A diagnosis......

8:48 am - Sunday - January 12th - Ramona, CA - 36° F, 92% humidity, wind - CALM......skies are clear and blue if not slightly chilly.....forecast high for today is 62° F.

Once again the VW was entirely covered in frost......third day in a row!  It has been down in the low to mid 30's every night for the past week, and the inside temp gets down to 54 before I remotely turn on our fireplace, which stops it from getting any lower.  I wasn't too long ago that I was happy when the interior got down to the low 70's at night with all the windows open.

After posting my daily missive I got to work again on our Jello travel itinerary for our Alaska trip this summer.  As you must know if you have been reading my blog for any period of time I use the word 'Jello' as everything except for Glenn and Laureen's appointment at A.M. Solar on April 19th, our reservations in Seward, AK and for Denali National Park is subject to change at any given time......in essence our plans are written in Jello.

When it was warm enough I headed out to take an MTB ride on the RORVR fire roads.  My goal was to get in a good ride, and then spend time working on a single track trail Rich built about 9 months ago.  TLE and I have hiked it a couple of times, and I have ridden it once on my new Haibike.  Most of it is pretty rideable, but there are a few sections where large rocks, or off camber turns cause one to come to a complete stop at times.  My goal was to work on those sections.  I forgot to take my phone with me, so there are no pictures, but I will take some later and post them.  At any rate, I tackled the first difficult section, and after an hour, or so of work I was able to move back up the trail and clear that section without stopping.  There are a couple other sections I'll work on over the next few weeks, and post updates when I do.

I was home just before 1 pm......the first Divisional NFL playoff game between the Minnesota Vikings and the San Francisco 49ers was slated to begin at 1:30 pm.  I took a shower then settled in to watch the first quarter.  At the end of the first quarter it was tied 7-7, so I decided to return to a long postponed project.....figure out what is wrong with our Splendide combo washer/dryer.  A few months ago it stopped going into the spin cycle, and would not drain, so we could not dry the clothes either, and the door would not unlock so we could get the clothes out.  TLE found a solution online showing how to open it manually, but you had to take the top off the unit to get at the switch.  I successfully got the door open, and we mopped the water out of the drum, but I did not feel like pulling the whole unit out of its closet to do a deep dive into what was wrong at the time.  One of the RORVR laundries is right across the street from us, so we decided to just utilize that until I got the Spendide fixed.  Well, it's been a few months, and it is time to get back to fixing the Splendide.  While I was riding TLE had pulled everything out of the pantry so I could get to work after my shower.  Within a few minutes of removing the lid I think I found the problem, or at least one problem......

.....see that red circle in the upper corner of the back panel on the Splendide?  It appeared to me that one of the wires looked a little melty, and there appeared to be some burn marks on the white plastic plug.......

.....now a little closer....see the enlarged insulation on the blue wire, and the burned spot on the plastic just below it?

Yup, something is going on for sure.  The plastic on the white plastic plug is burnt, and the plastic on the black plastic thing (I don't know what it is) is melted......

.....and this brown wire it definitely toast......could our problem be that simple?  I took a picture of the label on the black plastic thing which shows the manufacturer and part number.  I'll call Splendide on Monday to find out what that is, and how much it will cost to replace that, plus the wiring harness.  If it really is that simple, and I don't know, it's something I can get at pretty easily without removing the unit from its closet.  It is possible some other problem caused the pieces to overheat and melt.  Once I had a diagnosis, or at least a partial one, I put it all back together along with the shelving so TLE could put away all the food stuffs she had removed from the pantry.

The rest of the day was pretty routine......the Vikings vs. 49ers ended up being a one sided affair with the 49ers winning handily 27-10, it wasn't really that close.  The 49ers dominated the second half with the outcome really not in doubt.  The second game between the Tennessee Titans and the Baltimore Ravens was also another one sided affair score wise, but it was really closer than the score would indicate.  The Ravens finished the regular season with a league leading record of 14 wins and just two losses, and were the number one seed in the AFC.  The Titans were the number six seed, and had to wind their Wild Card game last week to advance.  Unexpectedly the Titans, with the help of 3 Raven turnovers, won the game 24-12.......a totally unexpected upset of Biblical proportions.

To top off the day TLE had me grill another filet mignon to which she added mashed potatoes and salad......

.....the filet was amazing!  I know, I keep saying that, but each time I grill one of these I edge a little closer to perfection, and each time I think I have achieved perfection I outdo myself with my latest effort.....I felt like I was sitting in a fine dinning restaurant eating a $35 Filet Mignon!  TLE opened a bottle of Malbec to accompany my latest masterpiece.

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