Tag Archives: Family and Friends

Family Legends

20200217 Starting the spring migration:

I’m am not sure if this is the start of our spring migration or a winter relocation trip, but we left Liberty Hill, Texas three days ago and we are now in El Paso Texas. After three days of hard-driving and 560 miles later were about to leave Texas. The weather has been fantastic. The wind is been light. The sun has been shining and it is nice and warm.

Take a look at the address this blog was sent from. I have set up a mailing service exclusively to send to my blog list. This new application allows me to send out one email and it delivers it to each and every one of you folks. It also allows you to request unsubscribing from this list. I hope that you don’t, but I can understand if you do. I get a lot of spam myself. I promise not to share this list of email addresses. In the past I have had to break my mailing list into groups of 35 or so, assign them a group name, place the name in the blind carbon copy address list. The extra time needed makes it easy to procrastinate about doing a new blog.

Some of the entries in the address field are not really hooked up. I don’t have passwords. For example. Although the instructions say you can sign in and set up a password to keep someone else from sending comments in your name. Could it really come to that? I hope not.

Now to bring you up-to-date. We spent the last four months camped at our daughter and son-in-law’s Bee Ranch near Liberty Hill, Texas. We have really kept ourselves quite busy spending usually three days a week in boxing classes and one day a week in singing class. After my boating injury I have regained nearly all of my range of motion. The people we have met in the Texas Tremulous, singing group, And the 413 fitness club, are tuned to the needs of Parkinson’s patients and their caregivers. A couple of these fiends are getting their first copy of this blog today. Our boxing club group would have got a kick out of Judy and I setting up our own workout this morning. We were trying to get the hang of the punching mitts versus the boxing gloves without bopping either one of us on the chin.

Because the activities in these groups is tailored to help the Parkinson’s patient they are really quite valuable to us. We exercise our balance skills and we learn how to get up off the floor. We even practice “Tucking and rolling” out of a fall. We also spend about half of the time punching, kicking, stepping over, around and through various mazes the coaches dream up. Only now we are on our own.

With this new blog mail server you can reply directly to us and I can directly answer you, just like you are used to doing with email. A second option is to send a comment to the administrator, that’s me. I will review it with a fine toothed comb. I will check syntax, linguistic anomalies and colloquialisms that might clash with my style. If I cannot find the slightest reason to ban it, I will approve and all can bennefit from your insight and wit. ie. pretty much carte blanche. Just don’t mess with my mind. I have the ultimate ax that is up to any challenge, “Ban.”

Now a puzzle. What did Judy and I do 55 years ago come February 20th at about 8:20 PM for the first time in our young lives? AND What is so special about this year?

We got married (for the very first time.) This year it is on 02/20/2020 at about 20:20 hours (military)

Maintenance, Uncategorized

20200128 The water Pump

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I confess I’ve been a little lax in creating blogs recently. I have been working on a very large project to revise the water purification system and the motor home. At the conclusion of the project. The pump that supplies pressure to the water system of the coach quit working.

A Relay. Provides full 15 Amps to pump, but the switch only handles a fraction of an Amp.
These relays are very small and can be hidden under vanities, behind studs or in void spaces.

Of course I did a bunch of troubleshooting, even enlisted Neil to help me. I finally decided that it was time to create a power source for the pump that included a relay. After several days of routing wires through the cupboards of the coach and hooking everything up, came the time for testing. I hit the “on” switch and nothing happened . I’m beginning to sweat a little, my handyman reputation is at stake. I pulled the cover on the strainer at the section of the pump and discovered that the section line was completely dry. Now there was water in the tank, but it wasn’t getting through the check valve. Logical conclusion: Check valve is plugged. Logical response: Remove, check valve. So I revised the inlet piping to eliminate the check valve. With my confidence renewed. I hit the on switch. Nothing happened. Now I’m really beginning to sweat. As handyman, I could be replaced, you know.

I think I do my best work. I’m asleep at night. The next morning I had a brilliant thought. We had been supplementing our water from the Tice’s house. The pressure from the hose could be keeping the pump from filling with water by blocking black pressure from the system. I walked over to the big house and turned off the water. You know it’s a little hard to flip the “on” switch with all your fingers crossed, but I managed to do it. Yes, it worked. Now I have to decide whether to put the check valve back in or not. I guess not.

The Sage Says: “What is the lesson to be learned here? It’s very possible to over analyze a problem. Occasionally you need to step back and look for the simple solution.”

Meanwhile, I will finish the two big projects I’m working on. The first is the adventures of the Abby Normal. The second is a detailed description of my new water system.