June 2nd 2015
It was time to start planning to travel for this year, and the first thing to create a problem was we wanted to move Luda's father from his apartment in Kiev in the Ukraine to Luda's apartment in Rostov, he was born in Russia, spent all of his working life in the Russian army, most of the time with the Army in the various satellites countries, and when he retired as a Col he chose the best city in the Soviet Union to retire to and that was Kiev and then of course Ukraine separated from Russia, his passport was changed from the Soviet Union passport to a Ukrainian passport, and none of that was really a problem, but we wanted to have him closer to Luda's daughter in Rostov, so we had him living in Luda's apartment for 6 months and he liked the location, his next door neighbour in Kiev indicate he want to buy the apartment in Kiev as his extended family needed room to expand and the apartment next door was the obvious choice.

So the beginning of April Luda went off to Rostov, collected her father, they went on to Kiev, then it was a matter of her father go through all this possessions to work out what little things he could take with him, the decision had been made that none of the furniture or large items be taken because the freight and the duty crossing the border would be worth more that the items.

They ended up with six large suitcases full, the only practical way of getting this to Rostov was on the train, the best train appeared to be the express to Uzbekistan which stopped near the Russian border where they would change trains to finish their travel to Rostov. Now with the trouble between Ukraine and Russia you cannot buy the ticket for the Russian train in Kiev so when the train stops you get the six large suitcase off the train, father looks after the suitcases and Luda runs to the ticket office where there is a very long line and one person selling the tickets. Eventually she got her ticket then it was to get the suitcases to the other side of the station and she was fortunate to get some young guys to help her in the next thing was to get them from the station to the apartment fortunately Luda's son-in-law came with somebody else in a pickup so that was a major event which was completed successfully.

Last year Luda stayed in Minneapolis to see her grandson being born and it just happened that at the time Luda was due to go to Minneapolis this year Olga had lost her nanny so Luda was able to step in and have some one on one's with her little grandson, Luda is absolutely thrilled and makes claims that he is absolutely beautiful, he is probably a little bit confused as Luda is talking to him in Russian but it seems to be all working out okay.
Last year we drove our American motorhome all the way up to the top of Alaska and I cursed the motorhome all the way, it was big, was heavy, and it was not easy for me to drive, but never the less we felt we were going to have another major trip this year so I spent some money getting the motorhome set up the way I wanted it.

However in the end I decided that I was not going to put myself through the pressure I had last year so I decided to sell it, there must be something in the way in which I price my old motorhomes as they sell very fast so it was a quick trip to Tucson, put the motorhome into storage for the new owner, for me to remove all of our personal bits and pieces, or that is the way it was planned.

The first hiccup came when the Christchurch to Auckland plane could not land in Auckland because of fog so we went to Hamilton, sat on the Hamilton airport whilst they gave us some more petrol, or whatever, then back to Auckland and in theory my plane was supposed to depart one hour earlier but there were 12 of us on the plane so they held the plane for us. I was mentally prepared to not see my suitcase in LA but it arrived so they obviously had adequate time to get luggage there as well as the passenger's.

I've started to do all of my bookings through the Internet and it has worked well, but I had to learn why I cannot check the luggage through to my destination. So was out of the international airport walked a few hundred metres to the next terminal I put my luggage on the plane. Uneventful flight on a puddle jumper to Tucson, luggage arrived, then on to pick up my rental, again booked on the Internet, evidently the company I had chosen was not on the airport, but telephone them for a pickup, this works well except today the telephone was not working, so after 45 minutes of trying, I got a taxi to the hotel and $25 later I was at the hotel, tried ringing the company and after about an hour going through all the computer controlled questions they hung up on me with a message that the company was closed for the day.

A $30 taxi ride to the airport soon put me in a rental car, but of course not at the price I had booked nor the size I had booked! But at least I had transport which with the way American cities are laid out this absolutely vital that you have.

Next day it was time to clear out the motorhome, I loaded up the car and took everything back to the hotel, opened up some of the mail that I had collected from our PO Box and discovered they had cancelled my motorhome registration because when I registered it they had not recorded that the insurance company had a branch in Arizona as they thought was an out of state insurance, which they did not permit, they cancelled the registration, so my next port of call was the vehicle registration so I joined the other large crowd that was there waiting to be served but fortunately they had probably 50 or more tellers working but it was still a two hour exercise, but evidentially my problem was not major so after about 10 minutes of tapping away at her computer the officer had sorted out the registration, I then attempted to transfer the registration to the new owner and whilst I had copies of everything including their passports drivers license I did not have a letter giving me power of attorney witnessed by a notary public so it looks like the new owner has got a some excitement ahead of them when they go there to complete the registration. At least the officer witnessed my signature transferring the motorhome to the new owner, had that not happened the new owner would have needed my signature witnessed by a notary public, yes it is exciting working your way through the red tape of another country.
Of course the temperature whilst all this was happening was incredibly hot and the GPS almost stopped working because of the heat but is not even worthwhile thinking of driving around American city without a GPS.

We are intending to buy a car and use that wandering around the country checking in to a hotel every night, and it is absolutely incredible how cheap some of the hotels are, I booked this one of the Internet and its $39 a night, and I see everywhere large signs offering accommodation for less than this amount.

Today I made arrangements with the service manager to have the Trek shifted to a parking area near the airport. The drive to the parking facility and I take them back to camping world. They tried to start the motorhome but they soon discovered was out of petrol, so they got a 5 gallon tin of petrol and put that into the tank, the motorhome would now start but it would not move, evidently on a Chev workhorse Chassis you run out of petrol it turns off the automatic transmission and you cannot move until it is reset by a small handheld computer. So after about 90 minutes we were on our way to the storage facility, however the service manager did not let me lead the way as I was the only one with a GPS I could see the trek motorhome going or in the wrong direction so with a bit of acceleration I caught up, passed, and indicated we had to go back but eventually got to the storage facility, open the gate with the code, found the allotted parking space, and we had no more problems, which was surprising considering the record so far, I must admit leaving the trek at the storage facility was somewhat of a relief to think that I would not have to repeat last years experiences.

I dropped the service manager back to camping world and while I was there had a look at the smallest motorhome that they had, and quite frankly, compared to what you can buy in Germany, it was ridiculous, so I went on the web and showed the American salesman a Burstner 586 and he quite frankly could not believe his eyes.

I then set off to a second hand vehicle dealer, they had one Lexus there and most of the others stuff was American, I asked the salesman what did he have and it turned out to be a Lexus with almost 200,000 miles of the speedo with no problems whatsoever, which to me was very interesting!

It is quite interesting watching American television, you would sit down of an evening feeling good and healthy, and very soon you find out all the things that may be wrong with you which you can cure by getting the latest drugs, but you had to ask your doctor could this drug suit your ailment but you had to be careful that the whole big list of possible side-effects that this drug could create which you needed to make your doctor aware, it is an interesting concept, selling the drugs to the patient first and getting the patient to ask the doctor of this complaint that they never knew they had could be cured by this new drug. It must be nice to be a doctor in America!

Having completed all of my chores I changed my ticket for the next day and flew back home to the winter and get ready for 2015's tour ..........

Wednesday, July 1st
 
The Last months have been fairly hectic…

First I travelled to the States to dispose of our motorhome of last year, the 2001 Trek, its main problem was ME, I first saw the Trek’s when they were introduced in the 90s and thought they were the ideal motorhome, very short by American standards, but with all the American amenities, that one has come to expect on American RV, the bed came down in the middle of the lounge and so this kept the length of the motorhome down to 26 feet instead of 34+.

The one I bought was on a Chevy workhorse chassis which even the Trek lovers (the group that thinks they are the ultimate) admit was not the best choice so I is pleased see it go and in its place I was intending to buy a car and wander around the states staying in medium priced motels.

That was until I worked out what that was going to cost me and I considered that to be dead money, because it’s was spent and I had nothing to show for it.

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