Repainting the Airstream/Smoked Out

On By stefrobrtsIn airstream, MeLeave a comment

Pre-Covid (in the before-times) I had big plans to make some improvements to our little Airstream Caravel (grey tank, new wheels and hubcaps, new front window guard, glass side window to replace the plexiglass one) and get it out more this year. So much for that. But, now that I sold the Mustang, I figured I had a little Mustang money saved up that I could allocate to it and make those upgrades – except now everything is indefinitely out of stock.

The tongue and the bumper have been slowly getting cruddier looking, and they needed some work, and that was something I could easily do with things I could find at the hardware store. So I removed everything off the tongue and got to it, scrubbing every place with a degreaser to get it ready for paint. Luckily the rust was just mild surface rust.

I used this stuff to try and assure any rust that was still on there would get stopped. I tried to get all the nooks and crannies, especially around the equalizer bar hooks, and underneath.

Once that was done I dug around my spray paint collection and found a metallic silver, and decided to go for it. If I hate it, I can repaint it later.

I wish I’d masked off the jack before I sprayed!

Since this was going so well, I moved on to the rear bumper. It looked pretty crusty from multiple layers of paint over the years. So I grabbed the Mouse sander and smoothed it all out. Paint flakes were flying everywhere!

And then I laid on a couple coats of that black rust-killer paint.

I got more serious about masking back here.

And finally another layer of the silver metallic. At first I thought it was too metallic, but it’s starting to grow on me.

Then a foul wind blew in, and we were suddenly in a crisis caused by a windstorm and wildfires all around us, and the air was hazardous to breathe, and things were quite apocaplyptic!

Well, shit…

So I popped on my respirator and ran out and reassembled the tongue in case we needed to grab the trailer and get out of town in a hurry.

Ready to roll!

So for a week we were stuck inside, trying to keep the smoke out.

Eventually it was over 500, which is just nuts. It’s terrifying to be inside your house, knowing you shouldn’t breathe the air outside. We kept the pets in, and just let the dogs out for potty breaks, then shooed them right back inside, which made everyone unhappy. Our cat, Mighty, started attacking out feet just because she was pissed about staying inside. The dogs were bored. Luckily we could still work, and Dave went out and photographed a few houses, and wore the respirator when he had to be outside. Crazy times. Finally the winds came back and blew it away.

A few days later we got wind and rain, and were back to normal. This will do for now. None of those other trailer projects HAVE to get done right away. The trailer is ready to use as is, and we have reservations coming up soon for Deceptions Pass, which is exciting because it’s a new part of WA for us. Off to the San Juans we go!

Woodworking

On By stefrobrtsIn garden, mustang, TheRancho, WoodworkingLeave a comment

Just a month or so ago my shop looked like this, and getting to my bench required crawling over stuff including the tongue of the boat trailer, tripping over boxes for my husband’s toy business. Once I got to the bench, there was barely room to do anything.

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But then I decided to overhaul the Mustang, and I sold my boat (without ever getting it in the water! That’s the 3rd boat I’ve sold without ever using it!), we installed new LED lighting in the garage to brighten things up, and my husband cleaned up his stuff in the garage and re-organized. Then I unexpectedly sold the Mustang. Suddenly I had an empty, clean, well-lit garage.

I decided that now I have a garage back, I wanted to do some woodworking. Quite a few years ago I used to do scrollsaw work and intarsia and woodburning, and I wanted to do more. I like building things. Someday I’d like to build a new vanity for the bathroom, and do new countertops in the kitchen.

This spring I built this potting table to put on the patio and organize my gardening supplies. I found the plan on https://www.ana-white.com/woodworking-projects/simple-2×4-potting-bench

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So that really lit up my desire to build more things. For a long time I have had my eye on Steve Ramsey on Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/user/stevinmarin and his Wood Working for Mere Mortals channel. So I finally signed up for his online woodworking class – The Weekend Woodworker – https://theweekendwoodworker.com/introduction/

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The first project was to build this neat little rolling bench, which has been awesome! He includes project plans and how-to videos and videos on each skill and tool, and safety videos. It went together just as expected, except I chose not to install shelves because my old miter saw is so big it took up the whole bottom shelf by itself. Even though I already have two benches, having one I can move around has been really useful!

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Second project was this little patio sidetable. Each project builds on skills and introduces new skills. I’m really having fun, and I can’t wait for my next project. We are all still trapped at home during the pandemic, so it’s nice to have projects to work on. And my garage is so clean and roomy now. I’ve sorted through a lot of things I don’t need, some of which I’ve had saved for years and never needed.

I guess I am a minimalist. All the things I get rid of take a weight off of me. Although I loved the Mustang, we joked that it was my albatross, a la the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, and I was cursed to have it forever hanging around my neck. I couldn’t go forward and I couldn’t go back. It was so heavy, with the weight of being ‘my first car’, and the story that goes with it, one of the best stories a classic car can have! Now I have shook it off, and released myself from it. I have my garage space back, and I can do creative things of my choosing, and I am really loving it!

Goodbye Johnny!

On By stefrobrtsIn cars, mustangLeave a comment

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For the last few years I have been trying to sell my 74 Mustang Mach I, Johnny. My first car, which I hunted down and bought back 12 years after I sold it (Bought it in 87, sold it in 93, bought it back in 2005). My original goal was to fix it up and enjoy it, but I do not enjoy working on cars like I did 15 years ago (Dave argues I NEVER enjoyed it that much). So once I got it running, and it is an actual, drivable car, so hopefully safe from ending up abandoned in a junkyard, I have been trying to sell it. Every summer I try, people look at it, nobody wants to pull the trigger, and I’d fix up a few more things to make it better.

This year I again listed it for sale, and again got some interest but nobody wanted to deal with the engine problem, low compression on one cylinder. It needed a top-end rebuild. I could do it, I’d done it before, but I really didn’t want to. But since nobody else wanted to tackle it, I decided to make the commitment. I put my boat up for sale to make room in the garage, and someone snapped it up within a day (I guess I should have asked for more $$$). Now there was room in the garage, and I could tear the Mustang apart.

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I was ready to pull the heads when someone on the Mustang II forum said they were looking for a nice fastback with a 302, and I thought about it for a bit, and wrote to them and told them I had a nice one, and they could have it and ship it home to CA for under budget. They were not afraid to do the work on it. A deal was struck.

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He sent an inspector, and we used an online Escrow service, which was new for me. When it passed inspection he sent a transporter to pick it up. I had to say goodbye to the Mustang my Grandpa picked out for me. The interior I had put together, even the wheels I had hand painted.

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So much nostalgia to that car, but now it is off on it’s next adventure to it’s excited next owner, and that’s ok too. We are only caretakers for the cars that go through our hands, we have to hope the next owner takes care of them too, or at least has a lot of fun with them.

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I packed that car full of all the spare parts and bits I had kicking around, and when I got done I kept a spare pony emblem, and the housing for the original mirror which had been replaced. I put those together and made a memento to keep on my shelf. A little something to remember my unique yellow gold Mustang by.

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Crown Point, 2 Ways

On By stefrobrtsIn nature, outdoors, photographyLeave a comment

Someone in a hiking group mentioned that for a few weeks a year, in late June/early July, the sun sets far enough North to light up the walls of Crown Point with Golden Hour light. I did not research their claim, but it sounded like a good excuse to go take a picture, and I haven’t picked up my camera pretty much since the pandemic started in March. Dave and I hopped in the car and headed up to the Portland Women’s Forum Viewpoint in Oregon.

Lots of other folks were there too, setting in for an eclipse that evening. We just wanted the sunset. We had stopped by Abby’s in Gresham and got a pizza, and settled in to wait until the sun was as low as it could get hoping for better color in the sky, but this nice peachy color was as good as it was getting, since there was not a cloud in the sky.

I’d say that’s a postcard perfect pic of Crown Point and Vista house, and the Columbia River Gorge stretching off into the distance. You can see Phoca Rock out in the river, and farther upstream you can see Beacon Rock in Washington state.

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The next evening, since I was so happy with the outcome of that photo, we headed out to Washougal on the Washington side of the Columbia, and snapped another picture of Crown Point, this time with Mt Hood in the background. I liked this shot best. Even though the light was not on Crown Point as nicely as the evening before, the glow on top of the mountain was very pretty.

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So there you go, Crown Point, two ways, from two different states. Both are home to me, and I feel lucky to live in this beautiful place.

Midnight Adventure

On By stefrobrtsIn cars, familyLeave a comment

 

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David and I had a little adventure the other evening. After his Dad got confused and drove to downtown Portland and lost his car and ended up in the hospital last year, we put a tracker on his car. Dave gets notified every time the car moves. Tuesday night the tracker went off at 10:30 PM and he certainly shouldn’t have been out that time of night for anything, so we jumped in the Flex and drove over to NE Portland where he lives. I was driving and Dave was following his progress on the tracking app, figuring he would be back at his place by the time we got there. But instead, he went the wrong direction, and as we got to his neighborhood, he was 10 miles ahead of us, heading East on Hwy 26!

After some debate about if this was a real emergency, or if the cops would even want to get involved in an adult going for a midnight drive, we finally called the cops, and by the time we explained everything, they said ‘well, he’s crossing the county line, lets send you to Clackamas 911’. So those folks were real helpful, but they didn’t have any officers in that part of the county who could chase him down. So we kept going as fast as we could, following the tracking app. We called his house to make sure someone hadn’t just stole the car while he was safe at home, but there was no answer, so we followed the car.

Along the way the tracker cut out as he drove out of cell service areas, or we were out of cell service, and we’d call back 911 when we had updates. Meanwhile we are driving out into darker and darker country, out past Sandy, heading for Mt Hood. Finally an officer called and asked where he was and where we were and said ‘sorry, but you guys are closer to him than we are’ and offered to tell officers in the NEXT county, because another 15 minutes and the highway would split, and depending on which way he went, he would be heading for Hood River or Madras, and worse, that was a service deadzone, so we were probably going to lose the tracker just before the split and not know which way he went for a while.

So by then I’m doing 70-80 mph (because obviously there’s no police to stop me, and there was zero traffic this time of night), we are just absolutely hauling ass up this highway, pitch dark. We’re out of service and lost the tracker, and we see another car ahead of us, and Dave says, that would be great if that was him, and we get up close, and it IS HIM! I get behind him and honk and blink and put my hazards on, and he pulls over. Dave runs up to his door and his Dad says ‘I figured if I kept going this way, I’d see something familiar.”!

He had driven 45 miles into the mountains! He was almost at Government Camp! When we got back to where we had service Dave called 911 and they were very happy to hear we caught him.

Dave drove him home and took his keys away. He’s going to go over daily to help him with whatever he would have needed a car for until we figure out what the next step is.

Update: Update on Dad. He has given up his car after talking about it and a week of running him to errands. Now getting Shari’s delivered and getting him on once a week errand visit. Will look into other help and potential medical assistance. Luckily he gets around fine and other then these jaunts he is generally able to do his day to day.

Lockdown in the time of Coronavirus

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, blather, family, mighty, mouse, navi, pets, photography, TheRancho, Uncategorized, xboxLeave a comment

I guess we’ve been hearing about the virus in China for a month or so, but it has suddenly hit us hard. With the knowledge that this bad new flu is circulating, but without testing capability, and an already overtaxed medical system, we are now in semi-lockdown. The play we have been rehearsing for over a month (Much Ado About Nothing) is on hold until later in the summer, I’m working from home, and people are wiping out the grocery stores (glad I went to Costco with friends and stocked up a couple weeks ago). Crazy times.

I had just settled on a plan to expand my photography into family portrait work, and decided that this summer I would train and do any odd jobs I could get, and hone my craft. I bought a new (used) lens just for this pursuit.

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This is a Sony f/4 70–200mm. It takes really sharp pictures with nicely blurred backgrounds. I’m really happy with the few test shots I’ve done.

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Combined with my full-frame a7ii, this is certainly a rig capable of producing high-quality images.

I also plan to dedicate any ‘hustle money’ I can make to my meandering Mustang project. But who knows when things will get back to normal, when I can start hustling, if I will even care about the Mustang when this is all over. Maybe priorities will change? Right now the poor Mustang is buried in the garage under shipping materials leftover from Christmas. The toy shipping season has stretched out significantly. Things are still selling now in March!

But I don’t mind working at home. I’m hanging out with my hubby and dogs and cats:

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surrounded by all my craft projects I’ve been putting off. Like my ‘learn to paint’ project. I’ve got my paints, I’ve got my easel, all I need is time.

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I can FINALLY follow along with BOB!

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It’s actually kind of nice, but I’m only a few days in. We will see how it feels by the end of the month! I hope to sneak off for some fishing when the weather warms up next week. We will see how it all goes. I’m just hoping people handle this sanely, take care of each other, remember to be kind and considerate, and we will all ride out this strange time, stay healthy, and be back to normal sometime this summer.

Until then I’ll try not to spend too much time riding the range in Red Dead Redemption.

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I bought a boat!

On By stefrobrtsIn boat, fishing, outdoors, UncategorizedLeave a comment

In my continuing effort to find the best way to get out on the water, I added to my vehicle collection this week.

I have had my mighty blue kayak for 3 years, but it takes two people to launch because it’s so heavy.

I have had my inflatable kayak for one summer. I can take it out alone, but odds of getting very wet in it are fairly high, so it is summer-time only.

And now there is a boat.

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This little guy is a 12ft Gamefisher. My goal was to find something I could take out myself and launch/recover alone. I looked at several larger project boats, like an aluminum StarCraft that needed to be completely rebuilt, and a finned runabout that was rough. They both looked like a lot of work, and would not fit in our short garage.

This boat had caught my eye earlier in the summer because it looked like it was ready to go. Seats, shade cover, 2 motors, fish finder, oars – pretty much ready to launch and go. The trailer even looked like it was in good shape. So I went to check it out with an amount of cash in my pocket slightly less than he was asking. We came to a deal and I dragged it home.

Although I liked those other boats, they all looked HUGE in person, and like a bit of a handful. This boat is small, the trailer is small, and I can move it around by hand if necessary. And best of all, after Dave spent the evening organizing, it fit safely in the garage, so I didn’t have to worry about anyone picking it clean out in the driveway.

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It just squeezed in there!

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This boat has a tri-hull shape to it, which I’ve heard is very stable. I’m not going to be taking it anywhere crazy, just out onto the local lakes. It has a 30lb/thrust Electric motor, and a 5hp gas motor. The electric should be fine for my needs for now.

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It has a livewell which needs to be hooked up, or I guess it would function as underseat storage just fine. And it has an old fish finder, so that should be fun to learn about.

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It needs some cleaning up, and the trailer was missing a few lights and has some rusty spots that could use to be touched up, but for the most part, I think it is ready to go, and I’m happy with this catch – I hope I will have many happy catches in it on the water!

 

My little pony goes to a car show

On By stefrobrtsIn cars, mustangLeave a comment

I’ve been trying to sell the money pit, I mean Mustang, all summer (I kid because I love). Unfortunately people were not interested with the remaining issues, so I threw a bit more money in the pit and got a travelling mechanic to come fix a couple big ones – the failed neutral safety switch, and the carb adjustment that was causing it to not stay running. The carb issue turned out to be an air gap one the carb spacer. The old gasket blocked it, and when the paper gasket blew out, the location was not easily seen, and working on carbs is not my favorite thing to begin with.

So that got it running, and I took it to a cars & coffee to meet the local car folks.

Then I got busy and didn’t do much with it all summer. I did continue to try to sell it, but I think interest was limited because it has a burnt valve on one cylinder.

We have a car show coming up at work next week, so that got me in a car show mood. The local club had another show this weekend, and it supported a local police K9 unit, so I signed up.

It was a bit gloomy and misting rain this morning. The Mustang gave me no problems starting up and driving to the show.

I set up a note on my dash explaining how it was my first car, and put the sales brochure out too, opened to the Mach I page.

I was right across from the classic Mustangs.

There were so many nice cars there! Really nicely done classics and late-models. It was fun to see them all! Especially the hot rods!

This motor in a classic Cougar was awesome. I’d like my Mustang to look this nice someday. So clean!

I had a nice time visiting with other car owners. Some who built their own cars. I got some ideas for making my mustang better. A friend from work dropped by.

K9 unit was there to answer questions.

I was the only person there in my class, which was mistakenly labeled 1973-1978. It should have been 1974, the 1973 Mustang is the same as the 71-72. Because I was the only Mustang II there lots of people came by to look at it and tell me about how someone they knew had one years ago, one guy even said he had never seen one in real life!

Since I was the only one in this class, I got my first trophy.

It was enough fun I feel like I should keep working on the Mustang this winter. It would be nice to show up for the next big Mustang show with some progress to show and talk about.

Barclay has some ups and downs

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, dave, naviLeave a comment

One night after an uneventful day in July, Barclay was restless and whiny and couldn’t lay down and go to sleep like he normally would have after dinner. He would come bark at me like he wanted something. We even took him for an extra walk, but he still couldn’t settle down.

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I was really worried since it was out of character, so we took him to the vet around 10pm, and the vet decided he might have hurt his back, gave us some pain meds and sent him home. We got home and I took him outside for a potty break, and he flopped over on his side and had a seizure! We called the vet and they said we could bring him back in, or observe him and see if the pain med helped, so we decided to do that since it would be less stressful. But he continued to be whiny and restless, and just couldn’t go to sleep. By then it was 2am, and we were all very tired, and he just couldn’t stop, then he had another seizure and threw up, so we raced him back to the emergency vet.

This time the vet said she thought the whole thing was seizure related. The vet decided to keep him, and we were waiting in the exam room while they got a spot ready for him in the back, and I put him in my lap and he finally fell asleep for a couple minutes, he was so tired!

They gave him medicine to stop the seizures and kept him until the next day, but we were there until after 4am by that point. So i called in sick to work the next day and worried about him all day. Wednesday afternoon he came home, and they gave him an anti-seizure medicine, which sedated him a bit. The vet said it would get better in 2-3 weeks as he got used to the medicine. Navi was happy to have him back, and hung out right with him.

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But it’s was hard to get him to eat. We were fussing over him, trying to get him to eat anything, because he was never fat, and I’m worried about him not eating enough. I bought him different dog foods, people food, baby food, but nothing much interested him. Dave and I were handfeeding him all kinds of good food just to get something in him. He seemed like he would take a few bites to be polite, then turn his head away to say he was done.

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Also, he was waking us up multiple times a night barking for what seemed like no particular reason. Everyone was getting really tired. It was like having an infant in the house. He didn’t mean it though, he was tired too!

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After three weeks of this, he wet the bed overnight a couple times, so I talked to the vet and she decided the side effects were too much, and had me wean him off of the medicine. We quickly saw improvement, with him getting his appetite back, sleeping better, and not being so groggy.

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So far so good. He is 11, and has been very healthy, though he did have two or three seizure incidents over the past few years, which the vets could find no reason for. He hasn’t had a seizure since that night. Hopefully he will not have any more issues for a while.

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