Category Archives: Midget

Irish for a Day

We’ve come through one of the coldest, wettest winters in memory here in Arizona. Donna’s vegetable garden seemed almost dormant at times as the vegetables endured cold nights. Things finally took off near the end of February and she harvested earlier this month.

Snow on the Superstition Mountains, March 2nd

She replanted for her second crop, which we expect will grow much faster as we are enjoying warmer weather and longer days.

Donna’s second planting in her raised vegetable garden bed

She relocated the worm bin when she replanted. The worms are thriving and continue to multiply. The same goes for my second worm colony.

The highlight of the year came on Wednesday, March 15th, when my youngest daughter, Shauna and her husband Gabe came to visit from Bermuda. Of course they had our youngest granddaughter Petra in tow. We picked them up at the airport and they visited while we had snacks and a drink. We met our granddaughter for the first time. We hadn’t visited Bermuda since the COVID lockdown.

Later, I dropped them off at a nearby AirBnb. On Thursday morning, I picked them up again and we drove to west Mesa where Shauna had rented a car through Turo. She picked up a new VW Taos compact SUV. She said the car felt big to her – Bermuda doesn’t have many (any?) full-size cars. Everything is sub-compact there. It’s an island after all with narrow roads.

We came back to Viewpoint and gave them a tour of the grounds. We finished the tour at Fat Willy’s where we enjoyed lunch on the patio. Lucky for us, we claimed a table next to a propane heater – it was a bit chilly with the breeze. I mentioned the unusually cool weather – when they arrived on Wednesday, it was raining and we had a high of just 65 degrees. Thursday was only slightly warmer with a high of 69 degrees.

Donna, Petra and me by the golf course behind Fat Willy’s

Thursday afternoon, they headed west to visit with Shauna’s mother and stepfather in Wickenburg. My oldest daughter Alana and her husband Kevin were already there. They flew down from Washington to meet up with Shauna and Gabe.

Alana and Kevin will come here this afternoon and we’re planning to go out for sushi tonight. Shauna and family will come back to Scottsdale on Monday. They’re meeting friends and will attend a spring training MLB game Monday night. Donna and I will babysit Petra while they’re at the game.

I need to shift gears now and discuss my latest passion – astronomy and, more specifically, astrophotography. When the astronomy bug bit, I spent the first month or so looking at the moon and planets visually through my telescope. Then I decided I wanted to capture the images, not just gaze through an eyepiece. I started with the easiest target – the moon. Then I spent about three months working on Jupiter and Saturn.

Once I had the planetary imaging techniques figured out, I wanted to try my hand at deep sky objects (DSO). I don’t mean to imply that I mastered planetary imaging – far from it. But here’s the thing. Astronomy has seasons – who knew? We are past the optimum time for imaging planets now. The moon is available year ’round except for about a week or so out of every four weeks when it crosses the sky during daylight hours.

The winter is the time of year when nebula imaging hits its stride. Nebulae generally are invisible to the naked eye, but if you know where to point your telescope, they can be found and images can be recorded. The difficulty arises from the distance involved and the dim light they produce.

Our eyes see in real time – that is, whatever photons strike the rods and cones in our eyes are immediately transferred to our brain. A sensor in a digital camera can be used that way or it can be exposed to a particular light source for a longer time and accumulate the light photons, gradually making the resultant image brighter up to a point. It gets tricky when we are talking about deep sky objects that have a wide spectrum of colors and brightness.

Keeping the camera sensor on point for long periods of time requires accurate tracking. The earth is in constant motion. As it rotates, the celestial bodies appear to move across the sky. Modern astrophotography utilizes powerful software and carefully designed telescope mounts to track the object we want to capture.

There’s also the fact that the earth revolves around the sun. Remember, I said astronomy has seasons? That’s why. As the earth reaches different points in the elliptical path around the sun, different parts of our solar system and the universe are in view. The second quarter of the year is known as galaxy season. The earth reaches a point where most of the Milky Way is no longer visible in the night sky, opening up paths to distant galaxies. The summer is planet season. Then we return to nebula time.

Astrophotography, especially DSO astrophotography, is a very difficult hobby. It’s probably one of the most challenging hobbies I’ve encountered. Having said that, I love it. I’m learning so much. There are so many decisions regarding gear, software and which objects to target. There are no absolutes – that is, there’s more than one way to approach the hobby. An inexperienced amateur astronomer will require a few years to really grasp what they need and what works best for them.

My gear is evolving and I found that I need different software for DSO than what I needed for planetary imaging. Like I said, there’s much to learn. I’ve taken up the DSO challenge and I’ve captured a few objects. My first was late in January when I shot an image of the Andromeda Galaxy. In hindsight, it was a marginal effort. I then went after the Pleiades star cluster. I made some improvements there after a few attempts.

At the end of February I tried to capture the Orion Nebula and was moderately successful.

This led me to the Horsehead Nebula.

My final version of the Horsehead came from two sessions. First on March 3rd, I captured 46 sub-exposures of 120 seconds each from our backyard here at Viewpoint. Then, on March 12th, I captured another 44 subs of of 90 seconds each from darker skies at the Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint. I learned how to combine the data collected from the two sessions in AstroPixelProcessor and the result is the image above.

My latest attempt came from our backyard and it’s the Rosette Nebula.

The Rosette Nebula is 5,200 light years away from earth. It’s in the constellation Orion as are the Horsehead and of course the Orion Nebula.

I’ve arranged an outreach event next week for our astronomy club, East Valley Astronomy Club, here at Viewpoint. Members of the club will show up on Wednesday evening and I’ve secured permission to set up on the ball field at the north end of the Viewpoint complex. We’re inviting people to come out and look at the sky through our telescopes.

Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day. Of course, everyone in the park was Irish for a day. I cleaned up Midget-San – it’s amazing how much dust finds its way under the car cover. I’ve had its battery on a float charger and the gas in the tank was stabilized, so I was confident about it running after spending many months stored on jack stands.

It fired up without any issues! We joined the St. Patrick’s Day parade in it. Donna threw candy to the people lining the streets of Viewpoint and made sure she found kids to toss the candy to. It was fun.

Donna talking with a neighbor, getting ready to join the parade in Midget-San

There was a car show after the parade. I didn’t enter Midget-San because I didn’t want to commit to hanging around all day. I’ve done the car show thing with my old Corvettes in the past and I’m not up to entering anymore. But I like to look around!

Last night, our friends Chuck and Sue Lines came over and joined us for happy hour and dinner. Donna made her usual traditional St. Patrick’s Day dinner of corned beef, cabbage and carrots, champ potatoes and Irish soda bread. And Sue brought a grasshopper pie she made. We had a great time – good food and conversation with good friends. It doesn’t get any better.

As always, Donna keeps fresh cooked, nutritious, delicious meals on our dinner table. Here are few examples from the last couple of weeks. I’ll start with a batch of grilled chicken with tomatoes and corn.

For another meal, she prepared braised chicken thighs and peppers over creamy polenta.

Braised chick thighs and peppers over creamy polenta

The next dish was very tasty. It’s garlic butter flank steak pan fried with baby potatoes and fresh herbs. Yummy!

Flank steak with baby potatoes and broccoli on the side

The weather has been much better in the last week, but it looks like we might have a wet, cold snap for a couple of days next week. I hope Wednesday is fair for the event with the astronomy club.

Moving Out

Last weekend, Donna started packing up stuff that we’ll need over the next four months for our summer vacation. We moved our departure date back by one day – we learned last year that it’s too much work to try and pack four months of necessary stuff in one day. Donna obtained a two-night parking pass and I parked the motorhome in front of our park model home.

Our park model is hidden behind the coach

The first thing I did was fill the fresh water tank and dose it with Chlor Brite. Chlor Brite is a product from Leslie Pool that’s basically granulated chlorine. Sodium diclor is the active ingredient – it’s 99% of the product. It’s a concentrated form of chlorine and a little bit goes a long way. When used in swimming pools, as little as three ounces will treat 10,000 gallons of water. Chlorine in drinking water is at a much lower level than swimming pools use.

I mixed a fairly strong solution, filled the fresh water tank and left it in overnight. After sitting in storage for eight months, I wanted to sanitize and remove any contaminants from the water tank. Early Tuesday morning, I dumped the tank and refilled it with filtered fresh water. We use a two-canister filtration system – the first stage is a five-micron sediment filter followed by a one-micron carbon block filter.

This is what 100 gallons of water quickly dumped in the street looks like

The dump valve on our fresh water tank is relatively large and empties the tank quickly. I dumped 100 gallons and it created a small stream in the road. During a storm in last summer’s monsoon season, our neighbors told us the street was completely flooded and ran all the way down through our carport to the shed! I can’t imagine how many gallons of water had to dump from the clouds to cause that.

Most people not from the area don’t realize Arizona has a monsoon season. In central Arizona, that season usually begins around mid-July and runs through August. Flash floods are common as these storms can drop a lot water very quickly.

Our neighbor across the street from us on the 1600 lane just bought the place. Donna told him we planned to place a barrier at the shed end of our carport to prevent flood water from entering our shed. His Arizona room addition is built on a slab at the back of his carport. Last year it flooded and suffered water damage – all the carpeting had to be ripped out. He was leaving the next day to go back north. He asked me if I could put up a water barrier for him – he gave me $100 for materials.

I found a product called Quick Dam Flood Bags. These are cloth tubes filled with a gel product that swells and seals the tubes, creating a useful flood barrier. They are stackable, so I bought enough to stack two high in front of our shed and his Arizona room. When they’re fully activated, they will create a barrier six to seven inches high.

Flood barrier for our neighbor’s Arizona room

I used a garden hose to activate his Quick Dams and make sure they’ll work. Job done!

I put Midget-San up on jack stands for summer storage. Then I removed the wheels – not only will this prevent the tires from flat-spotting, it’s also an anti-theft measure. It’s pretty hard to steal a car without wheels. I fastened the car cover over it for the summer.

Last Thursday was Cinco de Mayo – our anniversary day. We planned to celebrate our 16th anniversary with dinner at Baja Joe’s. Donna wasn’t feeling up to night out after her trip back from Vermont, so I ordered take-out from Baja Joe’s. Donna had her favorite shrimp dish with poblano cream sauce. I had the chef’s special fish filet with a seafood sauce containing pieces of shrimp and octopus. It was excellent – we’ve never had a bad meal at Baja Joe’s.

Saturday evening I manned the grill and cooked a pork tenderloin that Donna marinated in her mojo marinade. She served it with Cuban rice and a steamed vegetable medley. Another nicely balanced and nutritious meal.

Donna had shrimp again on Sunday when she grilled it and served it over cilantro-avocado-lime sauce. Tasty!

Grilled shrimp, Mexican corn and grilled shishito peppers

We had a warm weekend with the thermometer reaching the upper 90s – it was 99 on Saturday! The temps held in the 80s as we packed on Monday and Tuesday. Packing for four months is more like moving from a furnished apartment to another furnished place. It’s not like we’re just heading out for a weekend.

We hit the road around 9:15am. Our route took us over Usery Pass to the Bush Highway past Saguaro Lake and on to the Beeline Highway (AZ87). We climbed to Payson which sits at an elevation of 5,000 feet above sea level. It was much cooler – in the low 70s there – and continued across the Sitgreaves National Forest to Heber on AZ260. This road runs through pine forest all the way to Heber – not what most people picture in Arizona.

At Heber, we turned northeast on AZ277, then AZ377 to Holbrook. The wind really picked up at Holbrook – it’s a steady 30mph wind with higher speed gusts. We’ve stopped for the night near the entrance of the Petrified Forest National Park. We stayed here last year – it’s a dry camping spot. I positoned the coach near the leeward side of a building to shelter us from some of the wind gusts. This is about the halfway point to tomorrow’s destination – Cortez, Colorado. We’ll spend a month there. Tomorrow we will go north through the National Park, then head east a short way on I-40, then north again through the Navajo Nation past Four Corners and on to Cortez – that’s the plan.

Two Concerts and a Parade

Another busy and fun-filled week has flown by. Saturday morning Donna had her final rehearsal with the Viewpoint Concert Band. When she came home, Mike and Jodi Hall picked us up and we headed out to Apache Junction for the Superstition Blues and Brews festival. The festival was in a park at the junction where Apache Trail heads northeast toward Canyon Lake and Tortilla Flat.

We found parking in a dirt lot across from the park and checked in at will-call – we’d purchased our tickets in advance. They had a large crowd – more than expected. It was a beautiful day -clear blue skies and the temperature reached the upper 70s. We unexpectedly ran into our friends, Kelly and Frank Burk there. We sat on the grass in camp chairs we brought and enjoyed an afternoon of music and craft beers in the sun.

Superstition Mountains viewed from our spot in the park

It was a good time. After the concerts – there were a number of good bands performing, we went to Frank and Kelly’s place. They ordered take-out Chinese from J&M and we had an impromptu dinner.

Last Sunday, we drove out to Buckeye to visit my daughter, Jamie, and brought her a couple of goodies. She’s in a back brace and her mobility is somewhat limited. One of the items we brought her was a “reacher” – a mechanical picker-type device so she could pick things up from the floor without bending over or reach things above her on a shelf or cabinet. We picked up take-out from Jersey Mike’s and had lunch together with her and Francisco and I was glad to find her in good spirits.

Sunday was Donna’s concert day – it was actually in the evening. The concert band performed from 7pm to a little past 8pm and put on a good show. The seating arrangement of the band changed and now Donna was in the front row alongside the other two clarinets and I could hear her better. I was put in charge of a crew that collected donations for the band near the end of the show. The donations go into the music fund for the band – with a large concert band, sheet music for all of the instruments adds up. They typically pay over $800 for their music folio.

The rest of the week was mostly typical – pickleball, tennis and great weather. Of course, yesterday we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day, where everyone pretends to be Irish. I played pickleball in the morning. When I left the courts, vehicles – mostly decorated golf carts – we’re queuing up for the park’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. There were a couple of old green hot rod cars in the parade. I thought, “Midget-San is green, why not?”

I came home and wiped the dust off of the car and fired it up to join the parade.

There were about 100 vehicles in the parade. The route took us around the park and people were lined up everywhere to watch and collect candy thrown from some of the carts.

It was fun and something different to do. Donna was out getting groceries, but said she wants to be in the parade next year to throw out candy.

Last week, Donna picked up a cat perch from a woman in the park. She’d bought it for her cat, but her cat never used it. Donna set it up in the Arizona room and Ozark has put it to good use. She likes to get on the top platform and nap or go inside a little cubby a couple of feet off of the floor.

After months of living in our home, I wonder how Ozark will react to life in the motorhome this summer.

As usual, we had some interesting dinner plates last week. On Thursday, Donna grilled a pork tenderloin with bourbon brown sugar sauce. She served it with brown rice and broccoli.

On Sunday, she cooked chicken thighs in the slow cooker with bacon, fennel and onions in white wine and chicken broth with a little tomato paste. She shredded the meat and served it over mashed potatoes with fennel fronds.

Of course, yesterday was the traditional St. Patrick’s Day meal. She had corned beef with carrots and onions in the slow cooker all day and added cabbage in the afternoon. She made sides of champ – mashed potato with sliced green onions steeped in hot butter and heavy cream – and freshly baked Irish soda bread. We had our St. Patrick’s Day meal out on the back deck before sunset.

The weather has been fantastic – most days have been in the low 80s except for Tuesday when we hit 87 degrees. We should be in the low 80s today and tomorrow before the temperature dips to the low 70s on Sunday and Monday – then we’ll be back in the 80s. I need to sign off now and go buy an oil filter for the Nissan truck – it’s oil change time.

*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!

Queen Creek, Olives and Pork

Donna and I have fallen into fairly repetitive and predictable routines lately. After starting the day with pickleball yesterday, we changed things up a bit. We hopped in Midget-San and took a drive. It was a beautiful day – blue skies, not much wind and the temperature was a comfortable 80 degrees. Perfect for top-down driving.

We headed east to Ironwood Drive and followed it south through the desert to Queen Creek. It was a little over a 20-mile drive. Queen Creek is a town straddling the Maricopa and Pinal County line. It was mainly an agricultural town with cotton farms, cattle ranches and so on, but in the last ten years, its population has doubled as housing developments exploded. It was originally a small community at a train stop called Rittenhouse in 1919.

Our destination was the Queen Creek Olive Mill. The Queen Creek Olive Mill is a family-run olive farm encompassing 100 acres. They grow olives and press high-quality olive oil. They are the only virgin olive oil producer in Arizona. We signed up for their 11:30am Olive Oil 101 Tour.

This wasn’t really a tour, it was more of a presentation. We toured the Lucero olive oil facility in Corning, California and had seen how they operate first-hand. I posted about it here. The Queen Creek Olive Mill has an interesting story though.

Back in 1997, Perry and Brenda Rea visited Scottsdale, Arizona and were surprised to see olive trees growing in the valley. They got an idea – what if we could produce olive oil here in the Valley of the Sun? They found that olive trees flourish in this arid environment. They traveled to Italy to learn more about growing olives and pressing olive oil. Within a year, they left Detroit, Michigan and the auto industry to establish their farm on 100 acres of land in Queen Creek.

They started with 1,000 trees in 16 varieties. Now they have around 12,000 trees in those 16 varieties. Olive trees are native to the Mediterranean coast but are cultivated in many places. They are well-suited to the Arizona climate as they like heat and the dry climate prevents bacterial and fungal infections found in more humid climates. The heat in Arizona also precludes olive fruit flies – they can’t take the heat.

The older trees on the farm are grown in traditional spacing – 20 feet between trees with 20 feet between the rows allowing about 100 trees per acre. The trunks of these trees split into three to five different trunks and a canopy grows overhead after several years. Traditional trees must be harvested by hand.

The newer groves are higher density. These trees are pruned so that only one vertical trunk grows. They are spaced about nine feet apart and the rows are about 12 feet apart. These trees can be harvested with machinery.

They irrigate the trees for one week, then allow the soil to dry for three weeks before irrigating again. The trees bloom in April and produce huge numbers of flowers. Most of the flowers are blown away over time by the wind and they pollenate the remainders. Only about 4% of the flowers become fruit.

They start harvesting usually in October – a little later this year as they waited for cooler weather. The youngest olives picked become robust extra-virgin olive oil. It has the strongest flavor profile with a pungent, peppery aftertaste. Next they harvest olives for their balanced extra-virgin olive oil – this is the oil that Donna favors. Lastly, they pick the more mature olives to press their delicate extra-virgin olive oil.

There are six types of vegetable oil made from olives. The purest are extra-virgin and virgin oils. To be classified as extra-virgin, the flavor profile must display three positive sensory attributes – bitter, pungent and fruity. There are nine sensory defects that can show up and if the oil has any of these defects, it can’t be labeled as extra-virgin. Extra-virgin has 0.8% free acidity. Virgin olive oil may have up to three defects and no more than 1.5% free acidity.

The other types of olive oil are refined lampante olive oil and refined pomace olive oil. Refined olive oil is made from stocks that are unfit – they contain too many defects and require a physical refining process (lampante) or they are chemically refined (pomace). The last two types are misleading and I think many consumers are ripped off buying them. The fifth type is labeled olive oil and it’s made by blending at least 5% virgin olive oil with refined lampante oil. The sixth is the same thing but based on refined pomace oil.

Olive oil is best when it’s bottled in a dark glass container. It should be stored away from direct sunlight and heat sources. It’s best when used within 12 to 15 months of bottling and most quality olive oils have the bottling or pressing date on the label or bottle.

We had lunch at the Olive Mill – we ordered from the Italian-inspired eatery and took our lunch at an outdoor table set among olive trees. While we waited for our food order to come up, we shopped around in their market. Donna noticed something interesting – they had extra-virgin olive oil in three-liter bags like you can find in a box wine. Three liter bags sold for $60 – a good buy if you can used that much oil in 12-15 months.

After lunch, we hopped back in the Midget and drove east on Combs Road a couple of miles to another well-known Queen Creek establishment – The Pork Shop. They are a butcher shop that specializes in pork – they’ve been at this location since 1979.

The Pork Shop started when the owner, Greg Combs wanted to find a way to market the pork from his swine farm. He was a third-generation pig farmer at the Combs farm established by his grandfather in the 1940s. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Combs Road led to the old Combs farmstead. He started doing his own butchering and added a smokehouse and sausage making to his operation. It quickly grew and now he no longer raises pigs – all of his pork comes from corn-fed pigs raised in the Midwest.

We shopped a bit in this interesting little market. Donna selected a few sausages and a smoked pork shank for pea soup. I snagged a pound of pork belly to slice for uncured bacon.

That pretty much sums up a day out and about. The forecast for the coming week looks very fine – mid 70s to 80-degree highs and nighttime lows in the 50s. The forecast for Thanksgiving day is sunny with a high of 75 degrees.

*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!

Canada Post Comes Through

In addition to getting back on the pickleball courts, we’ve tackled a few projects here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. I agreed to take on pickleball coaching sessions again this year, so I need to knock some rust off my game. I played last Friday and again Monday and yesterday. Donna’s been a regular at the tennis courts but she came out for pickleball yesterday. I played two games against her and her team prevailed both times.

Donna ordered some solar powered LED light strings and proceeded to hang one set across the front of our car port.

She strung up another set with smaller LEDs on the railing of our rear deck.

I finally put up the end-fed horizontal antenna for my ham radio. This antenna works on 10, 20 and 40-meter bands with a MFJ 939 antenna tuner. It took a couple of attempts to get it mounted right – I underestimated the weight of the coil trap and balun – or I overestimated the strength of the fiberglass electric fence posts I used to mount it. It sagged terribly. Another trip to Tractor Supply and I was able to reinforce the mounting posts. All is good now.

Feed line and balun on my end-fed half wave horizontal antenna

I also put the wheels back on Midget-San and made it road-worthy. I turned the key to the “on” position and allowed the electric fuel pump to run for about 30 seconds. Then I pulled the choke knob and hit the starter. It fired right up! I warmed it up and was thankful that I had put Stabil fuel stabilizer in before I filled the fuel tank for storage. When I did that, the drive back from the gas station was enough to run stabilized fuel throughout the fuel system and carburetor bowl. I took a test drive – ran it long enough to get all of the fluids up to temperature and put some fuel through the carburetor. It ran like a champ!

Yesterday, Donna tackled a tough project. She cleaned and organized our shed which serves as our laundry room, tool storage and my ham shack! I should have been out there helping her, but I had a major distraction.

I mentioned the guitar amplifier kit I ordered. It was coming from Canada and I had some trepidation after reading a few online horror stories regarding Canada Post. I didn’t need to worry. They estimated an arrival date of October 14th and turned the package over to USPS on Saturday, October 9th. Yesterday, I received notification that it was delivered to the Viewpoint post office!

We can only pick up packages here at Viewpoint between 11am and 1 pm. It was 12:30 pm when I saw the notification. I took Donna’s bicycle and high-tailed it to the post office. When I was given the package, I realized I made a mistake. It was rather large and weighed about 25 pounds. As I held it under my right arm and tried to mount the bike, I must have been a sight to see. There were a few people at the parcel pick-up window and they all stopped what they doing to watch me.

I managed to get on the bike without falling or dropping the package – barely. Once I got rolling I was okay – I balanced the package against my right thigh. Luckily I didn’t have to pedal very hard to get back home. As I reached the end of the 1600 row and approached our driveway, I now had another issue. I had to stop and make sure I got my left foot down without dropping the box or falling to the right – the 25-pound box had me seriously off balance.

I called out to Donna – she was in the shed. I managed to get my left foot down and she relieved me of the package. Job done! I started unboxing the kit right away.

The cabinet work is outstanding – I didn’t expect anything less from Trinity Amps.

Inside the cabinet, I found the 120-page builder’s guide and a bags of components and hardware. This is going to be a challenge to build. As you can tell by the number of control openings on the front and back of the cabinet, this is a complicated circuit. It will be the most complicated amp I’ve attempted.

Component packages inside of the chassis

The first task was an inventory of all of the parts and comparing it to the bill of materials list. This is more tedious and time consuming than you can imagine. There are many different types and values of resistors and capacitors needed to build an audio amplifier.

I don’t trust my eye to read the color stripes on resistors to determine the values – the colors seem a bit off at times. I measure each resistor with a multimeter and group them together by type and value and tape them to a sheet of cardboard with the value written next to them. Then I do the same with the capacitors – I measure each one with an ESR meter, group them and tape them to the board.

When I start building, I’ll verify the value of each component before I solder it in place. The value and type of resistor coupled with a capacitor is how an amplifier is “voiced.” These components create filter circuits that attenuate certain frequencies while allowing the desired boosted frequencies to pass. This is how the tone of amplified sound is created.

The amplifier I’m going to build is based on a Dumble Overdrive Special circuit. I think it’ll be a great companion amp to the Ken Fischer Trainwreck type amp I built nine years ago. The stories behind these amps and their creators is interesting and I’ll write a post about them soon.

Donna cooked up a favorite dish last week. It’s chicken Lombardy and she served it with brown rice and asparagus.

The weather has been favorable. On Monday, we had gusty winds in the afternoon and evening as a cold front moved in. Yesterday’s high was only 71 degrees. We expect to have highs in the mid-70s today and tomorrow before we warm back up into the mid-to-upper 80s by the weekend.

Pine Trees and Petrified Forest

Packing the motorhome for a four-month road trip was harder than either of us imagined. I’m sure there will be situations where we say, “I wish I had brought XX along.” It’s a learning experience. Before, we traveled with all of our belongings. Now with the cargo trailer gone, we have to be more selective and there’s no reason to try to bring everything we own.

On Wednesday morning, Donna dropped me off at the 202 RV Valet storage facility, then she went grocery shopping. I moved our coach to the end of the row where there was a water spigot and hooked up our filtration and filled the fresh water tank. We planned to boondock for a few nights and I wanted a full fresh water tank. I didn’t take it back to our place at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort because the only water spigot there is located behind the house at the rear of the property – I would have needed about 75′ of hose.

By the time I filled the 100-gallon tank and drove the coach back to Viewpoint, it was 11am. I had to obtain a 48-hour parking pass to park the coach on the street by our park model home. We began the process of loading the coach right after lunch and worked until dark.

On Thursday morning, we continued the process. Just packing all of the pantry supplies, spice cabinet, refrigerated and frozen foods was a big chore. I also put the Midget up on jack stands and removed the front wheels – I put the wheels in the double-locked storage shed to make it very difficult for anyone to steal the car while we’re away. I loaded Donna’s bicycle in the bed of our Nissan Frontier – I had made a cable locking system for it. I also loaded the Sea Eagle inflatable kayak in the truck, then I assembled the tow bar.

It was nearly 2pm before we were ready to hook the truck up to the coach. Our neighbor came out to help. Honestly, although I appreciated him, I didn’t really want the help. It was the first time hooking up the truck and I wanted to do it methodically and check each step of the process. We got it done and headed out.

Our plans went awry within half a mile. I had driven down the 200 lane and had to make a right turn onto the main street of the park. The person living on the corner to my right had placed a large rock cairn on the corner of their property. Due to a large palm tree in the center median on the street, my ability to drive deep into the street before turning was limited. The truck right front wheel struck the rock cairn. I was stuck. I had to disconnect the truck and move it, then reposition the coach on the main street and reconnect the truck. Not a great start.

By then it was 100 degrees out and 98 degrees in the coach. I fired up the generator to run the roof air conditioner as we drove down the road. Our route took us over Usery Pass to Bush Highway and AZ87 (Beeline Highway). Did I mention it was very hot out?The climb to Payson had me watching the engine coolant temperature closely. Any time it went over 195 degrees, I slowed and geared down to keep the engine rpms up and the load lower. Payson is 5,000 feet above sea level.

From Payson, we took AZ260 east. A little more than halfway between Payson and Heber, we found the Mogollon Rim Visitor Center. By the way, Mogollon is often mispronounced. People say “Moh-geh-yon” but the Arizona State Historian says it should be pronounced “Muggy-yawn.” We parked at the visitor center briefly. Donna texted our friends, Mike and Jodi Hall. They preceded us to the area and were meeting up with Frank and Kelly Burk at a camping area about 15 miles into the Sitgreaves National Forest.

I unhooked the Nissan and Donna drove it across the highway to Rim Road, I followed in the coach as we entered the national forest. The road was wide and paved for the first few miles, then it was graveled dirt – the dirt was fine powder, almost talcum like. It was dusty!

We made it 12 miles into the forest and found the cutoff for the spur road where we were told they were planning to set up. I left the coach on the main road and we drove about a mile down the spur road before we decided it was no go for the coach. The road had sharp rocks and potholes that would be hard on the tires and cause the coach to sway excessively – I could imagine everything falling out of cabinets.

We found a nice camp site just off of the main road – I think it was Forest Service 300 road (FS300) at the FS76 spur. Unfortunately, there was no cell service so we couldn’t let the rest of the crew know where we were. We had a peaceful, quiet and very dark night in the woods. Most people don’t envision pine forests when they think of Arizona, but northern Arizona has them, especially on the rim. We were 7,880 feet above sea level. Donna heard a cow elk calling near our site.

We decided against hanging around and trying to find our friends – we weren’t sure we had the right cutoff road or if we did, how far down they might be. We moved out of there at 9am Friday morning. Donna had spent a full day cleaning the interior of the coach last weekend, but now everything had a layer of fine dust, Same for the Nissan. Once we neared the highway, we regained cell service and I had a voicemail from Frank. We were on the right spur road to find them, but they were 3 miles down – too far to go back and forth every day on a rutted, rocky road, even in the truck.

We found another boondocking spot about 90 miles east at the entrance to the Petrified Forest National Park. There are free dry-camping sites at the Crystal Forest Museum and Gift Shop. We were set up there before noon and took the truck for drive into the national park. I have a lifetime America the Beautiful multi-agency senior pass. This got us into the park without paying fees – it’s usually $25 per car. The elevation there is 5,420 above sea level.

The petrified forest and painted desert are both part of the park. We stopped about a mile and a half into the park at the visitor center. There’s a hiking trail behind the center with lots of petrified tree trunk sections. Petrified wood is formed when trees are buried under silt for long periods of time – about 216 million years, give or take a few. The wood absorbs silica and other minerals as rain water percolates through the silt and quartz crystals bond with the cells of the tree – eventually making a replica of the organic tree material details in quartz form.

We drove through the park 26 miles to the north end, taking note of stops we wanted to make on the way back. The north end of the park has the Painted Desert Inn – a National Historic Landmark – and panoramic views of the Painted Desert. We stopped at Chinde Point where we we had a picnic lunch of the sandwiches Donna made.

Painted Desert view – the colors are somewhat washed out in the photo from the mid-day sun

Our next stop was at a place called teepees. The name comes from the shape of the hills formed from layers of sandstone there.

We made the driving loop at Blue Mesa. We didn’t hike much as I have a sore right knee. The last two times I played pickleball, I was rewarded with knee pain all afternoon. The pain persists now when I walk more than a few hundred yards – I’m not sure what’s up with that.

Blue Mesa is named for the layers of blue, purple and gray badlands that make up the area. Badlands aren’t just a place in the Dakotas – badlands describes an area void of vegetation with rock formations.

We made another stop and short walk to see Agate Bridge. This is a natural bridge formed from a petrified tree trunk. It was reinforced with concrete and people used to walk across it. Walking on it is forbidden now though.

We had another quiet night. The owner of the museum and gift shop doesn’t allow generators after 7pm or before 7:30am. Our Lifeline AGM house battery bank is holding up well – it hasn’t dropped below 12.5 volts at anytime on this trip.

We were on the road by 9am once again. We decided to head back to Cortez, Colorado. Donna talked to Shiree, the owner of La Mesa RV Park there and she could have a site for us on Sunday and we booked a month-long stay. The best route took us back through the national park, we exited at the north park entrance which loops back to I-40. We took I-40 about 20 miles east and hit US191 north. This took us through the west side of the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona. It was much like the New Mexico route up US491, but with what appeared to be sparser population – not saying the New Mexico side is highly populated!

The road surface was great all the way to Chinde, where we had a little incident. I turned off the highway to get fuel at the Speedway station. Once I made the turn, I saw it was a trap. Getting to the pumps and back out of the station looked problematic. I looked at the GPS map and it showed the road I was on circling the station through a small neighborhood back to the highway.

I went down the block and turned right, then I saw the pavement ended a few hundred feet down the road where the road became a heavily rutted dirt road. If we had the cargo trailer behind us I would have just reversed back past the intersection we just came through and drove back to the highway. Towing a vehicle with four wheels down means no reversing. The castor angle of the front suspension would make the front wheel turn to full lock when you reverse and would result in a disaster. I had two choices – unhook the truck and get turned around – or continue slowly down the rutted lane. I opted for the latter and we made it out of there after a few choice words. Phew!

North of Chinle, the road surface deteriorated. It had whoops and rollers so bad that I had to slow to 45 mph on a road with a posted 65 mph speed limit. We eventually hit US160 and passed through Four Corners where we briefly drove through New Mexico and into Colorado. (The Four Corners Monument is currently closed due to COVID-19.) Our destination was the Ute Mountain Casino about 11 miles from Cortez. After about 250 miles of travel, we were ready to call it a day. We lost an hour as we’re now in Mountain Daylight Time. We dry camped for free once again in the casino truck lot – a large paved lot adjacent to the casino travel center. The Ute Mountain Casino sits at 5,880 feet above sea level.

This morning, we had cool temperatures – my phone app showed 40 degrees at 7am. The sun came over the mountain to the east of us and it warmed up quickly. We expect a high of 80 degrees today with the chance of a passing thundershower. We’ll gain a few hundred feet heading into Cortez and we’ll be about 6,200 feet above sea level.

I’ll close this post with a food picture. Last week I had to make my signature Memphis-style babyback ribs. I won’t be able make them again this summer – we’re traveling with just the Weber Q, no Traeger wood pellet-fired smoker-grill.

Memphis-style babyback ribs with green beans and sweet potato mash

Our Transportation Evolution

When I closed my last post on Thursday, I mentioned our plan to go to the Power Food Park and meet up with friends. That’s what we did. We arrived around 5:30pm to find a much smaller crowd and fewer food trucks than were present on the Saturday before. Donna had reserved a fire pit and s’mores packets from 6pm to 8pm. We found Mike and Jodi Hall right away and staked out a picnic table.

We decided to go ahead and order food and eat at the picnic table before going to our reserved fire pit (number 6) where we had six Adirondack chairs around the fire pit. Frank and Kelly Burk joined us. We had a lot of laughs around the fire – the temperature drops fairly quickly after sundown and the fire pit made it very comfortable. Here are a couple of underexposed photos.

It was a fun time and two hours was about right for yukking it up around the fire.

Friday morning I started the Traeger around 8am and put on a pork shoulder (Boston Butt). I didn’t play pickleball Friday, I was saving my legs for the Valentine’s Day tournament on Saturday. The plan was to make pulled pork and take it across the street to Chuck and Sue Lines’ place at 5pm. Roxy and Dick Zarowny would join us there. Sue made potato salad and Roxie made cole slaw and a cucumber salad and lime pie. I brought nearly five pounds of pulled pork and it made a great dinner. Again we had a great time talking into the night and Chuck had a propane fired fire pit!

Donna and I played in the Valentine’s tournament Saturday morning. It wasn’t really a tournament – it was a round-robin type scheduled play with players teamed up with their sweetheart and rotating play against other teams. We won 50% of our matches, but I don’t think we were playing at our best. It was fun nonetheless.

We drove to Frank and Kelly’s place in the afternoon – it’s only a couple of miles from where we used to live in east Mesa, about five miles from Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. It was breezy out and felt chilly although the thermometer registered 69 degrees. We enjoyed cocktails and laughs, then Frank got serious on the grill. He had some super thick USDA Prime New York steaks and grilled them to perfection. Donna brought spinach and bacon stuffed mushrooms for an appetizer – they were delicious. Kelly made roasted asparagus and yellow squash and potato kisses for sides. It was a great meal and laughs continued at the dinner table.

We drove our new-to-us Nissan truck to the Burk’s place and I was glad we did. It started raining when we left around 9pm. I don’t like to drive the MG Midget at night, especially when it’s raining. It was no bother in the Nissan Frontier though.

Our modes of transportation have evolved over the years we’ve spent on the road. When we first left our sticks-and-bricks home for the full-time RV lifestyle, I thought having a scooter to get around would be sufficient. I figured we just needed something to go to the store occasionally and if we really needed a car we could rent one from time to time. We learned to pack away a surprising amount of groceries on our Kymco Downtown 300i scooter. It’s pictured on the header of the blog page.

It had limitations though. It was capable of carrying us on the freeway, but whipping along at 70mph with cars all around us wasn’t exactly comfortable. Also, with its small wheels, it wasn’t the best on dirt or gravel surfaces which we often found in and around RV parks.

After a couple of years, we traded it in for a Can-Am Spyder three-wheeled motorcycle. This was much more versatile, but again it wasn’t the most comfortable vehicle for longer trips and extended freeway driving. We tried to avoid rainy weather or didn’t drive much at night.

The MG Midget was the next step in the evolution of transportation for us. Midget-San with its Nissan A15 engine and five-speed transmission made freeway travel easy, but you have to be on your toes as the sports car is very low and small. Like riding a motorcycle, you always have the assume the other drivers don’t see you. For Donna, all of these choices compromised her hair style. She either had helmet head or wind blown hair from driving top-down in Midget-San.

Now we can take the Frontier without any of our previous limitations. Midget -San will be relegated to local jaunts when we feel like it. The Frontier will be more of a daily driver.

We took a drive on Sunday morning. I felt like getting out and Donna wanted to see how the Salt River and Saguaro Lake looked for kayaking. The Frontier will be great for transporting the Sea Eagle kayak to almost any drop-off point. We loaded the Sea Eagle in the Midget many times, but we tried to stay off of dirt roads or difficult launch areas.

To get to Saguaro Lake from east Mesa is an easy drive. We took Ellsworth Road over Usery Pass to Bush Highway. It’s only a few miles, but it’s night and day compared to town. Crossing Usery Pass dropped us into the Tonto National Forest – a forest of desert scrub and cactus. Saguaro Lake is a popular boating, kayaking and fishing spot. It has a marina with a restaurant and also the Desert Belle tour boat.

View of the lake toward Butcher Jones Recreation Area

The Desert Belle cruise is a narrated tour of the lake and various sites and recreation areas. It has food and drink onboard, but currently only upper deck outdoor seating is open.

We back-tracked on Bush Highway and took a look at the Goldfield Salt River access point, but it didn’t look too good to get a kayak down to the river there. Next, we stopped at Phon D Sutton which has access and the water level is just enough to put a kayak in there. We stayed at Phon D Sutton several years ago when dry camping was allowed there – it’s the header photo – but you can’t stay overnight anymore.

Our last stop was at the Granite Reef Recreation Center. It was busy and we saw several kayakers there. With the low water levels, it seems like the stretch of water between Phon D Sutton and Granite Reef is the place to go.

It was a fun-filled weekend with good food, good friends and lots of laughs. We don’t have any real plans for the week ahead. The weather forecast calls for cooler weather with daily highs in the mid 60s until next weekend when it will warm up again.

Jaws

Donna has a new assistant. No, not for work – she retired, remember? She bought something she’s wanted for a while – a Shark IQ robotic vacuum cleaner. She actually wanted it for the new park model house when we move in, but she’s been using it in the motorhome. It’s an amazing device.

It docks in a charging station – it’s battery operated. When it’s activated, it relies on a number of sensors as it finds its way around the floor. It will transition from hard floor surface to rug or carpet with ease. It can work in tight spaces such as around chair legs or tables.

It stores information in its memory and becomes more efficient as it “learns” the layout of the floorplan. When it finishes the task – about half an hour for the motorhome – it docks itself in the charger to recharge for the next use! Since it’s a Shark, Donna dubbed it Jaws.

I don’t think it will take much more time to vacuum the park model home – it’s twice the square footage but it’s also more wide-open allowing longer straight runs without a lot of maneuvering.

You might recall back in the beginning of November that I took our coach to Rocky Mountain Cummins Avondale shop on the westside of Phoenix. When they completed the lift-pump replacement, I felt I’d been taken. They overcharged for the work, including charges for work that wasn’t even performed. I filed a complaint with the Arizona Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division since I couldn’t get any satisfaction from Rocky Mountain Cummins.

The Consumer Protection Division basically just forwarded my complaint to the Cummins Corporate office. They, in turn, sent it to their legal counsel which responded by writing a letter stating they did nothing wrong. I countered their argument with another filing – their position was not justified.

Last week, a representative of Cummins phoned me and we talked it over. He agreed that a compromise solution should be made. He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I just have to go to the Cummins shop in west Mesa and sign a release and they will refund me $606. A good ending to a bad experience.

Last week, Donna made an oven-roasted boneless chicken thigh recipe with a balsamic dijon garlic sauce. She served it over brown rice with French green beans with everything bagel seasoning. It was delicious – I loved the sauce.

Boneless chicken thigh with balsamic dijon garlic sauce

I think I said in my last post that experts, like author Kevin Kent, say most home cooks should have a selection of six knives or so. I’m getting there. I ordered another knife, bringing me up to five Japanese kitchen knives.

This time I ordered a petty. A petty is a small knife, usually ranging from 80mm to 180mm. The shorter size is for paring fruits or vegetables in your hand while longer pettys can used for board work. I ordered a 135mm petty from Japanese Chef Knives (JCK) in Tokyo, Japan.

This knife is from the Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan line and it’s made from a core of Hitachi Shirogami #1, also known as White steel #1 clad in soft stainless steel. The White steel #1 is a fine grained simple carbon steel without alloying elements and it takes a wicked sharp edge. The stainless cladding is unspecified, but I think it’s likely a SUS 410 series stainless like the stuff used on microwave oven or refrigerator doors.

This blade was hand forged by Teruyasu Fujiyama in Tokyo, Japan. Teru, or TF as he’s often referred to, is quite a character. He is a fourth generation blacksmith. In the 1970s, he and his father pioneered the art of cladding carbon steel by forge welding stainless steel to it. They had to experiment a lot before they got it right – 80% of the time they failed as the steel either delaminated or cracked. But they eventually got it right. TF is one of the very few blacksmiths that still make san-mai (three-layer) steel by hand forging. Most buy pre-laminated steel from the Hitachi YSS division or from Takefu Special Steel Company.

He makes three lines of knives, ranging from the value-priced Nashiji line to the mid-price Maboroshi and the premium line called Denka. I’ve read a lot about his work and a lot of knife aficionados complain about the lack of fine finish and fitment of handles on some of his work. Then they all rave about the fine heat treatment and geometry resulting in hard, durable blades with incredible cutting ability. It seems TF is rightly proud of his ability to forge great steel, but doesn’t care so much about a few stray grind marks or handle fitment. But the knife-crazy guys will pay upwards of a $1,000 for his top line stuff.

The JCK Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan line is their house brand and the particular knife I bought is sourced from the TF Nashiji line. I used it last night to slice an apple and it does have an incredibly smooth cutting feel. I also ordered a saya (wooden sheath) for safe storage. The simple magnolia wood saya was shown as available when I placed the order, but somehow it was out of stock when they picked the order. Koki-san at JCK took care of me though. He upgraded to the premium lacquer saya at no extra cost – it’s twice the price of plain magnolia!

We had some rain on Monday and Tuesday as a cold front came through. It was much cooler with the thermometer hovering around 60 for the daily highs. We had Midget-san under cover for a week when we finally had a warm, dry day yesterday. I uncovered it and found a dead battery! Something was drawing current from the battery. I put a charger on it. Then our neighbor, Chuck, brought over his charger with a boost function for starting.

I got the car fired up and Donna and I drove over to Basha’s for a few groceries and we picked up takeout from J&M – our favorite Chinese restaurant in the area. It’s amazing how affordable Chinese takeout is – we both had kung pao chicken with rice, spring roll, two crab puffs and soup for $12.50 per plate. And the portions were large enough for each of us to have a second meal of leftovers!

I got back on the pickleball courts Thursday and again this morning. My back is holding up fine. I planned to rest over the weekend, but they needed a player to fill out round-robin play tomorrow, so I’m in. It looks like we’ll end the month with fine weather. The temperature is predicted to be 70 or higher for the next several days.

Belated Christmas Dinner

I mentioned in my last post our plan to head over to Wickenburg for a family holiday gathering. Saturday afternoon I put the top up on Midget-San. I usually just raise the top without fastening it, then cover the car while it’s parked at our site. We normally drop the top whenever we drive. Donna wanted the top up for warmth on the 100-mile drive.

I put the top up and fastened it in the afternoon when the sun would likely soften the material. Getting the top fastened in place is always a wrestling match. The top material has to stretch slightly over the frame work and clamps to the windshield frame. Driving the Midget with the top up is a different experience. It’s much noisier inside and getting in and out of the small sports car is a little more difficult. With my back troubles, it wasn’t fun to climb out of the driver’s seat.

We hit a red light at Brown Road, about two miles from our site at Viewpoint, then didn’t stop at all over the next 90 miles. Our route took us on the Loop 202 (Red Mountain Freeway), then Loop 101 to I-17 to AZ74 (Carefree Highway). Midget-San with the Nissan A15 engine and five-speed transmission made the drive at 70mph without strain.

Our destination was my ex-wife’s house that she and her husband Jerry recently moved into. It’s north of Wickenburg about 5 miles in a housing tract called Wickenburg Ranch. It’s new construction in a gated community with a golf course. My middle daughter, Jamie and her man Francisco were there and his son Trey. My oldest daughter, Alana, and her fiance Kevin came down from Arlington, Washington with their kids – Gabi and Lainey, our granddaughters – and Kyle and Nick, Kevin’s sons.

The trip to Arizona was a surprise for the kids – they didn’t know anything about it until they were told to pack on Christmas Day. My youngest daughter, Shauna, couldn’t make it. She and her boyfriend, Gabe, returned from a trip to Bermuda, where Shauna will be working soon. On Saturday, they were at Gabe’s parents’ house in North Carolina.

We arrived at LuAnn and Jerry’s place just before noon. LuAnn was the only one home at first. Kyle and Nick were fishing at a pond with Jerry while Alana and Kevin were on the golf course. I’m not sure where Lainey and Gabi were, but we were all together soon enough and started in on hors d’oeuvres.

Charcuterie tray – just a small sample of the appetizers set out.

We grazed on the appetizers, drank mimosas and talked with football on the TVs. Donna contributed a baba ganoush dish with flatbread and brought the mimosa fixings plus chewy molasses cookies she made.

Meanwhile there was a turkey cooking and Jamie brought a ham. Everything was set out on the kitchen island and it was time to plate up!

Granddaughters Lainey and Gabi plating dinner

LuAnn and Jerry are just starting to settle into their place and it isn’t completely furnished yet. We had a variety of chairs to seat everyone around the tables.

I should mention that everyone in the room except Donna and me and LuAnn and Jerry have had coronavirus. And the four of us who haven’t had it have been taking precautions. So we felt that this particular group setting was fairly low-risk, especially since we kept the doors open the entire time we were there and spent some time outdoors as well.

I didn’t want to make the 100-mile drive back to Viewpoint through the desert at night, so we checked in at the Best Western in town. We had a quiet night and I was surprised to find the complimentary breakfast was a hot meal with scrambled eggs, bacon and biscuit. The trip back was uneventful and we were home before noon on Monday.

I mentioned the knife set Donna got for Christmas in my last post. When Cutlery and More (a retailer and online store of kitchen gear near Chicago) shipped her knife set, I received an e-mail notification. The e-mail also included a $25 gift card for my next purchase. I couldn’t resist. I shopped around and decided I needed a bunka-type knife. A bunka is a versatile Japanese knife that could be considered a kitchen-prep knife suitable for anything from vegetables to trimming beef.

I wanted a knife to trim the cuts of meat I smoke in the Traeger. This could mean trimming anything from babyback ribs to brisket. I found a small bunka – five and a half-inch blade length. Most bunka knives are around seven inches blade length. I felt five and a half inches was adequate for my use and easier to handle in a small kitchen space.

Cutlery and More had just the thing and it was on sale for Christmas. I ordered an Enso knife by Yaxell made in Seki City, Japan. With the sale price and my gift card, I was able to get this knife for just $64. The blade on this knife is Damascus – it has a very thin core made of VG10 steel at a hardness of 61-62 HRC. This thin core is hard, sharp and somewhat brittle. To counter the brittleness, the core is laminated with 18 layers of stainless steel on each side, alternating between relatively hard steel and soft steel making the blade much tougher and less likely to break. There are 37 layers of steel altogether. The knife was delivered shortly after we returned home.

I don’t fool myself into thinking a Japanese blacksmith made this by hammering red-hot steel on an anvil. Most likely, this is made from a laminated Damascus sheet supplied by Takefu Steel (maker of VG10 steel), which is ground and heat-treated. The hammer finish is most likely applied by pneumatic or hydraulic hammer machines. No matter, it’s still a high-quality knife with a beautiful finish – and it’s razor sharp. It’s going to be just right for slicing a fat cap down to <1/4″.

I’m doing a little more studying to increase my knowledge of knives. I’m not studying so I can start designing and making my own knives – I just want to gain a deeper understanding and be able to cut through the marketing hype (pun intended). To that end, I ordered a book from Amazon – Knife Engineering by Dr. Larrin Thomas. I was familiar with Larrin’s work from his website – Knife Steel Nerds. He has the rare ability to take complex engineering topics and explain it in a way that a layperson can understand. It’s hard to grasp from his website as the topics range from basic to highly advanced – without a logical progression. His book organizes his writings in a way that takes the reader from basic ideas up to complex applications, each chapter building off of the last.

We had a high temperature of 68 degrees yesterday, but gusty winds made it feel cooler. After dark, a few rain showers came through. We can expect the cool days with temps in the low 60s for the rest of the week – no rain is forecast though. Though my lower back continues to be problematic, I hope I can return to the pickleball courts soon.

Hiking, Shooting, Halloween and Trouble

Totally frustrated. I’ve spent the last hour putting together a post for this blog and poof! It disappeared. The entire content gone. I don’t understand what happened. Usually WordPress auto-saves several times as I write, so I don’t worry much about it.

On Tuesday, after I wrote my last post, we started clean-up from the wind/dust storm. Donna vacuumed the sliding window sills on the coach at least three times and she’s still finding dust. Dust storms with high winds means dust finds it way into every crack and crevice. Donna also vacuumed the interior of Midget-San while I dusted the exterior, blew out the engine compartment with compressed air and wiped everything down. It’ll take a lot more before it’s really clean again.

The weather was agreeable for our last week at Pleasant Harbor RV Resort. The highs were around 70 degrees on Tuesday and Wednesday and in the low 80s for the rest of the week.

We had plans for Wednesday. Donna wanted to hike the Beardsley Trail in Lake Pleasant Regional Park to the Maricopa Trail which would lead her back to Pleasant Harbor. It’s a little over seven miles. I had an appointment at the Ben Avery Shooting Facility. The plan was for me to drive Donna to the trailhead, then return to our site and load my gear. I had to be at Ben Avery by 10:45am for the 11:00am scheduled range time. I figured if we left around 9:15am, we would have plenty of time.

When I turned the key in the ignition switch of the Midget, nothing happened. Silence. I popped the hood and checked the battery terminals. No issues there. I retrieved my Fluke multimeter and found 10.3 volts at the battery. Oh no! Dead battery. I connected my little Schumacher battery charger and crossed my fingers. Twenty minutes later, I had enough juice to crank the engine and it fired up!

It took about 30 minutes to drop Donna off at the trailhead and return to our site. Another 10 minutes and I had my gear loaded up. It was about a 15-minute drive to the Ben Avery Shooting Facility. I made it with about five minutes to spare.

The Ben Avery Shooting Facility is one of the largest public shooting ranges in the country. It was opened in 1957 and originally was called the Black Canyon Gun Range. It’s on a 1,650-acre property and operated by the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD).

It has ranges for pistols, rifles, shotgun, archery and more. It even has camping with full hook-ups for up to 14 days. The target ranges offer distances from five yards to 1,000 yards. I think it’s the nicest shooting range I’ve visited. When I checked in at the main range, I noticed an array of antennas. The AZGFD headquarters in located on Carefree Highway west of the Ben Avery Shooting Facility. Personnel at the headquarters communicate with rangers and range masters at the eight ranges via radio.

I had a great time shooting there. All range time is allocated by appointment and a 90-minute session costs $7.50. It was well worth it.

I invited a kid that our neighbor, Roger, introduced me to earlier to come over Thursday afternoon. He’s 12 years old and holds a General Class ham license. He’s saving his pennies to get a HF antenna and get on the air. His name is Raymond Anderson (N7KCB). He’s really involved in radio and has several goals. I gave him the microphone and he took over my Yaesu 991A and worked the 20-meter and 40-meter HF bands. I also gifted him a KB9VBR J-pole antenna. He lives with his father and sister four days a week on a boat at Pleasant Harbor – the rest of the time he and his sister are with his mother in Phoenix. He only has handheld radios at this point – given to him by Roger. With the J-pole antenna, his handhelds should hit repeaters in the area and allow him to reach out.

On Friday, we drove back to Lake Pleasant Regional Park for lunch at the Scorpion Bay Grill at the marina. They call themselves purveyors of fresh food and cocktails. We found seating outside on the deck and enjoyed lunch – I had the fish and chips while Donna went for fish tacos. We washed it down with a couple of Four Peaks First Wave amber ales. Excellent!

I had a concern about firing up the Cummins ISL diesel powerplant in the coach when we left on Saturday. Earlier, I’d discovered a problem. There was a slow leak of diesel fuel coming from the passenger side of the engine block. It would form a drop every couple of minutes. It appeared to be near the lift pump. The problem was, I couldn’t get to it without some heavy lifting. I would have to remove the big starter motor and a few other items for access. I set an appointment with Rocky Mountain Cummins in Avondale for 7:30am Monday morning.

The engine fired up without any issues and we were soon on our way. We headed south on Loop 303 to I-10 west. We found the Leaf Verde RV Park in Buckeye around 12:30pm and were directed to a long pull-through site. After we set up, I checked the engine for the leak and found it to be dry – no fresh fuel leaking, just residue.

Later, we drove to the other side of Buckeye to my middle daughter, Jamie’s, house. She and Francisco bought a house out here this past spring. It’s new construction in a nice neighborhood. Her mother – my ex-wife Luann – and her husband Jerry were also visiting. The plan was to dine on tacos and hand out Halloween candy. The number of kids in costumes was surprising – Jamie handed out 20 lbs. of candy in one hour flat, and they still kept coming!

Jack O’Lantern like sunset on Halloween at Jamie’s house

On Monday morning, we were up at dark-thirty. I wanted to have our wheels rolling by 6:30am to head over to Rocky Mountain Cummins in Avondale – about 20 miles away. I had no idea of what the traffic on I-10 would be on a Monday morning. It turned out to be a breeze and we were in their driveway just after 7am.

Three hours later, they confirmed a faulty lift pump and had to order parts. They expect the parts to be there by Wednesday and we set another appointment for Thursday morning. Hopefully they can complete the work in one day.

When we got back to our site, I had another pressing matter. I had to buy a new battery for Midget-San. I dropped Donna off at Walmart then went across the lot to AutoZone. I wanted to order an Optima Yellow Top spiral wound AGM battery – they aren’t cheap but they are very high quality and have long life. The size I needed wasn’t in stock and the distributor showed them as back-ordered. I couldn’t wait indefinitely, so I opted for an off-the-shelf Duralast AGM battery.

I charged the new battery overnight – this isn’t really necessary, it would start the car off the shelf and charge while driving. But, charging it gently and letting it trickle charge overnight is easier on the cells and gets a new battery off to a good start. As always, changing the battery wasn’t as easy as it seemed. On the Midget, the battery is located in the rear center of the engine compartment behind the heater box. This made pulling the old battery out and installing the new one a bit of a wrestling match.

New battery on the left, old one on the right

I thought the old battery might have been damaged when the voltage regulator on the the old alternator went kaput. It was overcharging the battery and probably cooked it. When I removed the old battery, I saw the date stamp was March of 2016 – so it was at the end of its usable life anyway.

Although the old and the new batteries are both Group 51 batteries and dimensionally identical, the poles of the battery posts are reversed. Positive is on the left rear of the new battery while it’s on the right rear of the old one. This just meant I had to flip the battery around so the positive post was by the positive cable and the negative post was by the negative cable.

When you change a car battery or any big battery, you should always disconnect the negative terminal first. This way if you accidently ground your wrench against the car body or chassis while removing the positive terminal, it can’t short circuit. Likewise when you install the new battery, it’s positive terminal first, then negative terminal.

Battery behind heater box – note quick disconnect on negative terminal and red insulator on the positive terminal

I have a quick disconnect fitting on the negative terminal. This allows me to disconnect the battery electrically from the vehicle if it’s going to sit unused for a lengthy period and can also act as an anti-theft device.

It’s been very warm and breezy here in Buckeye. Donna didn’t let the heat and wind stop her from playing pickleball this morning while I changed out the battery. I’ll probably join her on the courts tomorrow. The forecast calls for highs in the 90s until a cooling trend arrives on Saturday. They say we’ll have highs in the upper 60s and low 70s for the next two weeks. I’ll believe when I see it.

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Category Archives: Midget

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Moving Out

Two Concerts and a Parade

Queen Creek, Olives and Pork

Canada Post Comes Through

Pine Trees and Petrified Forest

Our Transportation Evolution

Jaws

Belated Christmas Dinner

Hiking, Shooting, Halloween and Trouble

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