I didn’t sleep prior to the 1 AM feeding, which is my own fault because I chose to read TDIClub forums and get things prepped for the evening.  Both kids fell asleep on half-full bottles. Not 15 minutes after putting them down, they decided it was “non-productive poo time” and proceeded to grunt and scream for the next hour. Failing to find any useful appeasement, another round of bottles was warmed in hopes that they just hungry. Stella powered hers down and contentedly dozed off; Elise found no such satisfaction.  She’d calm down just long enough to think, “FINALLY, peace and quite”, and just as I was about to nod off she’d belt out more screams.  Valerie had been getting small bits of sleep throughout this, but, she’d been up since 5:00 AM that morning and was dragging too heavily to be of any help for Elise. So I returned the favor of sending her to the office as she had done for me the night before.

The discomfort continued on. Elise would not stay quiet. Somewhere along, Stella filled her diaper (literally — it’s unreal the volume of poo she saves up) and proceeded to wail from the discomfort of all that smelly gooey goodness left for me. By now, it’s 5:00 AM; both are in high grump for food.  At 6:00 AM with the twilight glowing behind the curtains, both kids are quietly pulling on pacifiers and slumber falls upon them.  That left me pondering if there’d be any value in getting 1.5 hours of sleep (best case) before Maia woke up. I’d convinced myself that I might as well just start my day without a wink of …

7:15 — Wah! Wah! Wah!

As I groggily woke up and searched for Stella’s pacifier, Maia and Valerie bound into the bedroom. A brief synopsis of the night was exchanged, and was sure she’d have pity on me and take the terrible twosome away to let me sleep under the silence of my earplugs. Work would be there at noon, or whenever I’d be rested enough to be functional — I’d be useless with only an hour of sleep.

And she did take the screaming Stella. And then she brought her back, with two bottles in hand. And a toddler in tow. A toddler that was very happy to see me. And the lot of them climbed into bed. My night was clearly over and so the day started with a brusque departure from bed and hardly a word to Valerie as I staggered out the door for work.

I wasn’t totally useless at work. Absentmindedly stumbled through the day; dumped coffee and cocoa on a wall, of all places. Dumped soup on the kitchen table as sat down for dinner.  It was like being drunk, but without the warm fuzzy happy feeling.

Those with triplets or more, my hat’s off to you. I’d have rolled the dice to figure out who goes up for adoption.

But, today started with a revolt followed by incessant bouts of giggling and screaming — combinations that do not lend themselves to relaxing for the call of nature. Ohh well, back in the diapers for a while longer…

This 1 hour time lapse was today’s attempt to get her to nap. Valerie was busy tending to the babies, so, Maia had the run of her room.

I worried about the minimum rating because there’s a dirty little secret about tankless hot water heaters: they completely shut down when the flow is too low and you get no hot water. Yup, your water conservation efforts of running a trickle of water will be for not with most gas fired tankless heaters. And after having the T-K3 in use for a few days now, I’m glad I did worry –0.4 gpm doesn’t quite go low enough for my liking. It’s probably just me, but the small stream of water I use when washing dishes is not enough to keep the water heater from turning off due to inadequate flow. You don’t read about it often, but, this is one of the cons to a tankless hot water heater.

A second negative to the tankless setup is the amount of natural gas they consume at full water flow — 190,000 BTU’s for the T-K3. That’s more than my furnace, oven/range, clothes drier, and old water heater… combined. Most installs are going to need to upgrade the gas plumbing to provided enough gas flow.

Here’s an online natural gas flow calculator that takes into consideration more than the standard 0.5″ water column pressure drop that most flow tables use.

Here’s is a good paper that illustrates the application of the low-pressure gas flow formula [1] used in the above calculator, and gives some helpful information about how to account for discontinuities. For example, a 90° elbow adds 2 linear ft of “equivalent pipe length” of resistance. Things that make you go, “huh”.

[1] found here.

We awoke from our caboose cabin and Maia was happily asleep in her locker private room which gave Valerie and I a peaceful morning to ease into the day while the sun peaked over the mountainous horizon. When Maia awoke, she was excited to be in the train and after getting dressed she wanted to “ride train” while snacking on a granola bar. More than happy to oblige, I climbed up with her and sat on the opposing seat and we pretended our caboose was swaying down the track while making choo choo and whistle noises. Even Valerie gingerly climbed the rungs once to come play train with us. Incidentally, only a few cabooses have the upper level observation deck.

As we gathered the accouterments from the cabin and got the car loaded, Maia wanted to, “play stairs”. In true form, she managed to make a playground out of any available obstacle and kept herself entertained. This quality of hers is, after all, what really let us make this trip in the first place.

With the car mostly packed, we moseyed around the park and checked out the variety of cabooses they had. Maia started pouting when her “play stairs” session was so abruptly terminated by our walkabout

The park is nestled in a valley, and the Cascade mountains are all around. Although it was still smoky, this was the first day we’d seen blue sky in about two weeks.

We got on the open road and decided to get a few miles in and then stop for breakfast. Little regard beyond going north was given as to what road those miles would be covered on — the destination was, after all, breakfast. And indeed it was found when we stopped in Yreka at the Black Bear Diner. Turns out they are small chain throughout the west (38 stores), which is just fine by me as their 7-Grain Almond Granola Pancakes are worth going back for.

Back on the road, I asked Valerie to check the map and remind me what road we’d need to go to Klamath Falls. After a brief study, she responded confused that there’s no obvious reason to go to Klamath Falls. It quickly became clear the road we wanted was already well behind us. So, regarding that GPS purchase we debated about prior to the trip … yeah, it was looking like we’d chosen poorly. But, that’s another story.

We spied a small, unnamed road in the atlas that head more directly to Crater Lake. A quick check of the iPhone showed it did have a name: Dead Indian Memorial Road. Crisis averted!

Dead Indian Memorial Road to the 140 was a very lightly traveled, well maintain road that winds through the forest and proved to be a very pleasant drive. We were quite pleased to have missed the more direct routing of 97 through Klamath Falls.

Eventually, we made it to our intended destination. (The astute reader will note we arrived from the south. This was actually taken on the drive out of the park).

Crater Lake was largely inaccessible due to snow. We arrived at the main visitor center and Maia headed directly for the snow. She wasn’t all that interested in it during the winter, but now it was suddenly fun.

After Maia soaked her shoes enough, we were able to take in the view.

And then Maia found new obstacles to play on.

Did I mention there was still snow?

We stopped at one of the overlooks on the north side of the lake and had a nice picnic snack while Maia ventured off in search of more obstacles. What she got was a spank’n when she refused to stop going toward the road.

More Crater Lake photos in the gallery.

We had a short drive from the lake to Chemult where we had a most unfortunate reservation at the Dawson House Lodge. Let’s just say, pictures posted on the net don’t tell the whole story and hide lots of cleanliness sins that change one’s perspective upon arrival. It was across the street from a truck stop and the lack of AC made for a long night of jake brakes through the open window as the truckers came and went. To add insult to injury, there was only one restaurant open in town and they clearly had no worries about any competition. Diner was edible, but left plenty to be desired beyond that. Maia was the smartest of us — all she’d eat were pre-packaged Saltine crackers.

The best thing about Chemult, was leaving the next day.

Day 1: San Jose to Dunsmuir – 337 miles.

We got off on a late start; too many last minute things that needed to be done before we left. Worst case scenario, we’d miss out on the Shasta Dam tour. We finally hit the open road about 11:30 AM, which gave us plenty of time to catch “breakfast” before Bette’s Ocean View Diner closed.

Bette’s is in Berzerkeley. As Valerie and I walked from the parking lot with Maia in my arms, a young man holding a clipboard took a step toward us and presumed, “I’ll bet you two would like to see a Democrat in office”. Both of us outwardly laughed and just kept going. It’s beyond me why they spend any energy signing up voters in Berkeley given the super majority they already have there.

Even at 12:30 on a Friday, we still had to wait for a table. But, only long enough to let us pick up some packages of scones and pancake mixes for warm breakfasts later in the trip.

Maia achieved a new first: she ate a short stack of pancakes on her own (minus a taste that I took), plus some of Valerie’s eggs, plus my fruit. Kid’s got two hollow legs! Breakfast turned into brunch as we concluded it with a slice of strawberry rhubarb pie. Had we known that no finer pie would be had during the rest of the trip, we’d have ordered two slices instead.

Back on the road we missed not one, but two shortcuts that would have turned us north towards the 5. Ohh well, only 30 miles out of the way, but a solid half-hour spent in stop and go traffic.

It had been about 2 weeks since we’d seen blue sky at home due the majority of CA being on fire. Nearing Redding, it was even worse as we approached some of the largest fires in the state.

We stopped in Red Bluff to eat and stumbled across the Riverside Bar and Grill. The food was quite tasty and the view of the river was very relaxing. But, the odd thing about Red Bluff was the coffee opportunities every other block. I’m hardly exaggerating — the Google search below is clearly missing more than half of them.

We arrived at the Railroad Park in Dunsmuir well after dark. We’d called ahead and they left the light on for us in caboose #28.

I wasn’t sure what to expect; could have been over the top cheesy. But, I have to say, it turned out to be a great way to get the trip started. The caboose is actually quite spacious, larger than an average hotel room. They left the large locker in place that had a ladder to the observation deck seating. And, like every caboose would, it was complete with a pressure gauge to monitor the health of the train’s brake system. At $140 it was only marginally on the splurge side of the budget.

Incidentally, the locker (closet) pictured above was huge. The pack-n-play Maia sleeps in fit with ease, giving her a private room all to herself.

I wasn’t quite ready for sleep, so, I shot a few photos around the park. The old steam engine was really something you don’t find often. It’s specially built for steep logging roads. Note the three vertical pistons driving a crank shaft. The crank has a few wiggle joints and a right-angle gear drive assembly on every axle, making it “all wheel drive” — even the tender car! The boiler is actually offset to the left side in order to make enough room for the pistons on the right — looks out of balanced when viewed from the front.

There are more photos from around the park in the gallery.

Here’s a higher-quality MP4 encoding (24 MB, H.264 encoded).

In case you were wondering, the supercharger has quite the loud whine without the engine cover on.

2200 miles, not counting side trips. We are looking at ~14 days time. Traveling with Maia (2 years old), we trying to keep any one day’s driving to less than 6 hours.

• Leaving Friday. Visit Lake Shasta Dam. Daily tours, most likely options are 1:00, 2:15, or 3:30. No cameras
• Friday night, stay in a CABOOSE CABIN! The Upper McCloud River trail looks cool. Complete with 2 water falls and all. Map it here:, and directions here.
• Saturday, bum around crater lake, and crash a little ways north at The Dawson House Lodge in Chemult.
• In Richland — visit the Columbia River Exibition of history, science and technology. Visit da nucl’ar museam.
• Walla Walla is out of the way, but, Valerie saw the L’cole No 41 winery in the guide book, and went, “Ooh”.
• Spend another 1-2 days working our way toward Chris and Jenifer’s. Stay where ever we find the need to.
• Leave out Saturday. Make our way to the Mt. St. Helens area. Staying at Guest House Intl for 2 nights. 501 Three Rivers Dr., Kelso, WA 98626
• Mt. St. Helens: Go through the Ape Cave lava tube.
• Monday, check into a near the beach house. Crash for 3 nights there.
• Go visit Spruce Goose Museum in McMinnville.
• More to come…

This was from a 2005 Jetta, but probably applies to most A4’s.

• The power windows can all be opened/closed simultaneously using the key externally. With the key in the door, turn and hold it in the lock position (clockwise) to raise the windows, or the unlock direction to lower all windows. Hold it long enough to get the windows into the desired position.
• If the battery is disconnected or dies, the above window feature no longer works. It can be reactivated: 1) Close all windows and doors. 2) lock it using the key in the driver door 3) unlock the driver door 4) Lock the door a second time and hold it in the lock position for more than 1 second.
• There’s a fuel filter heater for cold weather ops that extends the usefullness of #2 diesel down to -10*F where the waxy gel would otherwise clog the filter starting at +20*F.
• While it does not advocate idling for warm-up (drive slowly instead), it DOES caution to do a 2 minute cool down period “after hard or extended driving” — presumably to prevent coking the turbo bearings.
• Holding the steering wheel against the limiting stop for >15 seconds will over heat the pump and damage it. Yes, this is common sense, but I find it interesting they put a number to it. Can I do it repeatedly for 14 second bursts with impunity?
• The “Low Fuel” idiot light comes on with 1.9 gallons left in the tank.

And, I seriously have to question this warning:

• “The catalytic converter will be permanently damaged by … push or tow starting your vehicle”.

And exactly HOW is that different than turning the engine over with the starter?

Must be new to the job.