June 11 -- just a hummin

I got up early to load the car since I still had to tie the Ditra onto the top and, of course, it started raining. So I ended up loading the car in the rain -- and it took a while. We didn't get away until around 7:30 (my plan was 7am and anyone can tell you that I get agitated when I'm running late even if it is only my own deadline). Anyway, we were finally all packed and off. Kylie was off to school by that point and we were able to say goodbye to Stef and Lauren.

We went via Route 100 to I76 rather than over to 202 -- I figured that 202 would be a mess on a Monday morning at that time. The roof load was humming, not sure where the vibration was coming from but I was hoping that once we got up to speed on the highway that it would stop ... NOT.

Oh groan -- the faster we went the louder it hummed. When I say hummed -- I mean loud. You could hardly hear yourself think, let alone listen to music or talk. A hand placed against the ceiling could feel the vibration but I could not tell what was causing it.

I stopped by the side of I476 and tightened the tie-down straps to see if the hum could be eliminated -- to no avail. I opened the sunroof while we were driving to see if by feeling the load above we could find the root cause ... no.

Finally, past the Allentown service center about 1 hour north I pulled over again to try something else -- I still had some duck tape left from taping the tarps to the Ditra and ran a strip from the first tie-down to the last parallel to the road. We started off again -- blessed silence ! ... or at least just the normal road noise and wind noise that you would expect from a roof-mounted load. ah ... how do you spell relief !!

It was a long but pleasant trip. 13 hours door to door -- with the stop in Oakville included. Sandy picked up her car at the dealer and went to Joyce's while I continued north. Bronte was stop and go (getting from the dealer to the 407) but that didn't compare to the 400 between Toronto and Barrie -- it was bad planning to hit the 400 at 5pm, but oh well. We retirees are not ever supposed to hit rush hour.

I stopped at the service center at Barrie for the restroom and to feed Abby. She was content to stay in the car, seemingly wanting the trip to be over -- I think that she knew where she was going. Once at the cottage I unloaded everything but the Ditra, only loosening the straps on the roof load.

Some pictures:

Aaron's time trial on Saturday morning:



The winnah !! -- the Philadelphia bike race on Sunday. I only brought Sandy's small camera with me today. With the vantage point that I had at the end of the race I could have snapped a dozen pictures of the group crossing the line with the D2X ... but the small camera fits in my pocket. We didn't realize at the time that this small group got away from the rest due to a crash that we could not see just a few hundred yards away.



The silver bullet ? Coors Light ? -- no !! -- Schluter Ditra on the roof -- I told the guy at the border that I was bringing in an underlayment for ceramic tile for my cottage and he only wanted to know if we had commercial goods ... no. There were also two more of these rolls in the back, sans the silver tarp covering. If you look at the picture you can also see the duck tape across the three tie-downs that eliminated the vibration -- they were really humming away until I dampened their enthusiasm for the trip.