This post will be longer than usual because I didn’t do any work since just before we got to King City on April 25th.
The GMCWS Rally
The rally in King City, CA was my first as president of the GMCWS Motorhome Club so I had lots of learning to do while performing my Presidential duties. I had a blast and everyone was very complimentary. The reason that I haven’t posted again since we arrived is that I was too busy and having too much fun. The people are all so nice and they share a love of the GMC so they must be fun to be around.
For photos from the rally see this link.
Mark’s Family in Sacramento Area
Immediately after the rally was over on Monday morning Carol and I had to make a beeline to the Sacramento area because our grandson, Alex, had a Tee-ball game that evening. We only get to see our grandchildren once or twice per year and every minute is important. Getting a chance to be present for an important event in a grandchild’s life is precious because they are few and far between.
We spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights there and had a great time. The most notable thing is that my cat allergy was apparently gone. My son’s mother-in-law Linda had given him a treatment – herbal, homeopathic, or whatever – for allergies and he said that it made his pretty severe allergy to grass – as in lawn mowing – go away. I have (or had?) a very severe allergy to cats and the allergy causes itching and asthma. If I stay in a house with normal house cats (there is one exception) for more than a couple of hours I end up wheezing and it is difficult to breathe. The effects last for a couple of days. I took the remedy as instructed for almost a month before our visit and had no perceptible reaction even after being in the house for several hours each day and spending the last evening sitting on the over-stuffed sofa (usually verboten) in the middle of the carpeted living room (cat dander central) with 3 cats sitting on the floor in front of me and I had no symptoms. This is a miracle — really.
Other than the cat thing there were several well planned and cooked meals. Mark and Kristin are a great team. They work together to run their really large and successful dog boarding and training business – The Local Bark – and are raising 3 beautiful, well-behaved and extremely smart (of course) children. We didn’t visit their business this year but know that is doing well and growing really fast. It is really impressive how they handle their hectic lives so well.
Here are some photos from our visit with Mark’s family:
A “Quick” Visit to Applied GMC in Fremont
We left Mark’s on Thursday morning after Mark and the kids left for grandma’s, school and work for Brooke, Katie and Alex, and Mark respectively. We were on our way to Brian’s house and planned to make a quick stop at Applied GMC to return whichever cruise control module was appropriate – the old broken one or the new unneeded replacement. It was the old broken one because the new one works better than the old one ever did. Thanks JimK at Applied GMC.
The visit was supposed to be quick but our started failed again. The symptom has been occurring and getting worse for a year – turn the key to start and no sound at all and the lights on the dash go out. After lots of work and suggestions of rewiring the starter circuit it turns out that although I thought I had eliminated the “Park/Neutral Safety Switch” as a cause for the problem with a simple jumper I had actually jumpered some other switch – I don’t yet know which one – and the problem persisted. It was the problem and the coach starts very well now.
Alonso, one of JimK’s mechanics at Applied GMC, found the problem and jumpered it in time for us to make it to Brian’s house and dinner.
Brian and his family in San Jose
We arrived at Brian’s house in San Jose and had a really nice dinner and a visit with him and his family. We had a nice visit with the family – our daughter-in-law Chris and grandsons Brandon and Kyle. We had planned to stay 3 nights but hated to leave on Mothers’ Day so we decided to stay an extra night. It felt relaxed probably partly because, unlike normal yearly visits I was not recovering from the cat allergy results. We spent Friday just visiting with Chris and Brian and having lunch at a neighborhood Mexican restaurant. Friday night Brian and I watched the Sharks game while Carol, Chris and the boys played games. We had some good pizza for dinner.
Saturday we shopped a little, ate a little and visited a little. A quiet relaxing day. Played a little wiffle ball baseball with Brian and the boys on the front lawn and then had a delicious meatloaf dinner. Sunday was Mother’s Day and Chris’s Mom and Dad and sisters and brothers-in-law visited. Chris’s Mom and Dad are very generous and Mom loves to cook and prepare lots of good food for every event. We ate lots of good stuff. We finished the night off by watching the Sharks again – they lost both playoff games, Friday and Sunday, and playing board and card games with the family.
Here are some photos from our visit with Brian’s family:
Monday – back to Salinas and King City
On Monday we gassed up – and gasped up at the nearly $200 fill-up at $4.26 or so per gallon. We made a stop in Salinas to visit Artistic HangUps, our long-time business now owned by Carla, a former employee. The coach was acting up a little – seemed to be starving for gas once in a while – so we stopped at Elmer’s Auto Parts in Salinas and bought a new fuel filter. Haven’t installed it yet – will wait until I can tell if it fixes something. I am suspecting that getting down to about 4 or 5 gallons left in the reserve tank caused some junk to get stirred up and clog the filter.
We are scheduled to do a little boating on Lake San Antonio tomorrow with our friend Ted and his 1963 Chris Craft speed boat.
