Good Morning! 50F @ 9:30AM. 20% / 0 in. Sunshine and clouds mixed. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 54F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph.
Hopefully, Randy, at your wife's service you were surrounded by friends and family, and they'll lend you a shoulder to lean on. When my mother died, I met some of her friends for the first time, and it was a comfort to learn more about her from them. A few stayed in contact after the funeral, long after most had forgotten her. With luck you'll meet a few of those, too.
I've been hearing the telltale scratching sound of a potato bug in the office the past few days, and this morning it was clear enough I found it. This time, instead of squishing it, I corralled it long enough to don a pair of gloves to pick it up and launch it off the front porch, where hopefully it makes a proper home. Seems like I always get one in the spring and another in the fall when the weather changes, but they're so big I wonder what else could get in the same way. Not a comforting thought.
Got a start on the respoking job on the old motorcycle yesterday. Pulled the tires and tubes off both, but moving a bunch of stuff monkey-move-up style around to get to the tire mounting machine took longer than pulling the tires. Then slowly let the tension off all the spokes of the first wheel until I could work the nipples and spokes by hand, pulling one completely apart to see what was involved. The first thing I found was that they'd sent me the correct length of spoke, but they wouldn't fit the bushings at the hub side, and the nipples wouldn't go through the holes in the rim. I shouldn't have been surprised, as there were signs in the bearing stack that these were wheels made before BMW had gone to a thicker spoke correct for the model year stamped on the head badge, and which had been sent by the vendor. Set up a little fixture on the mill to drill out the bushings, and set up a wireless drill to do the rim holes. That worked well enough until, after pulling about ten more spokes, I discovered that the square shoulders on the bushings were tailored to the recesses in the hub, and not all were interchangeable. Managed to figure out what went where and got the ten new spokes back in place, but abandoned plans to completely disassemble the wheel for better access and a bit more polishing. Between the bushings and also noticing that each of the rim holes was drilled in a direction to point to the matching hole in the hub, it didn't seem very likely I'd be able to reestablish the correct orientation once I brought the parts back together. Both wheels are the same, and I'd have the other one to use as a pattern, but there was so much to get wrong I think going forward replacing one spoke at a time is the best approach. Hopefully I'll get the rest of them done today. Not exactly the relaxing Sunday I usually plan, but should be pretty satisfying if I can pull it off.
This last storm left an inch of rain behind, not near the two and a half predicted, but enough so that the county lifted the total burn ban. If it warms up enough I'll scrounge around the wood pile and see if there's enough dry stuff to put together a campfire tonight, which thanks to the expiration of Daylight Savings Time, will come comfortably close to dinner time from here on out.
Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their Sunday...
