Monthly Archives: June 2020
YouTube TV . .
I was outside and under the rig by about 1:30 this afternoon, and it only took me about 45 minutes to get the filter off and then remove the 4 bolts that hold on the oil filter adapter. FWIW it sure seems like Dix Diesel Center in Luling, the last people to remove and replace the oil filter last November, tightened it down a lot more than the 3/4 turn after hand-tight specs.
And as before I dumped the oil out of the old filter and then screwed it back on the adapter. Then I hit it a few times with my rubber hammer to break the adapter loose from oil cooler itself.
As before, the gasket peeled cleanly off the oil cooler flange, but was firmly stuck to the adapter side. So I soaked it for an hour or so in that Permatex Gasket Remover to soften the gasket so I could then scrape it off with a plastic scraper. But by this time it was time to clean up so we could head out for dinner about 5pm.
I’ll try to finish it up tomorrow and then do the high-idle test.
As I mentioned the other day, I signed us up for the two week free trial of Youtube TV to see if it will be a valid replacement for our DirecTV satellite service.
It was pretty easy to set up and get started setting up shows that we want to record. For a while we’ll dual record on both YouTubeTV and DirecTV to see how it work out.
A second major COVID-19 study has been retracted; First the Lancet, now this time it was the esteemed New England Journal of Medicine. And though it didn’t have anything to do with HCQ, it was done using ‘data’ from the same company, Surgisphere, that supplied the ‘data’ for the Lancet’s HCQ-discrediting article.
A peer-reviewed Lancet study claimed that Surgisphere culled data from nearly 15,000 COVID-19 patients from 1,200 hospitals around the world.
But there is no evidence that it collected any data from anyone.
“An investigation by the Guardian UK can reveal the US-based company Surgisphere, whose handful of employees appear to include a science fiction writer and an adult-content model, has provided data for multiple studies on Covid-19 co-authored by its chief executive, but has so far failed to adequately explain its data or methodology,”
The article that got yanked was another study, this one concerning COVID-19 and blood pressure drugs. And Harvard’s Mandeep Mehra, was the lead author of both studies. Coincidence?
So what else are they lying about?
Another in our Where We Were 9 Years Ago Today series.
June 6, 2011
Almost as Good as Bears . . .
This morning started off with a call from our daughter Brandi just checking in and talking about Landon’s latest antics.
About 10:30 we headed out on our Bear Hunting daytrip, but our first stop was for breakfast at the Hi-Lo Cafe where we ate dinner last night. Jan had eggs, bacon, hash browns, and biscuits. I had Eggs Benedict with country fries, and it was more than I could eat.
One thing we had noticed last night was this inscription on their coffee cups.
Now I would have sworn that Dawson Creek, BC, Canada thinks that they are the beginning of the AL-CAN highway. At least they thought so when we were there 3 years ago.
So this morning I thought to ask, and their answer kind of makes sense.
The cashier said that US 97 originates in Weed, CA and goes all the way up to Dawson Creek. And checking it out when we got home shows they’re right.
US 97 runs up to the Canada border at Oroville, WA and there becomes PH (Provincial Highway) 97 and, poof!, 1400 miles later you’re in Dawson Creek. And actually PH 97 runs all the way up to Watson Lake in the Yukon as the AL-CAN along with PH 1.
But when you get Dawson Creek, it’s still another 1500 miles to Fairbanks. A long trip.
For our bear hunt, we left Weed and headed south on I-5 to Mt. Shasta where we got on CA-89 and drove west.
All on a rumor.
A lady at the RV park that someone told her that someone had seen bears out around Dana, CA, so off we went.
Well, it was a beautiful drive.
Dana is about 50 miles away and about 10 miles before we got there we came down out of the mountains into a wide, flat valley that, although at about 3300 feet, looked like the Kansas prairie.
This beautiful little church is in the small community of Glenburn.
Still bearless and heading home, we saw a sign for a Wildlife Viewing area in the Shasta National Forest so off we went. Most of the road was really good, but we kept going until we were on a road like this.
Still finding no bears we turned back to the campground we had passed and stopped to stretch our legs. Hearing running water Jan and I walked over to the river and found this beautiful falls.
Called Lower Falls, it has been fished since the early 1800’s. Salmon and trout run through here still today, and if it was the right time of the year there would be bears here.
A day late, a dollar short.
I also did this short video.
Looking around we noticed that there were chipmunks everywhere, zipping around like hummingbirds. Of course Jan just had to feed them.
Who knew chipmunks like Rold Gold Pretzel’s?
They had obviously been fed before because when people show up, they come running . . . or zipping, as it were.
Jan said seeing all the chipmunks running around was almost as good as seeing bears.
Coming home we stopped off at the Dance Country RV Park in McCloud to check it out. And it’s a really nice park, well laid out with a lot of space.
Getting back to I-5 in Mt. Shasta, we decided to head about 35 miles north to Yreka, CA, and the nearest Wal-Mart. While we were there I stopped in at the Radio Shack, and then it was on to the Wal-Mart next door.
By the time we left the Wal-Mart it was after 4 pm so we decided to have dinner at Black Bear Diner before heading home so we could compare it with the Hi-Lo Diner.
And it was quickly obvious that these two places had the same origin. The menus, made up to look like newspapers, were almost identical, as was most of the menu items. And the food was just as good, too.
As we pulled in, we noticed an Ambassador Motorcoach towing an SUV on a trailer. Jan and I play a game in these cases and try to identify who in the restaurant are the RV’ers. But in this case it wasn’t hard. It turned out to be someone we knew, Ray Kannada, an old friend.
And he was also at the Lake Minden Thousand Trails in Nicolaus, CA about a week before we were there.
It’s really amazing sometime how small the RV world is.
Coming back to Weed, we had some really scenic views. Here’s another shot of Mt. Shasta still partially covered by clouds. Hopefully it will clear before we leave on Saturday.
You could also see the clouds rolling into the valleys as the day
You can also see the fog in how Black Butte looked yesterday,
And how it looked today. It’s hard to tell it’s even there.
We got home a little after 6 after a 200 mile trip and a lot of beautiful sights. Tomorrow will probably be a nice stay-at-home day.
Thought for the Day:
Remember, a big man with a big knife and a scowl isn’t nearly as scary as a little man with a big knife and a big grin.
Lavender Bears and Vaccine Tales . . .
Looks like I’m on schedule to take another shot at fixing our rig’s oil leak tomorrow. As I’ve mentioned I’m going to use two gaskets with sealer, and 4 new bolts.
The original specs say to torque the bolts down to 212 in-lbs, which equals a little over 17 ft-lbs. But this time that’s just going to be my starting point. Well, 20 ft-lbs, anyway. Then I’m going to increase by 2 lbs per time until I get up to about 26 lbs, seeing how it feels as I go.
My thought is that when I first took the adapter hub off last November, I had to use a breaker bar on my ratchet wrench to get the bolts loose, so they were certainly a lot tighter than 17+ ft-lbs.
Back on May 10, I posted a blog entitled Lorelei and Chicken Fingers . . . where I expressed my doubts about whether we would ever have a ‘vaccine’ for WuFlu. I based this on a lot of reading and research on Coronaviruses and their origins.
But ‘vaccine’ I mean a one-time shot, like we have for measles, whooping cough, polio, smallpox, etc. Corona is basically a flu/cold virus, and we don’t have ‘vaccines’ for those, just yearly shots that may or may not work very well, with effectiveness as low as 25% some years. So I wondered how long this whole ‘vaccine’ tale was going to survive.
Well, the first cracks in the façade started to appear a couple of days ago when Dr. Fauci admitted he has worries.
White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said he worries about the “durability” of a potential coronavirus vaccine, saying there’s a chance it may not provide long-term immunity.
“When you look at the history of coronaviruses, the common coronaviruses that cause the common cold, the reports in the literature are that the durability of immunity that’s protective ranges from three to six months to almost always less than a year,” he said. “That’s not a lot of durability and protection.”
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA Commissioner, agrees, saying that CoVid shot will probably end up being included in the yearly flu shot, which usually ends up covering 2 or 3 viruses already. And I’ve said before, only about 50% of the population gets flu shot each year anyway.
Remember I read all this stuff so you don’t have to.
And so it goes.
Another in our Where We Were 9 Years Ago Today series.
June 5, 2011
Lavender Bears . . .
Here’s a new pic of Landon in his new pool. Brandi says he loves it and cries when she takes him out.
She also said she got to sleep in this morning since Lowell got up to take care of Landon. When she got up the house was quiet and she thought Lowell and Landon had made a Starbuck’s run, but when she came out into the living room, she found this. Apparently they had pooped each other out. Really cute.
Friendly RV Park here in Weed
is a very nice little park with a great view of Mt. Shasta that should look like this.
But due to the rain and overcast looks like this.
Although it went down to 39 degrees last night it’s supposed to get into the 60’s today. And it’s supposed to really clear up on Tuesday. We’ll see.
About 12:30 we did our biweekly LandonSkyping, and as usual Landon was all over the place. Brandi and Lowell said if they walk into another room, he’s crawling right along behind them.
We can hardly wait until we get to see him in August.
A little later Jan fixed a lunch of left-over Chinese from Taste of China in Oakhurst last week. I wish we’d brought a gallon of that Hot & Sour Soup with us.
After lunch I finally got the satellite working by moving it about 30 feet behind the rig and shooting through this gap in the trees. It also didn’t help that, although it’s hidden in the overcast,
this mountain, “Black Butte” is also in the way.
Because of all this I can only get about 75% signal level, but it works.
After a nice nap Jan and I headed out about 5:30 to downtown Weed and the Hi-Lo Diner. The Hi-Lo has been around since the 40’s and is the original store of what became the Black Bear Diner chain of 50 restaurants in 8 states. Apparently there was a divorce back in the 1970’s that split things up. One side then partially bought out the other, leaving the Hi-Lo by itself.
We had been told this place was really good and they were right. Jan had the Chicken Fried Chicken and I had the Chicken Fried Steak, and for dessert Jan had the Blackberry Cobbler and I had the Peach Cobbler, both ala mode.
Boy was it all good. So good that we’re going to eat breakfast there tomorrow before we set out to explore the area.
Leaving the diner we drove around Weed, or what there is of it. Weed is a picturesque town but it only has about 2000 residents.
We did see this neat totem pole, although why it’s in front of a discount store, I have no idea.
Tomorrow, according to Jan, we going to look for lavender and bears . . . or lavender bears . . . or something like that.
We’ll see.
Thought for the Day:
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they shall never run out of material.
