Monthly Archives: February 2020

Unlimited – Not

After many hours of work, I have my new laptop ready to go. As I reported before, my old laptop had become unreliable. The problems began when Microsoft decided to push an Operating System (OS) update to it. The update software is flawed in my opinion. It had an incompatibility with an app or program I had on my computer. But rather than set an error message and identify the issue, it would just shut down the hard drive. I would have no choice but to force a complete shutdown, reboot and hope I hadn’t lost anything I was working on – in most cases, I lost my unsaved work.

Meanwhile, Donna was becoming increasingly frustrated with her phone. Our phones are several generations old – we had Samsung Galaxy S5s. So, we headed over to Best Buy and did some shopping. Donna ended up with a new Samsung Galaxy S10 while I picked up a new laptop – a 2-in-1 actually. This means it functions as a normal laptop or I can fold the screen 360 degrees and use it like a tablet. I don’t care much about that function, I only needed a laptop. I found an ASUS machine that seemed like a good deal – a lot of computer for the money.

It has two hard drives – one is a solid state drive that handles the OS and some file storage and the other is a conventional hard drive disk that has 1TB of storage space. It also has a Core i7 processor with 16GB RAM. This is a serious upgrade over my old unit. It’s fast and has better graphics and video than I had before. I still have to get a couple more programs on board.

One of the biggest hurdles we’ve faced in our time on the road as full-time RVers is high-speed internet access. With our Verizon Jetpack, we have onboard wifi, but high-speed access is limited. All of the carriers offer unlimited data plans, but none of them really mean unlimited. What they mean is, you’ll have high-speed access up to a certain point, then you become throttled. Once you meet the throttling threshold, other users may have higher priority than you and your connection speed will suffer. It depends on how many others are trying to use the cellular connection at the time and whether you are a lower priority user or not. Sometimes the speed can still be good while other times it’s almost like an old dial-up.

Our “unlimited” plan with Verizon gives us high-speed access through the Jetpack for 15GB of data usage before it throttles. Then we can switch to our phones and use them as hotspots. We can get an additional 15GB from each phone, giving us a total of 45GB unthrottled high-speed access. This has worked out well for the most part, but downloading program files eats up data pretty quickly.

We started last week with the Viewpoint Concert Band performance on Sunday. Donna had a few visitors in the audience. Our friend Stevie Ann came out to see the show as did Mike and Jodi Hall with their granddaughter Swayzie. The concert was great and enjoyed by all. I’m amazed at how well the band can perform together with limited practice time. They only play together five times before each performance date. Of course, they practice individually to learn their parts, but to hear it all come together is really something. Now Donna is working on the music for the next show.

Speaking of Mike Hall, I first met Mike back 2006. We met at Red, White and Brew – it used to be a favorite watering hole for us. There was a core group of guys that often met there for a cold one after work. One of the guys was Lindert Hartoog. Lindert is from The Netherlands and worked as an engineer at the Boeing helicopter plant in Mesa. He also owned a rental house nearby that Mike Hall lived in. This house has a large workshop in back. Mike is an expert body and paint guy and he often did side jobs in the shop and also worked on restoring a couple of his own cars.

Eventually Mike got married to Jodi. They later moved out of Lindert’s house and bought their own place a few miles away. Mike maintained a rental agreement with Lindert to occupy the workshop – about two-thirds of it really. Lindert kept about a third for some of his own stuff. Lindert came up with some shop equipment at some point, including a vertical mill and a lathe that he added to the shop.

As a body man, Mike is well-versed in working with sheet metal. Fabricating parts from billet on a mill or lathe would be a new experience though. Mike Hall and I thought it seemed simple enough and we decided to teach ourselves. Last Friday, we attempted to mill a pocket cut in a block of 7075-T6 aluminum. It was a humbling experience. We both had seen these operations performed many times and thought we had a basic understanding of the process. After breaking a couple of bits and fighting with the machine, we decided it was time to regroup.

I came home with my tail between my legs and did what I should have done from the start. I became a student and over the next few days, read everything I could find about milling aluminum and viewed YouTube tutorials. There are lots of things to be considered when milling metals – rotational speed, feed speed and depth of cut are just the beginning. There’s conventional milling and climb milling to consider – and on and on. I think I’m on the right path now and I’m anxious to try my hand at it again.

Donna was scheduled to play in a pickleball tournament – ladies only – on Saturday. But weather intervened. Rain moved in Friday night and continued off and on all day Saturday. We’d had great weather with the daily highs reaching the upper 70s and even 80 degrees all last week until the weekend – just the opposite of what went on the weeks before. Saturday and Sunday were much cooler, but today the sun is shining and the forecast calls for continued sunshine and temperatures back in the upper 70s for the rest of the week.

I’ll close this post with a few dinner photos from the past ten days or so.

First up was a new dish – garlic mushroom chicken thighs. It was quick and easy to prepare and delicious – a keeper for sure. Donna served it with black rice and steamed spinach with feta cheese.

Next up was another winner – spice rubbed pork chops cooked in the crockpot. Donna’s been using the crockpot every Wednesday so she doesn’t have to cook a meal after her two-hour band rehearsals. This was another very simple recipe with incredible flavor thanks to seven different herbs and spices. And it was perfect over a serving of garlic cauliflower mash and a side of steamed spinach.

Last but not least, we tried another crockpot recipe that turned out great – seafood cioppino. This dish required more preparation time than the other two, but the flavor was superb. She served ciabatta bread with my helping and served hers over roasted spaghetti squash. This was a surprisingly filling dish!

Working Man’s Weather

The weeks keep flying by and I find myself having a hard time keeping this blog up. I used to post daily – or nearly so. Nowadays, once a week is about it. That’s mostly due to our winter digs – we spend an extended period of time in San Diego followed by a long stint in Arizona.

Mesa, in central Arizona, is a great place to winter. When we lived here in a sticks-and-bricks house, we found many of the snowbirds to be a nuisance. Out-of-state drivers often had annoying habits on the road and the stores were often crowded compared to the number of people here from spring through fall. The snowbird season peaks in January-February-March, then begins to taper off in April. I guess we’re part of the snowbird crowd now.

One of the things we like about staying in east Mesa is the easy access to open country. We’re only a few miles from Usery Regional Park and the Tonto National Forest. It seems a little strange to be calling the desert landscape National Forest, but that’s the designation. The Bush Highway runs through the Tonto National Forest following the Salt River. It provides access to Saguaro Lake and miles of hiking, biking and horseback riding trails.

On Friday morning, I was up before the sun. Mike Hall came by at 8am and picked me up. We headed out Bush Highway to AZ87 and into the desert in his Toyota pickup. We spent the morning target shooting in the desert. It’s fun and a popular activity here. Getting out early to claim a good shooting area is always a good idea. We burned up ammo and plinked at his steel-plate targets for a few hours. I was back home by noon – I had a train-the-trainer pickleball session at 1pm.

On Saturday morning, Donna and I were up early again – I had an alarm set for 6:15am. We wanted to have ample time to hydrate and caffeinate before we competed in the Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort Valentine’s Pickleball Tournament. There were over 30 teams entered, split into two groups. Most of the teams were couples which made it interesting. We were in the early group which had 15 teams – 30 players total. We rolled through the round-robin matches and were undefeated after six games. We went into the playoff rounds along with two other teams, but our luck ran out on us and we finished in third place.

After the tournament we came home, cleaned up and had lunch. Then we headed out in Midget-San to Fountain Hills. There was a large car show there that ran until 3pm. It was a beautiful day out with blue skies and the temperature was in the low 70s. The drive out Bush Highway with the top down was very enjoyable. The car show was at the Fountain Park in Fountain Hills. I wrote a post about the fountain – you can read it here.

The area around the park was crowded and finding a parking place wasn’t easy. We managed to squeeze into a spot on the street about half a block east of the park. My interest in the hot rods and muscle cars has diminished lately. At the cars shows, I find myself more interested in the unusual and older cars. I learned about this show from a Facebook post by the Phoenix Lotus Club. I wanted to check out some of the old Lotus sports cars.

When we entered the park, we saw the scope of this show. Cars were displayed all the way around Fountain Lake. There were crowds of people, food vendors and cars everywhere. It was so packed in many places that it was hard to take photos – but I didn’t let that stop me.

The fountain behind a C1 Corvette

They kept the fountain running at low-power throughout the show.

Cars, crowds and vendors on the grass at Fountain Park

It turned out the Lotus Club was set up on the far west side of the park. We hiked past display after display and made a complete circle of the lake. There were also a few oddities on display. This is the first car show I can remember that had helicopters on display.

USMC helicopter
Another helicopter
WWII era half-track with 50 caliber anti-aircraft guns

As we made our way to the west side of the lake, we began to see British Car Club displays.

Very cool old Jaguar
Another beautiful old Jaguar
A 1955 or ’56 Austin-Healey 100-4 BN2

The cars on display were mostly privately owned and driven to the park. The sheer number of valuable cars is a testament to the wealth in the area.

A highly modified Ford V8 in a 1971 De Tomaso Pantera

We found the Lotus Club and saw a few old Elans that were cool and also spoke to a couple of club members before we continued our hike around the lake. Past the Lotus area, we found scores of exotic cars. I mentioned the wealth – the countless Ferraris and Lamborghinis that showed up was mind boggling.

A fraction of the Ferraris displayed
Lamborghini was not to be outdone

We left Fountain Hills around 3pm and drove down AZ87 to Gilbert Road – making a loop out of our route to and from Fountain Hills.

Sunday was another gorgeous day with the temperature in the mid-70s. It was a mostly lazy day for me. Donna never seems to slow down. She rode her bicycle over to Orangewood Shadows RV Resort to visit with our friends, Lowell and Debi Hartvikson. We met them several years ago when we stayed at Orangewood and Donna often hiked with them. Donna’s also keeping up with clarinet practice, tennis lessons, pickleball and hitting the gym here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort.

Last week, Donna prepared a dish that we really liked in the past but haven’t had in a while. It was coconut curry chicken. For some reason, it seemed to be lacking the curry kick we remembered. I don’t mean to be critical of the meal she prepared, but we both were puzzled by the relatively bland flavor. The ingredients were fresh and the recipe unchanged.

Coconut curry chicken with grilled bok choy

The great weather held up until yesterday afternoon. Rain moved into the area around 4pm. I came in from reading outside with a cigar about five minutes before it started raining. I made a marinade for another batch of jerky. I bought two pounds of pre-sliced top round beef at Winco. The meat was sliced about 1/8″ to 1/4″ thick across the grain and all I had to do was cut it into strips – and it was only $3.48/lb!

The rain continued off and on overnight but it’s dry this morning. We still have clouds and the expected high temperature today is only around 60 degrees. Things should warm up to the 70s again by Thursday. It seems like we’ve had working man’s weather – rain and cold Monday through Wednesday or Thursday, then warm, sunny weekends over the past few weeks.

*Just so you know, if you use this  link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

Minor Maintenance Tasks

We enjoyed another week as temporary residents of Mesa, Arizona. We’ve been coming here every year for the winter months since we hit the road – this is our fourth year here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. From 2006 to 2009, we lived here in Mesa full-time in a sticks-and-bricks home about 3 miles away from Viewpoint.

I had a couple of minor projects to attend to last week. When I dumped our gray water tank, I noticed a slow drip coming out of the bottom of the plastic pan in the wet bay. Later, I went to see about taking the cover plate off the wet bay to inspect the water lines, but the drip had stopped and all was dry. The next day, I saw the drip again. Taking the cover plate off the wet bay involved removing 14 screws. Once I did that, I saw that I really only needed to remove 11 of the 14 screws. Three screws were attached to a stiffener board that came off with the plate. Next time I’ll know.

I found the source of the water drip. There’s a plastic fitting in the PEX fresh water line with a small valve and connector to supply the ice maker in our freezer. This fitting had a hairline crack and was leaking. I made a trip to Ace hardware and bought a new fitting. I had to replace a short section of PEX tubing and it was job done. I neglected to take any photos while I worked.

The other minor project was routine maintenance on Midget-San. Modern cars make it easy to forget how much maintenance we once had to perform on automobiles. Unlike modern cars with sealed bearings and lifetime lubricated ball joints, our 1972 MG Midget requires chassis lube on the front suspension components. There are zerk fittings on the ball joints and king pin links and trunnions. These need to be greased with NLGI #2 bearing grease.

To do this, I needed to raise the Midget – it sits only a few inches above ground level making it impossible for me to get underneath the car. I jacked the car up and supported the four corners with jack stands. I used a grease gun and a cartridge of grease to inject grease into the zerk fittings.

I also had ordered a new distributor cap and rotor along with an ignition wire set from RockAuto. Nowadays, cars have separate coils mounted directly on the spark plug, eliminating the distributor and ignition wires. Modern platinum or iridium spark plugs can last 50,000 miles or more. Not so on the 1982 Nissan A15 engine in Midget-San. It is equipped with an electronic ignition module, so there isn’t a set of breaker points to replace. This is the only electronically controlled item on the car. The distributor is otherwise an old-fashioned device with a vacuum advance mechanism to control ignition timing. The single ignition coil is a Bosch blue coil feeding high voltage to the center terminal of the distributor cap where the current then travels through the rotor to each ignition wire and on to the appropriate spark plug.

These parts can wear and need periodic replacement. The high voltage arcs from the rotor to the distributor cap terminals resulting in wear on both components. The ignition wires delivering high voltage to the spark plugs can break down, allowing the current to arc to ground rather than firing the spark plugs. As part of my preventive maintenance schedule, I replaced the cap, rotor and ignition wires. It’s a fairly easy and straightforward job.

New distributor cap, rotor and NGK ignition wire set

Overall, the maintenance work was easy and didn’t take a lot of time or effort. These are the things you need to do to keep a 48-year-old car with a 38-year-old engine running smooth.

In my last post, I mentioned a new recipe I wanted to try. It was Smoked Paprika Chicken Legs with Chimichurri. I made a rub with paprika, coriander seeds, lime zest, salt and pepper and two tablespoons of olive oil. This created a paste-like rub that I massaged into the chicken leg quarters.

Paste-like rub on chicken leg quarters

I set the Traeger wood-pellet fired smoker-grill to high (450 degrees). The chicken leg quarters cooked on the smoker for 45 minutes.

Chicken leg quarters hot off the grill

While the chicken leg quarters were cooking i made the chimichurri by putting a cup of parsley and a cup of cilantro along with jalapeno, onion, garlic cloves, fresh squeezed lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper in a food processor and pulsed it until it was creamy. This was served directly on the chicken.

Thigh portion of chicken leg quarter with chimichurri, mashed potato, corn and asparagus

The result was tasty and it’s a recipe worth repeating. Next time, I think I’ll use bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. The high setting on the Traeger made a pleasantly crispy and tasty skin on the chicken.

Our Superbowl Sunday plan had a bit of a hectic schedule. Donna had tennis in the morning and a clarinet lesson in the afternoon before we drove to Mike and Jodi Hall’s for food, drink and the game – and cigars for Mike and me. The day before, we went shopping at Winco foods. I looked at the babyback ribs there, but wasn’t impressed. The only babybacks they had were Hormel brand, frozen rock hard and they didn’t look very meaty. We tried Fry’s grocery and they didn’t have any at all! We then went to Basha’s where I found nice looking fresh (not frozen) babybacks.

I did my usual thing with two racks of ribs on the Traeger Sunday afternoon. We took them to Mike and Jodi’s place around 3:30pm. Jeff and Chrissy Van Deren were there along with Mike’s sister, Connie, and Jodi’s sister Jackie. Donna made stuffed mushrooms and a vegetable tray. Mike had a whole chicken on his smoker grill. We had plenty of food for all. It was a good time and we enjoyed the game.

The weather had been great all week with daily highs in the low 70s. The weekend was warmer and we hit 78 degrees on Sunday! But on Monday, a cold front moved over the area and we had a partly cloudy day with the high only reaching the low 60s. I think the warmest part of the day was late morning, then it got colder as the day wore on. Last night, the temperature dropped to 34 degrees and we have a freeze warning tonight. Cold temperatures with the highs only in the 50s are forecast for the next few days. As I type this, it’s clear and sunny outside but the temperature is only 50 degrees. This cold spell should break by Friday and we’ll be back in the 70s.

*Just so you know, if you use this  link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!