4th weekend

[minnie]

hope everyone has a nice weekend and that there aren't too many rios or other bad things happening ..  I'm sure our founding fathers are still turning over in their  graves

[rah]

Thursday I put in the new clothes line posts I got for Sherry. I won't rig the wires on them until Sunday to give the concrete plenty of time to set up. Then that afternoon I helped my neighbor Steve build some racks for holding his lumber.

This morning I spent a little time cleaning my motorcycle and then took it for the first ride I've had in over two weeks. Later that morning I helped my wife with the groceries. This afternoon had both the kids with their significant others over for dinner then went and bought my fireworks for tomorrow night.

Tomorrow morning mow the lawn, fog for mosquitoes, and then that night Mom & Dad and some others are coming over. Having Shish kabobs on the grill. Chicken Teriyaki and Sirloin marinated in Sweet Baby Rays Steak House sauce. Rice Pilaf and a salad. Then I will be setting off the 80 aerial mortar canisters for our fireworks plus some other things.

So that will be our 4th! I have my big Stars & Stripes flying already.

But now I'm pretty tired and it's pretty close to bed time.

[rah]

Five and a 1/2 hours and three bottles of Sam Adams Summer ale to do my lawn Saturday. Because we have had so much rain so often it was a lot of extra work. I was called out last Wed. when the lawn was finally dry enough to mow and the grass was pretty high and thick. I never let it get that high normally but you can't mow when the grass is wet and you have puddles in the low places in your lawn. I had used the string trimmer the day before in preparation for mowing and my neighbor was good enough to hit my acre after he did his four while I was gone but he just knocked the tall grass down so it wouldn't get out of control and there were a lot of clippings.

So Saturday I did it all. I trimmed again with the string trimmer, then with the trim mower, and then broke out the edger and edged around my walk and the back patio slab. Then mowed slow cutting the grass & clippings as fine as I could. Really the whole yard was mowed twice because I only used 1/2 of the deck to cut grass and the other 1/2 to recut where I had already passed over.

Then I hooked up my 40" wide lawn sweeper and picked up the clippings on the whole lawn. Each time the sweeper was full I took it back to an area next to my neighbors garden and dumped it. They spread the clippings between the rows in the garden. The grass clippings prevent weeds from growing and retains the moisture in the soil and as they degrade provide natural fertilizer. It works very well for them.

It took seven trips back there to dump my sweeper before I had my lawn finally done and looking good. And I felt comfortable that the fire works I was going to set off that night would not cause a fire.

It's a good thing I did it yesterday because I got the call from Carter and am taking off for a 507 mi drive to the Tenneco plant in Harrisonburg, VA at 18:00 this afternoon and will be driving all night to deliver at 06:00 Monday. I have made the run several times before and it's beautiful drive down through the farm fields of Southern OH past the original Bob Evans farm then down into WV through the state capital of Charleston. Then over the mountains into VA and down into the Shenandoah Valley.

During the winter this run can be not so fun because where I-64 goes though the pass over Greenbriar mountain there is often a lot of snow and it's a steep and curvy down grade on the other side. One night Feb 2013 when I went over that pass it was really coming down. The brake check pull off at the top was full of trucks that simply parked because they would go no further until conditions got better. My load was the prefect weight for such conditions so that I had enough to have good traction but not so much that it would push me hard going downhill. So I did my brake check at the top and drove on. It was an interesting drive down that mountain. Hard snow coming down. The right lane had about 4" off the white stuff on it and the left lane had at least 8". Passed several trucks going 15 mph because they had loads heavy enough they could not go faster and not lose control of their speed in the slick conditions. With my load I could do 30mph without a problem and brake easy to slow for the turns. Pass the slow trucks on the straights then ease back into the right lane. I noticed I had car headlights behind me all the way down but was concentrating so much on getting down didn't really do more than glance at my mirrors to be sure I was clear when changing lanes. Once I finally reached the bottom a WV state trooper pulled up beside me and then passed and then turned into the next crossover in the median to go back up. That trooper had followed me all the way down and then apparently satisfied that I had made it turned around and went back up. Most cops really do give damn and I had to hand it to the trooper for actively patrolling that mountain such conditions in a car. One would think that a trooper with a 4wd SUV would be doing that kind of duty on a night like that.

[jerbear]

We were slammed with 911 calls, lake patrols, neighborhood parades and God knows what else. I was very happy when the 5th rolled around and could go home that morning.