Journey Notes

Today had a couple of milestones. Just 2 km into the ride, I crossed the 6,000 km (3,700 miles) point. Also, while we've not officially reached the Atlantic Ocean, we are only about 20 km from it and are paralleling it as we head northeast. So in effect, I've crossed the continent! Now it's just a matter of reaching the point on the continent that is furthest east!

We have chosen to stay away from the coast and its busy (and expensive) summer activity and to stay a little inland. It also seemed like a bit straighter path although with all the hills, it might be just as bad, just on the vertical axis. Oh well. It's good exercise! :)

It was pretty hot today. Temperature wise only 28C (83F) was expected but I saw signs that were closer to 90F. It felt very humid so that may have made it feel hotter. I had lots of ice water so the heat wasn't an issue. It did get very hilly on the last half of the day. I have a feeling that I will be seeing that for most of the rest of the trip.

VanGo started to act up again today. We've seen him have a hard time to stay running when first starting in a day but today he had no power and would barely stay running at all. Rochelle was feeling that she would not make it up some of the hills on the highway.

When we stopped for lunch, I had a look at things and decided it was a fuel flow or quality issue of some kind. I got some methanol (fuel line antifreeze) to soak up any water in the fuel and some WD40 to make sure that the issue wasn't wet plug wires (from all the rain that we've seen lately). That seemed to help but Rochelle ran into the same issues further down the road. On the phone, I suggested that she put more methanol into the tank and top it off the fuel, even though it was only at 1/2. VanGo was fine after that.

So the problem is likely in the fuel tank. I am thinking that excessive water over the years and the last few days of humid/wet days, might have put it over the top. I guess we will be putting methanol in with each tank of gas for a while.

Tomorrow, we should end up in the Bangor, ME area. We are still looking over places to stay but the distance looks about right. I am trying to keep above 100 km each day so that I can make up as much ground before our next break.

A beautiful sunset end to the day. Webber Pond (they sure have a lot of ponds around here!)