"Til you can't......"

 8:05 am - Monday - February 9th - TWW - 35° F, humidity 24%, cloud cover 12%, wind 5 mph out of the southeast.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 66° F.  The view this morning....

....and on this date in 2013 TLE and I were visiting her cousin Gail and her husband Jimmie in Ft. Meyers, FL.....

....and courtesy parking in their driveway.

Sunday, February 8th, was the 60th installment of the Super Bowl.  This year's edition was held in Santa Clara, CA, the home of the San Francisco 49ers.  After 3 straight days of working around the property we decided to take a day of rest.  I spent part of the day puttering around in the garage getting our 2 gallon gasoline cans filled for our 3 day winter storm arriving in one week.  Our 120 gallon propane tank is down to just over 40%, and we need to call for a fill up when it hits 30%.  Since we have not used our Predator 500 (running on propane) for a week now we may not have to call for that deliver for another week, which we get us past the storm.  Typically, running the Predator on propane every day for 1-2 hours would have had us calling for a fill up for this Wednesday, which would have been exactly one month since the last time, but now we may be able to make it an extra one, or two more weeks.  Our EcoWorthy dual axis solar tracker continues to tilt before 8 am now, and it won't be long until it is tilting at 7:30 am...over an hour earlier than the end of December.

This year's Super Bowl featured the Seattle Seahawks vs. The New England Patriots, both led by young quarterbacks with both teams in the top 10 offensively and defensively.  Both teams played great defensive football, but only one team managed to score in the first half, and that was the Seahawks who led at half time 9-0 on the strength of 3 field goals.  The Patriots did not score until the 4th quarter when the game was mostly out of hand with the Seahawks leading 19-0.  The Patriots scored a quick touchdown to match the touchdown just score by Seattle to make it 19-7, but then the Seahawks kicked another field goal, and then scored a touchdown on  a strip sack of the New England quarterback to make it 29-7.  The Patriots scored one more touchdown to make the final score 29-13, but the game was never that close.  In all the Patriot quarterback turned the ball over three times in the second half, and that sealed their fate.  I guess me flying Seattle's flag for the past three weeks paid off....

....at least one of my teams made it to the Super Bowl, and won.  Normally, I prefer a close game, but when the team for which I'm rooting manages to dominate the other team, I'm totally good with that.  Theoretically it was a close game until the middle of the 3rd quarter....lol.  It was a nice way to end another NFL football season.  By the way we did NOT watch the 'Bad Bunny' half time show along with millions of others who chose to watch the alternative 'All American Half Time Show'.....loved Kid Rock's final song....."Til you can't"....very touching and thought provoking.  If you haven't heard it, click on the link and check it out.  Pretty sure your eyes won't be dry at the end.

For the 7th day in a row all of our battery banks reached 100% without the aid of mechanical generation, but over the next few days (Tuesday through Thursday) it will be very cloudy, with rain/snow forecast for next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so the Predator will be running overtime then.  

Thanks for stopping by!

Whatever TLE says.....

 8:14 am - Sunday - February 8th - TWW - 36° F, humidity 25%, cloud cover 0%, wind 4 mph out of the east....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 65° F.  The view this morning.....

.....and on this date in 2014 I was a guest at Riverside Community Hospital recovering from an emergency double hernia operation....

I was there about 2 days before being released.  I made a full recovery, and have had zero issues since then.

For the third successive day TLE and I began our day with our 1 mile out and back walk.  This one was our fastest since we began walking again....

.....at 19 minutes and 24 seconds of moving time.

I've been asking TLE each morning what we should do work wise that day, and then I follow her lead.  Saturday she suggested we fix the carport.  Late last summer there was a windstorm here at TWW which toppled the old, dead pinyon pine widow maker, and it also tore up the fabric covering the cart port we built last winter.  We haven't really paid any attention to it until this past week when Charles and Phyllis were here.  Phyllis asked if we could remove the torn fabric from that used to cover the roof, and then fold up the sides, which were still intact, making them the new roof.  TLE suggested we do that Saturday after we cut some more firewood for the house wood burning stove.

In less than an hour we had a nice pile of kindling, and split wood....

The split wood

The kindling

.....after taking a snack break we returned about 1 pm to reconfigure the cart port.....

....this is what it looked like prior to the windstorm....

....eventually Charles will buy a new fabric enclosure, but for now at least we have shade, and shelter from the rain for the side by sides.

It was after 2:30 pm when we finished bagging up the old, torn fabric from the cart port.  We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, and watching the Winter Olympics, which we watched into the early evening.  We forewent the viewing of the sunset after two consecutive nights doing so, as we have both been affected by something in the air.  Whatever 'IT' is is causing me to sneeze frequently, and blow my nose an abnormal amount of times.  Once back inside the Newell it takes about an hour for me to stop sneezing, and blowing my nose.

Thanks for stopping by!

A year in the making.....

 8:06 am - Saturday - February 7th - TWW - 33° F, humidity 30%, cloud cover 7%, wind 4 mph out of the east by southeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 63° F.  The view this morning....

.....and on this date in 2022 I was polishing our four ALCOA aluminum wheels on the Newell....

.....it took about 4 hours to clean 6 months of salt air from the Coastal Oregon off of them.

First thing Friday morning TLE and I took another 1 mile out and back walk.....our 9th of this winter....

......once again we averaged 3.0 mph over the course of the 1 mile walk burning 166 caloric units and gaining 42 feet in elevation....

....next we dumped our black tank, and refilled our fresh water tank, which we hadn't done for 11 days (of course we were gone for 2 days for Phyllis and Charles' wedding).  We're getting pretty good at this, and it only took 30 minutes this time.  We only used 85 gallons of fresh water the last 11 days.....that's around 7.73 gallons per day.  

Now that the Ford 420 diesel tractor is running again, and quite well I might add, it was time to finish the new RV site for Phyllis' Newell.  We figured we had 4-5 bucket loads of grave left to finish the site, and that was just the amount we needed.  After dumping and spreading four bucket loads of gravel she was finished....

.....by 1:30 pm we were officially done, and all that remains is to move Phyllis' Newell to the new site, which we will try to do in the next few days.  We began working on this new RV site last Winter, so finally completing it was a major accomplishment for us.

I spent the afternoon disassembling the wind turbine we tried to use last year, but never worked.  As we were getting ready to leave TWW last Spring we took it down, and left it at the back of the garage in front of the Jeep.  I meant to disassemble it when we first arrived back in late October, but never seemed to find the time until Friday.  It took me from 2 pm until 3:30 pm to completely disassemble it, and stow it, which is part of the reason I procrastinated.

Around 5:15 pm we headed out to the 'sunset deck' to light a fire, and watch the sun descend towards the western horizon.  There was a cigar, and two fingers of Scotch, and some Classic Vinyl music....

The sun just 'kissing' the western horizon around 6:05 pm

.....we were out there until after 6:30 pm as the sunset continued to evolve.  By 7 pm we were back inside watching the opening ceremonies for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina, Italia.  I'm not a big fan of 'opening ceremonies', but this one was about as classy as I have seen in all the years I've been watching the Olympics....Winter or Summer.

Our  EcoWorthy dual axis solar tracker tilted at 7:59 am Friday, and for the 4th consecutive day we did not employ our Predator 500 dual fuel generator to add any electrons to our two battery banks.  Electrically speaking, we are on auto pilot....the system continues to regenerate itself each day without any outside assistance.  I know there are heavily cloudy days in our near future when we will need the Predator's assistance, but for the next 4-5 days we are good.

Thanks for stopping by!

On our own for the next 3.5 weeks......

 7:35 am - Friday - February 6th - TWW - 38° F, humidity 31%, cloud cover 29%, wind 5 mph out of the east by southeast....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 62° F.  The view this morning.....

.....and on this date in 2012 TLE were watching a sunrise in Indio, CA....we had just began our nomadic journey six days earlier.....

.......later that day we crossed out of California into Arizona on our way to Texas, and would not return to California again until November of 2013.

Our EcoWorthy dual axis solar tracker tilted at 8:00 am Thursday.  We have not run the generator since Monday evening (February 2nd), and have managed to fully charge both banks of batteries with only solar input each day.  

Elaine and Phyllis worked on the outdoor growing beds first thing Thursday, and Charles repaired, and enhanced the watering system before they left for their return trip to Phoenix....

 ....we will probably not see them again until either the very end of February, or early March as they will be in Texas for two weeks beginning the 11th, so we've got the place to ourselves for almost a month!

They left around mid morning, and then TLE and I took our first 1 mile out and back walk in  a long time here at TWW....

.....we managed 3 mph over the course of the mile walk.

After the walk I began taking down the old solar security lights to be replaced by the more compact ones I recently purchased, while TLE focused on a couple loads of laundry.  One set of the old solar lights was mounted on the dog kennel, and the rest on the front of the house.  Since they were mounted pretty high on both the dog kennel and the house I had to use one of the very tall 'A' frame ladders to reach them.....

The old....

The new...

....next I installed one more piece of fiberglass corrugated roofing to a patch of single layer fencing next to the south gate of the greenhouse....

....which we had missed the other day.  We're just about ready to plant potatoes again, so we'll see if our modifications to the fencing keep the cottontail rabbits out of those growing beds.  By this time it was after 2:30 pm, and time to wrap it up for the day.  

For the first time in a long time we had a sunset fire.  With the sun setting later and later now we have time to eat dinner, and still get out there by 5:15 to watch the 6:o5 pm sunset....

....it wasn't what I would call a spectacular sunset, but it good enough for the occasion.  And thus ended another TWW day!  Thanks for stopping by!