We made our drop in Laredo and promptly hooked on to our next load and pointed ourselves north!  I am not very fond of the Laredo area and am quite happy when it grows small in my mirrors.  However, I am quite amazed in how much freight comes in and out of the area.  The Mexican economy is growing by leaps and bounds.  The border patrol is more active than the last time we were here.  And there was a rumor of flesh eating jack rabbits but the person who started that rumor is quite insane.

We are headed to the east coast and just like the last time we left Laredo headed east, we had a squall about an hour into our trip – how strange!  It poured cats and dogs for about 30 minutes and then a lightning show and intermittent rain for a couple hours afterwards.  I wanted to stop the truck and grab my washing gear and wash the truck but it was in the bunk area where my wife was sleeping.  I am not certain which is crazier, washing a truck in the rain or imagining a sea of bunnies ...

I have relocated the cellular antenna to the rear of the main cabin so that it extends above everything.  The height of the tip is at around 14’.  The reception has been exceptional as we very seldom lose a signal over the routes we have taken so far.

I have added a new inverter and have attached it directly to the battery.  This eliminates the problem of the inverter needing to be reset every time it lost power on the 12 volt side (the ignition system cuts the power to the accessories when it transfers the power to the starter).  I have discovered that a majority of the inverters behave in the same manner.  Anyway, we have good power to our electronics and we are beyond that problem (I hope).

I have replaced the KR1 router with a Top Global router to eliminate the network reset on loss.  This router seems to be working well and does not reset on loss of the WAN connection.  However, I am noticing an occasional drop on the Wi-Fi side but have not spent any time finding out why.  I am so happy that my network is staying up that a drop once or twice a day is nothing (I am sure it will start to annoy me at some point).  The KR1 was resetting 15-20 times a day!

I have changed the error handling routine for the client side of the trip mapper.  It seems to be working much better and recovers on its own most of the time.  I have some more work to do but the “Live View” should be current now unless we do not have a network connection.

We lost the weather station console and logger.  The weather data is joined with the GPS data to provide the records for the trip mapper.  Currently, the mapper requires the weather data in order to display the GPS data.  I am considering a change to the client to place dummy records in the table if the data has not yet been collected or it is not available.  I will need to do something as I will not get a replacement for several weeks.

Anyway, now that things are finally under control, I hope to journal daily again.  We shall see …