Monthly Archives: April 2021

Our Third is Born

I haven’t updated this blog for the last ten days! Sometimes it seems like there aren’t enough hours in a day. But when I really think about it, I do a lot of leisure activities that take time. It’s not like I’m toiling away.

Four or five days per week, I play pickleball for about two hours in the morning. This ends up taking most of the morning – I usually need a snack after two hours on the courts and rest. Then there’s always an errand or two to run.

Lately, I’ve devoted about two hours a day to guitar practice. I’m slowly regaining my chops and relearning some songs I used play regularly. I haven’t played through my handwired vacuum tube amps in a long time. These amplifiers work best when the power tubes are pushed into high output – it creates a responsiveness and touch sensitivity in the guitar. The thing is, pushing the power tubes means high volume!

I used to run my Marshall 18 Watt clone through an Avatar speaker cabinet loaded with two 30-watt Celestion 12-inch speakers. I had an identical – except for color – cabinet for my Trainwreck style amp. When we lived in Michigan, I practiced in our finished walk-out basement. The houses in our neighborhood were separated by large yards – we were hundreds of feet away from our neighbors. Playing loud was not a problem.

I brought one of the Avatar cabinets with us when we hit the road. Unfortunately, it was in our trailer when those Dirty, Rotten Thieves stole it. I still had a practice amp and speaker Donna bought for me and I had an Egnater Tweaker 15-watt head and cabinet with one 30-watt Celestion 12-inch speaker. This cabinet handles the Marshall fine, but the Trainwreck is too much power for it. The Trainwreck is rated at 36 watts, but this is misleading. That rating is when the output is clean with no clipping or distortion. When pushed into clipping, the output is in excess of 50 watts.

Now we have neighbors with about ten feet of separation. I ordered a Power Soak speaker attenuator to put inline between the amplifier and speaker cabinet. This device is basically a voltage divider that absorbs some of the power output of the amp and tames the speaker while I’m pushing the output into the distortion range. I can play at reasonable volume while enjoying the response these amps can provide.

I’m still concerned about the Trainwreck overpowering the 30-watt Celestion speaker and blowing it out. I ordered a new speaker cabinet with a Celestion speaker rated at 80 watts to use with the Trainwreck. It’s my favorite amp. With the volume knob on my guitar set around 4 – zero is off and 10 is full power – I get a clean, sparkly sound. Turning the knob up to around 7, I get a fatter, distorted sound and anything higher than that is full on crunch, while the volume doesn’t change much. Love it. I quit playing it though until I get the new speaker.

Last Thursday, my eldest daughter Alana and her fiance Kevin visited us. They came down to the area from western Washington to visit her mother, golf and see us. Donna grilled sockeye salmon and we enjoyed dinner on the back deck. It was a nice visit, I always enjoy visiting with my daughters and always wonder when we’ll be together again when they leave.

Friday morning, I was up early to drive Donna to the airport. She flew back to Vermont to visit her parents, so I’ve been on my own for a week – Donna will return Thursday night. So that means I’m the cook – something else that occupies my time. I’ve been spending more time in the kitchen lately even when Donna’s home.

Saturday I met up with friends at Lucky Lou’s. We shared a table on the outdoor patio – it was Mike and Jodi Hall, Frank and Kelly Burk and another Mike ( I don’t know his last name). We swapped tales and enjoyed couple of cold ones, just like old times.

On Monday morning, my youngest daughter, Shauna, gave birth to our third granddaughter in Washington, D.C. Her name is Petra. I have three daughters and now three granddaughters. Baby and mom are doing fine and we feel blessed to have them.

I’ve been tackling some minor issues in our new-to-us park model home. One of the things that needed updating was the connectors on the coaxial cable for the televisions. This isn’t hard to do if you have the right tools. Without a proper crimper for the f-type RG6 connector, it’s not a do-it-yourself thing. I ordered tools and connectors from Amazon. I’ll probably put them in the shed and not need them again, but it was necessary. The old connectors were falling apart and if you moved the cable the slightest amount, you would lose the signal.

Last week before Donna left, she made a couple of outstanding dinners. First up was pork kabobs with pineapple, mushrooms and peppers.

Next up was plate of shrimp and shishito peppers and fried rice. I made the fried rice – it’s becoming my specialty.

She also made grilled chicken thighs with butternut squash risotto and asparagus.

The weather remained hot last week with daily highs in the upper 80s or low 90s. The swamp cooler in the Arizona room has been very effective. We use a box fan to circulate air to the front room and didn’t run the air conditioner at all! This is a great energy saver. It was overcast and cooler yesterday. Last night, we had a couple of rain showers and it was cloudy again this morning, but now the sun is shining. It’s only supposed to get up to 70 for a high today and 79 tomorrow. From Thursday, the forecast calls for mid-90s through the weekend. Just in time for Donna’s return Thursday night.

*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!

Curtains Up

The annual exodus from Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort is well underway. Most of the Canadian visitors have already departed. This morning, our next-door neighbors headed back to Iowa. The neighbor on the south side of us stays here year ’round. We’ll be here through the first week of May.

Things are slowly shaping up in our new-to-us park model home. This week, I hung drapes in the front room. Donna’s been watching the Facebook Marketplace and found some deals on rods and curtains.

New drapery and rods on the front window facing Superstition Mountains

Construction of these park model homes is different from what I’d expect to find in a regular sticks-and-bricks home. When I drilled holes for the curtain rod mounts, I didn’t know what I was drilling into. It turned out the center mount was on a solid header board. If I had known that from the start, I would have drilled smaller holes and tapped wood screws directly into the wall. But, having drilled oversized holes I had to insert anchors. It worked out fine. The end mounts were into thin plywood and required anchors.

The front window is curved. Donna found an articulated rod made for bay windows that fit perfectly. When I installed the curtain rod on the side window on the north side of the front room, I piloted the holes with a small drill bit first to see if I would be in solid wood or thin ply. Once again, the center mount went into solid header board while the end mounts needed anchors inserted into thin plywood.

Another thing I worked on this week was getting my guitar amps and pedal board set up and working. The amps have been locked away in a basement compartment of our coach for nearly eight years. I’ve really neglected my guitar and hardly played at all for the last couple of years.

I expected trouble with the vacuum tubes in the amplifier. They had to get shaken up on some of the roads we’ve traveled. I was pleased to find my Egnater Tweaker amp fired up with no issues at all. Then I was surprised to find the Marshall 18 Watt clone I built in 2011 worked fine. My luck didn’t hold out on the Trainwreck inspired amp I built in 2012 – it just crackled and made a few really fuzzy tones.

I suspected one or more vacuum tubes were shot. When I was a kid, back in the 1960s and ’70s, you could find a vacuum tube testing machine in almost every hardware store and even pharmacies and supermarkets. Nowadays, these testers are just a fading memory. Without any way to test the vacuum tubes, I broke out my credit card and ordered a complete set – three 12AX7 preamp tubes and two EL34 power tubes (plus an extra 12AX7 to keep on hand).

When the tubes came, I almost switched them all out with the new ones, but then I decided to do one at a time and see which ones were bad. The first tube in the V1 position was a Tung-Sol 12AX7 and I had ordered one of these. These are made in Russia. All of the new production tubes I used are made in Russia or China. Vacuum tube manufacturing completely disappeared from the Americas and Europe as the technology is no longer used in most consumer applications. At one time, every television set had a complement of vacuum tubes and high-quality tubes were made in the USA and western Europe and were readily available. Today, it’s a niche market for audiophiles and guitar amplifiers.

After I installed the first tube, I plugged in the amp and tried it. It worked fine. The V1 position was the only bad tube! The Tung-Sol tube was under $20, but now I have three Shuguang 12AX7 tubes that I use in the V2 position of the Trainwreck and in two positions of the Marshall clone. I also have a Sovtek 12AX7LPS and two Ruby EL34s. So I’m set with spares, but if I could’ve tested first, I wouldn’t have ordered $130 worth of tubes.

I have the amplifiers stacked to save space and I can easily switch from one amp to another when I play. I also set up my pedal board and I’m happy to report that all is well with my effects pedals. I’m back to playing my guitar, but man am I rusty.

Top to bottom – Egnater Tweaker, Trainwreck type, Marshall 18 Watt clone and Egnater 1-12 speaker

Donna had her second Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday. She got the shot in Fountain Hills and while she was there, she was able to visit two of her friends in the area – a gal she met through her church and a former neighbor, both of whom she hadn’t seen in a few years. She also enjoyed a solo alfresco lunch at her favorite Italian restaurant on the lake before heading to the pharmacy to get her vaccine. She felt fine when she went to bed, but woke up in the night with severe chills. By morning, she had a fever of 101.7 degrees. She was ill all day Wednesday and most of Thursday. She’s fine today and played tennis this morning.

I mentioned in my last post the Teruyasu Fujiwara Maboroshi gyuto I bought. You might wonder why I would want to have two Japanese chef’s knives. My two gyutos have completely different character with their own strengths. The Kintaro forged by Yoshimi Kato has a thin, light blade. The cutting edge of the blade is 215mm long and the knife weighs 131 grams. My TF Maboroshi is more stout – it has a cutting edge 200mm long and weighs in at 195 grams.

The Kintaro excels when slicing cabbage. It seems to float right through the produce like a ghost. But I have issues using it on potatoes. Potato slices stick to the side of the blade like they’re suctioned on – I practically have to peel the potato slices from the knife. The Maboroshi cuts cabbage fine, but it doesn’t have the feeling of just floating through. It’s super sharp though and excels on carrots and potatoes and just about anything. Potatoes do not stick to the hammered finish on the blade.

Lately, I’ve been handling the dinner prep – Donna tells me what’s on the menu and what she needs. I break out the cutting boards and prep whatever veggies she needs. This saves her some time and we both participate in the meal preparation.

On Monday, I made Japanese style fried rice while Donna grilled salmon and shishito peppers. It was a great meal.

Grilled salmon, shishito peppers and fried rice

On Tuesday, Donna kept it simple. She sauteed onions and mushrooms and baked spuds while I grilled filet mignon. Donna wrapped the filets with a strip of bacon. The filets were delicious and tender.

Bacon wrapped filet mignon smothered with mushrooms and onions with baked potato and broccoli

Last night, Donna made a new recipe. It was crispy chicken with turmeric-lemon cabbage and peas. It was a labor-intensive recipe that took nearly an hour and 15 minutes to prepare. The meal was great, but I don’t know if Donna wants to put that much effort into making it again.

The hot weather held over the weekend and through the start of the week. It was in the 90s until Wednesday when the high temperature was 87. Thursday cooled to 81 degrees for a high and today we expect 80 degrees. Last night was a comfortable 54 degrees. Looking ahead, we should maintain the highs in the 80s with maybe a day or two around 90 in the coming week.

I found the problem with our swamp cooler. There’s supposed to be a standpipe to drain water if the level gets too high. The standpipe was broken, so not enough water was in the sump. I fixed it and now the swamp cooler is awesome. We haven’t needed to run the air conditioner these last few days – the swamp cooler is doing the job great with just a box fan to circulate air to the front room.

Easter, Heat and Wild Horses

Progress has been pretty slow on our new digs. Donna’s been organizing drawers, cabinets and closet space. I haven’t accomplished much. I’m still a little frustrated at times by looking for something, then realizing we left it in the motorhome – things like the extra wide foil for the Traeger and grill or the BBQ tongs. Yesterday I could have used a needle file. After searching, I realized my needle files were still in a cabinet in the coach.

Today I’ll go over to the 202 RV Valet storage facility and retrieve a couple of things. I also want to put mineral oil in the drains to seal the “P” traps. Water usually does the job, but since we aren’t running water down the drains, it’ll evaporate and allow odors from the holding tank to enter the coach. Mineral oil won’t hurt anything and won’t evaporate. I have a gallon of food-grade mineral oil I recently bought to condition our cutting boards.

On Easter Sunday, we went to Frank and Kelly Burk’s house for a late lunch/early dinner party. I think we had as many as 10 people there at one point with eight staying to eat. Kelly made traditional Easter food – ham and asparagus with hollandaise sauce and scalloped potatoes. Someone else contributed sweet potatoes made with a unique recipe that involved basting with 7Up and cooking for hours. Donna made a fruit salad and I made a slaw.

The slaw was interesting. It was very simple – just cucumber, a Granny Smith apple, a honey crisp apple and scallions. The dressing was apple cider vinegar, honey, sour cream, salt and pepper. The trick to making this slaw is to slice the ingredients extremely thin. I sliced the cucumber and apples into 1 to 2mm thick slices – a thickness somewhere between dime and a quarter thick. Kelly was surprised that I did this with a knife, not a mandolin or some other slicer.

I’ve been working on my kitchen cutlery skills and I sliced these ingredients with a technique that’s probably old-hat to the cooks out there reading this, but it’s fairly new to me. I held the food items on a cutting board with my left hand with a claw grip. I curled my fingers back toward my palm, keeping my finger tips away from the knife blade. The side of the knife blade butts up against the second joint of my middle finger. With each slice I move my grip slightly before slicing again, creating the thin, uniform slices.

With the cucumber, I sliced it lengthwise first, leaving about half an inch still attached at the stem end. Holding it in a claw grip with the slice vertical, I made thin slices that were half the diameter of the cucumber. I used my FKRZ bunka Japanese kitchen knife which has a blade about 2 inches tall, giving me a lot of surface against my finger joint with no danger of slicing my finger tips.

The dinner, conversation and company was much fun and we really enjoyed the Easter gathering.

On Monday afternoon, we invited Dick and Roxy Zarowny for happy hour. They were pulling out of Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort on Tuesday morning to head back home to Spokane, Washington. Donna made baked jalapeno poppers and a bean dip for tortilla chips. Donna and Roxy had kayaked on the Salt River the previous Thursday and hoped to see wild horses. They had fun, but didn’t see any horses – Roxy’s been skunked on wild horse sightings.

One of the things slowing me down on household projects is pickleball. I’ve played almost every day this week. A couple of hours on the court with full sun and temperature in the 80s really wears me out. Today was the fifth day in a row on the court and my legs are weary.

I mentioned the Japanese bunka knife. I want to talk about a Japanese knife blacksmith. His name is Teruyasu Fujiwara (knife nerds refer to him as TF). He is a fourth generation Japanese blacksmith and is known for his heat treatment of Hitachi YSS high carbon steels – shirogami #1 (white #1) and aogami super (AS). In the 1970s, he and his father pioneered the technique of forge-welding stainless steel and carbon steel in to a san-mai (three layer) laminate. This allowed them to heat treat the core carbon steel to a high hardness level while taking advantage of the superior corrosion resistance and toughness of mild stainless steel.

When they started experimenting, they thought they would probably encounter a 20% failure rate – the laminations would de-laminate or crack during heat treatment. They actually lost 80% of their work before they perfected the process. Since then, Hitachi Steel Corporation’s YSS specialty department has developed a process for producing laminated san-mai steel in sheet form.

TF is one of only a handful of blacksmiths that can successfully forge weld their own san-mai stainless-carbon sandwich steel. He claims the hand forged san-mai to be superior to the machine rolled pre-laminated factory stuff. He makes three lines of knives. The first, entry level to TF knives is called the Nashiji line. This is “value” priced and made from pre-laminated factory rolled san-mai steel with a white #1 core and soft stainless cladding. His heat treatment of this steel results in a high hardness level allowing exceedingly sharp edges while paradoxically being easy to sharpen. “Value” pricing is relative – non-knife nerds would probably think these are expensive knives.

The next level of his knives are the Maboroshi no Meito – Maboroshi or Mabs is the common reference name. These are white #1 core with soft stainless cladding hand forge-welded by TF. These achieve an even higher level of hardness and retain the ease of sharpening. These knives have legendary cutting ability, but they cost double the price of a Nashiji knife.

His top level is called Denka no Hoto – Denka for short. Denkas are made with Aogami Super cores and soft stainless cladding hand forge-welded by TF. Once again, the price is double that of the Maboroshi, making them very pricey! The AS steel reaches a super hard level – 67HRC or so and features a razor thin edge that holds up well. I doubt I’ll ever buy a knife in this price range.

I have a few TF Nashiji level knives and I’m really impressed by them. I’m so impressed that I felt I had to try a Maboroshi to feel that hand forge-welded magic I keep hearing about. I ordered one from District Cutlery in Washington D.C. and received it yesterday. I haven’t used it yet, but it came scary sharp!

Teruyasu Fujiwara Maboroshi gyuto (Japanese chef’s knife)

TF Mabs top with Nashiji bunka and 160mm and 135mm petty’s below

I like the finger cut-out in the choil (rear of blade) in the Maboroshi. It makes a very comfortable pinch grip.

Yesterday, Donna went kayaking on the Salt River again, this time with Kelly Burk. They put in at Goldfield and kayaked about two and a half hours downriver to Granite Reef. They saw nine wild horses this time. Maybe Roxy will see them next year!

We had a few interesting meals this week. On Saturday, Donna pan-seared ahi tuna and served it with jalapeno, ginger and lime sauce over white rice, with quartered cucumbers and avocado.

On Tuesday, Donna made spicy-sweet grilled chicken with dijon mustard sauce and served it with rice and grilled broccolini.

Yesterday, I fired up the Traeger wood-pellet fired smoker-grill and put on a rack of babyback ribs I’d prepped the day before. These are always a favorite. No picture this time – I’ve photographed the entire process a few times on these blog pages.

The weather has been very warm with the hottest day of the week on Easter Sunday – we hit 98 degrees. Every day has been in the lower 90s. We expected cooler temperatures by now, but it looks like we’ll have a couple more 90 degree days before the temperature drops into the 80s on Sunday and low 80s by Wednesday. With the sun rising earlier and warm mornings, we’ve been up earlier.

Tuesday morning I woke up around 5am and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up and watched the sunrise over the Superstition Mountains to the east.

Sun rising behind the Superstition Mountains

Most mornings lately we’re out of bed by 6:30am and off to pickleball around 8am. On Monday, Wednesday, Friday and sometimes Saturday, Donna plays tennis from 9am to 10:30am. We’ve been running the air conditioner here in the afternoon and the swamp cooler in the Arizona room, but I’m having doubts about the effectiveness of the swamp cooler. I’ll have to look into it.

Transition

It has been a busy week since my last post. Over the weekend we put the Nissan Frontier to good use hauling numerous loads of stuff out of the motorhome to our new-to-us park model home. It’s amazing how much stuff we’d been hauling around the country. Over time, it’s easy to forget about some of the items buried deep in the basement compartments of our motorhome.

The home we bought came fully furnished – including things like kitchen utensils, pots and pans, silverware and plates. This made it harder to decide what we needed to move from the coach and also where to put everything. It’s an ongoing process – I keep searching for things as Donna reshuffles storage. Something I found in one cabinet yesterday is now in a different location. She’ll refine her organization of stuff soon and I’ll learn where to find things.

We spent our first night here on Sunday. It was an adjustment. After nearly eight years in the coach with only a few exceptions, it felt strange. On Monday morning, I had an appointment at Cliff’s Welding to have the Roadmaster base plate installed on the Frontier. It took longer than I expected – I didn’t get out of there until 1pm. The truck is set to be towed behind the coach when we depart from here.

Tuesday we got what should be the last load of stuff out of the coach. I drove the coach over to 202 RV Valet for storage, Donna followed in the Frontier. This RV storage facility is new – I think it’s less than two years old. It’s owned by the same people that own RV Renovators where we had extensive work performed a few years ago.

The coach is in a covered space, but it will get partial afternoon sun. I covered the tires to mitigate UV degradation. The space also has a 20-amp service – adequate for the batteries to maintain a charge. Of course, when I went to hook up to the electrical outlet, I realized my 20-amp adapter was in a box of stuff I moved to the shed at our new place. Not a big deal though, the storage yard is less than two miles from Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort and we have 24/7 access.

As we slowly settle in, we’ve been taking time to enjoy the back deck, watching golfers – and occasionally watching out for errant golf balls – and enjoying the view and weather.

Our back deck viewed from the 6th fairway of the golf course

View to the north – 6th green and 7th tee

Late afternoon view from the deck to the southwest

We also have a nice view to the east from the front room and side deck at our entry. We look down the 1600 Lane of the park at the Superstition Mountains.

Superstition Mountains in the background

We’re liking the transition into a more conventional dwelling, but we’ll still be hitting the road. Our tentative plan at this point is to leave Mesa, Arizona by May 10th. This date was predicated on the billing policy at 202 RV Valet. If you take your rig out of storage by the 10th of the month, they pro-rate the monthly fee. If you move out after the 10th, you have to pay for the entire month. I don’t like the policy, but it is what it is. It’s not like they would lose money if you left on the 11th or later – they told me they have a waiting list of more than 140 people!

We haven’t made a plan for our exit from the Valley of the Sun at this point. Presumably we’ll head north to a cooler climate, but we don’t really know where we’re going.

Did I mention the new place included a barbeque grill? It’s a large CharBroil grill with four burners, a large grilling surface and also a side burner suitable for a pot or pan.

Yesterday, Donna marinated a pork tenderloin with her mojo marinade and I grilled it on our new-to-us grill. This was the second time I’ve used the grill and I’m getting used to the settings I prefer. A new grill always takes some time to learn its adjustments for fine tuning temperature settings. I’m not used to grilling on such a large grill. When we were in our sticks-and-bricks home, I had a large Weber gas grill, but it’s been eight years since I’ve manned that.

The tenderloin came out fine.

Donna roasted cauliflower in the oven – yeah we have a kitchen with a real oven and stove.

The weather has been pretty much as predicted – on the very warm side. The week started with mid to upper 80s. By Thursday, we were in the low 90s. Yesterday we hit 93 degrees and the forecast calls for the same today. After a couple more hot days, they say we can expect to return to the low 80s for most of April.

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Monthly Archives: April 2021

Our Third is Born

Curtains Up

Easter, Heat and Wild Horses

Transition

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