Monday started off with a heavy overcast sky. While I caught up on the RV blogs I follow, Donna went for a walk. She started out on West Lake Goodwin Road and followed it south all the way to the end of the lake. At the south end of the lake, the road curves back and becomes East Lake Goodwin Road. She made a loop of the entire lake, a distance of just under six miles in about 90 minutes. Donna said the distance wasn’t bad, but the rolling hills made it challenging.

While Donna was out walking, the temperature rose to the upper 60s. The humidity made it feel sticky and much warmer.

Alana and the girls (Gabi, Lainey and Andrea) came over around midday. Alana brought lunch fixings. We sat at the picnic table and made sandwiches with sliced deli turkey meat and cheese on hoagie rolls. After lunch, the sky cleared. It was partly cloudy and the temperature rose to the lower 70s – not such bad weather after all! We spent the afternoon outdoors.

Donna had a pork tenderloin in the slow cooker all day with a barbeque sauce. So for dinner, we had BBQ pulled pork with grilled potatoes, peppers and onions and homemade corn muffins. We all sat together at the picnic table and enjoyed good food, good company and pleasant weather.

Yesterday, I was out of bed by 8am. Once again, the skies were overcast. I had a 10am appointment at Adventure Powersports in Monroe, to replace the rear tire on our scooter. After 5,400 miles, the original rear tire was knackered.

The ride to Monroe was a little over 30 miles from Lake Goodwin. The route I took made it a 50-minute ride. I rode through a couple of light rain showers on the way.

While the work was being done, I phoned my friend, Dan Wolanski. Dan lives a few miles away from the Adventure Powersports shop. He invited me to come to his place around noon. Dan and I spent a lot of time together in the ’90s. We were flying partners. We practiced flying aerobatic routines with giant-scale radio-controlled airplanes. Although we were both sponsored by Futaba and were close friends, we competed against each other.

Dan has a mechanical engineering degree from Michigan State University. He and his wife, Jen, moved to the Seattle area and Dan went to work for Boeing. Today, Dan owns a company called Mag-Knight. Back in the day, Mag-Knight produced magnetic motorcycle tank bras through a proprietary, patented process. Dan worked from a shop behind his home. We also built our giant-scale airplanes in his shop. He built up the Mag-Knight business and eventually left Boeing.

It’s been at least 10 years since I last saw Dan. In that time, he built a new house about a mile away from where he used to live. He also built a larger workshop behind his new house.

Although the Mag-Knight company still makes magnetic tank bras, the business diversified into die cutting and laser cutting. This is where the bulk of the business is today. Dan has several contracts as a supplier to major corporations. One of the products he manufactures is a ceramic fiber seal used in fuel cells. Ceramic fiber is heat-resistant and replaces asbestos in many applications.

The die-cutting machines Dan uses were sourced from China. He told me the machines work well mechanically, but the software isn’t the best. It’s an area he’s put a lot of time into. He also bought a laser cutting machine. To learn its capabilities and shortcomings, he made a few hobby projects. One project was a model of the Seattle Space Needle. Another, more complicated model is a Ferris wheel. The Ferris wheel has an electric motor operating a ring-and-pinion gear cut from plywood!

Like me, Dan eventually burned out on the radio-controlled aerobatic competition circuit. He hasn’t flown an RC airplane in years. He still has a passion for airplanes and flying though. He earned his pilot’s license and bought a Cessna several years ago – I think it was a 172. Since then, he’s become instrument-rated and replaced the Cessna with a speedy Cirrus SR-22. He flies regularly out of Harvey Field in Snohomish.

After catching up with Dan for an hour and a half, it was time to hit the road. I considered riding to Snohomish, where Alana, Donna and Gabi were poking around in the shops. It started to rain as I donned my helmet, so I decided to high-tail it home.

Alana, Donna and Gabi came home around 4pm. I drove Alana to her mother LuAnn’s house and brought her car back to the park. The plan was for us to come over for dinner at LuAnn’s at 6pm.

LuAnn’s husband, Jerry, is retired from the US Forest Service. During fire season, he’s often called back under contract to work as an administrator at wild fire sites. So far, this has been one of the worst fire seasons on record in the Northwest. Jerry is working at a fire site in Oregon. It was his birthday, so we raised a toast to him in absentia.

We enjoyed cocktails on the back patio as the rain showers had moved on early in the afternoon and the sun came out. LuAnn grilled alder-planked sockeye salmon and roasted a medley of fresh vegetables, many from her garden, as well as the bunch of garlic spears we bought at Pike Place. Donna also brought a couple of bottles of wine and a freshly baked marion berry pie she picked up earlier in the day from a bakery in Snohomish.

It was a very enjoyable evening. We had after-dinner drinks and talked well past 9pm before we headed back to the RV park with Gabi in tow. Gabi spent the night with us on the fold-out queen-size hide-a-bed.

This morning we woke to the sound of heavy rain and a couple of thunder claps. The forecast calls for a rainy day. It looks to be an indoors kind of day.