Weigh Stations and Fairgrounds . . .

We got up about 9am and got our hearts pumping with a big pot of Texas Pecan Hazelnut coffee. Then Nick called about 9:30 to say they expected to be in Gila Bend between 12:30 and 1, which gave us plenty of time to get packed up and then weigh the coach like we planned.

So about 11:30 we pulled out of our site into the adjacent parking lot and onto the scales.

When you park on the scales, make sure your front and rear axles are on two different scale segments, indicated by the black stripes on the scale.

Remember how yesterday I said you needed a long stick. These photos show why. Even when you’re at the right level, it’s still over a 3 foot reach to press one of the call buttons (one of the two buttons on either side of the speaker at the bottom).

You press the button and when they answer, tell them you’re a private coach and want a weigh.

This weigh will give you a front axle / rear axle weight, as well as a total gross weight for the coach.

Next I pulled through and back around, reentering the scales, but off to the left side, being sure that my left side wheels were completely on the apron and not on the scales. This allows me to weigh only the right side of the coach. This time I had to get out of the coach (with my long stick) to press the button. I now told them I wanted a ‘reweigh’. This saves me $5.00.

A ‘weigh’ is $6.00, and a ‘reweigh’ is $1.00. If you tell them both times you want a ‘weigh’, it will cost you $12.00. A ‘weigh’ and a ‘reweigh’ is $7.00.

Go figure. Just another mystery of life.

After pulling off the scales, I parked the coach and then Jan and I drove over to the office and picked up my weigh tickets, one for each time.

The first ticket shows that at 32,340 lbs., I’m about 340 lbs. over gross vehicle weight. Not exactly good, but actually only a little over 1% overweight.

As far as the front and rear axles go, I’m 120 lbs. under the max on the front axle and 460 lbs. too heavy on the rear. Again only a little over 2% overweight.

Time to jettison some books. Or a cat…a black cat.

The reweigh ticket has some good news. The reason for weighing one side by itself is to see if your weight is balanced pretty equally on each corner.

The front axle is perfectly balanced. 11880 lbs. total front axle – 5940 lbs. right front equals 5940 lbs. on the left side.

Perfect.

As far as the rear axle, 20460 lbs. minus 10340 lbs. equals 10120 lbs.

A little mismatch, but only about 2% again.

After we picked up our weigh tickets, we drove into Gila Bend one last time so Jan could get a McDonald’s Fish sandwich and some fries for lunch.

And about 15 minutes after we got back, Nick and Terry showed up. After getting in our hugs, and catching up a bit we hit the road to Yuma about 115 miles away.

A few miles out of town, Nick and Terry stopped to fuel up while Jan and I continued on to the Yuma County Fairgrounds where we would meet up.

Arriving at the fairgrounds parking lot, we found the rest of the Gypsy Gathering Rally advance team, Tom and Barb Westerfield, already waiting for us. Then a few minutes later, Nick and Terry pulled in. While Nick went to the fairgrounds office, the rest of us caught on old times.

When Nick got back we took our rigs over to our usual parking spots by the stables, luckily, uninhabited at the present.

After everyone got set up, about 5pm, we all drove over to Chretin’s, a local Mexican restaurant we’ve enjoyed in the past. They were really busy by the time we left, but luckily we got there early enough to beat the crowd.

After a couple of hours of swapping stories, we decided that, yes we DID have room for Dairy Queen, so we all adjourned to the nearest DQ to continue the evening’s fun and frivolity.

Ok, well it was fun, anyway.

Finally getting back to the rigs, we said our goodnights and settled in for the evening.

More tomorrow from Yuma . . .

——————————————————————————————————————-

Thought for the Day:

"One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals nor do they feel any obligations to follow their doctrine"

From a Russian warfare manual

——————————————————————————————————————–

"The reason that the American army does so well in wartime is that war is chaos, and the American army practices chaos on a daily basis."

A WWII German General Officer

sdfgs