I am going way out on a limb, but I have a feeling that most people like to have their lives tied up in neat little packages. You get up about the same time each morning. You have a little breakfast, probably from a narrow list of favorites. You go off to some kind of work, solve many of the same problems, fight the same rush hour traffic and park in exactly the same place each evening. Continue reading Neat Little Packages:
Tag Archives: repairs
I Feel a Blog Coming On:
Well folks it has finally happened. I have been dunned for my lack of attention to the needs of my reading public. It has indeed been several days since I wrote a blog, not to mention any names, (Gary Pettit and Ray Scholl.) but I do feel a blog coming on.
I try to write only when something new, or different, or otherwise exciting happens to us. Continue reading I Feel a Blog Coming On:
Duct Tape and Crazy Glue:
One thing for sure, life is what happens while you are planning something else. We dealt ourselves a very long day today. We drove from the Camping World parking lot in Amsterdam NY all the way to Niagara Falls, NY. That’s 277 miles and it took us 6 hours and 45 minutes of driving. That works out to an average speed of 41 miles per hour. We could probably have averaged 51 mph if we had paid the $35 to drive on the New York Throughway and we would have saved an hour.
We would have also missed an adventure by taking the Throughway. We routed ourselves across Highway 5S then down Highway 13 to visit Chittenango Falls. They were absolutely stunning. Photo below. The rest of the adventure was getting in and out of the parking lot at the state park. We had at least six inches on either side of the coach coming in. and no wiggle room to get under a low hanging tree. Yep. We wiped out the cover to the refrigerator vent this time. Judy walked back and retrieved the pieces and this evening we got out the Duct Tape and the Crazy Glue to put it back together. Red Green would be proud of our job too! We have another Camping World on the radar, and we should be able to replace it with a perfectly good one soon.
By the way the reason we were at Camping World in Amsterdam was to buy a new door for the water heater. It blew off a few weeks back and got accordion pleated by the traffic before we could retrieve it. See the story called “The Murphy Factor” on September 22, 2005. (under construction, link to come later)
Tomorrow we are going to “Do Niagara Falls.” The weather is predicted to be yucky all week, so we might even spring for the Tour Bus. Our plans originally called for riding Path, our trusty tandem bicycle, across Rainbow Bridge and view the falls from the Canadian side. Then ride the bicycle path along the river for a ways. Riding the bus is almost like compromising your scruples. Tune in tomorrow and find out. Will Gary and Judy take the bus? Will Path, the green dragon, suffer anguish from being abandoned for the bus and “go between” never to be seen again? (You have to read Ann McCaffery to understand that one.) Will two more rolls of Duct Tape be enough, or should we get three?
Bye now from Niagara Falls as we finally get around to taking the all American Honeymoon.
Love from Gary and Judy.
The Murphy Factor:
Well we are still seeing lots of neat new places and doing fun things, but we have a hitch-hiker along. His name is Murphy. Now I won’t go into detail for I don’t want to sound like a whiner but here are some of the things that Murphy has had his fingers in
We have spent the last couple days visiting Ricky Lord’s Computer Repair Service in Calais Maine. Our Laptop Computer caught a virus and wasn’t feeling very well. You could punch his go button and he would make a brave attempt to get up, sniffle a couple times and go back to bed. Ricky finally identified the critter, a Trojan called Dropper.32.delf. It had been lying dormant since October of 2004 and woke up on September 16, 2005. This virus took over ownership of our computer, assigned its own password and wouldn’t let anyone start up or change the computer. Thanks for the help Ricky.
This took several trips in the motor home to Calais Maine where Ricky has his shop; a fellow camper came up and pointed out that the cover door over our hot water heater was missing after one of these trips. He took a ride on his Harley later in the afternoon and retraced our route to Calais and he did find our cover door it had been run over…repeatedly. A couple hours with a ball peen hammer and a bumping steel and the door fits again. It ain’t pretty but it is functional.
But wait, that is not enough. When I went to start up my newly remodeled computer I was missing my power supply. A call to Ricky confirmed my fears. It was 30 miles back up the road in Calais Maine. We are starting to feel like commuters.
What next; how about the bedroom curtain jumping its track. Now we are experts at removing the window treatments and putting them back together.
Through all of that we have continued our travels. We exited Canada on Monday, September 18th. We crossed over from St. Stephen, New Brunswick to Calais Maine. Along the way we ate our way through the Ganong Chocolate Museum, filled up with cheap(er) Diesel in the USA and restocked our totally depleted supply of vegetables and fruits. We have been riding Path, our faithful Tandem Bicycle, daily and are starting to get back in shape after doing without the bicycle for so long. We rode out to West Quoddy Head Light House today. This cape is the most easterly point in the United States, and it has a very pretty red and white striped light house on it. Tomorrow we plan to do about a 20 mile ride on Campobello Island which is back in New Brunswick. To get there from Canada they have to take a series of ferries. Here in Lubek Maine there is a short International bridge to the island. It is famous for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s summer home. They tell us we can walk out to the light house on the far end if this island also, but the tide needs to be out to do it. These are still Bay of Fundy tides so there should be lots of semi-dry ocean floor to walk on.
Well it is time to say good bye and send along our love to all.
Gary and Judy
Walkin’ About:
We are winding up our last week here in Newfoundland. On Thursday we will hop back on the ferry for a fourteen hour ride back to Nova Scotia. We are anxious to get back and see how Path the green dragon, our tandem bicycle is doing. Without our bicycle we have been walking everywhere to visit the sights. Yesterday we walked across the town of St. Johns, the Capitol of Newfoundland and its largest city. Continue reading Walkin’ About: