Sunday of Errantry

There was a bit of a sleep in and then I listened to a podcast episode to make a later rising. When I did get up, breakfast was mostly ready for me. The Big T had made his usual style of perogies and I just had to fry an egg to complete the meal. Well, that and en-sandwich said egg in a half piece of bread. It was tasty and filling. After listening to my parents talk over each other to my STL sister on FaceTime I went to my room to watch YouTube and try to get another hour of sleep. Didn’t take.

I was mostly left to my own devices for the morning and I enjoyed some YouTube, some podcasts and worked a bit on my Musings. I can only imagine how far behind I’m getting in my MSC challenges, it will be a scramble when I get back home to get those licked up. I was shaken out of my revelry around eleven and the afternoon plan was revealed to me. There would be lunch and then there would some errands to run with the Big T. It was decided that I really liked Habitant Pea soup and needed to have can of it. I’m not convinced of the validity of that statement but agreed to partake. There was one chunk of chicken left from the previous week’s cooking so I ate that along with my soup which is pictured below.

With phase one of the afternoon plan complete we moved into phase two, the errands. The little rototiller wouldn’t start. In typical fashion, the Big T couldn’t decide whether to blame the Mayor or Jacko for this condition but assumed it was one of them. The Mayor had not used the device in over a year but helped the situation by bringing a fresh spark plug, in case that was the issue. Apparently Jacko had borrowed it and ran it for a long spell, during which the hot engine melted a split into the fuel line. We had a length of line to replace it with and that was the main aspect of the task. It only took a few minutes with the right tools and then we started yanking on the starting cable. It wouldn’t go. The next trick we tried was dumping some gas in with the plug. That got it running but only until that gas was burned off. After trouble shooting things we realized the hose coming off the air filter was loose. That helped but wasn’t the issue. It wasn’t drawing gas, likely due to something blocking the carburetor. The decision was made to take it to a small engine mechanic. At this point we should have cleaned up the tools and moved on, but not with the T.

Instead he wondered what was wrong with the three wheeler. An aging Yamaha 200E unit. As it turned out, the throttle mechanism was bunged up. We opened the assembly and found that it was bent to hell so used and axe and a ballpene hammer to flatten it out. It didn’t bolt down correctly. It was determined that the root cause of the issue was that the cable wasn’t moving freely. That diagnosis means that he should try to order a new cabled and the metal part and replace it. What will actually happen is nothing. Which is fine because they don’t need that dangerous weapon running again. It’s just a risk they’d be taking with limited reward outside of fun. That got put away and the adventure continued.

When we returned the tools to the main garage from the chicken shed we stumbled upon the Corvette. He wanted to find the small cable for the newly installed trickle charger. Turns out it wasn’t hanging down below but was under the hood the whole time. It was raining and muddy so he wasn’t willing to drive it anywhere but figured we should start it. He had to put the serious charger on it to get a boost and then we reveled in the explosive power of the engine. Eventually he asked if I could help him understand the radio. I revealed that it had a hidden CD player and showed him how to operate the radio. That was a win. Nothing actually got fixed on our two hour adventure but a lot of learning happened.

We learned what wasn’t the problem with the rototiller, we learned what was the issue with the three wheeler and we learned that the Corvette is more awesome than we thought. There was a short list of actions for Big T to follow-up on to get things running, a perpetual struggle around these parts. We went back home to regale Mother with what we’d learned and to kick back. Well, I kicked back. The parents were madly cleaning and tidying and cooking in preparation for the first Sunday dinner at the house in a long spell. The plan had been to cook another rotisserie chicken but the rain was changing that, the oven became the alternative. Some family gathered and brought some fantastic food to go with the chicken. There was two kinds of stuffing, chicken and gravy, roasted potatoes, fancy cucumbers and several kinds of salads. It was a filling and decadent meal that was topped off with some concoction of rhubarb brownie and iced cream. There were ingredients to make it a sundae and most did. Fantastic.

I’d had a couple of glasses of rye before dinner so was chattier than before and took that out on the Mayor. We had a solid chinwag before they moved on. During the meal we’d had the 70’s music channel on and listened to that some more after eating. Then I showed my parents that YouTube has music and we watched some great performances before I showed them a game on their where someone plays guitar riffs from the top 25 ballads or rock songs of all time. We were evenly matched for those but when we got to movie themes I destroyed them. We had fun with that until it was time to shut it down and get to sleep. It was around ten when my light blinked out.