September 27, 2004

September 27, 2004

Kingston to Ottawa, Ontario

DAY 102

 

My blog mentor, Jennifer Lamb in Vancouver thinks that my entries should include location / destination. So there ya go, Jenny. How's that ?

This morning's preventative maintenance task was to check and adjust the air pressure in the 7 truck tires. Most of them needed a bit more air. I decided to use the 12V air compressor I bought for $6.50 in Fergus Falls, Minnesota on September 3. This was its first use. It adjusted the first tire fine. On the second tire it malfunctioned. As well as self destructing, it allowed most of the air to escape from the tire. Now I had a brand new, totally destroyed air compressor, and an almost flat tire.

I suppose I should buy a better quality air compressor. These cheap ones might be fine for blowing up air mattresses and beach balls, but they don't seem to be able to handle 65 P.S.I. large truck tires. I opened this one up to see how / why it died. It had been assembled ( in Korea ) so that a piece of low quality rubber hose was positioned against the little motor which gets very hot during use. The hose simply melted. What a little piece of junk. For U.S. $6.50, I got 1 tire filled with air. Of course, I had not kept any of the packaging or documents, so a refund was out of the question. I threw the little piece of crap in the garbage.

Now I had to either change the almost flat tire, or drive very slowly through and out of the camp ground, and down the highway a very short distance to the nearest service station to re-inflate the front tire which had only 20 pounds of air pressure. I chose the latter.

So, by the time I got the truck tire air pressures all adjusted, returned to the camp ground, hitched up the trailer, and departed for Ottawa, it was quite a bit later than we had planned. We drove east on Hwy. 401, then north on Hwy. 416 to Ottawa. By the time we got to the outskirts of Ottawa, it was rush hour. We checked out a campground next door to the RV dealer where we bought Harvey, but decided we didn't want to stay there. We battled traffic across Ottawa, then headed back out of the city to the south, on Bank Street / Hwy. 31. We are now camped at Hither Hills campground a few miles south of the city. We unhitched, then headed north back into the city down Bank Street to do some shopping around South Keys.

We bought cat food at Wendy's PET VALU inSouthgate. I went to OIL CHANGERS for an oil and filter change, and lubrication service. The service provided by the team of 4 very unmotivated staff was atrocious. They did change the oil and filter, but did not do any of the other inspections, fluid top-ups, light checks, etc., etc., etc., that are supposed to be part of their service. When I prompted them to do some of the things they were supposed to do, I got shot attitude. When I discussed my dissatisfaction with the "manager" ( one of the four unmotivated staff ), I got even more attitude. Upon reflection and discussion with Joanne, it's my observation that the very worst service we encounter is in Toronto and Ottawa. We continued running our shopping errands, at Wal-Mart, then Loblaw's. We were too late for the Bank Of Montreal, and the C.S. Co-op. Back to Hither Hills for a very late supper.

DSK