Saturday, May 14, 2011 - Marion IN

LD Lower Panel Detail, Sewemup Mesa Canyon, Gateway CO, April 28, 2011

Too much

That the black tank dropped and rested on the rolled under fiberglass body panel for a good many rough country miles before it finally slid off on a swelteringly hot bone jarring ride on one of those poorly poured concrete roads in Iowa is pretty amazing.

I think a couple of factors contributed. First, I seldom travel with the waste tanks more than 1/2 full. Experience has taught me I need a cushion so I can live aboard a few days while awaiting emergency repairs. This puppy has been towed 3 times in the short while I've had it. Second, it was bloody hot that day - when the tank fell to the ground it was soft and folded at the rear mounts.

Night camp

Wal-Mart Supercenter in Marion IN

Walmart Supercenter Store #1294, 3240 Southwestern, Marion, IN 46952 - (765) 662-0809

Good level parking
Verizon cell phone service - good signal
Verizon EVDO service - good signal
Locate this Walmart on my Night Camps map
Find other Wal-Marts in the area
Check the weather here

Five Trillion Spiders

Spiders begin their hunting with a few handicaps. They're often smaller and weaker than their prey, and they have no wings to give chase in the air. Some species extend their legs by hydraulic pressure, using the same liquid that carries oxygen from their lungs, so they have a hard time running and breathing at the same time. Even their poison may be no match for their victim's: a crab spider's bite is to a honeybee's sting as "an air-gun compared with an elephant rifle," John Crompton wrote. Yet spiders kill at an astonishing pace. One Dutch researcher estimates that there are some five trillion spiders in the Netherlands alone, each of which consumes about a tenth of a gram of meat a day. Were their victims people instead of insects, they would need only three days to eat all sixteen and a half million Dutchmen.

From Spider Woman by Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker magazine, March 5, 2007, page 69

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