Monthly Archives: April 2015
Mystery Solved . . .
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A couple of days ago I posted two photos of a quadcopter drone that was hovering over the Thousand Trails RV Park here in Las Vegas.
And it only took a few hours for blog reader Jesse Haman to solve the mystery. He pointed me to this YouTube video posted by Bill and Kris Osbourne who are two rows behind us here at the park. You can check out the video here.
Thousand Trails QuadCopter Video
In fact, if you stop the video at 1:06, you can see our rig from the rear directly in front. And you can see Jan standing at the rear of our truck that’s sticking out to the left. I’m standing just to the right of our rig taking the above photos. Neat!
About 12:30 Jan and I headed out for a Wal-Mart run, and a first test of yesterday’s radiator repair. And, so far, I’ll call it 95% fixed.
I still have a very tiny amount of seepage at the bottom of the repair, so it may be that I didn’t extend the epoxy putty don’t quite far enough. So I’ll take another shot at it tomorrow.
One thing I noticed as we did our Wal-Mart thing is how much of their merchandise here is behind locked glass cabinets. Tools, paint brushes, light bulbs, all things that we’ve never found locked up before. Even the makeup area is cordoned off and is closed from 10pm to 7am.
And even stranger, the locks are locked up. What’s up with that? There’s a big market in stolen padlocks?
About 4pm Jan and I drove down to the Henderson area to have dinner at our favorite Las Vegas Mexican place, Lindo Michoacan.
Besides the great food, one of our favorite things about Lindo is the great view of the Las Vegas skyline, especially when we’re there at night.
It was pretty overcast this afternoon (after yesterday’s 87, it only got to 79 today.) but I did get this shot showing the new High Roller Observation Wheel located right off the strip, just behind the Flamingo Casino.
We both ordered our standard dishes here. I got the Carnitas a la Coca-Cola, made with pork chunks, marinated in a Coca-Cola-based sauce, along with chiles, fresh garlic, black pepper, cloves, and other spices. Really, really, really good.
Jan went with the Shrimp Enchiladas, just full of large shrimp.
But in something pretty unusual for us, we started out with Strawberry Margaritas, on the rocks, with salt.
Probably the first time in a couple of years we had one. And unlike the margaritas served at a lot of places, these definitely had alcohol in them, a lot of alcohol. But boy, were they good.
Finishing up our great meal, we decided to drive over to the Strip and take in the sights. We drove from the airport all the way up to Fremont St, and then back down, enjoying the lights as they came on. Getting to Flamingo St., we took a left and drove back by the High Roller Wheel.
Opening a little over a year ago, the Wheel is 550 feet high and has 28 pods, each capable of carrying up to 40 passengers. It’s now the largest wheel in the world.
The wheel takes 30 minutes to make one revolution and it never stops. Passengers load and exit as it moves. The tickets range from $25 in the daytime to $35 at night.]
And at night it looks like this.
We’ll have more on the Wheel when we ride it in the next few days.
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Thought for the Day:
WARNING: SOME IMAGES MAY BE DISTURBING. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
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High Taxes and Small Cracks . . .
I mentioned the other day about the 12% tax this Thousand Trails charged us on the $5 a day / $70 for two weeks upcharge for our 50amp site. Well, I found out where that comes from.
The normal sales tax rate here in Las Vegas is 8.1%. The 12% amount is the hotel tax charged here, the ‘room’ tax. Now why the $5 charge for 50 amp is a ‘room’ I can’t explain. I do know that I’ve never been charge tax on 50 amps before. But as Jan says, “Hey, it’s Vegas, Baby!”
After our morning coffee and English muffins, I put the finishing touches on the magnetic shade that covers the large driver’s side window, and got it mounted outside. And it quickly made a big difference in the heat coming in. Enough so that AC’s cycled on and off during the hottest part of the 85+ degree day. So far, so good.
Later in the afternoon, I took a shot at fixing the small radiator leak I’ve had for a month or so. I found that there was a small vertical crack on the top right edge of the radiator.
Anticipating this repair, I had picked up a tube of this JB Weld Epoxy.
J-B Weld SteelStik Steel Reinforced Epoxy Putty Stick
It’s easy to use, handles temps to 300 degrees, and pressures up to 900 PSI. So it should handle the radiator repair with no problems.
The crack ran just along the edge of the scalloped piece of metal on top of the radiator body. I first cleaned the area with a wire brush and roughed it up with sandpaper for increased adhesion. Finally I wiped the area down with rubbing alcohol and let it dry.
Cutting off a marble-sized piece of the JB Weld, I rolled it around in my fingers until it was a single color, and then into a 4” long snake. Then I pressed it into place along the crack and a little further out from the ends of the crack.
Checking back in an hour I found the joint perfectly cured and ready to go. So we’ll check it out tomorrow during our Wal-Mart trip.
For dinner tonight Jan heated up some of the Baked Spaghetti that we picked up from Crusty’s Pizza in Camp Verde before we left last Sunday. Really good.
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Thought for the Day:
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. – Kierkegaard
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