Late in 2010, Kathleen and I
purchased a lightly-used Mercedes 1017A military cargo truck and
converted it to an expedition camper. This process, like
most construction projects, adhered to the so-called "80-20
Rule". The 80-20 Rule states that 80% of the work will be
completed in 20% of the time, but the remaining 20% will take
80% of the time. We started this effort in October 2010
and was "essentially" complete in mid-June 2011. The
number of details that required attention was tremendous, as was
the fabrication effort, but the truck is ready for an extended
test drive. The chronicle of the build-out of the truck
and camper can be seen on
1017A
Camper Construction Page
The first use of the rig was some small outings in San Diego
county, a trip to the
Overland
Expo and a week in Baja in 2011. The Baja Expedition
is detailed on
Baja
Trip 2011 and demonstrated that the concept was
viable and that the platform was sufficiently stable to execute
a long trip To be sure, the Baja trip showed that there
was some effort required to address some issues, a front bash
plate protecting the radiator in particular, but most of the
items were nits.
Since then, we have completed several extended trips in Thor
including an
extended
western US trip in 2011 and a
full
cross-country trip in 2012 that took us through the south
and as far north as Niagara Falls, NY.
The western U.S. is one of our favorite areas, Mexico
notwithstanding. It is sad that the political situation in
Mexico prevents widespread travels without the constant, nagging
fear of being kidnapped or killed by the narcos. But,
since Mexico is not a candidate, both due to actual climate and
political climate, we settled for the west. Our planned
route will first take us to the Tucson, AZ area and then north
to Flagstaff, AZ for the Overland Expo. At OvX we will
hook up with some U500 expedition camper guys and do some
exploring in the Grand Staircase area of southern Utah.
Since the U500 guys have "day jobs", that portion of the trip
will only be about a week. Once they return to
civilization, we will be on our own and will likely continue
north. It will be hot when we depart, over 100 degrees in
the desert and sadly our air conditioning unit that we added to
the cab is on the fritz. But, no matter, we will
persevere.
Tracking Our Location Via The SPOT
Some years ago, after a
scary
mechanical failure in the canyons and mesas of southern Utah,
we decided that we need a better way to advertise our position
and call for assistance if needed. Kathleen found out
about the SPOT which is a GPS locator that transmits your
coordinates via satellite so that others can see your
location. The location is plotted on Google maps and a
"bread crumb" feature is available for an additional fee.
We have the enhanced service, so you can see our historical path
back 50 updates or so. See our
current
location plotted on Google Maps in Real-Time via SPOT
satellite geo-locator device. This page is "book-markable"
and is updated approximately every 15 minutes, but may miss
updates due to inability of our transmitter to reach the
satellite. The communication is "open loop" so the device
never knows if it's messages are actually going anywhere, it
just keeps trying until the next update is available. If
we are in a congested urban area with high buildings (like
Manhattan) or in deep canyons, the position may not
update. We try to send an "OK" message once a day just to
let everyone know that we are, in fact, OK.
Connecting and Contacting Us While on the Trip
Because of internet connectivity issues on a previous trip, we
purchased a MiFi cell phone modem that allows us to connect
nearly anywhere there is 3G service via cell phone (which is
most of the cell phone service area available today). But,
as we all know, cell phones are useful many places, but not
everywhere has coverage, particularly in the remote areas of the
western U.S. Our phones and the modem are enabled daily so
you may contact us, although it may take a few days for us to
respond. But, we will respond. If you are close to
our current position or planned path and would like to meet,
just give us an email or call and we will do what we can to hook
up. If you are on the moglist (tx4x4.com) or BenzWorld, my
cell number is available there. My email, spelled out, is
"bcaid at yahoo dot com".