ShoutBox Added

I have added ShoutBox to the Blog. Just type your name and website or Blog address if any (otherwise leave the "Website" part blank) type a short message in the "message" box and click "Shout". This is just an experiment to see if it will spur any of you who are reluctant to leave a comment or GuestBook entry to say "Hi". I am always very curious to see who is reading the Blog. Humor me!

I am also trying to change the layout to a three column format. You will see some changes while I experiment with this.

Farmers Market

I went down to the Farmers Market with Norma today so I could try out my new Tokina 12 - 24mm f/4 Wide Angle lens. It is VERY wide and will take a little getting used to. I had a Tokina lens before and this one is just as solid feeling as the last one. It is very heavy compared to most of the new lenses but this gives it a very solid feel. It is made out of steel and titanium instead of plastic and I am happy with the purchase. It will come in very handy in Mexico. Here are a couple of shots I took today. Both were taken at the 12mm setting, the widest setting for the lens.

Campbell River Farmers Market

Discovery Passage

Staining

Today's project was a little less technical than yesterdays! Today we stained much of the patio furniture. We have a lot of wood patio furniture, some came with us when we moved from Terrace in 1989, some Norma bought during her years at Forest Renewal BC and some we bought from friends here in Campbell River. The one thing all the pieces have in common is a need for regular maintenance.

We scraped, wire brushed and sanded to get the old "stuff" off and rolled and brushed a new coat of stain on. Three boards on the ancient picnic table were in sad shape so I made a quick trip to the local building supply to buy new ones. It was a long day and now that we are finished my knees, ankle and back hurt. All I want to do is flop into my favorite chair and watch TV tonight. Some days I feel young and some days I feel old. Today is one of the later..

My hands are staining but my mind is dreaming of Mexico.............

The Flaky TV Switch Box

The motorhome is equipped with a Winegard Video Distribution Switch. You know, the box that sits under the TV and lets you send satellite to the front TV and the DVD player to the rear or any other combination of cable, off air, DVD, VCR or satellite that you may want. Last year we had problems with the distribution system. The rear TV stopped receiving a signal from the box so I "fixed" the problem by doing a bunch of temporary rewiring and bypassing of components and built-in wiring to get the rear TV "sort of" functioning again. The result was a jumbled up mess of wires behind the switch box with nothing marked and me with no memory of what I did several months ago. It was a mess!

Today was the day to fix it. First I wired the StarChoice receiver directly to the front TV, bypassing the switch box and all the built-in wiring and tested it. I discovered that the receiver's 75 ohm output was cutting out intermittently! It seemed to clear by re-booting the receiver but this would be disastrous if it failed while we were in Mexico because Starchoice, as good as they are in allowing their signal to be used outside of Canada, will not ship equipment outside of Canada. I found a new receiver at London Drugs on sale for $99 which I bought and installed. It is a newer model than the one I had and has some of the newer features that are on the high definition receiver in the house. The old receiver went into the bedroom in the house where I can whack it when it acts up.

I also bought some contact cleaner spray and a couple of short 75 ohm cables. I sprayed a ton of contact cleaner into any crevice in the switch box that I could find and exercised the buttons like crazy. I then started by getting the front TV working with all the outputs and then moved on to the bedroom and outside TV hookup. It took all day but I finally succeeded in getting everything back to the way it was when the rig was new. We will no longer have wires running down the hall to be able to watch TV in the bedroom or the cable from the dish running through the driver's door.

While I was at it I hooked up a (very) small home theatre sound system to the front TV to improve the sound quality. It now sounds much better than the tiny built-in speakers did. The TV amplifier is still used as a pre-amp and is controlled by the volume control on the TV remote just to keep everything simple. A good day's work.

If there is anything left on my TV system wish list, it might be a larger TV for the front. The one I bought earlier this year is a 20' Wide Screen but there is room for a larger one. If prices keep dropping, I just might do the upgrade next summer. In the meantime, Life Is Good!

Starchoice Dish

You may remember the Starchoice dish that got blown over and broken two years ago in San Miguel de Alende. It was a bit of a comedy trying to get it fixed in Mexico but we finally succeeded and it got us through the rest of that trip. When we got home we ordered the larger dish which we have been using in the motorhome ever since. The larger dish is much easier to aim.

The old repaired dish was taking up space in my workshop so I decided to mount it to the side of the workshop to use in the motorhome when it is parked at home. This was my project today. I screwed the mount to the end of the building and climbed up on the roof where, with the help of my neighbour, I mounted the dish and found the signal. I then ran some cable down, ending near the electrical box where we hook the motorhome up.

This was not anything that had to be done but it will be convenient once in a while and it got the old dish out of my somewhat cramped 10 X 12 workshop. Now I just have to clean out a ton of other junk so Rae will be able to use the shop to do some work on her motorhome while she is staying here this winter. The way it is now you can hardly find the workbench. This is going to become a major project but something that has to be done.

Hail Storm

About midnight last night I was awakened by a viscous hailstorm! It was just pounding down and then came the thunder and lightening. One lightening strike sounded like it was very close to the house and when I got up this morning the modem to my computer was dead.

I called repair service and was given the old "We will be there in three days" routine but I still know some people in the central office so I made a phone call and within an hour I had a new modem installed!

I am back on line! Life Is Good!

A Wide Angle Lens

I bought myself a decent wide angle lens today. It is a Tokina ATX PRO 12 – 24 mm f/4 DX zoom. This will allow me to make much better photographs of the fascinating streets and buildings of Mexico. Ever since my 18 – 70 Nikon "Kit" lens fell victim to internal dust over a year ago I have had nothing to experiment with this type of photography. The estimate for repairs to that lens was more than the cost to replace it! This new Tokina is a much better lens.

I tend to be a little anal over this type of a purchase and have spent several days on the Internet reading every review and user opinion I could find on this lens and it's competition. It tests out better than both the other third party lenses in this focal range and is almost equal to the Nikon brand lens at much less than half the cost. A perfect fit for me. Back in my film camera days my wide angle was my most used lens and I have been wanting one for a long time. It is just hard to justify the expense sometimes.

Today my mission was finding the best price which I did at $399 USA from Amazon.com. It is being delivered from the USA so it will take a couple of weeks or so to get here. At least Amazon.com allows you to track the shipment so that will give me something to do for a few days. I ordered a multicoated filter to protect the glass from eBay. Almost free.

TLC For The Honda

The poor neglected old 89 Honda got some much deserved attention today. It was my dad's car which I inherited in perfect condition in 1997 with only 30,000 KMs on it. Since then I have put an additional 220,000 KMs on it and done only the minimum amount of maintenance. The old girl simply refuses to quit. It has been dragged behind the motorhome across North America several times on it's dolly and another two times through Mexico. If the front end has 250,000 KMs on it, the rear end must have close to 300,000.

Last year in Mexico it started boiling over. If faced with any kind of an uphill run the temperature gauge would peg on the "hot" side and it would boil over. This *might* have been because the anti-freeze was twenty years old. Because of this we started carrying a couple of gallons of water in the trunk. The tires had 110,000 KMs on the front and close to 150,000 KMs on the back so it was time to pay some attention to her!

Today I treated the lady to a new set of tires and a radiator flush. She was very grateful and promised to perform well once again in Mexico this winter. If she does she just may get her two little spots of rust fixed and a new Mexican paint job.

Nice new shoes!

Eye Candy

Norma’s garden has been doing unbelievably well this summer. I think she finally got the deer situation under control by ringing the flower gardens with bars of soap and moth balls. This is the latest artillery she has used in her war and it seems to be having the desired effect. Failed solutions have included preserved animal blood at $60 a bottle – if she had told me how much that cost I would have cut my own throat to save the money! She also tried chicken wire and piling lawn furniture around the beds to no avail. Next came a BB gun used on their butts only. Her most inventive effort was having me pee all around the flower beds. This display provided great entertainment for the ladies in the condo next door who went running for their cameras and binoculars. I appreciated the attention but cannot imagine why binoculars would be necessary.

ON EDIT: I spoke too soon! The night after I took this photo this, and other, flowers became a midnight snack for some deer who had overcome their dislike of soap and mothball odor.

26,000 Visitors and Beginning Winter Plans

This humble Blog is going to hit 26,000 visits today! When you add the number of hits on my old Blog that chronicled our 2006 - 2007 Mexican tour it totals over 41,000! This is very humbling for me and to think that I could come up with enough content to keep people coming back is almost beyond belief! It started as simply a way to let friends and family keep track of us as we headed off into the unknown wilds of Mexico for the first time. People started forwarding it to others and readership started growing exponentially up to the point where it is now.

Many of you have stuck with me even after we got home from our latest Mexican adventure, perhaps in the hopes that we will soon head off for another. We will be doing that in late October and things will get a little more interesting on the site.

Plans Are Starting!

We are starting to make plans for the next trip. Luck came our way a couple of weeks ago when Rae, a fellow RVer and Blogger who is full-timing in Canada expressed an interest to come to Vancouver Island for the winter. We immediately offered a parking place at our house where we have an RV hookup and this offer was quickly accepted. This will keep our house insurance company happy and she will have access to my workshop to perform some modifications to her motorhome. A win - win situation!