20250407 Monday, April 7, 2025. Prepping for Heading Home

20250407 Monday, April 7, 2025. Prepping for Heading Home

When we were driving down to Los Altos from Chico, we had bypassed a planned refueling stop because the station we had stopped at only had what is called B20 Diesel, which contains 20% biodiesel. Our RV has a Mercedes-Benz diesel motor and there is a sticker on the fuel door saying “Use Ultra Low Sulfur Highway Diesel Only. Max B5 (Max 5% biodiesel allowed). Otherwise, the emission control system will be damaged”.  We initially thought that was a fluke and assumed we’d just get some normal #2 Diesel in the city.  We had planned filling up the RV today so we wouldn’t have to do it with the Bronco hitched when we started our return trip.  But when we got to a nearby Chevron station, the sign said #2 Diesel, but it also had a sticker on the pump saying it was also B20, or contained up to 20% biodiesel.  We then drove a bit further and found a Shell station with a high posted diesel price ($5.75/gal) and figured it was probably good old-fashioned petroleum diesel.  

The pump was also labeled #2 Diesel, but with a new twist, the pump was labeled “Renewable Diesel” and a sticker on the pump declared “95% Biomass-Based Diesel Blend- Contains more than 20% Biomass-Based Diesel or Biodiesel”.  So it appears that the State of California requires B20 or greater in its highway diesel.  So what to do?  Ben had to pull over and hit the internet.  Obviously, there are tens of thousands of Mercedes-Benz Sprinter-based commercial delivery vehicles on California’s roads, and California has the world’s most stringent vehicle emissions standards.  Where do they fill all of them up?  

There is a lot of confusion and contradictory pronouncements on the several internet Sprinter forums.  Now looking back at our refueling stop in Redding, all I saw was Top Tier approved Diesel, but now looking back at the pictures I took of the pump, there was a sticker saying “99% Biomass-Based Diesel Blend- Contains more than 20% biomass-based diesel or biodiesel” but another sticker immediately below that saying “Biomass-Based Diesel Blend Is Renewable Diesel- NOT BIODIESEL. Meets ASTM D975 and CARB ULSD Specifications for Diesel Fuel.”

As if things couldn’t be more confusing.  So a search on Renewable Diesel and Shell Renewable Diesel turned up more information about the differences between biodiesel and renewable diesel.  Biodiesel is essentially vegetable oil.  Renewable diesel starts with vegetable oil and hydrotreats it so that it has the same chemical and mechanical qualities as petroleum-derived diesel.  

B20 Biodiesel meets ASTM D7467.  Mercedes-Benz says it should only be used if you have no other alternatives, and regular use will increase maintenance requirements.  Anything higher than B20 will violate warranty coverage.  But B5 is allowable.

Now to make things even more confusing, Chevron is selling a renewable diesel blend that is 80% renewable and 20% biodiesel.  The 20% biodiesel content restricts it to the ASTM D7467 specification.  Shell, however, is selling a 95% renewable, 5% biodiesel blend, as well as a 99% renewable, which is what Costco was probably selling.  

So we got lucky when we filled up at the Costco in Redding, which was selling R99 (Renewable 99%), which is chemically identical to old-school petroleum diesel.  But the Shell R95 (95% renewable, 5% biodiesel blend) is allowable.  So we just have to be careful to read the specs on the pump, and not just the posted prices.  After all the teeth gnashing, we went back to the Shell and filled up with R95B5 diesel.  Since Shell is selling both R99 and R95 in California, we’ll try to stick to Shell stations.  It did help that Shell’s Fuel Rewards membership program dropped our cost from the $5.75 on the street side sign to $5.16/gal.  

After getting that done, we set back up in Eileen’s driveway and then got in a walk around Eileen’s neighborhood.  There are lots of interesting plants growing here, including several we have seen in places like Bottle Brush trees we have seen in New Zealand and Australia, and Bird of Paradise plants in full bloom, which we have seen throughout the tropics.  And, of course, there are plenty of citrus trees full of lemons, oranges, and even kumquats.  Janet had her eyes on several large fig trees.  

While Bay Area residents were worried about the overcast weather forecast, we thought conditions were perfect for walking.  

Teslas are now by far the most common vehicle on the roads here, outnumbering even Toyotas, Hondas, Kias, and Hyundais.  Because of that, the anti-Musk backlash has been tempered by a majority of car owners having one in their driveway.  But perhaps, more Rivians will be showing up in more driveways now that they are an alternative to Tesla.

Another noticeable phenomenon is that housekeepers, landscapers, and construction workers encountered all over the neighborhood all look like immigrant laborers.  It’s no wonder California is a blue state.  It is highly dependent on immigrant labor.  

We had earlier reached out to a cousin, Xiaowen, whose brother, Daqing, had met us in China in 2006.  We had invited her to the dinner at Chef Chu’s but hadn’t checked the email until just yesterday.  Ironically, she said Daqing was flying in from China this evening.  So we are modifying our return plans to make a stop in San Ramon, where she lives, to visit and spend Tuesday night after we pick up our China visas in the morning.  We will see about arranging a dinner near San Ramon for a mini reunion with Eileen and Dave if possible.

We did get through our last Costco rotisserie chicken breast cooking it with Mac and Cheese and green beans.  More camp cuisine.  We capped off the night watching The Matrix, from Eileen and Tony's DVD collection.

20250406 Sunday, April 6, 2025. Stevens Canyon Reservoir and Costco Liquors

20250406 Sunday, April 6, 2025. Stevens Canyon Reservoir and Costco Liquors

Today started with squeezing some fresh lemon juice to freeze and take home with us in the RV.  We then had a Zoom chat with Price and Ciara to get caught up.  John was unable to join in Switzerland because he was out on some sort of adventure with friends.  

Dave stopped by and suggested a couple of possible places to go for a hike and let us borrow his Santa Clara County Parks pass. 

We had a beautiful sunny day with temperatures in the mid-60s and very little wind.  We walked around the Stevens Canyon reservoir.  It was a nice gravel walk, although you had to climb up the face of an earthen dam to get from the parking area to the reservoir level.  The reservoir was built in 1935 to recharge the Santa Clara aquifer.  Today, it was nearly filled to the brim of the concrete-lined spillway.  There is recreational fishing, but it’s catch and release because the fish all have dangerously high mercury levels in them.  I would worry if the reservoir was a primary source of drinking water, but it apparently just percolates into deeper aquifers.  The hillsides are still quite green this time of year.  In the past, we’ve usually been in the area during the summer when the hillsides are all brown and dry.  

After our hike, we went to the Sunnyvale Costco to fuel up the Bronco and look at the liquor prices in California for Ciara’s wedding supplies.  In Washington, a 1.75L bottle of Kirkland Gin is $33. We were surprised to find it is just $18 in California.  There is a 10-cent bottle deposit, but saving $15 per bottle was hard to pass up, especially since they anticipate needing 6 bottles of Gin and 6 bottles of Whisky.  We also bought 14-1.5L California sparkling wine for the toasts and 36 bottles of white wine, although the cost  for the wines was not a whole lot different than those in Washington.  They didn’t have any of the red wines the kids were planning on offering at their wedding, so we’ll look for those in Redding or purchase them in Washington.

Strict liquid diet

We had leftovers from Chef Chu’s for dinner.  Tomorrow we’ll need to get the RV prepared for our return trip by refueling it and figuring out where to pack all that wine and liquor into it.  Tuesday, we’ll head back up to the city in the Bronco to pick up our new China visas, and then we’ll start on our trip back north.  We do need to get back in time to prepare and submit our taxes, and there are no more open clamming dates until after tax day, so we’ll head back up I-5.  

20250405 Saturday, April 5, 2025: San Francisco Bay Trail, Tree Surgery, and Chef Chu’s

20250405 Saturday, April 5, 2025: San Francisco Bay Trail, Tree Surgery, and Chef Chu’s

Dave dropped by and picked us up with Eileen, and we walked the Locheed Reach of the San Francisco Bay Trail in Sunnyvale.  This started with a climb to the top of a hill, which was at one point the Sunnyvale landfill.  It is capped and plumbed to harvest methane, which feeds a power generation facility which, in conjunction with methane produced by the nearby anaerobic digesters, provides nearly all the energy required to run the Sunnyvale waste treatment plant. There is a nice view of the Sunnyvale water treatment plant, which creates a vast wetlands habitat for many migratory birds.  We saw some interesting ducks, herons, and other waterbirds paddling around in the settling ponds, as well as views of Eileen’s Locheed Martin plant complex and the giant blimp hangars at nearby Moffett Field.  It was a perfect day weather-wise with blue skies, very little wind, and temperatures in the upper 60s.  

After our walk, we stopped at Hobee’s, a quintessential Silicon Valley brunch place for omelets and their famous blueberry coffee cake.  

After getting back to Eileen’s, Ben topped off our fresh water, which had gotten down to 1/3 tank from washing and cooking.  The holding tanks are still reading empty, though.  In the afternoon, we joined Eileen in doing some tree surgery.  She has a mandarin orange tree and lemon tree in her side yard which were growing into and over utility and power lines.  We were able to successfully disentangle them and produced a mountain of citrus tree branches and lemons, which will keep Eileen’s organic recycling bin full for the next few weeks.  Fortunately, Coby’s girlfriend lives in an apartment complex where buckets of surplus lemons can easily disappear.  

In the evening, we went to Chef Chu’s with Dave, Sharlene, Ellen, Eileen, Brevan, Coby, and his girlfriend, Claire.  We had quite the feast and a good time. Chef Chu himself even came to the table to express his appreciation to all his faithful customers.  

After getting back to Eileen’s, we watched Gran Turismo, a movie about a video gamer’s actual ascent in the real world of racing in a story that was part Karate Kid, Rocky, and hard to imagine based on a real-life story.

20250404 Electrical Gremlins and Yard Work

20250404 Gremlins and Yard Work

Gremlins lurk here.

It was a comfortable night in Los Altos.  After having his morning coffee, Ben got to work figuring out why there was no power to the RV.  He had plugged into a heavy 50A 240V cord that had previously been used to charge Eileen and Tony’s electric vehicles, but that had been disconnected when they had a new Tesla wall charger directly wired into the garage.  So Ben coiled up and put that cord away, and plugged into a 20A 120v outlet in the garage shared with a sprinkler timer.  That solved getting power to the RV, which wasn’t absolutely necessary since there had been plenty of sunshine to keep our batteries charged with solar, but it does preserve our LP supply not to have to use it to run the furnace overnight or to cook with.

Janet got to work picking up a lot of pine, palm and other yard litter, as well as weeding the front yard and driveway.  The organic recycling bin had just been emptied before we set up the RV in the driveway, and Janet managed to fill an entire 52gal bin with debris she had cleaned up.  She also noticed that Eileen’s boys were working on some sort of electrical project in the kitchen.  Since Ben has had experience with wiring in our own house projects and remodels, he went to investigate.  

Eileen had several items that were needing to get fixed.  The first was that several undercounted lights were out.  Her boys had disassembled one of the fixtures and they were puzzling over why it wasn’t working.  They were trying to upgrade by replacing the small fluorescent tubes with LEDs, but couldn’t figure out why one wasn’t turning on.  Ben determined the problem was a worn-out starter. 

There was also a GFCI receptacle on one wall that was dead, and half the outlets around the kitchen were also not working.  After pulling the GFCI partially out of the wall to check with a voltmeter, the circuit supplying it was not energized.  

Eileen’s house is quite old, with part of the electrical system dating to the 1960s.  The service panels are situated outside the house with one from the 1960's and a newer one dating to the 1980's.  Unfortunately, none of the circuits on the older panel were labeled, and on a newer panel on an addition to the back of the house, only a handful of circuits were labeled, with more than half of the label missing altogether.  So Ben sent the boys to Home Depot to buy replacement fluorescent starters matching the ones removed from the undercounted fixtures, a replacement GFCI outlet since these often do wear out and fail, and an inductive circuit tracer to find the faulty circuit.  

CSI Los Altos team with new circuit tracer

We then had to test each outlet in the house and find the circuit on the circuit breaker panels to map out what was wired to what circuits.  Unfortunately, because the circuit tracer can only feed signal back to the breakers on energized circuits, the tester couldn’t tell which circuit was feeding the dead GFCI.  That was a lot of work with Eileen and Coby inside the house and Ben and Brevan outside at the breaker panels communicating by phone.  Once the mapping was done, we treated ourselves to lunch at In-N-Out Burgers.  

Even after mapping out all the outlets in the house, there were inexplicably dozens of circuits that didn’t correlate with any outlets.  Now some are likely directly wired appliances like the ovens, but that still left at least a dozen suspect circuits.  Direct inspection revealed a 30A 240V breaker on the old panel that had failed and needed replacing, but was so old that you really couldn’t find a replacement on the internet, let alone Home Depot.  Ben bypassed that circuit breaker (don’t tell L&I!) just to see if either side of that circuit fed the dead GFCI, and neither did, so that breaker and its wires were left as found originally.  

Then testing the output of each breaker directly with a VOM revealed one half of a double breaker on the new panel that was not energized, even though on its exterior, it appeared normal and not tripped.  But after toggling the switch, it would not reset and was clearly broken. That was a real surprise because in mapping out all the other circuits in the house, all of the outlets in the front part of the house were mapped to the old panel, and none to the new panel.  When Ben temporarily bypassed that bad breaker, the GFCI still was not energized.  This was baffling.  

Ben then pulled the GFCI completely out of the wall and discovered that the wires had been reversed such that the line inputs had been fed into the GFCI’s downstream posts instead of to the line in posts.  This would explain the absence of voltage with the breaker bypassed.  So Ben corrected this and restored the circuit to life by bypassing the bad breaker half by tying into an adjacent breaker that wasn’t assigned to anything on the residual label on the panel or anything we found testing all the outlets in the house.  It’s possible it’s connected to something like a dishwasher or garbage disposal, which would be wired directly, but as a temporary fix until a replacement for the failed double circuit breaker could be found, it was safe.

We are steadily whittling down our Costco rotisserie chicken and made ziti arrabbiata with green beans for dinner.  There are leftovers that will be another meal, and one chicken breast left, which will most likely end up as sandwiches.  

We are planning on getting together tomorrow with Ben’s brother Dave, who lives nearby, to go for a hike somewhere, and then get everyone together for dinner at a favorite Chinese restaurant in the area, Chef Chu’s, which Ben first encountered during an engineering internship with Hewlett Packard during his college years.  

20250403 Chico to the Chinese Embassy in San Francisco

20250403 Chico to the Chinese Embassy in San Francisco

We had a comfortable night’s rest at Chico Rice, and Sammy came by to see us off as we broke camp and headed south.  

We thought we might have found cheap diesel on the Gas Buddy App in Dunnigan, but it turned out to be too good to be true.  While it was 50 cents less expensive per gallon, it turned out to be B20 biodiesel, which is 20% biodiesel. Our Sprinter can only take No.2 diesel and no more than B5 or 5% biodiesel.  We will just have to get used to paying more for diesel in California.  

We stopped at a Planet Fitness in Vacaville, where we took showers and refilled our drinking water containers.  It’s handy to have a Planet Fitness membership when traveling by RV over long distances and durations.  

Our next stop was the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairview.  Although they now charge $8 for the museum and factory tour, they have a huge store and restaurant gift shop, and in the back, they have a room full of discounted candies.   Who says a mutant double jelly bean can’t live a fulfilling life as a belly flop? 

From Fairview, it was a straight shot to Los Altos.  Fortunately, we only encountered traffic in a few places like Hayward, and managed to arrive at Ben’s sister’s Los Altos home before 1 p.m.  Ben saw that it would take an hour to get to the Chinese Embassy in San Francisco, and although he thought he had read earlier that it was open until 4:30 p.m., a quick check on the internet showed it closed at 2:30 p.m.  We decided to take a gamble and see if we could deliver our Chinese Visa applications today, which would allow us to return back a day earlier to deal with filing taxes and upcoming appointments.  

Thankfully, people in the Bay Area are not afraid to drive fast.  We unhitched the Bronco and flew with the traffic along Hwy 101 into San Francisco like the wind.  We were largely off the rush hour traffic but did encounter one major slow down just before dropping down into the Civic Center.  The Chinese Embassy is just a block from Japantown where they have a large public parking garage so we were able to park there for $4/hr (bargain compared to $16/hr in Seattle’s downtown).  

We got in the door at 1:55 p.m.  There was a line at the windows for accepting Visa applications but they had 4 windows staffed and we got up to one of the windows at 2:10 p.m.  We had seen several other people have problems with their applications like missing photocopies of their passport pages or copies of prior Chinese visas, but Ben had been extra paranoid in reading about the documentation requirements and had color copies of all passport ID pages, proof of residency, and old China visas from our 2006 trip.  The gal behind the counter carefully went through double-checking each item and then handed us receipts for picking up and paying for the Visas next Tuesday.  We had a total of 3 visa applications submitted. We were out the door before the 2:30 closing time and very happy to have accomplished that.  

We did hit more traffic leaving the city, but while we hit multiple rolling slow downs, it was nothing compared to the worse traffic we have encountered in Vancouver, BC, and Seattle.  

After getting back to Eileen’s place, we set up camp in their driveway and had a late lunch of chicken sandwiches with the Costco roast chicken.  

Eileen and Brevan got home from work and got ready to go to their kickboxing gym workout.  We got to do some laundry and unloaded 11 computers to be donated to Tony’s nonprofit.

We made a trip to the Apple Park visitor center, which is on the campus of the Apple headquarters building shaped like a giant flying saucer.  Ben had broken an earpiece on his AirPods and picked up replacements while Janet got to order a replacement screen protector glass, which got cracked during this trip when it slid off the Bronco’s dashboard and onto the pavement.  That will get shipped to our home for later installation at an Apple Store closer to home.

When we got back, we finished our laundry and watched some TV with Eileen while Brevan and Coby were doing some fantasy footballing.  Ben got to drink some homemade beer that Tony had brewed using a kit that he had received from his son Alex for Christmas.  It was quite good, but Eileen complains it takes up a lot of space in the refrigerator, so Ben will drink enough to make space for the razor clams we gave them.

Ben made ramen with Costco rotisserie chicken for dinner in the RV.  Now that the China visa applications have been filed, we relax and think of things to do and see over the weekend.  

20250402 Medford, OR to Chico, CA

20250402 Medford, OR to Chico, CA

We had a very quiet and restful night at the Edenvale Winery and would recommend it as a well-positioned Harvest Host location for driving between Washington and California.  We were back on the road by 9 a.m.  

The RV had to pull the Bronco up Siskiyou Summit, which at 4310’ is the highest elevation along I-5.  We had no trouble, but did have to stay in the slow lane climbing the steepest part at 47 mph @ 2900 rpm.  We did end up passing a number of semis during the hill climb, but fortunately, traffic was very light and the weather was favorable.  It was in the 40’s as we ascended and the roads were bare.  At the summit, there was a bit of snow on the far edge of the shoulder, but we didn’t encounter any ice on the roadway.  For all but the steepest climbs where shoulder driving was permitted for semis, we were able to tool along at the speed limit.

The weather cleared up remarkably as we descended into California past Lake Shasta, which was remarkably filled.  We have seen the entire marina high and dry in the past.  Today, the water was near the high water mark around the lake.  

We made a refueling stop at the Costco in Redding.  This was fortunately visible from the freeway off-ramp, so it was very easy to find.  It is also a very large warehouse and we were able to park the RV and Bronco in the outskirts of the parking lot near the gas pumps.  The diesel was $4.599/gal, which was far more expensive than in Oregon, but the cheapest diesel within 100 miles.  We picked up a Costco chicken and artisan rolls for dinner and hot dogs for lunch.  It was in the mid-60’s and sunny in Redding.

Our next stop was the Olive Pit in Corning, which is another favorite stop of ours because they have so many different types of stuffed olives that you can sample for free.  We did have to buy a few jars both to have for ourselves and to give as gifts.  

We arrived at our next Harvest Host site, Chico Rice, at 3 p.m.  This was visible from I-5 and is a several-acre site with numerous grain bins and a building where they process and polish organic rice.  It is surrounded by floodable fields for growing rice.  Normally, they would be planting this time of year, but it has been unseasonably wet, so they have delayed planting by a couple of weeks.  We picked up an 18# bag of organic sushi rice for $30.  We went for a nice walk around the fields with one of the owner’s dogs, a very nice golden retriever named Sammy.  We were the only Harvest Host campers on-site.  We got out all our wet clamming gear and set it out in the sun and light wind to dry off before storing it for the rest of the trip. 

They had a small menagerie behind one of the equipment sheds with goats, chickens and ducks. Sammy was with us and when he ran up to the fence, one of the goat got startled and turned to run, but then suddenly turned stuff and fainted onto its side. One of those fainting goats for real.