5 MPH... Believe It!!!

This happened today. One of my pet peeves, when people fail to use their turn signals. When this fool started hitting his brakes, I said, "Hmmm, I wonder what's going to happen here..." but then they let off, and I thought for a moment I had been faked out, but no!!! In retrospect, they should not have let off!!! These exits are marked a 5 MPH, and if you aren't a master of cornering with decent tires, you best believe it!!!

Of course, I was driving Scruffy, and had to come to a full stop unexpectedly, so I was glad to not have another incident of rhinoplasty!!! I know the dash cam has audio recording, and it doesn't have any way to turn it off, but apparently it's not working. As I rolled past afterwards, I called out "Genius!!!"

The Mixer Mix Up

So, I'm driving home last week (in Scruffy, naturally) when I went over something in the road. I didn't see it, but heard the double thump of it going under the wheels or bouncing off the underside. Hope it didn't damage any tires...

As I'm proceeding home, I start hearing a scrape whenever I hit a larger dip in the road. I had flashbacks to the time the crappy hanger on the crappy exhaust pipe had broke. I drove home, hoping for everything to hold together and wondering how my heavy duty double bracketrey could have failed. Headed over to that side when I got home for a look, and saw a bar in the wheel well, pointing towards the tire.

(I did a closer shot with one of those helpful arrows pointed at it)

Huh. How did that happen??? And it's way away from where the bracket is. Went around the other side and went to drop down and get a look at what happened.

And found this poking out from the front end!!! That's no hanger!!! Turned out it was a paint mixer that had gotten flattened and went over the tip I'd made up!!!!

In other news, I think the high temp paint I used on it isn't a very effective rust preventative!!!

Geo Tag You're It

Just recently my younger son has discovered geocaching. I had heard of it years ago, and thought it sounded interesting, but never went any farther than that.

He found one fairly close to our house, and a few down in the flatlands. There were a couple over on the other side of the mountain, so last weekend we trekked over to see if we could find it.

There's a wildlands park over there, and that's where we went. Things I always saw in cartoons growing up, but had never seen in real life, hollow logs, a hollowed out tree, and a bee hive in a tree!!!

It's a pretty wild place, for being in the midst of the city. We'd never been in this area before.

Of course, we hit a couple pokestops and Pokemon gyms on the way, one of them having a raid.

Came across a rope swing along the way.

There was a lot to see out there!!!

This weekend we headed out to hit a couple of raids in Pokemon Go, as well as spinning some pokestops. We each had two Team Rocket battles, too. After the second raid, he saw that there was a Snorlax a ways over from where we were at, and he was off!!! I caught up a little after, and fed it a golden raspberry and used an ultra ball on it. It was considerably higher level than the one I have (which I'd caught in a battle encounter), and after it broke out of the second ball, it ran away!!!

But my son finally got one of his own!!!

In the Harsh, Cold Light of Day

I kept telling myself it might not be that bad. Sure, the front bumper cap would need replaced, and I was sure that some of the mounting points on the fenders would have snapped, and the hood has a little fold on it that would need seen to, but since the impact was all on the bumper, maybe it just pulled everything attached to it out of joint??? I was looking at junkyard inventory and replacement bumper caps, as well as aftermarket styled bumpers, which are mostly hideous.

Finally got a chance to check it out yesterday. I had to use a crowbar to get the finger latch undone. Nope, I'm confident it's a total loss. In the first picture, I circled the bumper mount, that looks like it's bent about 15°, and has a big crease.

The aluminum bumper beam is all twisted, too, and the side metal that mounts the fenders is pushed over. The plastic mount for the driver's side headlight is broken, as well as the front end of the fender. In the last picture, you can see my new motor mount, which should be parallel with the frame, is at an angle.

Sometime in the future, I'll be yanking the engine and probably the transmission out. This is the only Saturn that hasn't developed oil usage issues. Probably will drop it directly into Scruffy.

While I don't completely NEED another car, it's always nice to have a back up. Currently, I'm not seeing anything that's a direct replacement, but there's a super impractical Sky Redline that I really like the look of for a better price than I've ever seen before. It's a sexy beast!!! And there's another way I've been considering going for a few years that I might just pull the trigger on!!!

Rhinoplasty Part Two

It's been raining since Sunday, on and off. It was coming down in buckets on Sunday night, but not at all yesterday afternoon. Coming home tonight it was, and just before a ramp I was taking, I saw a great puddle of water, extending a lane and a half out from the right. Uh oh... As I hit it, the car started pulling to the center of the freeway pretty hard, and I probably was trying to correct the other direction. With the little traction I had, I began a spin heading towards the outside wall. I saw it coming and knew there was nothing I could do but brace myself. It was a hard hit, I was probably still doing 50 or so, and kept spinning for a second revolution, coming to rest with the back end towards the wall, and the nose out in the traffic lane. I turned on my hazard lights and assessed the situation. Of course, it shook up everything in the car, my water bottle, glasses, phone, and the lid to my coffee cup all ended up in the footwell on the drivers' side. I picked all these up, put the gearshift into park, and tried to fire it up. Started up on the second crank, and I straightened it up onto the shoulder, and assessed the the exterior. I'd thought for sure it caught both ends, but apparently it was all on the front. It looked ugly, but nothing that would prevent me from driving it. Headed home, and there was a scraping noise as I was driving. A couple blocks away, I heard something come loose, so I pulled over and discovered the plastic shield below the radiator had been knocked loose.

When I got home, I took out the memory card from the dash cam. There were a half dozen of the clips marked with the emergency save, but none of them were from tonight. Scrolled though the rest, and where it should have been, I got a clip with the unplayable message. Good thing I didn't need it as evidence for an incident with another vehicle!!! I checked the rear camera, and it didn't get scrambled like the front facing one had, and here's the clip!!! Can't tell much of what's going on, but you can see the splash of water, and the spin and where it ended up.

As you can see, it made a mess of the front bumper!!! Lost the emblem, tweaked the headlights out of place, as well as tweaking the fenders and hood out of place.

In addition, that alignment I just got is now completely shot!!! The steering wheel in about 30° out of square. We'll see how it looks in the light of day, and when things have dried out some. Also, it wasn't a sufficient hit to set off the airbags!!!

At least when my wife did Scruffy's nose, it was just the hood!!!

Doing Time

Strange times are upon us, such as I have never seen. The Wuhan virus has put severe restrictions on our day to day lives. The government has all but put the gas-on-a-fire economy into an induced coma. Here's to hoping it will still live once restrictions are eased.

As always, with my work, I had to map out my vacation times off at the end of last year. Of course, not having anything planned out in advance, I was just going for random chunks of time strung together. My wife said, "we never take vacations in the first part of the year, you should take some time and do that!!!" OK, I requested March 16th to 18th off, strung onto a weekend. If you're keeping track, that's right around the time things started getting real with the Wuhan virus. That didn't work out well at all!!!

A couple weeks before my vacation time came up, I'd gotten an Email from the Catalina Island Company, who were doing an off season promotion where if you bought weekday lodging at a couple of their hotels, they would provide boat travel. That sounded like a pretty good deal, and I was considering doing it. However, getting close to time, and the weather prediction was for rain there most of the time. Since it's largely a pedestrian attraction, I scrubbed that from our plans.

I figured we'd stick close to home instead, go see a movie or two, go out and get some food, maybe do some things around the house. Then the lockdown came. Movie theaters were closed, and restaurants were limited to take out. Ah well, the best laid plans and all that...

So, watched a few recent releases on TV. I'd wanted to see the latest Quentin Tarantino feature, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It was pretty enjoyable, but I'd put some of his other works ahead of it. Maybe I just need to see it again and let it grow on me.

My wife has been wanting to see Dr. Sleep again. We'd seen it when we were on our anniversary weekend trip, right around when it came out. I'd read the book, and thought it was quite good. As far as an adaptation of a book goes, it was a pretty good job. An even better job was the melding of the original Stanley Kubrick Jack Nicholson Shining, of which this is a sequel.

Way back in 2007 I'd been bad-mouthing I Am Legend for being a poor man's Omega Man. Well, it happened to be on TV, and I checked it out. It was actually pretty good!!!

Ended up doing a few things on the cars, too. Finally took 3 to get aligned, months after replacing the tie rod ends. I'd been getting a code for a fuel tank pressure sensor on Scruffy. I got a replacement, and spent a couple days dropping the fuel tank and replacing it. It was the first time I'd done such a thing, and it was a bit of an ordeal since I didn't know that I had to completely remove one of the straps. Haven't gotten that code since, so it seems to have been a success. After that, I rotated the tires on 3, and had checked the rear brakes, where I had been getting a bit of a shudder. Figured it was probably getting time for new brake shoes, but they had lots of lining left, and it had a leaking wheel cylinder. Fortunately, I had an extra new one, so I put that in. The sealing washer was worn out, though, so finally got it finished a week later. Did an oil change on her, too. Next, I pulled the back end off Jade. I'd done the back brakes a while ago, and they didn't seem to be self-adjusting properly. Found the problem rather quickly, one of the springs I'd replaced back when I'd done them originally had broken.

We brought home a pizza one night, and another night had a frozen Jeno's East Chicago Deep Dish pizza.

Turns out my job is one of those critical services, as we supply many medical and infrastructure entities. Things are different there, but we're still going. I'm a bit jealous of the people who are having to stay home, I could get so many other things done if I were, but I think I'd rather still have an income in these uncertain times. Bonus, the traffic out there is some of the best I've ever seen!!! Double bonus, they have been having most of the office and sales forces working from home, so parking at work is also much better!!!

Last Friday I took Scruffy for a 4-wheel alignment to correct the rear tire wear it's been getting. apparently the toe settings were way off. Yesterday I began doing a piston soak on Jade, trying to use Sea Foam as the medium this time to see if it does any better. I've still been getting the P0410 code on Scruffy, so I'm trying some Sea Foam as a soak in the injector ports, too, to see if that helps.

Quick Break

Every once in a while, CHP or the police will run a traffic break. Sometimes you don't know why, but this time was to clear some debris off the freeway, a tie down strap that someone had lost.

Light traffic for a Monday morning. Things are slow on account of the Wuhan virus. I have some other things I've been thinking of posting regarding that, but for now, you get this.

Car Stuff

Some car stuff that's happened. First up, the previously mentioned radiator replacement on Jade. This was back in December, it started losing water pretty regularly. Gave it an inspection, and it had coolant ooze on the driver's side tank of the radiator between the transmission cooler lines, so I figured that was it.

Put a replacement in, and while I was doing that, discovered some damage to the bottom edge and the air conditioning condenser (as well as the radiator, but I took care of that!!!), probably from the time it fell off the jack!!! Fortunately, the extra clearance on both of those components doesn't appear to have affected the functionality of either of them.

So, went through all that, flushed the cooling system, and then noticed the underside of the fill cap didn't look right. That may have been all it needed.

Got myself another set of Ion rims to put on 3, as I've been wanting to do. The rims on 3 were the ones from Baby, and the tires on there were a couple years old when I swapped them on, so I've got my money's worth out of them. There's a whole story on those where they ended up costing too much, suffice it to say don't waste your money on those Goodyear mileage maximizing tires, they have such hard compound to them as to be dangerous, and I ended up getting even worse mileage with them than I'd had with a set of Chinese cheapies.

Anyway, I'd ended up getting two on the Thanksgiving weekend 40% off day, and two on the New Year's sale. Same deal as last time, I was only able to find two machined face ones, and two other painted. As you can see, one was in way worse condition!!! I was telling my dad I'd like to get the painted ones machined to match, and he made the comment, "Well, we know how to polish..." Yeah, that used to be a fair amount of my previous career. Planted the idea in my head, and I bought the discs and wheels and compound to polish, and went to work. It's too much work, but it's getting there. Still need to get an alignment from when I replaced the rod ends. Additionally, it looks like I've got one of the rear wheels on Scruffy that needs work, probably a camber kit, as it's wearing the tire back there prematurely.

And finally, that cool flat exhaust tip I made up??? The dip down to clear the emergency brake cable became the low point, and as with most lowered cars, occasionally you scrape a little. It appears it's done a bit of tweaking it up some, to where it's into the rocker panel, and it's melted it down a little. If I'm able, I'll get some aluminum tubing the same diameter and make up a metal piece with a cutout around it to give it some clearance.

Lil Irv

So, once again with the Pokemons!!! One of the daily things to do with your buddy Pokemon to keep your level up is take a picture with it, so I've got several pictures on my camera roll!!!

First up is from back when I had a Bulbasaur as my buddy. Back when we'd vacationed in Encinitas and had gone to Legoland, I'd won a stuffed Bulbasaur, so I posed them together. Back when the firstborn was a youngster, he had a Pokemon VHS tape that, of course, he would play fairly constantly. It had a scene of them stumbling upon an evolution ceremony of bulbasaurs, so that is permanently etched in my brain.

Then I've switched to Lil Irv, my buddy Flareon. Here he is, outside, after I've given him some berries.

And again, at my work.

Then, when I tried to see if I could get a shot of him from behind.

And there he is, just this week, you'll notice he has a best buddy badge now!!!

While we were out shopping, and he had found some goodies. My wife in the background, reminiscent of when she didn't approve of my Baja Blast!!!

One of my favorite pictures of 'em!!!

Then, I tried to get a shot of him with the cat, and was photobombed by a Smeargle!!!

This week I also came upon my first Flareons in the wild. Caught one, and it turned out to have a higher level than Lil Irv!!! There was, of course, some debate as to what would become of them, and I finally decided to re-name it!!! Meet Big Irv!!! This is now my top six, the Virizion (from the raid we had done at Universal Studios) had for quite a while held the top spot.

I'm generally not in the habit of re-naming my catches, but here's the only other one I've re-named!!! See why??? Do not vote for the socialist!!!

And, just today, caught myself a Snorlax!!! Went up to my younger boy and asked him, "You Jealous???" He asks why, and I show him and say, "You Jealous."

Done with Mirrors

You will recall my bumper mod, and how I was dissatisfied with the results of the illumination. Here's what I've done to improve it some.

I drilled several holes through the plastic bumper core, in the areas that weren't getting good light transmission, both vertically and horizontally.

On the original installation, I'd thought it would diffuse enough light to illuminate the opening with the light strips facing up vertically on the metal bumper core, but I was mistaken.

So, after drilling the holes to allow the light to pass through, I mounted a strip of highly polished stainless steel on a 45° angle over the LED strips. The result looked promising...

Then, above the vertical series of holes, I added another strip, again on a 45° angle, for a periscope effect.

The blue light seems considerably more visible, and across a wider area. I'm pleased with the results!!! My goal from the beginning was to have the light diffused and subtle, yet across the openings.

The red light, however, is still a bit light. It's visible, but just barely. The picture actually has quite a bit of light scatter from the tail lights. I may be opening up the area one more time!!!

Yule Do Over

Remember two years back when the company had the Christmas Party at Universal Studios??? Apparently, it was so well received that it was deemed worthy of doing it again!!! Two years back, I took the day off so we could spend some time at the park before the party started. This year, when they were distributing the tickets, they tell me, "Oh, you do the Saturday shift, right??? This year, for your crew, we're giving out the wristbands, and instead of passes for that day, here's a pair that are good until the end of the year!!!" Cool!!!

So, after I got off work that day, came home and got changed, then my wife and I headed over there. It was a good time again, tasty English style foods, and all the butterbeer you can drink!!! Two years back, when we were on the way out, I grabbed a bottle of the pumpkin juice drink they had there, and brought it home for the younger. He liked it, and asked us to try and get some more. Got two!!!

So, most of the year since the announcement, the younger has been bemoaning that he's never even been to Harry Potter land. Since I had separate wristbands and passes, a plan forms...

I took the Thursday before Christmas off, and the boy and I went!!! It was a good time, and while we were there, we both played Pokemon Go a good amount!!! At the time I had a Bulbasaur as my buddy, and there he is!!! He caught a shiny Charmander, so that was cool. We, and several others, did a 5-star raid, and got a Virizion, my highest one.

The first thing we did was hit the Harry Potter ride. We used the single rider line, and the wait wasn't too bad at all. Got some butterbeer afterwards, and found out that all the butterbeer I'd gotten for free was pretty expensive if you were to pay for it!!!

Went to the Simpson's area, and got a shot of Homer and Marge from behind from inside the shop we were in. Surprise, they were out of "Bort" license plates!!!

We headed down to the lower lot, the only area with anything approximating a proper roller coaster, the mummy coaster. Just as we got to the entrance, out of it comes the mummy himself, flanked by two very tall acolytes or priests-priestesses!!! The female one stopped by my boy and was petting his head!!! Then we posed for a picture with them all.

Also down in that area are the Jurassic Park ride, and the Transformers ride. They have recently redone the Jurassic Park ride, but it's one of those where you will likely get wet, and being on the chilly side, we had no interest in doing that!!!

We had never been on the Transformers ride, though, so we went over to check that out. Single rider line again, with a very short wait time. and it's a pretty good ride. However, close to the end of the ride, it broke down. It wasn't that long of a break down, but I did get a chance to take a couple of pictures!!!

On the way out, they gave us a couple of passes to go on the ride again in compensation. We went over and went through the Jurassic Park gift shop, then doubled back and went on the Transformers ride again, before heading back up.

The plan was to go on the tram tour, but we had just missed the last one for the day, so we went on the Simpsons ride, which had the longest wait of any of the rides we went on!!!

We'd gone to the Waterworld stunt show earlier on in the day, always entertaining.

I like the way the arch lines up with my head in this shot!!!

Headed back to Harry Potter land, where they were now restricting people going into the area. Not long after they had their Holiday display light show, projected on Hogwart's.

We had noticed the flare of fire coming out of the chimney before, and finally figured out that there's a spot where you can use your fancy new wand to cause it to do so. Went on the Harry Potter ride one more time, and the boy bought himself a good looking Hufflepuff watch.

Back in the Simpson's area, there's Luigi's Pizzeria, and the boy was interested in getting a slice. They have good sized slices, but they were almost $10 for a slice!!! I averred that for less than that, we could get a whole pizza. He made mention of that garlic knots pizza, so we ordered that on the way home to cap off the day. Here I am in the shirt I'd worn all day, one of my recent acquisitions, that depicts an alien eating pizza!!!