Chaos Leaves Town

I am enjoying this area quite a bit…mostly because of the fine weather. Warm days, cool but not cold nights. And we’ve had a rain storm or two come through. I’ve gotten some work done on my RV too, here’s a link to the latest project, restringing of two Day/Nite Shades. They were in the living room and took me much longer than they should have, for a couple reasons. The article about those specific shades are below that older article of the bedroom shade I had to restring. So scroll down, or better yet, read both articles as they relate.

I also spent half a day visiting three hardware stores trying to find a 1 & 1/2″ plug for the fresh water drain. My Winnie has a drip-drip-drip from a PVC pipe in the middle of the undercarriage that slowly depletes my freshwater tank. It’s a drain that this RV has a slide valve for, used when winterizing the RV. Pull the handle, the slide valve opens, and drains the tank. Except when you close it, it’s suppose to seal. Doesn’t work very good at that. And rather than trying to find and repair whatever is wrong with that slide valve, I’ve just plugged the outlet for now. Had to drive for several miles to find the right sized plug. True value was out, Home Depot didn’t have that size, ended up at a regular plumbing supply house where I finally found the right part. Like I said, took half a day.

After I’d been here a week, I was enjoying myself here enough that I decided to stay another week. No particular reason, I just like it here. This is the area where the Coachella Concert is held each year. My brother Dan used to come down and camp in a tent every year to enjoy the concert but he’s stopped coming because he says the music has gotten too mainstream, with too much hip hop type music. He really goes for off-the-wall style music though. Stuff I can’t stand to listen to.

A couple days ago, I remembered my camera and just cruised around the area near where I’m staying for a look/see. This is the view from the end of the street I’m on.

And up the road a bit is this little store. They really need to dust in there. Not a very pleasant shopping expirience. They have a little tiny Mexican style cafe in there too. If it wasn’t filthy all over the store, I might have tried eating there.

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I’ve added another repair section to my blog. 

The new blog thread is going to cover any repairs and mods I make to my 2001 Saturn SL1. It’s a 4 cylinder 1.9L 4-door coup. I wish it had power everything like in the cars I’ve bought before but sadly, no. All it has is A/C and an aftermarket AM/FM/AUX/CD system.

When I bought it in June 2016, it only had 60,085 miles on it. It still did need some parts replaced as they were poorly designed or manufactured by Saturn to begin with and had short lives. You’ll see what I have had to do on the car so far at this link: 2001 Saturn SL1.

And for the towing story, links, info, and results click the link here: History and Setting up to Tow…

Thanks for reading!

Finished and posted a write up of the installation of a Progressive Industries EMS-LCHW50 Surge Protector in the Journey. If you’re a fan of DIY electrical stuff, you may enjoy this, and this article may just be helpful down the line.

Electrical: Adding Surge Protection

The following weekend, after enjoying the Blues Festival in the gorge, I went to the Gresham Saturday Market (GSM) at Mt. Hood Community College (MHCC) in Gresham. The GSM is a summertime event and has been around for years. And it’s where my friends and former neighbors make much of their yearly income, because they operate a booth where Kathy sells homemade dipping sauces from her grandmother’s recipes. The venue is very pretty there on the NW parking lot of the college. Lots of tall pines give welcome shade.

My ex wife and I both attended MHCC back in the ’70’s, she to get an office management type degree, me to get my ABA (Associate in Business Administration). To go along with my AAS (Associate in Applied Science – Electronics) degree. It was great fun going there. It was interesting going to college with my wife, and because we averaged 10 years older than most of the the student body, we got respect. I took 200 series Physics and Chemistry because I fully intended to get my electronics engineering degree someday. Along with any other science, computer programming, or technology course I could squeeze into my schedule. Had to work pretty hard. Lots of studying and homework. That damn required accounting though…two years of accounting classes and all I learned was that it’s so dry and boring. I got A’s and B’s but I’ll be damned if a year after I graduated I could have told you much of anything about that class.

But, I did learn some stuff that helped years later when I started my own Electrical, electronic design, and computer consulting business.

So, I have some friends that set up a booth up at the GSM and they collect my mail for me so I went up to visit and pick it up. While there, I wandered around campus and took some pictures.

And there the GSM is, across the street from where I parked. Lots of trees all around the venue.

This is a look back down Kane. When we first went to MHCC, the right side was an empty field with trees. The owner tried to sell the property for a fast food franchise on the corner of Kane and Stark but for some reason, many students opposed it. They occupied the property to prevent clearing the land. Huh? I never did understand their objections about that so I sort of stayed out of it. Yeah, there were some big beautiful pine trees, and open meadow that students took their lunch on, but really, the purposed fast food joint would have been handy. Though I loved our cafeteria, sometimes change can be fun and interesting. The owner was a good sport about the protests, maybe it was MHCC that owned it and they’re sensitive about community perceptions of their behavior? Anyway, the owner shelved the idea for a couple years until that particular group of students had moved on, and objections to development had faded, then they developed the land. Now it has a large theater, a bar and grill, a huge parking lot, and a Jack-in-the-Box on that parcel.

On the left side of the street in this picture is the MHCC campus.

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