Zephyrs

One of the ways to make things easier on the road in your RV is to reduce what you need to do for dinner. You can pre-pare your dinners and stash them in your RV’s freezer. Melissa recommends (Don’t Panic–Dinner’s in The Freezer.) (Amazon link referencing Melissa) as a resource. “When we are traveling in our camper, I simply stash the homemade meals in the mini freezer before we leave and pull them out as necessary.”

It looks like the book was successful enough to breed a sequel. — Might be worth checking out.

Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera, Chronicle Staff Writer at SFGate discusses the problem of how Web sites deal with digital assets after we die. Do you have a contingency plan so someone can easily take care of your online presence if you die or are incapacitated? Who knows the ID and password you use to access online banking or investment accounts or how to obtain them? Do you have instructions that someone can use to notify your friends and correspondents of your status if need be? What should be done with the user accounts at social or shopping websites?

And how do you protect this personal access information while on the road yet still have it available with use instructions in a safe and secure manner? No longer is it the family lawyer with a will in his safe. Exactly what it will be is being figured out. Martínez-Cabrera describes some of the options being tried. A first step is just being aware that the problem exists and that is where you can start.

They were forecasting a bit of snow Sunday night into Monday and it appears the forecasters were a bit conservative. Here’s what is looks like Monday morning.

The Nevada Winter Road Conditions website at Safe Travel (also 511 or 877 687 6237) has chain or snow tire conditions on I80 nearly all the way across Nevada, on US 50 out past Austin, from Gerlach to Hawthorn and even on the US 70 Feather River route as well as all the usual routes in the Reno and Carson City area.

So, if you are thinking of travel in Northern Nevada this week, forget it. Find someplace you can hunker down and wait for the storm to break and the road crews to clean up the mess and the weather to abate a bit. Do make sure to find someplace to hunker down where you can keep warm as this storm appears to be bringing January and February temperatures with it.

In weather like this, road travel is hazardous and even just keeping warm and safe can be an issue. Take care.

Fall is here and the cold fronts are making their way through the Great Basin. That means taking precautions to avoid freeze damage. Generally, your RV won’t suffer freezing problems with most of these storms even if the overnight temperatures get down to near 20F. That is because the temperatures aren’t that low very long and the inside of your RV has some residual heat built up during the day. Even so, precautions need to be taken.

The long term solution is to run RV potable antifreeze in the lines to make sure the faucents, pump, and pipes all have the pink stuff in them rather than water.

A short term solution is a device like the Thermo Cube. This costs a bit under $20. It plugs into an outlet and you plug an electric heater into it. It powers up whatever is plugged into it when it gets down to 35F and turns off when it gets back up to 45F. # Maximum Rating: 1800 Watts, 15 Amps, 120VC (to be used with GFCI outlets).

The Thermo Cube can be used with several different devices to help save electricity and wear & tear on your equipment. We recommend the following devices to be used with the Thermo Cube – Self Regulating Heat Tape, Heat Lamps, Stock Tank Heaters, Pond De-icer, Engine Block Heater and Outdoor Pet Heating Pads. [Cozy Winters]

The Water Garden has it for $15. Gun Dog Supply is another source. It has also been found at local hardware and building supply stores.

A device like this coupled with an inexpensive fan type electrical space heater placed in the bathroom of your RV can provide just a bit of heat with some air circulation that will help prevent freezing until winter really sets in.

Some don’t appreciate a blaring boom box in the campground but you might hear one anyway if you approach Tuscarora Nevada. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Rock music blaring from boomboxes has proved one of the best defenses against an annual invasion of Mormon crickets. The huge flightless insects are a fearsome sight as they advance across the desert in armies of millions that march over, under or into anything in their way.
…
In flyspeck villages like Tuscarora, crickets are a serious matter. The critters hatch in April in the barren soil of northern Nevada, western Utah and other parts of the Great Basin, quickly growing into blood-red, ravenous insects more than 2 inches long.

The crickets can make for hazardous driving, too. Cleaning them off the rigs can be a chore as well. Take care and take heed!

Now that winter is turning to spring, it might be a bit late for a warning, but it is never too late for a reminder. Outside.com describes the cold hard facts of freezing to death in As Freezing Persons Recollect the Snow–First Chill–Then Stupor–Then the Letting Go. It could happen to you.

- lowest core for an adult is 61F but anything below 77 is usually fatal. You tremble violently at 95F

But for all scientists and statisticians now know of freezing and its physiology, no one can yet predict exactly how quickly and in whom hypothermia will strike–and whether it will kill when it does. The cold remains a mystery, more prone to fell men than women, more lethal to the thin and well muscled than to those with avoirdupois, and least forgiving to the arrogant and the unaware.

People can learn adaptive mechanisms to help deal with the cold. Some interesting things happen when core body temperatures drop – and also when they recover. Read the story to learn about what could happen to you.

Lifehacker says Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush Makes Packing a Snap. The reference is to several websites that will help you with trip planning.

Tell Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush where you are going and when, and it will generate a list of potential things you need to do based on your travel type. The to-do list is divided into advanced planning, two weeks before, one week before, the day before, the night before, and as you are leaving for the trip.

You customize the checklist for your particular needs. This site appears to be advertising supported with user registration.

The Universal Packing List is an experienced honed, fill in the conditions, get a list type of website.

Normally people pack their bags the night before. This is a mistake! Give it one day more in advance per week of travel, so start packing three days in advance if you’re packing for a three week trip. This way you will avoid some of the stress inevitable the last day before you leave, and you get some extra time buying (or in other ways get) the things you realize you need. Or remove what you really don’t need.

The About UPL page has some good information, too.

Whether you are heading off on an airplane to visit relatives for Christmas or planning an RV expedition, there is help and assistance available for you to minimize the chance you’ll forget something important.

Survival Dentistry, by The Army Dentist is worth reading for a viewpoint on issues that are sometimes encountered by the RVer.

I would like to present a summary of the caries process and the best way to prevent dental pathology in the first place, a simple way to recognize and or loosely categorize dental symptoms, and some simple treatment alternatives until definitive care can be reached.

A short essay with some hidden gems it will reinforce what you need to do for prevention, basic treatments, and what is going on behind the symptoms you encounter.

Paul Auerbach, M.D. has an interesting review about report on Search and Rescue and EMS in Utah’s National Parks.

For a five year period, emergency medical (EMS) calls, at about 1000 per year, were about twice the search and rescue (SAR) calls. The SAR responses averaged a cost of about $600 each.

In addition to identifying the specific parks needing EMS and SAR support, this study points out that there is a predictability to the nature of incidents, as well the expense of providing support. Interestingly, it was not possible to determine if the availability of mobile (cellular) phones, which were used to initiate 21% of SAR operations, made it easier to seek help and thereby somehow increased the number of operations. In more detailed analysis, the authors concluded that judgment errors, inadequate preparation and experience, physical conditioning, falls, and darkness were common factors contributing to the need for SAR. If for no reason other than this observation, the study is important support for education programs and resource allocation planning for EMS, SAR, and medical support in wilderness recreation areas.

The Reno Gazette Journal got out its pre-storm anticipation stories tonight. See A driver’s guide to chain controls, Storm: list of items every home needs, Seven-day forecast for Reno, and Top Sierra Nevada storms since 1950.

It looks like you don’t want to be in an RV on US 395 south of Reno starting Friday and on through Saturday, especially in the parts towards Bishop. The problem will be wind but a bit of snow may accumulate in areas.

You must have chains in your vehicle when you enter a designated chain control area when the sign is up saying “chains required”. If towing a trailer, make sure you have chains for it, too.

As for emergency supplies – check your RV inventory! The stuff, like food and water, that is perishable or can be damaged by cold should be in a handy spot in the house. The key is to make sure you can get by for a few days even if the electricity goes out or the pipes freeze.

The NWS has a special statement out for Washoe County about a change in the weather due this weekend (Change to Winter Conditions this Weekend — SNU meeting weekend – Luncheon Saturday December 13, 2008!). Ontario Weather Service is talking about “SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA – December 8, 2008 (OWSweather.com) Rare 50 year Arctic Blast Sets Sights On Southern California.”

This is yet a week out which is long for forecasting. But the weather people do appear worried and it is about time for a winter pattern to set in. Be prepared. Make sure your rig is winterized and everything is set to handle a good hard freeze. Make sure your house is also prepared with windows sealed and whatever else needs to be done to remain safe and comfortable over winter.

The need was for an oxygen concentrator prescription after heart surgery. The solution was a genset in the back of the tow truck. The problem was CO getting into the RV when the wind went the wrong direction.

You must have functioning detectors and alarms in your RV anytime you are anywhere near anything combusting including gensets, furnaces, RV refrigerators, or catalytic or similar space heaters. You should also have combustible gas detectors in case of leaks. (See the Safe Home Products Page for definitions)

RV ratings for alarms and detectors account for the confined space in an RV and the broader range of expected temperature and other conditions, among other things. Make sure any alarms and detectors in your RV have a proper UL listing for RV use.

Detectors age and may need replacement every few years or so. Read the owner’s manual for guidance on this.

Where detectors are installed depends upon what it is trying to detect. Smoke and CO detectors are usually placed high on the wall and combustable gas detectors low.

Check the UL page on CO Product Safety Tips or PDF

The Safe T Alert is a common detector for RV’s. It runs on 8-16v with a 60mA current draw and an operational temperature range of -40F to +140F – this provides a contrast to the usual 110v +40F to +100F specifications for a typical household detector. (Camping World has these for a bit under $60 – Safe-T-Alert Carbon Monoxide Detector with FREE Smoke Alarm and Safe-T-Alert Detectors)

Here’s an Atwood RV alarm at PPL with a digital display that also runs a bit under $60. With a display, you can see how much the stove and oven add to rig CO content. See the battery powered CO Detector at Atwood. Be careful not to use micro measuring to feed paranoic tendencies!

Here’s the Atwood for about $50 at Mac the Fire Guy along with some other fire safety stuff.

The Army has Guidance on the Use of Heaters Inside Tents and Other Enclosed Shelters.

RV Safety Systems has Safety Related Alarm Systems for Buses/Motorhomes that provides some good data as well as descriptions of other alarms you might consider.

The Wisonsin Department of Health Services has a good summary of Portable Generator Hazards that includes CO as well as electrical hazards.

Make sure you have the detectors you need and that they are working properly when you use your RV. It is much better to be awakened in the night by an obnoxious alarm than to suffer fire or other disaster.

Hot Hots And Cool Cools Protect Picnics – Cross-Contamination, Bad Temperatures Can Aid Bacteria by Shiloh Woolman, Staff writer at Fox news describes a few things to keep in mind when you want to take the dinner outside.

Temperatures? the 40/140 rule; avoid cross contamination; cook the meat properly; see the article for a number of things to keep in mind to make sure you minimize the risk of an unpleasant day after.

Don’t forget to check the sidebar links: basics Food Safety Smarts and others (many at revolution health – watch out for ads)

Severe weather is no joke. A radio that will warn you of impending dangerous weather can be very handy. NOAA provides SAME encoding on their weather stations to allow radios to automatically detect when they transmit alerts, warnings, or watches. The problem is that the coverage of these weather stations in the Great Basin area is rather weak. Here is the NOAA coverage map for Nevada.

There are some features to look for if you plan on adding a weather radio to your RV inventory. Most of these radios have battery backup so the question is whether they will run off internal batteries or your RV battery system, and for how long. The ability to use an external antenna will allow you to get better reception than you’d get with an antenna trapped within the walls of your RV.

For SAME decoding, the features to consider involve how difficult it is to customize the radio. How does it set the county code so you can have the radio alert you only when something is happening near where you happen to be? Can you set the radio to alert you only for certain levels of urgency (watch, warning, alert) and only for specific weather hazards?

You should also think about what you should do in a weather emergency. Determine whether it is better to stay inside the RV or to seek shelter. In tornado country, you should always be aware of a place to go that will shelter you from the tornado. It is usually not the best idea to try to outrun weather but you can plan in advance and avoid areas where severe weather is predicted.

In the Great Basin area, winds are perhaps the most common weather hazard. Flash floods are also possible. A hot spell can be a safety hazard to balance out the winter storms on occasion. Severe weather is a risk and you can minimize the risk by being aware of the weather before you head out and monitoring the weather radio if reception is available where you are camping.

ID Theft is getting a lot of attention. That means the wolves are out after your money for protection schemes so you don’t get your identity stolen. The RV community is particularly vulnerable because many financial transactions are away from home with strangers. You need to know the risk so you don’t buy insurance you don’t need but also don’t put yourself at unnecessary risk you can’t afford.

The Nevada Attorney General has a special page for Identity Theft in Nevada. You can hear radio adds for companies that will sell you protection for a small fee per month.

Should this really be a worry for you? How much of a problem is it, really? What should you do to protect yourself. Information Week has a good rundown answering these questions at ID Theft Monitoring Services: What You Need To Know .

Every time there is a breach of personal information, it seems you see a headline. “over 225 million records containing sensitive, personal information have been compromised since January 2005, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.” Not all of these ended up in ID theft and “an Identity Theft Research Center study found that in almost half of all identity theft cases, the victim believed the perpetrator had been family or a friend.)”

If your identity is also stolen and misused, it can take up to 44 hours and $1,200 to clean up the mess. That’s the exception with only 10% or so of the cases. The median is 4 hours and, for half the cases, usually no financial loss.

There are identity thefts that involve more than financial matters. Medical ID theft can be used to obtain ER care with the side effect of confusing your medical records. Social Security fraud can result in your getting into a mess with the IRS. Criminal identity theft is where the police are mislead about who they arrest which means they might come after you when the criminal skips town.

The article mentions some of the things you can do to minimize ID theft. You should watch your credit reports for any improper activity. Put a credit freeze on credit reports so anyone seeking to verify your credit worthiness needs to ask you first. Use credit cards, which have a capped loss, rather than debit cards which have the risk that misuse can clear out your bank account. See the NV AG site for more ideas and links to resources.

Other resources:

Ohio Lemon Law has a list of theft indications and what you can do.

The Owner’s Guide has some tips and links and advice.

The Escapees Club brags about their membership benefit of ID theft insurance.

Now relax, think it through, and don’t let fear send you into spending money for insurance or services that might not really be cost effective for you

findmespot is a gadget that uses GPS plus a satellite uplink to send a google maps link to someone to let them know where you are. It also has an emergency function that will send a distress call to search and rescue. Cost is about $100/year and they have a link to insurance that will pay search and rescue costs, too, if you need it. Since this doesn’t use cell phones or other land based communications, it will work just about everywhere there is a clear sky (continental, mostly – see the coverage map at the website). That means it might be a good thing to have if you do a lot of great basin exploring in areas as shown at the maps link!

The American Heart Association has updated their recommendations about what to do when someone has heart failure. There is a new website, Hands only CPR that tells you what to do.

When an adult suddenly collapses, trained or untrained bystanders – that means a person near the victim – should:

1) Call 911
2) Push hard and fast in the center of the chest.

Studies of real emergencies that have occurred in homes, at work or in public locations, show that these two steps, called Hands-Only CPR, can be as effective as conventional CPR. Providing Hands-Only CPR to an adult who has collapsed from a sudden cardiac arrest can more than double that person’s chance of survival.

Don’t be afraid. Your actions can only help.

The mouth to mouth breathing thing has not been found to be very effective so chest compression only is the new standard. See the FAQ and resources on the website and learn more!

Using the maps.google.com site, you can see the Obsidian road intersection with US 395. Anita notes that there may not be turn lanes so you need to be careful about traffic. (latitude 37.774798, longitude -119.014281) [UPDATE: yes, nice turn lanes to get out of traffic to turn is good, but no acceleration lanes so getting back on the highway means waiting for a good hole in the traffic]

The campsite itself is between the loop and the dome near the center of this view. (latitude 37.749565, longitude -119.021641). In the Satellite view you can see the slide to the east of the camp area that goes down into a small crater. You can also see the mining road that goes up the side of the dome.

Note that the road goes nearly all the way around the dome leaving US 395 a couple of miles northeast then going around the west side of the dome to end on the south face. Somewhere along the way, it changes from Obsidian road to Glass Creek road. On the map, Glass Creek road whithers to a trail for about 2 kilometers as it heads back to US 395. There is also a trail that continues on to the east around the base of the dome and then towards US 395 across some areas that appear rather devoid of vegetation. This area may be one the ATV crowd likes to cruise around in.

You can find more about this rally and the dome by searching this blog for “obsidian”. See Fires close roads and campgrounds to check for conditions before you head out. Check out Going to an Eastern Sierra Rally this weekend? for links about gas prices. Weather and other background links are highlighted at Background for Obsidian Dome.

South of Conway Pass Photo Gallery Update links to several photo galleries.

Thunderstorms with lightning moved through the Sierra’s this afternoon and started a bunch more fires. US 395 is closed north of Bordertown and south of Mammoth where the June Lake Loop is being used as a bypass.

For those planning on the SNU Obsidian Dome Rally, here are some links to bookmark so you can keep current on what’s closed and where the fires are and what is happening.

The Incident Information System website is a hardcore data source. The page is a table with all incidents summarized that you can sort and select to help you find what you are looking for.

Inyo complex fire on InciWeb – this is the InciWeb that gives you the status of the fire and its impact.

Inyo current conditions – The Inyo National Forest news headlines.

Inyo NF on Inyo complex fire – a PSA on the fire in progress.

Here’s the CalTrans site where you can enter a road number and get current conditions in California. Nevada doesn’t seem to be much interesting in road conditions other than for construction or winter weather.

Over on the Escapees forum is a post that summarizes a lot of experience on the budgets of full timers. One of the features of the report is that it lists the sources so you can go see where the numbers came from.

The report lists annual campground expense as ranging under $400 to over $5,400. Food expenses ranged from $1400 to almost $11,000. Fuel ran between $1700 and $6800. To these basics you’d also need to add personal items, health expense, RV maintenance and other things.

If you are planning some extensive time in your RV, you should check out the links to see how others do it, what they spend their money on, and what they think they need to be comfortable living in an RV. From that, you can better plan your own adventure.