Neighborhood Garage Sale

Yesterday was our annual neighborhood garage sale. I usually jump in my car and make a pass through the neighborhood, in the past I have gotten some good deals.

This year there was everything from a really clean 55 Chevy Sedan Delivery,

to a barely used Bocee Ball set.

A block from my house I found this brand new bike with a $20 post it note on it. I didn't really even look at it before pulling cash out of my pocket. After a quick conversation with the owner he told me he had been given they bike at work and had never ridden it.

After explaining I would be back to pick it up I started walking to the next house, thinking I would now need to find one for Tania as well. I had been looking for a his and hers set but nothing I had really pursued.

Next door there were two his and her Schwinns that I was not sure if they were for sale or if someone had ridden them there. I looked around a bit and then asked the home owner if she was selling them. At this point I was just curious since I had just bought a bike. She informed me they were for sale for $10 apiece.

Now I have three bikes...

I looked them up online last night and found the Polaris is currently available and sells for around $240.00. The Schwinns are about 8 years old and sold for just over $200.00 apiece. I think I will sell the Polaris on Craigslist (the Schwinn is a better bike) and use the money to buy some lights for the Schwinns.

There is trail head for a bike path about .5 miles from our house that I would like to start riding on.

Recover

A friend form work gave me some items his room mate no longer wanted. One of which was a rather nice NAPA "Balkamp Racing" creeper. There is no way I would ever pay over $200.00 for one of these, I just wouldn't use it enough, but if someone wants to give me one...

It looked like it had been used very little but the covering near the bottom had a tear in it.

I couldn't think of a good way to fix the vinyl that would have any longevity or wouldn't end with duct tape residue all over my back side. I decided to just recover it, so Tania and I headed to the fabric store to buy some vinyl. I ended up buying black, there wasn't a blue that matched and the black was cheap. Buying one yard is enough to cover it twice and was less than $12.00.

It did take a little work to get the old covering off it was built like a piece of furniture.

Putting it back together I used some 3M #77 spray adhesive to glue the foam pieces together along with the vinyl to the foam.

I'm happy with how it turned out, it took me longer to find my can of spray adhesive and the staple gun than it did to recover the creeper..

Christmas Present

Normally Tania and I don't do much for each other for Christmas. Generally we buy what we want throughout the year that makes it the "how do you buy something for the person that has everything". This year I came up with the idea of each of us putting items on our Amazon wish lists and then we could go through the others list and pick what to get them.

Tania only had selected one of those fancy new pressure cookers so the choice for me was simple. I had like 10 different things picked, from those Tania bought me a Vortex Venom red dot. She even figured out the correct mount for it.

It was very easy to install and the past few weeks I have spent about three hours trying muscle memory exercises to allow for quick and easy sighting. It does take some getting used to along with resisting the urge to move your head to find the dot.

The thing I haven't yet decided is how I will sight it in. I don't have or have access to a sled that will hold a pistol, but since it does have a bottom rail and I have access to a good shooting table I might try this:

At least I think it will steady it for one axis, Ill find out.

I also picked up a trigger scale this week, I want to do a trigger job on my 10/22 and need a way to measure any changes. I'm less worried about the accuracy of the scale an more that it gives me a starting point to finish point.

Hopefully will have an early spring and I can go do some shooting soon.

ATS Allignment

Three weeks ago I took Tania's ATS in to a shop near work for an alignment. The place is very reputable and they have done at least three alignments for me in the past.

That afternoon they called me for what I was expecting to be a notification of the car being ready. Instead it was to let me know they had damaged it. Apparently the alignment tech left the alignment fixture still attached to the passenger side front wheel as he drove it off the rack. It hit the fender just behind the wheel and then pulled the fixture off the wheel, scratching it.

 
The Manager was very apologetic, had already contacted his body shop and had someone over to look at it. I was concerned not knowing who his "body shop" was, so I set my expectations of only OEM parts and let him know how particular I was. We mad arrangements for me to bring it back in just over a week and how they would pay for a rental.

I picked it up yesterday and looked it over closely. Even with the knowledge that it had happened I could not find any indication of it being repaired, I was very impressed with the quality of the work. When speaking to the Manager I thanked him for replacing the wheel, I found out they had it "repaired" and had used a wheel repair shop I have used twice in the past. It looked perfect, actually better than it had before because they removed the road rash from it as well.

Railing Project

A few weeks ago my boss showed me this picture and asked me if I wanted this railing. He said he had bought them for a project at home but they weren't going to work so he wanted to get rid of them.Initially I had no idea what I would use them for but decided to take them just for the steel.

I had them in my garage for a for a while before my wife suggest using them near the entrance of the house.

When I started looking at them closer, I saw just how badly rusted they were, as you can see in this picture the leg is completely rusted through. Fortunately for what I was going to do, the railing didn't need legs.

I ended up cutting out the center area of one of the railings and proceeded to spend about 15 hours of sandblasting, wire wheeling and at some points naval jelly to remove all the rust. I would never try to do that again, at one point it was apparent that even for free the railing was worth less than the time I had invested. After getting the rust off, I used some of the metal from the remaining pieces to make tabs to mount the rail between the columns at the entrance of the house. After a coat of primer and three coats of paint I mounted it with some massive lag screws.

Vegas Vacation

Its been a loooonnnng time since we went on a real vacation. A few months ago Tania purchased a Southwest Vacation for Vegas, basically plane tickets and a hotel. I've been in Vegas a few times over the past few years for various reasons but Tania hasn't been there since our vacation in 1993.

When we arrived in Vegas it took us a while to find the Uber pickup area for the airport, its on the second floor of the short term parking garage. We were staying at the MGM and once we dropped off our bags we hit the strip for something to eat. I did a Google search for what was rated as a good buffet and the one listed on multiple sites was at Caesars Palace, so we headed that way while taking in the desert sun and warmth I have missed so much. I haven't been to that area of the US since we moved back to Indy from Tucson.

I haven't been in Caesars Palace before so it took us a little while to find the buffet. I was glad to see there was no one in line to get in and was looking around as Tania paid for us. While we were being seated I looked across the table at Tania, she looked like she was going to be sick. I asked her what was wrong and she said, "I had no idea this was going to be over $160,00. I'm pretty sure I was able to replicate the same look she had, so in an effort to find the glass half full side of this, I saw a flyer that said something about all you can drink alcohol. When the waitress came over to the table and asked us what we wanted to drink I told her I would have a beer, and she asked if I wanted a bucket of six, I said sure. She then went on to explain that I could do the all you can drink (pointing at the flyer) for an additional $30.00 a piece. I then promptly ordered some iced tea. The remainder of the trip was a game for us in finding the cheapest places we could to eat. The buffet was good but maybe $35.00 each good.

We spent the rest of the night wandering around and headed back to the hotel early that evening. I did find some socks for my boss who has some kind of strange fetish for ugly socks.

After deciding that purchasing them for him could potentially be career limiting, I showed him this picture when we got back. He liked them so much he immediately went online and ordered a pair.
Saturday we walked the casinos did a bunch of shopping and bought a massive margarita. I had bought some tickets for KÀ by Cirque du Solei. I have never been to a Vegas show before so I didn't know what to expect, all I can say is if you get a chance to go you must go, it was very impressive. Don't worry about getting the best seats, even though we were in the fourth row I don't think it would have mattered much where we sat.

They didn't allow cameras during the show so I took a couple pictures before it started, the area surrounding the stage was awesome.

The next day we rented a car and drove to the Hoover Dam. I have wanted to visit the Hover Dam for quite a while but even with us living in Arizona for two years we never made the trip.
We rented a car with the points I had acquired, from a hotel near by. When we arrived the agent informed me they didn't have a midsize sedan available so they had upgraded me to a Range Rover, which for 24 hours cost me $1.86.

This is something you must do if you have the chance, its like a 25 minute drive from Vegas. Going early in the morning is important, it was busy when we got there but when we left there was literally a five plus mile line of cars trying to get in.
Even though we did get there early the full blown power plant tour had a 3 hour wait, so we took the standard tour which was still very good. It took us down in the dam to where the water inlets were and we were able to see the generator room as well. Its a very impressive place with tons of the original Art Deco everywhere.

When we got back into Vegas and while we had a vehicle, we drove over to Gold and Silver Pawn.
It was much smaller inside than I had envisioned and obviously none of the now millionaires that work there were at work, There were some pretty cool items on sale though and its not far off the strip so its worth the visit. I would bet that 98% of the people that were inside were doing the same thing.

Overall it was a good trip and nice to get away for a few days.

Christmas Present

The wife unit got me a Kobalt 1/2" cordless impact for Christmas this year. I already have a 1/4" impact, 3/8" drill, flashlight and three batteries.

I wont go into details on why these are great tools, there are plenty of detailed reviews on the internet for them. What I like about them besides how powerful they are, is how cheap the batteries are for them. The smallest battery is 1.5Ah and sells for 10.99. These are so cheap that people are buying them to take the 18650 battery cells out of them for projects, tactical flashlights, etc. There are six of them in the 1.5Ah battery, made by Samsung and generally sell for $2.50-3.00 a piece. I'm sure whomever is making these for Kobalt is getting some volume discount but it appears to be a loss leader to me.

What I do know for sure is I can buy four of the 1.5Ah batteries and it is half the price of a single battery for most any other quality brand cordless tool. The battery cost is why I never had cordless tools before, I just don't use them enough to justify a $80.00-90.00 battery that will go bad in 3 years.

Now that I have them I do use them more than I thought I would, especially the 1/4" impact and the flashlight. Even with the small 1.5Ah battery the life is pretty impressive. Plus for the cost you can have more than enough extra batteries charged and ready to go.

Indianapolis Cars and Coffee

Yesterday Tania and I went to Indianapolis Cars and Coffee. I was impressed by the amount of cars in attendance and how well it was run.

Their schedule is:
1st and 3rd Saturday's each month will be at Gator Motorsport.
2nd Saturday each month (except May will be Sunday) will be at the IMS Museum.

This is just the lot in front of Gator Motorsports there is an area just as large behind the business and a lot next to it that were full of cars.

 I don't normally get excited about cars from this era but the dual carb straight eight was way cool.

These were cars inside Gator Motorsports for sale. The blue and black car in the front is an Zenos E10S. Its a 1600lb car with a 2.0 liter turbocharged Ford that puts out 250hp, I think they start around 60k.

The blue car is a Lotus Evora, the black car is Lotus 2-Eleven track day car with similar specs to the Zenos

This beauty is a $186,000.00 2017 Lotus 3-Eleven. It has a supercharged 3.5 that puts out 460hp, a sequential six speed and does 0-60 in 2.9 seconds. I know they can make these street legal in Europe, I don't know if this one is. Its a lot of money to spend for a track day car but what a beast.

This is a 2005 Noble M12GTO-3R with around a 1,000 miles on it. They are a British made supercar with around 350hp and they weigh around 2,400lbs. Its a very cool car that needs someone to buy it and drive it. Really a 2005 with 1k miles wtf?

Deer + GMC = Bad

Friday nights Tania, Matty, Savannah and I generally go out to eat together. This Friday our supper was delayed because I didn't see a deer standing in the road until it was too late.

I caught the deer with the front passenger side bumper at 50 mph and ended up in the ditch on the other side of the road narrowly missing a tree and a telephone pole.

When we hit the deer it activated the seat belt tension devices filling the cab with smoke to the point I couldn't see out the windows. This set off the emergency flashers that were impossible to turn off and OnStar calling me while I'm trying to figure out what happened and why the truck was full of smoke.

We were only a couple of miles from the house, so after I got the truck out of the ditch and the police did their thing I limped the truck home and we took the ATS to supper.

I was not really in the mood to take pictures of the damage to the truck, even though it was relatively minor, its still a 55k vehicle with less than 5k miles on it that got smashed. All of that is material and can be replaced, thankfully no one was hurt in the slightest or well no one except the deer...

Red Bull Air Races

Yesterday was the first time for the Red Bull Air Races in Indianapolis, I was more excited about this than the 500. It would be a lot less people and basically all seats would be fairly equal. I first saw the Red Bull Air Races on TV about seven years ago, not something I would go out of my way to watch but it was entertaining and the venues provide very interesting backdrops.

To promote the race Red Bull put out a video shot with this years Indy 500 winner Alex Rossi and two time Red Bull Air Race World Series Champion Kirby Chambliss.

We found some residential parking (free) about five blocks west of turn four, our tickets were for seats on turn three. Attendance was obviously much less than the 350k+ for the 500, they estimated it just over 40k. The majority of those 40k were in turn three and four, all the other stands were closed for safety reasons including the short chutes between turns three and four.

Below is a layout of the course, the aircraft took off from the road course and immediately entered through the starting gates. After two timed laps they would circle off track while the next competitor did their run. When the next competitor finished their run the previous one would land. The timing of all of this was very well orchestrated.

At first it didn't appear the weather was going to cooperate. It rained off and on during qualifying the day before, and yesterday the ceiling was less than their minimum 1k feet. This delayed the start of the races by an hour during which they had motorcycles performing stunts on the track and an aerobatic paraglider performing stunts over the track.

This was a view of the finish gate from our seats in turn three. None of my pictures a very good for the day, the weather combined with the distance and speed of the aircraft were greater than my abilities as a photographer.

Here are some various shots I took during the day.

The last two shots were taken at over .5 mile distance. The first shows a track worker zipping in a new section of pylon, they are wearing black and yellow shorts and their legs are sticking out of the top of the pylon. This was the first set of air gates after the start gate, the wind was blowing the southern pylon towards the northern causing it to be clipped six or seven times during the day. Generally the workers had the pylons on the course repaired and back up within 3-4 minutes.

This is the B-17 Yankee Lady that did a flyby.

We had a great time and I hope they come back again next year.