Good Morning!!!! 52F @ 9:00AM. Cloudy with light rain this morning. High 61F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Funny, there was no rain in yesterday's forecast, and I almost put off mowing yesterday. Glad I didn't.
Not even gonna try to catch up on 20 pages of posts, so I hope everyone enjoyed this past weekend. The camping was dry at Death Valley this year, partly because the organizers delayed the event by a month. The wind was the news, as it flattened a few tents on Friday and filled most of them with alkali dust and grit. Kept a lot of us off our motorcycles, severely depleting the barley pop supply to the point that we had to venture out for resupply to Pahrump, NV for a dozen more cases. Bench racing is thirsty work! I hung out in camp, helping with odd jobs, one of which was collecting ice to keep the kegs cold. One 'head had it down pat, using a length of ABS pipe with an elbow at one end to feed ice into a bucket directly from the ice machine at the hotel.
Saturday I joined a group of long distance friends I see at events like this only a few times a year. We enjoyed the climb up to Dante's View overlooking the Badwater basin, which was covered with a fresh coat of salt from the rare floods last year. Temps were in the 60s at Furnace Creek where we were camped, but dropped into the 40s at the top of the climb.
On the way back we visited Zabriskie Point, a short uphill walk to a view of severely eroded yellow rock and mud that is very picturesque at low sun angles, but we were too early to bring out the best of the place. We did get a "had to lay 'er down" story from a Harley rider in the parking lot, though. One of the group suggested lunch at the Furnace Creek Inn, which features very good food and nice view of the Valley.
No less than two bikes refused to start after lunch; one because of a worn ignition key, the other due to a flat battery. One owner had a spare key back at camp, which was quickly fetched by a friend. The flat battery turned out to have a reserve function, but the owner had to remove several plastic panels to get to the magic reset button. Neither of them were Airheads, both suffered from complexity issues.
No issues on the trip, but I did manage to get a foot momentarily trapped under the ramp when I unloaded the bike yesterday from the van. Ouch.
Took the Camry in to the dealership for a complementary oil change and a something point check yesterday. I'd also noticed rattles in both doors and asked them to check those, too. I was supposed to get a complementary shuttle home and back, but the shuttle driver never showed up and they were done in an hour. They couldn't find the rattles, and when I got home, the dip stick showed that the oil was over filled. I won't be going back to that dealership again.
I'll use today's wet weather to do some housekeeping and to gather tools and supplies for the trip north this weekend. Might run a few errands, too.