Elizabeth

Here’s a few pics of the Reeds. We spent Saturday at Wise Acres, a seasonal pick-your-own farm with activities for the kids. We also saw the new movie Beauty and the Beast. The story is well known, but the telling was very good. Today after Church, Bryon will be fixing breakfast. Then we will paint the treehouse in the afternoon, while the Reeds go to an Easter Egg hunt where the eggs will be dropped from a helicopter. We’re hoping to get the painting done today, because the forecast for tomorrow looks ominously wet.

Pat Bryon Julia

Wise Acres goat

Wise Acres train ride

B & E

I have a bunch of pictures this time.

Augusta has some beautiful natural areas. This is taken at Phinizy Swamp.

We spent some time in Augusta. It’s a nice enough city. When the Augusta economy collapsed before the civil war, they decided to build a canal with the idea of creating hydro power to operate many cotton mills. Their engineer found that they could have a 53 foot water drop; plenty to get the pressure they needed to turn the wheels in a cotton mill. The project was late and had cost overruns. When they were done, they found their engineer had dramatically underestimated how much water flow was required to power the factories. They barely had enough hydro power for one factory. After the civil war, they hired an engineer who knew what he was doing. He dramatically increased the volume of water available and several major mills opened.

Augusta Canal Works

Not long after, Augusta found out how bad the factory jobs were. Augusta has much fewer historic buildings than Savannah has, and it hurts them quite a bit. The river walk area is attractive, clean, modern — and sterile. However, they also did some pretty cool things. In the late 1930s, the mills used the hydro power to run electric generators for the mills. They slowly converted their equipment so that each machine ran off its own electric motor, increasing automation as they went. A few of the old mills are still standing. They are being converted to modern uses. It works out very well, in part because the old electric power plants from the 30s and 40s still work. The canal museum is in an old mill building that generates 500 KW, which is twice the power the building needs. The excess power is sold to the local power company.

A picture can be worth 1,000 words. Here are some examples.

Blacksmith Shop

Taken at a state park / lunch stop. This is the first time I have knowingly eaten lunch in an area where water balloons were prohibited.

Turtle

Hawk

We had an excellent dinner in an old cotton warehouse. These lampshades made by a local artist fit the building perfectly.

There are pics this week.

A walkway under the mighty oaks in Forsyth Park

We’ve been goofing off, slowly moving north, and enjoying perfect weather. Jacksonville is a nice city. We had a good time there and saw some cool stuff — from river walks to plantations to forts. But Savannah has earned a special place in my heart. Their downtown area historic district was dying. They focused on preserving it and made it an area where people want to hang out. Of course, it helps that we are visiting the area in the spring, when high temperatures stay in the low 80s.

St. John Cathedral

Our hotel was right in the historic district. We were able to get around without using our car, which made parking a lot cheaper. Besides the parks and 22 squares, Savannah has a rich selection of historic buildings, houses, churches, and such. We spent the better part of a day riding a tour bus around town, getting off when we wanted to see something. They advertise that a buses come every 20 minutes, but I’m sure we never waited anywhere near even 10. We had our first evening’s dinner in the Cotton Exchange on the river walk. We found it had good food, a quiet atmosphere, and very reasonable prices. Without realizing it, we selected the same place for dinner the second night. Our first dinner was good enough that we decided to go ahead and eat there again a second time.

Railroad Museum

Besides just hanging around in Savannah, we also visited the the railroad museum. They had docents give tours, which made it more interesting than just looking at the trains. This was especially important since their signage was nonexistent. They don’t run steam engines during the week. Even when they run their working steam engine, they can’t go very far because they no longer connect to working railroad track. But they obviously have lots of people restoring equipment, and very knowledgeable docents. We even got to ride a hand-car. It’s nice being able to relax while we tour. The thing that surprised me the most was the passenger car used by the RR’s president. Discounting the mahogany and china, it wasn’t any better than the larger rooms on the car train. And, of course, there was no WiFi or cell phones. And the air conditioning was whatever they cooling they could get out of 800 pounds of ice.

Here are a few more pics of our trip.

Savannah bridge

This was the first diesel-electric engine the RR got. GE loaned it to them for evaluation. The RR was so impressed at its advantages that the called GE back in 2 weeks, bought that engine, and ordered more. It was the beginning of the end of the steam era.

There are pics this time.

Car Train Roomette

The first part of our adventure was taking the car train to Florida. We had a roomette. This was the smallest private accommodation. It was incredibly small. The seat wasn’t wide enough for us to sit side-by-side. Instead, we sat in seats facing each other. We were so close that we were bumping our knees into each other. The room was just long enough that we could lay in our beds. I took the upper bunk. It took some time before I was confident I wasn’t going to fall out. Most people in private rooms took a much larger room. We made it through in fine shape. I spent several hours in the more comfortable lounge car. The train was only 2 hours late.

Anniversary Cake

We didn’t do much touristing in WPB. Mom & Glen took us out for our anniversary. We had a very nice seafood dinner at Bimini Twist. When we got home, Mom served an anniversary cake with Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for dessert. It was all  quite good. Mom had converted some old 8 mm home movies to VCR, and had recorded a commentary on a cassette tape. I had these converted to digital format and gave her a copy for her birthday. She was quite pleased.

Whitfield Lovell’s Pago Pago

Today we drove to Jacksonville. We stopped downtown at the riverwalk to see the Cummer museum. I saw one work that caught my eye. The museum includes a garden along the river. The plants were in bloom, and music from a street festival was drifting over the river’s waves. It was a very nice day and an interesting couple of hours.

Our surprise news is that the NPS is interested in our being volunteers at Jewel Cave in South Dakota. We will probably have a phone interview this week. If the interview goes well, we will spend the summer in South Dakota.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week.

The Northeast got hit with a major snow, but we here in Columbia were lucky. We had several inches of very wet snow, which quickly froze into sheets of ice. Everything was shut down one day. After that, Danita and I stayed home, but roads were open. By Friday I was riding. There were three incidents where a sheet of ice flew off a car going down the highway, and crashed through the windshield of the car behind them. Drivers were hurt, but nobody too seriously. Today the temperature was up in the 50s, with almost all of the snow melted.

We had a marvelous weekend. We started with a neighborhood St. Patrick’s Day dinner Friday. There were plenty of potatoes, cabbage, and corn beef. And there were a few more American foods. And plenty of beer and wine. The desert cake was very good.

We just got back from a Baltimore Symphony “Celtic Celebration”. They had singing, drama, and those women Irish dancers that swing their feet around and hold their hands down by their sides. Everything was very good; the dancers were unbelievably fabulous. Afterwards we walked to a creperie. The place turned out to be set up mostly as a sidewalk stand. There was a very small indoor area with some bar stools and a shelf. We were lucky and got to sit. I enjoyed my crepe immensely.  Danita said her crepe was good but she wouldn’t go back.

Just about everything around the house is working. The E-car is running fine. The level 2 charger is a great success. Toilets and sinks have shiny new ball cutoff valves with Batman water hoses. New smoke detectors grace our ceilings. The bike is back and it’s running fine. With a little bit of luck, we’ll even have our fire suppression sprinklers inspected tomorrow morning. There being nothing left to do around here, it must be time for a road trip!

We’re taking the car train down to Florida Tuesday. We’ll spend a few days with Mom. Then we’ll drive home, stopping for 2 days in Jacksonville, Savanah, Augusta, and of course Monroe, NC.

That’s all for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Our community website was hacked. It went down last weekend. I restored it and it went down again Tuesday. We brought in a consultant who suggested the security plugin “Sucuri”. That seems to have done the trick for now. I learned that hackers like to take over WordPress sites, then fill the database with their nefarious files. It works well for the hackers, because a lot of WordPress sites are abandoned. They get free storage that can’t be tracked back to them.

After a bunch of beautiful and warm weather, we were promised a cold week coming up, with even some snow. I decided this would be a great week to get my bike tuned up. My bike’s sitting in the shop, but it wasn’t easy. The first several bike shops I visited were either closed or out of business. I don’t particularly care for the shop I left it at, but the bike needs some attention and the shop is at least in business. I should have it back by Friday.

Smoke detectors should be replaced every 10 years or so. Our house has an amazing 6 detectors — one for each floor, plus one for each bedroom. That sounds like a lot of smoke detectors. What I don’t understand is why they didn’t put one in the garage. There are two things wrong with common smoke detectors these days. The first is that they are all tied together. One will hear the alarm from anywhere in the house, but it also means it is difficult to figure out which detector triggered the alarm. The other problem is that it is difficult to add a new detector location without a major project, running new wires so the new detector will be tied into the others. Fortunately, technology has come to the rescue. I purchased 7 Nest smoke & CO detectors. They connect to each other through a wireless signal. There’s no need to run extra wires into the garage. And if an alarm is detected, they broadcast a verbal message stating the problem and location, such as “Replace the batteries in the living room”. This being the age of computers, they do a lot more stuff, but that’s all fluff. Installing the new smoke detectors will be a nice little project while I don’t have my bike.

Guinness Cake

In addition to all that fixing stuff, we have 3 social activities this weekend. We had a neighborhood party Friday and a neighborhood concert tonight. Yesterday we had a Circle lunch with a St. Patrick’s Day theme. Danita made an Irish stew (with Guinness as one of the ingredients) and a Guinness cake. Not only did the cake use Guinness as one of the ingredients, the chocolate cake with a frothy white icing was supposed to look like a pint of Guinness. The visual effects weren’t obvious, but they were fun to talk about. And the cake tasted very good (as did the stew, of course).

That’s a lot of stuff for one week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Basement playroom ceiling, before repair

Hagia Sophia was a church built by William the Conqueror in Constantinople in 537 AD. It is one of the most significant buildings in one of the most significant cities in the world. Danita and I won’t be seeing this building or the city, but we are still going to Greece. We ended up selecting another Road Scholar tour that leaves the same date and covers most of the important archaeological sites. We are arriving 2 days early to pick up a couple of sites north of Athens that the tour misses. But we won’t be going to Constantinople.

Cheap plastic cut-off valve

Wednesday, our contractor came and fixed the damaged ceiling in our basement playroom. It looks fine. You may recall this leak was caused by a cheap plastic cut-off valve. The leak occurred at the red arrow. This cheap valve cost over $1500 in repairs. Fortunately, the insurance company helped with that. Our plumber spent a good part of Wednesday replacing all the cheap cut-off valves with metal ball valves, and also installed super cool “Bat Man” flex lines. I call the Bat Man flex lines because they are wrapped with a steel band that is like the armor that protects the Batmobile.

Metal ball valve with super cool Bat Man flex line

While we’re fixing things up, we’re having the dryer vent cleaned this afternoon. That hasn’t been done since we moved in 6 years ago. We have also been informed that we should have the fire sprinklers inspected annually. That hasn’t been done in 11 years, so getting that done is near the top of the list. That leaves the E-car charger installation to get us all ship-shape. Or it would, except the E-car started displaying a mysterious warning, so the car will be going to the dealer for a look-over soon. It’s a good thing we’re retired. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have time to get all this stuff done.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week.

Danita and I planned to go to Greece in September. We wanted some extra time in Athens, so we arranged air tickets to arrive in Athens 2 days before the tour started. Last Sunday, I finally got aground to reserving the hotel room for those 2 days. About 6 hours after I locked that reservation in, the travel folks called to tell us they were cancelling the trip. I was *not* pleased. We’re working out what to do. One possibility is to use the airfare and the 2 day hotel stay as the beginning of our more-or-less self guided trip. We will pre-arrange local tours in combination with getting around on our own. It looks promising, thanks to our good friend Mr. Google.

Our Leaf was having a hard time getting out of the dealer’s repair shop. I requested a service loaner for us to pick up Monday and keep until our car was repaired. The dealership agreed. We got a brand new Sentra (with 1100 miles on it). It was kind of noisy and definitely less comfortable than our Accord, but it had some interesting features. One feature was adaptive cruise control, which I didn’t notice until I was driving to the dealer to return the loaner. I had the cruise control set. The traffic in front of me slowed down, but I never had to hit the brakes because my car slowed to keep pace. It felt very strange. Its performance was flawless, but in that short drive I never felt I could trust it. The other feature was a lane-change warning. If I turned on the signal to switch lanes and there was another car too close in that lane, it would flash and beep to warn me of a possible collision. This sounds like a way cool and very useful feature, but it quickly got irritating. When changing lanes around here, it’s often necessary to kind of push your way into the other lane. The bleeping beeper went off too often.

You might have noticed I just wrote about driving the loaner back to the dealer. Yes, that means our Leaf was declared leak-free. It’s sitting in our garage right now. I took it out in a rain yesterday. It came back as dry as a fine Cabernet.

With the Leaf leak plugged and some interesting options on the trip to Greece, things are beginning to turn around. We hope to have the other issues resolved before long, but I won’t tempt fate by pre-announcing success.

We only have one party this week — a neighborhood Italian potluck dinner this evening. Danita made lasagna. My goal is to get towards the front of the line so I can get a slice. There’s no charge for the potluck dinners, so they are BYOB. We have a nice bottle of Cabernet waiting and ready.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pics this week So much has happened that it’s hard to believe it’s only been one week since I last posted. Many of our adventures and misadventures seem to involve water in one way or another.

Leaf Leak: Our new Nissan Leaf has a leak somewhere near the rear bumper. We found this last Sunday, when we drove it to Church in a light rain. The car went back to the dealer early this week. They found the leak but didn’t know how to fix it, so called in a specialist. The specialist had them order an obscure part from some faraway place. The car is still at the dealer. We’ve requested a service loaner, which we will pick up tomorrow.

Related delay: The Level 2 charger for the Leaf came in. It’s mounted to the wall. I have delayed calling the electrician until we can actually plug it into the car and see the battery charge.

Toilet Leak: Our house uses plastic plumbing. Each appliance has a cut-off valve, which is crimped onto the plastic water pipe. Apparently, after 10 years or so, the plastic pipe cracks and starts to leak. Our first leak was the master toilet. It resulted in water dripping through the ceiling of our basement play room. We spent that night and most of the next day without water in the house. Fortunately, Danita detected the leak very early. The only damage was to the ceiling. A moisture specialist confirmed there is no water damage or mold inside the walls. A contractor has come in to quote the price of repairs. The plumber that fixed the toilet has promised a quote to replace all 15 of these crimped cut-off valves. The only thing we use the play room for is my morning stretches, so the impact on our daily life is minimal.

Shower stall fall: Danita took a hot shower the other morning (as she often does). Apparently, this triggered a rapid lowering of her blood pressure. She fainted and fell, then felt nauseous. She bumped her knee and hurt a toe. She deservedly spent the rest of the morning relaxing in her jamies.

We also had some good things happen. Danita got her first two shifts in at the food bank. They went well. Friday we went to a chili cook off at our church, which was great fun. Tina Baumann (from Circle) turned 70. Her family threw a birthday party for her yesterday, which was also fun (after we found the venue).

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We got our new Nissan Leaf today. I’ll install a “Level 2” charger next week. For now, we’re using the 110 V charger that comes with the car. The cost of electricity to drive the car is about 1/3 the cost of gas to drive our Honda Accord. If you go the web, you can see some pics. We used to differentiate our cars by the color (ex: I’ll take the blue car tomorrow). Unfortunately, all the blue 2016 Honda Leafs had a bunch of extra options installed. Our choices were either red or boring (black, white, and various shades of grey). We took the red one. The Nissan red almost exactly matches the Honda red.

Besides getting a car, we have a neighborhood party tonight, a Circle luncheon at the Bertch’s tomorrow, and a neighborhood concert / desert party Sunday. Danita will start volunteering at the Howard County Food Bank. She has to start with few a training slots. She’s having trouble finding training slots that meet her schedule, but I’m sure she’ll work that out eventually.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.