Good Morning! 48F @ 8:30AM. Overcast. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 61F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
From the sounds of things fall has come in pretty much everywhere across the country, even Texas!
Spent a few days in San Antonio a bunch of years ago on business, Don, and enjoyed the River Walk. Also saw the Alamo while there.
I don't think the Costco 4' LED fixtures are as bright as the Costco 4' LED replacement bulbs, Hawkeye. I used the bulbs in existing fixtures in my garage and they're much brighter than the flourescents they replaced, but the 4' LED fixtures I used in the make shift paint booth were a bit disappointing brightness wise. That and only three can be strung together, which makes wiring more complicated.
Got a good start on tire mounting yesterday, but ran into a couple of snags. The cone I made up for the wheel balancer wasn't enough to get the wheel running true, so I had to make another, shallower, one, and arriving at the right shape took some iteration. Actually mounting the tire was easy, but when I went to air it up I remembered that I'd removed the valve stems when I painted the wheels and hadn't bought replacements yet. So I'll do that today when I'm in town.
The bodyman/neighbor dropped by midway through that and left me with 1500 and 3000 grit sanding discs, along with a backing pad, to try out on the van paint. The weather was almost sunny by then so I rolled the van back out and gave it a shot. I was pleased to find that the 1500 quickly took the orange peel down, but not so quickly as to unexpectedly go through the clear into the base coat. No danger of that happening with the 3000, as it gets used wet and removes almost no material. It's also very fast to use. Then rubbing compound, and then swirl mark remover, then a quick polish with hand glaze and the finish looked great! I'll still have to sand the runs and bugs off by hand, but using the DA sander on the large flat areas will save days of hand sanding.
All through that I'd been watching as the western sky darkened, and during the last bit I could hear thunder as I rubbed out the hand glaze. So I got things put away and the van rolled back into the garage, and poured myself a couple fingers of Bourbon to enjoy while I watched the rain and lightning come down. It all started off gently enough, with mostly cloud-to-cloud flashes and not much rain hitting the ground. But then very quickly the wind picked up and large drops of rain started hitting the ground. Across the canyon in the burned areas, dust devils were picking up the white ash and dancing around like Halloween ghosts. But the wind wasn't happy with that, and soon great gusts of air were throwing ash into the sky in big rivers that looked like fog. And in another minute the entire canyon was full of airborne ash. About that time I realized it was headed my way so I retreated into the garage, closed the doors, and went inside the house. Just as I closed the door I heard a huge crash from the driveway and felt a sort of thunk, and I looked out the window to see the fan side frame of the make shift spray booth upside down on the fan, and the roof that had been laying on the parts van covering up part of the front planter. The rain was just hammering down by that point, and lightning bolts were hitting the ridge tops, so I continued to watch to see what else would happen. That's when the electricity went off, probably another victim of the wind. Wandered out onto the back porch to check on the ribs I'd started smoking a couple hours before and found that the wind had also blown out the flame and they were cold as a mackerel. It was still to strong to get the BBQ going again so I just closed the lid and went back inside to start something else for dinner. With the dark clouds and approaching dusk it was too dark to see what I was doing in the kitchen, so I fired up one of the new solar powered LED lamps and opened a can of soup. The BBQ has a side burner and I was able to get that going, as the wind had dropped considerably by then, and I could see blue sky out from under the trailing edge of the storm cell. Got the smoker going, too at that point.
Came back inside to find I could actually get cell reception on the iPhone. Checking the weather radar showed that the storm cell had just grazed my place to the north and I'd hate to think what would have happened if it had made a direct hit. Later I learned that lightning had lit a tree on fire a few miles to the north, but fire crews quickly got it under control. The electricity came back on mid way through dinner (a nice garlic chicken soup, fresh salad, and a nice glass of Zin), but the satellite Internet connection refused to come back up. I called but gave up after a half hour on hold, then tried again later, this time giving up after fifteen minutes. When I checked again this morning the outgoing message was that Exede was experiencing a system wide outage, with estimated repair time of midday. So on a lark I power cycled the modem and five minutes later it came back up. So today after errands I'll clean up all the pine needles that rained down last night in the wind, then take apart the fan wall from the spray booth to keep it from blowing away again. And when I get the roof back on the parts van, I'll wrap a ratchet strap around it to keep it there.
