Chuckanut Drive and Crab

After publishing my last post on Friday, we had a problem. I’m still not sure if it was a hack or an error at our hosting site, but the link to Flyingthekoop came up with an error showing “account suspended.” Donna’s Unclutter site had the same error – we share hosting services. Donna spent most of the morning getting it fixed. Coincidentally, Donna received an e-mail offering software to protect web sites from hackers. Maybe not so coincidental.

In the afternoon, we drove our granddaughter, Gabi, up to Darrington for her friend’s birthday party. On the way back, we stopped in Arlington. The streets were hopping as it was Arlington Street Fair time. This three-day event kicked off Friday afternoon. We didn’t check it out much – we were hungry and went straight to Suda Thai on the corner of Olympic and 4th Street for dinner. The food was great.

The weekend looked promising weather-wise. Donna took her bike out for a ride around the Arlington Airport trail. She’s also been doing a kettle-bell workout routine. In addition to that, she traded in her Yamaha electric piano and bought a clarinet. She played clarinet in her junio high school band and is practicing it daily now – she didn’t forget how to play it. I’m impressed!

Saturday evening we were invited to a barbeque dinner at my ex-wife’s (LuAnn) house with the kids. They live around the corner from Alana so we walked over around 6pm. Donna made a dish of saffron ginger brown basmati rice to go with the grilled salmon. When we arrived, LuAnn put out a spread of appetizers. The appetizers included crab dip made from crabs they collected in Puget sound off of Camano Island the day before.

Barbeque – clockwise from the left (in pink) Alana, Gabi, Kevin, Donna, Jerry, LuAnn, Dan and Lainey

We had a few adult beverages which continued into the night as we gathered around a propane fire pit. The weather was fine and the temperature was warm enough until we left around 11pm.

Sunday was another fine day with partly cloudy skies and the temperature reached the upper 70s. A great day for a joy ride in Midget-San. We drove up I-5 with the top down and exited in north Burlington on WA11. This took us past Edison and Bow on Chuckanut Drive. Chuckanut Drive is a scenic road that hugs the Samish Bay and Bellingham Bay. It goes through Larrabee State Park. We pulled off at a scenic turnout. It was a beautiful day and sail boats, motor yachts and even the Alaska ferry could be seen on the water.

Donna and Midget-San at a turnout on Chuckanut Drive
View to the northwest
Looking west – I think that’s Lummi Island in the background

We continued north all the way to Bellingham before we went east on Lakeway Drive to Lake Whatcom. We were within 20 miles of the Canadian border. This road took us past several smaller lakes and we hit the Valley Highway (WA9) and followed it south. We went through Sedro-Wooley, over the Skagit River and through Big Lake back to Arlington. Overall, it was about a 100-mile loop and a very scenic drive.

Later we went back to LuAnn and Jerry’s place to polish off the remainder of the crab. They had more than two dozen crabs and they needed to be cracked and eaten or frozen.

Time to crack some crabs

Monday was a cooler day and we had a couple of passing showers. I’ve been monitoring our Verizon data usage as I always do – I check it daily first thing every morning. We still seem to be going through an excessive amount of data and I can’t explain why. Our Jetpack is password protected and I don’t see any unauthorized users. Donna and I aren’t doing anything out of the ordinary – in fact, our usage should be down if anything. Meanwhile, Verizon keeps sending me solicitations to change my data plan.

I received an Amazon package on Saturday, but I was not pleased. I had ordered a set of four sparkplugs for Midget-San. I received a single plug – not a package of four. I was billed the price of four. I sent an e-mail to the seller and waited for a response. None came on Monday. Tuesday I got a response that said “We’ve reviewed your order and the advertisement doesn’t say it’s a box of four.” The seller was a company called Newparts.

Their Amazon ad lists the part as:

NGK Spark Plugs BPR5ES-11 NGK Spark Plug 4/BX

That 4/BX suffix looks a lot like 4/Box. The ad also has a photo showing four sparkplugs. Under answered questions it says:

Question: Is this item a pack of four plugs Answer:Yes

There are also other sellers offering a pack of four plugs for about the same price – within 50 cents. I filed for a return with Amazon and I think they to need to investigate this seller. They issued a refund and I placed another order with a different seller.

Yesterday I decided to perform some routine maintenance on Midget-San. I want to establish a baseline for fluids and other consumables like filters and sparkplugs. Before I could do this, I needed a new floor jack. The Midget is so low to the ground, I can’t get underneath it. My old floor jack was a cheap model that didn’t lift very high and the hydraulic cylinder was leaking. I bought a new aluminum floor jack that fits the bill perfectly and it weighs only 40 pounds.

I jacked up the Midget and put jack stands on all four corners. This will be the normal maintenance mode for this vehicle.

Midget-San in maintenance mode

When you have a car that’s been the subject of an engine swap, sometimes routine stuff becomes a little more challenging. In the case of Midget-San, the Nissan A15 engine installation put the oil filter directly above the front-right frame horn. It took me a while to figure out the best way to remove the oil filter and it involved a 30-minute search of the trailer for the right tool. I was sure I had it, but couldn’t find it.

Donna and Gabi were playing bingo at the senior center. When I picked them up at 2:30pm, I stopped at the auto parts store and bought the tool I needed. Maybe I’m remembering a tool I used to have and it’s long gone with our stolen trailer. Anyway, with the right tool, I was able to get the job done.

Meanwhile, I placed another call to Lifestyles Recreational Products to inquire about progress on the Spyder. These guys are a real disappointment. The service advisor, Guy, doesn’t seem to have a clue every time I call. He said they performed another test and are waiting to hear from BRP technical assistance again! He said he would get back to me, but I never heard from him yesterday. I called again this morning and they’ve finally decided to replace the Engine Control Module. I told them I suspected the ECM two weeks ago and the technician also had the same thought, but they were too unsure of themselves to order the part until BRP told them to. Now we wait for the part to arrive.

The weather was fine yesterday – we had another day in the upper 70s. It was not to last though. We woke up to rain this morning and cloudy skies and rain showers expected over the next few days.

*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!