Log 2015052304

It's been a little while since I logged last.  I live in the Western Hills neighborhood in Marietta of Washington County.  I rent a room in a house on a high hill that has a stellar view of Marietta's north side.  You might call this place "Upper Harmar." You might think that it's just a $20 folding camp chair.  But when I'm on the back porch, it feels more like a throne.  Other than that, there's a bunch of things that I'm trying to do to the place.  Right now, I'm making progress on a mouse problem.

I have a bathtub drain where the water will not go down.  Right now, I'm thinking about getting the Roto Router in here.

The garage is one car and has a lawn tractor in it.  It doesn't have any exterior door controls and the garage door opener doesn't work.  So, my car is parked outside with it's manual transmission in gear, the parking brake on full and chalks deployed because of the driveway's grade.  If the car were ever to roll, it will punch though an attached garage at the neighbors house across the street.

I've known for a while that the parking brake's 3 cable system in my 2008 Chevy HHR LS are stretched.  When I back up while applying the break, I can hear sounds from my rear left brake shoes.  The parking brake cable is attached to a rocker bar.  And that's attached to a brake shoe (it doesn't have it's own hardware).

I'm waiting until the 1st of the month to get my Electronic Control Module looked at.  The technician at Sears this past month was able to crimp the broken wires that led to the Cylinder 1 spark plug mount.  They were cut by a bar that once mounted the air filter manifold to the engine block.  Once upon a time, the bar above the mounting hole snapped, leaving a rough, but sharp and perpendicular edge.  They were cut by the bouncing of the air filter manifold as I was driving.

I then had an engine misfire somewhere just before Marietta.  I stopped at Speedway to get some gas and selected the 87 octane. It didn't have a light on at the bottom the selector, but it worked and I gave it a full tank.  Well, when I pulled out of there, the misfire started happening and I was experiencing reduced power.  And I thought, "oh my gosh, Speedway gave me bad gas!!!"

But that wasn't true.

This month has not been good with the weather forecasts.  I've had 2 straight of the last 3 weeks of lightning forecasted for the Marietta area.  It didn't happen as much as they forecasted, but that's hind sight.  Nothing scares me more than being caught in a lightning storm on the trail.  There's nowhere to take shelter out there.  And there hasn't been a chance to blaze at all this month.  I'm really hoping the weather is going to break soon.

One last thing... I have no idea what direction the wind usually comes from.  In NE Ohio, I remember a naturalist saying that they never built bird houses where bird would have to fly west into the hole because that's where the wind usually comes from.  Up north, our weather typically came from Chicago.

Post 2015052701

Whipple Section - Buckeye/ North Country Trail's mainline was completely free of obstructions today with 4 members of the sawyer crew present and myself.

My next stop is Lane Farm, hopefully tomorrow. My 2008 Chevy HHR has a misfire in cylinder 1. I have the spark plug to change it, but the bolt which holds the wire on is stripped. I probably have the stripped nut socket to get it out, but not a replacement for the bolt. That will have to be a dealership item, but I doubt that they'll have to be a big one to stock it. Changing the spark plug is just one of the possibilities.