On the arrival day, usually late afternoon and evening, we unload the car, deal with the food that we bought along the way, have a quick dinner like pasta, do other opening-up activities like turning on breakers, water etc. and get the internet connection going. If it's really late, I don't turn the computer on, simply use the laptop. On our arrival day here, I basically got everything going since we were early.
On the full day, in the winter, I clear the snow from the front of the barn, pull in the X5 and put on the snow tires. That went without a hitch until I got to the third tire which was flat as I put weight on it. It hadn't appeared flat, but then without weight on it and with the rubber being stiff with cold, it's hard to tell until it gets mounted -- without actually using a tire pressure gauge. This one would have shown zero, likely, or close enough thereto.
So I jacked that side up and got the pump, hoping that it was a slow leak. I checked and adjusted the pressure in all four tires; only one other was down a couple of psi. That done, I had some lunch and went into town. The tires were feeling a bit funny so I stopped along the way and checked the pressure in that tire; sure enough it was down from the 39psi overpressure that I'd set to 26. Hmm. This isn't exactly a slow leak ! Sure enough, as I started rolling again, the tire low pressure light came on. It's interesting that I could feel it on the snowy road before the sensor even told me.
I went straight to Clapperton's garage and Daryl was there but wasn't able to help me. He'd just had detached retina surgery and wasn't working. Drat. He called the Arnstein garage to see if they could help me and yes, they could, at 1pm. That was about 45 minutes from then so I went and picked up the mail, two boxes of it, then went to get minnows. The minnow guy wasn't there so I went on to Arnstein and sat and waited for 15 minutes since they were all having lunch. That's ok, I was early and expected to wait.
They seem to do a good business there. I've never used them before but the owner, Jeff, has three guys working for him and they were all busy. Interesting. They hoisted up the car and pulled the passenger rear wheel, cleared the snow and checked for leaks. I had expected a nail or something, puzzling why this hadn't shown up last Christmas but then we were so busy dealing with alternator problems that who knows. Well, there was no nail. Lying the tire down, he put soapy water along the bead and the entire area bubbled ! Ah ha !
Long story short, I guess that they run into this all the time. Aluminum rims will corrode and break the bead. He pulled the tire and used the wire brush. All the paint along the bead was flaking off. Back together and re-pressurized, the leak was gone.
I'm betting that was the problem with Sandy's winter snow tires as well. This will be the last season for these snows on the X5. What I do for next winter will partly depend on whether we have the same car next year. I'm betting not, but who knows. It's still running well. If I want to continue using these rims I'll probably bring up a set of snows and have them mounted here.
I went back to Gohm's and he was there so I picked up minnows. I will set out the rigs today and hopefully we'll be eating pike soon. We had crappy out of the freezer for dinner and it was excellent ! Sandy has one of those freezer vacuum thingys but in fact these were just frozen in water. They cannot get freezer burned / dehydrated in water.
Even before I did the snow tires, I cleaned the stove vent hood. That wasn't exactly what I was planning, especially since we don't use it during the winter, but there was a burned out light and one thing led to another. Like the vent hood in FL which I'd cleaned when I took it down, it was full of grease. I've got to make cleaning that thing a regular maintenance item since all that grease surely poses a fire risk. It's not something that I've even thought about before. A flare up in the stove can go out quickly but if it ignites grease in the vent hood ... oh oh.
Jason has a tree down, the spruce by the cottage at the near end of their clothesline fell towards the point. It's all on land so won't be too difficult to clean up, but too bad. It didn't take anything else down with it and didn't hit the cottage, so all's well.
Today, perhaps we'll find a Christmas tree, perhaps.
Onward !
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