My Butt Hurts...

Becca told me a story about when they were living in New Jersey and Inessa and Sophronia were still young.  They were sitting in sacrament meeting in their tiny branch, and the girls were kind of being loud.  Becca was trying to keep them quiet, and it wasn't working.  Then out of the blue Sophronia stopped the meeting by shouting loudly, "My butt hurts!"

Good stuff.

I spent the day out in Magna working.  In the morning I cut up some steel fence posts, and that took longer than I'd planned.  Then around noon I headed out to the lot.  When I got there I set to work pulling the wooden stakes off the 2x6's I'd bought to use as forms.  I spent the last few days nailing 2x4 stakes to the boards, then tried to drive them.  Unfortunately, in the battle between the stakes and the ground, the ground won.  I pounded and pounded and pounded away, and after those three pounds, the wood split and fell to pieces.  Thats why I bought the steel fence posts.

I was bending over all morning cutting the posts, then again pulling the forms I'd built apart, then driving the steel post pieces, and when I'd done all that I spent a couple hours clearing some of the thick grass.  My back was quite sore.

When I got home I took a shower, and I noticed that the skin right above my butt was a bit sore.  It felt a little like I had a rash.  That was a bit disturbing   So when I got out of the shower I looked at it in the mirror.  There was no rash.  There was on the other hand, a very clearly delineated patch of livid red sunburn.  All that time bent over today in the sun, it turns out that I had a bad case of plumber bum.  That's the danger of working alone I guess.  There's no one to tell you that your butt crack is sticking out.  And so it goes.

Sophronia, I'm with you on that.  My butt hurts!

At Last...

So, a month later, I seem at last to have mended my motorcycle.  An engine needs three things: air, gas, and spark.  I determined it was getting gas by pulling the fuel line off the hose and sucking on the vent line.  Gas came out.  Then I determined it was getting to the carb by opening the float bowl valve.  Gas came out.

Then I figured out it had compression because when I tried bump starting it slowed and grabbed when I popped the clutch.  But it still didn't start.  And that just left the problem of spark.

I left the spark for last because it meant that I had to pull the body of the bike apart to test it.  And it turned out to be the problem indeed.  I pulled the sparkplug out and put it back in the boot, then grounded it on the engine and hit the starter.  No spark.

First I thought it was the plug, but when I replaced that it still didn't work.  Then I thought it was the coil, but I bought a cheap multimeter and tried to test it, and it seemed to be good.  Then I decided to follow the wiring back from there.  What a mess.  I cut all of the wrapping off the wiring harness.  It took days.  I found  a wiring diagram online, but it wasn't accurate.  I only found that out after following every wire there was.

I got kind of hung up on the start button, and cut it up.  Then I realized it was actually fine, and had to go back and solder it all back together.  Seriously this was all a tremendous amount of work.  And I was working on it all the time.

After I figured out it wasn't the ignition switch I thought it was the starter relay.  I tested that though, powering it with a 9volt battery.  It clicked fine.  Then I thought it was the ignitor.  There wasn't really any good way to test it.  I was really hoping it wasn't that.  It's the most expensive part in the electrical system.  $175.  The coil isn't much cheaper.

Then I followed the wiring back from the ignitor, and thought it was the fan switch.  It wasn't.  Then I thought it was the kick stand sensor.  It wasn't.  Then I thought it was the pulsing coil.  That would have been a real mess, because I'd have had to pull the engine case apart, take off the cam chain and gears and get in behind them.  Happily I tested it at the connector and it was ok.  I checked the battery, but I was pretty sure that was ok, since I'd replaced it only a few months ago.  It actually had run down from all the testing I'd been doing without running it.  So I charged it.  Then I was back to the wiring.  Then when the wiring checked out, I was back to the coil.

I got a copy of the factory service manual, and ran some more detailed tests on the coil.  The secondary coil seemed to be ok, but the primary failed.  This wasn't a good thing because the coil costs about $125.  So I took it to the parts place, hoping they could test it better than I could.  Like I said, my multimeter was pretty cheap.

When I took it to the parts place the guy who helped me took the sparkplug boot off and looked at the lead.  There was no visible wire in the lead.  Turns out that's the bad thing.  I'd have never known it, but the leads deteriorate.  So they sold me a splitter and a little bit more lead.  I took it home, put the gas tank back on, and it fired right up.  Huzzah.

Now I've just got to put it all back together.  The problem is that it's been a month.  I don't really remember how everything fits exactly, and fumbling around the garage for a month I've bumped bits and pieces and knocked out bolts and nuts.  The result is...  we'll see.

Staking...

I spent the better part of yesterday and the day before staking out my lot.  Today I realized I did it
incorrectly.  I'm going to have to do it all over.  Inexperience.  What can you do, except make the mistakes you make.  It's all about learning, huh?

The problem was that I staked out an extra foot on the outside.  I was thinking I was going to need it, so I could form the outside face from the bottom.  Then I realized there's no particular reason to do so.  It only really needs to be even and flat on the outside above grade.  There's no real reason not to use the side of the trench as the form on the outside as well as the inside.  And it will save on costs on the forms.

Besides, I was forgetting a couple of things.  First, I've got to get all the ground up wood and grass off the ground, and second, I've got to lay gravel down.  That means I'm going to end up eight inches above the current grade, rather than the six required by code.  That's probably going to be a good thing, as the grade is below the road on one side, and it could be good for drainage.  Actually the roads are kind of ridiculous there abouts.  At the cross streets you have to go through a ditch that is deep enough, and that rises fast enough to the height of the road that if you are in a car you are definitely going to scrape your undercarriage. I almost do in my truck.

Anyway, it was interesting when I finished staking it out last night.  I walked through counting paces and could visualize for the first time where the individual rooms were, and their proportion.  It's going to fill the lot  more completely than I'd thought originally.  But it will be fine.  It will be good.

We've All Done It...

I was researching Salt Lake County Public Codes in preparation for digging a foundation for my house when I came across this:

14.32.150 - Games on sidewalks, curb ramps or streets.

It is unlawful for any person to obstruct any sidewalk, curb ramp or street by playing games thereon, such as ballgames, quoits, marbles, jumping, rolling of hoops, flying of kites, or coasting, or to annoy or obstruct the free travel of any pedestrian, team or vehicle.

(Ord. 1265 § 22, 1994: prior code § 10-12-6)

I haven't looked, but I suspect there are similar laws on the books in most places, perhaps even in Providence.  If that is the case, I think I've broken the law many times.  I suspect we all have.  I can see the utility of such a law, but can you imagine a policeman trying to enforce it?  Storming in like a bull and breaking up a kid's game of marbles?  Who knew jumping on a sidewalk was illegal?  What about hopping? Can a one legged man who's lost his prosthesis under his bed use the sidewalk?  Surely he'd be moving slowly, as he hopped along obstructing able bodied traffic.

And what's with the games?  Rolling hoops, coasting, quoits?  Can you imagine any kid doing any of these things on the sidewalk in front of you house this afternoon?  They're like a million years old.  Does anyone even remember what "Quoits" is?  I had to look it up.  Here's a lovely drawing of some people playing it.

It seems to me from the picture that it is clearly a game that originated at Hogwarts some time in the late 1700's.  Actually, I guess it is some kind of ring toss game.  

I think any cop who came for kids playing these games on the sidewalk would be wearing a mustache and a silly hat, and a huge double-breasted coat and clodhopper boots.  The ne'er-do-well that they've apprehended in this photo is probably a little old for our purposes, but it serves as illustration.

They'll be dragging any kid who gets nicked away in a horse drawn jail carriage.  The precursor of the paddy-wagon?  It's off to the workhouse for those urchins.

I'm totally going to call the cops and insist they enforce this law if I see any children playing on the sidewalk when I build my house.  I mean it must have current relevance   It was revised just in 1994.  There will be no quoits in my neighborhood.  No sir-ee.

My Truck is New...

Today I did something that seems to have renewed my truck somewhat.  And the great thing is that it only took me about twelve hours of work.  I changed the spark plugs and wires.  What's that you say?  That's a twenty minute job?  Obviously you own a japanese vehicle.  I bought American.  Cause I'm a 'MERICAN.  And american engineers think it is an excellent idea to put spark plugs in the most inaccessible nooks of an engine.  And they have happily deposited the distributor cap at the very back of the engine bay against the firewall, underneath the overhanging intake manifold.  Wow.

To be fair, I was cleaning engine grease around the plug holes as I went along, and periodically got carried away with the tidying.  But it was a terrible job.  The ratchet didn't fit anywhere.  Luckily I bought some universal joint ratchet extensions on a whim, because they were entirely necessary for the job.  They bend at the middle, at the joint, which makes it so you can change the direction the ratchet handle is moving.

Then, the last plug, in cylinder one, was seized.  It seemed somehow inevitable.  This plug was giving me trouble before.  The performance had been pretty horrible, and it was stuttering badly when you accelerated.  This said ignition problem to me.  But only after it said vacuum leak, and compression loss.  Well, those things may also be true, but eventually I figured out that this might be an electrical problem.

A good test for this is to open the hood in the dark and start the engine.  If you see sparks flashing, you have a problem.  Electricity escaping through cracks in the wire boots or a cracked distributor cap can apparently have a significant effect upon power output.  In my case, I think it is quite possible that number one cylinder wasn't firing at all.

In any case, it has done quite well for me.  I took it for a test drive to Papa Murphy's to get a pizza.  Acceleration was far better.  Because, you know, you could.  Not fast, but far faster than before.  Before people had constantly been frustrated following me away from lights.  I'd be juddering up to thirty miles an hour about about a block and a half away from the light, and whoever was behind me would be three blocks on, having gone around me on the right.  So it's better now.  And today wasn't a wasted day.  So that's good too.

Oh, and Laura, about not letting that thing on my leg get infected?

Uh... Too late.

Question...

At some point everyone wonders to his or her self, "Self?  How hard can a 3.5 horsepower lawnmower whip a green tree branch?"

Now you know.

PS-  It's very difficult to take a picture of your leg at that angle.  Try it.  You'll see.