Our RV Adventures

At least that’s my story and I’m sticking with it. It’s a tool, not a toy.

But it sure is neat.

It’s my new WORX Power Screw Driver that came in from Amazon today. My old Coleman driver was about worn out and this one was top-rated by Popular Science so I thought I would give it a try. And I’m glad I did.

It’s smaller and lighter than my old one, but has a lot more torque. And even better I don’t have to keep up with a lot of different bits. Pretty much every one I’ll need is included in two changeable barrels.

Each one of these barrels holds 6 different bits, from Phillips and Flat Blades, to Torx and driver bits. There’s even one with a small drill bit for making starter holes for screws.

You can rotate the barrel manually, or by pulling back the slide, the barrel will rotate one position to the left. Kind of like a cross between a pistol and a revolver. Guess that’ why they call it a ‘Semi-Automatic’ Power Driver.

I also like the fact that it uses standard 1” bits, and you can even insert your own longer bits from the front. I’m also going to try and see if I can buy a couple of extra barrels to load my own bits into.

The only possible improvement I could see would be a way to store the 2nd barrel in/on the driver so it doesn’t wander off. But you have to keep track of the charger anyway, so they can stay together.

All in all, a really neat toy,   ehh, tool.

We’re at 11 days and counting until we head back to Houston, and Jan’s gone past giddy and is almost into delirious, she’s so excited. Me too.

Since this is a short blog, I thought I repost some of our visit to Newfoundland in 2009. This is our drive from St. Johns, where we arrived on the Ferry, down to Twillingate.

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Thought for the Day:

“We’re lending money we don’t have, to kids who will never be able to pay it back, for jobs that no longer exist.”  – Mike Rowe, “Dirty Jobs”

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Icebergs and Puffins…Not!

Originally posted on September 6, 2009

After availing ourselves of the free breakfast at our hotel, we headed out for the 280 mile drive to Twillingate, an island peninsular north-north west of St. John’s.

Twillingate is known as Iceberg Capitol of the World and has boat tours to see them, and also puffins and whales. And we wanted to see them all.

But on our way out of town we stopped to take some pictures of the town. It’s a very quaint town of about 100,000 people, with brightly colored buildings, and, of course, the beautiful backdrop of the countryside.

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And St. John’s has it own version of the icon statues we’ve seen in other towns. In this case, it’s an mermaid perched on an iceberg. Here’s an example.

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On our way out of town, and talking over our schedule, we decided to stay an extra day if we could. So I called the RV park in Louisbourg to see if they could accommodate us for another day. When they said they could, I then called the Ferry to see if we could move our return trip from the 8th to the 9th. No problem. Five minutes and it was done. Aren’t cell phones wonderful!

Along the way, Jan finally had a moose sighting. It didn’t appear scared at all. It just stood there like a statue.

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About lunch time we stopped at place called “Mary Brown’s Famous Chicken and Taters”. This is a Newfoundland chain that seems to be everywhere here. The ‘taters’ are fried potato wedges. I’m not sure it would beat “The Colonel”, but it was good.

After lunch we drove across the street to a combination gift shop/visitor’s center, where we had another moose sighting. This time it was a whole family. And, again, they seemed strangely unafraid of us. It was like we could have just walked right up and petted them.

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A while later we stopped at a scenic pull-out to stretch our legs and take in the view. Noticing one of the telescopes you see at these spots, I walked over to take a look.

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And I was surprised to see who the manufacturer is.

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I know this family, or, at least, I think I do. I assume they still own it, since it’s the same name.

I took piano lessons in the late 50′s, early 60′s from Dot Cain. Her husband owned this company and they must be doing good, since I see them everywhere, and now in Canada, too.

Small World!

Along the way we saw a lot of interesting flora.

Arriving in Twillingate, we found a small, neat fishing village with a lot of local charm and atmosphere.

On our way into town, we stopped at the place that offers the boat tours to sign up for a tour tomorrow morning. And were very disappointed to find out that both the icebergs and the puffins had gone south for the summer. All we could see were whales and dolphins.  Bummer!

We decide to pass, so went to check into our hotel. While we were registering, the manager said “Susan, come out here. These people sound just like you!”

Turns out the reason she sounded like us is that she’s from Houston too. She was here visiting the manager and his family. She lives in The Woodlands, and also worked at Johnson Space Center, like me, although she was just starting about the time I left. We even worked in some of the same buildings at JSC.

Another Small World moment!

After getting set up in our room, we took a drive out to Crow Head, an area at the tip of the island, that juts out into the North Atlantic, with some spectacular scenery just as the sun was going down.

Coming back to the hotel, we had a very good meal at the restaurant, and then turned in after a long day.

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