May 7 - all over the map

Soon I'll be starting a major project and my blogs will be about progress ... soon ... and that project will be the basement ceiling.

Yesterday, however, was odds and sods. I went over to Matthews around 9:30 to help Jim sort out what was happening with his trailer lights. He was convinced that he still had a problem with his car, however, we tested his car with my trailer last fall and it was (finally) ok. The (finally) is because at first the programming was incorrect but VW fixed that.

Originally I had told Jim to come over with his car and we'd test it with my trailer again, but decided to just go over there with my portable starter battery. I'm pretty sure that it doesn't have enough juice anymore to start a car, but it works fine to start the ATV's, provide 12 volt power to charge my IPOD while traveling and it has a built-in air compressor that I've used.

Just a side note -- why do I use this to charge my IPOD rather than the 12 volt accessory (cigarette lighter) receptacle in the car ? Well, that's because some weird electronic bug in the X5 causes it to think that the AUX cord has been disconnected from the IPOD and it reverts either to the CD Player or Radio after some random length of time. So, on a long trip if the IPOD is running out of battery power, I can plug it into the accessory receptacle and put up with a bounce to radio or cd after some time, could be right away or could be 5, 10 minutes, or I can simply plug it into the starter battery and be done with it. At the same time I can be charging the starter battery from the car ... go figure.

Anyway, back to Jim and his trailer lights. When I got there I found that Jim was already working on the trailer and had spliced a new 4-wire trailer plug onto the wires from the trailer, having judged that perhaps the old corroded plug was the problem. I observed that the new setup had no connection to ground but theorized that perhaps one of the wires, maybe even the wire that he'd connected to the white :) was connected to ground somewhere else, because when I applied the contacts on the spare battery to his plug contacts, at least one of the lights worked. Troubleshooting this was complicated by the fact that the trailer has a heavy coat of paint and rust, making it hard for the jaws of the battery clamps to get a proper ground contact on the trailer. Connections at the lights are pretty corroded ... you get the idea. Anyway, long story short, I finally determined that the four wires that came to the front were setup as two from one side and two from the other, with no ground. One from each side had to be joined together (the one from the dim filament) and attached to one from the plug, the other two were to be attached to the other two and the white from the plug had to be grounded to the trailer. Grounding to the trailer was not easy as the grounding bold snapped when we tried to loosen it ... but we found another bolt to which to attach the ground wire and Jim found some spare automotive wire at Stan's. The other thing that we found is that one of the running light wires is broken somewhere between front and back so that he only has one running light, but has both signal lights and brake lights. He doesn't care about that -- "I'm not going to be using the trailer at night" -- we could fix it later if we wanted.

So ... that was that. I heard from Jim later on another subject that he and Dennis had gone over to Robinson's and repaired the two copper T's that had separated in their plumbing, started the pump and then discovered that the drain faucet on the hot water heater was leaking. Otherwise she's good to go ... and Jim is going to pick up a replacement faucet at Timbr Mart.

Sandy kept busy most of the day working on the deck chairs and table, removing pine sap. I also did some work on the deck, using a paint scraper edge-wise and removing dirt from between deck boards. I'll have to go over it again, doing a thorough job, but this is prep work for staining the deck. In hindsight I should have left more of a gap between boards so that dirt was less likely to get trapped between. There are many, many spots from pine sap on the deck ... I think that we're just going to have to live with them. I tried paint remover, but don't think that it does any better than simply scraping off the excess and cleaning. Partly it's that the pine sap has "protected" those spots from UV and they are a different colour.

I filled the inside wood box from the woodshed up by the barn; I made bread; I roasted coffee beans; I picked up the piles of twigs/leaves/pine needles that Sandy had raked; oh ... and I did plumbing work.

Yes, I did plumbing work. I assembled the three valves, 2 hose bibs, 4xT's, cut pipes and soldered it all together. I'm taking this assembly down to Stef's and hopefully it will fit in quite nicely into their supply line and hopefully my soldering work so far is watertight -- that's my Sunday morning chore. I need to pick up a couple of 90 degree elbows on the way down for the final work as well as two 3/4 caps so that I can close off the work and ensure that it's watertight. Aaron can then take off those caps and go from there.

Late in the day yesterday it started to rain and rained -- drizzled -- through dinner. Trout, asparagus, potatoes -- all done on the barbie -- comprised dinner. Dinner tonight and tomorrow night will likely be Subway so I have to save the memory of that :).

My plan today is to leave before noon. I have seven hours of driving in total, 4 of which is getting to Stef's. I'll drop off my plumbing assembly and tools before heading down to Rochester. I think that I've remembered the essentials -- key for Stef's, passports -- bike and bike stuff etc. If not I'm in trouble !

It's brightening up outside but there is low cloud. I have not checked the weather or doppler this morning, but at last look it was supposed to rain today too.

These days the house cools overnight from 72-ish to 68-ish and I start a fire in the morning. The outside temperature is reading 49F at this point, not too bad. We let the fire go out in the early a.m. and the sun keeps the place warm during the day with the number of windows that we have -- if it gets too warm, we open windows.

When I was at Jim's yesterday working on the trailer the black flies were out, buzzing around us but not biting. It's only later that they start biting. Are black flies like mosquitoes in that only the females bite ? Do the males hatch first so that these first on the scene are just annoying and don't bite ? I'm not sure. A little breeze during the day kept them at bay when we were outside. That, however, doesn't last long. By the time we're back outside again, after three days of rain, they'll be out clouds. By the time I get back from Stef's on Sunday, in other words, I need to be prepared to wear a bug jacket or do inside work.

That's it for now ... won't likely update the blog again until sometime later Sunday or perhaps Monday a.m. I'm going to bring my laptop with me but really don't expect to have service at the Cornerstone Inn in Ontario NY. I'll have service once I'm back at Stef's, but won't be there long. Come to think of it, why am I bringing the laptop at all ? It's my security blanket.