25 May – Hobart - Melbourne - LA - Seattle

A very early start this time as we started this year’s epic adventure from home.  Taking the 6:30 “red-eye” from Hobart, we were up at 4am (yay!).  Some early trouble.  We (actually Steve) forgot to pack the Bank of America card.  BIG OOPS.  We arranged with Alysha to have it sent over to an address once we figured out where we’d get to.  A fairly quick change over at Melbourne and then we shoehorned ourselves into our tight-little-ole economy seats, you may have noticed we’re still not quite over missing Business class……oh well.  Ros ended up with a lady beside her who should have booked herself TWO seats. After twisting, turning, fidgeting & fussing, she talked to a stewardess & had herself relocated to another seat (just in front of us) much to Ros’s relief, as it gave her a bit more room.  An otherwise uneventful trip.  Not a great selection of movies and we both found it harder to sleep this time, so quite tired at the end of it.  Landed in LA around 6:30am of the day we left (love the time zone change thing). There must have been about 3 other planes land about the same time, as the line through Customs was lloooooonnng.  Luckily though we had enough time to get our bags & get to our next flight. We got to Seattle by 11:30am & out to the van by around 12:30pm.  All looked as we had left it. The cover was still in place, albeit a few mice holes in the top.  We packed in our gear & headed off.

Now the fun starts!  We only got about 300m or so when the RV’s motor just died. A quick restart & we found that it would idle ok & that was it.  We pulled into a side street & contemplated our options.  We called around a few places, visited an auto parts store (just across the road) and found an auto mechanic just a block down the road who was able to have a look at the dear ole girl. After some testing & pulling some bits off, we found that mice/rats had made a home in the air filter & on starting the motor, the shredded bits had jammed up the throttle assembly.  The mechanic pulled this all to bits, cleaned it out, installed a new air filter & put it all back together.  We started her up & she ran like a dream again.  Thanking the mechanic (Victor) for his efforts & going a bit past his Saturday knock off time (he finished with us around 4:20pm) we went off to do our shopping & get set up at a nearby RV park.  We finally sat down to have dinner by around 6:30pm.  Having been awake for so long, we crashed fairly soon after that.