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Aaah…

…I had a few ideas for posts this last week but I never got around to actually writing them here.

Because I haven’t written anything and the Miata has been driven a few times this week I lumped them all together below. As you can see the CTBNL went significant miles for the first time since last year and over two thirds of that number happened yesterday.

Took a nice drive early, to beat the heat, and did a quick backroad loop to a couple of small Oregon towns to take pictures of their post offices, Sprague River and Beatty.

171.2 miles on 5 drives since last Monday.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 52

Busy Tunnel

On my morning cannabis run last month, because I was unsupervised, I decided to stop and take a Miata picture for Instagramming. There is this cute little one lane tunnel under some railroad tracks a short detour off the way home that I thought might be nice. In all the times I have passed by on the road perpendicular to the tunnel I have never seen anyone use it.

HA! I pulled in and stopped and hopped out to take a photo. When I moved a little closer to take a photo from a different angle I could see someone trying to come through from the direction I entered, so I just hopped in the car and moved forward to let them by.

I did a K-turn and headed into the tunnel to take one from the other direction. Sure enough, the same thing happened again. I got one photo and had to move the car for a whole different vehicle coming in opposite direction.

When I previewed the photos it really wasn’t that scenic, so I just went home.

Broken Spokes

Toward the end of June I took the road bike out for a ride for the first time in a while. I was going down a small hill not far from home slow with hands on the brakes because of the stop sign ahead and because of the cracks in the road. Halfway down I heard the distinctive “PING” of a spoke breaking and I could see the front wheel wobble in a singular spot. I opened the front brake so the rim wouldn’t scrape against them and turned for home.

I dropped the wheel off at the the local bike store to get it fixed and they said it would be done later that day or at worse tomorrow for a total cost of $37 ($36 for labor and $1 for the spoke. True to their word, early the next day I received a text to let me know the wheel was ready. I brought it home and stuck on the bike, but things were busy, so I didn’t take the bike out for a spin.

A couple days later I had time for a ride, so I got all dressed and ready to go, but when I went to roll the bike out of the garage the back tire was being tugged at by the brakes. I lifted the back wheel off the ground and spun it. The rim was contacting the brake pad in one spot. Sure enough, there was another broken spoke! I only heard one “PING”, did the two spokes, on different wheels, break in sync?

I took the second wheel down to the bike store. This time the repair was going to take week because they were backlogged. I bought this bike, used, in 2016 and from my research it was actually brand new in the year 2000 based on the color, so probably these rims are 22 years old. Wondering if this broken spoke problem will continue because of their age, I asked how much it would cost to have the wheels rebuilt using all new spokes. So, the total would be: 32 spokes per wheel, 2 wheels $64 plus the labor of $90 per wheel equals $244. This makes it, based on the fairly inexpensive group set of the bike, a better to just buy a new set of wheels.

The back wheel was ready yesterday afternoon, so this morning I got to go for a ride. I didn’t break any new spokes so maybe that whole conversation about new spokes or wheels is moot.

47.4 miles on 5 drives in the last week or so.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 47

Robert B. Parker Books

I’ve written here numerous times before about my love of Robert B. Parker books, but not for quite a long time now. The other week when we lucked into a woman getting rid of her mom’s stuff and gave us carte blanche on her jigsaw puzzles, she also offered up any of the books too. Donna grabbed a few and I picked up 4 hardcovers of Robert B. Parker books. Only one of which was actually written by Mr. Parker, well one and a half.

The first book was the fourth novel of the Virgil Cole/Everett Hitch western series called Blue Eyed Devil. I had read the first two of these books, and while I enjoyed them, I didn’t seek out any more, very much unlike the Spenser series, which at one time I had a copy of every one of the books. This book was the last one Mr. Parker wrote before he passed away, but the series has continued with Robert Knott churning them out. Number eleven is due out this October.

The second book I took was a Jesse Stone novel called Colorblind. I can’t tell you how many of these books, about an ex-LAPD detective turned police chief of a small Massachusetts town called Paradise, I have read, maybe four or five of the nine he wrote. There are now twenty Jesse Stone books total, the one I just finished was written by Reed Farrel Coleman who took over the series back in 2010. Mr. Coleman wrote nine books before giving way to Mike Lupica who is responsible for the latest two books.

The third book I got was Little White Lies, a Spenser novel, that was written by Ace Atkins. Previously I had read one of the other Spenser books by Mr. Atkins, but didn’t really like it. This one was different, I enjoyed it, at least for the first half. The book was only maybe a third or so longer page-wise than the typical Robert B. Parker, but the text is denser, making the halfway point feel about the time the book should have finished.

The fourth book, which I haven’t read yet, is called Silent Night: A Spenser Holiday Novel. This book was unfinished at the time of his death and was completed by Parker’s longtime literary agent Helen Brann.

I did get something interesting from the third book, I got to add to my collection of Spenser’s Crime Buster Rules for the first time in 15 years: On the list of crime-busting techniques, talking to the nosy neighbor was always in the top five.

Return Trip

After grabbing four Post Offices on the way up to Washington, on the way home we took photos of seven. This pretty much takes care of all of the possible post offices along US97 in the state. There are only two left, our hometown P.O. and one 70 miles north of us in Chemult. Klamath Falls we can do anytime and we would have done Chemult on the way home as well, but when Donna asked, I said we already had it. Ooops.

46,000 Fruit Trees

Another 280 mile day consisting of The Dalles, OR to Monroe, WA and another day of more traffic than expected in a few spots. Don’t ask me about Sultan, WA…

We did manage to take a very pleasant and fun road from Yakima to Ellensburg. WA-821 runs right along the river through a canyon filled with 24 miles of sweeper turns and beautiful scenery.

If you have a hankering for Italian food you definitely can’t go wrong at the Ellensburg Pasta Company.

Just south of Yakima, while driving through thousands of apple and cherry trees the LadyBug ticked past its forty-six thousandth mile.

Small Road Trip

Off to the Great State of Washington. We are heading to the World Famous 4th of July Picnic of Les & Joanie Gilbert, something we haven’t been to for the past 5 years. Today’s leg was around 280 miles and for the first 100 and the last 80 of those miles it was smooth sailing, but the middle section from south of Bend to where US197 splits off was crowded, slow and quite a contrast to the end segments.

We did stop in downtown Bend for lunch and had a great meal at a place called The Point. We split an order of beer battered fish. But the real highlight was something that Donna saw on a chalk board inside, Fried Apples. It might have been advertised as a desert but we had it as an appetizer. The half dozen slices tasted like a sublime fried apple pie and were served with a caramel dipping sauce and some whipped cream.

For the fun of it and to break up the drive we snagged 3 Post Office photos. There were a couple more we were close to, but on a Friday their parking lots were too full to even find a spot to park in so that I could get car and Post Office in the same frame. We may try and stop at a couple few on the way home next Tuesday.