Tucson....

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11/28/2006 3:53 PM

Today has been pretty uneventful. Woke up at a rest area, got some weird looks from the other people there and found coffee at a truck stop. Passed through a wind field with hundreds of windmills and drove by a dust devil before we found ourselves in El Paso buying filters for grease collection. Now we are at Home Depot getting some plumbing PVC to build the intake filter.

11/29/2006 5:39 PM

Made it to Tucson safely last night in time to go to bed. We are staying at a friend of Brian’s house in the desert, southwest of Tucson about 20 miles. Brian finally got a chance to put together the new filter before going to sleep.

This morning we woke to eat at Waffle House and then off to a hardware store and a Checker auto store to change the bus oil. We’ve put on about 1,100 miles in the last two days alone so an oil change is due. After those stops we spent about an hour and a half trying to find a place that had oil we could take. Right now we are sitting in the parking lot of a used car lot trying to pump Vegoil from a Chinese restaurant through a chain link fence. For some reason it seems that the filter is leaking air somewhere so we are having a hard time getting it. Its getting a little frustrating in that the conversion works excellently but the collection process is difficult. Unfortunately when ever we finally locate large amounts of oil the intake system malfunctions.

11/30/2006 5:07 PM

We discovered, on the way to the show last night that, one of the inside tires on the rear passenger side of the bus had a screw in it. We made it to the show safely. It was held in an art gallery/co-op. We were fed very well. The space was pretty cool despite its lack of heat. Apparently we brought cold weather with us as the locals were complaining how unseasonably cold it was. It dropped to around 30 degrees at night, which isn’t bad but here most people have only space heaters and the buildings are un-insulated.

Brian woke at around 8:00 this morning with the roosters and the donkey down the road both making a racket. As soon as everyone was up he changed the oil on the bus and we started a search for a replacement tire. The second place we called had a used one in stock with about 75% of the tread so we started off to find it. The phone book we were using was about 4 or 5 years old so all the places we have been trying to GPS have either closed or moved as was the case with the tire place. I called them again and found they had moved about 15 blocks away.

We pulled in and they had a new stem put in one of the tires and replaced the other tire in about 15 minutes. Brian expected to spend $50-$100 for the whole thing but when he was done the mechanic said he only wanted $30. He had been talking with Brian about being in a band and traveling and I think he was sympathetic to our cause. We ended up having breakfast at around 3:00pm at a Mexican restaurant. Now we’re heading north to Phoenix for a show there this evening. We will be staying in a hotel tonight as per the contract so I think I might stay up late after the show and see if I can get some of these damned blogs posted

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Photos

wood...
...with holes

Ojo de Oso
Oso sitting on the couch