Predator!

7:51 am - Sunday - December 8th - TWW - 31° F, humidity 47%, wind 6 mph out of the south by southeast.....partially cloudy today with a forecast high of 60° F.  On this date in 2021 TLE and I were treated to one of the most amazing sunsets ever whilst sojourning in the Anza Borrego Desert in SoCal.....it was a 360° affair.....

 ....with the most amazing cloud formations I have seen in quite some time!

We were up just before 5 am Saturday, and on the road to Prescott by 6:15 am....it was still quite dark as we drove the 7+ miles of dirt road out to US-66.  We've never driven that dirt road in pitch dark, so it was an interesting experience.  By 7:20 am we had exited I-40 in Ash Fork, AZ to head southward on HWY 89 through Drake, Paulden, Chino Valley, and other small towns that lay between Ash Fork and Prescott.

Why were we up at such an ungodly hour?  Well, right now we use our Honda EU2000i to put a charge into our Bluetti Solar charger first thing each day until the sun hits its solar panels, then we turn it off and let the sun do the work the rest of the day, and into the next morning when we repeat the process.  We've also been using the large Champion 7,500 kw generator the land provided when we arrived here at TWW to throw a charge into our house batteries, and the house batteries of Phyllis' Newell until the same sun gets high enough in the sky to hit both sets of roof mounted solar panels on the roofs of both Newells.  The Honda cannot handle both jobs in the morning without running full blast for an hour, or two.  We really wanted to have one generator to handle both jobs, that was also quiet.  The Champion is quite loud.  I've been looking for a 5,000 to 7,500 watt Honda, or Predator generator (dual fuel - gas, or propane) on Facebook Marketplace for sometime now, but they are running (used) in the $550-1,000 range.  

A few days ago I got an email from Harbor Freight with $300 Black Friday credit coupon on their Predator 5,000 dual fuel/remote start generator bringing the $1,099 price down to $799.  The sale is over on December 8th, and the Prescott store had just 2 left at that price on Friday evening at 7:50 pm (they close at 8 pm each day), so we decided to buy a new one, but we had to get there by 8 am Saturday to guaranty we would get one of the remaining two, plus I needed to pick up the table that goes with the drill press I bought a few weeks ago, plus do some shopping.  We didn't have room in the Expedition for the table then, so I promised to return and get it after Thanksgiving.

At any rate, we arrived at the Prescott Harbor Freight at 8:10 am, and there were still two Predator 5,000's left....SCORE!  We quickly purchased one of those two, along with some longer masonry drill bits so I can finish drilling those bore holes for the rebar, and were back on the road to pick up the aforementioned drill press table, but not before stopping off at a local Starbucks for some coffee and pastries.  

By 9:15 am we had retrieved the table, and were on our way to the local Walmart Supercenter to buy some groceries, then over to Trader Joes, and finally COSTO where we topped off the Expedition fuel tank at $2.83/gallon (best price in 4 years for us), then into COSTCO to buy a few more things.  We were back on the road home by 11 am, and reached TWW at 12:50 pm....6.5 hours after we left.

I spent the rest of the afternoon tinkering with the new Predator 5,000.  After adding 10w-30 motor oil, and reading the instructions I hooked it up to a 5 gallon propane tank to test it.  It fired right up, and runs so quietly!  The remote start key fob works from about 20' away, so no more going outside first thing to turn on the generators, plus no more trips to town to buy gasoline for any generators.  Using propane will be a lot less expensive as it only costs us $2.29/gallon.  Ultimately we'll have it plumbed into our 120 gallon propane tank.....

.....there she is....she is big, and heavy!  On Sunday we'll build a platform for her near the shed.  I'm not sure, at this point, if I'm going to put her in the shed....we'll see.

By the time I finished it was after 4:30 pm, and I was tired!  TLE had purchased some really beautiful top sirloins at COSTCO, so I fired up the Sea-B-Que and grilled one.  They are very thick, and it took me around 15 minutes to get them to medium rare.

I haven't reported on my weight loss for some time, and that is because I have managed to maintain my 177 weight I reached this past summer at LPG&RVR.  I hadn't weighed myself in a while, and after that Thanksgiving eating binge last week I needed to know how I was doing. On Friday I weighed in at 176.8, so eating one meal a day is working just fine, even with the binge over Thanksgiving....lol!  For the first time in years I'm back into the green zone on the body mass index scale, staying there, and feeling great!

Thanks for stopping by!