Chapter 3

New:

Gruillo family- fishermen

I contacted the Chilean embassy in Houston to get the wheels in motion to obtain a visa. Since I wasn't asking for a work permit things went a bit easier than they could have. Chile has been undergoing a surge in immigration as people first from Europe and now from other countries in Central and South America are streaming in to take advantage of the healthy economy.

I planned to pay them a visit within the month to prove my fiscal health and allow them to finger my passport. If they wanted to fingerprint me and run my ID with the state and federal government I would come up clean--for now.

I headed out for San Antonio and points east. I wasn't a speed demon so a lot of the road traffic passed me like I was standing still. The bus driver's seat left a lot to be desired. I resolved to get it replaced with something nicer at one of the big truck stops near San Antonio or Houston, depending on what I found.

As I travelled further East I found the environment getting drier--something that I thought was impossible but there it was. I only spent a few days in San Antonio cleaning up and doing my laundry. I had a guy measure and install carpeting everywhere but the bathroom and kitchen. I bought a nice sized braided rug to go into the living room. I thought that it looked good in muted reds.

I checked in with a big RV store and looked for an upgrade for my oven. The guy suggested hanging a tiny balcony off the back for the propane tanks and installing an RV-style drop-in multi-burner stove and oven. According to him it should take very little work besides drilling the hole for the gas line and welding/bolting on the balcony. It was fully insulated so it wouldn't burn the place down and it would make any inspectors a lot happier. I shrugged my shoulders and said "Hell, go for it." It turned out to be a pretty good decision as I got both propane tanks and the jerry cans of gasoline out of the bus as well as the benefit of an oven with a thermometer and a fairly-well-regulated temperature control. I picked up a smaller auxiliary Honda generator to keep from hauling the big one out all the time. I also broke down and bought an eight cubic foot chest freezer that would run on 12 volts. Gain some space, lose some space. I had to re-arrange the kitchen gear on the shelves closest to the kitchen and destroy a couple of shelves to drop in the freezer but I thought that it would be worth it for the flexibility--I could stock up and leave civilization for weeks at a time and not give up my luxurious dinners or run out of fuel charging my batteries due to using the new, more fuel-efficient generator. A small 110-Volt to 12-Volt DC converter topped off my purchases there. I wired it into the battery farm so that I could charge them when plugged into an external supply. A small breaker box and distribution panel went into the battery bay so that I was code compliant with my AC use. On the way out the door I spotted boxes of little blue bags, like dishwasher soap packs. These weren't soap, though--they were deodorizers for the holding tank! They were like gold when they were really needed. I bought four boxes.

The truck stop had several air-ride seats that would fill the bill--much as the captain's chair did in a professionally built RV. It would lock into a face-forwards driving position or allow me to spin about and use it as a comfortable chair when not on the road. My back and I noticed the difference immediately.

They wouldn't let me use my grill at the truck stop so I had a taxi take me to a steak house a couple of nights. It wasn't too bad but as far as I'm concerned nothing beats a well-marbled steak grilled over your own smoky fire, hot enough to make the fat pop and sizzle. Hmm. With those thoughts in mind I found a butcher shop willing to cut, wrap and pre-freeze some top-quality steaks and roasts to fill most of my freezer. I paid for second day pickup and left there a happy man.

Before I left I checked the internet and called around Houston to find a trailer camp that accepted reservations and hopefully met MY reservations. The web offerings were such a confusing mess that I took a lesson from my camping experiences in Wisconsin--I looked for anything that the state either ran or a place that had earned the state's blessings. I found an acceptable place called Bay RV Park south-east of Houston city center by about 35 miles. It was in a smaller town called Dickinson. It was a bit of a 'sunstroke acres' but it had concrete pads, was well laid out and very clean. I parked there and arranged for a rental car to pick me up. I visited the Chilean embassy and received my tourist visa, hit a couple of museums, the galleria and the USS Lexington monument--a 1940's era aircraft carrier that had survived world war II and had been turned into a museum. It was nicknamed 'the blue ghost' and had an interesting history.

Since Chile was known for its cool, wet climate in the South even though it boasted the dryest desert in the world way up north, I bought a decent hat and an oilskin slicker with a zip-out liner. The Puerto Montt area was known to be one of the largest salmon fisheries in the world second only to Norway. They shipped live and fresh, iced salmon around the world on a daily basis. Yum. Seared salmon on the grill, steamed salmon with a lemon-dill sauce, dried salmon flakes with rice and onion--the list goes on and on. I could get into this.

I knew that I didn't know enough to contract for moving me and my ride to Chile. I didn't even know the class of ship that I should be looking for. The internet gave me a contact for the Port of Houston Authority. They put me in touch with someone that could answer my questions--

How long would the trip last?

Could I get power to the bus during the trip?

Could I get access to water and a way to get rid of my sewage?

Could I stay on the bus during the trip?

Answer: Anything could be had for enough money. That answered that!

I needed to bring the bus up to standard in the electrical and safety departments. I had a commercial louvered fan put in over the old permanent window just above the stove. I had an electrician integrate the outside supply/cutover switch/generator with the battery farm, up-and-down power converters, put in four 110 Volt AC outlets near the desk and entertainment console (just over the battery bay) and install a 12-volt disconnect switch for all internal power other than that provided by the engine. I bought and installed a couple of fire extinguishers and fire blankets for the front and rear of the bus then ran the whole shebang past an inspector. The only thing that I got gigged for was a lack of ventilation for the battery bay. Not bad! I put in a louvered vent panel and called it a job well done.

I took a look at the place with an eye towards securing everything for high seas. I put some sliding cage doors on the shelving and a locking bar on the front of the dresser. I fastened down the futon bed and table, put covers over the book shelves and entertainment system and fastened my flat screen monitor to the wall. I'd been running off of my laptop all this time and wanted my two big systems up and running off of 12 volts. I found a 12-volt drop-in power supply for my HP quad-core but the Shuttle power supply was engineered for the box. I settled on using the 110 Volt AC from the power inverter for that. The flat screen's power brick put out 12 Volts DC so a simple wiring harness worked there. The amplifier and cd/dvd player again needed the power inverter's aid.

I investigated whether or not my 110-volt to 12-volt inverter would be able to cope with a 220-volt feed. A simple slide switch would take care of matters once I reached my destination. I had to add a 220 to 110 transformer to convert the external power feed running into the breaker box, then into the AC outlets.

It was mid-November. I screwed my will to the sticking point. I signed the contract to leave in two weeks, topped up my stores, emptied and flushed the holding tank, flushed and filled the water tank and got the propane cylinders topped up. I even filled my charcoal reserves for the grill. (If you use a chimney you don't need lighter fluid--just a little newspaper. It saves on drenching your fuel with a stinky hydrocarbon mix.) With everything ready to go I left my bus in a guarded storage yard, checked into a motel for a while and basically screwed off until it was time to load and travel. I spent my time in bookstores and window shopping. November in Houston is comfortable for us Yankees. I didn't mind living out of a suitcase for a while.

I saw one guy in a nice brown leather vest with indian head nickels for snaps. I asked him where he got it and proceeded to buy one of my own. I took in some live jazz at a couple of local bars. I was too old for the local college kids to pay any attention to me--I was just a wall fixture that drank beer.

Soon it was the big day. I drove the bus onto a giant pallet, got strapped down and hoisted up and over the rail to my home for the next four weeks or so aboard a cargo ship. I connected the offered AC adapter to the bus and settled in to--hopefully--a nice boring sea journey. I was out of contact with the rest of the world (save the crew, and they could give a shit). It was liberating.

Each day after I rose I cleaned my pits and crotch, applied deodorant, brushed teeth and dressed. After a breakfast of toast and tea I cleaned up the kitchen (is it a galley when it's floating? naaah.) cleaned the place up a bit and either read or watched a movie. Every week I vacuumed the rugs and changed bed linens. Dirty linens and clothing got stuffed into a garbage bag for later cleaning. I thought about dropping a line overboard to fish but the ship's second mate told me that there weren't many fish to be had in the shipping corridors, probably because of the diesel exhaust gasses dissolved in the water. I imitated the crew and used buckets of seawater to bathe on deck and sluiced what remained overboard, then sponged off with drinkable water. That was a weekly ritual.

Travelling through the Panama canal was an experience which I'll never forget. The thing is ancient in non-European terms and works perfectly. I mused on the fact that modern ship builders restricted the beam of their vessels to comply with the width requirements of the canal, just as English canal boat builders had to restrict the beam of THEIR vessels to comply with the much older, narrower constraints of the British canal system.