Good Morning!!!! 70F @ 10:30AM. Abundant sunshine. High near 85F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph.
Glad you're having Halloween fun with your CoVid-19 outfit, Jay. :laughing: Good idea taking a day away from social media once in a while, but I'm late posting this AM trying to get caught up.:confused2:
Randy, welcome to Gravel Spreaders Anonymous. Looks real nice!:thumbsup:
Not surprised rainbows are even more beautiful in Hawaii, David. Thanks to Sophie for sharing:thumbsup:
No battery saw for the cedarcide, Don?
Glad the update came down without a hitch, Paul. HughesNet here has been even more sluggish than usual, and this morning I hod to power cycle the modem to get it going again. Some may have noticed strange lights in the sky lately, as Elon Musk is launching StarLink satellites in batches of 30 to provide internet connectivity from low Earth orbit. Supposed to be 20,000 of them by the time he's done, and in my book, it can't happen fast enough.
Smooth trip to Medford yesterday; I think the rings are starting to seat in the new engine and there's a bit more pep as a result. Huge yard chock full of construction equipment accessories, hammer breakers tall than I am, backhoe buckets by the hundreds, thumbs of all sizes, grapples, you name it. Picked up a new skid steer adapter for $180, a little less than I've seen them advertised for, and no sales tax or shipping.
It had been raining over the Siskiyou Pass, and continued in Medford. As I left the yard, one of the wiper arms came adrift and started banging into the other one. Tapped on the shop door and borrowed a wrench to fix it, but foolishly didn't tighten the other one, too. And sure enough, before I could get to the Kubota dealer down the road, it came loose, too. There was an Autozone in the next block, but they were out of 10mm wrenches. They had a loaner tool kit though, and I was soon on my way again. The Kubota dealer was way bigger than the one in Chico, with rows of all sorts of tractors, and even Kubota loaders, which I'd never seen before. They were very happy to sell me 15 gallons of SUDT transmission fluid for $300...
I'd been running the heater in the van since passing north of Redding, where I-5 climbs a few thousand feet and the secnery becomes mountainous and covered with evergreens. Most of the traffic was big rig trucks, and for quite some time I started to wonder if I'd be pulled over for violating the stay-at-home orders. The lighted message boards all had CoVid-19 messages on them like "Stay At Home, Stay Alive".
I saw no one wearing a mask in Medford, but I used plenty of hand sanitizer. Came up with a system of opening the door, reaching in for a squirt of sanitizer, covering my hands and while still wet, wiping down the door handle and my keys. Seems to be working; I'm still alive!
By the time I got back down to Redding, the temp dial on the heater was switched over to A/C as the temps climbed back into the 80s and the sun baked through the windows. Ran errands and hit the grocery store in Chico, and scored half a dozen tubes of grease at TSC. Also found that the local Raley's grocery has a butcher shop, and couldn't resist slipping some nice steelhead fillets and a pair of two inch thick New Yorks, both wrapped old fashioned style in butcher paper, into the cart. They also had those bottles of local porter in stock, and a heavily discounted bottle of a Speyside Scotch that needed very little help jumping into the basket.
Time I got home and got everything unpacked and decontaminated, it was past 7PM and I was bushed. Twelve hours on the road and I was feelin' it, probably why I slept in this morning.
Only one other niggle on the trip: I couldn't hear the radio. When I tried to turn it up, the sound was so distorted it was unlistenable, and the van is still so LOUD at freeway speeds it's clear I still have a lot of work to do in the sound deadening. But I think I may have used the wrong outputs from the radio, so today I'll switch to the other ones and see if that makes a difference. And I'll get a start on installing the alarm system, you know, to protect the radio.
Got word from the Kubota dealer that repairing the front axle leak would cost me $1200, partly due to two bad seals that cost over $150 each:shocked: Then the real shocker: They think the FEL hydraulic problem was caused by the links on the TPH hitting the bottom of the backhoe mount, diverting enough hydraulic flow to prevent proper operation of the FEL. Somehow that doesn't sound right to me, but since they won't have the parts to finish the repair until next week, I'll have to wait and see.
Hang in there, gang, Friday's comin'!
