A week with Mom and Dad then on to the family reunion. (posted from our room in Oscoda, MI)
(This post covers 2-11 July, 2007)
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Wednesday, 11 July -
Today I hosted a geocaching trip for the family reunion. I first gave a short talk on the sport and its origins then we loaded up three cars and went geocaching. The trip was a hit with the kids as I had expected but the adults also got into it, in some cases racing the kids and each other to be first to find the next cache. We hit five caches, each with something different about it. One of them was our first ‘nano-cache’. It was a tiny little magnetic container about the size of two hearing-aid batteries and containing only a strip of paper for you to log your find. Very cool! I’ve also set up four caches around the property where we’re staying for the kids to do on their own.
After supper we did the obligatory reunion picture-taking then we had a campfire and fireworks on the beach. The weather’s spectacular and we stayed up till midnight walking the beach and staring at the Milky Way.
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Tuesday, 10 July-
Today Labashi and I checked out the local library for an upcoming ‘Michigan Raptors’ live-birds program for our group to see later today. Then we went geocaching to find some suitable ones for our group to do later on this week. Along the way I found the local gun shop I’d been looking for but it turned out to have very limited stock.
We then had a little adventure with Mocha Joe. As I turned down one of the side streets in Oscoda a loud noise started on the left front and it was obviously something going on with a tire or wheel but I’d never heard anything like it before. When I got out, there, sticking out of my tire was a piece of metal rod over a foot long. It had a spring on the end and the turned-up end of the spring was embedded in my tire tread. Several very nice people stopped to offer help and one directed me to one of the local tire stores. I jacked up the van and put on the spare and drove to the nearby tire shop where they plugged the bad tire. Amazingly, it took only a half hour from when we first saw we had a flat to getting back on the road. Cost for the repair? $10.75. It couldn’t have gone any smoother.
Labashi and I spent the rest of the afternoon geocaching and had a lot of fun doing it. I had thought we’d be going through it mechanically just to check things out for the kids later in the week but the caches were all interesting and challenging enough to make a find seem like a worthwhile reward for the search.
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Monday, 9 July -
Today I again went off on my own, this time to check out the local gun shops. There aren’t many around and they are far apart. But I certainly had poor luck finding them. I couldn’t find the first at all—the address just didn’t make any sense. I was following along the address numbers as they went up approaching Oscoda from the south when all of a sudden the numbers changed from ascending in the 4000 range to descending in the 300 range as US23 turned into Main Street addresses in Oscoda.
I thought I’d figure that out later since it’s relatively close by so headed north to Hubbard Lake, an hour away. I couldn’t find the first shop because of the same problem and the second was closed on Mondays—not too much of a surprise in this rural area. I should have called ahead but I wanted to see the area anyway so no big deal. I did find the next one in Lincoln and it was mildly interesting but limited in selection. I drove on to Alpena and never found the street listed for it. I tried calling via my cell phone but all I could get was a recording telling me to key in the number again. When I did that, it just started charging me a roaming fee but never connected me to anything but a buzzy dead line. I could have stopped to ask around but by that time I was just as happy to head for home. Along the way back I ran into something interesting—a ‘Kikker Hardknock’ motorcycle. It’s a cool little bobber built on a 110-cc Honda engine—just like my old Trail 110. The assembled bike sells for $2195 or you can get it in kit form for $1695 plus $125 freight to your door. Here’s a link to a dealer and this one has a video. http://www.baronbob.com/kikker-hardknock.htm .
Back at the ranch the whole gang went out to eat at a fancy restaurant where we had a room to ourselves. It was a wonderful evening of good food, toasts, and lots of laughter.
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Sunday, 8 July -
I took off exploring on my own for the day. I had seen a Sunfish sailboat for sale cheap ($250!) on the way up yesterday so I went to look it over but it apparently had been sold by the time I got there today. I’d love to have one to play with though I’m not quite sure where I’d store it. I looked at a second Sunfish for sale for $400 but it was too old and the sail was too ratty for the price. And if I bought it I’d have to figure out how to get it home—not an easy thing to do when you’re 500 miles from home and headed the opposite direction.
I also drove out River Road, a scenic two-lane going west from Oscoda and loosely following the famous Au Sable River. I had been here before back in 2001 so I was just re-familiarizing myself with this area today. By 1400 I was at the western trailhead of the Highbanks Trail at Iargo Springs and thinking I should be heading back soon to make supper time. It was a 90-plus-degree day and very humid but also airy so I jogged the Highbanks Trail from Iargo Springs to Canoer’s Monument and back— about 3-1/2 miles according to the trail map.
Back at the reunion we had a group meal and then a Pictionary session.
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Saturday, 7 July –
We spent most of the day making the trip north to Oscoda for the family reunion. The trip was uneventful and we were happy to find all arrangements in place for the arriving crowd. We have a nice room and, surprise of surprises….an excellent internet connection. Labashi and I took a walk on the beach and relaxed while the clan gathered throughout the late afternoon and early evening.
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Friday, 6 July -
I spent much of this morning working on a pesky email problem on Mom’s PC. She uses a dialup connection and the silly PC kept disconnecting while in the middle of downloading an email. The email would download for 15 minutes or so before failing (and locking up Outlook) so I suspected it was a size problem and called Tech Support for help. They suggested I try the Webmail interface to their server to check out the waiting email and that did the job. There were two 5 MB attachments out there and once I deleted them mail began flowing again. I spent a few hours with ccleaner and Ad-aware to clean up and check for viruses.
We spent the afternoon packing up for the trip to the family reunion starting tomorrow.
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Thursday, 5 July -
Today Labashi and I went on a mission to find a replacement door sweep rubber strip for the side screen door. I had thought this would be a simple thing to do—just go to Lowe’s with the bottom piece from the door and ask for a replacement rubber strip. But the door expenrts at Lowe’s were clueless. They first said they couldn’t do anything unless we’d go home and get the model number off the screen door. We found the same bottom piece on another door and said just use that one. But they still couldn’t find the item on the computer or in the ‘big book’ after a very long and tedious search so we left. We perused the Yellow Pages for hardware stores and tried two of them, again to no avail. We finally looked up the local Pella Store and called them. They didn’t have parts for screen doors but did give us an 800 number in Iowa for their screen door division. Back home we found the warranty registration and called the special number. Two strips are on the way at $5.50 each but they won’t be here before Labashi and I move on. We’ll have to take care of that on a return trip. What a waste of a morning!
That afternoon I drove over to the shooting range to try out the Glock 30. This was my first try at shooting a .45 caliber pistol and this one is the ‘baby Glock’ or compact version. I did OK with it but the fat grip was a bit big around for my hand – I think! I’m going to miss this range from a try-it-out perspective but it has been getting expensive. By the time I buy ammo and targets and rent the pistol and range time, we’re talking $40 for each make-it-go-bang session.
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Wednesday, 4 July -
Happy Independence Day! I walked to Starbucks this morning and read the Free Press and Times. In the afternoon I repaired a faucet and took on the job of adjusting the doors on a utility cabinet in the bathroom. These doors have European-style hinges (the kind you see at IKEA) which are supposed to be highly adjustable but they’ve defeated us in the past. After a bit of frustration I finally removed the doors and disassembled the hinge assemblies entirely and found that three of the four of them had not been assembled properly by the contractor who had done the bathroom update. It was impossible to adjust them adequately within their operating range to get the doors aligned and keep them from overlapping. Once I resolved that, the adjustments were a snap. Hooray!
Most of today has been threatening rain but with the library and shooting range closed for the holiday, I spent my time reading and listening to music and to a podcast from the International Spy Museum. This podcast episode was about Britain’s MI-5 intelligence agency. I also learned the International Spy Museum (in the Washington, DC area) has a new, interactive display which sounds interesting. Apparently you move from room to room on ‘an intelligence mission’ and each room is a highly-realistic re-creation of the physical locale of the mission. Sounds like an interesting way to spend a winter afternoon.
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Tuesday, 3 July -
This morning I skipped my walk to Starbucks in order to get an earlier start at the shooting range. Today I wanted to try two new (for me) pistols—a Sig Sauer P239 and a Glock 22C. I’ve read glowing reports about the 9mm Sig and also wanted to try a larger caliber Glock, in this case, the S & W.40 caliber. I didn’t want to rush so I reserved an hour for shooting and bought two boxes of ammo for each pistol (200 rounds total). I was surprised to find myself hurried on the range. It’s certainly easy enough to bang-bang-bang through a clip (ok, a ‘magazine’) of ammo with a semi-auto pistol but I’m trying to make each shot count. Several days ago I bought what seems to be a pretty good book on technique and I’m trying to follow the recommendations for stance, grip, sighting, and trigger control to improve my accuracy. I quickly learned that I don’t like the Sig’s stock sights—I can’t see them well enough, particularly in the relatively low lighting of the range. I’ve had the same problem with other pistols and I’ve finally realized my glasses are cut wrong for this— I tend to look through the upper portion of my glasses and that’s the part optimized for longer distances.
Since I could only have one gun on the range at a time, I used the Sig for the first half hour, then went back to the rental desk for the Glock. Upon first gripping it, I liked the Glock’s feel better. It feels more balanced and I like the sight-picture better. My shooting was more accurate from the get-go, even with the heavier recoil of the larger cartridge. The ‘C’ on the 22C indicates the pistol is ‘compensated’, meaning it has precisely-placed and sized slots on top and near the end of the barrel to allow jets of gases to escape and resist the normal lifting of the barrel after the shot, allowing you to get back on target. But after 100 rounds of the S&W .40 my wrist was ready to quit.
A funny thing happened during my range session today. I noticed someone several lanes down run his target to the end of the 25-yard mark and start firing away. He seemed to be firing quickly so I was wondering how he was doing on the target with such little time to aim. I bet I heard at least thirty shots, probably more at the rate he was firing… but not one of them had hit the target! Finally, a disembodied voice came over the intercom: “Sir, you’d better move that target a little closer. You might want to start at ten or fifteen feet… you’re not hitting a thing.” The target was dutifully moved and shooting resumed. I couldn’t see it anymore so I resumed my battle with the hard-to-hit silhouette stranger on MY target.
After the range I drove over to the library and spent the afternoon on the web, much of waiting for the interminable downloads of podcasts in the background while I worked on the web. After supper Labashi and I walked to a small park nearby.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 2 July -
This morning I took my morning walk to the local Starbucks and spent an hour with the Times. On the way home I stopped in at nearby computer shop to ask a few questions about the services and found exactly what I’m looking for--- someone who does computing house calls, seems to know what he’s doing, and has been around for awhile. I explained that I’m looking for someone to call in if my in-laws have problems with their computers, printers, faxes, answering machines, etc, and need someone on site to troubleshoot the problem and do the repair (as opposed to carrying the device in for service). Meeting the owner of the shop and getting a feel for his work by looking around the shop and talking with him beats the heck out of trying to find someone in the Yellow Pages should the need arise.
After lunch I drove over to the local library and spent a few hours updating my blog, checking email and hometown news, downloading podcasts, searching iTunes for music I heard while driving around yesterday and listening to some of my small music collection, all in the comfort of the modern and very nice library.
I spent the entire afternoon at the library and even had to cut things short to get back home in time for supper. After supper, Labashi and I rode our bikes to a local park and watched the golfers on the driving range. So far everything I’ve seen labeled a ‘park’ has been a golf course or tennis courts. I’d like to find some woods to walk but will apparently have to go further afield for that.
(This post covers 2-11 July, 2007)
-------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 11 July -
Today I hosted a geocaching trip for the family reunion. I first gave a short talk on the sport and its origins then we loaded up three cars and went geocaching. The trip was a hit with the kids as I had expected but the adults also got into it, in some cases racing the kids and each other to be first to find the next cache. We hit five caches, each with something different about it. One of them was our first ‘nano-cache’. It was a tiny little magnetic container about the size of two hearing-aid batteries and containing only a strip of paper for you to log your find. Very cool! I’ve also set up four caches around the property where we’re staying for the kids to do on their own.
After supper we did the obligatory reunion picture-taking then we had a campfire and fireworks on the beach. The weather’s spectacular and we stayed up till midnight walking the beach and staring at the Milky Way.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 10 July-
Today Labashi and I checked out the local library for an upcoming ‘Michigan Raptors’ live-birds program for our group to see later today. Then we went geocaching to find some suitable ones for our group to do later on this week. Along the way I found the local gun shop I’d been looking for but it turned out to have very limited stock.
We then had a little adventure with Mocha Joe. As I turned down one of the side streets in Oscoda a loud noise started on the left front and it was obviously something going on with a tire or wheel but I’d never heard anything like it before. When I got out, there, sticking out of my tire was a piece of metal rod over a foot long. It had a spring on the end and the turned-up end of the spring was embedded in my tire tread. Several very nice people stopped to offer help and one directed me to one of the local tire stores. I jacked up the van and put on the spare and drove to the nearby tire shop where they plugged the bad tire. Amazingly, it took only a half hour from when we first saw we had a flat to getting back on the road. Cost for the repair? $10.75. It couldn’t have gone any smoother.
Labashi and I spent the rest of the afternoon geocaching and had a lot of fun doing it. I had thought we’d be going through it mechanically just to check things out for the kids later in the week but the caches were all interesting and challenging enough to make a find seem like a worthwhile reward for the search.
--------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 9 July -
Today I again went off on my own, this time to check out the local gun shops. There aren’t many around and they are far apart. But I certainly had poor luck finding them. I couldn’t find the first at all—the address just didn’t make any sense. I was following along the address numbers as they went up approaching Oscoda from the south when all of a sudden the numbers changed from ascending in the 4000 range to descending in the 300 range as US23 turned into Main Street addresses in Oscoda.
I thought I’d figure that out later since it’s relatively close by so headed north to Hubbard Lake, an hour away. I couldn’t find the first shop because of the same problem and the second was closed on Mondays—not too much of a surprise in this rural area. I should have called ahead but I wanted to see the area anyway so no big deal. I did find the next one in Lincoln and it was mildly interesting but limited in selection. I drove on to Alpena and never found the street listed for it. I tried calling via my cell phone but all I could get was a recording telling me to key in the number again. When I did that, it just started charging me a roaming fee but never connected me to anything but a buzzy dead line. I could have stopped to ask around but by that time I was just as happy to head for home. Along the way back I ran into something interesting—a ‘Kikker Hardknock’ motorcycle. It’s a cool little bobber built on a 110-cc Honda engine—just like my old Trail 110. The assembled bike sells for $2195 or you can get it in kit form for $1695 plus $125 freight to your door. Here’s a link to a dealer and this one has a video. http://www.baronbob.com/kikker-hardknock.htm .
Back at the ranch the whole gang went out to eat at a fancy restaurant where we had a room to ourselves. It was a wonderful evening of good food, toasts, and lots of laughter.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 8 July -
I took off exploring on my own for the day. I had seen a Sunfish sailboat for sale cheap ($250!) on the way up yesterday so I went to look it over but it apparently had been sold by the time I got there today. I’d love to have one to play with though I’m not quite sure where I’d store it. I looked at a second Sunfish for sale for $400 but it was too old and the sail was too ratty for the price. And if I bought it I’d have to figure out how to get it home—not an easy thing to do when you’re 500 miles from home and headed the opposite direction.
I also drove out River Road, a scenic two-lane going west from Oscoda and loosely following the famous Au Sable River. I had been here before back in 2001 so I was just re-familiarizing myself with this area today. By 1400 I was at the western trailhead of the Highbanks Trail at Iargo Springs and thinking I should be heading back soon to make supper time. It was a 90-plus-degree day and very humid but also airy so I jogged the Highbanks Trail from Iargo Springs to Canoer’s Monument and back— about 3-1/2 miles according to the trail map.
Back at the reunion we had a group meal and then a Pictionary session.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 7 July –
We spent most of the day making the trip north to Oscoda for the family reunion. The trip was uneventful and we were happy to find all arrangements in place for the arriving crowd. We have a nice room and, surprise of surprises….an excellent internet connection. Labashi and I took a walk on the beach and relaxed while the clan gathered throughout the late afternoon and early evening.
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Friday, 6 July -
I spent much of this morning working on a pesky email problem on Mom’s PC. She uses a dialup connection and the silly PC kept disconnecting while in the middle of downloading an email. The email would download for 15 minutes or so before failing (and locking up Outlook) so I suspected it was a size problem and called Tech Support for help. They suggested I try the Webmail interface to their server to check out the waiting email and that did the job. There were two 5 MB attachments out there and once I deleted them mail began flowing again. I spent a few hours with ccleaner and Ad-aware to clean up and check for viruses.
We spent the afternoon packing up for the trip to the family reunion starting tomorrow.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 5 July -
Today Labashi and I went on a mission to find a replacement door sweep rubber strip for the side screen door. I had thought this would be a simple thing to do—just go to Lowe’s with the bottom piece from the door and ask for a replacement rubber strip. But the door expenrts at Lowe’s were clueless. They first said they couldn’t do anything unless we’d go home and get the model number off the screen door. We found the same bottom piece on another door and said just use that one. But they still couldn’t find the item on the computer or in the ‘big book’ after a very long and tedious search so we left. We perused the Yellow Pages for hardware stores and tried two of them, again to no avail. We finally looked up the local Pella Store and called them. They didn’t have parts for screen doors but did give us an 800 number in Iowa for their screen door division. Back home we found the warranty registration and called the special number. Two strips are on the way at $5.50 each but they won’t be here before Labashi and I move on. We’ll have to take care of that on a return trip. What a waste of a morning!
That afternoon I drove over to the shooting range to try out the Glock 30. This was my first try at shooting a .45 caliber pistol and this one is the ‘baby Glock’ or compact version. I did OK with it but the fat grip was a bit big around for my hand – I think! I’m going to miss this range from a try-it-out perspective but it has been getting expensive. By the time I buy ammo and targets and rent the pistol and range time, we’re talking $40 for each make-it-go-bang session.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 4 July -
Happy Independence Day! I walked to Starbucks this morning and read the Free Press and Times. In the afternoon I repaired a faucet and took on the job of adjusting the doors on a utility cabinet in the bathroom. These doors have European-style hinges (the kind you see at IKEA) which are supposed to be highly adjustable but they’ve defeated us in the past. After a bit of frustration I finally removed the doors and disassembled the hinge assemblies entirely and found that three of the four of them had not been assembled properly by the contractor who had done the bathroom update. It was impossible to adjust them adequately within their operating range to get the doors aligned and keep them from overlapping. Once I resolved that, the adjustments were a snap. Hooray!
Most of today has been threatening rain but with the library and shooting range closed for the holiday, I spent my time reading and listening to music and to a podcast from the International Spy Museum. This podcast episode was about Britain’s MI-5 intelligence agency. I also learned the International Spy Museum (in the Washington, DC area) has a new, interactive display which sounds interesting. Apparently you move from room to room on ‘an intelligence mission’ and each room is a highly-realistic re-creation of the physical locale of the mission. Sounds like an interesting way to spend a winter afternoon.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 3 July -
This morning I skipped my walk to Starbucks in order to get an earlier start at the shooting range. Today I wanted to try two new (for me) pistols—a Sig Sauer P239 and a Glock 22C. I’ve read glowing reports about the 9mm Sig and also wanted to try a larger caliber Glock, in this case, the S & W.40 caliber. I didn’t want to rush so I reserved an hour for shooting and bought two boxes of ammo for each pistol (200 rounds total). I was surprised to find myself hurried on the range. It’s certainly easy enough to bang-bang-bang through a clip (ok, a ‘magazine’) of ammo with a semi-auto pistol but I’m trying to make each shot count. Several days ago I bought what seems to be a pretty good book on technique and I’m trying to follow the recommendations for stance, grip, sighting, and trigger control to improve my accuracy. I quickly learned that I don’t like the Sig’s stock sights—I can’t see them well enough, particularly in the relatively low lighting of the range. I’ve had the same problem with other pistols and I’ve finally realized my glasses are cut wrong for this— I tend to look through the upper portion of my glasses and that’s the part optimized for longer distances.
Since I could only have one gun on the range at a time, I used the Sig for the first half hour, then went back to the rental desk for the Glock. Upon first gripping it, I liked the Glock’s feel better. It feels more balanced and I like the sight-picture better. My shooting was more accurate from the get-go, even with the heavier recoil of the larger cartridge. The ‘C’ on the 22C indicates the pistol is ‘compensated’, meaning it has precisely-placed and sized slots on top and near the end of the barrel to allow jets of gases to escape and resist the normal lifting of the barrel after the shot, allowing you to get back on target. But after 100 rounds of the S&W .40 my wrist was ready to quit.
A funny thing happened during my range session today. I noticed someone several lanes down run his target to the end of the 25-yard mark and start firing away. He seemed to be firing quickly so I was wondering how he was doing on the target with such little time to aim. I bet I heard at least thirty shots, probably more at the rate he was firing… but not one of them had hit the target! Finally, a disembodied voice came over the intercom: “Sir, you’d better move that target a little closer. You might want to start at ten or fifteen feet… you’re not hitting a thing.” The target was dutifully moved and shooting resumed. I couldn’t see it anymore so I resumed my battle with the hard-to-hit silhouette stranger on MY target.
After the range I drove over to the library and spent the afternoon on the web, much of waiting for the interminable downloads of podcasts in the background while I worked on the web. After supper Labashi and I walked to a small park nearby.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 2 July -
This morning I took my morning walk to the local Starbucks and spent an hour with the Times. On the way home I stopped in at nearby computer shop to ask a few questions about the services and found exactly what I’m looking for--- someone who does computing house calls, seems to know what he’s doing, and has been around for awhile. I explained that I’m looking for someone to call in if my in-laws have problems with their computers, printers, faxes, answering machines, etc, and need someone on site to troubleshoot the problem and do the repair (as opposed to carrying the device in for service). Meeting the owner of the shop and getting a feel for his work by looking around the shop and talking with him beats the heck out of trying to find someone in the Yellow Pages should the need arise.
After lunch I drove over to the local library and spent a few hours updating my blog, checking email and hometown news, downloading podcasts, searching iTunes for music I heard while driving around yesterday and listening to some of my small music collection, all in the comfort of the modern and very nice library.
I spent the entire afternoon at the library and even had to cut things short to get back home in time for supper. After supper, Labashi and I rode our bikes to a local park and watched the golfers on the driving range. So far everything I’ve seen labeled a ‘park’ has been a golf course or tennis courts. I’d like to find some woods to walk but will apparently have to go further afield for that.
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
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