Year: 2024

February Ride Schedule

I was the editor/publisher of the newsletter for the Aiken (South Carolina) Bicycle Club for most of the 90’s. The best part about it was creating the ride schedule because I kept the format my predecessor created, giving the rides names that referenced something that happened on that particular date. The club did a ride on both Saturday and Sunday. Ride leaders volunteered for the day and the the length of the ride at the monthly meeting of the previous month but I made up the ride title. Here is the ride schedule for February 1994…

Sat. Feb 5 – 8:00 AM
Track Kitchen Ride. The Cold Weather Rule is suspended for this 8:00 am ride. Don your warm woollies and cycle with Woody Huffines <642-7257> on this 1.5 miler to the Track Kitchen, a horsy Aiken institution, to put on the breakfast feedbag. (3 miles/E)

Sun Feb 6 – 1:00 PM
Longest Drive Ride. Donna Bogardus <642-0767> will lead this edition of the Sunday Fun Ride, 23 years after Alan Shepard hit the longest golf drive ever. It was also the longest drive to get to the course, 239,000 miles. (10-15 miles/E)

Sat Feb 12 – 1:00 PM
The Vanishing Red M&M’s Ride. Doug Walker <649-5929> will lead today’s ride on the 18th anniversary of the FDA’s banning of red dye #2 in food, drugs & cosmetics. (30-40 miles/M)

Sun Feb – 1:00 PM
Disavow Your Copernican Beliefs Ride. Ride along with Doug Felix <649-1780> as he retraces Galileo’s route into Rome to stand trial before the Inquisition in 1633 for his belief in the heliocentric theory of planetary movement. (10-15 miles/E)

Sat Feb 19 – 1:00 PM
Diathermy Machine Ride. Come ride with Bill Young <648-3898>, as he offers up his idea for a new loop 4 today. Hopefully, when finished, no one will need the services of this device first used 70 years ago on this date. (25 miles/M)

Sun Feb 20 – 10:00 AM
Bankruptcy Ride. Clint Johnson <649-4972> will lead a careful off-road ride so as not to duplicate Austria’s trick of going belly up back in 1811. Put your MTB on the car rack for the ride to a local trail. (10-12 miles/E-M)

Sun Feb 20 – 1:00 PM
First American in Orbit Ride. Join John Glenn lookalike ABC V.P. Ed Leibfarth <279-9161> on a fun ride that promises to be shorter than Friendship 7’s 4-hour & 56-minute flight in 1962, but no less exciting. (10-15 miles/E)

Fri Feb 25 – 6:15 PM
Moonlight Levee Ride. Brian Bogardus <642-0767> will lead this night trip along the Augusta Canal. Meet at Weeks @ 6:15 for the caravan-o’-cars over to, or meet at the Confederate Powder Works Chimney @ 7:00. (12 miles/E)

Sat Feb 26 – 12:00 Noon
National Currency Act Ride. Jaye Pearce <642-3856> leads her second ABC ride, 131 years after President Abraham Lincoln assured his place on the $5 note by signing this bill into law. (40 miles/M)

Sun Feb 27 -1:00 PM
Double Golden Ride. Come out and help Leslie Romano <649-6204> celebrate what she says, is her and husband Joe’s 100th wedding anniversary, by riding approximately 1/10 of a mile for every year of what, up until now, Joe thought was matrimonial bliss. (10-15 miles/E)

Demo Day

A whole lot of banging and sawing went on today. The main bath was being gutted so that we can get a really nice titled true flat floor walk-in shower instead of the stained fiberglass one we had.

We had the TV in the living room up pretty loud listening to Radio Paradise while we worked on a jigsaw puzzle. But at times it was so loud that Donna requested to borrow my over the ear headphones to play Radio Paradise via the app on my cell phone. From this photo it looks like they are almost finished with the tear down.

The loud noises will continue tomorrow at 10: 00 AM.

Uncontrolled Quality?

A couple weeks ago the dryer started to let out a little squeal on start up randomly. So I ignored it. a week ago the randomness stopped and it became routine. I started shopping around for deals on laundry pairs. Last Friday the little squeal became a constant loud scream of ear splitting high pitched noise.

We were now stuck with a load of soaking wet clothes. I called our neighbor across the street to ask if I could dry a load of clothes because our dryer was making a loud squeal (I’m almost surprised she didn’t hear it.) She said, “You can of course use my dryer. But, we do have a small laundry room in the community and it is free.” “Oh,” I said, “I’ll try the on-site laundry first. Thanks.”

It was just two washers and 2 dryers and when I got there a woman was in one set, so I popped are wet clothes in and opened the Lowes app to see what I could get in a hurry (there was actually a filter for that criteria.) I could get a set of stackable Whirlpool units delivered the very next day, Saturday.

I selected the haul away service because broken laundry machinery won’t fit in the back of the Mini. They won’t let you check out until you have added the water supply hoses, the dryer power cord, plus the dryer ducting and the clamps, even though what I had on the old machines would work. Oh, and $55 for the stacking kit of 4 plastic feet, 2 metal plates and 4 screws.

The delivery, the assembly, stacking and hauling away, went great. It took them maybe 45 minutes total and we were ready to do a load. Washing was fine, but when the wet clothes went into the dryer it sounded like something didn’t get screwed down inside the machine. I put pressure on the dryer sides, then the top, I even lifted the front of the machine and the noise was diminished some, but not to an acceptable level. Checked to see if the machine was off level, it wasn’t.

I went online and registered the machines and their serial number with the manufacturer. Right after I got the registration conformation email I entered a request for warranty service. Because everything is online and artificially intelligent these days, even though it was Saturday, I had a Monday morning appointment for some service.

It took the fellow who came maybe 5 minutes to diagnose the issue of a faulty blower wheel. His comment was, “We’ve been seeing a lot of this lately.”

Does the manufacturer know that they have this problem?

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Back to Reality Edition of SORT
As of Monday, February 19, 2024 at 8:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1973 Porsche 914 2006 Jeep Wrangler 2016 BMW 328i
An almost perfect 914 for me. Love the exterior color, the wheels & plaid seats. But, the plaid dash is a little bit too much. Back in 2006 when you looked up “off-road vehicle” in your Encyclopedia Britannica this is the photo you would have seen. With the back seats down there is nearly as much space as a small SUV, but with the handling of a sports car.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sport: 1980 MG MGB Sold for $9,600 on 2/15/24
Off-Road: 1983 Mercedes-Benz 230GE Bid to $22,000 on 2/14/24
Touring: 2012 Porsche Panamera Sold for $37,250 on 2/14/24

Time (and PHP) Marchs On

I received an email from my webhost the other day that said, HostGator is excited to announce that we will be upgrading our servers to PHP 8.2.” They were going to start rolling it out on or about the 20th of February, but I figured why not go ahead and do it myself in my cPanel. Several clicks later my website was running the new version instead of PHP 7.3.

The only trouble was, WordPress was not happy with the change. Life of Brian was just displaying an error page. As usual, I made the leap of upgrading PHP, just like I do with every WordPress update, without backing up the database or deactivating any plugins. This time it bit me in the ass.

Step one was back into cPanel to rename my plugin directory to /plugin.old see if plain old WordPress would come up. And, phew, it did. So, the database wasn’t the problem. One of the plugins must not be compatible with the new PHP. Next step was to create a new /plugin directory and add my 25 plugins back one by one and wait for the crash. It didn’t take long.

The very first one I tried caused the blog to disappear and an error page to show. And unfortunately it was one of my favorites and alphabetically first, A Year Before.If you clicked that last link and can’t read German, let me ‘splain it to you. On the date you are looking at the blog, this widget would show a couple links that are the title of a post I created on that same particular date in the past.

The only other plugin that was problematic was one that allowed me to put widgets in columns on the sidebar. It didn’t crash the site, but it did screw up the nice way I had the ‘best of’ and ‘rest of’ displayed in the sidebar. I did make a work around, but it isn’t nearly as elegant looking as before.

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Super Bowl Hangover Edition of SORT
As of Monday, February 12, 2024 at 5:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1980 MG
MGB		 1983 Mercedes-Benz
230GE		 2012 Porsche
Panamera
Every time I tell of buying my first Miata, I mention that I always wanted an MGB in high school, it is about time to try one. I’d like to think that I’m an Alt Version person, so instead of a Jeep Wrangler this M-B would be the perfect alternative. This is probably the ideal touring car and I didn’t think I’d ever picked one before, but I had just done it 8 weeks before.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sport: 1995 Rover Mini Cooper Sold for $26,250 on 2/8/24
Off-Road: 2003 Lexus GX470 Sold for $30,250 on 2/8/24
Touring: 2001 BMW M5 Sold for $37,000 on 2/8/24

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

The Cruelest Month Edition of SORT
As of Monday, February 5, 2024 at 5:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1995 Rover Mini Cooper
 2003 Lexus GX470 2001 BMW M5
How can 62 HP constitute sports car? When it only has to move 1400lbs, that’s how. Im keeping this for about a year so I can sell it before the whole overlanding phase is over. The early 2000’s were the last time BMWs actually deserved ‘The Ultimate Driving Machine’ phrase.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sport: 1973 Porsche 914 Sold for $27,914 on 1/30/24
Off-Road: 1977 Toyota Land Cruiser Bid to $30,500 on 1/30/24
Touring: 2015 Land Rover Range RoverSold for $27,250 on 1/30/24