WTF

Wendover Will

On Day 12 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip we spent the night in the town of Wendover, Utah. The town sits right on the border between Utah and Nevada and just across the literal line in the sand sits the town of West Wendover. In 1952 West Wendover, Nevada replaced a bright light on a tall pole that State Line Service (a cobblestone service station), right on the border, had used to attract visitors with a 64 foot tall mechanical cowboy outlined in neon lights.

Probably hundreds of thousands of people have taken pictures of Will and even themselves with Wendover Will over the years, but now the town has created a page where if you submit a selfie photo with him they’ll post it with a digital pin on the map of where your from. I, of course, thought it sounded like fun, so I took a picture. It is not a very good picture overall and shows that I need a lot more practice at the selfie thing. Take a look and see if you can find me: Wendover Will Visitor Map

Easter Miracle

Cleaning up the drafts folder…
Somewhere in the middle of March, while doing some laundry, one of the socks from Donna’s favorite pair of yoga socks came up missing. We looked in every nook & cranny of every item of clothing that was in the wash load with no success. I retraced our steps to the laundry room, I looked beside and behind the washer and the dryer, I looked inside the dryer to see if it was stuck somewhere and then retraced our steps back into the bedroom where we were folding the clothes. No sock.

Donna repeated what I just did and she didn’t find the missing sock either. While she was doing this I looked under the bed we threw the clothes on to fold thinking maybe it fell off and got kicked under there. Nope. When Donna got back she looked under the bed too. No sock. We shrugged our shoulders and figured it would show up in the leg or sleeve of someone’s in the near future.

Two weeks later, on Easter morning when I got out of bed in our hotel in Myrtle Beach and turned on the light in the bathroom, there in the middle of the tile floor was the missing sock. How the sock got there is a total mystery. The suitcases with all our clothing were kept in the room. Any clothes brought into the bathroom wouldn’t have included socks or anything that a sock could hide in. It was just there.

Of course we weren’t really sure that it wasn’t the non-missing sock until we got home on Sunday afternoon and Donna looked in her closet and saw the other sock sitting on the shelf right where she left it waiting for its mate. Still not sure how the resurrected sock made it to Myrtle Beach and to magically appear on a bathroom floor.

Huh? Snort! What?!?

Last Saturday Donna and I went over to the annual Book Fair put on by the local AAUW. In years past this was one of our main suppliers of cheap reads, but now that we both have been Kindlized(TM) we still go to hunt for a gem or two and a few books for the nieces and nephew in Washington state.

For as long as we can remember they have found a local space that at one time was a large open retail shopping place. This year they couldn’t find something like that so they settled for a three story office building that used to be the home of a Bomb Plant sub-contractor. All the office cubical walls were still standing in the four large rooms on each floor and they had printed maps directing shoppers to which cubicals housed which category of books. I was both awkwarder and easier than the typical one large room with straight rows of tables.

They were only allowed to set up on the first and third floors, so the button for the second floor was taped over. They had also deactivated it, so when the curious among us pressed it, the elevator would just pass right by on the way up or down. This led to speculation as to just what was left behind on the the 2nd floor. A couple of lead lined boxes with nuclear waste, where the original paper X-Files were moved after they where closed down or alien artifacts previously held in Area 51. More likely though it was all the phones, chairs, chair mats, pencils, pencil sharpeners, desk lamps, etc. left behind from floors numbers 1 & 3.

Donna picked out a few books to send off to the west coast and I, for a total change of pace, picked out a couple of audio books. One was a book I remember hearing about a decade or so earlier and wanted to read, but never did, The Art of Racing in the Rain and the other was a book I did read about a couple of decades ago, The Trials of Rumpole1.

I have talked to people who swear by audio books while driving long distances, but I can’t do it. I would be listening to the first chapter and the next thing I knew we were in the middle of chapter three and I couldn’t tell you what happened. Maybe it is because I like like to pay attention to the driving part of the trip, unlike them. My plan for these was to just sit back on the couch, close my eyes and enjoy someone reading to me. I started listening to chapter one of The Art of Racing in the Rain and the next thing I knew was I was in chapter three with no recollection on how I got there. I must have reverted to my 6-year old self and fell asleep while being read to. So much for that. I wonder how much the two audio books would go for on eBay?

Mr. Meniere Makes A Visit

Sunday morning I woke up at 5:30. I was lying on my side facing the alarm clock and when I opened my eyes the image I saw spun quickly up and repeated and repeated and repeated…so I blinked a couple times, but it wouldn’t stop. I closed my eyes and decided that maybe if I rolled onto my back that would help. Trouble came about when I started to roll over I opened my eyes! I can only equate the visuals to what I imagine is a portion of a potent LSD trip. Once on my back the ceiling fan was scanning across my vision rapidly from left to right.

I closed my eyes and lay there for a few minutes contemplating. I knew what it was, it was the one symptom of Meniere’s Disease that I hadn’t suffered from back in September — vertigo. With experimentation I found that I could make it stop by jamming my eyeballs all the way to the right (direction everything was spinning.) I then woke Donna and told her what was happening. She wanted to know what we should do and I told her the first thing was I needed to go to the bathroom. Using a combination of eyes closed, eyes opened hard to the right and her supporting me, mission accomplished.

It was still early, so I suggested let’s go back to bed and see where we are when we next wake up. I woke up again at 7:30 and I was lying on my side facing the alarm clock. When I opened my eyes the image was perfectly still. I blinked my eyes a couple of times, normal. I closed them for a minute or so and opened back up to the return of ordinary. There hasn’t been a return of the dizziness since.

I’ve given up caffeine as the doctor suggested, so was it the small coffee in the morning and the 20oz. Dr. Pepper in the evening on Saturday? Was it the 300 mile road trip, more than half of it with the top down that brought it on? The pizza in Milledgeville? The glass of wine with dinner? Not getting a lot of sleep two nights before? Watching the synchronized drones of the Olympic’s Closing Ceremony?

P0455

Yesterday about half way home from work, the check engine light come on. Not on the Mini this time, but the Miata. Just like in the Mini though, there was no discernible reason for it and the car showed no drivability symptoms at all. When I got home I hooked up the bluetooth OBD2 scanner and read the code – P0455 – which translates to ” EVAP Emission System Leak Detected Large Leak.”

The most common cause is your gas cap is too loose. I opened the filler door and twisted the gas cap and when I did it may have moved just a tiny amount. I reset the CEL and we’ll see if it comes back.

On the forum, they say if you just tighten the gas cap and keep driving the light will reset after about 30 miles of driving, so I wonder if it takes 30 miles to show up. We filled up the CTBNL last Tuesday night, so it made 3-1/2 round trips to work and one quick run to the bike store on Saturday, which is roughly 30 miles, before lighting.

Mini Wiper Blade Fun

Back in October, the first time we drove the Mini in the rain, we found out that the wiper blades squeaked/squealed when they do their job. So I did a search on the North American Motoring Mini Forum and found that the most recommended replacement blades seemed to be the Bosch Icon, so I bought a pair from Amazon.

On a side note, is it really too hard to design it, so the wiper blades are the same length? Mazda didn’t have a problem with the Miata, it uses two 18″ blades. Our recently departed Hyundai Sonata had a 24″ drivers side and an 18″ passenger side blade. The Mini? An 18″ blade for the driver and a 19″ one for the passenger side. (I wonder if on the right-hand drive version of the Mini those are flipped?)

Two days later I got some really nice replacement blades that will not go on our 2013 Mini Cooper. This is because in the middle of 2012, Mini in their infinite wisdom, changed the standard hook ends on the arms to a straight connection and forgot to notify Amazon. So I boxed the Boschs back up to return them and headed to the local parts store. Of the 8-10 different kinds of wiper blades they had hanging there, none of them included an adapter for the Mini’s straight-ending arms.

When we got home, I went back to the forum and re-did my search for wiper arms. This time instead of stopping after the first couple of threads and posts, I dug deeper and discovered that there really isn’t an off the shelf aftermarket blade that’ll work on the 2013 and up cars. I ended up buying some stock blades from a forum sponsor ECS Tuning.

While perusing that site, I discovered that they actually sell a kit to change from the earlier style to these new-fangled aero blades. Is there a 2-ounce weight savings involved here? Am I crazy for considering going the opposite way and getting the older hook-ended arms next time I need wiper blades? OK, maybe I am crazy for wanting to go backwards (and I probably won’t), but for someone like me who drives longer than he should on crappy wipers, finally decides that enough is enough and buys news ones on a rainy day, it is a little unnerving to not be able to walk into the local chain auto parts store and get some replacements.

After The Beep

I had just really settled into my desk at work, it was couple minutes after 7:00 AM, and the desk phone rang. I glanced at the display and saw an 803 (SC) area code, followed by an entirely unfamiliar 7 digits, so I ignored it. I figured, wrong number, or if it was for me, they’d leave a message. No message.

Just after I had finished my sandwich at lunchtime, my cell phone started vibrating. I picked it up, flipped it over and saw a 706 (GA) area code, followed by an entirely unfamiliar 7 digits, so I ignored it. I figured, wrong number, or if it was for me, they’d leave a message. A couple seconds later the phone buzzed once, ah, a message. The Cricket visual voice mail app said, “Cannot display message.” I looked at the time the message used up, 1 second, so, no, no message.

I was just putting the cell phone back down when the desk phone rang. I glanced at the display and saw the same 706 number that had just called the cell phone. One ring and it stopped. No message again.

Spam? Scam? or just Shy?