The Hunting Times

 Nice morning outside today.  63F (17 C) and not overly humid.  Nice August weather for Indiana!  Krueger showed up at 6:30 am and we headed for the Amphitheater.  We started our ride at 7:02 am, which is before sunrise, but we were able to see okay.  Wouldn't you know it, we were the only ones there!  It was nice not having to worry about joggers, other bikers, or dog walkers.  We could go as fast or as slow as we wished. We did four laps.  Two were relatively slow.  On the third one, we raced up the last hill in an attempt to set personal bests for the climb out.  And on the fourth lap we increased our pace.  I can tell you that my body could take it (lungs, legs, arms) but my bike could not - and by that I mean that I had lost some dexterity because I was getting tired. Of note, on the race up the hill, I did bounce off a tree.  Never fell off the bike and did set a PR! We ended up logging 14.56 miles (23.4 km) in just ...

Great idea.  Poor execution.   We have a fireplace in our home.  No mystery to anyone who knows us.  When we burn, the ashes remain in the fireplace, but we have a trap door and we can scoop the ashes into a pit below (in the basement).  All is good and well until said ash pit fills up.  It's full now.  Last time it was cleaned out?  20 years or more.  So yep, we got a lot of ashes down in that pit. Instead of opening up the door to the pit down in the basement, scooping out ashes into 5 gallon buckets and hauling them out through the house, I got the great idea that I could vacuum them out. So I took the top off my ShopVac (TM) vacuum and installed it on top of an old trash barrel.  I cut a hole in the lid and used duct tape to make a good seal.  I cut a hole in the side and stuck in the hose.  It worked, but it lacked power. Please note that I set this contraption Outside, in the back of the Gator and then ran just the h...

 For a few years now, we have owned the Ambient Weather Station model WS-2902C.  It works rather well - except when you need to connect that SOB to a new router.  Lord have mercy! I did a search on YouTube and found this helpful set-up guide by user Just A Dad:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXHHJ4UmAGE Follow those steps and it MAY work.  I tried multiple times over an hour and could NOT get the dang thing to connect.  Why did I have to reconnect?  Because we updated our home router and the weather station was not accessing the Net. I finally went to the App Store to see if maybe I did not get a recent update or something on my iPhone.  Nope.  All good.  However, the app has an average of 1.8 stars.  I read the comments and could not agree more - it's a royal pain in the arse to get that thing to connect.  It seems you just have to hold your mouth right.  I did try all the suggestions to no avail. What finally wor...

 The sweet corn is coming on like gangbusters now.  Sandy picked over 30 dozen ears yesterday and that's not including all we have eaten or given away already - and that's only HALF of the crop.  I think we may have finally figured this deal out - well after a mishap early on with too much herbicide.  I will just say, it's probably best to go with the manufacturer's recommendation and not what "experts" think you should apply.  Long story short - we almost didn't get any sweet corn! Along with that, the sunflowers are starting to bloom.  They're looking good.  This was by a happy accident and not good planning.  While we did get the grass burned off, the ground fertilized and tilled appropriately, and planting in early, there was an issue with a chain on one of my planters.  Thus, only half of the sunflowers got planted.  This is a good thing though as if they all got put into the ground, they would have been way overcrowded.  As it...

 Posting some pictures from the Farm this July 2022.  Still hot and dry here.  Need some rain.  All these shots were taken on an iPhone 13 Pro Max.  Enjoy the photos. Moonrise at 9:10 pm on Tuesday, July 12th (no zoom) Same photo, same location, same time, 4.1X zoom Same photo, same location, 15X zoom. Sunset, same night (just facing W now, duh).  9:12 pm. Now it's 9:18 pm.  4X zoom. Papaw has a Monkey on his back! That's Wes, our youngest grandchild (2.5 yrs) Went on a Family Run-Away (reunion) to French Lick and took an animal safari.  They had two bears.  Here's one of them bathing. Yes, we were close, but you can see the electrical fence "saving our lives!"

 Just catching up on posting some photos taken around the farm this July.  Spring started out really wet and quickly turned to drought conditions - as you shall soon see.  Enjoy the photos.  Captions included. This was taken at 10:06 pm (22:06) on Friday, July 1st. Beautiful sunset, but it's TEN O'CLOCK at night! This was Kathy's extended family enjoying the fireworks on Sat. July 02. You can see the sun reflecting off the house. Yep, it's 9:13 pm (21:13) And now I am driving back to Nick's to run his puppy.  The next three photos are same day, same sunset, Saturday, July 2nd, at approximately 9:15 pm. Taken from Kathy's driveway - pond on left in photo. Now taken from lane. Still in lane, just a little further N to capture Big Red. Grandma taking two of the grandkids on an adventure. Note the condition of our lawn from total lack of rain. Coming back from our adventure. Don't worry.  We didn't "lose one" as he's with me.

 This post is not about disassembling a Benchmade Bugout knife.  That video is here .  Nor is this post about how to modify your Benchmade Bugout knife to make it function even better.  That video is here .  And since those already exist, why do I have to post about it?  Glad you asked... Yesterday we ground 250 pounds (114 kg) of deer meat.  Some of it was cut into pieces too large to fit into the grinder.  And thus, I used my clean Benchmade Bugout knife to cut the venison into smaller pieces. All good, right?  Not if you add seasoning to the deer and also use your knife to clean the grinding plate.  Your knife then becomes a holy mess.  Next year I'm taking a straight blade!  Lesson learned. Even after hand washing my knife, there were still bits of venison and lots of seasonings stuck in all the cracks, crevices, and screw heads.  So much crap, in fact, that the next day, my knife refused to open once all that junk had...