Harris and Judy's Great Adventures!: Spring Training 2015 part 1

Sunday March 1- Saturday March 7 (Days 399-405)

Another spring means another Spring Training trip! Harris has been busy preparing Howie (the last 11 months if you ask Judy) for the trip. And this year marks Howie's 10th birthday, 7 of which were with Harris and Judy. Howie has 110,000+ miles and it seemed time to install a second set of new tires. Since the last set of General Grabbers HTS went 55,000+ miles and still had tread left, Harris did his usual price negotiation to get his best deal on another set.

As has become a ritual, Harris left early on Sunday morning (4AM) to beat Seattle traffic and to get into California by nightfall. He briefly considered going via Boise because there wasn't snow on the ground just to change things up, but night temps in the 20's quickly convinced him that the “same old drive” down the warm throat of California (night temps in the 50's) wasn't bad at all. Diesel prices were climbing compared to a few weeks ago, especially in California, but were still much cheaper than years past( 2.59 in Portland/2.99 at Costco in Bakersfield/2.49 in Phoenix)

A fellow sprinter at a rest stop

To not be totally a creature of habit, Harris went via a different route from Bakersfield to bypass the whole Los Angeles mess.

The Route:

I-5 down to Bakersfield,

hwy58 to Barstow

then I40 to Needles.

Hwy 95 and then Hwy 62 which was hilly and very scenic down to Parker.

Hwy 60 to Wickenburg and then to I-17 and south to North Phoenix RV

New neighbor provided dinner the 1st night at the RV campground

Harris stopped at a rest stop just a few miles north of Patterson, CA for 6 hour sleep. Before leaving Seattle, Harris showed Judy how to track his movements on the “Find Friends” app so he didn't try to leave too early the next day. The worst weather he encountered was just before arriving in Phoenix. Torrential rains and lightning added excitement as well as keeping him awake from Wickenburg to I-17. Luckily there was little traffic along that route.

Unlike previous years where Harris was in shorts before nightfall in central California, he didn't don them until Wednesday for the first baseball game. Also unlike previous years the RV park was almost completely full. Luckily he found one spot that has a tree for shade being held for someone arriving later and since Harris has been coming for several years the manager swapped the spots so he could keep the tree!

Harris had one day to relax before baseball began which was fortunate because Howie had several problems. The fridge wasn't working when plugged into shore power before the trip. After using google to troubleshoot he found that the fridge AC heating element was bad. He did find out that the fridge worked just fine on propane. Since no one had the element in stock at a reasonable price he had it shipped to the RV campground from an online source. The other problem was that Howie's sliding door handle wasn't working resulting in him having to enter the van via the front seat. More troubleshooting online while camped at the site showed him how to dismantle the handle and rehook the lever to open the door. The handle is now working (knock on wood). The third problem occurred when plugging into the pedestal at the RV site (the one with the nice tree!). It worked fine the night before, but when plugging in the following morning there was no power. Harris wasn't sure which wire was the ground, neutral, and hot on the cable so he took Howie to an RV dealer just down the road and a very nice guy helped him troubleshoot it. Nothing wrong with the cable and Howie got power from the RV dealer just fine. Therefore there was a problem with the site power. Long story shortened...Harris figured out the 50 amp plug in worked fine while the 30 amp didn't. Problem solved! Hopefully Howie will be fine for the rest of the trip.

He is making short work of getting into his baseball groove/ritual. So far the Mariners are 2 for 3. The highlight was meeting up with Judy's brother and sister-in-law for the second Spring Training game. The game had it all...30+hits, good defense...shouting...errors...extra inning...and a walk off single for the win! A great start to another Spring Training.