Early Risers.

[Ian Abel]

BIN day

 

As time goes by...

 

Nothing much happening here, Tuesday evening we planned a September trip to the "outer reaches" of Minnesota in search of Trolls with our travelling companions.

There's a Troll trek, a Danish (no idea why!!) artist has carved a trail of trolls on various recycled material -->  Trolls in the Northern Woods and apparently it's quite an interesting trail/trek. They cover several miles and we'll see what mischief we can get up to tracking them down.

 

Yesterday was much of a non-starter as I had some gastric bug, possibly food/wine related, requiring me to spent far too much time in the smallest room.

 

Today, working, taxi service for the Mrs to an eye doctor appointment and later an evening with choir members at our favourite watering hole.

 

According to the local weather man, we're now the second wettest year since 1871, stark contrast to last year!

Today 17c at BIN time, 25c the expected high, and some rain forecast for later this afternoon/early evening.

 

Onward.

 

Edited August 15 by Ian Abel

[Sidecar Racer]

5 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

 

 

I've sometimes come upon an area of  road that has the skid marks of 80 or so tyres, due I assume to some other motorist being silly in the path of one of these doing 100kmh.  An impressive sight! I

 

I have very great admiration for the skills displayed by the drivers of any multi trailer units , this one at

8-49 is testament that , and his mate at 10-21 ditto , would love to see them tackle the Cornish roads .

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKScV8WXAnc&t=187s

 

[monkeysarefun]

6 minutes ago, Sidecar Racer said:

 

I have very great admiration for the skills displayed by the drivers of any multi trailer units , this one at

8-49 is testament that , and his mate at 10-21 ditto , would love to see them tackle the Cornish roads .

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKScV8WXAnc&t=187s

 

 

 

Two things I alway take away from watching Dash Cam Australia:

 

Everyone else's music taste is much worse than mine.

 

"F&$&ken IDIOT!!!!!" seems to have replaced "Stone The Crows, you flamin drongo!" as our national exclamation when voicing displeasure at someones antics.

[monkeysarefun]

When drawing things up in CAD its easy to forget that many of the details I am  spending time accurately representing are too small to be seen with the naked eye when printed. Or my aging naked eye at least.

 

Thankfully the macro abilities of camera phones are keeping pace with the resolution increases of 3D printers so I can at least check my work!

 

 

 

Edited August 15 by monkeysarefun

[New Haven Neil]

Managed to do the first job on the project bike, and one I hate - replacing the steering head bearings.  Driving out the old races is an absolute 'stard of a job, they've been in there 42 years and don't want to leave home in a hurry.  Got them out and shiny new roller bearings inserted which too three hours.  Knackered as a result, too much bending and squatting for arthritic hips.

 

Still, that counts as progress, 5 parts fitted!

[BoD]

Evening all.

 

Again, haven’t had time to keep up to date so I hope all is well.

 

Another distillery visited today, or rather the site of a closed (not mothballed) one.  It’s interesting to see how much of an original distillery is kept/incorporated when converting it into flats or whatever.

 

Moving over to the West Coast tomorrow where I believe there may be another distillery to visit.

 

Top of the top of my bucket list is a visit to Islay, something I have tried to arrange on a number of occasions but have failed to do so, so far, for various reasons. One day …

 

 

[polybear]

Bear here...

 

Yet more fun at another W/H day.  That's a Tick....

It's also quite possible that it may have been a D&C Day** as well.  That's a Huge Tick.......

(**Donut & Cornetto)

 

Today's fun included "The Country Run" (which is just as it sounds - and covers four shops; the last shop being our favourite cos' we get Tea & Bikkies 😁) plus another four more local to the W/H

Someone donated these piccies - which may well appeal to our more discerning fellow ER'ers:

 

 

We also did a furniture pickup from a VERY nice house indeed - complete with double garage.  Jealous?  Moi?  Oh yes, and the Garage had two Chandeliers hanging inside.......

 

ION......

 

Netto Supermarket?  Bought out by Asda in 2010

 

And as for big Motorhomes, it seems that many people stow a step-through Scooter on a rack on the the back of the Motorhome; much easier and cheaper for use as a local run-about than a car (and no towing issues either) assuming of course you are comfortable riding Scooters.

 

And finally....

 

Let's hope this isn't a case of "Oh no, here we go again...."

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gqr5lrpwxo

 

BG

 

 

 

Edited August 15 by polybear

[BoD]

2 minutes ago, polybear said:

And finally....

 

Let's hope this isn't a case of "Oh no, here we go again...."

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gqr5lrpwxo

We couldn’t afford to do it all again.

Not this century anyway.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

You think you've finally seen the end of one's children in the education system. Phew! Hurrah!

Then the one who works in critical care has her final shift in the hospital tomorrow and becomes a student again next month to do an MSc. 

[jamie92208]

Good evening from a cooling Charente.  A day trying to keep up with a 5 Yr old.i worked as a bike mechanic, a locksmith, a pool maintain ER and a loco repairer.  The pool has been well used, the layouts have been in use. We even survived an invasion by three more SPT's and their mum, who fly home to Chicago tomorrow. 

 

All in all a good day. 

 

Jamie

[Tony_S]

We will be visited by a toddler tomorrow. It should be fun. We had a very successful visit today from one of our friends. She had bought a new Samsung tablet but felt she would prefer me to transfer all her data. Of course the suggested methods of achieving the transfer didn’t work but both tablets eventually complied . I then set about dealing with the damp patch on the upstairs ceiling. As mentioned earlier I got the new filler valve and fitted it. I was very pleased , then as I descended from the ladder so did a lump of ceiling that had been weakened by the leak. It is a swirly Artex finish so I can patch it and hope it doesn’t show! If it  looks horrible I will have a word with one of our builder neighbours. 
 

[Coombe Barton]

Still raining. The met office estimate of 10% chance of precipitation is happening,

[Winslow Boy]

10 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

We will be visited by a toddler tomorrow. It should be fun. We had a very successful visit today from one of our friends. She had bought a new Samsung tablet but felt she would prefer me to transfer all her data. Of course the suggested methods of achieving the transfer didn’t work but both tablets eventually complied . I then set about dealing with the damp patch on the upstairs ceiling. As mentioned earlier I got the new filler valve and fitted it. I was very pleased , then as I descended from the ladder so did a lump of ceiling that had been weakened by the leak. It is a swirly Artex finish so I can patch it and hope it doesn’t show! If it  looks horrible I will have a word with one of our builder neighbours. 
 

Just remember to match the swirls with either left or right handed swirls but not both and preferably not at the same time.

Edited August 15 by Winslow Boy

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

The rain fell all day, it’s only just stopped, so I’m glad I moved the wash stand to the cellar yesterday, so I could paint indoors. I managed to get a lot more done on the wash stand than I expected to do. The main parts are now finished, all that’s left to do is paint the rear of the splash back, as obviously, I couldn’t paint both sides a he same time and give the top and shelf a second coat of clear wax. They’ve already a coat of antique brown and one coat of clear, but a second will make it look better. 

 

Charlie called round this afternoon and we spent a couple of hours in the workshop, both making some more progress on our own projects. 

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. I've spent most of the evening watching the electronic fish tank. Firstly Channel 5 about traffic police catching scrotes and then BBC1 for WDYTYA, quite interesting, now to play catch up.

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[BSW01]

Goodnight everyone 

[jjb1970]

I am in Shanghai, gloriously bright and sunny but baking hot, I need to get back to the cool of Singapore...... I had a nice stroll along the bund, it's quite a sight now. The Peace Hotel is still there, I remember staying there in the 90's when it was pretty much the hotel for foreigners and party big whilst.

 

On Aldi and Lidl, the car parks for the stores where we lived had plenty of very expensive cars and I used to see our GPs and various well paid types in there. I think there may be a lingering stigma in some quarters but people get to a point where it doesn't  matter as if you're on a six figure salary doing nicely why would you give any thought to what lower wrung social climbers think of your shopping habits?

[Ozexpatriate]

11 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

I have to say that when we were in Cairns during October one year it wasn't really that bad; in fact, we found it very pleasant. It certainly wasn't as bad as when we lived in Singapore.

Some of the worst humidity I experienced was in Penang. I desperately needed a shower when I arrived. My room wasn't ready so I used the pool deck facilities which were not air conditioned. I was wetter after toweling off than when in the shower.

 

I sweated through my jacket until the air conditioned restaurant achieved equilibrium.

[Ozexpatriate]

6 hours ago, polybear said:

Let's hope this isn't a case of "Oh no, here we go again...."

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gqr5lrpwxo

6 hours ago, BoD said:

We couldn’t afford to do it all again.

Not this century anyway.

96% of new M-pox cases are in the DRC, but it was inevitable that it would break out of Africa.

 

[BR60103]

When we bought our motorhomes, we had cars which couldn't be towed flat and I didn't feel like getting a trailer thingy for them.  Also, I had got my licence in a Mini and I didn't have confidence in towing anyway. We did a couple of trips where I drove the MH and Dayle drove the car, then we found we could rent a car at our destination. Most times we could set up at the campground and leave the MH there.  The exception was our last trip which was November in New York and we had to drive out to refill the propane tank for the heater once a week.

 

 

[iL Dottore]

Good morning all,

 

Up early again after yet, another disturbed night. Although my back is slowly improving by the day, it still reminds me what a bloody stupid idea it was to start walking upright all those hundreds and thousands, if not millions of years ago, Simians (the great apes) don’t have back problems like humans and they knuckle-walk. Whilst walking upright has many, many advantages, the musculoskeletal balancing act that allows us to walk upright is so finely balanced and tuned that once it is injured, your back is permanently FUBAR’d.

 

On the mpox news (I wonder why have they started calling it mpox, rather than monkeypox? Did some overpaid bureaucrat think that “monkeypox“ was offensive to monkeys?), yes, it is nasty and whilst we must be vigilant not to import the disease from those countries where -  to put it charitably – standards of hygiene and medical care are not always optimal, there’s no need for the mass panic we saw with Covid. You have to be in physical contact with an infected person in order to run the risk of being infected; it is not transmitted through the air in droplets like Covid and other Coronaviruses.
 

However, I would eschew “firm handshakes” and “manly hugs” for the foreseeable future.🤣

 

On the subject of “cheap“ there is also a non-financial, ethical, dimension, which may or may not be of relevance to you: and that is the provenance of such goods. Many brand labels in the past have been (justly) accused of using sweatshop labour to produce their goods incredibly cheaply which they then go on to sell at inflated prices. Of course, many low-cost items are produced by workers working in factories with good working conditions and pay, the low cost being achieved by quality of materials used, “minimal use” of such materials and little or no QC

 

The concept of what I can call “minimal use“ can be illustrated by looking at how clothes are constructed. With bespoke or upmarket clothes, there is (or should be), some cloth (0.5 - 1cm)  on either side of the inside of a seam – this allows the garment to be let out at a later date. With very inexpensive clothes, there is essentially no cloth on either side of a seam, making it impossible to let out. This may not seem a big issue, but if you are producing hundreds of thousands of – say – shirts then, a few square centimetres of cloth saved on each shirt by not having  generous seams adds up to a lot of cloth (ergo £££) saved. 

[Ozexpatriate]

9 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Did some overpaid bureaucrat think that “monkeypox“ was offensive to monkeys?

It was the WHO. The original name predated WHO current standards for naming diseases and does not comport with the current conventions.

 

I don't think monkeys care either way.

 

The name change was more related to concerns that it was being used pejoratively and that the name was causing discrimination and anti-vax fears concerning Africans and African-Americans, particularly in communities more affected by the disease - much like attitudes to AIDS 40 years ago.

 

CNN: WHO renames monkeypox as ‘mpox’

[iL Dottore]

On the the subject of RVs and motorhomes, Mrs iD has been toying with the idea of getting one – probably an ageing (2nd hand) VW campervan – to go bombing around Europe with the dogs and, occasionally, a husband. Whilst, in principle, I am not against such an amusing little diversion, I think a VW campervan does not quite have the level of comfort and facilities that I would regard as the bare minimum….
 

One thing I read about the so-called “grey nomads“ (or whatever they are now called in the US) is that to have that lifestyle is incredibly tax efficient. You have a base camp (for want of a better term) in a county of a state that is known for its low taxes and and a minimal official curiosity into people’s finances you base yourself in that county and from there you travel all over the country.

 

Unfortunately, that wouldn’t work in the UK. Apart from the fact that much of Britain’s roads are totally unsuitable to the sort of vehicles beloved of the grey nomads, there is also the fact that Britain doesn’t have States, Kantons or Länder with differing tax regimens; you pay the same tax everywhere, regardless of whether you live in a high cost area (e.g. London) or a low-cost area (e.g. North Wales). But if Britain did, I can well imagine tiny little villages in low-cost counties having incredibly high per capita registrations of luxury vehicles (something along the lines of the village of nether codswallop, statistically having 250 Mercedes Benz registered per head of population).

[iL Dottore]

Re RV, this is more my style:

 

https://www.marchi-mobile.com/palazzo-superior/

 

Or this https://www.motor1.com/news/552329/sod-rise-unimog-offroad-motorhome/ for some serious off-roading

Edited August 16 by iL Dottore
Added photo