And the hits just keep coming!

 7:35 am - Tuesday - February 24th - TWW - 37° F, humidity 35%, cloud cover 27%, wind 12 mph out of the west by northwest.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 65° F.  The view this morning.....

......and on this date in 2020 TLE and I were touring Galleta Meadows on the outskirts of Borrego Springs, CA.....

....where there are a 100+ metal sculptures dotting the landscape....these are just a couple of them.

I've had a project on my long range 'to do' list for about a year now, and have been procrastinating about fixing an issue with our patio awning, but recently, due to some high winds we had, it became worse, so TLE and I promised ourselves we would fix it Monday morning, on the warmest day we've had in weeks.  What was the issue you ask?  Well, a picture is worth, they say, a thousand words, so here is a picture of it fixed....

....the Sunbrella fabric had pulled loose from the aluminum slot beginning about 2" from the left side (see red circle) over time.  We have fixed it once before, about 8 years ago, but it had begun to pull loose again a few years ago resulting in a 3-4" gap.  After the recent windstorm the separation had expanded to about a 10" gap running to the right side of the circle where you could see daylight, and it appeared it would come completely undone in the very near future.  The reason I kept procrastinating was it took us several hours to fix it last time.  Once we had decided to fix it I began my usual process of trying to figure out how to fix it more efficiently this time, and believed I had figured it out by Monday morning.

Before we could work on the 'FIX' we needed to isolate the roller so it couldn't roll up, and then place a 10' 2 x 4 under the roller to relieve the tension on the aluminum and fabric.  Once that was done, and it didn't take more than 20 minutes,  I used a large flathead screwdriver to spread the aluminum slot so I could push the fabric back into it again.  Once the fabric was in place I used my metal dollies, which I've carried with us for at least 10-12 years to close the slot over the fabric, and secure it firmly in place.  All of that took another hour, but it worked, and now for the first time in a few years there is no daylight coming through the gap anymore.  I wish I had taken more pictures of the process, but suffice it to say my plan made it much easier to fix this time around....in all we worked about 90 minutes, not hours like last time.

Once the awning was fixed we were able to redeploy it for the first time in a couple of weeks, and since the weather so delightful we brought out our anti gravity chairs and spent a few hours on the 'lido deck' reading (both), and napping (me).....

Our 'lido deck' is restored!

....I would have been content to spend the rest of the day doing that, but I had another solar powered lamp like the one I installed in the greenhouse to install in the dog kennel house.  You will recall that last year I thoroughly cleaned all the mice, and rat poop out of the kennel, and left the door open, but that didn't discourage the little buggers, so I decided to install the solar lamp so when any vermin enter the light will come on and, hopefully, discourage them from residing there.  I also ran another string of solar powered rope lights in there, and put them on intermittent flash mode.  We'll see if that combination does the trick....

....I'll take time Tuesday to tack down the rope lights so they cover the whole floor.  And with that final task done I returned to my anti gravity chair for another couple of hours.

Based on the clouds I could see on the western horizon I believed we were in for another great sunset, so we headed out to the 'sunset deck' around 6 pm to see if I was right, and I was.  We another slowly evolving sunset that went on for 40 minutes...

These contrails really light up at sunset....looks like it's on fire!

That pinion pine wood sure burns well in the firepit!

.....just like the last sunset, this one evolved, and evolved.  We didn't head inside until after 7 pm.  And thus another amazing day at TWW came to an end.  Now that it appears the worst of winter is behind us there will be more days spent on the 'lido deck' reading, and relaxing.

Thanks for stopping by!

Another "Miracle on Ice".....46 years in the making.....

7:54 am - Monday - February 23rd - TWW - 34° F, humidity 36%, cloud cover 26%, wind 6 mph out of the east....clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 64° F.  The view this morning....

 .....and on this date in 2021 I had just finished installing our new Speedhut digital tachometer....

....we hadn't had a working tachometer since 2009, and it wasn't really a big deal, but since we had just installed our recently rebuilt Leece-Neville alternator I decided to fix the tachometer, also.

With most of the property still drying out from the rain storm, plus two snow storms over the past 10 days I decided to confine my day of small projects to the area immediately around the circular driveway.  I had set the stage Saturday for reorganizing the trailer by fixing the 50 amp cord, and the grease gun.  Now that those projects were off the workbench I could proceed with the reorganization.  I brought in an extra folding table on which to place things I was taking out of the cabinet to move into the garage, or CONEX.  It was really getting crowded in that wall cabinet, but after filling the dump bed of the Yamaha Rhino with things no longer needed in the trailer it is much more accessible....

.....once that was done I turned my attention to our Dickinson Marine Sea-B-Que.  A few weeks ago I was going to grill a steak, but the burner would not light.  I wasn't sure what the issue was at the time, so I figured I would get to it later, and later was about three weeks later....lol.  I suspected there was some restriction in the propane regulator at the propane bottle, or in the burner, or gas control regulator, so I began to disassemble it to trouble shoot the issue.  I began with the stainless steel burner (the simplest thing), and worked my way backwards all the way to the propane bottle.  The only thing I could find was a serious restriction in the gas control regulator (where the propane line connects to the Sea-B-Que).  I tried to clear the obstruction, but was unsuccessful, so I ordered a replacement from Dickinson, which we should have within a week.  The original gas control regulator was 15 years old.  It was on my original Sea-B-Que, and when we replaced it with a new one back in 2020 I transferred it from the old to the new.

By the time I finished it was after 3 pm, so time to wrap up another work day and head indoors for dinner.  Around 4:45 pm I noticed there was no wind, and thought it might be a good night for a sunset fire, and TLE agreed (she is so agreeable!), so I brought out the camp chairs around 5:45 pm (sunset is at 6:23 pm now), and lit a fire, and what a great fire it was.....

....almost as good as the sunset, which continued to evolve for about 40 minutes.....

Then there was the waning crescent moon

....seriously, all of the above pictures were of the same sunset!  We hung around until almost 7 pm before heading indoors for the night to watch the replay of the USA vs. Canada hockey gold medal hockey match in which Canada totally dominated in shots on goal during the 3 periods leading up to the overtime period 42-28, or something like that, but the USA goal keeper stopped 41 out of those 42 shots to send the match to sudden death overtime.  Just 1 minute 49 seconds into the overtime period the USA scored the game winning goal....amazing....

These guys will remember this game for the rest of their lives

....and for the first time in 46 years the USA takes home the Winter Olympics gold medal....I think I was just 30 years old the last time they won the gold medal in Lake Placid in 1980 in the 'Miracle on Ice' game.

Thanks for stopping by!

Apocalyptic red clay mud!

 8:32 am - Sunday - February 22nd - TWW - 37° F, humidity 34%, cloud cover 20%, wind 7 mph out of the east....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 59° F.  The view this morning....

.....the snow is almost gone now.  On this date in 2025 we (Charles, Phyllis, TLE and I) had just finished removing the old, damaged, corrugated, fiberglass roofing from the greenhouse....

Then....

....Now

....and now we have things growing....

As we emerged from the Newell Saturday around mid morning you could see that the snow had melted significantly.....

....but we still had a long way to go.  For the first time in 3, or 4 days the temperature rose into the mid 40's, and there were once again possibilities of things being done outdoors.  We had a beautiful clear blue sky kind of day, meaning there would be no Predator 5000 running this day.  By 1 pm all of our battery banks had returned to the familiar 100% status.

Around 12 pm I decided to get dressed and work on a couple more indoor projects.  First up was to figure out why the new grease cartridge I installed in our grease gun was not working properly.  Working with greasy stuff is so frustrating!  Your hands get all greasy making it difficult to hold anything without it slipping out of your hands.  You find yourself going through a dozen blue shop towels to wipe up the mess you are making, but in the end you are victorious, and the grease gun is no longer a paperweight.  After fixing the issue, which is hard to describe, I returned to the task I was attempting to accomplish back before the rain and snow bombarded TWW....grease the Ford 420 diesel tractor, and the water trailer.  As I walked out to the tractor it became obvious that it will take at least a week for the red clay mud to return to its former solid state status.  After finishing greasing the tractor and trailer I headed to the greenhouse to wash the red clay mud off my 'mud boots'....

The now functioning grease gun

....next up was to repair one of my numerous 50 amp extension cords.  One of them needed a new female end wired, so while the current PGA tournament was playing in the background, I proceeded to install the new female plug.  It took about 45 minutes to cut and strip the four wires (ground, neutral, and two hots), then cut them to the proper length, and connect them to the appropriate terminals (black and red to hot posts, green to ground post, and white to neutral post)....

The repaired 50 am cord....the yellow piece is the female plug I installed

....I finished around 3 pm, and that is quitting time here at TWW.  After shutting the CONEX, garage and trailer I headed indoors to change clothes, and relax before dinner.  Now that the chainsaw, the grease gun, and 50 amp cord projects have been completed I can begin to reorganize the trailer, which is kind of chaotic (from my perspective) at this time.  Then it is on to the garage, which really needs help...lol.

Thanks for stopping by!