1 May, 2000

Beebee awoke the same as yesterday and the same as about the last 21 days. She gives up fighting these bacteria alone. We'll see if the Penicillin does the trick. We otherwise made phone calls, traveler's insurance headway and general paperwork processing. The day only got exciting when we headed down the hill to do some errands and noticed Sandy was making an odd sound under the hood. Lo and behold! the alternator's mounting bolt had broken off. Back up the hill, slowly to take a better look. Steve managed to burn the back of his hand on the header during the inspection- OUCH!

The problem appears to be that the alternator is swinging too far away from the engine block and hitting the steering box when the engine moves on it's mounts. Seems there is a simple solution- just use a slightly shorter belt. Not so. The air pump belt that was on Sandy to begin with turns out not to be standard, so Steve is off on a goose chase finding the size that will work-- whatever that may be. At least there was a spectacular sunset at the end of an otherwise not-so great day.

Steve didn't get quite as much done as he had hoped… but Gimpy is now re-united with us! Big thanks to Joel for storing the trailer for a month or two.

Stopped by at his old office in the afternoon and enjoyed chatting with everyone before he ran off to Luigi's to have dinner with good friends Todd and Sonja. Steve and Todd stayed up late shooting the breeze.

In the afternoon Steve sat down with the fine folks at Synergent Solutions to work on some bumper designs. Amazing what they can do with those Computer Aided Design (CAD) programs. Fun. More details on the bumper in the near future.

He should know by now that there are no quick repairs on Sandy. After pulling the passenger side wheels off without incident, Steve was dismayed to find that the front driver's side has 2 studs that are loose enough that he can spin them with his bare fingers, and some of the other studs he can push in and spin as well. Not good. And it sure makes it tough to get the lugnuts off when the studs are spinning too! After stressing about it and reading the manual, we called Brian Sullivan- one of our Landcruiser guru friends, and he agreed that…. "That's bad". On Monday we plan to hit a local mechanic and see what they have to say. For those of you who don't have a 'Cruiser, or haven't dealt with this type of problem, the reason this is bad is because to replace those studs one must completely dismantle the front hub and brake caliper. Messy, and about five hours work (probably more, knowing us).

As if that weren't bad enough- Steve noticed that there is a very slight seeping from the front of the engine somewhere…. could just be stuff flung up by the tires or fan, could be drops of oil that have worked their way down from past accidental spills, could be lots of things, including one of the recently replaced gaskets. It would be frustrating if it were one of the new gaskets, to say the least. Regardless, whatever it is, it is really slow and much less of an issue than the previous leaks.

We did, incidentally, get the wheels all back on, so the studs aren't too screwed up. That's a relief. Still should get 'em checked out.

After dinner we watched the penultimate episode of Beverly Hills 90210. Steve and Beebee found out that not much had really happened on the show since the last time they watched it- about 4 years ago.

We are starting to really feel a need to get our behinds in gear and get moving on our trip, but it seems like every time we fix one problem or project, five more rear up to take its place.

Beebee's friend Greg graduated in the afternoon from the Monterey Institute of International Studies with his MPA (Masters of Public Administration) so we attended the ceremonies in Monterey and J is so proud.

We made some more progress this evening -- Steve's been pulling apart the dash to install some switches. Poor thing has to put it back together every time we want to drive somewhere which seems to be right about when he's just getting to work. Beebee set to cleaning the fuse box we wrenched off a heep at the local pic 'n pull.We had a pleasant interuption to our afternoon work when J got a surprise phone call from her friend, Christine, who lives in San Diego. She and her man, Patrick, took off for the weekend,drove up the coast and found themselves in Carmel. She looked us up (would you believe there is actually another Steve Broyles in Carmel?) and they came over for a pizza and wine (that they brought -- thanks guys!) dinner. We had so much fun and really enjoyed the unexpected company.

We celebrated Mom's Day with a nice lunch that J, her mom and Cristie (her sister) made. Yummy food and a dessert that we didn't even have time to photograph it. Mom was tickled by her new tulips and a handmade necklace (by Beebee, of course).

Steve spent the evening tearing into the wiring harness and fuse/relay box from the aforementioned heep. Amazing tangle of crazy wiring in there, but it should work out to be a good thing, especially once we get our extra battery installed.

Between the two of us the drawer is now more permanently installed, with some matting underneath to squelch the squeeks and some fancy grommeted carpeting on top to make it look nice, but still be easy to clean. The job was finally stymied by a lack of appropriate spacer-material to level the drawer. We would have just used some wood, but it is cool, windy, and raining so painting the wood is a no-go.

Mom and Dad ran off to play golf with Marty (Steve's brother) for his birthday, we are feeling some guilt about not joining them- staying home to work instead. Sometimes it would sure be handy to be able to be in two or three places at the same time.

Tomorrow we leave for Long Beach where we get to pick up our new batteries and stay with Dave and Haven. We're pretty excited as this is really the beginning of the trip. Finally.