Life CAN be a Circus when you’re 5 years old

Last Thursday evening, grandson Alex’s kindergarten class performed a circus over at Union Hill School. Alex came to our house to show off his costume and it was obvious he was very proud and happy with his look.

The Circus itself was very cute with kids who had obviously paid attention to their instructions doing one thing and kids who had obviously not paid attention doing something else altogether. I remarked that I thought it was really just a shakedown cruise for Halloween costumes.

Along with 4 or 5 other kids, Alex was a trick horse rider. On his stick horse he ran around the circle jumping and running and generally having a good time.

There were “ribbon dancers”, strong men, tricycle riders, tightrope walkers, and dancing animals in the show. The kids were all very cute but mostly very funny. It didn’t take much to make any of them forget they were part of a group doing an act. It could be spotting grandma in the audience or a bug on the grass—the attention span of a 5-year-old is amazingly short.

One of the kindergarten teachers was also our Daughter Laurie’s teacher when she attended Union Hill School. Mr. Heck was one of the producers of the show and wore a great clown costume.

The Auto Repair Saga, Continued

Our motorhome is back in the front yard with new battery cables and vents in the dashboard that open and close as they were designed. The vacuum motor had to be replaced as no one could supply a new relief valve. In fact, Monaco Coach Corp. (after reviewing the photos sent by the repair shop) said, “We didn’t make that. It must have come from the chassis maker.” Roadmaster chassis (after reviewing the photos sent by the repair shop) said, “We didn’t make that. It must have come from the maker of the heater/ac system.” The heater/ac company (after reviewing the photos sent by the repair shop said, “We didn’t make that but we have a similar unit that should do the job.” It’s never easy when you’re repairing or replacing parts on an older vehicle. Either way, it works and that is what we wanted.

The Jeep’s window repair, however, is not yet finished. I’ve been to the dealer 3 times now and will have to go back for at least one more time. When the replaced the mechanism that raises and lowers the window they lost a piece of the door panel. Without it, it rods that control the door lock and latch are rattling together and against the metal structure of the door whenever the door is opened or closed. Ugghhhhh!

They really don’t seem to understand my frustration. They said, “We’ll order the part and put it in at no charge to you. We’ll call you when it’s in and you can just come over anytime and we’ll do it immediately.” I said, ‘I came here in the first place, knowing I would pay a little more than my favorite private mechanic would charge, because I felt you guys would do it quicker and better because of your experience with these cars. You’ve done neither and now the repair will require that I visit your shop 4 times.” Ugghhhhh!’

By the way, the new battery cables and the new vacuum generator cost about the same as replacing the window mechanism on the Jeep. Does that seem right? It doesn’t to me.

We’ve now had some rain and the plants in the meadow behind our house have perked up after a long dry summer. A vigorous thunderstorm rolled through about 9 last night with gusty winds and heavy rain. The deck is littered with oak leaves this morning.

The trees are turning color quickly now as the season changes. Soon the yard will be knee deep in leaves and we’ll be out there with the blowers moving them somewhere else for burning. It’s definitely gotten cooler as well. Overnight the low was 41 degrees. We’re still hoping for an “Indian Summer” spell of pleasant warm weather that we normally see this time of the year.

We got the wood pellets for the stove, and I cleaned and serviced the stove, so we should be ready for Laurie and Dani to visit at Christmas—at least as far as keeping the house warm is concerned.

A FLIGHT OF FANCY--State of the Art Wildfire Suppression

In my last edition I mentioned that son Kevin had been dispatched to the big wildfire at Big Bear Lake, in So. California.

He left Grass Valley last Sunday afternoon and returned this past Friday night—after a long ride north on Interstate 5.

He and the strike team to which he was assigned never saw any action though they could see the fire on the mountainsides around them which is just fine with me. A week in the Southern California mountains was a nice little vacation for him and the crew.

Those of you not in California may not have seen our latest California fire fighting tool on your local news. It’s pretty darned impressive and, from reports, does a fantastic job. It’s a Douglas Aircraft DC-10 jumbo-jet that has been modified as an aerial tanker. It drops a 12,000 gallon load of fire retardant that coats the ground several inches deep for nearly a mile.

There is even a larger air tanker that has not yet been certified for use. We saw it in Washington State several years ago at the Evergreen Aviation Spruce Goose Museum. It was parked at the airport across the street. It's actually a Boeing 747 and carries even more retardant than the DC-10.



Kevin said it was an amazing sight to see this enormous airplane floating slowly down the canyons and then roaring off as it grabbed altitude leaving the fire.

Yeah, we're still here. Just Quiet recently

It's Catch-Up-Time, after a long absence from the blogosphere.

Of course we’re back home. Within hours of our arrival the hot tub was up and running and the washer and dryer were cranking out clean laundry. All is right with the world.


Since returning home we’ve taken care of a number of things. That “haircut” in Redmond has been nicely repaired and my head is now the same on both sides. Phew! I fixed the Seth Thomas regulator clock in the dining room (to tell the truth it had not worked for a number of years—sometimes I’m a little slow to move on some things) and now it has to go to the clock shop for a bigger repair than would have been the case had I just left it alone and taken it there in the first place.
Have I learned a lesson? Probably not. Oh, don't forget that Jeep thing that was the subject of the posting that preceded this one.

While here in town we’ll reacquaint ourselves with several of our physicians, get new eye glasses, and prepare for our Halloween departure. Leaving the house empty on Halloween is not a problem in this neighborhood. They only kids who ever come around are the grandboys and sometimes they’re accompanied by their girl friends from down the road. We’ll leave their goodies with their parents. Do kids still soap windows? Do kids even know about soaping windows? When one comes to your door and says, “Trick or Treat” ask him to show you his trick. We had one who did a little song and dance at the door many years ago.

I’ve had the opportunity to have coffee with my friends, Ken, Don, Wes, Brent, and John twice since returning. The “Olde Farts Kaffee Klatch” meets every Tuesday morning and we sit around and share developments in our life, tell a few off color stories, and work on solving the problem of World Peace and Industrial Pollution. Maybe that’s an overstatement? Well, it’s a nice break in the week with good friends.

I’m sure you’ve heard about the wildfire in Southern California, at Big Bear Lake. Son Kevin was dispatched last Sunday on a strike team to that fire and is still there today. He hasn’t done much besides spending several very cold nights out in the little village of Fawnskin, in readiness to try to protect the buildings should the fire make a run at it. Many of the crews that were called to respond have already been sent home and Kev’s crew may be included tomorrow. The bad part of that is Kevin will miss his son Alex’s very first kindergarten stage performance tomorrow night. That’s a big deal for him as he’s a living example of “Mr. Mom.
Like all kids, Alex enjoys dressing up. Though not much of a costume, the glasses certainly made a Harry Potter statement.

The fire has quieted down significantly and there’s even the slight chance the area will experience rain and snow or rain mixed with snow in the next couple of days.

When we had the coach inspected in Oregon, they discovered what they believed was a vacuum leak in the system that controls the vents on the dashboard. They also recommended replacing the battery cables due to corrosion. Well, the cables are new but the vacuum leak isn’t. It seems the system is not vacuum but air pressure and the relief valve on the little storage tank has failed. Sooooo, we’re waiting while the garage searches for a supplier of that little valve. It’s probably obsolete or the only remaining one in the country will be a solid gold display model. After our experience with the Jeep’s window mechanism I’ve become very cynical.

The weather was warm and smokey when we arrived home but has improved during the past 10 days or so. It’s been very comfortable. Fall seems to be in the air today with a strong breeze stripping some of the leaves off the black oak trees and a definite chill to the air. We may even get a little rain in the next 48 hours. That would be nice to dampen the dust on the road a little bit.

Speaking of the weather, it does get snowy here sometimes. The pic shows an overnight snowfall just before we were due to load up our camper on the truck and head south. That lump on the right is our other car. This is also the reason we’ve become “Snowbirds” leaving here to spend much of the winter in the Desert Southwest.

We had to hire a plow to come up the hill and clear the driveway so we could get out.

I’ll be laying in a supply of wood pellets for our stove in the next week or so, before they become scarce again. We’ll want them when we return home for two weeks for the Christmas Holidays. Last year suppliers locally actually ran out of pellets, leaving some people with no stove fuel.

Give a Shout-Out for the Crank among us!

Do you remember when all cars had cranks to roll windows up and down? My Dad’s first car, a 1937 Dodge, had crank windows.

I don’t remember when “power windows” first came on the scene but I do remember they were limited to only the most expensive cars. Cadillacs, Lincolns, and Chryslers had them first. My best friend’s dad drove a private limo for Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios in Culver City, CA. The first one I remember riding in was a 1951 Chrysler and it had crank-up windows. His next car was a CADDY and it had power windows. As teenagers we delighted in running them up and down. Swish down, swish up, down and up, down and up again. Norm’s dad would finally tell us to knock it off.

I don’t think my Dad owned a car with “power windows” until his 1975 Mercury Marquis.

Did any of you ever have a crank-up window that broke? I can’t recall a single instance of such a failure. Oh sure, the little knob at the end might wear out but a trip to a hardware store could solve that problem.

Today, in our comfortenience society power windows are found on all but the very cheapest cars. Even my Jeep came standard with power windows. It’s a Jeep, for pete’s sake. Who needs them? I’m still completely capable of turning a crank to roll my windows up and down.

Now I won’t argue the occasional convenience of being able to roll the passenger window down to tell that creep on that side of the car that your windshield doesn’t need washing, but that type of situation rises so rarely that having a window that goes down and up at the push of a button seems pointless.

Who among us convinced the car companies that we wanted this “convenience”? Does it somehow make that person riding around in one of those ridiculous looking Toyota XB cars feel more important to drop the driver’s window in one fell swoop at the touch of a button? It's nuts, if you ask me.

The real problem with “power windows” is that they are expensive. Every time you raise or lower a window you are incurring costs that will eventually come due because all of these systems break eventually. Fixing them has become a very expensive process. Some of the earlier mechanisms utilized an electric motor turning gears that moved a bar the raised and lowered the glass. Today, unfortunately, on many current model cars they have gone to a system using cables to do the job. There is a cable on one side for raising the window and another to lower it. There is a great deal of tension kept on the cables to allow for a smooth operation.

The worst thing that could happen to the old motor and gear system was the motor would wear out. Replacing it, though not exactly inexpensive, was a small price to pay when compared with today’s cars. The cables in these "hi-tech systems cannot be replaced. Fixing the window requires replacing the entire control unit, and there’s one in each door with a power window.

I just replaced one on my Jeep that failed late in our trip north this summer. The cost you ask? $424! Yikes! I don’t have any idea how many times the window had been cycled up and down before it failed, but each time cost money, obviously. The engineer(s) who designed and created a mechanism for raising and lowering windows electrically that costs nearly $500 to repair/replace should lose their jobs. They are totally irresponsible and inconsiderate of those who will use their creations. It's outrageous!

The service guy at the Jeep dealer said, “This is a part that never should break.” Right. I believe that. Each of these things has an breaking point built into it. The maker can predict almost exactly when one or the other of those cables is going to fail. They determine it in their product-testing phase of production that the auto manufacturer required. The manufacturer says it should last a certain length of time. By then the original owner will probably have bought another car. I shudder to consider how much it would cost to fix the system controlling my “moon roof” that I also didn’t need. I seldom even retract the upholstered cover that keeps the sun out.

In addition to the cost there’s the inconvenience involved in a window failure. The default setting seems to be in the down position. When can it be convenient to have a window that can’t be raised. We got home from Washington without a flooded car thanks to a clever mechanic in Illwaco, who removed the inner door panel, pushed the window up to within ¼” of being completely closed and clamped a pair of Vise-Grip pliers beneath the window frame to hold it in place.

It was an interesting repair bill. The parts list showed only “1 pair Vise-Grips”. The total cost was $60. Add that to the $424 and you’ll understand why I feel the convenience of raising and lowering the widows electrically is an overrated convenience. I might have just left the Vise-Grips in there but the "diagnostic" charge at the dealer was $95 just for looking at the problem.

LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE CRANK!

Life thoughts

Yesterday, September 6, 2007, I turned 69 years old. Some of you might learn of that and muse that Ron is really getting on in years. I prefer to look at it from a slightly different point of view. I am now less than twice as old as my youngest child, Laurie, who incidentally is celebrating her 38th birthday today. When she celebrated her first birthday, I was 31 times as old as she. There’s some consolation in the fact that she seems to be catching up.

Laurie could have been born on September 6, also but I insisted that Judy hold off. I didn’t want to spend the next 15 years with carousel birthday cakes and Barbie dolls on my birthday. No way. Well, she was born on September 7, after Judy ingested a large quantity of Castor Oil mixed with Welch’s Grape Juice. Laurie squirted out that evening like a kid on a greased water slide.

That’s not what this is about, however. The point is I’m now 69 years old. It’s not a particularly memorable age. There are no new senior citizen perks that come with turning 69. It just means you’re a year older. While still in Oregon, we had a very nice Prime Rib dinner off the Early Bird Senior menu, but we've been able to do that sort of thing for years. Nothing notable about turning 69 at all.

Yesterday Luciano Pavarotti passed. I think he was 72 years old. You know him, the really big Italian Opera Singer with the even bigger voice. He was big because he lived life big. Would he have been happier had he gone on weight watchers and knocked off a couple hundred pounds? I doubt it. He married that really young gal and lived life the way he wanted. His passing will leave a much larger hole in the fabric of society than that left by most of us. Most of us will leave only little dents that quickly fill in with time.

Most of us lead pretty simple lives. We grow up, get a job, get married, have kids, raise the kids, maybe get another job, and finally retire to walking our dogs in RV parks throughout the country picking up their shit in little plastic bags which get deposited in trash cans that big trucks pick up. Those trucks are driven by guys who are still in the “get a job” segment of their lives. They see daily what lies in store when they reach retirement age. I wonder if future archeologists, digging in a landfill, will come across these little indestructable plastic bags and wonder about them and their contents. Will they know we were just enjoying our golden years in a "green" manner? Oh well, that's another story that has no bearing on the one at hand.

Most of us will be remembered by our kids and grandkids. Great grandkids, however, will have only to hear of us on the rare occasions when their grandparents are in one of those looking back moments and they really won’t pay a lot of attention. GGG grandkids will probably know nothing of our lives or us. I have more of those looking back moments as the years pass.

My folks are long gone and I wonder why I never sat down and had those long searching conversations about who they were and how they got that way. I have boxes of pictures of strangers who were important in the lives of my parents and I have no idea who they are. Why didn’t we sit around in the evening and label them with post-it-notes?

If there are regrets about my life so far it is in all of those opportunities missed.

It is strange to be in the part of my life where I look back more than forward. Chances are there are only little mountains left to climb and most of them relate to declining health issues. Hopefully, I'll stick more to the valleys where travel is easiest for a while.

Recently some wag compared getting old to a roll of toilet paper. He said it seemed like the closer you got to the end the faster it went. Well, I don’t know how true that is because I have no idea how close I am to the end of mine. I really don’t want to know either and certainly am not going to spend a lot of time contemplating it.

Years do seem to fly by, however and I try to squeeze as much enjoyment out of each of them as I can. If it’s not fun, I no longer want to do it. You may call that selfish if you like but I feel I’ve earned at least that by making it this far. After all, one of my doctors would freely tell you I wouldn’t make it through 1977, yet here I am 30 years later, still kickin’, just not quite so high.

So I gleefully celebrate my 69th birthday and wish my daughter a happy 38th. I look forward to as many more birthdays as life has in store for me.

Happy Birthday, Laurie.

A Smokey End to the Summer Road

Monday night in Coos Bay, the rains came steadily almost all night. When we awoke Tuesday morning at 0600 the rain had been over long enough that the streets were actually beginning to dry. We tuned in the local news on television to hear the weather broad say that scattered showers could be expected all over the area west of the Cascades throughout the day.

We set about getting ready to leave only to have the skies open up again just as we were about to attach the Jeep to the back of the motorhome. We waited that cell out and finally got underway.

All of the way from Coos Bay, to Interstate 5 we did indeed have scattered showers. Ron was frustrated when we hit I-5 as the GPS said we were now 8 miles further from home than when we left Coos Bay, and we had been on the road for 2 hours.

It's true, unfortunately. There is no straight line road from the coast inland and the way out of Coos Bay, goes way north before reaching I-5.

Shortly after starting south on the Interstate the rain began in earnest and rained steadily (and at times very heavily) all of the way south to Ashland.

From Ashland to Redding, CA, the roads dried out except for one brief shower near Lake Shasta.

Redding was very warm on our arrival at an RV Park there. We slept with the windows open for the first time in a while and awoke this morning to the smell of smoke in the air. TV news again informed us of a huge wildfire off to our east that was spreading smoke into the central valley as far south as Chico and Paradise.

We hit the road with a tailwind averaging about 20-25 mph helping our fuel mileage a lot. However, when we turned east in Colusa that wind hit us squarely in the side and driving was very difficult for about 30 miles. Wind gusts were reported as high as 45 and I think we experienced a few of those.

That pall of smoke had reached Marysville and a telephone call home to son Kevin revealed it was also in Grass Valley. It was so bad that grandson Alexs' class at school could not go outside for recess.

The sun shone as a partially obscured orange blob in the sky and the winds decreased the further east we went.

It is very smokey here at home and the smell is very strong. The wildfire is easily 80 or 90 miles away but we're still getting the effect. Smoke has now been reported as far away as Bakersfield, about 300 miles south of here.

We'll look forward to an onshore breeze that will blow the smoke into some other yard and leaves us with clear skies again.

It's good to be home though. Our 2-month trip was fun and we saw lots of neat stuff and met some new folks are reacquainted again with some old friends. We did manage to get in a nice breakfast with Dick and Kathleen, ham radio friends for many years, in Eugene. And, of course, Dave and Sue from Arizona.

Now it's time to start planning for our winter departure about 1 November.

A Wreck on the Beach and a Soft Spot on the Summer Road

Photo courtesy USCG

The MV New Carissa went aground in a violent storm on February 4, 1999, and remains on the beach just north of the harbor entrance at Coos Bay, Oregon. We watched the saga of the attempts to save her for several weeks on television. At that time station KOIN from Portland, was our west coast CBS station on the satellite and their helicopter was overhead every morning and evening throughout the ship’s ordeal.

She had been carrying no cargo and was ballasted with bunker fuel oil in her bilges and posed a serious environmental threat to this delicate shore and on up into Washington State. They decided to burn the oil off and set explosive charges in all of the cargo holds. Instead of a nice fire, they ignited an inferno that at one time had the hull plates glowing cherry red.

Photo courtesy USCG

As a result, the ship split in two, with the forward cargo section breaking away just forward of the bridge superstructure.

Large ocean-going tugboats were called in and the connected to the bow by means of large diameter tow cables and commenced to pull. The tugboat company said it could take several days before any movement was seen. They were right on. The big tugs pulled and pulled 24/7 for days before it finally began to straighten towards the open sea and move away. They towed it many miles offshore and sunk it in deep water.

Still left on the beach, however, was the entire stern section containing the multi-storied superstructure and bridge and the engine room below that. The fires had spread throughout this section of the ship too leaving very little beside scrap iron to salvage.

Today, all that remains is the section of the hull that was aft of the superstructure—the stern of the ship. One identifiable structure is the rack that is visible in the right of the image above that is slanted at about 45 degrees. That once held a lifeboat that was probably used by the crew when they abandoned ship. She lies just offshore and ideas on how to remove the remains still continues to this day. Several weeks ago there was an article in the news about a new plan to “rid the coast of the eyesore”.

While watching the television news coverage of the event I recall them saying how difficult it was to get to the spot where she had run aground. It’s way out on what is called the North Spit and is truly 4-wheel-drive country. The road in is about 4 miles long consisting of beach driving and dune driving through powdery soft sand. It also seems likely that in February, 1999, following a huge storm, the sand was quite moist making driving on it a little easier than it is today.

Our Jeep was doing great until we were within a mile of returning to the paved road when Ron stopped to read a sign. It wasn’t an interesting sign so he stepped on the gas to get going again and we sunk in the sandy powder all the way to the frame so fast it took his breath away. Four wheels spinning in holes in the sand offered no forward progress at all. A couple riding an ATV came up and the driver immediately began removing air from the tires though it appeared quite obvious that wouldn’t work. A guardian angel arrived in a large 4X4 pickup and he had a tow strap. He hooked onto our front end, backed up, and with Ron applying some gas pulled us up and out of our soft spot. Thanks were given all around and we drove slowly back to the RV with 4 very soft tires. Fortunately, the RV has a built in air compressor and we quickly put everything right with the tires.

Ron’s mistake was stopping in what was obviously very soft sand. He won’t do that again. So long as the Jeep was moving forward it kept on keepin’ on. Stopping allowed it to just sink into the powder sand. We’ll stock a shovel, and a tow strap, and perhaps an air tank to refill the tires after airing them down in the sand, before we go again.



We’ll call it a learning experience or our adventure on the beach in Oregon. The weather was gorgeous and so it was much better than getting stuck somewhere in the boondocks in the snow. The Pugs had a great time walking on the beach too.

Coos Bay, OR

Our detour to the coast has been absolutely splendid. They days have been sunny and the temperatures have been in the low to mid 70’s in the afternoons. It’s just perfect, as far as we’re concerned—unusual for this area, but perfect.

We’ve also been able to spend some time with the wanderers in the Carefree Coyote, Dave and Sue. We got together twice, once at their place and once at ours where we had a very nice cocktail party on our patio. Judy served our last remaining can of Capt. Jack’s Alaska Salmon in a spread on crackers. That, along with some killer salsa and the frozen margaritas was just perfect.

Today, Labor Day, we’re just kinda’ kickin’ back. We’ll go in search of the New Carissa this afternoon.

Judy did a load of laundry here in the RV park and I gave a tour of our RV to some neighbors who recently purchased a gasoline powered coach. They’re now heading back to their home in Nampa, Idaho, to put it on the market and start researching diesel pushers. I praised DeMartini RV as a wonderful place to buy a previously owned motorhome.

It’s just like when we were in boating. There’s always one two feet longer or a little nicer to lure you into doing what you should have done in the first place. The boating motto was always, “buy the bigger boat.” The same motto seems to apply to RV’s as well.

Our plan is to head for home tomorrow morning, arriving in Grass Valley on Wednesday. Ron is looking forward to getting the hot tub up and running again as soon as we get there. Judy is looking forward to having the dishwasher and the washer and dryer available anytime she wants and conveniently located right in the house. Different’ strokes for different’ folks.

A Detour in the Summer Road

A Detour on the Summer Road

You may recall that one of the primary reasons for this annual trek north is to avoid the hot, hot days of summer in Grass Valley. So here we were in Eugene, OR, heading home, expecting to arrive tomorrow afternoon, Sept. 2. Well we were close enough to home to be able to receive our Sacramento, CA, local television stations on our satellite dish. We tuned in the news and the weather guy said it was going to be 103 degrees in Sacramento today and 104 tomorrow.
Now those are exactly the kind of temperatures we came up here to avoid. After much ruminating we decided it wasn’t all that important that we get home tomorrow. There were no appointments during this next week that couldn’t be postponed. The question was where, on Labor Day Weekend, could we find a campground that had a vacant space for us to park in. Judy called the Mill Casino in Coos Bay, and they said, “Come on down,” so here we are back on the coast of Oregon. It’s sunny out and the air temperature is 71 degrees. Now that’s more like it.

It also works out that because of this detour we won’t be driving at all during the Labor Day Weekend, and that too is good. I’ll also get to see all three of the NASCAR races this weekend—maybe the best part.

The weather at home is forecast to be a lot nicer beginning Tuesday when we’ll again plan to head for home. In the meantime, we’ll connect with Dave and Sue, the friends we last saw in Chinook, WA. They planned to be here and will be quite surprised to have us knock on their door.