This is what I now have. It works wonderfully, I will go back through the notes to see exactly where I ended up going to get the previous .htaccess file.

VEARY NICE MOD!!! Thank you for writing it.

#### BOF SSU
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
# Make sure to change "test_site" to the subfolder you install ZC. If you use root folder, change to: RewriteBase /
RewriteBase /

# Deny access from .htaccess
RewriteRule ^\.htaccess$ - [F]

RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*) index.php?/$1 [E=VAR1:$1,QSA,L]
#### EOF SSU

Alan