Monday 5-16 Projects, Dancing and Cleaning Porch Railing

What should I do today?

We had a beautiful day with a lot of sunshine. It got to 94 degrees at the house.

Larry started the day out by doing a couple of Minnie projects. The other day he changed the belts. The last time he did this one of the belts would squeal for a bit when it started. He discovered that over the years the crankshaft pulley gets polished by the belt running on it, this allows new belts to slip and squeal a bit until the belt warms up. To get it to stop he took the crankshaft pulley off and had it sand blasted. It was quite a job getting it off and back on and he had to find someone to sand blast it. Well with the new belts it once again was squealing when it first starts. This time he hoped to rough up the pulley without removing it. First he removed the belts and tried sanding the pulley by hand, he could not get it rough enough. He remembered we had a pumice stone for the bathroom. Using the pumice stone he was able to rough it up. It was a bit of a pain, some of the work was done from above, some while laying underneath the Minnie, then he had to turn the engine a couple of times so he could get all the way around the pulley. Once it was roughed up he had to clean the pumice from the pulley and then put the belts back on. He started the Minnie and the squeak was gone.

Next up was resealing a couple more places along the edge of the roof. He had to remove the old sealant, clean the area and add new sealant. To help with this he had purchased a new drip free caulk gun. He said the caulk gun worked great. 

Minnie Projects

After the projects were done he started the motorcycle, it started right up.

While Larry did his projects I attended Di Green's Weekly C1 dance at 9:00. She called five tips with 23 participants. She worked on Percolate in different positions. I had a great time dancing to Di and with my friends from all over the world.

On Saturday I put a couple of hummingbird feeders on our deck railing, we have already had hummingbirds visiting. It started yesterday. Usually it takes a couple of days for them to visit. Maybe, they came earlier because there were no other birds to scare them away.

Hummingbird

The oak trees have finished pollinating and I have been saying I need to wash the railing on the back porch and steps. After lunch I got up and did exactly that. It took me a couple of hours. Then I rested. After resting I went back outside and cleaned the grill. We clean the railing every year about this time.

Cleaning the railing

Before 

After

A clean grill

I played my computer games. I did the Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong. Then I did a few games of Jewel. Last I did the Event: Free Cell Adventure of 20 games. It took me 2 hours, 57 minutes and 16 seconds, which put me in 12th place in my group.

Late afternoon we watched a GizWiz and YouTube videos.

In the evening we watched a couple of episodes of 1st season of The Hour. The Hour is a series on PBS about a television news show, it is set in England in the late 50's. So far it is very good. Then I started to watch the 11th season of New Tricks. I ended up doing 27,500 steps, which put me in 4th place in my group.