeque in Arkansas and featured on the Food channel. Al has a burger; I order a half chicken with 2 sides only I don’t know what sides are. Silly me. Anyway I get turnip greens (very yummy, but probably canned) and corn bread that is not so yummy. BTW Gypsy & Leila disagree. Forgot to take a photo.
As we approach the state line, I notice that there are two Texarcana’s, one in Arkansas, another in Texas. The state has some interesting place names incorporating the letters ‘ark’ such as Arkadelphia. This county is also dry, but a few yards into the next one on F.M. 3129 & just outside the city limits pop. 52 (that’s what the sign said) is a liquor store. Interestingly enough it seems to be closed; the grocery store however is doing a great business.
Today’s National Public Radio offering – a book called ‘Manifold Destiny, A Guide to Cooking on Your Car’s Engine’. I kid you not. Just remember to double tin foil wrap.
Today’s journey ends at www.campingfriend.com/twinoaksrvpark 5 min north of Nacogdoches, advertised as the oldest town in Texas. The Texas info centre suggested this as an interim stop. I have no idea of what the web site says, but suffice it to say that it is a very small campground (would you believe ~12 sites) in the middle of a horse farm complete with pond. No fish apparently, but I did count over 20 turtles. We spoke with the owner who would gladly give us a horse or two. Several years ago they would sell for over $2,000, but now he can’t even give them away. Apparently the food bill is mounting, but at least the horses are aging so not so many babies.

Sat. Feb.14th

Saturday, Feb.14th & Valentine’s Day, 7:45am
Weather – pretty much the same as yesterday only warmer at 8-11 Celsius
Gas report – lowest we’ve seen so far at $1.77/gal
Despite yesterday’s marathon, according to S&T we start out 200 miles behind schedule.
This stretch of I65 continues to show the results of the ice storm that occurred in this region one week ago. Uprooted trees, split trunks, tree tops, large limbs, branches of all sizes hang over the guard rails covering the shoulder of the road such that the right highway lane barely misses the fallen debris. Our motel parking lot had 4 large tree removal rigs so the cleanup must be in progress.
Today has been largely uneventful compared to the previous ones. No breakdowns, bent or broken anything. Even some good news. I finally finished ripping the FMQ stitching from across the bottom of my latest artquilt. I’m thinking of hand quilting that section since I have no machine. I will have to buy thread and also some batting as would like that section to be more trapunto-like.
We’ll finish the day in Little Rock, Arkansas. At the moment it is 5:37 and we have about 30 more miles to go. When we entered Tennessee, the clock moved back one hour so today will be almost as long as the previous ones in ‘real’ time. Have but 3 pictures, none of which is particularly artistic or …

Friday the 13th aka day 2

Friday, the 13th, 7:30am
Gas report: $1.96 -- $1.87 -- $1.989
Weather: Brisk wind, 0 degrees, sunny with clear skies. Heavy cloud cover at 9:12. By noon the sun is peaking through & raising the temp. to 5 degrees Celsius.
Ironic that today is the 13th and not yesterday. We’re travelling alongside Lake Erie on I90 in Cleveland on a 4-laner. Like other big American cities we’ve passed through, it has a large stadium, airport and massive marina with an equivalent population of gulls flying overhead, all downtown.
I71 south, halfway between 80 and 271 in Brunswick, Ohio, we pull off and into a garden centre parking lot. We have a sway problem. After a long telephone conversation with a Hensley technician, we identify the culprit – a bent sway bar. The local autobody shop saves the day in under one hour. Bending the bar tube didn’t work as that created a flat spot so they cut it and welded on another piece of pipe. And magically the master lock on the trailer door now functions. Go figure.
What do you call it when the sky is darkened by a zillion smallish black birds? They break into two, one each side of the 6-lane highway. Then another slightly smaller group which settles in the eastern field. A Lodi discount mall complete with train rides – much, much bigger scale than my father’s setup. A sign warning that firewood and ash tree transport is prohibited beyond this point.
Breakfast never happened as each place we attempted had no parking for us. At 12 we finally suceed with Cracker Barrel, a chain we’ve eaten ate. Despite the hour, this restaurant has a very big crowd and serves up excellent buttermilk pancakes with real butter and maple syrup.
Dog report: Seems Leila adapts better to change, inhaling her meals with the usual speed; Gypsy is a wee bit clingy and hyper and not so enthusiastic about her food. Both need a good run and of course that’s not going to happen for a bit. As always they have the complete back of the Ford (seats are down), 2 toys each and of course 2 beds.
Cincinnati – big city, home to the Reds & Paul Brown stadium next to another slightly smaller one and arena all overlooking the Ohio River. Surprisingly traffic was nothing like what we experience in Ottawa at the same time of day.
We plan to stop east of Louisville at a Red Roof Inn close to the ring road. If I have the patience, I will address the problem of not being able to send mail. It’s just a toggle switch setting, but of course I can’t remember in what menu. Maybe this time I’ll have the smarts to write it down.
Well guess what, the best laid plans … Seems there is a state agricultural fair happening in Louisville and there is not a motel room to be had. So much for my 5:00pm plan which is now an 8:00pm plan ‘cause it took that long to drive to Elizabethtown. Well at least we didn’t have to continue on to … who cares at this point. And I have to add that this motel is the shabbiest I’ve ever stayed in.

First Day on the Road - a sorry tale

Day 1 – Feb.12
Departure – 7:30am
Weather – 4 degrees C, fog, light rain, 25mm rain predicted with flood warning
Gas report – $0.799/litre -- $2.11/gal. -- $1.96 -- $1.91 -- $1.87
9:30am is our first stop at the Salmon Run Mall in Syracuse. Looks to be a shoppers’ paradise. The only other time I’ve seen such shiney floors was the first day of school. This place is not only immaculate, but also massive. It’s also a popular place for people to do their morning walk exercise. I get a Subway breakfast bagel while Al gets the replacement SIM card for the cell phone. Good move as it turns out. After filling the gas tank (2.11 per gal.), we’re on our way by 10:00am
Back on I-81 south the weather worsens – real rain occasionally verging on sleet accompanied by gusty headwinds of up to 50mph. We’re gonna lose bigtime in the gas mileage department. Al has already started playing with the radio – on, then off, then finally settling in on NPR with the Diane Rheme(sp?) show. The environment is the hot topic.
Well it’s now 3:39. Are we there yet? Are we having fun? The former is self-evident; the latter is debatable. Let me review our progress. According to S&T (short for MS Streets & Trips, our computer mapping system), we are 250 miles short of our day’s goal despite having started out 1.5 hrs ahead of schedule. Now why would that be? First we have never been able to keep up to this sytem’s schedule. But an unscheduled stop of 45 minutes doesn’t help either. Oh did I say where? Just five miles short of the next gas station on I90, a toll road no less. Joe Benson’s Towing service to the rescue. Moral of the story: don’t let your CAA membership lapse (we didn’t or it would have cost ~$65); OK I admit it - a cell phone is helpful; listen to & obey (the operative part of this statement) your car’s early warning system re: low fuel (we won’t go into who consciously drove by the gas station – VBG).
5:25pm. We’re down to the last 10 miles and headed for a Days Inn in Ohio. Price includes free Internet so that’s good although I don’t have much to post and certainly no pictures.
Now why ever would I think that this would be the end of the day. Our first question is always ‘do you accept dogs?’ Since they wanted $10 per dog and the only room was a smoker, we declined and drove on. The next intersection with I90 offered 3 possibilities. The first wanted $15/dog and the second $20/dog. So much for Pennsylvania. On we drove to exit 193 (by now we are in Ohio) and a Red Roof Inn, Al’s ultra favourite. Yes they accept dogs and when I went down to the office to inquire about Internet charges I was given a freebie. Should I tell you what time we checked in? Why not! Can you believe 8:30pm. There were some intervening events all to do with the hitch, sharp turns & a certain parking lot, but I’ll let Al have the pleasure of telling that portion of the story personally.
Nightie, night.

FALSE START

We're still here at home! due to a dental emergency. We are so lucky to have a good friend for our dentist who will start her day earlier than expected just for us. I stayed home and updated the blog with pictures from Cancun, yesterday's chore that didn't get done. Only took three hours!!! Holy moly! why ever so long? I'll leave that to your imagination, but suffice it to say that although a blog is an on-line diary, it takes longer to create than any journal I might have kept in my younger days.

When that was finished I had some free time. What to do? The answer was obvious as I had not had time to stitch the piece pictured. No photos here; instead I put the finished 9"x10" quiltlette? on the scanner.

You might be wondering what it is - content, technique, etc.

In creating my t-shirt fabric (pictured & described in a previous post), the serger's cutter left me with many bits and pieces of fabric in addition to thread clippings, all of which I saved. I sprinkled them on top of acrylic?? batting and topped it off (just like cake icing) with my neighbour's (Louise) donation of used dryer sheets. She 'makes' the best ones. Not certain why or how as she claims that she just buys Bounce in quantity. Anyway her dryer sheets come to me all sparkly unlike others which are more opaque and dull, but also torn in half as she is clever and knows that that is all that is required for one load of laundry. This of course creates a delimma for me in creating larger pieces.

If you look closely you can see the straight line stitching which I did to tack down the dryer sheets. Then I started what is known as free motion stitching, i.e. feed dogs are down with me, not the machine, moving the fabric.
I was never any good at doodling and this is the same type of process only using a machine so I don't think my friend, Elaine, will be too impressed with my technique or patterning. "No I didn't practice doodling first as I was told". I decided to make use of the straight line divisions to create grids; of course my resolve to create different but distinct patterns in each section faltered very quickly (as it usually does).
When I finished machine stitching, I then proceeded to minutely trim the edges to remove the backing and expose individual bits. What you see here is both front and back.
Unfortunately a tiny portion of t-shirt fabric bits was not covered by the dryer sheet and it captured my attention. And that was definitely not my intention. No problem I said as I started to 'scrape' off parts of the dryer sheet using the tips of a pair of manicure scissors to expose more fabric. As I did this, I realized that I was also creating more texture as I released the tension and allowed the fabric to pop out. I kinda like that effect.
Hopefully the next post will be about our journey south - first stop being Watertown to get a new SIM card telephone number for the cell phone. With that in place we are truely on our way.
Stay tuned for more. That is if you are still awake after wading through all of the above.

CANCUN

This wonderful arrangement of flowers greets you in the reception lobby of The Royal Cancun, a 5-star hotel. The main lobby has a soaring ceiling and contains over-sized furniture including armless chesterfields for two that make you look like a doll by comparison. Beyond that is the lobby bar. There are no doors at the entrance, but the bar is protected from the winds by massive glass sliding doors.

Above the flowers is this stained glass roof.

A similar stained glass roof covers what is known as the motor lobby.

Gulf side of The Royal hotel. Our room was way over to the left on the 7th floor.

Taken from the beach of our sister hotel.

Our balcony featured a hammock done up in a most intriguing knot.

Three views from our 7th floor balcony:

To the right, west

Straight ahead and south

To the left and east. In the bottom left hand corner you can see yet another swimming pool. Residents on the first floor can step out onto their balcony and go down several stairs to sit on their personal water level lounge chairs. This side of the hotel features many canopied beds complete with curtains.

These 2 photos were taken from the 7th floor open hallway just outside our room. On the first weekend, we could view the massive outdoor TV broadcasting the Superbowl game.

Same perspective showing the interior lagune and more resorts on the far side.

This is our room with king size bed. The glass in the head board is actually a window allowing a view of the ocean while showering in the bathroom behind.

The wedding pavillion is to the left. It is also used for 7:30am yoga classes.

All food is beautifully presented, the major effect being one of tall sculptures. Lettuce wound into a spiral and stood inside a cherry tomato was my favourite. These enchaladas feature chocolate in the sauce which I identified not by taste but by sight. Of course any Mexican dish features the traditional guacamole sauce. Many dishes had a sprig of rosemary for decoration.

[ASIDE: You may be wondering where the picture is. I managed to delete it while trying to remove excess space between pictures. I have yet to figure out how to place a picture in the middle of a blog entry as any inserted pictures automatically go to the top of the blog. So if there is anyone out there who can tell me the secret - other than deleting all that comes above, placing the picture and then recreating the deleted text & photos - I would appreciate hearing from you.]

Can you believe that this is the beach washroom?

Photo taken from our balcony on the 7th floor. We ate Pelicano's frequently for lunch or breakfast. You can see the life guard stand where the daily life guard rarely sat; instead he patrolled along both sides of the breakwater beach. His whistle was used to good effect in catching a swimmer's attention when s/he was considered too far from shore.

This is Raphael, the hotel's playordomo as indicated by the sign on his cart. He provided sun tan lotion, reading materials and eye glass cleaning amongst other things. Also featured are my travelling companions.

The oceanside of the 8 storey hotel features these wonderful welded steel sculptures including a waterfall backdrop.

Looking out to the ocean, this part of the pool ended at a wall overlooking the ocean.

To the left you can see a pavillion used for weddings and early morning yoga classes.

Gulf ocean waves are relentless so Mother Nature is constantly being improved upon. Sand is dug from the water's edge, put into a bucket and then carried to a location further up the beach where it is dumped and then raked.

Each day 4 men dressed in wet suits created this setup to help restore the sand beach. One man was the designated 'diver' who used a very long hose line connected to a compressor and his regulator to allow him the required underwater time to make the final connections.

Daily raking of yesterday's footprints provides employment for another group of local residents. Here you can see where our hotel's beach ends. Our hotel issued tan & white striped towels; our neighbours had pink and blue ones respectively.

The pick axe crew is breaking down the steep sand bank in front of our sister hotel which catered to families with young children. They had the better beach IMHO.

Two days during our stay were on the cool and windy side meaning large waves & fast moving clouds. Our hotel & the one to the east have 2 curved breakwaters to try and protect the beaches and also provide a calmer area for swimmers.

The waves hitting the rocks are quite spectacular.

I know these waves are nothing compared to those found in Hawaii, but they are pretty spectacular to me and made for great fun trying to body surf.

Bar owners are quite inventive in capturing poolside vacationers' attention.
Advertising is pulled by both boat and light airplane. We saw many in the day & hours preceeding the Superbowl game.
This sexy bikini event features 1000USD in prizes

Dady Rock (with two XX's) is having a wet body contest.













[Wednesday we went snorkelling. To start we took a local bus to the marina on the lagune side and from there a largish 2 diesel, aluminum hull boat out to the ocean. We transferred to a smaller boat which ferried us a short distance to another boat moored on the edges of a dordoned off Mexican heritage marine site.

I had borrowed Tyler's underwater 8megapixel camera so got to take pictures. I hope that Nicole, his sister, will send the pictures for posting here at a later date. I am certainly interested to see them as most of the time I felt I was shooting blind as the viewing screen was almost black underwater.]

Thursday we booked a bike trip before lunch. Pedro who hails from Mexico City was our guide despite having only started working at The Royal 4 weeks previously. Given his limited English he didn't understand the significance and reason why I took these 2 pictures.

Flying anywhere means arriving at the airport long before flight time. Hence window shopping is a popular activity.

Here you see a wonderful display of handpainted pottery.

Paper mache figurines

These figurines are all one-of-a-kind, handpainted & signed. I quite liked one of the cats (not shown), but was not inclined to purchase due to the price.

Last but not least, a sampling from Pineda Covalin, a fabulous Mexican designer's fabrics which IMHO are right up there with the likes of Hermes without the expensive price tag. I was enthralled with his silk fabric designs which, until closer inspection, appeared to be embroidered. He has developed a great product line of scarves, purses, capes, shoes, hair bows, eye glass frames, etc.

To view a fashion show of Pineda Covalin designs

http://cashak.tv/fashion-shows/scottsdale-fashion-week-pineda-covalin-2007-11-02/

To see a less frentic display

https://www.pinedacovalinaz.com/


If you would like to know/see more about the Mexican-owned resort in Cancun, please visit http://www.realresorts.com/The_Royal_Cancun/Video_Gallery/

where you can have a virtual tour showing much more of this hotel's grandeur. And FYI this place has just recently received a prestigous award, apparently a first first for Cancun.