Rust, Grime, and Dirt

I just realized that August is almost over, the kiddos are heading back to school, the Maine Summer People (A.K.A. "folks from away") are thinning out, and summer 2014 is almost a memory. We still have a few more days of calendar summer - but autumn in Maine is rapidly approaching. 

All things considered - we have had a pretty great summer. The weather has been quite nice, we have kept busy doing stuff we enjoy including having some good times with our kids and grandkids, and we are looking forward to a fun fall as well. Except for raking leaves -- fall is probably my favorite season. Crisp mornings, warm enough afternoons, and cool nights for sleeping ... hard to beat that!

Peggy and I have had a pretty slow week this past week. I have been tinkering with my Yamaha project and Peggy lets me tinker while she gets a few of her house "pink jobs" taken care of and enjoys her quiet time while I'm outside playing in the 50 year old rust, grime, and dirt. 

Since my last post I have been successful in getting the Yamaha's engine to start with the electric starter .. and the generator now charges the battery. The fix to both items was the same - replace the "brushes" in the generator/starter mechanism. The fix was relatively easy - finding the replacement brushes for a 50 year old bike for less than the cost of two arms and two legs was more challenging. All I can say is that restoring an old motorcycle may be easier than a car since it is much smaller and has less parts - but on the other hand - finding parts for an old bike is more of a challenge! Ebay has become my friend once again.

Now that the engine runs pretty well I moved on to my next challenge - dealing with who-knows-how-old tires. The rear tire on this bike looks like it was replaced at some time in the past but I'm relatively certain that the front tire is original equipment. Although the rear tire/tube holds air - it is pretty worn out. The front didn't hold air and is suffering from severe dry rot. 

Since none of the local cycle shops carry much of an inventory anyway - especially for this small of a bike - it was back to the internet to find suitable replacements. Amazon.com is another of my new friends.

So while I await the postman/Fedex/UPS guy to bring my new parts I accomplish the not-so-fun part of old vehicle restoration ... cleaning old rust, grime,and dirt off of 50 year old parts.

Front Wheel after initial cleanup

It's still better than working for a living!

More Fun and Not-So-Fun times

Wow! have things been busy around here this last week or so! Actually, "things" have been busy all summer.

We started off last week by purchasing Mikee's new project. Since I didn't have enough to do keeping up this house and our other rolling house I decided to purchase a non running 50 year old motorcycle as a restoration project. Actually, I have been sorta looking for just such a project for several years but the right bike at the right price just didn't present itself ... until last week when I found this 1965ish Yamaha 125cc YA6 model in dire need of a complete restoration. The previous owner had owned the bike for 3 years, never had it running, and he had no clue when it last ran. On the plus side - the bike looked to be almost all there and the previous owner was willing to make the price acceptable to me -- so now the Yamaha has a new home.

 My first restoration goal was to see if I could get the engine running. The little one cylinder engine would "turn over" with the kick starter so at least the piston wasn't frozen in the cylinder. Let's try and see if we can get some spark at the spark plug. First we need a new battery since this bike requires one to run, then we needed to reconnect a few wires that someone had disconnected in the past and repair a few others that were broken. Voila ... we had spark! Now on to see if we can get fuel into the cylinder. I removed, disassembled, cleaned, and reinstalled the carburetor which was definitely in need of some renewing ... and then moved on to the gas tank. The gas tank appeared to be in pretty good shape but it definitely had some rust inside that needed to be flushed out. The tank will require some further work when I get into the detailed restoration process - but I got it cleaned out good enough for a test run. After adding a half gallon of gas to the tank and kicking the starter 3 times the engine sprang to life! Yippee - step one complete. Of course the engine test led to discovery of a few new problems - like the electric starter/generator didn't work ... so that became my next restoration step.

Our son Brian and his family from NJ showed up on Thursday last week for a few days of visiting before they had to return home yesterday to get ready for the start of school for grand daughters Alyssa and Emily. As always - we had a good visit. We don't get to see those NJ Evringhams often enough.

In amongst all that excitement we found out the son of one of our dearest friends passed away. Michael Swartz was only 45 years young and was the loving father of 2 young sons when he died relatively suddenly of a pancreatic cancer. Sad news indeed. We joined many others yesterday celebrating Michael's life and did our best to console his grieving parents ... but that will take a lot more time ... for all of us.

Hug all your loved ones today.1

Fun Show - Fun Drive - Fun Day

We are SomeoftheTime RVrs. We know many Fulltime RVing couples ... and we know a bunch of Ex-Fulltimers who have transitioned to SomeoftheTimers. But we have been and continue to be SomeoftheTimers. When we purchased our motohome in 2004 I was still working so we were more ExtendedWeekendWarriors. We had a couple of years where I was only sorta retired but we were still not much more than Vacationers. But since about 2007 we have been SomeoftheTimers.

As most of you know - I tend to keep track of such things ... and since 2007 we have traveled in our motorhome about 1/3 of the time - usually in 2 to 3 month stretches. Sometimes we are sorta snowbirds (although we still manage to see a lot of snow here in Maine) and visit the southeast and southwest. We haven't experienced March in Maine since 2008. 

We have made the trip from Maine to California 9 times in the last 10 years (OK I lied - we only made it to Arizona one of those years - but close enough)!

Since we last stayed home during the winter of '07/'08 ... we have only stayed put here in Maine for 7 months in a row one time -- in 2011. Until this year.

Wow ... it just dawned on me that we have been home now for 3 whole months -- and we presently have no firm plans to leave again. If we keep that up through the end of the year we will have stayed here at home for 7 months again. It feels a little strange ... and so it is time to start planning our next trip. If Mikee has his way (at best a 50-50 proposition) we will leave Maine for points south following Santa's Sleigh. Preliminary trip thoughts (not even a plan yet) include a few weeks in the southeast - travel to Arizona for a few weeks (perhaps back to the Congress/Prescott area) - up to Nevada again for a few weeks - back to Arizona (Tucson) for a few more weeks - attend the Escapee Escapade again in mid March - and then back home by the first of April. 

Only 4 months left to turn that into a plan!

In the meantime we have remained pretty busy. Peggy finished up her Vacation Bible School teaching last week and by all accounts it all went very well. She was pretty tired after all that activity herding toddlers for 4 days -- but she survived quite nicely. As for me? I held down the fort here at home getting a few house related projects done - but nothing of any real importance.

We celebrated the birth of our first child yesterday by dusting off the Chevelle and driving north on Route 1 - up the Maine coast on a beautiful summer day. Since we started sorta early - well early for Peggy anyway - about 8:30 AM - we just had to stop for breakfast at Moody's Diner in Waldoboro. Moody's has been serving the locals and the traveling public now for over 80 years ... nothing fancy ... just good old fashioned food and friendly service. It must explain why the place was packed when we arrived and was still packed when we left an hour later.

You may have noticed that fine '58 Chevrolet parked next to our Chevelle at Moody's. It seemed we were both headed to the same destination - the annual Wings and Wheels Spectacular being held this weekend at the Owls Head Transportation Museum up near Thomaston, Maine. The OHTM sponsors several antique car shows per year and some of the shows include demonstration flights by a few of the museum's restored antique aeroplanes. They have several unique planes from the WWI era that can still make it into the sky - and a few that I continue to wonder how they do it! 

This particular show included several WWII "Warbirds" from the traveling Texas Flying Legends. What fun to see 2 TBM Avengers, a couple of P-51 Mustangs, and a F4U Corsair taking off, flying in formation, doing a few stunts, and landing. And then there was the stunt sailplane doing silent loops to some beautiful background music. Not only did we get in for free since we exhibited the Chevelle - but we got to see a nice two hour air show as well.

 Oh Yeah ... the Museum itself had some really cool displays. We have visited the museum several times in the past but they had a lot of new stuff since we were here last.

They had old race cars ...

and how about this early, turn of the century Gypsy RV

And I especially liked this Whizzer ...

Fun Show - Fun Drive - Fun Day

Happy Birthday Brian

Blogging and Other Musings From Mikee

Here we are - 6 years on this blog - writing post #809. The Maineiacs In Motion blog actually started in 2005 (at a different web location) when we took off on our first Coast-To-Coast trip shortly after I "Retired" the first time. Since I re-entered the workforce on and off over the next couple of years the blogging kind of went by the wayside - as did our traveling. The blog was started so that our friends and relatives could keep track of our whereabouts during our travels. Since most of our relatives live far from Maine - and since writing old fashioned letters wasn't really my thing even back before electronic communication methods gained popularity - I have found that writing a periodic blog update, even while we are "home" helps keep those curious of our activities up-to-date. I suppose I could do something similar on Facebook - but so far, I find this more appealing. I also find it fun once in a while to go back and re-read those posts from several years ago. Since my memory fails me more and more these days - being able to read my thoughts of several years back helps bring back those times. So perhaps I'll keep this up even when other readers tire of my musings. I will probably get to the point where I need to read yesterday's post to remember what I was going to do today!

Today is son Eric's birthday. It is really hard to believe that he is 39 and his older brother will be 42 later this week. How they became my age is wonder to me! Happy Birthday Eric!

Today is also Day 1 of Maine Street Baptist Church's Vacation Bible School. Peggy has been a VBS teacher almost every year for many years now. She starts her preparations in the early spring to be ready by this time and she still has lots of last minute things to do each year. Now comes the busy-fun part.

I did get a few projects crossed off the Ta-Do list last week - including getting the deck stained - again. Actually - I did the cleaning and prep work and then hired young Bailey Johansen to spread the stain. My back and shoulders really appreciated having him operate the brush ... and he did a fine job - in spite of my supervision.

I also got Winne's entry steps scraped, rust proofed, painted, and lubricated. I'll put reinstallation on next week's Ta-Do list.

Peggy and I were suffering from a lack of Sophie time so we had her parents come over on Saturday to drop her off so we could play and get to find out about all the stuff she has learned in the last week or so. A one year old learns new stuff about every minute. Some stuff is good - some stuff needs other learning to become good stuff - but watching it all happen is a joy. Especially when you are a grandparent and have the time and inclination to enjoy it. It really is true that youth is wasted on the young.

So that's about it here. Summer is happening. Grandkids are growing. 

And the Blog marches on.