Ready To Go

It's been a busy week. You can tell when I am getting serious because I make a list. Or lists. This list was a long one but I kept after it and, slowly but surely, I ticked off everything on it. But then there is, as Normie calls it, the unknown X factor. This morning, after filing our tax returns and making some calls to track down a couple of Mom's errant information slips, I sat down to upgrade my Garmin Zumo 550 GPS.

A map update should be easy, albeit time consuming because of the 550's USB 1.1 connection. I paid for lifetime upgrades for this unit to stay current and have already done it once. But I have heard that recent upgrades would not fit in the Zumo's internal 1.2 GB memory. And that is what happened this time. All the extra voices and icons had been deleted and the trip logs erased and still not enough room. So I very painstakingly imported regional maps until the memory was filled up, getting most of Canada and the US except for the Prairie provinces and Newfoundland.

Wile I was waiting for the maps to load, I checked out the ever useful Zumoforums and found a procedure that will allow me to install the maps on the external SD card. When I have time and a larger card, I will give this a whirl.

The weather didn't cooperate, either. You'd think the snow could have held off for one more day to allow us to make a clean break, but we weren't so lucky. Several inches of greasy slippery snow fell today but we'll be out of here before the rest arrives.

So by 6:30, my list was finished except for the things to be done just before we leave. There was a minor flurry a few minutes ago when I discovered my suitcase was a few pounds over the fifty pound limit. I have some very heavy manuals and camping guides in there. No big deal, I moved some of the heavy stuff to Sandy's lighter bag in exchange for some clothes.

So Biker will be picking us up at 11:00 PM to take us to the bus station. The bus leaves at 12:50 AM and should get us into Birmingham at 6:45 Sunday morning where Blondy will pick us up and take us to Centreville where she has been babysitting our vehicles. The Chattanooga area VROC contingent have a supper planned for Monday night and we're booked into Camping World for the mods and service first thing Tuesday morning.

The adventure begins. Stay tuned for future updates.