Good Morning!!!! 65F @ 5:30AM. Mainly sunny. High 88F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
AQI 78 and 241, inside and out. Overnight the wind reverses and runs down canyon, bringing the smoke with it. Yesterday afternoon the southern winds improved things to push AQI into the single digits, like a normal blue sky day. The firefighters are fighting fire with fire, burning lots of ground in a controlled fashion in hopes of starving the three hot spots into submission. There will be smoke in the sky until they can finish, and even then, a southwesterly wind will bring in smoke from the August Complex, which as reached almost 900,000 acres.
Ran a bunch of checks on the van yesterday, but still no smoking gun. I'm going to replace most all the vacuum lines, as several of them are a little on the large side and are not tight where they connect. So far, though, I'm not seeing a signal from the engine management computer that trips the solenoid providing vacuum to the EGR valve, so one of the things being monitored by the EMU isn't getting through. More wire tracing is in my near future. Years ago, a friend gave me a vacuum pump, and it has sat on the shelf unused ever since. Until yesterday, when I pulled it out, dusted it off, and turned it on for the first time. I was rewarded with a pretty good suck, and the ability to use the vacuum gauge on it to check for intake manifold vacuum at the proper places. I also found out why his company was throwing it out: The little in line hand switch is a little balky, so it'll get the DeOxIt treatment today.
While I was dragging my feet, waiting on the smoke to clear yesterday, I digitized a couple of CDs. One was from Jimmy Buffett, and had many tracks off his now out of print first album. All but one track could be found on other albums I already had, and I was able to snag the missing cut from a video someone had posted on YouTube. All of them are made with acoustic instruments, and show his talent for story telling was well established right from the beginning of his recording career. Anyway, made copies of each track on "Down To Earth", edited the meta data appropriately, and now have a home brewed copy of that first album. Just waiting for a smoke free evening on the back patio to properly enjoy it.
From the looks of this morning's news, someone set the campground across the canyon on fire again last night. Several acres got BBQed, crews are still over there mopping up. Less than a mile away, way too close.
Happy Hump Day, folks!!!!
