Sue has been doing 24 hour shifts at her moms for 11 days. Swapping days with Tom. I was moping around this morning when Lisa dropped by. She was on her way to a preggers appointment. 3 weeks to go. Sue got home, and then Lisa dropped back by. Her dog was in daycare so she didn’t want to just drive home. We all went out running errands. I dropped off my UE Fit’s earbuds at UPS store. They didn’t fit. Let in a ton of wind noise.
I’m planning to get some custom musician style in ear monitors. For decades now when I jam with other musicians, I can only hear myself. Occasionally I’ll hear bits and pieces of the other musicians, but it’s mostly lost now. These IEM Audiologist fitted ear buds will be hard wired to a belt pack, which has a mixer. That in turn can be hard wired to a mixer board, or a ZoomH4N, or Tacam DR-40, any one of which will allow me to channel the whole band, mixed to my liking into a mono track in my one good ear.
I can also use them like a normal hearing aid, as the ear buds have microphones. I can mix the ambient noise to be full on hearing aid, or completely isolated. The custom fit will prevent all sounds from getting to my ear, except the ones I choose. I can also wire them to my phone.
Later Clint came over and we laid pipe to add 4 sprinkler heads to zone 2 in the southeast portion of the back yard. I read that too many sprinklers per zone causes them to spray weakly. We may have to add a zone…won’t know until the glue dries.
It was nice to see the kids. Rose is getting quite cute at 6 months.
Sue and I had planned to leave for Lovers Leap on the 18th after getting our new canopy installed. We were going to hook up with Chad who would have just finished up a week at Yosemite with Annie, Brian and Liz. However, Chad was on his way down two weeks ago and couldn’t get past Centralia due to bad smoke from the Eugene Oregon fires.
He stopped by our house to drop off a coat of mine. I was sewing my new leather hat and we discussed options. I mentioned that the City looked relatively smoke free…and we could possibly bring our plans back to life by going there. I had plans to climb with Kena on Sunday but was free after that.
So off we went Sunday night, crashing at midnight up a dirt road on Swauk pass, then getting to the City Monday at 6pm. Highlights of the City were my cruise up Private Idaho, and a couple 9 and 10b slab leads at Lost World. Sun and smoke were a problem, but it was still awesome as always.
We climbed hard until we woke up Wednesday, 9 days later and realized we needed a rest day, plus that BLM road was getting irritating in my two wheel truck. The ruts are a full two feet deep. But rather than a rest day, we decided to spend it driving closer to home. We drove to Smith, arriving at 10pm to a half empty Grasslands. I led Outsider and second pitch of Pack Animal while Chad led two 11’s at Morning Glory: Zebra seam and Lion’s Chair. Not sure of those names…
He also led Pack Animal Direct, which I fell off of at the top. It was totally covered in Guano. The Covid shutdown has brought back the nesting birds. I had to rest following him up Karate before the traverse. I blame that on the lack of gym power. Can’t be that I’m getting older.
I got home Friday. Today I sewed a beaded hat band for my new leather hat, which survived the two week road trip in perfect shape. I chose to use a pattern size of Medium, since I was in the low side of that hat size at: 22.6 inches. Turns out, that made a hat too small. But my experience with leather phone cases told me that leather can always stretch…though shrinking is less likely. Almost twice a day I had to sponge water on the hat opening and wear it too tight. Finally, it is starting to remember my big head.
Just in case though, I ordered a hat stretcher from Amazon. It was really awesome seeing Sue today. We are both very independent people…but absence does make the heart grow fonder. I wish dad was alive to see my hat and hear all the family news. He would be proud. Pictures to follow later .
Our twenty year old Kenmore Series 70 electric dryer stopped heating last night. It would run, but would only blow cold air. I found this dryer repair tutorial on youtube.
I was able to fix it the next day for $60 instead of the $200 it would have likely cost. I could have fixed it for $30 if I’d wanted to wait for shipping. But it gets used every day and we didn’t want to wait.
Danger! Be absolutely sure you disconnect the power from your dryer BEFORE you take it apart.
I worked through the steps with my multi-tester and found that the heater element was bad. He explains it better, but the basic idea is that your multimeter has a battery inside it. When you set it to ohms, it sends current through the connection prongs on the heater element. I think he said to look for 9 ohms of resistance? Anyway, this means that the current from the multimeter tries to ‘get through’ the coil of the element but runs into a load…or maybe it’s called resistance. Point is, if it’s good, the current can get all the way through to the other probe, completing the circuit…but with resistance, which is measured in ohms. If you see a zero on your ohm meter, it means the current can’t get through at all…and this means a bad heater element. I took it apart and sure enough, the coil was broken. Looked like a broken spring.
I called a local appliance store and they had a replacement coil in stock. Took me a few hours total time. That was fun work. I like fixing things.
FYI: I am not an electrician. My instructions may be wrong. The youtube guy knows his stuff. I’m just a guy who likes a challenge and frequently gets over his head. I told Sue it might electrocute us when we turned it on if I’d done something wrong. There is 220 volts in there. My saving grace was to take a lot of photos of how the wires were connected as I took it apart. Then I just reversed the process as I put it back together.
The only way I can see this going south is if one of the connectors pulled apart and short circuited to the frame. The push on connectors seem flimsy. I was temped to soder them tight but didn’t.
