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Issue #1192
Including:

Nova Scotia Sus
Russ
Doug

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From Nova Scotia Sus

Winter came again but only for a short visit I hope. We have had the most pleasant March weather I can ever remember. Our pond is almost totally free of ice and that also is unusual...normally its the end of April. But we are not complaining.

My brother Warren will be visiting soon and staying for a month!! He loves the west but most of his family is here and we really appreciate his visits.

Our chickens are doing fine but lately they have some unwanted visitors. Rats! I started noticing movements and even seeing them quickly going out of sight. They seem small but we need to do them in before they have babies. So we are on rat patrol. We bought some rat poison and stuck it in places where the chickens can't get into. So with luck we will stop them in their tracks!!

Sus

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From Russ

After sitting around doing nothing but keeping my infected foot elevated for nearly a month, I finally got the 'OK" from the nurse to try to get a shoe on, and if I could without disturbing the bandages , she said,--- go ahead and ride your 3-wheeler. I could, and I did! It was a fairly warm, sunny ride with a strong south-east wind, but I relished every moment!

Arriving home, I felt ambitious so I prepared a bunch of vegies and popped them into the slow cooker, topped by boneless, skinless, chicken thighs. After lunch (not the chicken, that would take 5 hours) I watched TV for a short while, until I couldn't stand it any longer----the news was all about Trump!

Still feeling ambitious, if not nauseous, I began to 'purge' my closets - a bigger job than I expected. I separated my clothes into 3 different piles; 1. charity, 2. toss, 3. keep. After about 5 hours, it was time to eat dinner (or supper, if you like) still not the chicken - it was still 'slow-cooking' - had pork & beans instead. Will freeze the chicken for later use.

Russ

PS My frozen chicken does not have a long freezer life, as I use a lot of spices, and always try to buy dead chicken - saves time trying to catch a live one!

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From Doug

Just for the fun of it, here are some totally irrelevant silly facts regarding my numerous trips up, and back down, the gondola….

The length of the ride from bottom to top is about 2km, as is the length of the ride back down. Therefore, the total round trip is 4km. So, 4km X 2,000 round trips = 8,000km. Thats a distance equalling traveling from the west coast all the way to the east coast of this country.

The time required to ride up is aprox 15 minutes (depends on wind and a few other factors). Therefore riding up and back down takes about 30 min, half an hour. Therefore I have spent about 41 days (24hr days) riding in the gondola cabins.

The vertical lift is just under 1km (900 meters). 2000 X 900 = 1800 km. The ISS has an average orbit hight of 400 km. Therefore, my total accumulative ‘up’ distance has been 4.5 times higher than the ISS orbits, and of course I’ve come back down the same amount.

Aside from crunching a few numbers in my head, thats about it for this week. Our weather has been the pits with almost endless rain for the last month. There was one little, and I do mean little, ray of sunshine early in the week where the rain stopped and the sun sort of came out. That window only lasted for a few hours but it gave us some semblance of hope. Things were going not too bad at home and so I figured I could slip out for a short motorcycle ride. Just as I was about to gear up, the phone rang and that conversation tied me up for about 15 or 20 minutes. Once freed up from that, I proceeded to finish gearing up and fired up the Harley. As I maneuvered it out of the garage something felt wrong. There seemed to be some looseness in the front end. So, back into the garage to hunt down the problem. I ended up running the front wheel into the corner of the garage to hold it steady while I turned the bars. Obviously the bars should not turn if the wheel in held in place. The bars did move, just a bit but enough to tell me there was something amiss.

Now I had to hunt down the source of the problem which turned out to be the two bolts that hold the risers that the bars are mounted to. The repair was easy, just tighten those bolts, which I did. I should probably run each of them loose and put some blue lock-tight on them, which I will. Anyway, I was good to go and so mounted back up and headed out again. I got as far as the south end of town where I ran into rain. Our tiny window of good weather had closed. So, back home I headed where I went over the rest of the bike looking for loose fasteners. Didn’t find any which is good. Now, if we ever get a break in the rain, I’m ready to go again.

Doug

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Have a Good One
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