Category Archives: Grilling

Sticker Shock

I received quite a shock in the mail a couple of weeks ago. It was my insurance renewal notice for our Jeep Compass. The rate for the same coverage on a car that’s a year older and depreciating was more than double – that’s right, my premium was more than double the cost of the previous year.

I talked to my insurance agent about this and she had some shocking stories to tell. The insurance market is in turmoil. She’s been in the business for over 30 years and she’s never experienced a market like the current conditions. She says a number of factors are involved – I think many of these factors were avoidable.

She cited California and New York as major influences in the cost of insurance. California has had huge claims from wildfires and they regulate the cost of insurance. Many companies have quit writing new policies or renewals in California and New York due to over-regulation. When the government doesn’t allow a free market, unintended consequences can rule. Companies leaving the huge California and New York markets has a ripple effect on the rest of us.

Companies that continue to operate in California and New York have to underwrite policies for less than their actuaries calculate. They spread that loss to others – in this case, my current insurance through Progressive raises the cost for everyone else to cover their losses in states like California and New York. In essence, I’m subsidizing California policies.

Another factor we face in Arizona is the double-edged sword of under-insured/uninsured policy requirements. Under-insured/uninsured coverage is a state requirement here. Many of the collision claims here involve uninsured motorists. The flood of illegal immigration puts many unlicensed, uninsured motorists on the road. So, the state requires me to have insurance coverage to account for that. Again, I’m forced to subsidize their lack of responsibility. If your policy is due for renewal soon, be prepared for a cost increase. End of rant.

Awhile back, Donna and I decided to buy whole chickens which I then broke down into eight or 10 pieces. We liked the quality of whole chickens better than the pre-packaged breasts we found in stores. I would break down the chicken and Donna would vacuum seal pieces and freeze them for later consumption. Somehow, over the last year or so we got out of that habit. It bit us when Donna made a dish with pre-packaged chicken breasts that turned out to be dry and stringy. It had nothing to do with her recipe or cooking skill – it was not a good quality product.

So I’m back into the chicken butchery business. I break down a chicken into two breasts and tenders, two thighs, two drumsticks and two wings which I sometimes cut into four pieces. We rediscovered why we were doing this in the past.

To break down the chicken, I use a Japanese knife called a honesuki which is designed precisely for this task. A honesuki was one of the first Japanese knives I bought. I’ve never liked the Misono brand Swedish steel honesuki I bought all that much. It was made in the traditional Japanese way with the blade sharpened to an offset bevel – in this case a 70/30 grind. I couldn’t keep a sharp edge on it and struggled to maintain the 70/30 edge.

I found a good deal on a honesuki made in Sanjo, Japan with a western 50/50 bevel grind. I like Sanjo knives in general. Sanjo is a historic blade- and tool-making district. Many of the bladesmiths there are small operators with one man doing the entire knifemaking process. There is a factory there called Tadafusa which employs a number of blacksmiths and sharpeners, but most of the knife makers there are run by only a few employees or a single person. The honesuki I bought is typical san-mai (literally translates as three-layer) construction where the hard shirogami #2 carbon steel core is sandwiched between layers of softer stainless steel. I broke down two chickens with this blade and it glided right through all of the joints to separate the chicken parts. Love it!

Honesuki knife from Sanjo, Japan

Most of the meal prep work I do for Donna involves cutting vegetables. I bought another Japanese knife from Teruyasu Fujiwara called a nakiri. Nakiris are typically made with a rectangular blade and have a slight belly curvature. They are specifically designed for cutting vegetables and the flat edge profile makes it cut cleanly through a vegetable without leaving what’s called an accordion – that’s when the vegetable isn’t fully separated and the bottom layer of the vegetable stays connected together. It’s annoying.

TF nashiji nakiri – vegetable knife

I keep our kitchen knives sharp by free-hand sharpening on Japanese water stones. These are whetstones that either need to be soaked in water before use or in some case can be used with just a splash of water to lubricate and clean the surface. I have a number of synthetic stones in various grits for this task.

Traditional Japanese stones were mined for centuries and are natural stones. This can lead to another rabbit hole where there are enthusiasts looking for stones with seemingly magical properties. This can lead to an expensive journey through stones which can be collectable as many of the old mines have been shut down for years. Enthusiasts sometimes spend hundreds of dollars for a single stone!

Recently I’ve been hearing about natural stones being mined in Indonesia. There are a couple of groups there trying to open up an export market for these sharpening stones. I watch a couple of YouTube videos describing them. I fell for it and bought an Indonesian natural whetstone. It was inexpensive – they haven’t developed much of a following or market yet, so they are dirt cheap. The stone I bought is hard and fairly fine grain. I used it to finish the edge on my honesuki and also on a Sanjo slicer (called a sujihiki). It left a razor-sharp edge.

Indonesian whetstone in stone holder

You can see this thing is a brick – I think it’s a lifetime whetstone.

I put my knives to good use recently and made my famous Japanese fried rice.

Vegetable prep for Japanese fried rice

Donna grilled shrimp and served it over a cup of fried rice.

Grilled shrimp over fried rice

Another recent meal was pork tenderloin served with chipotle maple sauce with garlic smashed potato and fresh broccoli from our garden on the side. That’s a winner!

Choptle maple pork tenderloin

Another fine dinner was a plate of skillet chicken parmesan served with gnocci and steamed spinach and fresh basil from our garden.

Skillet chicken parmesan

Last night, we had our friends, Chuck and Sue Lines and Dick and Roxy Zarowny over for Donna’s annual St. Patrick’s dinner. We had it a few days early as Donna has a Viewpoint Concert Band performance on Sunday evening. She made all the traditional Irish foods – corned beef, cabbage and carrots, champ potatoes and Irish soda bread. Sue brought an appetizer and Roxy supplied Key lime pie for dessert. I neglected to take any photos as we chatted all evening.

There’s a big project underway here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. A company called Airebeam has been contracted to install fiber-optic cabling and internet service for the park. In a couple of months we should have access to blazing fast (up to 750Mbps) internet and video streaming – it will be great!

Donna competed in a tennis tournament a couple of weeks ago. I attended as an official scorekeeper – I’m a league scorekeeper for the East Valley Senior Tennis League. The league sanctions competition for seniors from various 55+ parks and neighborhoods in our area. Donna and her tennis partner, Linda Rice, won their first match but were eliminated in a close second-round match two days later.

The weather has been very pleasant over the past couple of weeks with daily highs in the mid-to-upper 70s. We had clouds roll in last night and will have some rain today before the sunshine returns again tomorrow. The rest of the month is forecast to have daily highs back in the mid-to-upper 70s.

Backyard Bounty

I wrote about buying a new telescope mount in my last post. I ordered a Losmandy GM811G mount from Losmandy in Burbank, California. I wanted this mount for a number of reasons. It’s a proven, reliable design. It’s made in the USA. It’s made from machined aluminum, brass and stainless steel with a minimum of plastic parts. Replacement parts are readily available and support from Losmandy is great. And, unlike the Asian products, it’s been refined over the last 30 years. The Asian gear is obsolete after a few years as they constantly introduce new models on a regular basis.

Having to justify the expense of this equipment to myself, I did a lot of background research on the company and found some interesting stories there. When we were full-time RVers, I always enjoyed meeting people around the country and especially enjoyed success stories from self-employed people that pulled themselves up with hard work and ingenuity. Scott Losmandy falls into that category.

Scott owns and operates a machine shop called Hollywood General Machining (HGM). Under the HGM banner, he has a company called Porta-Jib. Porta-Jib caters to cinematographers and Hollywood movie production companies. Scott designed a track system that is portable and Porta-Jib builds an assortment of carriages that ride on these rails. The carriages are used to smoothly transport movie cameras through the set to film a scene. Some carriages are built to allow the director to be seated or stand while the carriage is raised to different heights so the director can survey the set or the scene being played. Some have articulating arms that can extend or retract cameras to suit the scene. The company is successful and well-known in Hollywood.

Meanwhile, Scott is also an avid amateur astronomer. He was disatisfied with the quality and cost of commercially available telescope mounts. In the late 70s or early 80s, he designed and built one for himself. It wasn’t long before members of his astronomy club wanted to know if he would build one for them. This led to a contract with the Celestron Corporation for Scott to supply them with mounts which they marketed and distributed. He formed the Losmandy Astronomical Products company under HGM. He invented a mounting plate that was sturdier and more rigid than the existing products and he made it universal to fit a large number of telescopes on the market. Today, many companies offer that design and it’s called a Losmandy dovetail plate.

In the 1990s, Scott’s new company broke away from Celestron and he began marketing and distributing the mounts himself. He also has a retail store, most of his sales are online nowadays. He is hands-on and adjusts each mount himself before shipping. Between Porta-Jib and Losmandy Astronomical, Hollywood General Machining is kept busy making parts.

The covid era caused quite a disruption in many manufacturing sectors. Hollywood shut down and movie production stopped. This meant Porta-Jib saw orders fall to almost nothing. Meanwhile, people stuck at home entered hobbies in unprecedented numbers – including astronomy. Losmandy Astronomical Products sales soared to the point of having up to a six-month backlog of orders to fill. By catering to two separate client bases, HGM was able to not only stay afloat, but thrive. Porta-Jib is picking up steam once again and Losmandy has whittled down the lead time for telescope mounts to about four to six weeks. I’m hoping to get a call by the end of next week telling me my mount is shipping.

I’m continuing my astronomical education – I devote hours every day to study. I started with our solar system and planetary/lunar observation, then astrophotography. Then I started learning the constellations and objects in our galaxy (The Milky Way). I’ve even reached out to distant galaxies. The techniques, equipment and software for photographing our solar system versus deep space objects are completely different and require new skillsets. Donna keeps saying that I’ve put in enough hours over the last six months to earn an Associate’s Degree in astrophotography!

We’ve had a pretty miserable winter by Arizona standards with extended cold, wet periods and only short breaks with clear skies and pleasant temperatures. This puts a damper on my astrophotography opportunities, so when they arise I tend to take advantage. Guys up north don’t have much sympathy for us desert dwellers when we complain of cold nights with temperatures dropping to 40 degrees. But to me, these temps feel very cold and I’m freezing when I have to spend hours trying to capture an image of a celestial body.

Cloudy skies can make a spectacular sunset

This week I decided to try my hand at capturing a nebula. Nebulae are fascinating to me and can be very challenging to image. There are five types of nebulae – emission nebulae, reflection nebulae, dark nebulae, planetary nebulae and supernova remnants. The first three listed all have irregular shapes. The planetary and supernova remnants are usually spherical. Planetary nebulae don’t have anything to do with planets – it’s a reference to their shape.

A nebula is mostly made of gases. The predominant gas is hydrogen alpha (Ha) followed by Oxygen III (OIII). Then there are other gases like sulphur and so on. They usually contain a certain amount of space dust as well. The Ha component appears red while the OIII appears blue. Dust can be brownish to almost black – dark nebulae are mostly dust that’s so thick light doesn’t pass through.

Nebulae can be the birthplace of stars. The gases combine into helium and other compounds creating mass. The mass creates a gravitational pull and over a period of millions of years can compress into a star. Supernova remnants are remnants of a dying star. In the final phase of a star’s lifetime, it turns into a red giant or a red dwarf before finally exploding, scattering matter in a swirling ball.

I went for the Orion Nebula (M42) in the constellation Orion. It’s located just below the three stars making up Orion’s belt, in the center of the stars forming Orion’s sword. In dark skies, people with good eyesight can see this nebula as a dim smudge. Most people would mistake it for a dim star. M42 is a considered a good beginner’s target because it’s easy to locate, relatively bright and fairly large. It’s over 1300 light years away from Earth and about 24 light years wide. It’s estimated to be three million years old.

To capture this image, I ran a series of 105-second exposures. I made 50 exposures and kept 49 – I had to discard one because an airplane or satellite crossed in front of my telescope leaving a white streak of light. It took about two and half hours to capture about 86 minutes of data. Processing the data into an image took me several more hours. It’s not the best image of the Orion nebula I’ve seen, but for a beginner’s first attempt, I think it’s more than good enough.

Orion Nebula – Messier catalog number M42

This was taken behind our house with much light pollution and a bright moon. I used a narrow duo-band filter to block unwanted light while allowing Ha and OIII bandwidths to pass. The telescope was my WIlliam Optic Z73 with a ZWO ASI533MC Pro camera.

Donna has almost completely harvested her first growth from the raised vegetable garden bed. She harvested collard greens, broccoli and tomatoes and is ready for round two – more tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, green beans, lettuce, spinach and herbs. She’s also staying busy with tennis and golf and has really upped her tennis game. Later this month, she’ll be rated by the tennis club. The rating process is important – it will determine which league she’s qualified for and what groups she plays with. I’m still coaching my pickleball clinic on Thursdays and playing two or three days a week – weather permitting.

For Valentine’s Day, I bought Donna a special treat – a box of chocolate covered strawberries! She tries to avoid too many sweets, but who can resist chocolate covered strawberries?

Donna hasn’t let up on her culinary skills. She made a couple of new dishes that were home runs in February. First up is a Japanese curry chicken. This took me back to my childhood – my mom made this dish and it was always a favorite.

Japanese curry chicken

Then there was an excellent grilled shrimp and sides of garlicky collard greens and cheesy grits.

Another chicken favorite was this chicken marsala plate.

Chicken marsala with broccoli and fresh bread

Another excellent shrimp dish was this one – it’s called citrus skillet shrimp seasoned with fresh orange from our tree, shallots and jalapenos served with broccoli from our garden. Lots of homegrown bounty.

Citrus skillet shrimp

One more dish – grilled fennel-crusted rack of lamb served with grilled baby bok choy and sweet potato mash.

Fennel crusted rack of lamb

We’re expecting rain this afternoon with a high of only 57 degrees. The rain will continue overnight and into Thursday morning with the cool temperatures hanging around through Friday. By Sunday the forecast calls for 70 degrees. Yay!

Not an Amazon Affiliate

I haven’t been motivated to write a post as we haven’t done anything too exciting lately. The biggest highlight of the past week was dinner at Olio in Mancos for Donna’s birthday. Her birthday was actually on Friday, but celebrated a day early because we couldn’t get a table reservation on Friday.

Olio is upscale dining by reservation only. The owner and chef, Jason Blankenship, prepares locally sourced dinners and the menu will vary according to what may be available at the time. The place only seats about two dozen people and the tables are reserved for the night – no rushing through a meal while people wait for your table.

They have an extensive wine list. We started with the house salad – fresh salad greens with sauteed mushrooms, marcona almonds and piave and saba cheese. Their house dressing was fabulous. I ordered a bottle of 2013 Domaine les Bastides – a blend of cabernet sauvignon and grenache from Aix-en-Provence, France. It went well with our dinner entees. Donna went for the Pan Roasted Pheasant Breast on Grilled Corn Maque Choux with Tomato-Marsala Sauce while I had the Grilled, Dry-Aged, Piedmontese New York Strip with Olio Signature Steak Sauce. We split a slice of Chocolate Silk Pie with a 5-Nut Crust  for dessert. What a meal.

Our time has been mostly occupied with activities in the mornings and leisurely afternoons. I play pickleball for about two hours most mornings while Donna alternates between tennis three or four days a week and pickleball. I didn’t play over the weekend as we had high winds with gusts of 40mph. Donna has also been helping our friend, Carolyn, with chores at the Owers farm a couple of days a week.

There was a lot of turnover here in La Mesa RV Park over the Memorial Day weekend. Weekenders came in while some of the longer term people went away for the weekend, presumably visiting family. Some of the longer term people here are workers staying here while they work in the mountains. I think they’re stringing electrical cable.

We had a young couple with a baby pull in next door on Friday. They were from Kansas and came here to visit with family. They pulled out Sunday morning and had to drive 900 miles back home. Their intention was to do it in two days so he could be back at work on Tuesday. This seemed awful ambitious to me – especially towing a travel trailer in the gusty, windy conditions on Sunday.

We had a few excellent meals in the last week prepared by Donna. We started the week with grilled chicken with the barbecue sauce that Donna whipped up. She served it with crash-hot potatoes (an Australian recipe) and green beans.

Barbecue chicken plate

Last Tuesday, Donna made lemon butter scallops served with a side of sweet potato-spinach hash. I cut the spinach into thin strips and this worked much better than preparing it with whole spinach leaves.

Scallops with sweet potato-spinach hash

Wednesday night Donna made something a little different – she made salami pasta alla gricia. I chopped salami into small squares that went in with the pasta and it was topped with chopped parsley and grated parmesan.

Salami pasta alla gricia

Donna bought wild Bristol Bay salmon on Sunday and she grilled it with a dijon-brown sugar glaze. Really tasty and a simple sauce to make. The side dish was gingery bok choy.

Dijon-brown sugar glazed salmon with sauteed bok choy

The weather has been much cooler than it was at this time last year. A week ago Monday, the thermometer only reached 62 degrees. It gradually warmed back up into the 80s by Thursday. I already mentioned the windy weekend conditions. Yesterday we had another cool Monday with a high of 68 degrees. The pattern will continue with low 70s today and tomorrow before we reach the 80s again.

Tomorrow I’ll drive Donna to the Cortez Regional Airport. She’ll take a small commuter flight back to Phoenix, then carry on to San Diego. Her sister, Linda, will arrive at about the same time and they’ll be visiting her other sister, Sheila. Sheila’s son, Connor, is graduating high school and they’ll attend the graduation Friday. Donna will fly back here on Sunday. So I’ll be on my own for four nights.

By the way, Amazon notified me that they were removing my affiliate status. They said I violating their rules by having friends and family make purchases through my website link. Huh? I thought that was how affiliate links worked – I provide the link and people that follow my blog utilize it. Whatever. I removed the Amazon link – it didn’t earn much anyway.

Day Trip to Hovenweep

It’s been an eventful week – some good, some not so good. I’ll start with the good stuff. Monday afternoon we drove over to the Cortez Elk’s Lodge and enjoyed a cold brew on the patio. The view was similar to our back deck – we were overlooking the golf course. Donna wanted to check out the golf course and driving range there.

Golf course view from the Cortez Elk’s Lodge

Donna wants to hit a few balls at the driving range and maybe play a round on the course while we’re in Cortez.

I played pickleball on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I took Thursday off as I had an appointment with Clint, the only local RV repair guy – but that’s another story I’ll get to later in this post. Donna alternated between pickleball and tennis. Friday was too windy for pickleball.

On Friday morning, Donna went over to the Owers Farm to help Carolyn with weeding. Then, after lunch, we made a trip to Hovenweep National Monument. It’s about an hour drive from Cortez on mostly two-lane county roads across the border into Utah. Hovenweep is an interesting place. It was inhabited over 800 years ago by a large number of ancestral Pueblo people – what were formerly called Anasazi. These people were farmers and also skilled at building, utilizing bricks made from mud, rock and plant material. Most of the building ruins there were originally built from 1230 to 1275 AD.

The area is thought to have had many creeks and springs providing water to the canyon where Hovenweep is located. Around this same time, the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings were also built. The people of Hovenweep didn’t stay here for long. It’s theorized that after the towers, storage buildings and dwellings were built, decades of drought ensued. It was once thought that the ancient Puebloans simply disappeared. Nowadays we know that they relocated – some went to the Rio Grande valley in what is now New Mexico, others went south to the Little Colorado watershed in Arizona.

Today, the Navajo, Hopi and Zuni tribes can trace their ancestry back to these people. We hiked from the visitor center to the Square Tower, then on the way back we took the Tower Point loop. The hiking path was well-marked with stone boundaries and the terrain was uneven, flat stones. Wear good, sturdy shoes if you come here!

Stronghold House
Tower Point
Hovenweep Castle
Square Tower – Hovenweep House on top of the canyon in the background

I should have had Donna pose in a picture or two to give a sense of scale. These were large structures, many stories high. It was a fun and entertaining way to spend the afternoon. When we came back to town, we made another stop at Loungin’ Lizard. Once again the beer was cold, but the food was off and the service a bit hit or miss. We’ve heard from a local person that’s what you can expect there – hit or miss.

On Saturday, Donna and I played in a pickleball tournament put on by the Cortez Pickleball Club. They call it a “Shootout.” I didn’t play all that well, but we had fun. The format had us playing three games with a different partner each game, then based on total points scored you either moved up one court or down one court for another three games with different people.

Now the not so good stuff. In my last post, I mentioned two issues we were having, both related to water. We have water dripping from behind the shower, either from the water supply line at the shower valve or the shower head connection. I cannot find a way to access either area. So, in the meantime, we are only running the fresh water pump on an as-needed basis to prevent a constant drip.

As if that weren’t enough to contend with, the fresh water supply suddenly lost flow and pressure. I was fairly certain the problem was the check valve at the hot water tank. I ordered a new one. When it was delivered on Tuesday, I drained the hot water tank by pulling the anode rod. I was surprised to find the rod had eroded down to the core material – it was about the diameter of a clothes hanger wire. The tank was full of anode rod bits and mineral deposits.

Once I had the tank cleaned up, I embarked on a comedy of errors – at least that’s how I think of it now. When I removed the check valve, I saw I had ordered the wrong replacement part. The Amazon description says it’s for our Suburban water heater and it will fit the heater tank, but the other end of it is a female coupling and I needed male couplings on both ends. Grrr. I cleaned up the old check valve as best as I could and reassembled it and filled the hot water tank.

Good news – it worked fine then! I went back to Amazon and ordered replacement anode rods. I enjoyed a nice, hot shower with good water pressure and flow. Donna had half a shower before trouble hit again. We lost water flow and pressure. I went back to Amazon and found the proper check valve and placed another order. We were stuck for the remainder of the week without good water pressure.

Thursday morning, the only local RV repair man came out. I explained the water drip situation to Clint and showed him the dilemma regarding access. He looked at the options and couldn’t come with a good solution. As I feared, he said it wouldn’t be a mobile repair job and would have to be left at a shop – it wasn’t something that could be done in a day. The only way to do it would be to either cut through the wall or cut the shower enclosure and patch it afterwards. Not good.

Friday Amazon delivered the new anode rods, but the check valve wasn’t scheduled to arrive until Saturday. I would need to remove the anode rod to drain the tank to install the new check valve, so I waited to do the repair on Saturday.

New anode rod on the left, old eroded anode rod on the right

In hindsight, I can see that I should have drained the hot water tank when I put the coach in storage. Leaving water in the tank for eight months without use eroded the rod.

I should mention that I had to buy a 12″ adjustable end wrench in order to remove the anode rod. When we were full-time RVers, I always had all of my tools with me – now I only pack a handful of tools. An adjustable wrench should have been in that handful.

The check valve arrived mid-day on Saturday and I set to work. I removed the old anode rod, drained the tank, then replaced the check valve. After installing the anode rod, I opened the pressure relief vent and turned on the city water supply to refill the tank. I opened the bathroom faucet to check for flow and pressure and was disappointed. I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

I went back outside to check the hose and saw water dripping from behind the hot water tank. I shut off the water and hustled back inside. The pex hose connection to the check valve was leaking profusely. After fiddling with it, I could see that I was missing the rubber gasket. I looked around inside the cabinet where I was working and couldn’t find it.

In a panic, I drove to the hardware store and found a Sharkbite-type 90 degree pex elbow fitting that I thought would work. I came back and started disassmbling the fitting when I had a sudden epiphany. I picked up the old check valve and sure enough, the rubber gasket was lodged inside it. Doh! I installed the gasket on the new check valve and put it all back together. Another refill of the hot water tank and pressure check was a success. Good flow and pressure, no leaking. This was not one of my finest repair attempts.

New check valve – note arrow showing direction of flow

After that long winded tale of woe, I’ll talk about dinner plates. Last Monday, Donna grilled shrimp kabobs with onions, mushrooms, tomatoes and pineapple chunks. She served it with tare sauce on the kabobs and I put soy sauce on the side of rice.

Grilled shrimp kabob

Tuesday she made something new – hoisin glazed pork bowl. The recipe called for thinly sliced carrot, radishes, mushrooms and scallions – it recommended using a mandolin the get the radish thin enough. We don’t have a mandolin but with my Japanese 180mm bunka knife, I was able to cut the radish nearly paper thin.

Japanese 180mm bunka – forged by Teruyasu Fuijiwara

The vegetable medley was placed over the thinly sliced pork that was seared and then baked with a hoisin marinade. I mixed everything together before eating it and it was delicious. I would happily go the through the meal prep for this dish anytime.

Hoisin pork bowl

The daily temperatures were in the mid 80s through Thursday. Then a front came in bringing wind and cooler temperatures – the high was 71 on Friday, only 68 on Saturday. The overnight lows have been around 40 degrees. We’ll see more of the same for a few days before it begins to warm up again mid-week.

Roughing It

Things went according to plan last Thursday – except for one thing. We noticed our fresh water pump would run for a few seconds with an interval of a few minutes before it ran again. I checked for drips and didn’t find anything. Before we left, I saw a drop of water fall next to the left rear wheels. This would only come from a leak up high – I was guessing the bathroom sink area. We’d left the pump turned off all night. I couldn’t deal with it where we dry camped, so we hit the road.

We drove north through the Petrified Forest National Park, then hit I-40 eastbound. After about 20 miles, we exited on US191 north through Navajo Nation land. It was an uneventful drive until we were north of Chinle, then we hit a series of construction areas where work was being done on bridges, leaving only one lane available. These stoppages added several minutes to our drive.

The road surface also deteriorated north of Chinle as we hit unexpected dips and heaves in the roadway. We turned northeast at US160 and that road had a number of bad areas that rocked us. This route took us to the northwest corner of New Mexico – about a minute later we left New Mexico and crossed the Colorado border. The Four Corners monument where Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado meet is less than half a mile off US160.

We entered Mountain time and lost an hour when we left Arizona. We made it to La Mesa RV Park in Cortez around 3pm local time. The camp host, Jim, said we had our pick of three sites – 7, 11 or 13. He said satellite reception should be good at any of the three. I took 13 to get us as far from the street and car wash as possible. This turned out to be a bad choice.

We set up without any issues. Donna heard a drip behind the back of the kitchen counter. She pulled out the bottom drawer and we found the leak. It’s coming from the water supply line to the shower. The problem is, it’s up high between a wall and the shower stall with no access point. Until I can figure out a way to get to it, we aren’t using the city water supply. Instead, we only run the fresh water pump with a faucet open to prevent pressurizing the shower supply line. This is a real pain.

At that point, I tried to tune in the Dish satellite TV. No good. The tree at the back of the site has grown and was leafing out enough to block reception. I talked to Jim and told him I didn’t want to go without satellite TV for a month. We decided to move to site 11 in the morning. I wish I had checked the satellite reception before we set up. Tearing it down and securing everything to move 50 feet is just as much work as securing everything to move 100 miles.

Friday night Donna manned the grill and made barbeque chicken thighs. She made barbeque sauce from scratch with a base of tomato paste, maple syrup and sriracha along with a few other ingredients. It was excellent. She served it with garlic mashed cauliflower with chives.

Barbeque chicken thigh with mashed cauliflower

Later, while she was washing dishes, the water pressure from the fresh water pump dropped and only a weak stream of water came out of the kitchen faucet. When I checked it out, I found the sprayer head on the faucet we clogged. We chalked it up to eight months of storage. I took the sprayer head off and soaked it in vinegar. After soaking overnight I could blow through it – it wasn’t clogged anymore, so I put it back together.

The water volume didn’t improve and now we aren’t getting hot water – only lukewarm on the hottest setting. We had this issue seven years ago – I wrote about it in this post. I think the check valve is bad again. I ordered one from Amazon and should have it tomorrow, but I might have another problem. I only packed a few tools that I thought might come in handy. I didn’t include a 1-1/8″ socket, which is what I usually use to take out the hot water heater anode to drain it. I’ll see what I can figure out when the parts come. Meanwhile we are roughing it with low water flow and no hot water.

Saturday morning we went to the pickleball courts at Centennial Park. The Cortez pickleball club had a social event with round-robin style play. We had a good time. I felt I played really well. Donna said she was a litlle bit rusty, but she had fun.

Saturday night we went to the Loungin’ Lizard downtown for drinks and dinner. Our friend Rocco Gerardi raved about this place when we met up for a cold one at Wild Edge Brewery here a couple of years ago. He was right – the beer was cold and the food excellent!

The weather is agreeable – it was cool when we arrived on Thursday – in the mid 60s. Daily highs have varied from mid 70s to mid 80s since then with overnight lows in the mid 30s to low 40s. It’s very dry – humidity is only 10-15%. But we’re used to that as it’s dry in Mesa, Arizona too.

Moving Out

Last weekend, Donna started packing up stuff that we’ll need over the next four months for our summer vacation. We moved our departure date back by one day – we learned last year that it’s too much work to try and pack four months of necessary stuff in one day. Donna obtained a two-night parking pass and I parked the motorhome in front of our park model home.

Our park model is hidden behind the coach

The first thing I did was fill the fresh water tank and dose it with Chlor Brite. Chlor Brite is a product from Leslie Pool that’s basically granulated chlorine. Sodium diclor is the active ingredient – it’s 99% of the product. It’s a concentrated form of chlorine and a little bit goes a long way. When used in swimming pools, as little as three ounces will treat 10,000 gallons of water. Chlorine in drinking water is at a much lower level than swimming pools use.

I mixed a fairly strong solution, filled the fresh water tank and left it in overnight. After sitting in storage for eight months, I wanted to sanitize and remove any contaminants from the water tank. Early Tuesday morning, I dumped the tank and refilled it with filtered fresh water. We use a two-canister filtration system – the first stage is a five-micron sediment filter followed by a one-micron carbon block filter.

This is what 100 gallons of water quickly dumped in the street looks like

The dump valve on our fresh water tank is relatively large and empties the tank quickly. I dumped 100 gallons and it created a small stream in the road. During a storm in last summer’s monsoon season, our neighbors told us the street was completely flooded and ran all the way down through our carport to the shed! I can’t imagine how many gallons of water had to dump from the clouds to cause that.

Most people not from the area don’t realize Arizona has a monsoon season. In central Arizona, that season usually begins around mid-July and runs through August. Flash floods are common as these storms can drop a lot water very quickly.

Our neighbor across the street from us on the 1600 lane just bought the place. Donna told him we planned to place a barrier at the shed end of our carport to prevent flood water from entering our shed. His Arizona room addition is built on a slab at the back of his carport. Last year it flooded and suffered water damage – all the carpeting had to be ripped out. He was leaving the next day to go back north. He asked me if I could put up a water barrier for him – he gave me $100 for materials.

I found a product called Quick Dam Flood Bags. These are cloth tubes filled with a gel product that swells and seals the tubes, creating a useful flood barrier. They are stackable, so I bought enough to stack two high in front of our shed and his Arizona room. When they’re fully activated, they will create a barrier six to seven inches high.

Flood barrier for our neighbor’s Arizona room

I used a garden hose to activate his Quick Dams and make sure they’ll work. Job done!

I put Midget-San up on jack stands for summer storage. Then I removed the wheels – not only will this prevent the tires from flat-spotting, it’s also an anti-theft measure. It’s pretty hard to steal a car without wheels. I fastened the car cover over it for the summer.

Midget-San hibernating for the summer

Last Thursday was Cinco de Mayo – our anniversary day. We planned to celebrate our 16th anniversary with dinner at Baja Joe’s. Donna wasn’t feeling up to night out after her trip back from Vermont, so I ordered take-out from Baja Joe’s. Donna had her favorite shrimp dish with poblano cream sauce. I had the chef’s special fish filet with a seafood sauce containing pieces of shrimp and octopus. It was excellent – we’ve never had a bad meal at Baja Joe’s.

Saturday evening I manned the grill and cooked a pork tenderloin that Donna marinated in her mojo marinade. She served it with Cuban rice and a steamed vegetable medley. Another nicely balanced and nutritious meal.

Mojo marinated pork tenderloin

Donna had shrimp again on Sunday when she grilled it and served it over cilantro-avocado-lime sauce. Tasty!

Grilled shrimp, Mexican corn and grilled shishito peppers

We had a warm weekend with the thermometer reaching the upper 90s – it was 99 on Saturday! The temps held in the 80s as we packed on Monday and Tuesday. Packing for four months is more like moving from a furnished apartment to another furnished place. It’s not like we’re just heading out for a weekend.

We hit the road around 9:15am. Our route took us over Usery Pass to the Bush Highway past Saguaro Lake and on to the Beeline Highway (AZ87). We climbed to Payson which sits at an elevation of 5,000 feet above sea level. It was much cooler – in the low 70s there – and continued across the Sitgreaves National Forest to Heber on AZ260. This road runs through pine forest all the way to Heber – not what most people picture in Arizona.

At Heber, we turned northeast on AZ277, then AZ377 to Holbrook. The wind really picked up at Holbrook – it’s a steady 30mph wind with higher speed gusts. We’ve stopped for the night near the entrance of the Petrified Forest National Park. We stayed here last year – it’s a dry camping spot. I positoned the coach near the leeward side of a building to shelter us from some of the wind gusts. This is about the halfway point to tomorrow’s destination – Cortez, Colorado. We’ll spend a month there. Tomorrow we will go north through the National Park, then head east a short way on I-40, then north again through the Navajo Nation past Four Corners and on to Cortez – that’s the plan.

Swamp Thang

I mentioned how well our swamp cooler works in my last post. When our friends Ginette and Greg were visiting, they were amazed to find we weren’t using our air conditioner and kept the house cool with the swamp cooler. In fact, they had never heard of a swamp cooler.

They live on Vancouver Island, Canada where a swamp cooler wouldn’t be very effective. Swamp coolers are evaporative cooling devices and are most effective in dry climates. They take advantage of the physics behind the effect of changing water from liquid to vapor. The swamp cooler is a simple device – it pumps water over a matrix – in our case, it’s batting material made from cellulose fibers. This batting is held in the louvered housing on three sides of the cooler. The fourth side is a duct connected to our Arizona room.

The batting is soaked with water drawn from a sump in the bottom of the cooler. A large squirrel-cage fan sits inside the housing of the cooler. This fan draws air through the louvers past the wet batting and pumps the air into the Arizona room. As the hot, dry air passes over the wet batting, the water absorbs heat from the air and changes from liquid to gas (evaporates), thus cooling the air. The drier the air is, the more effectively this change of state occurs.

This also has the benefit of adding some moisture to the dry air in the house. It’s common to have relative humidity levels under 20% here in central Arizona and last week we had single digit relative humidity.

We typically see a change of temperature in our house of about 20 degrees – it’s about 20 degrees cooler inside than the ambient outside temperature. So, last week when we had temperatures in the 90s outside, our house was comfortably in the 70s inside. The swamp cooler doesn’t require much power – only a couple of amps to run the fan and water pump. Considerably less than the demand of a compressor on an air conditioner unit.

When we bought this place, the previous owner said the swamp cooler didn’t work very well when the temperature reached triple digits. I wondered about this – it should still provide the 20 degree drop regardless, unless humidity rose high enough to slow the evaporative process.

By the way, the 20 degree drop is an average of the interior temperature versus outside. Swamp coolers don’t have any temperature regulation – it’s not governed by a thermostat. I checked the temperature of the grill where the air from the cooler enters the Arizona room with a non-contact infrared thermometer and it’s typically 60-62 degrees. To regulate the interior temperature, I leave a window and the front sliding glass door open, otherwise it would get downright chilly inside!

When it was in the upper 90s, I noticed the swamp cooler seemed to struggle – in fact, it quit working. I checked it out and found the problem. The water supply to feed the sump was feeble and couldn’t keep up with amount of evaporation taking place at that temperature. I could see the water dribbling from the supply valve – it has a float arm like you would find on a toilet ball cock that opens the valve as the water level drops.

Swamp cooler side panel open – you can see the batting on the side, the squirrel-cage fan, sump, pump and water supply valve below the fan

On Monday, I went to a shop that sells swamp coolers about a mile from here and bought a new supply valve. I took the old valve off and found the water supply still only dribbled a small amount of water. Hmmm.

I went to the other end of the water supply line and took it off the fitting – still only had a dribble. The clamp over the water pipe holding the water supply feed line was mis-aligned. Once I straighten that out, I had ample water flow to the swamp cooler.

Swamp cooler water supply fitting

Now the swamp cooler works better than ever and maintains plenty of water in the sump. Job done!

Last week, I played pickleball six days without a break. After taking Sunday off, I played for the next four days. That’s a lot of pickleball and my 65-year-old legs were feeling it. When I first started playing pickleball, I bought a Pro-Lite paddle. I used it for a few years, then I replaced it with a Head paddle. I bought the Head right when they hit the pickleball market – Head was well established as a tennis racquet supplier also sold ski equipment.

Head had their pickleball paddles manufactured in China. As an early adopter, I was a victim of poor quality control – my Head paddle literally fell apart. Then I met a Paddletek representative in Colorado and bought new Paddletek paddles for me and Donna. Paddletek makes their products in the USA – Niles, Michigan.

I’ve been using the Paddletek paddle for over three years now and I decided it was time for a replacement. I did a little research. The biggest factor in pickleball paddles is arguably the shape. The rules give a restriction on overall dimension, but it can be long and narrow or shorter and wider to meet the specification. My game is more of a control and shot placement game rather than power and speed. I opted for the more traditional shape rather than the elongated power-paddle.

I settled on a paddle branded by the tennis racquet company, Prince. These paddles are actually made by Paddletek right here in the USA.

Prince Spectrum pickleball paddle
Paddle cover

I found it on sale at Pickleball Central for $103 and they included a nice paddle cover. These regularly sell online for about $130 and the cover is an extra cost $17 option, so I think I got a pretty good deal. I’m liking it so far.

As always, Donna is feeding me like a king. Here are a few examples. Last Saturday, she made a new twist on chicken – garlic-roasted chicken thighs with carrots. She served it with guasacaca sauce, a Venezuelan sauce made with avocado, jalapeno, rice vinegar, zest and juice of lime, plus loads of fresh parsley and cilantro. The sauce can be drizzled over grilled flank steak too or used as a dip so it’s very versatile not to mention tasty!

Roasted garlic chicken and carrots with guasacaca sauce

For our Easter Sunday dinner, she grilled wild Alaskan salmon and served it over asparagus with peas and capers in a brown butter sauce and chantilly potatoes on the side. Yummy!

On Tuesday we had real man-food. I grilled New York strip steaks with bok choy and Donna made jalapeno poppers to go with it.

As I mentioned, we had some hot weather. On Monday and Tuesday the thermometer hit 96 and 97 degrees respectively. If the weather guessers are correct, we might see triple digits for the first time this year next Tuesday.

Speaking of next Tuesday, I have an appointment to change the oil in the coach in preparation for hitting the road. Last time I had an oil service, I think I paid $280. Now, every place around here is charging around $400 for the seven-gallon oil change plus filter on a Cummins ISL diesel engine. I don’t see any plan from the current administration to curb inflation and energy costs. It’s disheartening to see these price hikes while my investments are losing value.

Snow Birds Head North

The season is really winding down here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. I haven’t taken time to update this blog and I’ve mostly neglected to take photos when I had the opportunities. I’ll start this update going back to a week ago Saturday.

Mike Hall met me Saturday morning at 202 RV Valet where our Alpine Coach is stored. You might recall, we had a mishap in Utah near the end of last summer. The driver side panel in front of the left front wheel broke loose. I made a few attempts at roadside repairs and finally got it secured well enough to limp to a campground. I made a better repair and it held up as we made our way back to Mesa, Arizona.

But, the panel didn’t quite line up the way it should. Mike looked at it a few weeks ago and came up with a repair plan – he’s a paint and body man among his other talents. Saturday morning we put his plan in action – well, he handled most of the action while I watched and learned. With judicious use of a floor jack, he aligned the panel then riveted it into place. I did some clean-up of tape residue from my temporary repairs by wiping it with laquer thinner and it was job done. I don’t think Mike spent more than 30 minutes on the actual work. Thanks, Mike!

Saturday afternoon I put the Heritage duroc babyback ribs on the Traeger – I wrote about duroc pork in my last post. Our friends, DIck and Roxy Zarowny joined us for happy hour and dinner on the back deck. The duroc babybacks were a hit – I think it’s worthwhile to spend a little extra for the premium duroc pork. In fact, I went back to Fry’s this morning to see if they had them – sold out for now. If I can’t find them in the next day or two, I’ll go to Chuck’s Fine Meats and see if he has duroc or Berkshire pork babyback ribs.

The rest of the week seems like a blur – Donna had tennis most days while I played pickleball. I spent some time learning new songs on the guitar and did a lot of reading. It was hot outside with the temperatures in the 90s from Tuesday through the weekend.

It’s been a while since I’ve gone to Lucky Lou’s for a couple of cold ones and a cigar on the patio. I did that on Friday and met up with Mike and Jodi Hall there. The usual suspects – Leendert, John Huff, Bob and the other John and one of the other Mikes were all there.

I learned on Saturday that my old friend in San Diego, Bob Babich passed away. Bob played for the San Diego Chargers and the Cleveland Browns. He was drafted by the Chargers in 1969 in the first round – the 18th player drafted that year. He was an NFL linebacker for 9 years. He was part of the Bay Park crew I often hung around with at Offshore Tavern and Dan Diego’s whenever we stayed in San Diego. He would have turned 75 on May 5th. RIP Bob – you will be missed.

Yesterday we were joined by our friends Greg and Ginette DeCoteau for happy hour on the back deck. It got interesting a couple of times when wind gusts threatened to take our shade umbrellas away! Greg and Ginette are Canadians, their home is in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. They’re heading back to Canada on Thursday of this week.

I have some dinner plates to close out this post. First up was last Tuesday’s dinner – grilled chicken with Italian seasoning served with spaghetti squash and marinara and steamed spinach on the side.

Grilled chicken with Italian seasoning, spaghetti squash with marinara on the side

The next night Donna came up with turmeric black pepper chicken with asparagus over rice.

Turmeric black pepper chicken with asparagus

The next dish might be a bit of an oddity, but it was delicious. Last Saturday Donna made duck sausage roasted with onions and grapes. The side dish was cauliflower risotto with chopped asparagus and mushrooms.

Duck sausage roasted with onions and grapes

Yesterday I broke down another whole chicken and Donna grilled the wings, legs and thighs and prepared an Asian dipping sauce made from mayonnaise, mustard and sambal oelek – an Indonesian chili paste. We had grilled shishito peppers on the side.

Grilled chicken with Asian style dipping sauce and shishito peppers

The forecast calls for cooler weather – only in the mid-70s for next couple of days, upper 80s on Friday and back into the 90s for the weekend. It hasn’t been bad – we haven’t even used the air conditioning. The swamp cooler and fans have been good enough to keep the place comfortably in the mid-70s, even with the front slider open and only the screen door closed.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

Time for Summer Plans

April 1st – I promise, no April Fool’s lines in this post. This is the time of year when many people pack up for the season and leave Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort, especially the Canadian visitors. I’d be willing to bet that we have only 50% occupancy two weeks from now.

Donna and I have been discussing plans for our summer season. I think we’ll need to scale back from our original thoughts. With the current price of fuel, we’ll be burning over $5 every eight miles! The current administration wants to blame the high cost of fuel on the Russians, but it doesn’t take much memory to go back two months, well before Russia invaded Ukraine, when fuel prices had already increased by 48% over a year ago.

I don’t see any real relief anytime soon and with it, inflation will continue unabated. I don’t see any cohesive plan from the White House to provide a real solution. So, I’m going to be conservative in my spending for the foreseeable future.

We’ve booked a month in Cortez, Colorado. This has been a favorite area to visit over the last few years. We also have a month booked in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I’ve pretty much scrapped our original plan to head back to the Pacific Northwest. We’ll hang in the Northern Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico regions this year when we escape the heat of central Arizona next month.

A couple of days ago, I went into my geek mode and ran some tests of our stereo sound system. I found some surprising results with an oscilloscope on the output of the Elekit integrated stereo amp. First of all, looking at power output, I found that only one watt of power could bring the sound to a reasonable listening level in our Arizona room. The room is approximately 24 feet by 16 feet with a peaked ceiling and is acoustically challenging.

Nevertheless, running the power up to five watts will drive you out of the room as it is loud! My speakers have an efficiency (sensitivity) rating of 93db. The low power requirement really took me by surprise. I wish I still had my decibel meter to make meaurements of sound pressure levels, but it’s long gone.

The other thing I looked at with the oscilloscope was the waveforms creating the sound. It always amazed me how a speaker can reproduce several sounds simultaneously. I can easily separate and hear the difference between drums, bass, other instruments and vocals all at once. How can this be?

Oscilloscope trace of speaker output from stereo amplifier

When you look at the waveform trace in the photo above, you mostly see the composite signal. The scope is set for 5 milliseconds per division, so beginning to end we are looking at 0.6 seconds of material. What’s hard to see without enlarging further is the jagged appearance of the trace. This jagged appearance is due to other frequencies of lower amplitude that are overlaid on the larger amplitude overall signal. In other words, the signal trace we’re seeing is made up of thousands of smaller peaks and troughs that make each individual sound. I don’t think I’m putting this phenomenon into words very well, but it’s a topic that fascinates me.

The past week was a little less busy than the week before. My last pickleball clinic of the season was cancelled on Tuesday when we had high wind and thundershowers. I managed to play on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday and hope to get a few games in this afternoon. Donna played tennis and had an epiphany last week. Her friend, Lorraine, lent her a racquet to try. Donna was amazed at how much easier it was to handle and how much her accuracy improved.

The first thing she noticed was the grip diameter. She has been using too large of a grip. She has small hands. Tennis racquets can be had in a variety of grip diameters that go up in 1/8-inch increments. Her racquet was 4 1/2 inches, the one she borrowed was 4-1/8 inches. We searched online and found some grip size recommendations. Using one method of measuring hand size it appeared she should be using a 4 3/8 inch grip.

I didn’t believe this was right – especially since she found the 4 1/8 to be comfortable. I ordered her a new racquet and split the difference and went with a 4 1/4 inch grip. She used it yesterday and liked it. She’s played with it again this morning and felt much more confident with it. So we made the right choice!

As I stated in the beginning of this post, it’s the end of the season for a lot of the park visitors. Our friends, Dick and Roxy, from Spokane, Washington will be leaving soon. We invited them to join us for happy hour and dinner tomorrow. Yesterday Donna stopped at Fry’s grocery and saw some Heritage duroc pork babyback ribs, but she passed on them because they were $8.99/pound.

This morning I went to Fry’s and bought a rack – playing the Fry’s VIP card game I got the ribs for $6.99/lb. I’m surprised to find duroc pork at a grocery chain like Fry’s. I would expect to find them at a specialty meat market. Duroc pigs are what’s called a Heritage breed – this is like heirloom vegetables – it’s an old breed that’s come back into favor. Duroc and Berkshire are the most popular of the Heritage pig breeds and are known for their high-quality meat. Duroc is known for juicy meats due to intramuscular fat and mild flavor. They are the second most popular Heritage breed behind Berkshire – also known for its tender, mild-flavored meat.

I’ll prep the ribs later today and smoke them for tomorrow’s dinner. Speaking of dinner, we went out to eat on Wednesday evening. We thought about Fat Willy’s but they had a 30-minute wait for a table on the patio. We went to an old favorite Thai restaurant instead – 5R Cha. We used to go there years ago when we lived here.

I went for the old standard – chicken pad thai. Donna was more adventuresome and ordered a green curry with fish. When she asked the server what kind of fish they used, she just said it was a white fish. Hmm, sounded a little shaky to me. Donna went for it anyway. She’s sorry she did. She had an upset stomach Thursday morning and it persisted all day. I suspect the “white fish” was probably swai. Swai is a fish that’s farmed in Vietnam and it’s not the healthiest fish option. It’s sold under many different names – it used to be called Asian catfish, but that name is no longer allowed in the US as it’s misleading. Anyway, I’ve heard and read many reports of people having digestive disorders after eating swai. We won’t be going back to 5R Cha.

We haven’t had any complaints about Donna’s cooking. Last Sunday, Donna prepared chile-glazed pork tenderloin with a sweet potato-spinach hash.

Pork tenderloin with sweet potato-spinach hash

Monday I made my almost famous – well it’s famous among immediate family members – Japanese fried rice. Donna grilled shrimp to serve with it. Japanese fried rice is always labor intensive for me. I cut the ingredients carefully, trying to keep things uniform. Donna laughs at me for using four different knives during prep. I use the Japanese method of selecting the proper knife for each task – traditional Japanese kitchen cutlery is very specialized.

Ingredients in the wok before rice is added – and yes, that’s fried spam in the other pan to be added to the fried rice
Monday’s dinner plate – Japanese fried rice and grilled shrimp

As I mentioned earlier, Tuesday was a rainy day. Donna kept it simple and made a beef ragu served over angel hair (capellini) pasta for me and spaghetti squash for her.

Beef ragu over capellini

Last night, we ended the month of March with blackened tilapia. We are always careful when buying tilapia – some parts of the world are known for shady fish farming practices while others have better regulation and use acceptable modern methods. This tilapia was purchased at Costco and came from Costa Rica.

Blackened tilapia with green rice and baby squash

Last Sunday was warm and the high reached 93 degrees. The stormy Tuesday was only 66 degrees. We reached 81 yesterday and will probably hit 83 degrees today. The forecast looks good for the week ahead – maybe on the warm side by the end of next week. Long range, April looks to be comfortable temperature wise.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

Party Time

I’ve been adding to our music collection by purchasing a variety of recordings on compact disc (CD). I like the CD format – they’re fairly rugged, easy to store and with a good, modern digital to analog converter (DAC), they sound great.

I’m really enjoying the sound of the Elekit TU-8200R single-ended vacuum tube stereo integrated amp I built from a kit. In fact, I like my entire set-up right now. When I posted about the Klipsch speakers I’m using, my friend Peter Swingle commented that he couldn’t get used to the sound of the Klipsch speakers – he much preferred soft-dome tweeters in his speakers.

I thought about this a bit and wondered if he ever listened to Klipsch speakers driven by a vacuum tube amplifier or was his experience with solid state? About 20 years ago, I put together an expensive sound system based on Pioneer Elite series components (solid state) and used expensive Infinity floor standing speakers with soft dome tweeters. I remember being somewhat annoyed by the amount of sibilance that was apparent in some recordings with that set-up.

I recalled how the sibilance was pronounced when I played back Talk of the Town by the Pretenders. As Chrissy Hynde sang, when the lyrics had certain words like “such” and “shots” the “ess” sound came out almost like a hiss. I broke out my Pretenders CD and gave it a listen on my current system. No sibilance, just nicely balanced sound. I know, it’s not a scientific comparison, just my memory of the sound of two different systems in completely different surroundings.

Since I started this music buying spree, every time I open YouTube, I see performances by different artists. This has influenced my choices in new music. One of the YT suggestions was for an American jazz singer named Melody Gardot. She has an excellent voice that’s very pleasant to listen to. When I read her back story, I had to order her CD.

In 2003, when Melody was 19 years old, she was hit by a SUV while bicycling in Philadelphia. She sustained head, spinal and pelvic injuries that were serious enough for her to be hospitalized for a year. One of her physicians thought music would help her recover from the brain injury. After a period of time, she could hum along with different songs. Slowly she began singing along. Finally she could really sing and started writing songs. It’s quite a story and she advocates for music therapy.

Our calendars had some social events this past week. On Sunday, we had the annual Viewpoint Pickleball Club general membership meeting and dinner. It’s always fun to get together with the people we usually see only at the pickleball courts. It’s kind of funny – a few times I’ve run into fellow pickleballers at the grocery store or somewhere offsite and hardly recognize them in street clothes.

On Monday, we had a block party for Viewpoint residents of the 2500 row. It was a potluck and BYOB at the southpoint recreation area. Viewpoint has three recreation areas – the main pool area which has two swimming pools, hot tubs and shuffleboard. The northpoint recreation area has a swimming pool, hot tub, gym and a clubhouse with an upper patio deck. It’s adjacent to the softball field which has bleachers and a kitchen area. The southpoint recreation area has a swimming pool, hot tub, gym and a large patio area with gas barbeque grills. It’s directly across from Fat Willy’s bar and restaurant and the golf pro shop. It was a fun little party and a chance to meet some of our neighbors.

On Wednesday Donna went to northpoint for an end-of-season party for her tennis team. Donna was one of the organizers – she’s really involved with the tennis club. She’s also a Residents of Viewpoint Association (ROVA) street captain. ROVA advocates for the residents here and raises issues with the Viewpoint management and parent corporation – they generally keep the management on their toes and make sure any maintenance or safety concerns are voiced and documented.

We recieved another party invitation on Wednesday. Our neighbor and fellow pickleball enthusiasts from Washington, Kay and Jay, are having an early happy hour with appetizers and BYOB at their place on Tuesday. However, today we found a notice left at our door saying they had to cancel the party as they both tested positive for Covid-19. I hope they’re okay and recover quickly.

With all of the parties and eating out, I only have a couple of dinner plates for this post. Both plates happen to be chicken dishes. On Saturday, Donna made turmeric chicken and she reserved some of the turmeric sauce to put over some leftover champ potatoes.

Turmeric chicken

Yesterday I broke down a whole chicken and Donna used the breasts to make chicken Lombardy. This is a favorite dish for sure.

Chicken Lombardy

Yesterday I trimmed and cut a London broil for jerky. I marinated it overnight in a soy-based pepper marinade. It’s on the Traeger now – it usually takes about four to five hours of smoker time. I started with two pounds of beef cut into strips. After smoking and dehydrating, I should end up with more than a pound of jerky. The London broil was on sale and I got it for $7. The soy sauce, worcestershire, brown sugar and spices don’t amount to much cost. All in all, it’s way better than paying eight to 10 dollars for a 1/4 pound of jerky at the market.

The weather held pretty much to the forecast with the exceptions of a few raindrops Sunday afternoon. We’ve been seeing low to mid 80s since then and will be over 90 degrees today and tomorrow. The forecast for the week ahead shows mostly the same with one anomaly on Tuesday – they say it’ll only get up to 64 degrees on Tuesday and we’ll have rain.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!