Seven

Seven is the number of curbs I've hit in the last 1,800 miles. One of those is not really a curb. We hit a storm drain in the dark while trying to pull into a motel. It was about 2 feet deep. when I hit it I wondered what the hell I had just done. Both the front and back passenger tires went into it. After I stopped to inspect the car I was very pleased to find no damage. I'm 100% sure this is because the Hummer is designed to take this kind of punishment. If it had been a regular limo I would have hit the front bumper and scraped the underside very heavily. Score one for hummers!

Wednesday was another travel day that was not without issues. After we started heading to Dallas. I noticed that even though I was on the main tank the gas tank was draining very quickly. I could watch the gauge go down as we were driving. Not a good sign. We stopped. I checked to see if we had a leak. We did not. So after looking a little more I discovered that the tank switch had stopped working and we were stuck on the auxiliary tank. It's only 12 gallons. At 8 miles per gallon mileage we will not get far on a tank that size. This was a show stopper. After Dallas there are some stretches of highway that are far enough we would not be able to make it on 12 gallons.

We got into Dallas and we were early for our dinner meeting. So we headed out to find a mechanic to take a look at the problem. We found a place called City Garage. They identified that the mechanical part of the fuel switch had failed. They called several Hummer dealerships to learn that the part is no longer being manufactured. Oh crap! No longer manufactured? Well they got it switched over to the main tank. So now we are on that tank. Thanks to City Garage of Dallas. BTW: They could not repair it so they did not charge us for the hours of diagnostics. So I gave the 3 guys that worked on it a $20 tip each for their help. I always like to reward good help. It fosters more of the same kinds of actions for everyone.

We made it to dinner on time. Getting into their parking lot was another example of the trouble we will have with getting clients to their destinations. We could not make the right hand turn into their driveway. there was just not enough room and there was no possibility of jogging the car to get it in. The road we were on was also a freeway off ramp. There was no way I would consider backing up to make a corner here. The only way to get into their parking lot was to come at it from a different road. so we did. The detour to do that though was about half a mile. We are going to have to keep in mind that we are going to have to do stuff like this. The customer won't understand and think we don't know how to drive. So I think a little education about how the car turns and the problems with the customer will be needed to keep a good image.

We met with (From left to right) Viceroy of UO Radio, Stev of Markee Dragon, Marcus Eikenberry aka Markee Dragon and Ramirez from Markee Dragon. (For those of you wondering what's with the names. The names I used are our online names we use for the online communities we work with. We are all from the video game industry. It's part of one of my other companies.) We had a great dinner. It was a 4.5 start restaurant and the food was very good. I had met Ramirez before. But I had not met Viceroy and Stev. After working with them online on different projects for so long it was great to meet them.

After dinner we headed out towards El Paso Texas. Once outside of Dallas it's all oil country. We would go stretches of 20 miles or more with no exits. When there was an exit it was just for a farm road. You could not even see any lights around. We were out in the middle of no where.

It got late and we started looking for a motel. Every motel on this road was booked full! We ended up driving an extra hundred miles or so to find a motel. The 9th one was a charm.

Thursday we got an early start. We drove a lot of miles. The land here is very flat and you see oil wells everywhere. We were told by someone at one of the truck stops that they would stink really bad. We did not really experience that. Later when we got to the Rio Grande river. OMG. It smelled like a urinal. It was very bad. We think it was the river that smelled this way because we drove along it for some time and it smelled bad the whole time we were near it.

On the way to El Paso we had to climb up into the high plains. We topped out at 4500 feet. Going up the hills we got very close to overheating several times. It was 20 miles or so of nothing but up hill. It was very hard on the car. The car for most of the hill ran at 220 degrees. That's to high for normal. But given that the car weighs 15,500 pounds. I think that's about 7,000 pounds more than normal. It's much like pulling a very heavy trailer all the time. So it will put an extra load on the motor and that creates more heat.

Today we are headed to Tucson Arizona. We have a dinner meeting there tonight with Lady Alex from Markee Dragon. It we arrive early enough we are going to visit Tombstone before the dinner meeting.

Cheers.