Good Morning!!!! 71F @ 6:30AM. Abundant sunshine. High 98F. Winds light and variable.
There's rain, a 50% chance of scattered thunderstorms, in the forecast for Monday! Only 1/3 of an inch predicted, and we could do without the lightning, but it's still a good sign that we won't have the protracted drought that led to last year's fire.
I have a tarp big enough to cover the fire truck on order, but it figures it won't make it here until next Thursday. So this morning I'll rummage around for old tarp pieces and see if I can get at least some of it under cover.
The rain is also a reminder that I need to order in some more decomposed granite to cover the areas where landscape plants formerly grew. Otherwise, they'll be muddy messes when winter finally arrives. And since the DG is sold by weight, if I wait too long and the quarries get wet, I'll be paying for water instead of ground cover.
Honing wasn't enough to salvage the scratched cylinder yesterday. There were two scratches in the Nikasil coating that I could catch with a fingernail, and both were in the area swept by the rings. To get the bike back on the road, I'll steal the cylinders off the bike I bought this past winter, and use the new pistons I have in hand. That bike needs some paint work before the weather closes in, another weather driven task. I'm not a farmer, but the seasons still control a lot of what I do...
Dropped by my buddy's motorcycle shop yesterday to get a second opinion on the cylinder (he said to run it), and was given a replacement for the damaged clutch switch on the red bike, a part BMW no longer inventories. It seems like every two or three years, BMW puts a new person in charge of their "classic" parts operation, whereupon they declare the company will always make parts for the old cars and bikes. Then two years later, the parts guy behind the counter starts seeing "NLA" (No Longer Available) on his computer screen... My friend's wife was filling a parts order for one of their customers and mentioned they were short a couple of cables, so I offered to pick them up and drop them off later as I was headed to the BMW dealer myself. The shop was closed when I returned, so I slipped them under the door mat just as another tenant of the industrial park was driving by. He's another friend, a gearhead with some pretty interesting hobby car and truck projects for which he rents space. He saw the van and asked some questions, and it turns out he knows the former van mechanic. That led to a long conversation about brilliant mechanics and trades people that can't seem to keep a business afloat, and hints that my motorcycle buddy was financially struggling as well. I guess it makes sense to do work that makes you happy, but they call it work for a reason and if you don't do enough of it you have a hard time paying your bills...
This summer I've been pulling over to use the smart phone to turn on the AC at the house when I leave town. It's really nice to walk into a cool house, but kind of inconvenient to stop. But last night I remembered to do it while I was standing in the checkout line at the grocery store. Didn't remember to bring my cloth grocery bags, though...:confused2:
It's Friday the 13th, AND a full moon. There won't be another one on this date until 2049!
A great day here for outdoor activities. I saw a red shouldered hawk flush a mourning dove out of our pear tree earlier. I suspect the dove was lucky this time based on lack of evidence.
