the rain and the sun
the rain
saturday night i stayed in portland, after a drive out to cannon beach and astoria (pictures to come, i promise!) while relaxing back at the hotel, my locally brewed organic IPA was interrupted by a roll of thunder. then it started raining.
it rained at a rate, the likes of which i’m not sure i’ve seen before; in the northeast, in the northwest. the only thing i can think of being comparable was being caught in a rain & hail storm in wisconsin when we were driving out to Seattle in ‘01.
my friend greg put an audio clip of the storm on his blog, it’s neat.
the sun
sunday, i drove back up to Seattle, via Bremerton for a dual-purpose on the peninsula. first, visiting my friend Charles at a SCCA Northwest Region Autocross event. it was cool - i got to watch the 2nd morning run, then i walked the course for the afternoon runs before departing.
my other reason for heading out on the peninsula was to enjoy lunch at Silver City Brewing in silverdale. enjoy, i surely did. it was departing Silver City when i started to notice that my forehead hurt. i forgot to bring a hat on this trip, and i guess the half-hour or so that it was actually sunny while i was at the autocross, was enough to fry me. it figures that the only time it was sunny on this trip, i got sunburned.
so if you’re in the greater seattle area today and you see a large, round, bright red orb floating at you - don’t worry. it’s just my head. say hi!
long day, big country
again, i’ve crossed the continental US. this time i didn’t do it in a pickup truck with 2 cats.
woke up around 5 EDT yesterday morning, drove down to logan for an 8:05 alaska flight. non-stop to seattle.
got to seattle around 11:30am PDT. picked up a car, had coffee with a former co-worker, and then drove to portland to attend the Web Visions conference.
this morning, i woke up around central time. not bad. early for the west coast, slept in late from the perspective of the east coast.
this morning i’ve determined what panels i’m attending and soon i gotta get downtown.
what the clunk?
so while driving around this past weekend, i detected a thunking in the back of my car. i currently have some sound deadening removed so i can keep an eye out for where a water leak is (i’ve found it, it’s where the taillight mounts. still crafting a solution for that. anyway). it got worse as we drove around on cruddy new england roads.
yesterday i investigated a bit more. turns out i’ve got at least 3 things rattling back there. my hatch rattles/squeaks. i’m not sure what i can do about that, given that it needs to open and whatnot.
the protective plastic casing on my shock rattles against the shock body. i think that one is only noticeable since i have all the sound deadening stuff removed. we’ll see if it gets better after i fix the leak/restore all that stuff. i also checked the torque on all my suspension components, and everything was tight.
the last and worst offender? the previous time i put my jack away underneath my spare tire, i didn’t tighten it down enough. 60 seconds, done.
now, if we could do something about these roads…
car rally, brew rally
Saturday this weekend was spent in the Focus. we participated in the Spring Run organized by the New England Rally.
the premise is that a bunch of people get together and drive somewhere as a group, have lunch, drive somewhere else as a group, have dinner, drinks, socialize. sounds great. this years course was Rt 1, all the way to Maine.
there was good and bad; i won’t get into the specifics here but a few misunderstandings led to 1/2 the day being unpleasant. all in all it was 15 hours spent mostly in the car, and i don’t know if i can convince my better half to do that again.
Sunday we started out with plans of productivity, and to brew later on in the day. by 1pm i called shenanigans on our intentions of productivity, and we headed to Kettle to Keg for brewing supplies. that afternoon/evening, we brewed a batch of Double Brown Ale as an end-of-tax-season celebration. afterwards, we followed up with a Golden Ale recipe designed to be a drinker and not knock one on their respective sorry butt on a weeknight.
that was the weekend. at some point, we need to look into this ‘relaxation’ we hear people toy with on their 2 day break.
gorillas at the dealership
no, sigourney weaver is not selling cars. i’ll get to the title in a bit. drove to buffalo for the weekend, to surprise my mom for her birthday and to get a little work done on my focus at my brothers house.
i spent a lot of time debating whether to leave my snow tires on or switch to my summer tires. turns out it didn’t really matter either way. time (or lack thereof) ultimately decided to leave the snows on.
work accomplished on the car: stainless steel brake lines from goodridge, new DOT 4 brake fluid, brake bleeding courtesy of motive via focussport. new front disks by brembo to compliment the hawk HPS brake pads.
oil change with royal purple. that’s where the gorillas come in. last time the oil was changed, it was done @ the dealer. both my brother and myself literally injured ourselves trying to get the oil drain plug out.
note to AutoFair Ford in Manchester, NH: Ford’s official torque specification for the oil drain plug on a focus is 33 lb-ft. not “hammer it on with the impact wrench.” thanks.
next up, filter. hand? ineffective. strap wrench? dented it. ineffective. giant pair of channel locks? crushed it into a rectangle-like shape and got it to turn. note to AutoFair Ford in Manchester, NH: there’s a gasket on the oil filter. let it do its job. thanks.
spring fever - catch it!
well, i got over my rocking pneumonia. and i’m using prescription medication to control my boogie woogie blues. but now i’ve come down with a case of spring fever!
wednesday it got up to 56, something snapped in my brain. i opened windows, put the box fan in one, and made a wind tunnel in the house. then i vacuumed the whole place.
yesterday, i finally picked up summer tires for my focus. (not installed, the snows are still on).
today, it’s snowing. 2-4″ they say, but it’s coming down like mad out there. sigh.
ventmatic faucets
of course you’ll see this in my flickr feed, but i’ll elaborate.
we’ve had the 4-tap kegfridge for quite some time now, even going so far as to have it transported from WA to NH when we moved (is that legal? probably. it was empty at the time).
we were never really happy with our chromed faucets. they quickly chipped, leaving a nasty appearance. also, their traditional design left most of the internal valve mechanism exposed to the room air while in the sealed position. this meant that both they would get sticky and difficult to operate, and that various microorganisms in the room air could waft up the nozzle and take up residence in the aforementioned stickiness.
as a christmas present to ourselves (okay, i ordered them and carrie went along with it) we purchased four Ventmatic faucets. their design is significantly different - a “forward sealing” design which means that they aren’t subject to the standard faucet issues. also, the entire faucet from tail to tip is made from stainless steel.
plus, i think they’re awfully handsome. if i only would have cleaned up the plastic tap handles before taking this shot:
