BBBC 2017 #28

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

The Febryary (February?) image on your wall calendar

I think that this is the only actual calendar in the house. It is in the kitchen/dining room and features bird photos taken by Bridget's cousin. Beautiful photos. The only calendar I've been using for the last couple of decades has been on a computer. Better when it "synced" to the phone and even better in the cloud. (Google knows all…)

The last post of the Brave, Bold Blogger Challenge 2017 aka BBBC. Thank you Kathy for the blog motivation. I think...

Now back to the irregularly scheduled content...

And hopefully the last major snowfall of this winter was yesterday. A tried to help a friend get out of her driveway as it hadn't been plowed. Even with chains of the front wheels it was all I could do not to get buried up to the axles. I'm told that we received over 18" of very wet snow over the last week. Too much...

BBBC 2017 #27

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Nature trail or city street for walking

I didn't feel like going out and taking some new pictures so these are some screen grabs from a GoPro video taken on January 18th. This street is our subdivision road where I walk Bridget's two dogs most weekday afternoons. On this particular day it was -36°F (-38°C) so it wasn't a very long ride but it was a very beautiful, sunny day.

I used to walk a loop through these roads at least a couple of times per week before a property owner decided that he didn't like people going through the trail along the edge of his property. Actually, I blame it on a couple of kids with dirt bikes who rode through there repeatedly back and forth during the summer. I think that I would be annoyed too.

I originally had a bunch of solar stuff here but pulled it out for another post.

BBBC 2017 #26 and BMW Leaving

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Three songs you love to sing along with

Too easy! There really are no songs that I love to sing along with! If there is a group singing then I will usually join in but not just with music on a radio, CD, (record, cassette, 8 track, reel to reel). I listen to music but it isn't a really important part of my life. In fact, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've turned on the radio in the truck and the Sena has been used for music fewer times than that.

Bye-Bye BMW

A good friend just picked up the BMW this afternoon. Bridget had a hard time understanding why I wasn't upset about selling it. I guess I don't really develop emotional attachments to inanimate objects. Maybe that's why I never felt inclined to give vehicles and bikes names. It was always just "the BMW" or "the motorcycle". Maybe I'll have to surrender my Airhead belt buckle now and stop attending the airhead get togethers and tech days...

BobC, the Alaska airmarshall, said that a Ural was close enough. I do like the simplicity of the older BMWs. Electronics is limited to the ignition and if you like to tinker, you can probably fix whatever breaks. The Ural is kind of the same only more likely to break. I can see another bike in my future but it won't be something for long road trips. More likely something much smaller and lighter.

BBBC 2017 #25

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Share the 25th image you come to on your camera or phone

Finally a kinda straightforward challenge. The phrase "you came to" adds some ambiguity but I'll go for the straightforward approach. Go back as far as the library goes and count forward by 25. Unfortunately, that gave me a photo that I didn't even take so I counted 25 of my photos. A sticker bush in Ethiopia is the 25th picture on the phone though it wasn't taken on the phone. In fact, I didn't even take the phone on the trip since I didn't want to deal with international roaming and AT&T.

BTW, this is the actual 25th photo on my phone. I had imported some photos for a friend from a photo CD. This is George Rahn at his shop with some visiting moto-tourists. He was well known in the BMW motorcycle community and was sought out by many traveling through the area.

Connecting to the Tristar

Not related to the challenge but I picked up a another serial to USB communications cable. "Another" is because I must have a half dozen of these lying around somewhere as I needed them to connect to network equipment over the years. The Tristar TS-45 charge controller has a DB9 serial port so I just had to see what I could do with it. There is a lot of discussion online but they are all dealing with the much more costly Tristar MPPT charge controller. I had difficulty even finding out what kind of serial cable was expected or if a null modem was needed. So I just plugged it in to see if it worked. It did.

Using the serial port requires some free software from the Morningstar website and, of course, it's Windows only. But I just happen to have a Windows 10 machine lying around. It is a convertible (laptop/tablet) but it did have a USB port. Once I installed the drivers for the USB/serial cable, I fired up the MSView software. It found the Tristar right away at Com4. I used it to check the status. This is really the only way to see if everything is working as there is no display on the Tristar. They do have an optional display but it almost doubles the price and one very good solar website said that it's a waste of money. Get a Trimetric monitor instead. The temperature sensor is registering +6°C, it shows the input voltage, the battery voltage, charge current, etc. All of these are "live" and if the computer was left connected, all of this data could be logged and graphically displayed. This is the feature that I was attracted to. There are some Raspberry Pi data logger projects on the Internet that collect and display the data. To me that sounds like something I'd find interesting.

An interesting number is the target voltage of 15.86 volts. This is the temperature compensated absorption voltage. The voltage target is set to 14.8 volts for flooded lead acid batteries at 25°C. Since the battery bank is 6°C, the absorption charge voltage is increased to compensate for the lower temperature. 

BBBC 2017 #24

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

What you ate for breakfast

I actually took this photo on Tuesday (look at the clear skies!) but I figured that it didn't really matter what day since I have the same thing almost every day. It is a glass of the green juice. I used to make the version from the movie Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead but the fresh ingredients ended up being pretty expensive. I now settle for the grocery store version. It's tasty but, in my opinion, has way too much fruit juice and not enough vegetable juice. The coffee house versions all have the same problem so maybe it's just me. I don't need all that sugar from the fruit juice. But I figure that it's probably still better than a more traditional breakfast. In our house, the more traditional breakfasts are usually served as the evening meal.

What Else is Going On?

Not  whole lot. We ended up with over 6" of snow on the driveway so I got to play with the plow. I had ordered one more of the battery on/off switches to be able to switch power going to the DC side of the RV. I couldn't find any info on the current draw of the hydraulic pump or the front landing jacks so I figured that the 250 amp rating of the switch was adequate. The challenge seems to be finding a place on the plywood board for it. Not a whole lot of room. No significant sunlight today so only 2 amp-hours of charge for the battery bank. I disassembled the combiner box so I could drill the hole on the bottom that will feed the 4 awg wires into the trailer through the roof. That's about it for today. I didn't even go to College Coffeehouse today...

BBBC 2017 #23

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Share a photo taken from your front door today

It just started snowing again and we are forecast to receive about 16" over the next couple of days. The orange cord is running to the back of the house to the solar panel that I'm using to test the charge controller. This picture is taken from the front porch looking up the driveway towards the subdivision road. The pile of snow on the right-center is the grill. It's not getting much use these days.

The picture below was taken from the garage showing the modest accumulation of snow this afternoon. All of the tracks are from the Prius coming and going throughout the evening so you can see that we got a maybe a couple of inches of the fluffy stuff.

Was There Enough Sun?

At 9:00 on Tuesday morning after several days of essentially solid overcast, the battery bank was down to 81%. When I checked at noon, it was being charged at 6.9 amps according to the Trimetric monitor. By 5:00pm after the sun was behind the trees, the Trimetric monitor reported that the battery bank was still down by 33 amp-hours and the bank was at 92%. Not too shabby for only a single panel in Alaska. I turned off the inverter since the forecast is calling for a week of snow. Even though it has been heavy overcast or snowing most of Wednesday, the panel still produced enough charge to get the battery bank up to 94%. So, no, there wasn't enough sun in one day to completely charge the battery bank.

I did get the combiner box mostly assembled. This is a waterproof junction box that will be screwed onto the roof of the RV. Once I get it positioned, a hole will be drilled in the bottom of the box into the roof for the 4 awg wires that lead to the charge controller in the storage compartment from each of the short bus bars in this box. The 10 awg wires from each pair of 100 watt panels will be brought in through the waterproof connections that thread into the pvc fittings on the bottom of the picture. The box cover with it's seal is seen above the junction box. The short bus bars are made for both the two sizes of wire. The box is PVC so plastic cement was used to assemble the box and the two bus bars will be screwed in from the bottom. I think there might be room in the box for two inline 15 amp fuses. One for each pair of panels. And there will be another short bus bar for the ground wires. With all of that the box will be pretty packed. If I decide to install additional panels, there is a 4" tall junction box available at Lowes instead of this 2" box.

BBBC 2017 #22

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Pick a color then share seven interesting images featuring that color

Carrot colored. We'll see how well I did. I just picked a random color from my photo library and started scanning through the pictures stopping whenever I spotted the color. Not too sure about the "interesting" part of the challenge. Three pics are from AK, three are from the trip to CA on the BMW, one is from the Ural road trip, one is from the Ethiopia trip, one is last fall in PA and two are from Barrow. None are local. I think that Dom may be right in that there isn't anything worth taking a picture of in Fairbanks...

Cooking carrots for a
crowd in Ethiopia

Steam locomotive in Santa Cruz

Karen's Tent in Baker City, OR

Arktos Demo in Barrow

I think this was in Portland

Temperature Map during my
BMW road trip

Ikura at Osaka's in Barrow

Pumpkins at a PA
Market

Chicken in Chicken, AK

BBBC 2017 #21

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Misinformation

Based on the last election, this must be one of the biggest source of misinformation in the world. Not that FB the corporation is the actual source of the misinformation but their failure to vet any of what is portrayed as news that is posted on their site. An incredible number of people blindly accept it as real news, believe it and share the misinformation. The whole thing was pretty disgusting and leaves me wondering about the future of society. Even all of the "real" news sites in their mad rush to be the first out with a story chose to believe anything that fits their view of reality. Maybe the media bought into the concept that it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission. But to ask forgiveness requires them to address the shortcomings in their editorial process.

But maybe I'm just picking on them since I have a very poor opinion of them and their funding model. It's right there with Google. Privacy and individual rights are all the way at the bottom. I would feel better if we were the customers and not the product. But the subject wasn't supposed to be FB bashing. 

BBBC 2017 #20

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Favorite road close to home

Sort of a slight deviation from the actual challenge. This is my favorite loop when riding, It's 30 miles of mostly 2 lane roads and includes some hills, some twisty turns and some divided highway. When I first started riding, I took this route as my scenic ride home. I used to ride the same loop on my bicycle but it took quite a while longer. The "favorite road" part is Goldstream Road and is the north western part of the loop and has runs through the next valley north of Fairbanks starting near the university and ending in the community of Fox.

Overcast Days

2/19 5pm amp-hrs

Not much solar power produced with multiple cloudy days. The draw on the battery bank with the inverter powered up with a small load is 800 ma or about 19.2 amp-hours per day from the 430 amp-hour battery bank. I'm going to leave it running for the next week or so to see if it's able to recover from the intermittent openings in the clouds. Saturday night, it read -1.5 amp-hours so there was not quite enough sun on Saturday to fully charge the battery. There is sun in the forecast on Tuesday and possibly Wednesday. I'm curious if it will be enough.

This morning, the Trimetric monitor was reporting the bank down to 91%.  

BBBC 2017 #19 and Solar

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Reflection

This challenge is proving to be a real challenge. I've written and deleted pages of text trying to figure out how to address this topic. I'm basically trying to reflect on where I am today. This reflection is prompted by the death of a friend here in Fairbanks. He was about a year younger than I, looked to be in much better shape but had a heart attack. Like I mentioned in challenge #15 "What are you thankful for today?", I'm thankful that I was able to retire. Several close friends hadn't made it that far.

In the past, I thought that I could do just about anything if I was willing to put my mind to it. I don't really believe that anymore. But I'm not sure that I'm ready to just coast either. I know that I'm not going to be climbing Denali or riding a bicycle or motorcycle around the world. Nor sailing around the world. All of those things I had considered doing in the now distant past. I'd like to make some more motorcycle trips one of these days but I don't feel that "I have to" as do some of my friends. Right now, I'm really looking forward to our road trip this summer. I'm thinking of taking a bicycle with me this summer and trying to do some riding.

More Solar

For the last couple of days, I turned on the inverter and plugged in the Ubiquity radio and its wireless access point. I've been connecting to that access point almost exclusively just to verify functionality. This modest load resulted in a 5% consumption of the battery bank by the next morning. Even with the less than optimal weather (hazy sunshine) and short days, the batteries would be up to 100% by early afternoon. This is with only one 130 watt panel. I was planning on initially installing 4x100 watt panels on the RV and see how that works for us. The capacity of the Tristar TS-45 PWM charge controller is seven or eight of the 100 watt panels that I am planning on using depending of if you are using the short circuit current (I_sc) or the optimum operating current (I_mp) in the calculation.

I picked up the parts to make a combiner box. This is essentially a weatherproof junction box that sits on the roof. In my case, the plastic PVC junction box with an "O" ring on the lid came from Lowes. I will be running 4 awg wire from the charge controller to this box through a hole in the bottom that goes through the roof. The short bus bars have connections for 2 large wires and 5 smaller ones. Two of these bus bars will go into the box. 10 awg wire will be used to connect pairs of panels (in parallel) into the combiner box. The plastic mounts for the bus bars will be screwed into the bottom of the junction box and the bus bars snap into place. I'm still trying to decide if I will put install fuses inside this box for each pair of panels.

Plus I have one more bus bar that will be fastened to the bottom of the box for the ground wires. Grounding is required for home solar panel installations as the panel frame is usually one of the highest things on a home. It is grounded through a rod pounded into the ground. Obviously a RV does not have that sort of ground setup. The best may be the metal jacks and stabilizers touching the ground. If you look on the Internet at RV solar installations, not all of them have ground wires. I'm thinking that it's probably a good idea.

BBBC 2017 #18 and the RT

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Church

I don't talk about "church" much on this blog since it is one of those topics that could spark conflict. Not my intent. But "church" is not-insignificant part of my life and not something I'm embarrassed about. I just don't talk about it on the blog. Since I've retired, I've been able to contribute more time doing things such as A/V, preparing food for events, committees and even driving the van to pick up students from the university. Time is something that used to be a scarce commodity (believe it or not). You will see this building in a number of my PBC videos since it is only about ⅓ mile away from our home. I used to walk there all of the time but the motorcycle has made it too easy to just ride there. Now if the topic was "religion" this post would be drastically different. For me, they are not interchangeable terms.

And Some Moto Content

In an earlier post, I mentioned the PDM60 as a way to clean up all of the battery connections. This is the BMW which does not have a PDM60. Five positive wires on the battery post each with an inline fuse. My fingers are really sore for getting all of those connectors back onto the Odyssey battery under the seat. The Cozy sidecar is removed so I'm back to the stock battery. Even after being disconnected for over a year, it still had 12.4 volts and would still crank the engine. Pretty good performance. It's on the smart battery charger right now.

See, no more sidecar mounts. I also removed all of the sidecar wiring and I think the only thing left is putting a bulb back into the right rear turn signal. I removed it to avoid confusion when the sidecar was attached. A former colleague wants the BMW and will be picking it up in a little over a week. It needs to be cleaned up a bit. Okay, a lot but it's mostly just dirt. There is oil dripping from the pushrod tubes seals which are fairly new. I think it's the 5w30 oil from last winters riding. Maybe I'll switch it out for 20w50 and clean up the oil. 

BBBC 2017 #17 and Solar Test

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Simple pleasure

Having a food item be a simple pleasure is probably a bad idea but it is what came to mind today. Just a slice of bread,  lightly toasted with a little bit of butter and sliced avocado. It doesn't get any better than this...

More Solar Testing

Thursday turned out to be a nice, sunny day. Charge current was up to 7 amps so I enabled battery equalization mode on the charge controller. In this photo the Trimetric monitor is indicating a battery charge voltage of 15.5 volts and was continuing to climb during the afternoon. According to the charge controller documentation, the equalization will take about 3 hours. Hopefully, we have that much sunshine reaching the panel.

An equalizing charge is a deliberate overcharge to about 2.5 volts per cell (or about +10%) to remove sulfate crystals that build up on the plates over time. I read that an equalization charge is recommended for new batteries as well. I will need to check the water level in the individual cells as recommended post equalization. The Tristar TS-45 charge controller is set for manual equalization and an absorption voltage of 14.8 VDC. Temperature compensation is enabled so the absorption voltage would be about 15.3 VDC at the 50°F temperature of the garage.

By 1:00, the equalization mode completed and the charge controller reverted to float mode. I was impressed that we had enough direct sunlight on the panel to complete it in one day. The Trimetric monitor indicated that about 30 amp-hours were pushed into the battery today.

BBBC 2017 #16, Solar Test and the Last PBC Video

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

What are you thankful for today?

I have a lot to be thankful for. But for the purposes of this challenge, I'll pick being able to retire. Back in 1984 when I started with the university, the retirement system was supposedly one of the benefits of working there. The offering was a defined benefit plan something that didn't mean anything to me. Back then, I didn't really care as retirement was so far into the future and I never really gave it much thought. Until a couple of years ago.

Solar testing

I set up the borrowed Kyocera KC130TM solar panel on our rear deck after using an old extension cord to wire it up to the Tristar charge controller. I really wanted to test the controller and make sure it works as expected before hauling it down to the lower 48 to install on the RV. This is a older polycrystalline 12 volt panel is rated at I_sc = 8.02 amps. It is a very long run with 14 awg wire from the deck on the back of the house to the charge controller and battery bank in the garage so I was not expecting a lot of current.

Around noon, the sun came out of the clouds and the charge current was at 6.5 amps (positive value on the Trimetric means that it's charging). The battery bank was still down a couple of percent from when I made my cup of coffee using the Keurig machine. I'm not expecting it to recharge completely with the one cloudy day. I initially didn't have the wooden blocks under the panel and it was partially shaded by the deck rail. Raising the panel by 3" doubled the current. The lesson learned, you really need to watch for shading.

There was only a couple of hours of sunny-ish weather so the battery bank is still not fully charged. It read 97% this morning and 99% that evening. The forecast for tomorrow is clear and sunny. Maybe I can even do a battery equalization.

And, the final PBC video...

BBBC 2017 #15 + Two More PBC videos

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Random act of kindness

This is a difficult challenge as just about everything we do is a deliberate choice so I'm not sure where the randomness comes in. And I question some of the choices people make in the name of kindness. For example, we have a traffic circle on campus and more than once someone (usually a tourist) driving around in the circle will come to a complete stop and wave at an oncoming car to pull out in front of them. Meanwhile, about 5 cars behind him came screeching to a halt due to his unexpected behavior. But he was just being a polite driver, right…

And, completely unrelated to the BBBC challenge, a few more PBC videos...

Tire Pressure Monitoring System

I've heard enough stories of RV trailer tires failing to convince me that a TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system) would be a good thing to have. The truck did not come with a system so I was looking for a single system for both the truck and the trailer. So it needed to be able to monitor eight tires. Most of the systems don't monitor enough tires, have enough range to pick up the trailer tires or sufficient pressure range for the H rated tires on the truck. The EEZTIRE T515/SP by EEZRV Products had great reviews and meets all of the requirements.

The system will actually monitor up to 22 tires (steer axle, rear axle, tag axle, and three trailer axles and all axles except the steer can be duals) but I ordered the system with just eight sensors. Four for the truck and four for the fifth wheel trailer. If you prefer, you can get them with flow through sensors so that the pressure can be checked without removing the sensor. But the flow through sensors looked big and bulky. The display is large enough to show all of the tires that you programmed in and has easy to understand words such as "Low Pressure" or "High Temperature" and not just an icon. It can be wired into the vehicle or use the included power adapter. It has a motion sensor to automatically turn on and off as well as a light sensor to turn on the backlight. I'm thinking of ordering two more sensors to monitor the truck and trailer spare tires as well.

Installation was very straight forward. Just go into the code screen, select the tire you are working on, and screw in the sensor. Once the sensor detects air pressure, the monitor will see the code for that sensor. Repeat for each tire. Then you just need to set high and low pressure for each axle and the high temperature. The bigger challenge is trying to figure out where to mount it. I'm using the included suction cup but will probably screw mount it somewhere. Maybe on the overhead console. Power is readily available at the reading lights and it would be completely out of your field of view but easy to see if there is an alarm. The alarms are for high/low pressure, high temperature, and rapid pressure loss.

BBBC 2017 #14

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

What Valentine’s Day means to you

When growing up, Valentine's Day was always a stressful day. There seemed to be a requirement that everyone bring small paper cards in small envelopes that you had to cajole your parents to get. Then try and remember everyone's name. No small feat as some of those elementary classes had 35 to 55 kids in them. Then after bringing them home, you had to figure out what to do with them.

Right now, it doesn't feel as stressful. Happy Valentine's Day!

BBBC 2017 #13

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Open concept or rooms with walls

Open concept. Kitchen, dining, living room should be one shared space. I was never a fan of the huge "open concept" spaces on the HGTV shows. There was enough wasted space vertically to add another floor of two in some of them. We do not have an open concept home. Or do we... Pictured is the main living space in our new-to-us RV. I'm thinking that this meets my definition of "open concept" mentioned in the first line. 



If we are talking about office space, I've never been a fan of cubicles. The entire time I've been at the university I've had an office. Even when I was a grad student. In the Butrovich building, where my office is located, 95% of the occupants are in the cube farm concept popularized by HP. The one time I had something resembling a cube, it had 8' walls, a door and a window. You don't bother your neighbors when you made phone calls or impromptu meetings. And, if you were a manager type, you didn't need to look for a conference room when you needed to talk to an employee. 

BBBC 2017 #12

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Mother

It's amazing what some people put up with in the name of "playing along". I think I've posted this photo before and in case you didn't guess, this is my mom taken last summer shortly before her 90th birthday. After this, we headed to Pioneer Park aka Alaskaland, for a credit union picnic (free food if you're over 55). The blue skies and lack of snow does look real nice compared to our -30°F temperatures today.

Shortly after this on her 90th birthday, she did the zip line during the family reunion in Seward, AK.

I just found the post showing my mom riding in the Cozy sidecar attached to the '83 R100RT. This was in July, 2013.

BBBC 2017 #11 and a Random Update

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

A national park you’d like to visit

We are still in the planning stage for our road trip are thinking of visiting a lot of national parks. Unfortunately for this particular challenge, I've been to just about all of them at least once and for many, multiple times. Except one. Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado. In all of my travels, I just never had a reason to go through that part of Colorado. It looks very interesting and hope we are able to go on some of the tours through the ruins. To help with this, I reserved one of the few RV sites so we can leave the RV air conditioner running for the dogs. Dogs are not allowed on any of the trails or visitor facilities within the National Parks.

And just a random update, I removed the sidecar from the BMW as there is someone in Fairbanks thinking about installing it on one of his classic bikes. It sort of has the look of an old sidecar without the associated price tag. I was going to remove the subframe from the BMW and most of the sidecar specific wiring mods. I probably won't remove the auxiliary lighting switches as those are built into the fairing pockets.

BBBC 2017 #10

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Favorite sandwich

Sandwiches don't rank high on my list of comfort foods but my favorite is probably the egg salad, bacon, lettuce, tomato and avocado sandwich on a really hearty, grain filled bread (lightly toasted) with lettuce and mayo. This is a picture was nabbed from the Internet (http://damndelicious.net/2012/07/25/egg-salad-blta-sandwich/) so I must not be alone in this. Quite honestly, just about anything could be substituted for the bacon even fried Spam. But the egg salad needs to be made with Best Foods mayo (aka Hellman's) or home made. 

BBBC 2017 #9

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Strange thing you believed as a kid

This is a tough one but after wracking my brain trying to remember that long ago, I came up with something. I believed that Pluto was the ninth planet from the sun. Seriously, how strange was that!

This photo showing Pluto is from Nasa.gov. More recent photos were taken when the New Horizon spacecraft flew by in 2015.

BBBC 2017 #8

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Three pics you’ve never shared

This was more of a challenge than I thought. After flipping through thousands of photos I decided to stretch the rules a bit and shared other versions of shots that I may have shared before. I just don't take that many photos and delete probably 90% of them if they didn't come out "right".

One of my favorite places along the Alaska Highway. Kluane Lake just a little east of Destruction Bay. I believe I shared a photo taken the looking back from where I had just come from. Much more scenic as I'm right up against the mountains. This was from 2012 (pre-sidecar days) on my way back from CA.

I'm not sure about this one but it was taken from a parking lot at the university just before sunrise. I liked the colors. I've posted a lot of sunrise photos over the years from the university. Not too many these days.

This is not that I'm sure about this one since I took it Monday to show how much the snow was hanging over the eaves. I have since knocked this down as well as all of the snow from the first couple feet of roof. It made a pile about 4' high in front of the garage door.

BBBC 2017 #7

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Vegetable

On the left is what we would like to have. And the right is our Alaskan reality. At least during the winter. Some vegetables are phenomenal in Alaska with our plentiful sunshine and warm temperatures during June and July but the rest of the year, forget it. You can find almost any kind of vegetable your heart desires but be ready to pay top dollar. Vegetables that have a long storage life like carrots, onions and potatoes are reasonably priced during the long winter months. A few years ago I was making my own green vegetable juice but the cost was ridiculous. I now settle for the too sweet version from Sam's Club (too much fruit juice not enough veggies). Nowhere near as tasty as my homemade version. The tomato is included in the picture as it is one vegetable (fruit?) that I almost always have on hand in spite of the ridiculous cost though not very flavorful as they are not ripe when shipped. Whenever I think it's bad here I just need to step into the AC store in Utqiaġvik aka Barrow for some truly shocking prices.

BBBC 2017 #6

This post is part of ToadMama's Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge (BBBC) 2017 which is an attempt to make February go by a little more quickly. There are 28 topics, one for each day. 

Your favorite motorcycle gadget/gizmo

Back in November, 2015, I installed a Rowe Electronics PDM60 on the Ural. This is a programmable power distribution module that has six individual circuits totaling 60 amps. On each circuit you can set the maximum current, startup delay or shutdown delay. I use it with the startup delay to control accessories such as the heated grips and gear outlet. These have a 15 sec delay to allow the engine to start before they can draw power from the bike. The GPS outlet has a shutdown delay of a couple of minutes after the bike is shut off in case I want to enter the next destination. Installation of the PDM60 was very straightforward and it eliminated the rats nest of inline fuses for the accessories. The only hassle is that to change any of the settings you need to use a Windows only application. Fortunately there is little need to change things once it's been set up. After a circuit is tripped, shutting down resets the circuit.

A very cool gadget/gizmo...