A Few Days of Travel

We had two and one half days of travel from Colorado to Ohio. The weather was absolutely beautiful, even with a little fog one morning. Here is the recap.

Monday started dark and early in Colorado Springs. The BoggsMobile's Detroit 60 Series was rumbling by 5:30 and we were wiggling our way out of the neighborhood where Souls Harbor is located a few minutes before 6:00.

Souls Harbor is 72 miles from I-70 at Limon, Colorado. The first 32 miles took us nearly one hour. At 6:50 I was pulling off in a wide spot of the road to take this picture.

I posted last week that we were about to register 200,000 miles since we have owned the BoggsMobile. Now it is official, 384,479! When we purchased the bus on March 21, 2008, it had 184,479 miles.

Once we joined the interstate, it was smooth sailing all the way to Flying J at Salina, Kansas. For the day, we drove 418 miles in 6 hours and 40 minutes. Not too shabby for us.

We had no sooner shut down when my brother Steve and his wife Karen pulled up next to us. They drove about 90 minutes one way to meet us and we are thrilled that they did. It was so good to see them again.

We ate at Flying J in a wide open Huddle House and it was very good!

We went straight to bed afterward and had a good "night" of sleep in the middle of the evening! Actually, I slept good for about 2.5 hours, but did not do so good later when it was time to go down for the night.

Tuesday we drove 513 miles to the Flying J in Effingham, Illinois. We were on the road 8 hours and 15 minutes, which included a long fuel stop at a crowded TA in Missouri. We did not need fuel badly, but we wanted to buy it while it was cheap. 

The price went up over 30 cents a gallon when we crossed into Illinois. The price is even higher in Indiana, plus there is another huge tax on that.

Ohio is high too, but we topped off about 10 miles before we arrived at the barn Wednesday. The bus will most likely be sitting for three weeks, so I want the tank to be as full as possible.

Tuesday evening KJo and I went to a local cafe in Effingham. They we being very careful and it felt completely safe. I needed to get out of the bus for a few minutes and that did the trick.

We were rolling from Effingham by about 7:00 AM Wednesday morning. I took this picture before we rolled.

All was smooth sailing Wednesday and we finished up 282 miles and pulled onto the Lazy OD Ranch about 1:00 PM Eastern time.

We emptied the holding tanks, unhooked the car, used Dad's truck to pull the tent trailer out of the barn and then pulled into the barn.

After a nap, we went up to Odie's for a masked and distant visit with my parents. It was so good to see them!

Odie called in an order to Acapulco and we drank a little salsa as a toast to arriving home!

The total trip was 1213 miles and about 20 hours of driving. We are glad to have that behind us and I am ready to take a short break from driving!

This is the earliest we have been home for Christmas in a while and we hoped to visit several of the local churches. COVID is raging here in southern Ohio so we do not know exactly what we will do. Fun times, right?

Thank you for traveling with us. May God bless you all!

Davy

The Green Machine - An Extremely Low Mileage Year

We have been putting miles behind us this week so I suppose it is appropriate to write about miles on the Green Machine.😊

This was a very low mileage year on The Green Machine. In fact, the last 12 months have been the lowest mileage year since I have owned my own car. My first car was purchased in the summer before my senior year and I put nearly 50,000 miles on it by the time I bought another car in October of the next year.

We have never looked back! Some years KJo and I put 90,000 miles per year on whatever combination of cars we owned at the time. Several more years we put 70,000 miles or more.

We have not been driving near that many miles for a long time, but The Green Machine really got a break this year!

In November 2019, the original transmission failed on our 2006 Envy Green Scion xB, AKA The Green Machine. It is hard to believe, but we seriously considered not fixing the car and leaving it to fend for itself in California.

In the end, we decided to get The Green Machine up and going one more time and get serious about saving for a replacement. I wrote recently HERE and HERE about our thought process concerning our next vehicle.

We are half-heartedly on the hunt for a replacement now, but we are praying and weighing options carefully. We want to purchase the right "next" car the first time.😁

It has now been a year since we had the transmission replaced and the Green Machine has performed fine. However, it is amazing that we have not put very many miles on it at all. 

The Green Machine had 197,962 driving miles when the transmission was replaced. The transmission went out on November 25 and we picked it up from the repair garage on December 4. As of December 4, 2020, the Green Machine had 207292 miles.

That means for the first time ever, we drove our car less than 10,000 miles! Wow! That is amazing. Of course, COVID had a lot to do with that. I want COVID to take a hike, but I could get used to low miles like that.

We have never, never, never put less than 10,000 miles on a car in a year! But we have now.

It will be interesting to see what happens in 2021. Thank you for reading Mile Markers today.

Davy

Up AND Down Pike's Peak In Less Than Three Minutes

We are traveling today so I thought it would be appropriate to put up the video of us going up Pike's Peak Highway and back down again in less than three minutes.

We are not driving quite that fast on our way across Kansas.😁

And here are the others.

Driving UP Pike's Peak Highway.

Driving DOWN Pikes' Peak Highway.

Thank you for stopping by today.

Davy

Driving DOWN Pike's Peak

Our regular post will be along shortly so there will be two Thursday posts.

YouTube
Tuesday I posted on YouTube of us driving UP Pike's Peak Highway.

Wednesday I posted the video of us driving DOWN Pikes' Peak Highway.

Thank you for reading today. Remember to look for our regular Thursday post about driving the BoggsMobile 200,000 miles!

Davy

Going Up Pike's Peak

I have been spending too much time editing and preparing videos for YouTube and not enough time getting Mile Markers together. Today should be Vintage View Vednesday, but I did not get to it this week. I have a certain number of hours that I spend in sermon prep each day of revival and between sermons and YouTube, I maxed out this week.

I did put up a video Tuesday from our dashcam as we drove up Pike's Peak Monday. That was the prettiest day this week and we spent three hours doing that. Man, I have all kinds of excuses for not getting my work done today.😁

The video going up the mountain is kind of long, but the scenery is beautiful. I am working on the video going down and I may have it up today or Thursday. The video going down is even better.

I also am working on a high speed dashcam video going to the top and back down in less than three minutes. That is really cool!

Here is the one from yesterday.

Thank you for stopping in today.

Davy

What Can Follow The Green Machine? Part 2

Recently I asked a question in Mile Markers that has been posed to us and that we have often considered ourselves, "What in the world can replace the Green Machine?"

I wrote about some of our thought processes to arrive at the point of replacement. Now I will discuss a little of our thinking going forward. We are starting at the same place we started when we began looking for the Green Machine nearly nine years ago.

-Fuel efficiency- Gas prices were sky high in 2008 and so a car that sipped fuel became important to us. By 2012, we were ready for better MPG.

Gas prices are much lower now, but we all know that is temporary. The price will soar once again and people will be trading their gas guzzlers at a loss, like last time.

We still want to be careful with MPG ratings, but we are slightly more flexible with that than we were in 2012.

-Room for two wheelchairs and three of us- We carry a power chair, actually a scooter the last several years, and Odie's lightweight folding wheelchair. Both of them need to travel in the car when we are traveling between churches.

We also carry quite a bit of sound equipment in the car when we are not able to park the bus at the church. The Green Machine has been quite a truck at times.

This pretty much eliminates a small car with a trunk, even if it clicks other boxes. Not many small cars with trunks are towable like we need them to be anyway.

-Ease of entry and exit- Because of Odie, we cannot tow something that sits down on the ground or something that has a six-inch lift kit.

-Towable four wheels down without major modification- This may be the most unnegotiable item on the list. The vehicle we tow behind us must tow with all four wheels on the ground. I refuse to consider using a tow dolly. That is a nonstarter.

The fact is, most cars are not towable with four wheels down without modifications. I counted less than 50 on the list for 2020 cars. Some years it is more, some years it is less. That eliminates a lot of choices.

The little Ford Transit Connect vans or small Nissan NV200 vans would be perfect, but they can not be towed four wheels down. The larger versions of these vans are rear wheel drive and I will discuss their possibilities below.

-Fits in the tent trailer- We would love for our tow vehicle to fit into the tent trailer if possible. However, the height is an extremely limiting factor because of the lift overhead in the trailer.

We have decided that if we partially retire the Green Machine before it is dead and replace it with something that checks off all the other boxes, we might keep the Green Machine to take with us during tent revival season. 

That way the replacement would not have to meet the qualification of fitting in the tent trailer. We are not sure how that would work in real life, but it is an option we are considering.

Chevy and GMC trucks and SUVs that are four wheel drive are USUALLY towable. With the current popularity of trucks, the prices of these have soared. We have looked around quite a bit at these and have pretty much crossed them off our list for that reason alone.

Most Ford four wheel drives are towable too, but with pretty severe speed and sometimes mileage restrictions. That is a deal breaker.

There is one modification we would consider and that is purchasing a rear wheel drive van and installing a transmission disconnect. We would only consider that if we found something with low miles at a good price, that we would be inclined keep for a number of years. If we kept it a long time, it would average out the high cost of getting it ready to tow.

Nissan does have a larger NV van that is rear wheel drive and the full sized Ford Transit is rear wheel drive too. Blue Ox sells a base plate for these and they could probably be equipped with a transmission disconnect. If so, we would consider one of them too.

Ideally, we would like to find something five or six years old at the most, so we can delay starting this process over at least eight to ten years down the road.

A good friend recently pointed out that some years of the Honda CRV is towable and the Chevy Traverse is towable four wheels down most years too. We have a few options to ponder.

So all of that to answer the question, what can follow the Green Machine? 

The answer?

We are not sure😁

Hopefully, we will know soon. Thank you for joining us today.

Davy

What Can Follow The Green Machine?

What Can Follow The Green Machine?

I mentioned in a Mile Marker a while back that even though the Green Machine is doing well now, we have begun to consider what comes next. We have been asking ourselves a question and hearing the same question from others.

What in the world can you buy to follow the Green Machine?

Our little 2006 Envy Green Scion xB has become part of the Boggs Family, almost as much as the BoggsMobile. We are known for the Green Machine and the Green Machine is known for us. Where you see one, you see the other. Like Abbot and Costello, Lum and Abner, Fiber McGee and Molly and Lenny and Squiggy.🤣

This is the week we purchased it. (Without gold rims)

We are very thankful that the Green Machine has lasted as long as it has. We purchased it in May of 2012 and it has bounced along behind the bus for 8 1/2 years and is still bouncing relatively strong.

However, the Green Machine is not built with the same purpose in mind as the BoggsMobile or to the same standards. It was a whole lot less expensive when new and not engineered to run two or three million miles. It is possible that it is nearing the end of its run as our main car on the road.

Honestly, we would prefer to retire it to home pastures rather than for it to die on the road and be left behind to face an uncertain end alone. We came very near to leaving The Green Machine behind when the transmission went out in California last year. We invested a little in the California economy and the Green Machine still lives.

Toyota no longer has the Scion brand and the xB has not been made since 2015. The second generation xB was not as attractive to us as the Green Machine anyway. However, they were more solid cars in general and we are open to another xB in the 2013-2015 range.

IF we could find a 2006 xB (The only year with Envy Green) in good shape, very low miles and manual transmission, we would definitely look closely. There were only 2200 green ones manufactured and only a few hundred of them had a manual transmission.

What in the world can replace it? KJo would be real quick to speak up and say that a new Jeep Gladiator pickup or Jeep Grand Cherokee, Jeep Wrangler or the newly unveiled Ford Bronco would fit the bill very nicely.

I would make note that each of those choices would be towable four wheels down in their four wheel drive versions. For that and for many other reasons, they would fit the bill. However, I am more concerned about the bill fitting us!😊

For several reasons, for many years we have avoided financing cars. We would rather pay cash for something less nice than new and enjoy the freedom that being car payment free gives us. It is amazing how liberating it is not to have a car payment.

I am not saying we will NEVER finance a car, but we do our best to avoid it. That is why a beautiful Jeep Gladiator is not in contention this time even though what KJo wants is very important to me.

I have rambled on long enough for one day. I will get into the nitty gritty of what it takes to replace The Green Machine in a later post. (Maybe Thursday IF something does not preempt me.) Thank you for stopping by today.

Davy

Good Thing Diesel is Cheap Right Now!

I am preparing this post on Wednesday evening before church, for publishing Thursday morning and soon you will know why. 

Tonight is our last night of revival at London First Pentecostal and we are looking forward to watching the Lord work once again. We have been having a wonderful time each night with Pastor Vernon Jarvis and his church and we expect great things on this last night.

The BoggsMobile is already hooked up to the tent trailer and the Green Machine is loaded and strapped in the trailer. 

After church tonight we will load the sound stuff in the bus and we will be ready to roll by God's grace.

Once we leave London, we need to be in place to begin revival at Junction Hill Pentecostal Church near West Plains, Missouri by Friday evening. That is about 506 miles from here. Normally, we would make most of the drive Thursday and then finish the last small leg on Friday.

However, it seems that we can not do anything normal these days. It is 2020 after all.😁 Ah, that is not a legitimate excuse, we always seem to find a way to follow the long way around.🤣

When we left Ohio in mid-August, we had two tent revivals and the outdoor revival in Richton on the schedule. We left home prepared for those meetings, pulling the tent trailer behind us.

By the time we finished in Virginia two and a half weeks later, the tent revivals had either postponed or converted to a church revival. In each instance, it was the correct decision and we agreed wholeheartedly. 

Those changes meant that I did not have to pull the trailer for 2000+ miles and go through the difficulty of wiggling in and out of churches or finding alternative places to park the tent trailer multiple times.

Jeff Rowe from East Tennessee Luxury coach allowed me to leave the tent trailer behind and that saved me a bunch of pulling, a boatload of aggravation and at least three miles per gallon in diesel.  All those things are part of having tent revivals and worth it, but if there are no tent revivals, the trailer becomes unnecessary baggage.

I really need to get the trailer home, plus I need to shuffle some sound equipment between the bus and trailer for a project I will tell you about in the future. That is why I picked it up Saturday from Vonore, Tennessee and why we are not going directly from Kentucky to Junction Hill.

Tonight after church or very early Thursday morning, I plan to go north instead of west and pedal as fast as I can to the Lazy OD Ranch in Ohio. We will drop the trailer, shuffle some equipment, wave at everyone, MAYBE, HOPEFULLY, drink some salsa and then move west quickly.

That turns a 506 mile journey into an 800 mile journey. Oh well, like I said, good thing diesel is cheap right now!

Please, please, please pray that God will give us grace and mercy to complete this trip safely and with no problems. I really do not try to find ways to complicate things. These are just some of the contortions we have to go through to get the job done. You have the same things in your life. It is part of the ride, right?

Thank you for stopping by today. Tomorrow is Revival In Pictures!

Davy

The Green Machine Lives To Roll Another Day

We purchased the Green Machine, a 2006 Scion xB, in May of 2008. I said then that I would love to drive it until at least 2020. Well, here we are! We have owned it for over 8 years and it is 14 years old.

It has over 206,000 miles on the odometer and over 140,000 miles on top of that being pulled behind the BoggsMobile. It has also ridden inside the tent trailer at least 50,000 miles. The little car has done well.

In September 2018 we had quite a bit of front-end and brake work completed on the Green Machine because it was riding like a buckboard wagon. We also had new tires put on it at that time.

We usually need to change the tires every 20-24 months, because of the miles driven and because the pulling miles are rough on the tires. Since we did not drive much at all for 3 months, the tires are still in good shape.

However, one of the tires has had a slow leak for a few months and I could not find the leak. It was only losing 3-4 lbs per week so it was not bad. Lately, the rate of loss had increased so I took it to Paul's Auto in Laurel, Mississippi last week. Bro. Carol Waters from Richton First Assembly is the manager there and I have had them work on our vehicles before.

They found a very small self-tapping screw between the threads and they took care of that. We had also been having a periodic thumping/popping when turning and they found that. The bushings on the sway bars were gone and they said that was an easy fix.

So the Green Machine lives to roll another day! Praise God for Bro. Waters and Paul's Auto.

We are in the process of trying to figure out what kind of vehicle will eventually replace the Green Machine on the road. It needs to be able to be pulled four wheels down, it needs room for us and both wheelchairs and decent gas mileage is a plus too.

We try to avoid car payments like we try to avoid coronavirus, so that is a factor too. We are confident when the time comes, we will have the right direction. We do have some ideas. Maybe I will write some about our thought process.

For now, we are very thankful to have the Green Machine. It is perfect for our needs at this time. We are glad it is still rolling!

Thank you for joining us today.

Davy

What's Up, Weekend? 10/5/2020

The weekend began Friday with a wonderful meal from the master griller, Bro Scott and Sis. Kim! Wow!

If you start a weekend like this, you know it is going to be a momentous weekend. Buckle your seatbelt, here we go!

At 4:00 KJo and I set up all of the sound equipment for church, but saved the soundcheck for later. Then while she was getting the inside of the bus ready to ride, I was filling the water tank, disconnecting the utilities, cranking the BoggsMobile, moving it into the church parking lot and hooking up the Green Machine.

When all of that was completed, we dressed for church, completed soundcheck and by then it was time for the last night of revival. We had a wonderful closing night that capped off a great week.

It was different this year without the tent, but I really enjoyed the whole week. The Richton folks are like family to us and I am always to preach to them with a burden. We sure love them! It was hard to leave but it had to be done, duty calls!

After church, we loaded the sound equipment on Bro. Scott's trailer and took it to the bus. We had lots of help and that was wonderful!

Four pictures from Deidre.

We pulled out of the church parking lot about 9:20 and drove 272 miles and about 4 1/2 hours. The first place we would have considered stopping was the Welcome Center in Cuba, Alabama, but we were feeling good and it was still early. When we stopped at the Rest Area in Ashville, Alabama it was 1:45 and I was winding down.

I really could have driven further, but I knew my places to stop and park would be limited IF I began to get sleepy. We had made it passed Birmingham and that was good enough for me.

I did the work of the evangelist before we left the rest area Saturday morning and we were rolling by 7:30 AM. We had zero problems, slipped through Chattanooga easily and pulled into East Tennessee Luxury Coach 200 miles later.

We unhooked the car and loaded the car into the tent trailer.

I removed the towbar from the BoggsMobile, inserted the hitch, hooked up the tent trailer and away we went. We had an unexplained, self fixing bus glitch that is being thunk over by experts, but we made it to London First Pentecostal about 4:00 PM, finishing 600 miles from Richton, Mississippi.

By 5:30 we had the sound equipment unloaded, the car removed from the trailer, the trailer parked and unhooked and the bus parked and connected to utilities.

Soundcheck video

By 8:00 we were in the bus and by 9:30 I was out like a light. I love traveling with my own bed! It feels so good when I crawl in some nights that I get back out just to crawl in again!🤣😍

Sunday we had two good services to kick off revival. We are so glad to be back here with our friends. Pastor Vernon Jarvis, his wife Sis. Marsha and our brothers and sisters here are a joy to be around.

That wraps up the weekend! Thank you for joining us. May God bless you, friends.

Davy