Spada Lake Trip Log

http://www.fordbarn.com/forum/showthread.php?t=198950

Chuckanut Drive Trip Log

http://www.fordbarn.com/forum/showthread.php?t=199637

5/8/2016 Verlot & Almost Arlington

Mountain Loop Highway Info
Verlot Ranger Station

5/7/16 Morning Drive to Sultan

Distance: 35 Miles
Scenery: A+

CARBURETORS!!!!

Today I came home from work a little early to deal with our webernets.  We are switching internet providers, since our internet breaks obnoxiously frequently.  Of course, it didn't go well.  I had to call Comcast to activate our connection, and their robo-directory ended up sending me to the billing department.  After 10 minutes on the phone, the gal at the other end said, "Ooooh, we need to send someone out to set up your connection"... which is especially annoying, since they told us we didn't need that.  So, someone coming out on Friday to set up our webernets.

After that, it was time for some relaxing with the Model A Ford.  Last week, I had found a short in one of the headlight bulbs.  Essentially, the contacts that are supposed to touch the bulb were also touching each other -- resulting in a short.  Looking at the design, it seems to me that this must happen all the time... the contacts are long and flexible and not that far apart.  I couldn't see a way to keep them apart other than shoving some electrical tape in between them... which is what I did.  This evening I tried to turn the headlights on and the short was back, so I replaced the old electrical tape with a slightly bigger piece, which did the trick.

After some checks in the garage to verify that the new fix was working (turn the headlights on, whack the bucket to see if vibration caused the short to come back), I set off for a short high speed jaunt along the Snohomish river.  I like this stretch of road, the speed limit is 45, and Kingsford maxes out at 45 MPH indicated (which I believe is more like 50 actual, given the speeds folks drive on this road and the fact that I don't hold up traffic).

I had also adjusted the brakes slightly, so when I got to a parking lot near I5, I pulled off to make my checks.  The water pump continues to have a slight leak -- I believe the shaft is scored so the only way to fix this is to rebuild the water pump and that's a kind of obnoxious amount of work when you can just live with the slight leak.  The brake temperatures were reasonable, but gasoline was POURING out of the carburetor (steady drip/small stream where the air goes in).  As you might recall from the facebooks, I had this problem the other week when I forgot to turn the gas off.  I had figured the float was stuck, but a few days ago I ran it in the garage for 10 minutes with no noticeable leak, so I figured it had fixed itself.  Clearly not, now that I'm 20 minutes from home and it's getting dark...  On the bright side, headlights continued to work great!

I didn't want to disassemble the carburetor in the parking lot (and if the float was sunk or something, what was I gonna do?), so I decided to get back on the road and make a beeline for home.  On the road, I could tell something was different -- I couldn't break 40 MPH and whenever the throttle was more than 3/4 open you could tell that something was not right.

When I was about 3/4 of the way home, magically it all got better.  I could once again hit 45 MPH, and the weird sounds/vibes at full throttle went away.  Yeeeeehaw!  I made it home without any further incident (headlights continued to stay out without shorts!).  Once in the garage, I checked and the air intake for the carburetor was now dry...  There must be some sort of intermittent seal issue or something causing the float to occasionally not stop the flow in the bowl?  I bet if I take it apart, I will see nothing wrong & and it will continue to do this intermittent garbage to me.

The Best Electronics Come in Ziplock Bags

Sure has been a while posting on here, maybe this will encourage me to get back into the swing of it again. A big thumbs up to Ian for throwing down the gaunlet and posting about some model A adventures! A quick scroll through my last posts reveals how much has happened since... cripes I feel old!

I was surprisingly productive last weekend, lately it seems I'm finding myself all over New England (and sometimes elsewhere) with my lovely lady friend Kaitlyn. As always I've got half a dozen projects in various states of disrepair so traveling around and having all this fun can be a little detrimental to progress. Last weekend though I had one of those rare times where everything seemed to line up just right such that I was able to make some milestones on a couple things and do some socializing along the way!

I recently took rental of a storage unit in Westbrook for my motorcycle(s). Last year I was able to store my bike at work but it got in the way and was generally a hassle to have around. Being an old bike I really don't want to leave it outside for long periods unattended if possible. I've been slowly working my way into building it into a reputable machine so I wouldn't want all that work wasted. Here is a small list of the improvements I've done on the bike since I got it late in 2014.

• Full carburetor rebuild (Took them off line 4 times for various assorted screw ups. Who knew you had to synchronize your chokes... and the vaccum on each carb... and that the idle adjustment in the rebuild kit is just junk and you should use the original one anyways?!)
• Carb synchronization (I bought 4 gauges to do it with, it was quite the site... real mad science).
• Valve adjustment and timing 
• New battery (which I killed due to a posionous bad starter which was very hard to find.)
• New starter (new to me anyways)
• Newer battery (AGM)
• Starter solenoid(s) ... I welded a brand 2 new ones shut with my bad starter/battery combo luckily they sent a new one for free, also the Cb750 doesn't have a fuse on the starting solenoid so.... if it welds shut it is just on until you can disconnect the battery. Bad design, still haven't corrected it.
• New side covers ( I painted with a matched paint not the exact stuff which is crazy $$. The covers I got were cast by this guy on a forum who replicated some orginals in ABS and they are pretty cool but took a lot of sanding to get right and lots of paint to look good. I still need to shape the mounting features on them to fit right into the rubber grommets on the side of the bike.)
• Various fasteners updated to stainless steel allen heads from old chewed up phillips heads which required an impact driver to remove
• A couple little electrical things
• Front brake dis-assembly/rejuvenation and adjustment (weird design but seems to be working pretty well now)
• New spark plugs
• New fuel lines and hose clamps

The 750 without side covers and missing a handlebar grip

Despite all these items I still haven't really put many miles on the bike. I have taken it back and fourth to Litchfield from P-town a few times but I haven't really gotten things dialed to the point where everything runs 100% as it should. There are a couple of items to address with it still. Firstly is starting, the bike is painfully cold-blooded and no matter what I do it seems the idle will change while I ride the bike. So I'm constantly adjusting the idle to start and then once the bike is warm it will settle down kind of. My quest to fix these issues has led me to the one, the only Hondaman. Hondaman is apparently this badass guy named Mark who lives out in Colorado. Besides making awesome improved parts for old honda bikes in his spare time, he appears to have experience making a lot of cool electrical stuff for his day job. Apparently one big issue with the only CB750 is the points which used to be made of a higher quality material than they are now. Modern points are notoriously bad until they warm up resulting in cold blooded engines. However Mark made a super sweet transistorized ignition that solves that problem. It even goes one step further, it leaves the existing points in place and so in the event his ignition module fails (which is apparently pretty rare) you can jumper it out of the circuit and ride home on your normal points, brilliant! I recently got one of these ignitions but haven't installed it yet, I couldn't help myself and had to take it apart. Luckily Mark responds to e-mails readily and told me how to get it back together! 

I still have the same bike I've had since high school as well, my 1984 Honda CM450 which is a sweet little bike. It has front and rear drum brakes, both mechanically operated (no need to bleed anything). Starts easy and runs solid. This weekend I put a rear tire on it and got it started up, as well as the 750. I drove the 750 down and put it in storage so now it's nice and close for me to ride/wrench on. 

Additionally, I have been planning to build a desktop computer for a while. I finally made it happen after much debate with my coworker using PCPartPicker. It's a great website and allows you to really optimize and see what's out there. My build was loosely based on this featured build which clued me into a super quiet CPU cooler. The goal was a kickass machine that could do solidworks, play rocket league, be up-gradable and basically handle anything I could throw at it without using too much power and making too much noise. I will say so far the machine is super quiet, boots crazy fast and looks pretty sweet too. I have some computer building PTSD from when I was in middle school and threw months of my hard earned landscaping money into a machine that ultimately never worked. Happy to say everything went off without a hitch on this machine which was a huge relief. 

Electrical Incident

Exhibit A, Melted Fuse Holder

This should not have been a difficult trip.  We were going from the house to the monthly meeting at a restaurant 1/3 of a mile away and then back.  This was the first breakfast Kingsford had made it in several months (September?), due to the extended brake job / Ian being lazy.  The drive from the house to the restaurant was uneventful.  Kingsford started fine, and the short jaunt was uneventful with the new brakes holding their own (later adjusting would bring them into A+ form).

As always, breakfast was delicious with much discussion of old cars.  We stayed late to talk about an upcoming swap meet, and also have some discussion on proper Model A mechanical brake adjustment in the parking lot.  When the dust settled, it was only Mike (former club president you might remember from the wedding), and I.  I hopped into the drivers seat and tried to start the truck.  No dice.  I tried a couple more times, and still no signs of life.  Kingsford is usually pretty good about starting, and 0 signs of life means that the fuse has blown.  

It is salient to note that original Model As do not have fuses.  Given the rat's nest nature of the wiring, this is somewhat dangerous so most owners have subsequently installed them.  The most convenient location is somewhat obnoxiously downstream of the starter and upstream of literally everything else.  Short in the headlights? -- engine dies.  Short in the brake light? -- engine dies.  Short in the horn -- engine dies. And when the engine/ignition dies, everything else (wipers, horn, lights) goes with it.

So, you can check to see if the fuse is still alive by attempting to blow the horn.  I got a wicked weak horn blow that cut out after a second or two -- and subsequently wouldn't blow.  I have been bit by a blown fuse before, so I carry spares.  So, I grabbed a spare, hopped out, and opened the hood expecting to replace the blown fuse and be on my way.

Unfortunately, the fuse had not blown.  Or, maybe it had, but also the fuse holder had also completely melted.  As you can see in exhibit A, there should be additional plastic & a wire at the top -- not air and bubbly plastic.

Mike hadn't left the parking lot yet, so I flagged him down, and he came over.  Being that this was 1/3 of a mile away from the house, I hadn't tools or spares to speak of. Mike had his full kit, so with this help we spliced a new piece of wire in where the fuse was -- and luckily whatever had caused the original event was no longer making sparks.  Sadly, even with the electrical circuit complete, the car still showed no signs of life.  The distributor wire showed no signs of life when held near a head stud, so our next thought was that whatever electrical short there was may have killed the coil.  Mike didn't have a spare but I had one at the house, so we hopped in his Fordor & took a quick jaunt to the house where we picked up a new coil.  Back at the restaurant, the new coil went in, & still there were no signs of life holding the distributor wire next to a head stud.  Having nothing to lose, we decided to try starting it anyways.  To my great surprise, it started -- and I limped the 1/3 mile home with Mike in tow.

I subsequently discovered that the timing was waaaay off, which may have been a contributing factor.  Still have no idea why the fuse holder melted to begin with.  I also later found a short in the headlight bucket, but that shouldn't have caused a short while the headlights were off....

Running Down a Chicken

Today, Liz & I ran over a chicken.

As you might remember from the wedding, the Model A brakes were very poor.  They could bring the car to a stop on a totally flat plane, but any kind of incline or reasonable speed would result in exceptionally poor deceleration. It got to the point where even I had had enough of panic stops.  So, the Model A went up on blocks for a brake job.

It took much longer than I was planning, and included several long stretches of doing nothing -- including one where I was in the UK for a month.  But, with the help of the Moon on A club and a guy in California who rebuilt the backing plates, attached my old hubs to new cast iron drums, and turned the new drums -- the Model A can now stop!  It is truly a wonderful thing to be able to stop your car when driving on the road.

Getting them dialed in just right has taken quite a bit of trial and error.  It's a complicated system of mechanical components, and any slop can quickly compound.  In an 80+ year old car, there can be a lot of wear.  Many of the worn components were replaced, but there are still a few bushings that I haven't gotten around to yet, so some monkeying was required to get desired performance.  Thus, many drives around the block to get everything right.

But now, everything was pretty close to right.  It was time to venture a bit farther away from the safety of the garage, but not too far away as I also recently had an electrical episode (a fuseholder burned up, resulting in zero electricity).

We took a cruise to the west of Snohomish through what is a large flood plain & a hill sticking out of the flood plain.  Coming around a blind corner (marked in red below), there was a chicken standing in the middle of our lane.  The brakes work pretty good, but "we was cruisin'", and Model A tires are basically bicycle tires so even when they are fully locked up you really don't stop that quickly.  Liz & I both went "Aaaaaahhh!!!!" and the chicken saw us and tried to outrun us.  Chickens are not fast, so we quickly closed the distance.  The chicken disappeared, and we both held our breath as the Model A soared over the chicken.
...
Then, in the rear view mirror -- A NOT DEAD CHICKEN!  The chicken must've been sufficiently short that it was not cleaned out by the Model A undercarriage.  That chicken will have a heck of a story for its chicken friends.  The view out the windshield of an 80 year old car of a chicken trying to outrun you is hilarious.  It really looked like it should have been part of Chicken Run.

Model "A"dventure to Anacortes

[Editor's Note: This trip occurred 9/13/2014, this blag post is very late]

(NOTE: Not the actual map, apparently google maps doesn't save the "no highway" version.

Shortly (basically immediately) after I purchased my car, I joined the "Moon on A" chapter of the Model A Ford Club of America (MAFCA).  It just so happens that the next scheduled tour was to Anacortes.  Anacortes is a solid 60 miles from Snohomish, and at that time I don't think I'd driven for a stretch any longer than 5 miles.  Clearly, a big leap.  But, I figured if there is a time to break down, it is when you've got 6 Model A gurus in tow.

We were scheduled for a 9:00 AM departure from the Erickson Furniture Co, which is highlighted on the map.  Liz & I left her house at a little before 8:30, stopping to pick up some coffee and breakfast before heading over to the meetup spot.  The Model A does not have cup holders, and as you can imagine it isn't the smoothest ride around.  So there was lots of spilled coffee in the early part of the trip.

The view while cleaning spilled coffee...

We were the 2nd to last to arrive at the furniture store.  We left the store with 5 cars and picked up a 6th en route.  We were 2nd to last in the line-up, and away we went!  The first part of the journey was through a fairly busy part of Everett, which wasn't much fun because the brakes were bad and I wasn't yet used to using the parking brake in hairy situations.  Luckily, there were no catastrophes, and the reward was leaving the north end of Everett over a spectacular bridge that spans the Snohomish River.

Then we proceeded up along the side of I5, before cutting up through Skagit Valley.  Here is a timelapse of part of the trip, including a fast stop that almost resulted in a rear ending...

After this we got on state route 20, which is a 2 lane each way highway.  We stayed at about 45 mph on the right.  Kind of fun, we got lots of waves, honks, and smiles.  SR20, dumps you into Anacortes, where we were heading for the engine show, below are some pictures.

Neat display of old electrical thingies

This fire truck helped put out the fire in SF after the earthquake in 1906

Another Ford!

All the Model As lined up

To be continued...

Solving the Lunch Problem

First a couple cool things.

Went to UNH this past Friday to see the Umaine vs. UNH game. Sat directly beside the student section and being a Maine fan was of course the target of various insults and put-downs. Can't say I'd treat them much better at the Alfond, but it was all in good fun. Unfortunately Umaine got out goalie'd pretty hard. UNH's goaltender was on his game pretty hard that night and they took the game 3-2.

They had a pretty cool blimp flying around before the game and at the half. It dropped little tickets (not sure what they said) but I wasn't able to really see how the mechanism for dropping them worked. Either way the driver was really well practiced and went underneath banners and all around the arena. They also had two mascots (overkill much?) and a t-shirt cannon that hurled shirts but could only launch a total of three before emptying the air tank. Using my anecdotal pneumatic estimator I guesstimate that Umaine's T-shirt launcher has roughly the same amount of energy storage onboard but we dial ours back significantly so we can launch all 6 shirts.

Blimp!

In VW news, I made some progress on repairing the tears in vinyl on the seat covers for the most recent bus. I hand sewed a few small tears in plaid tops but vinyl is one funky thing to repair. I bought a kit from Permatex for vinyl repair, it was intended to repair seats that are still installed. It gave me a bunch of color matching crap and even a little metal thing to heat up and melt the coloring to make it look textured. All of that sounded like I would just end up drawing more attention to the tear, what are the chances I could actually match the color perfectly?

Since I had the covers removed, I carefully taped the tears closed and butted the seems together and applied a patch from the back. I basically bought the kit for the adhesive which seems to work nicely.

Can you see all 3 tears?

The repairs came out pretty well and I was very satisfied with the results. A couple of them are still kind of visible but I don't think you'll be able to see any of them without really close inspection once they're installed. No color matching needed, just had to remove any crap left behind from the masking tape using some denatured alcohol. 

Currently the seat frames have gotten a coat of paint and are drying right now. Here they are all taped and ready for paint.

The Lunch Problem

Now what I really wanted to talk about. The lunch problem. You know what I'm talkin' about, I'm looking at you employed single dude who works fairly regular hours! I like to cook but I'm often too busy to make a great dinner, I've got breakfast pretty well nailed but lunch has always been a bit of an issue. Sure leftovers are awesome when you have them but for me that seems to be pretty rare. Various fast and cheap noodles are available but pretty disgusting and pretty bad for you too. Sandwiches are great but they actually cost quite a bit to make at home and I usually end up wasting a lot of my deli meat because it doesn't keep very long. "Yes Tony, but you can't have it all fast, cheap or healthy pick two," you say to me. Well there is where you're wrong. 

Two words, Black Beans. These delicious economical protein and fiber filled bastards will keep you chugging along during the coldest days of January in New England and for mere pennies! If you're fortunate enough to have a refrigerator at work this shit is about to become your new best friend. Here's what I've been doing, buy a pack of tortillas, 3 cans of black beans (Goya is the best I've found so far they have a pop top too so you don't even need a can opener you frugal, frugal man), jar of salsa and an industrial sized brick of cheese. Bring said ingredients and a plate to your place of work. For lunch through all the crap in the tortilla, microwave for 2 minutes and enjoy your well balanced hot lunch that costs about $1 to make. I've been doing this for several weeks and the best part is waking up and knowing that your lunch is already at work when you wake up. 

So you say "But Tony, that sounds pretty bland. I mean, I'm not like you, I actually have taste buds and it's much easier to just buy lunch anyways." 

FALSE. Introducing.... Green Mountain Gringo This salsa is the cat's pajamas! It really adds a lot of flavor to your cheapurrito and it's damn good with chips too. However, I'll admit after a few weeks of eating the above described recipe I was longing for some more veggies and a couple other improvements to make lunch. So, today I picked up some summer sqaush, red pepper, onion and burrito seasoning along with a bigass 1lb 13 oz can of black beans (which by my math is actually more expensive per ounce than the smaller cans). One problem with the black beans is that they let out a decent amount of liquid which makes it hard to eat the burrito with your hands. After talking to resident foodie (Hamlin), he suggested I switch to refried black beans so they'll be more sticky and less watery. 

Cooked up a bunch of veggies, heated up a bunch of black beans, mashed the crap out of the black beans (more on this ghetto refried bean technique later, but probably not) and chucked it all together. 

Lunch all week baby!

From experience I know that I eat about half of a 15.5oz can of beans per burrito. I made a spreadsheet (yeah I'm a dork) the other day to estimate how much it costs for lunch every month. Today I kept my receipt from the store, added in costs for the veggies and spices and tallied it all up.

$250 a year for lunch... whaaatt?!

The numbers don't lie folks. For a pretty healthy lunch that takes 4 minutes to make at work everyday and costs a whooping $0.90 I would say that's pretty good. Keep in mind this is with the added ingredients, if you still wanna eat poverty-rurritos they're even cheaper than this. Also, that calculation was done with more expensive black beans. I don't know why but I am seriously getting a kick out of optimizing this insanely cheap lunch solution. The folks at work seem to get a kick out of it and they like to make suggestions on how I can get the costs down even lower. That's where I got the idea for the industrial brick of sharp cheese. 

Anyways, props to whoever actually read that dissertation about my lunch. Have a burrito on me.

In other news, Dean's kickstarter book finally arrived on my doorstep the other day. Haven't had a chance to go through it with a fine tooth comb but it looks sweet and it's HUGE.  

Unique New York

Bought tickets a couple months ago to go to this year's Frozen Fenway game and it did NOT disappoint. The first hockey game at Fenway I went to a couple years ago, we brought the T-shirt launcher and got a shirt into the upper deck. This year there was absolutely pouring rain. After playing for a few minutes (and Umaine scoring 2-3 unanswered goals), there was thunder and lightening and the skies literally just opened up. After the squall passed we watched 8 guys with shovels skate around the rink in perfect formation and push water off the end of the ice. The camera guys even got in some action shots of the water rushing out of the rink. I was honestly just impressed with the effort put in by the crew to keep playing. They easily could have called it, but I'm really glad they didn't. 

The BU crowd began to thin out but the Maine fans stayed strong and got rowdy. The game ended 7-3 with a very pleased group of Mainers. 

Seriously, check out that water!

After and during the game I caught up with the one and only Mikey B, who of course was "working" at the game.... Who is this guy?! He had a field pass and was just walking around rink side like a boss. Kid is king of Boston sports. 

The next day I took off for NYC to catch up with my sister and eventually Tyler. Mo, her newlywed husband Chris and I went out for BBQ and it was delicious.

No idea what building this is, but it's awesome. 

Tyler with an energy drink, behind an aircraft carrier of fighter jets.

In line for the Daily Show

 This sign is on the wall adjacent to the Daily Show studio. Apologizes for the blurriness.

Oh, Jon... 

There was pretty tight security at the show, made us go through metal detectors and the whole bit. They were very adamant about not using cell phones during the filming. They let the audience take pictures for like 2 minutes before the show started. Note the gawking tourists taking selfies in the background.

But, it's so small...

Mo!

Tyler!

The show was good, it was weird seeing them go to a reporter in the field. The "field" is just a green screen that is right next to Jon's desk. Also Jon Stewart looks pretty old in person he is quite grey. Tyler expertly called that Jon would do a pizza rant because the Mayor of NYC ate pizza with a fork the previous day. Nailed it. 

After the show we walked around a bit and got tickets to the Comedy Cellar, which was a great decision. Three hours of comedy from comedians who have specials on Comedy Central (Tyler has the line-up). We sat right up front and naturally got made fun of for being from Maine. I also learned that making windmills isn't sexy.... news to me.

The show let out at 1AM and we were way out in Manhatten somewhere, needing to get to the Bronx to catch up with Renee and Toby. We were all dead tired and didn't make it to the Bronx until 3AM. Of course Toby came in hot and answered our call to let us in (he knew we were coming... just didn't expect it to be that late). Unfortunately, Toby and Renee had class the next day so I didn't see them at all really. 

We dragged ass a bit the next day making our way to the train station to get out of NYC. Grabbed Tyler's brother's whip in Connecticut and cruised in the Caddy back to Maine. Overall a successful trip, could have had less rain but got in some quality activities. Also Megabus is awesome, if you buy tickets far enough in advance it's $1. Money.... how does it work?

Yes and Another Raspberry Pie

Just another dump of pictures of things I've been up to lately. 

Bonsai trees! 

Last weekend Hamlin invited me to come over and make Kimchi. For those of you who don't know, it's a spicy, delicious fermented side that you can put on all kinds of stuff. You can put it on noodles, eggs, pasta and just straight up eat it.

Kimchi Makin'

After you cut up all the vegetables you have to let it sit and ferment at room temp for a few days. Mine has been spewing some stuff as it ferments. After it settles down you stick it in the fridge for a while and I think it's good for eating after a couple of weeks. Apparently it lasts for months too, which is awesome because it's kind of a messy endeavor to make.

Wire brushin'

I've been redoing the front seats for my bus. Since they were fairly rusty, I wanted to sandblast them. Since they're so big I would've had to do it outside with the awesome sandblaster I bought a couple summers ago. However since it's ya know... January. I'm not real keen on doing that. So, I wire brushed them instead and I've got some sort of rust restoring paint to use. These will be well undercover so I'm not too worried about it. It took a lot of brushing though.

Trashcan Slinger 3000

I got around to characterizing the motor I plan on using for the rowing machine. I'm calling it the REbus Rower, for those of you watching at home. I jimmied up this ghetto testing setup with the brake tester at work. Luckily I was just testing open circuit voltage so since there was little to no torque, I got away with spinning the motor like this. Turns out this motor is roughly 0.2V/RPM.

Raspberry Pie Round 2

Last night I made it over to the Havu Estate for dinner. I tried making another raspberry pie that was less thick.... it turned out ok but still thicker than I wanted. I've gotta nail down that recipe. MORE PIE. 

Tonight I went to my first improv class. It's going to be a weekly thing for a few weeks I guess (when does this thing end again?). It was pretty fun and I think it'll be a nice outlet from work and it'll be fun to interact with people I don't normally see.

Preposterous Past Pre-Portland Post

So, I went to Portland Oregon last week for about five days. It was sweet and now we have another person in our family. SSShhhhh no facebook pictures about that. Hey man, I'm just playing by the rules. Anyways, besides legal contracts that give people tax benefits and join them in holy matrimony... we did lots of other stuff.

I got the chance to check out Powell's Books, if you ever get the chance to go... DO IT. Powell's is hands down the best bookstore I've ever been to. They have new and used books and in terms of selection there is no competition (besides Amazon). They have a huge main store with another building across the street dedicated to science/engineering/technical books. My only complaint is that I didn't find the other building soon enough and didn't get to spend much time in it. The main building is huge with signs pointing to different rooms. I actually got pretty lost in it. They even have a MUCH smaller Powell's at the airport, where I picked up Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

 I had my eye out for a book on Bonsai trees. Powell's actually had a much larger selection than Amazon and I spent 20 minutes just looking through the books on Bonsai. Oh, yeah. I bought a Bonsai tree. After seeing these these a year or two ago, I've been interested in getting one to see how quickly I can kill it. I bought one for my grandmother's 91st birthday because I felt like that was quite the milestone. Nothing says "Your a badass" like a miniature tree that is given just enough nourishment to stay alive in a tiny pot.

Enough about Portland, I have a pretty good overview of the trip on the facebook album. So now for pre-Portland stuff.

I tried my hand at making a raspberry pie for Pika's holiday party. Used my grandma's recipe but I think I didn't have enough water (or cooked it too long) because it came out a bit thick. It was however, completely devoured by the Pika crew.

Raspberry Pie

I'm realizing a lot of the pictures I take on my phone are from work and kind of proprietary so I shouldn't post them online. So, here are a couple that are pretty safe. This was an installation in Greene, ME like 2-3 days before a massive ice storm that left a bunch of the state without power. It's on a 100 ft lattice tower which made this install a little technically challenging.

Turbine was assembled on the ground and hoisted up.

We used a couple tag lines on the turbine and some clever rigging to raise the beast. A one-off wooden gantry was made and attached to the tower top. A Raum turbine used to be installed on this tower before it well.... died.

Half-way up

The site is located next to a river, the land actually dives down about 20-30 feet from the base of the tower. It's a very steep drop down to the edge of the river from there, so from the water this turbine probably looks pretty high up. Unfortunately the ice storm actually iced the thing solid for a couple days, finally a day with some sun and it's all free.

In other news... I decided to take apart my perfectly good rowing machine in the name of truth, justice and the American way. Actually, I'm hoping to make a sweet demo for an Energy Conference at the MIT Energy Conference. Thinking about making this rowing machine grid-tied. Fortunately, I work at a place where we ... ya know, do... that. I was even given an alternator that might work for me. It's got a pretty cool backstory too. The alternator is an experimental high voltage wind for the Air-X, which was originally made by Southwest Wind Power. The rowing machine is actually pretty simple and is pretty elegantly controlled. The resistance is controlled by an eddy brake. The fan has magnets on it and a flat metal plate is moved closer to the spinning magnets to induce eddy currents in the plate and increase torque. The plate position is controlled by a knob which adjusts a Bowden cable the pulls on the plate. I am guessing (big guess) that the resistance increases linearly, but interestingly the air gap between the magnets and metal plate is not linear. It might be neat to take the Bowden cable assembly apart further to see what it does to achieve that. I plan to scrap it for a potentiometer but I might want to be able to reassemble the whole machine and get a couple hundred dollars for it someday. 

The project is still in the planning phase. I'll need to measure the RPM range I'm operating at for the rowing machine and see what gearing might be needed for the alternator. I've got to come up with a mounting solution and then hack some electronics to make it work.

I started working on repairing the front seats for my bus too. I hand sewed a couple of tares in the seat back together. Need to do some rust removal on the frames, cut some foam and see if there is a good way to patch tears in vinyl. 

This is a PREEMPTIVE Post!

I am posting this to remind you that any and all Holiday Shenanigans should be posted here in an effort to spread holiday cheer and stuff.

I'll be catching a plane to Portland, Oregon Tuesday to see my sister get hitched! Ian, keep an eye on Southern(ish) Maine for me. Tyler, you've got the county under control. I'll be taking lots of pictures and hopefully seeing lots of hipsters.

In the meantime, please enjoy this.

Another Uneventful Weekend

Hey guys, figured I'll keep you posted on this boring life stuff.

So this week I didn't get to go to my sweet-ass job piling hardwood veneer, so instead I took a short little drive to the southern end of our state. Spent Saturday night drinking mediocre craft brews with an okay friend from high school. Then I had to get up first thing in the morning to drive further south just to meet a couple of douchebags I used to room with. Apparently if one of them flies from the west coast and brings some lady friend of his I'm obligated to meet up with them. Not like they're offering to pay gas money, assholes.

Spent a few hours having this self-involved cunt-waffle tell me all about his job and how it was helping the environment and stuff. Yeah I'm sure, let's just power the whole United States of America on fucking air. While we're at it we'll just replace cars with hot air balloons powered from our own farts. Dickhole.

Then they were all like, oooooh, lets go get some beers from some brewpub restaurant. Look how fuckin' hip we are, can't just eat at Wendy's like the rest of us? Got to hear all kinds of stories about these guys building airplanes and windmills and shit. Well I make shit too, you know? Hardwood veneer is serious fuckin' business. I stack some good fuckin' panels! Motherfuckin' full loads of 0 Select Whites, make a ceiling in a ski lodge or some shit. Asshats...

Then they're all like "Dur! Let's go to the mall, herpderpflerp!". Just full of original god damned ideas these cocksuckers. Then this fuck has the audacity to take him and his lady friend and fuck off to Rockland or something. Good thing I drove all that way. Fuckin' amateurs. Spent a few days wandering around shops in Portland and spending money I don't have. Went to the movies to see the fiftieth anniversary of some stupid cliche science fiction show. Fucking nerds everywhere. Had to help one little nerd pick up the pieces to his glowy stick, called it a screwdriver. What kind of fuckin' screwdriver doesn't even have a head. Just some glowy lights and stupid sound effects. Only screws he's taking out are the ones loose in his fucking nerd head.

Then these fuckin' people in the county have the audacity to make me go pick up a load of craft beer for them. Yeah, that's what I want to do, drive your stupid goods around. Now I have to go and eat a bunch of high carb food with these familial types. Thanks for fucking up any chance of success on my diet you sons of bitches.

Hope you guys had a better weekend, maybe with some super cool guy who drives a super cool Jeep and stuff. That would've been awesome.

<\sarcasm>

Wuv you,
Tyler

Awesome Domain Name Deal

Hey yall,

Just saw this post on Jalopnik. It's a wicked good hosting deal from dreamhost and seems like you can get two domain names plus unlimited storage for a year... I don't really have any use for it other than to steer tonynuzzo.com at it and maybe get a legit name for this blag but it's a really good deal for the money. Maybe it's time to get a domain name? I would advocate for moving from Blogger but it seems to work really well and I don't wanna mess with setting up a wordpress for something that works fine as is.

Thoughts? Opinions? I just need an excuse to buy this deal haha.

3rd Shift Piler and Other Tales from The County

So I haven't really written since I started the job because there isn't much to write about in regards to that. The planks come down the line, I pull them off and put them in the correct pile. We process 5-8000 panels a night. Also a man wore a gorilla mask Halloween night on the splice line. The place has got a lot of good folk in it and thank jebus I work the night shift where they have a smidgen of a sense of humor. Suffice to say that The Fox hit Columbia Forest Products like a ton of bricks last week. Everyone keeps on sneaking up on each other and yelling "HEY ______! WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?" and then _______ responds. One guy on the line near me just put his hands up and when someone asked him why he said without singing, in a perfect monotone "I throw my hands up in the air sometimes, saying ayo." I'm stealing that.

Outside of that, I've consistently been having crazy weekends. Where the hell were these when I was unemployed? The first weekend a bar in Presque Isle had a party for Bradd and his fiance Carlina, welcoming them back from basic training. It was a camo party so I went in full dress from the Civil War. After much whiskey I don't remember the latter part of the night, but according to eyewitness testimony I may or may not have projectile closed the bar early. Not too proud of that. I blame Bradd since the last thing I remember is asking him to order me whatever he thinks I'll like. I don't remember the name of the drink but I will just refer to it as a Humdinger in future conversation. Good thing I know the bar owners, they were very nice to me about it.

The next weekend there was a surprise 40th for my cousin and wouldn't you know the whole Beaulieu clan showed up. I don't know how much I've told you guys about Beaulieu family parties, but they are pretty nuckin' futs. Country music cranked right up, a beer selection of Bud and/or Bud Light, obligatory dancing around 1-2 AM. Also there haven't been that many in the past 5-6 years since a lot of them moved in recent years. I ended up at my uncle's house, just drinkin' Buds with all my older cousins and uncles until 8 AM. Very good times.

Then last weekend Bradd came over for a LAN party which just turned into us drinking and trying to install Windows 7 on his laptop. Fun times.

Well now it's November or as I like to call it, Ernest Hemingway appreciation month. That is because it is both National Novel Writing Month and No Shave November. Also I'm still doing the low carb thing so I'm surviving on a diet of steak, bacon, eggs, whiskey and black coffee. Been trying out the NaNoWriMo thing, which is hard when you work a job that leaves you exhausted, so my word counts are less than stellar. I'm not writing for any other reason than to have a project, so if I fuck up, fuck it. Also I'm trying to write a really bad book on purpose because that approach seems to really take a shit on writer's block. Also if I accidentally write something good in between, well that's just neat.

My "technique"

If I actually do meet some stated goals on that I'll let you guys know. 

In the meantime there is a partial solar eclipse tomorrow morning here on the east coast (suck it Seattle) and I'm going to MSSM to see it with the Mr. Larry Berz. In the meantime I'm going to stay up and write about two guys eating tacos and/or burritos with some not so clever passages over-analyzing the Baja Blast Mountain Dew because this book is just me rambling. I'm good at rambling. You know that. You read all of this stupid shit.

This Prime Automobile!

Blatant picture dump. So.... long time no post but I had this crazy weekend where I took a wind turbine to MIT energy night (which was sweet), drove back that night. Next day went to Pika's annual Cider weekend, took Rita Cooper with me... it was pretty sweet. Then finally the day after that I went to a VW swap meet in NH. Now that I am an adult... why not do ALL the fun things, right?

Sweet VWs and I scored some good parts for cheap!

Look at how jovial this guy is, yes that is a human powered cider press!

Rita and I kicked some serious cider ass this year. I just got in the zone and pedaled my arse off and also pushed apples into the cutter machine which is the messiest and most satisfying job. Made it home with a bunch of cider and some of last years hard cider. Nice.

On the trailer!

So, I found this one on craigslist for what seemed like a good deal. I got there and found out it actually was a good deal. The dude held it for me until I could come back with a trailer which was sweet. Also, it's very hard to find a trailer this time of year... seriously several Uhauls were out of car trailers two weekends in a row. This bus loaded much easier than the last one I put on a trailer. We hooked it onto my dad's truck and he towed it down the guys driveway (which was wicked nasty). Loaded it on the trailer when we got up on the pavement. I got to drive it while it was being towed, which makes it officially my longest ride in a VW bus thus far.

Checkout that plaid!... Just don't look at the curtains. Please.

This one is a Westfalia which means it has a wicked sweet pop-top. The tent is missing but I will replace it once the thing is running again. I was surprised at how much room there is in the top though. I am 6 ft and I could probably sleep up there. Also allows you more head room in the back if no one is up there.

At her old home

Needs a new battery and a list of other things but the important thing about this bus is that there is less than 10k miles on the rebuilt engine. The rebuild was even done by the guy who is doing my engine (or... actually what is he doing with my engine). Also the bus was stickered last year, so it is much closer to being road able than my other rig. I jumped it with the Subaru and got it to turn over, all the lights work and there is fuel to the carbs so .... it's on the right track. I mean it's so much further along than my other one that in my mind, it's already running! First things on the list are to fix the drivers window (which doesn't go up or down), get a new battery, recondition the wheels, fresh tires, brake job and obviously get the thing to you know... do the whole start and run thing. After all that I'll re-pad the front seats, get a new westfalia tent and clean up the top part, maybe replace the gasket up there too. 

Hooray projects!

To War

Before I start, ATTENTION TONY NUZZO, THE FUNNIEST MOTHER FUCKING COMEDIAN I KNOW WILL BE IN PORTLAND ON MONDAY OCTOBER 21ST. GO.

HERE HE IS ON NATIONALISM OR FREEDOM

So the plan. Get up at 3 AM Friday, leave to pick up Toby from a train station in Brewster, NY and then to Alfred by Friday night to help them prepare for the war. The next day, battle and party. Then on Sunday up at 6 AM to drive back to The County. Damn near 1700 miles of driving in about 3 days. My family said I was crazy. What they failed to realize is that this is what I've been mentally preparing to do for months. Also it was just sort of amazing to do something, anything, especially something a little insane for mostly very silly reasons. After four months of absolutely nothing, three days of hour by hour something were a godsend.

The truly amazing bit, it all worked. Brilliantly. The trip was zero stress and adhered to schedule surprisingly well. The only glitch was the curse of Toby. Every single god damned time Toby and I get in a car together and say "LET'S GO ON AN ADVENTURE" the car fails. Every. Single. Time. There was my trip to see him in Toronto where my Jeep died in the parking garage. Him and Renee's trip to see me where her clutch fell out. Then this time my battery just sort of disappeared about twenty minutes after he got in the car. After we pulled off it was pretty apparent that all that happened was the battery terminal was loose and sort of bounced the fuck off after a bump. But still we had to pull over and tinker for an hour to figure that simple thing out. It is Tobias Hrynick and I, we are not known for our mechanical prowess.

We arrived in Alfred and dove right into helping the club build swords for the war. We had a good twenty five people building swords quickly for about four hours and met our quota. of 72 new swords. Got to meet a lot of the new faces including one kid everyone refers to as "New Tyler". I was weirded out until I found out he got the name for having similar drunken personalities. Looks like I've got someone to take on an adventure at Hot Dog Day. Then Toby and I went back to AJs apartment, had some beers and went to bed.

Wake up at 9 AM for the Officers breakfast, Toby, AJ and I were not officers but insisted that we are a necessary element of their discussion. Also I need Battle Waffles, it's tradition to eat waffles prior to combat for me. It's kind of my thing. We ate our waffles and headed up to the field of battle to set everything up. There was a lot of on the spot improvisation as it turned out we didn't have half the things we needed but in the end the new officer corps did it up nice. Alfred States army arrived and after a pretty ad libbed speech about the rules, we all headed back to camp.

I was happy that this year we got time to properly put together a strategy. We divided up into units, nicknamed the units, even had a group dedicated to relaying communication from the General. I could have really used that last time. We fought for maybe 4 hours and it was awesome. I spent most of the match defending the AU homebase which eventually fell after a near 90 minute siege. In the end Alfred State won, again. I had fun, Toby had fun, trip well worth it. After the war we got a couple cars and took some good folk to the chinese buffet in Wellsville and then went to AJs apartment for a wonderful night of drunken revelry.  I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to see because of the short window of time I was there but I saw a good bunch. The weekend was pretty expensive to pull off but it was well worth it. PICTURES!

Toby Hrynick, in Alfred, helping fend off the State school horde.

My good friend Gaelen representing.

Pic from the final battle around the King Alfred statue.

A nice orchestrated group shot.

Toby and I left at 7 AM Sunday and I got home around 2 AM so I could start my new job at 8 AM. After 10 hours of OSHA safety videos I was considered an employee at Columbia Forest Products, making whole piece hardwood veneer of the maple and birch variety. The job is not exactly what I would call a dream job for me. The job is very physically demanding and only just mentally demanding enough that I'm not allowed to zone out for even a second. That said, the people are all very nice and the pay is quite nice. It's mostly headed to the bank where hopefully I can finally grow a small amount of savings. I haven't had more than a few hundred dollars in the bank since High School. A bit of money in the bank to fall on is just what I need while I plan the next step, which currently is move somewhere that people live and get a job that sort of uses this brain thing I got bouncing around my shoulders. It works decently and could be applied to any number of things.

Anyways, time to sit here and wait for something to happen.

Autumn, can we just call it Windmill season?

I've been at it at approximately 3/4 throttle with the gang at Pika over the past couple weeks. Last weekend was spent entirely at Common Ground Fair. Most of that time was hanging out at the Pika booth and talking with people who want one of our sexy wind turbines (I hope google catches onto that phrase and this blog comes up in search results for "sexy wind turbines", maybe I'll over use it in this post just to give us a fighting chance). I was pleasantly surprised to speak with some very informed customers on Saturday. Of course there were a few folks who didn't know how energy works but they were fairly few and far between. One point of discontent was that we had the wind turbine braked because in order to run we need an inverter and our inverter outputs "split phase 240V" which is what is at the entrance to your house.... however we only had a 120V extension cord. Most people understood why this was an issue but there was one man who simply did not understand that and was convinced that we were giving him some sort of BS. Next year we'll bring a transformer.

In the off times I hung out with Blandrea Jarrett (not actually bland at all) and her associated compadres. I have to say that after staying there all weekend, you really don't get the common ground experience until you camp there. The "volunteer" campground is the loosest run hassle free camping experience. I showed up too late to "get a permit" so I just pitched my tent anyways and no one bothered us the entire weekend, turns out that is what all of our neighbors did too. I just got a sweet new tent so I was excited to try it out, it worked great and despite wind, rain and uneven ground it kept me and my stuff bone dry. We did some contra dancing saturday night and witnessed a man playing guitar on hallucinogenics on Friday. Yup that's Common Ground.

That's right kids, it's a double rainbow over a wind turbine. Can you get anymore Common Ground than that!?!?! 

I didn't get to see much of the fair really but I did see a sweet booth with a bunch of bonsai trees. I nearly bought one because ever since visiting the national National Arboretum, I have thought they are awesome. There was some guy there who seemed to know everything about them too, unfortunately he was engaged in a Bonsai geek conversation when I was there and I didn't get to pick his brain. Overall a good time. On the way home my car started skipping, I put some "drygas" (moisture remover) in the tank and it ran fine the rest of the way home (more on this later).

Taking down our booth @ Common Ground

This past week we've been going great guns at work and installed two wind turbines and a bunch of solar stuff too. The two sites each have a turbine and 3kW of PV installed (or nearly installed at the time of this writing). We're not technically installers but we have been working with electricians and installers of other wind turbines to train them on our equipment. We had an out of state installer come up and walk through our manual during one of the installs with us. One of the sites has a sweet fiberglass monopole tower that comes in sections that slide over each other and glue together. The whole rig goes up with a winch so it doesn't require a crane, it's pretty sweet. We all take turns winching the towers up, not only is it a workout but it feels pretty BAMF to be part of the tower raising. 

I'll eventually get a picture of the monopole installed, I hope. My phone died part way through the install. 

In other news the Subaru is down with a clogged catalytic converter. After racking my brain to figure out why my car was loosing power, I decided to just play the uninformed idiot and drive it until it became obvious. After a painful 5 miles from my house to Josh's place (my car squealing and riding the struggle bus the whole way) I parked it and looked underneath. My catalytic converter was straight up about to be on fire. It was bright bright orange all over  and did NOT look pleased at all. A few months ago I had my friend scan the OBD2 port on the car with his fancy scan tool. The code read "efficiency of emissions tank 2 low", being an elitist cheapskate fuck I said "Oh it's probably just some sensor." Now I think that is probably directly related to the recent failure. Screw you hindsight, screw you! Also there really isn't much of a way around the expense of replacing one of these because the catalyst inside the part makes them $$$. Additionally it would be very difficult to replace with one person and no lift. 

So, this weekend I've been tooling around on my motorcycle which discouraged me from driving around at night much. It's kind of unsafe to ride when it is too dark, even though it is pretty awesome feeling to ride down the road surrounded by darkness with only a small headlight leading you home. 

I'm taking tomorrow off to spend the day with my pops at Fryeburg Fair for woodsmans day! It's where all the "big name" lumberjacks (is that even a thing?) come to participate in events like the springboard chop, two-man saw, underhand chop and various other lumberjack things. My dad and grandfather used to go fairly regularly but I could never make it because school. Should be a wicked good Maineahbubguy time!