Vacation and Time with Tom!

Spent a week with Tom, Kevin, and Mickey on the motorcycle, during a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains this past week.

It was nice to spend some time with Alex's Godfather before he ships out in November to Afganistan for a year.

We toured a little of the mountains, went on some Patriot Guard Rider missions, and ate out a lot.

In the pic from left to right: Mickey, Kevin, Me and Tom.

It was good to see him and ride in the wind for almost 2000 miles.

And Congrats to Tom and Mickey - when Tom got back to base after the trip, they got hitched! Welcome to the family Mick!

Picture of the Boy!

Here is Alex with some new stuff from his secret Santa! Now that creates competition for Dad. See he has his own laptop now - I'm sure that pleases Momma since she is a computer engineer and MIS (computer fixer) kind of person.

Dad needs to find him some wrenches and other tools, maybe a bench for him to play with. Although he may just chew them for now, there's nothing wrong with getting familiar with a good tool. At least in Daddy's eyes.

Finally Getting Back To Fixing Stuff

Well this summer sure has flown by, and Alex is now 7 months old.

But it is getting cold outside already, and I haven't fixed any of the snowblowers yet. I did get the clutch issue resolved on the Cub 125 project - the pulley that the starter drives, and subsequently drives the clutch, had a cracked keyway - thru the setscrew, so the setscrew was missing as well. A little welding, and a new setscrew, and putting it back on and we are back in business.

Now for the snowblower - as mentioned back in May the gearbox was junk and missing all the gears. I bought two Cub Cadet 76's, is mediocre to poor shape and fixed them up, and re-sold them. The coolness is that one of them came with a gearbox mounted on the front - so I kept those parts. The mowing deck does not use them, and so now I can rebuild the old gearbox to the snowblower I purchased for the 125 project. Pics of that to come over the next week or so. Also, I have a 6 HP Jacobson walk behind which did most of the work for me last snow season, but desperately needs an engine case gasket. It would leak about 1 quart of oil per hour of useage. I just kept refilling it with used synthetic motorcycle oil, and I still have plenty left from oil changes over the past two years. So I should be back to my wrenching antics within the next few weeks, just in time for a wintertime hiatus.