Just some of the things we get up to.
We drove up to Delaware via this to avoid DC and its traffic. Much better scenery too. It was a nice drive but long. We saw huge numbers of cicadas flying around but I managed not to collect any on the car. Several times I found myself dodging my head around.. inside the car which I kept straight.
Farrell is the longest dog in the world according to Guinness
The engine block in my father in law’s boat was spraying water so we investigated. I found bondo covering something. A grinder showed that it was welded in the past. After cleaning I used JB Weld to cover and fill any voids. Tomorrow will tell if the operation was successful.
Well the next day showed that this fix held. Unfortunately the freeze plug just above this started leaking when the block held pressure. Then with the boat in the water we found water streaming in through the transom somewhere. Time to cut our losses and sell this thing.
Grumps too.
The rear mount on the front subframe was as bad as the others. This one had clearly been repaired before but it rusted badly around it. I really had a job trying to cut this out with limited clearance. The torches were out of the question with the fuel line an inch away. Welding required my pipe sweating pad.
Pieces after the struggle to cut it out. I had to cut back farther than the length of the repair plate.
So I had to lengthen it with a piece of steel. I got it sized the way I wanted and then had to get funky with welding it. Reaching up inside the frame blocked my view so I had to figure out when I was welding the end of that extension plate. I got it but it ain’t pretty.
After all the struggle to get this side I was dreading the next side. I took the bushing out and found it was in pretty good shape! I sprayed it with rust stuff, painted it with Rustoleum, and put in the new bushing. Done with subframe mounts. The ones on the front at the radiator support were okay though the bushings were rusted out inside.
A few days ago the water was up to our light pole. As it drops it’s leaving us lots of trash.
We could have a bonfire for days.
We put up a purple martin house and fairly quickly got some residents. They work hard at making their nests and we’ve witnessed purple martin porn so we know they’re getting ready to have broods. The trouble is European starlings show up and tear out the nests and harass the martins. We looked it up and see that the starlings will kill the baby birds, they’ll kill the adults if they can trap them in the box, and they’ll peck the eggs if they find those. Oh and to discourage the martins in the first place they tear the nests apart and chase them around. So following what we found on the internet we’re preparing a little surprise for them.
Here’s the parts
Here they are being painted
Home sweet home
With a fire escape?
The water can’t get much higher before it starts going over the dam. In the meantime water levels are wreaking havoc. Here my floating dock is pulled as high as I thought it would ever need to be. I would have to detach it from my winch cable and move it higher. I probably won’t because the lake will drop again as soon as TVA is able to lower it without more flooding down stream.
Some of my neighbors are having a tougher time though.
This is my next door neighbor’s dock. I tried moving that tree but I’ll have to wade in to get enough leverage. It’s very large and mostly waterlogged. That makes it really heavy. Yesterday afternoon a large float of debris washed up our little cove. The far end must be several feet deep in debris. Several dead animals are floating in the mess too.
Farther down is more debris trapped by a floating dock. Beyond that is a neighbor’s DECK that’s been covered. Their floating dock is still working though.
Taking a closer view. You’d have to swim to the ramp and wade across that to get to the dry floating dock.
Looking at our pretty irises and seeing the extremely high lake levels in the background.
