Good Morning!!!! 60F @ Either 6:30AM or 7:30AM (more about that later). Partly cloudy. High 76F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.
Well I guess it's time for my annual Grinch tirade. Last Thursday was November first. Nearly two MONTHS before Christmas. So imagine my surprise and disappointment when I walked into my allergist's office and heard Christmas carols on their Musac speakers. I almost threw up in my mouth. Not to be undone, Costco, too, had that awful music, and went the allergist one better by having fully decorated and lit artificial Christmas trees on display. I think I'll stop shopping there. It's too early for the Christmas spirit, and it's too early to start feeling like Grinch. But there you go...
And then there's the semi-annual Daylight Wasting Time thing that creeped in overnight. Some clocks here set themselves, syncronizing to an atomic clock somewhere, I think, in Colorado. The ones that do it every hour are showing the correct time this morning, the ones that do it every night will show the old time until tomorrow. And I forget which ones do what. In some of the vehicles, like the VW, you poke something in a little hole to set the hour, and into another little hole to set the minute. The Ford has a fancy Pioneer radio in it with a touch screen, and you just poke the digital clock with your finger to bring up a display you can poke some more to set the time. But one of the BMW motorcycles has an analog clock that has to get pried out of it's mount, then you can pull the stem and wind it one way or the other to set the time. It's held in there by a rubber band like thing, and one of these days that band'll break, and since the company that sells the clock is long out of business, I'll have to come up with an improvised replacement. Another BMW motorcycle has been mothballed without a battery all summer, but when it gets revived in a few weeks, I get to hold down a button on the back of its clock and watch the hands go round for a few minutes until they reach the correct time. You can't see the back of the clock where it's mounted, and the temptation is to try to turn the button instead of push it, but this year I think I'll remember how it works. Since I'm telling you all this now, maybe later if I forget I can ask here for a refresher?:laughing:
Anyway, especially since I retired, the only time I really care about the time is when I have to go to the doctor's office for an appointment. That happens so infrequently I can't sleep the night before because I'm worried I'll forget about the appointment or get the time wrong, even though it's set as an appointment with alarms on the iPhone calendar. So I really don't like the idea of upsetting Father Time's apple cart twice a year so we can supposedly get more useful sunshine out of certain days of the year. It makes no sense, really, because the basic problem is that the days get shorter in the winter, and short of righting the Earth's tilt, that's gonna happen regardless of DST or not. So why not just leave it alone? Maybe I should start looking for property in Arizona?:confused2:
Spent some quality time documenting what some of the wires are connected to on the Engine Management Unit (EMU) on the Vanagon yesterday. Took a diagram of the connector and colored the pins to match the wires that are connected to them, using Photoshop. Unfortunately, the diagram is made from the vantage point of looking into the open end of the connector, and in order to get that "view", you have to either disconnect the connector, which also stops the clock and most anything else electrical on the van, or twist the EMU box around at which point you can't see the wires very well. But it turns out that there are two large wires colored yellow with a blue strip right next to each other, and they go to pins at one corner of the connector, and that makes it easier to orient the diagram to the actual connector. Still, it's not something to do late in the day when you're tired and your eyes aren't working that well. I added colored dots from one of many of the Subaru wiring diagrams I have for the car yesterday, maybe twenty dots, and there are probably four times that remaining. Something to keep me busy on future rainy days, if we get any this winter.
I'd also been noticing a leak from the gear box on the old BMW motorcycle that's almost "done", and took off the lever on the back of the 'box to see if that rubber bellows was leaking. It was not. It turned out that the rubber bellows between the 'box and swing arm had ripped, probably when I installed it. Quarters are tight there, and the tear was on the bottom, out of sight and where it would leak the most. Unfortunately for me, to replace it, the rear wheel and swingarm had to come off, and that meant disconnecting the drive shaft as well. Tedious and time consuming work, I'm just glad I found a new bellows in a box of parts. Today I'll have to figure out how to get the clutch arm back onto the transmission. I tried for a few minutes yesterday, but the spring under that bellows and the confined space made it feel pretty much impossible without removing the swingarm again...:mur::mur:
Hope everyone is enjoying this fine fall weekend!
