Its back! Thank goodness it is back.

By the end of June the work horse of the camp host job, our all electric ATV, had no tread left on the tires and the brakes had worn completely through the caliper pads and the caliper pistons grinding on the rotors was all that was stopping us.  We had told the people responsible for maintenance of this equipment that it needed work done on it last September, but with the government shutdown on the 1st of October everything went to the wayside.  Even when the government re-opened a couple weeks later it did not matter because the North Rim was shut down for the winter and all but a skeleton crew had been furloughed until May of this year.

Aside from Cyndee, the ATV is the hardest working member of the camp host crew.

On the first of July the ATV was just not possible to drive anymore.  It was finally retrieved and dispatched to St. George, UT, 3 hours away, for much needed maintenance.  The guys that took it had hopes that they might return with it the same day.  I knew that was a pipe dream, there was just too much to be done.  They would not even get it to the shop before noon so that meant that all repairs would have to be done in less than two hours so that they could make the three hour drive back to the north rim before their shift ended at 5:00pm.  Never going to happen.

Cutting to the chase, it was more than two weeks before they even started to work on it and then there was the multi-week wait for parts.  That could have been a shorter wait but they ordered the wrong parts (it needed new rotors, which they don't keep in stock) and had to start all over.

But in the interim we used a gas powered ATV that belongs to the law enforcement group.  I don't want to seem ungrateful but there is no other way to put it, this thing was a dog!  Being gas powered it was noisy, it stunk, it rode rough (super aggressive off road tires) and engine heat pumped directly into the cab, scorching our legs.  Making rounds at six in the morning and quite hour checks at 10:00pm became impossible.  We were the noisiest thing on the north rim.  Non-fire pit cleaning rounds were done on foot now.  Good exercise but added lots of time to getting the job done.

Then, as if an answer to prayers, the engine light came on and the LE guys were quick to recover their back roads patrol vehicle.  We moved on to the next vehicle down the line, our 16 year old Dodge Dakota pickup with giant ash cans in the bed.  No more scorched legs and significantly quieter.  But significantly larger too.  Moving through the campground and getting in and out of campsites got a lot slower.  A much improved working environment but still a slow go.

Cyndee, I and our co-hosts hounded the guys every day about when the electric ATV would be back.  Even after the repairs had been completed we could not get it back up on the plateau.  Everybody they thought was "qualified" to make the trip to St. George were not available or had scheduling conflicts.  Finally, after days of pestering them and getting them convinced that we were fully qualified to drive a pickup truck and pull a one thousand pound trailer (our pickup weighs nine thousand pounds and our trailer weighs twenty-two thousand pounds - duh!) they gave in and told us to go get it.  They did not have to tell us twice, we were off.



Backed up to the trailer and connecting the hitch.



Getting this show ready to go on the road.



One last walk around to be sure the tie-downs are good and tight.



Saddle up Cyndee, we are out of here.

That poor old truck has been around the block few times.  In addition to being 16 years old it has 160 thousand miles on it and has been modified six ways from Sunday to do duty as a police cruiser, back roads patrol vehicle and now as a visitor assistance/traffic control cruiser.  The shotgun and assault rifle mounts are still bolted into the inside of the cab, they're empty, and the big two-way radio and bubble-gum machine light system are still in place and functional.  The siren control box and electronics are still mounted to the dash but they are not hooked up to anything.  A pop of the hood and a peek in the engine compartment reveals a rats nest of after market wiring for all the gadgets inside.  Why explain all this you ask?  Well, all of these factors contributed  to us not getting home without incident.

We had no more pulled away from the Polaris shop than the idiot light for the battery came on.  Typically that is an indication that the alternator has quit and the battery is the sole source for all things electrical.  It was getting late and it was wicked hot, we had three hours of driving to do and we needed the air conditioner and we were going to have to use lights.

Lucky for us we were driving down a street that had a few repair shops on it.  I pulled into one just as they were closing up for the night.  The owner said he would not be able to do a repair but he would at least put a meter on it to see if he could tell what was exactly going on.  Like me, he expected the alternator to have quit but it turned out to be the opposite.  The battery was getting hit with 17 volts, that's enough to deep fry a battery pretty quick.  Rather than having to worry about turning off everything electrical, the mechanic said that we should turn on every single thing we could to draw down the voltage.  Looks like we will get home tonight, limping in on a burned out voltage regulator.

Man is it good to have the electric ATV back in service.  Our efficiency is much improved and we are keeping up with all the chores again.