There 'he' is again......

 7:41 am - Thursday - October 29th - TWW - 41° F, humidity 47%, cloud cover 51%, wind 15 mph out of the south by southeast.....cloudy today with a forecast high of 66° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were in West Jordan, UT.....

....courtesy parking in front of my brother and sister-in-law's home.  Took a little effort to shoehorn the Newell and American trailer into that cul-de-sac.

TLE and I dedicated Wednesday to finishing the assembly of the solar panel rack, which will hold the four new 195 watt, bifacial solar panels.  It's been a while since 'the Hockwald way' reared its homely head, but Wednesday there 'he' was.  What should have taken an hour at best, took TLE and I working together, combining our two brains, two hours, but we got it done....

....for the base we used 4' x 4" pressure treated wood.  They, in turn, will be attached to 5 concrete piers....

.....which will add extra weight to keep them from being flipped over by the wind, which has happened, on occasion, here.....

....once that was done I removed the four solar panels from their packaging and leaned them against the new solar rack to wire them together to see if we had to wire them together in parallel, or could wire them together in series, which is preferred.  The voltage limit of our Victron charge controller is 100 volts, and the voltage generated by the panels in parallel was around 57, which is way under 100 volts, obviously.  Next I wired them together in series, which generated 87 volts, still way under 100 volts, so that is what we will do when we move the new rack to its location just to the north of our Newell.

We took a break right after finishing the assembly of the solar rack, then I, mostly by myself, ran the voltage experiment.  Once I was satisfied with the results I began putting all of the tools we had employed away, and cleaned up the mess created by unpackaging the four solar panels.  By the time I finished it was around 2 pm, and time for a nap.

The current weather forecast shows rain this Friday (62% chance tomorrow, in the morning) and a lot of rain Sunday (89% chance with the possibility of up to 1/2" of rain), so we should get a long ways toward filling our new IBC water totes.  A half inch of rain is a lot of rain for this area....

.....TLE had me grill two Mahi Mahi steaks for dinner, to which she added boiled spinach and rice....

....while we ate we watched game 5 of the World Series.  By the end of the 6th inning the Brewers had built a 4-0 lead, and their relief pitchers were almost unhittable, but the Rays did managed to get one run across the plate in the bottom of the 9th inning, but that was it, and that was the end of the 2026 World Series.  Not as exciting as the 2025 World Series between the Dodgers and the Blue Jays, which went to 7 games, and could have gone either way.

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Water catchment upgrade.....

 7:26 am - Wednesday - October 28th - TWW - 38° F, humidity 38%, cloud cover 34%, wind 13 mph out of the south......partially cloudy today with a forecast high of 66° F.  On this date in 2014 TLE and I were near Port Orford, OR.....

You can see the light at the lighthouse in the distance

....at the Cape Blanco Lighthouse walking in stormy weather on South Beach.

As you will recall, Charles and Phyllis bought 6 more 275 gallon IBC totes to double our water catchment abilities.  Once they were in place it was clear we would have to modify the length of the down spouts on two or three of them so we could reach the fill point on each of those totes.  Initially we had only made them long enough to reach the single tote.  On two of the other three the down spouts were already long enough to reach either tote.  On the final one all we had to do was move the new tote from one side of the original tote to the other for the down spout to reach each of them.  I spent about 3 hours making the changes necessary to fill the new totes....

Northwest corner of the greenhouse

Southeast corner of the greehouse

Northeast corner of the barn

Southeast corner of the house

Northeast corner of the house

Southwest corner of the house

.....which should get some water this weekend when it is forecast we will get at least a 1/4" of rain.  While I was thus engaged TLE was straightening up the greenhouse interior.  Right now all we have in there are the plants we brought south from LPG&RVR, but due to recent big wind events some damage had occurred to the visqueen, and there was general chaos inside....

.....you can see the missing panels of visqueen in the picture above on the east and south facing sides.  TLE and I will repair those sections in the next couple of days prior to the new weather front arriving here on the weekend.  I also use dour ECHO string trimmer to knock down all of the weeds choking the walking paths to the greenhouse, and around the growing beds themselves.....

.....they were about 3 feet tall in places, and it seemed like I was cutting alfalfa....lol!  I am slowly, but surely cutting down all of the weeds around the house, but it will take a few more sessions before that is finished.

By the time we finished we had worked almost 4 hours, and we were both ready for a snack, and a nap.  We are finding as we work each day that we are are recovering more quickly each time, and have a little more endurance the next day, so we are working our way to being 'work hardened' as they say at Amazon.  

Later in the afternoon I spent more time assembling the steel rack which will hold the four new 195 watt, bi-facial solar panels we purchased....

.....I have a little to do before I can begin the final assembly of the rack, but by 3 pm I was ready to be done, so I'll finish it up Wednesday, then put all the pieces together, and attach the solar panels.

We had chili, cornbread and Margaritas for dinner, and watched the 4th game of the World Series in which the Rays got out to an early lead, 1-0, which the Brewers tied one inning later.  Then the Rays went up again 2-1 late in the game, but the Brewers tied it again on a homerun.  It remained a tie game until the top of the 12th when the Brewers hit another homerun to go up 3-2.  It looked like the Rays would be swept as the bottom of the 12th began, but after an error, and then 3 more hits they won 4-3 to extend the World Series to a game 5.  It was a very good game!

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Town and country.....

 7:57 am - Tuesday - October 27th - TWW - 41° F, humidity 39%, cloud cover 1%, wind 14 mph out of the south.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 66° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were in Ogden, UT....

....having morning coffee at "Grounds for Coffee, a legal brew".  That smile!  The view this morning.....

.....first totally cloudless day we've had in a while, and the temp will be over 65° F today!

The Post Office notified us a few days ago that the package containing the 100 feet of solar cable I ordered from Amazon had arrived, so we headed into town around 10:30 am to retrieve said package, and pickup a few groceries.  The north/south arterial was graded over 3 weeks ago, and it is still very smooth, so we're able to drive the Explorer comfortably at 25-30 mph and get to US-66 within 10 minutes.  

The drive into town was uneventful, and by 11 am we were pulling into the USPS parking lot to get our package, and while I did that TLE walked over to the Family Dollar to buy a few things for the pantry.  Within 20 minutes we were at the Seligman Market to buy some freshly made bread, some produce, and a few other sundries, then we were back in the Explorer headed back to TWW arriving there around 12:15 pm.

We spent the afternoon figuring out how to configure, and then attach two 'sail' sunshades between the trailer and Newell patio awning.   After many failed attempts at the perfect configuration we finally settled on this arrangement using only two of the three 'sail shades'....

Afternoon shot....

Morning shots

....we don't mind the morning sun hitting the 'lido deck', but really want to provide a larger area of shade in the afternoon, and this configuration achieves that goal.  The bottom two pictures were taken this morning.  Now we can sit anywhere we want on the artificial turf between the Newell and the trailer.

I also spent about 20 minutes repairing another faulty fuel line in the Yamaha....

See the split at the end of the line?

There were literally dozens of cracks in the hose, too

.....and I believe, fingers crossed, that is the final bad section of fuel line.  When we left for town I noticed a gas smell coming from the Yamaha, which was parked near the 'lido deck', so upon return I got right on it, found the problem, and replaced it.  It's always something, right?

By the time we finished with our afternoon activities it was 3 pm, and another day at TWW was quickly moving into the rearview mirror.  We watched game number three of the World Series between the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Rays, which quickly became a blowout with the Brewers jumping out to a 10-0 lead after 4.5 innings when the Brewers scored 8 runs with two outs, and that is how it ended.  On the NFL front the hapless Dallas Cowboys managed to defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 38-21 in Philadelphia on Monday Night Football.  Apparently the star quarterback for the Eagles, Jalen Hurts is out for the season due to blood clots in his lungs.

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We passed 6 million all time views last night.......

 7:46 am - Monday - October 26th - TWW - 40° F, humidity 47%, cloud cover 24%, wind 8 mph out of the south.....partially cloudy skies today with a forecast high of 65° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were at Lone Rock, UT.....

Lone Rock

.....on the shores of Lake Powell boondocking.  One of our top four, or five boondocking sites ever!  The view this morning.....

....beginning to get dryer after the rain.

Charles and Phyllis were on they're way back to Phoenix before 9 am Sunday.  TLE and I had planned to do a little work Sunday, but it was such a nice day we decided to take a walk, then mostly take the rest of the day off from work.....

....we covered one mile averaging just under 3 mph.

I say 'mostly, because we did do a couple of things like lay out the three 'sail' shades we've used in the past to create more shade on the 'lido deck', which will become really important this summer....

....they will be attached to the trailer, and to the patio awning to create a shady area over the artificial turf between the trailer and Newell.  Additionally, we took one of our small tables out to the garage on which to set the 4Patriots solar charger battery, so it is now off the ground, and one is no longer required to stand upon one's head to read the display.....

Much, much handier

.....and with that we were done working for the day.  There were many good NFL games being televised in our area on Sunday beginning with a 6:15 am game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New Orleans Saints in Paris, France, which was won by the Steelers 16-10.  In other games the Denver Broncos defeated the Arizona Cardinals handily 30-16 to win their 18th game in the last 21 going back to last season.  In the Sunday Night finale the Seahawks throttled the Kansas City Chiefs 20-3, and it wasn't really that close.  At any rate, most of the teams for which I was rooting won.....Rams, Falcons, Browns, Dolphins, Buccaneers, Bengals, and Giants.  I think only two of the teams for which I rooted lost.

Yesterday I posted a picture of our all time views counter showing we would pass 6 million viewers sometime yesterday, and it happened....

....sometime last night.  Just a year ago we had just passed 4 million views, so it has been quite a 12 months!  Oh, I took a video of the 1969 Jeep CJ-5 idling....it is so quiet....

Around 4:30 pm I lit the Sea-B-Que to grill a couple of filet mignons TLE had been aging in the refrigerator, and grilled them to a fine medium rare....

....to which TLE added a side salad....YUM!  Shortly after finishing dinner I noted the moon was rising to the east, and took a shots......

.....that's how big it looked to the naked eye.  We pretty much lazed around all day, and that is the first day we have really done no work since we returned a week earlier.

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"Gentlemen, start your engines....."

 7:30 am - Sunday - October 25th - TWW - 36° F, humidity 56%, cloud cover 5%, wind 7  mph out of the north.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 61° F.  On this date in 2023 TLE and I were in La Quinta, CA....

....awaiting our orders.  They have the best fish tacos; certainly in the top 5 in our travels, and that is pretty good considering they are a chain restaurant.

Saturday was a very, very busy day here at TWW.  We always get a lot done on Saturdays when Charles and Phyllis are here.  The first task of the day was to move the chest freezer from the garage to the battery room.  Charles and Phyllis are early risers; they are usually up well before dawn, so they already had the battery room cleared out in preparation for the chest freezer move when TLE and I arrived around 8:30 or 9 am. With the aid of one of the numerous wagons we have here at TWW Charles and I moved the chest freezer over to the breezeway between the battery room and the CONEX....

Where is was in the garage (right rear corner in front of the Jeep).  The boxes to the left are for the new 780 watt solar array we will be installing in the very near future....

....and where it is now....you will note that it is sitting under one of the wall mounted lithium batteries, so how are we going to open the lid?  Good question!  We are able to move the freezer out from the wall about 4" which will give us clearance to open the lid...we already checked.

.....you may recall that we originally (I wrote about that here) put in in the garage and attempted to run it off of a large solar battery, but the battery did not have enough capacity to keep up with the demand of the freezer.  Now that it is in the battery room we can plug it into the house system, which has enormous capacity.  It's not plugged in yet, as we have nothing to put into it, but there is talk of buying 1/2 a cow.  Anyway, as it sat there next to the doorway of the battery room I was convinced it was bigger that the doorway entrance.  I would have bet $100 it would not fit. We opened the door all the way and the opening measured 29".  Then we measured the freezer....it was 28.5" wide....doh!  I was glad to be wrong.  With a little effort we got it turned to go in the doorway, and with a 1/4" to spare on each side we got her into the battery room.

Of course, in order to get the freezer out of the garage I needed to reinstall the Jeep battery, and get the Jeep running after its 6 month hibernation, and that is always an adventure.  I wasn't successful initially, so Charles and I had to push it out of the garage.....

  

The Jeep cover is off, and she runs!

.....after installing the chest freezer in the battery room I went back to the Jeep to trouble shoot it, and found the choke was stuck completely closed, so I freed it, then disconnected the fuel line where it connects to the carburetor, turned on the fuel pump to move some of the old gas out, then reconnected it.  It then started on the first try, and purred like a kitten.  Charles and I also reinstalled the battery in the large Champion 11,500 watt generator, and got it running in pretty short order, so now all of our motorized equipment runs.  There will be no more 'summerizing' any of our rolling stock since we will now be here year round.

A few weeks ago Charles purchased 6 more, very clean 275 gallon IBC totes for $50/tote (killer deal) to double our water catchment ability.  We spent about 40 minutes unloading them from the trailer, and using one of our wagons, moved them into position....

....we now have four of them around the greenhouse, and 6 around the house, and two at the back of the barn, which gives us about 3,300 gallons of capacity now.  The original six are all full due to the monsoons we had in the area a month, or so ago.  Eventually we will set up water catchment at the large 2 car garage which has a very large metal roof.  As it turned out we had rain on and off later in the afternoon for about two hours so we've already caught some rain water in the new totes!

I spent the afternoon watching NCAA college football, and there were some more upsets in the top 25, so it was the perfect college football day!  The biggest upset of the day was #2 BYU losing in double overtime to unranked UCG 39-31, then #7 Mississippi (Ole Miss) was upset by #19 Texas, #8 Texas Tech was upset by unranked Cincinnati, #11 Tennessee was upset by unranked South Carolina, #15 Iowa State was upset by unranked Minnesota, #19 USC was upset by unranked Wisconsin.  My USC Trojans had no defense, and no offense, losing 24-7.  They scored no points in the 1st, 3rd and 4th quarters.

On a side note our blog will surpass 6,000,000 all time views sometime today (Sunday)....it sits at 5,998, 100 as I write....1,800 to go!

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