Kaimusailing

The political landscape is undergoing a real shakeup and it is very interesting. It looks like the Dems were shielding Joe Biden from the public but that went out the window after the debate with Donald Trump. The Dems then began lobbying for Biden to step down from the nomination and let someone else run for president. The Repubs had their convention to nominate Trump, but only after he was grazed during an assassination attempt by a very young registered Republican. Crazy.
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Trump chose an extreme right VP, JD Vance, and after their convention, Joe Biden, who was now afflicted with Covid, decided to step down from the nomination and gave his support to his Vice President, Kamala Harris, a woman of Jamaican and Southern Asian descent. Immediately she is endorsed by almost everyone in her party and inundated with about 100 million campaign dollars. It’s astonishing to see a massive change in the whole election landscape. It looks to me like Trump should have chosen a middle/right VP. Harris has yet to pick a running mate.
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I once again have an infected tooth and dreaded organizing a trip to Pocomoke to see the VA doctor, will he even treat what is basically a dental problem? Not to worry, I could have a virtual dr visit about 45 minutes after first contacting the VA Outpatient Clinic. That visit resulted in an antibiotic prescription at the local pharmacy, about a mile away, a short trip on the bike in between rain showers, and a box of wine on the way back. It was on the way.
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I insured Cornelia Marie’s old vehicle and printed various motor vehicle department forms at the local library. The library is very nice. It has a Westward looking deck on the second story to observe Tangier Sound and the beautiful sunsets.
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Past the library is the Small Boat Harbor, which is the harbor for many crab boats and has dual boat ramps separated by a dock. Past that is Lorrie Quinn Drive and the waterfront homes, the town beach, and the Legion. I headed to the Legion for wine and some food. I had a BLT sandwich while Cuddily and Teri arrived. We were the only ones there when we left, well after dark. I biked up the dark street and a bunch of cars came at me, obviously not driving normally. I hit a pothole and pop went the rear tire. I stowed the bike in Cuddily’s garage and she dropped me off at the marina.
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The next day I pumped up the old Serotta bike’s tires and rode it around. I decided for dinner to try Chesapeake Barbecue, a new place that just opened up, not far from the marina. I got a take out brisket sandwich which turned out to be good. This is a convenient place to the marina with a complete menu, salads, soups, etc. On my return I stopped at Big Willey’s liquor store for wine.
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The next day I expected to sign motor vehicle documents with Cornelia Marie, but there was no response when I texted her. When I tried to call Cuddily, her mom, there was no response. No, they couldn’t be involved in some drastic event, could they? It turned out they did, taking the Triumph boat out to a place called Rumbly and running into shoal water, having to take a long roundabout way to get to the place, and thus, they were out of cell phone range all day.
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Later my deflated bike was returned to the Old Red Shell Shanty where motor vehicle documents were signed and we moved on. I had some new TPU inner tubes from China to repair the bike. But I slept in, maybe I was doing puzzles when my younger brother called from Hawaii, no, I was fixing the flat bike tire while talking on the phone. I had to interrupt the phone call at times when I had to inflate, but the noise of the compressor didn’t result in an inflated tire. We talked about reconstruction of a french chateau while I undid the tire repair and then continued with interruptions of the compressor. My brother finally quit the call, I was behaving badly.
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I must have punctured the first repair tube, as the tire wouldn’t inflate properly. I used a Harbor Freight straight screwdriver to lever the tire into place instead of the plastic one the tube manufacturer recommended. I inflated another tube from the pack of new tubes and it inflated and held air, the bad tube did not hold air. I put the good tube in the tire and wheel and took care not to puncture it, inflated it, and stared at it, is it going to pop?
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I used it to ride around a bit, but not too far. I biked to the house which is in walking distance of the marina and opened the gate, opened the car, started it, made sure the gate was really open, put the bike in the back, back seats down, bike fits without any dismantling. Back out, close the gate, drive into the marina.
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I wanted to go to Pocomoke to get some tools and some good EVOO. I called Cuddily to invite her along, if she wanted. Yeah, OK, need more time. So did I. When I arrived at her waterfront home she was on her way out the door, let’s go.
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The car has some problems. It has a healthy dent in the passenger door and almost a quarter million miles. The brakes shudder when you try to come to a stop, and the car has to pass stringent Maryland mechanical inspection before it can be registered. So this was sort of a test drive, about 15 miles or so to Pocomoke, then shop at a couple stores, get tools, get the olive oil I want, Carapelli, I think.
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I have new brake rotors for the front coming in, maybe that will fix or hide the problem, to replace them I needed a proper jack, and to get the head off the Atomic 4 on the boat I needed a perfect hammer and a nice chisel set, I found them all at Walmart. No impact screwdriver though.
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We went to Don’s, the watering hole near the Virginia border, for lunch and libation. I was driving now, so it was a beer for me, 2 Orange Crushes for Cuddily. She’s petite and doesn’t even need two orange crushes to cause trouble, let’s go to the Legion she said, and so we did. Teri had called that she was there and we were late. We did not speed, I found out how to work the cruise control. After a while I felt tired and Cuddily said it was from the driving. The old CRV has heavy steering.
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The next day I took off the right front wheel to look at the brakes. It was work. The car, the vehicle, has high ground clearance such that the jack is useless without some blocks or something to take up the gap. I was able to jack it up with a hydraulic jack on the anti-roll bar. The brakes looked bad, the pads were down to 20%, rust everywhere. Fortunately I had ordered new rotors which would be here soon. It’s a good idea to replace the pads if you have brake shuddering and the old pads are down near the end, in our case, only about 20% left.
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When the brake caliper pushes out the piston to push the brake pad out to contact the rotor, all goes fine until the pad gets worn. The piston has to go further out until it starts losing the support of its cylinder. Then it can get cocked and be difficult to deploy the brakes and also difficult to disengage when you take your foot off the pedal. The pad then continues to scrape against the rotor and the rotor overheats and warps.
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Replacing the rotors and the brake pads gets rid of the warped rotors and the caliper pistons get situated deep in their cylinders. Hope it works out. Big heat outside tomorrow.
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Big heat indeed. I couldn’t bring myself to work on the brakes in the heat. It was brutal. The headlights were clouded and I got some Mequire’s headlight restoration product, their #2 product that consists of a couple of scotchbrite pads, a little soap bottle of cleaner, and a small can of clear coat to protect against U/V.
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The product worked very quickly. First I masked off the headlights, then I started scrubbing with the cleaner and the pad. It doesn’t take long, just a few minutes. You can feel when the surface needs more scrubbing and you can wash it all off to see what it looks like. When it is wet it looks great, but it dries out and looks like hazy crap. The U/V clear coat spray goes on in 2 coats, by direction, and it looks great afterwards. Success.
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It was breezy the next day and I thought I could work on the brakes. I had bought brake pads in Pocomoke and the headlight cleaner. The rotors had come in and they looked great. They weighed a lot. I took a block of wood from the finger pier and the new hydraulic jack that I bought at Walmart, maybe 45 bucks or so. I engaged the jack, but before the wheel was off the ground I started to undo the lug nuts. The correct term is breaking the lug nuts, but I didn’t have a breaker bar, just a low cost Harbor Freight torque wrench, the 3/8” drive model, did I say cheap?, it did the job if I heaved on it with my foot.
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The wheel came off and I had to take a break from working on the brakes. I knew the process, take 15 minutes before you go back at it. The breeze that had got me to do the work was gone and I was sweating all over myself in the humidity. The heat was only about 93. The A/C in the car was not up to these temperatures, I shut it of when remembered the Men’s Room on L dock was well air conditioned and I went there.
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I forgot to take my phone and a guy came in. He was obese and I figured out he wanted to use the commode right next to where I was sitting, hat off, literally fanning my head, I didn’t care, we talked about the heat and he washed his hands and left. I wasn’t ready to leave, but I had to get back the the job at hand. Today really didn’t turn out to be the day to work on brakes.
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I could take out the bolts that hold the caliper bracket to the hub and take out the bolts that hold the caliper to the bracket. Swing the caliper stuff up and tie it to one of the coil spring coils with some cable ties. With the caliper, etc, out of the way I could remove the rotor. There are supposed to be a couple of flat head screws holding the rotor to the hub. Only one and stripped. I went the SUNSPLASH to get the drill kit to drill out the screw. In the kit was a strange philips head bit and it turned out to be the one thing that got the screw out. The old rotor came off and I got the new one and put it on the hub.
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The old pads were worn out abnormally, the inboard pad was worn out and the outboard pad was like new, almost no wear. The caliper would not come down over the new pads. The piston was seized. I tried to force it with a big pair of channel lock pliers, but no go. I had to retreat to air conditioning. While sitting in the disabled shower chair in the Men’s Room I ordered a pair of calipers for the vehicle. I got a 20% discount for ordering online.
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The old pads went back on the brakes. I could put it back together, but I had to take several breaks in the air conditioned Men’s Room. It had been a bad day to work out in the heat. It seemed the hardest part was mounting the wheel back on the hub. I ended up just manhandling it. That which does not kill you…
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With the vehicle down off the jack and the rear hatch back full of trays of tools, I took it for a ride, carefully, up the marina parking lot, testing the brakes. The shudder was gone. Maybe it was the rotor I had just changed. At any rate, I will have to do it all again with a new caliper, plus, on the other side, the passenger side, I will have to replace everything.
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I had Dawn detergent and endless paper towels in the Men’s Room. I scrubbed off my arms which were very covered in grease and grime. Back on board I found no one was going out for dinner or libation. I needed a shower and then some. I made a ham and swiss sandwich with tomato and mayo. I was drinking ice water from the fridge.
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Cornelia Marie said the rear brakes were done for about $600 just a few months ago. Why wouldn’t they have done the fronts, which show a lot of attrition. My parts come to at least $350 for the fronts. I can’t believe the rear brakes were completely done, there are parking brake shoes that would raise the cost of parts. Six hundred dollars is a significant auto bill, but at around 100 dollars/hr and maybe 3 hours of work and 350 dollars in parts, not excessive at all, you have to keep the lights on.
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I’m writing this just prior to sunrise. I awoke when the ibuprofen wore off. Shoulder pain. I need to keep nutrition, I’ve lost about 15 pounds during the heat. I went to Pocomoke to get the brake calipers and when I looked at the box I asked if the calipers in the box looked like the photo on the box, it showed dual piston calipers and this Honda had single piston calipers. They said all the boxes have the same photo on them. Inside the box was a dual piston caliper. I said these can’t be the correct calipers and we looked them up and no, they were calipers for a totally different vehicle, like a Hummer or Buick.
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We needed to reorder and I wanted my 20% discount which required me to order online. The store had none in stock, so I had to wait to order until they got the correct calipers in, then I could order. The counter lady was so nice and got it all worked out, I don’t know how I had ended up with the incorrect part.
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I was off the hook as far as car work went. On the menu was shrimp scampi at Cuddily’s house. I had picked up some salad fixin’s. I chopped veggies for the salad while Cuddily set out her ingredients for the scampi. Customers arrived and we had wine and crush drinks. We did a good job on the food, making it as well as eating it.
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I had a laundry day because I was wearing some hand me down rags, the bottom of the clothing stash. It was a blessing not to work out in the heat except to do laundry in the L dock building. When the new order of calipers came in I drove to Pocomoke to pick them up, and when I got back, started to work on the brakes. It was hot again but with a breeze. When I was almost finished with the driver side, just had to put the wheel back on, I received a couple calls inviting me to the Legion. I declined and continued to work on the car. It ended up lasting until sunset, but the brakes were done, the test drive was like a new car, no shudder in the brakes, and the steering felt lighter too.
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The trip to Salisbury to the Motor Vehicle Admin was about 30 miles, the car purring along. The registration went very quickly and I had the new plates to put on the car. The old plates were removed and returned. I made sure I had a receipt.
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I took Stevens Road South to Pocomoke and returned the caliper cores. Later we celebrated at the Legion. I was going to text Cornelia Marie about returning the old plates when I looked at the receipt from MVA, it had the wrong name, wrong vehicle, it looked like the person at the counter made an error entering the plate number. Now someone is going to get a refund that they are not expecting as well as having their license plates discontinued. Cornelia Marie would not get her refund and might get a fine or infraction for not returning the plates. I promised I would call the MVA the next day.
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When I called and waited a half hour on hold, I was told the correction of the plate return transaction could not be done over the phone. Sheesh. I was not going to drive 40 minutes to MVA to help them fix their mistake. I would go up if I had another reason to go up there, maybe if Cuddily wanted to go to the Irish pub up there…
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The storm Debby was coming our way as well as raining heavily on the boatyard in St. Marys, Georgia. I tried calling down there and although I talked to several boaters from down there, none of them were there, the weather had been too hot, everyone was away. Including me.
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We were now under a gale warning and a tornado watch. The marina contacted slip holders to come and check on their boats before the storm hits. It is moving slowly and will take a day or two to get here. In the end we got the wind and lots of it but very little rain and no flooding. The public works crew had placed street closed signs on Cove Street, ready to put them up, they didn’t have to.
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I took CM’s old vehicle to get inspected and they failed the windshield, a tie rod end, and wiper blades. The windshield needed a chip repaired, not expensive, the tie rod end needed replacement and an alignment check, not too expensive, and only the passenger wiper blade needed replacement.
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The car has a nasty crease on the passenger side and that lowered the blue book price by a couple thousand dollars, thus a cheap price for the car and a smaller vehicle tax bill. I looked on Harbor Freight’s website for dent repair, maybe I could get the passenger door handle back into position. Harbor Freight had a 15 dollar DIY paintless dent repair kit. I looked at videos on YouTube. It might work. The procedure is to glue a threaded fitting to the depth of the dent, then pull the dent out with a fixture mounted above the dent. Most of the videos that had failures were because the adhesive didn’t stick strongly enough.
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The image is of yesterday’s sunset at the Legion when the Dog and Duck event was going on. The HDR Scape filter was applied and it was cropped a little bit.