Same plane, same reporter

I had the pleasure last Thursday of flying in a 90-year-old Ford Tri-Motor that inaugurated transcontinental air service back in 1929.

Interestingly, it was the very same plane I flew in back in 1974 when TWA was commemorating the 45th anniversary of that aviation milestone.

Both rides were on media flights - the first when I was a reporter for The Indianapolis News and the one last week as a "special correspondent" for The Lebanon Reporter.

I sat on the starboard side of the plane both times, watching the huge right radial engine throbbing along.

I think I wrote a better story this time than I did in '74.

It was named City of Reno back in 1974.

Nice shirt

My soon-to-be son-in-law Edgar is cleaning out his closets and other areas of his house to make room for Morgan. Maria went down to help over the weekend and came back with a bunch of beautiful high-end shirts and pullovers, including this Chaps shirt by Ralph Lauren, all fresh from the dry cleaner and on hangers.

Thanks, Edgar!

Pressure washing

My original plan today was to pull both bikes out of the shed so I could get the mower out. The grass inside the fence, i.e. dog country, needs a mow.

But the K1200GT's battery was too low to start. Happily, the K75S fired right up, so I backed it out of the shed, realizing this made it possible to access the pressure washer that was in the back corner of the shed.

Hayden and the neighbor kids marked up the sidewalk yesterday, so I figured it should be easy work to blast it clean.

I was gratified when the little Honda pressure washer engine fired on the third pull - the first time it's run in more than a year.

After cleaning the walks and also some chalk artistry on the front porch, I dragged the stuff to the back and attacked what is left of the deck. The areas furthest from the house have suffered the most from 10 years of weathering and hot sun. Several boards need to be replaced, but I wanted to see how much pressure washing would improve the overall appearance. Turns out, it makes a rather substantial improvement.

I flirted with heat stroke and dehydration before I came in and got rested and hydrated. Later, when about half of the east-facing deck was in shade, I hit it again. Again, gratifying results.

Having my own pressure washer is kinda cool. Maybe when we get the rotten boards replaced, I can put some kind of weather seal on the deck and coax a few more years out of it.

Pulling staples, pulling the cork

When we returned to our 1903 vintage house a year ago, we were horrified by what the renters had done to it.

I won't recite the whole list, but one of the more egregious insults to the house was their letting their dogs use the upstairs carpet for a toilet. Days after we moved back in, we ripped out the reeking carpet and dragged it out to the curb for the trash collection. Shortly after, Maria, her daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law realized their legs were covered with flea bites from working with the carpet. So we called in an exterminator to deal with the fleas.

The master bedroom was still unusable because of hundreds, maybe thousands, of staples left from the carpet. We left them there while we did other projects, but the time has come to free the hardwood floor from its burden of staples. Once that is done, we can move our bed upstairs, which will free up the dining room for dining room stuff and open up the living room. This will make it possible to consolidate our stored furniture and belongings into one storage unit instead of the two we've been renting for a year.

The stapes, then, are the cork in the bottle of progress.

I'm waiting for a call-back about a newspaper story I'm working on this afternoon, so I busied myself with pulling staples. I didn't count them but they represented a line across the center of the bedroom, length-wise. There is still much pulling to do, but it feels good to make a dent in the problem.

I gave up trying to work on all fours because it amounted to doing a prolonged one-arm push-up. So I got out my automotive creeper stool, used it to support my upper body and used a small flashlight to illuminate the staples from the side while I pried and yanked them out with a small screwdriver and needle-nose pliers. I'm surprised at how fast I can creep across the floor.

As I work, I can tell where the renters' dogs peed because the staples are rusted in those spots. Ack!

New gas bill

I remembered how costly it was to heat this 1903 Victorian barn of a house when we lived here 11 years ago, so I made a point of putting us on the gas company's budget plan.
That way we could spread the cost out over a whole year and avoid the ruinous winter gas bills.
Based on the previous year's consumption, the gas company fixed our monthly bill at $190.
So, imagine my surprise yesterday when I opened the gas bill and discovered it was for $85.10!
I guessed this would be a one-time adjustment and next month's bill would be maybe a tick lower.
No, this is the rate for the next 12 months!
Holy crap! That amounts to an annual savings of $1,270.80.
I can only suppose that replacing all of the windows last November is what made the difference. They're going to pay for themselves faster than I ever imagined.

Hard to put on, maybe hard to get off

I'm testing a pair of Adidas Men's Adizero Ubersonic 2 Tennis Shoes this week for the Amazon Vine Program.

When I first tried to put them on yesterday morning, I was wearing heavy socks and I finally gave up after several minutes of fruitless struggle. The reason is the ridiculously small opening and the absence of a heel loop to facilitate entry. If you look carefully at this photo with the Adidas on the left and my comfortable old Nike on the right, the difference is readily apparent. The absence of a tongue also hampers entry.

After reading what other reviewers wrote, I only found a couple who complained about this so I decided to try again this morning, with lighter weight socks. I finally succeeded with the aid of a clothes brush/long shoe horn I inherited from my dad. Once on, they feel fine on my size 11 feet.

Now to put a few miles on them.