Day 166

It was hot today. At least 90 degrees. I worked on the viaduct outside for awhile, but by mid-morning it was getting hot so I went inside. I finished the viaduct except for painting. It took all day because I needed to wait for the glue on various pieces to dry before I could add more. I also fit it to the layout. That took a little bit of work with the jigsaw. I also started a second car stop. It looks much neater than the first one. I'm learning.

I went out and got the mail. I didn't stop anywhere else because it was too hot with the dog. There was a bill from the ambulance company for $1,100. They said the insurance company wouldn't pay. I guess that will have to be run down. I did stop and run the dog on the way home. She did a surprising number of retrieves, especially considering how hot it was.

I tried to play ebay tonight, but the crazies were out. I was looking at two items. Both had OK prices until they rocketed in the last minute. One went for more than you can buy a new kit from an internet vendor.

I ordered a pizza combination from Pizza Hut for dinner. Even though I did it over the internet it wasn't ready when I got there half an hour later. The pizza was 8 inches by 12 inches, cut into 10 pieces. Each piece had 2 small quarters of a piece of Canadian bacon. That's 5 small rounds of bacon total. That's not a Canadian bacon pizza. It's a cheese pizza with Canadian bacon flavoring. I won't be going back there.

Day 165

I went to another estate sale today. The house was small and held nothing of interest. I stood in line to get in, and it was a waste of time. The garage was different. Apparently this was a different person. There was a lot of nerd stuff. I picked up some magnetic window switches which I thought might work on the turntable. Unfortunately they are normally open. I did get some 18 ga speaker wire for $1.

I did some other running around. Mail (the loco and station came today), grocery, pet store (cat food), Home Dept (Dremel), and Hobby lobby (glue). Lucy made out big time. Two people at Home Depot gave her cookies, and the lady at the pet store gave her two. I also ran the dog a bit at a park near the estate sale. She didn't do much, but then it was really hot.

When I got home I used the new glue to finish the viaduct pillars. I also built up a track stop from the bass wood I bought. It came out OK, but I'm not much of a scratch builder. I think I need more practice. After they dried I measured the pillars for height on the layout. I'll cut them tomorrow with the new Dremel accessories.

Day 164

I went estate sailing today. It was a pretty good trip. I got three Coca Cola bears - Mommy, Daddy, and baby. I also got a spatula and measuring cup for making rocks. On the way home I happened by another sale. There I got a surge suppressor and a 12V power supply for the layout. I'm going to go to another one tomorrow.

I also stopped by a hobby store and got some wood for building a bridge. I'll do that in a little bit. I also got some concrete colored paint. I'm interested in seeing what that looks like.

I took the dog to run. She only did about 4 retrieves before she quit. I'm a little worried about her. She seems down on energy, and it wasn't all that hot.

In the afternoon I started to build up a viaduct for the layout. I modified the top deck for Kato and glued a bunch of halves for the pylons together. The cheap Chinese glue I'm using is a pain. I'm going to get some real stuff tomorrow.

There wasn't anything on ebay today. I don't think there's anything tomorrow either.

Day 163

I got up today and looked at the stuff I'd done yesterday. The rocks came out fine. Unfortunately the styrofoam didn't work out so good. It cracked when I bent it. So I went ahead and order some retaining walls. They'll take some fitting, but I'll make them work.

I tried to do some soldering. I can do it, but it takes an incredible amount of time. I need a plan B. After a couple of hours I asked myself why I was doing it. I'm supposed to be having fun. So I turned everything off and went over to the well house. I cut a hole for the turntable. The hole looks kind of funny, but the turntable looks nice in it.

I went to get the mail. The rest of the electrical parts came in. I was going to take the dog for a run, but it started to sprinkle and the clouds didn't look good. Bagging it was a good idea. It started raining pretty hard a little after we got home. It rained hard a couple of times in the afternoon and there was a thunderstorm tonight.

I also entered a design for the control panel graphics in the CAD program. The thing pissed me off. It won't print. I had to export the file and then print it in another program. The result isn't optimal because I lost the grid markings.

I lost the first auction on ebay tonight. Somebody wanted to pay more for the item than I thought it was worth. I won the second auction. I put in my bid with 3 seconds to go. I ended up paying full shipping for the two items I bought. I hope the seller refunds part of the cost.

Day 162

I'm pissed. I lost an auction tonight in the last 4 seconds. I submitted a bid with 10 seconds to go, and someone rebid with 6 seconds to go. Damn.

I took Ellen to the airport this morning. Traffic was just as bad as I thought it would be. I did learn a couple of things about how to negotiate the traffic. I also learned that we don't want to leave any later than 7.

I stopped at the Waffle House on the way back. It must have taken 15 or 20 minutes to get there. When I was finished I checked the traffic and found that I35 was clogged all the way to downtown. It turns out that the road the Waffle house is on goes all the way up to 19th roughly paralleling I35. 19th is where the football stadium is. So I went that way. There were some lights, but not much traffic. It sure beat sitting on I35.

I drove up to Fry's and got a soldering iron tip, some wire, and a couple of other things. Then I went to Harbor Freight and got a couple of tools. On the way home I stopped to run the dog. It wasn't hot, but she only did three retrieves before she quit.

When I got home I did train stuff. I made up an experimental retaining wall and some rocks. We'll see how they came out tomorrow. I also soldered some lead wires. The new soldering tip makes it pretty easy. Now I have to decide exactly how many of these I'm going to do.

Day 161

We didn't do a whole lot today. Ellen spent her time packing and doing the washing. I went out in the morning and used the hand sprayer to finish the spraying. There are still a few weeds out there, but I'm tired of messing with them. I'll let the poison soak in for a couple of days and then it will be time to mow.

I spent a lot of time on the web looking for various train things. I won an auction for a Chessie gondola. I've got my eye on several other things. I also transferred the hydrocal from the bag with the hole in it to some freezer bags. It's impossible to handle the stuff without making a mess.

We went out to get the mail and mail the rugrat's package. It cost $12. All of the switches I ordered were there. Three days after ordering - that's not bad.

Tomorrow Ellen is off to Oregon. I think I'll go up to Fry's after I let her off and see if I can get a fine point tip for the soldering iron.

Day 160

I just didn't feel like shooting a tournament today, so we didn't go. Instead I went out and did a little work on the layout. I figures to how to drill little holes in the pieces to anchor them with tack nails. I tried to solder wires to a piece of track, but it didn't work. I need to have a finer tip for the soldering iron. I also mad an inventory of the parts I'm going to need to wire up the layout. I only worked for a little while before it got too hot and I went inside.

When I got inside I went on ebay to look for components. I found everything I needed at pretty good prices. Of course the Chinese are cheaper, but I'm afraid I wouldn't get the shipment in time. I watched an auction for a loco like the one I bought yesterday. It went for a few dollars more than I paid. I also got a building for a relatively low price.

I searched for a bunch of other nscal stuff, but didn't see anything that was really a good deal. Some of the items that I'm watching are going up a lot days before the auction closes. That tells me I won't be bidding on them.

I tried to watch TV tonight, but I got bored. So I'm back on ebay looking for wire.

Day 159

We took the dog for a swim today. It was cloudy and a little cold when we left in the morning. So I took her to Circle C instead of Zilker. The front parking lot was jammed with cars. It was a Saturday soccer day. We did find a place and walked over to the creek.

Lucy swam for a very long time. While we were there two different people with labs came by. One swam a little with Lucy. The other just waded in the water. There were some little kids there, and I let them throw the bumper for Lucy. They were so little that they could only throw it a few feet.

When Lucy finally tired out we watched some kids play soccer. The first group was a bunch of little kids that played pretty well for being as small as they were. The second group was a team of 15-17 boys playing a team of 18-19 boys. The younger team had pink jerseys. The younger team scored two goals in the time we watched. We left before the half.

After that we went to Goodwill to get some old utensils for me to use for mixing hydrocal. The Brodie store didn't have much and what they had was high priced. The Hwy 71 store had more and cheaper stuff. I still need a couple of things before I can cast some rocks.

I screwed up on ebay. I forgot to put one of the items I was bidding on on my watch list. So the auction ended without me trying to get it. There's another one later that I'm hoping to get. I did ace the engine kit last night. I got my bid in literally at the last second and won it by $.07.

Day 158

I finished the spraying today, but it didn't start out well. The new wand leaked like a sieve. It took me awhile to figure out why. The fitting I bought is cut square. A hose has a taper at the end. The fitting wasn't sealing against the wand. A second hose washer fixed the problem.

The new rig doesn't spray as efficiently as the other. I use a lot more poison. I'm going to try to find away around this. I did manage to get everything finished. There was a whole thistle forest in the back that was hiding behind a tree.

I woke up this morning with an idea to make the switches a little more efficient. I redid the plan, which changed the requirements a lot.

After that I did ebay. I bought the switches I'm going to need. I also got a brand new power supply for about half what it costs online. I'm waiting now to bid on a engine house kit.

The squirrel finally pissed me off. He showed up and I shot him in the ass with the pellet gun. We haven't seen him since. There are actually two squirrels. I wonder if he told his buddy to stay away.

Last evening there was a deer eating seeds that had dropped from the feeder. It just stood there when I opened the door. I let Lucy go after it and the both took off running. Lucy gave up by the time she got to the swimming pool. She knows it's hopeless.

Day 157

I got up at 8 today with the intention of spraying all of the weeds. I mixed up a tankful of poison and started spraying. I got all of the parking area and the front lawn done. I couldn't do the driveway because it's still too wet.

I was about halfway through with the side yard when the wand on the sprayer broke. It was cheap Chinese plastic crap that just disintegrated. There wasn't really a way to fix it. So I went to Home Depot and got a yard spay wand and an adapter fitting. When I got home I threw away the old wand and used the adapter fitting to fit the wand on the sprayer hose.

When I left, there was about 3 gallons of solution in the sprayer. When I got back, it was bone dry. I'm not sure what happened to the solution. It may have siphoned out through the pump.

It was too hot to continue, so I'll finish up tomorrow. There aren't any good estate sales tomorrow.

In the afternoon and evening I worked on the track wiring. I got a schematic program and spent some time learning it. As soon as I started to enter something, I realized that I really hadn't thought things out enough. The wiring diagram from the book that I was going to use wouldn't work for two reasons. It uses a common ground technique, and it didn't provide for the track direction indicator lights that I wanted. Things were made worse by my wanting to use red/green LED's instead of separate red and green LED's for the indicators.

I spent hours working things out in my head and writing things down in a document. In the past I could have done it all in my head, but I'm getting old and losing it. I finally came up with two options, but they both require about $40 worth of parts. I'll probably bite the bullet and buy the parts tomorrow.

Day 156

I finally finished the benchwork today. It didn't seem like much, but it took several hours to do. The next thing is to start the wiring. I have some planning to do before I can do that. I'm reading the wiring book right now to get ideas.

The weather was great today. 73 degrees and sunny. I'm going to do the spraying tomorrow. The weeds are getting way out of hand. I have to mow, too. But I won't do that until several days after the spraying.

There wasn't anything going on ebay today. There was just a couple of things that I wasn't truly interested in. The stuff I'm really interested in doesn't come up for a couple of days.

Day 155

Today was our birthday. We celebrated by staying bed until noon. That wasn't hard to do, since sleeping last night was a little difficult. There was a lot of thunder and lighting as well as heavy rain for hours.

In the morning everything was soaked. The were rivulets running alongside the driveway. The circle where the pool used to be was filled with water.

I didn't do anything all day except surf. I mainly looked up electrical things that I thought I'd need for the layout. I just didn't feel like working on it. About the only thing of note that I did was take out the recycling and put out the garbage cans.

We went to dinner at a new Mexican restaurant near Belterra. We had a $10 coupon and they were having a 1/2 off special because we came before six. We didn't know about the special. We came early because we were afraid of the traffic (there wasn't any). The result was that we ate dinner for $3. Pretty good.

We stopped at the Dripping Springs HEB for a cake. Ellen had seen one at Circle C that she liked. Unfortunately they didn't have the same one at Dripping Springs. We got another cake that was pretty nice though.

When we got back it was more surfing and a little TV.

Day 154

I did some work on the layout today. I completed the ramp up to the far viaduct. I also did most of the remaining pieces for the ramp down from the near viaduct. I've only got one more piece to do. I should complete the benchwork by next session. I'll still have to build whatever enhancements I want, but that counts as new work.

There was a lot of fabrication required to do this. I no longer have any original pieces that "drop in". I was getting hot and tired, so I quit. This is supposed to be fun after all.

After lunch it was time to ebay. I lost out on the first two auctions. One of them pissed me off. I was outbid in the last 5 seconds. I won the one in the evening though, and got a bargain. $58 of stuff for $36.

After the first bids, we went out to get the mail and run the dog. With all the BS about the coming storm we figured we should run her before the weather got bad. She did pretty good retrieving and also got a fun stop when we went to the pet store to buy cat food.

I got four packages in the mail. One was the remaining track I needed. Two were auctions I won. The items (a locomotive and a chessie tender) were just what I wanted. The last was the tire pressure gauge that I had sent in for repair. They sent me a new gauge. It's not like the old one, but I think I'm going to like it.

I went out and installed the rest of the track. When I was finished the only left over pieces I had were two long curves and one short curve. I've converted 6 sidings to Kato. That means I'll have to buy an extra 9" package, but I'll save 3 conversion packages. It's about a wash price wise.

Because of the dire warnings of golf ball size hail I put the truck in the garage. It just fit. It's almost midnight now and it seems it's all bullshit. The weather is either going south of us or to the northwest. Oh well.

Day 153

We got up a little early this morning to take the dog for a run. She was getting really antsy yesterday, and the weather is supposed to turn really shitty until Wednesday. She ran a few retrieves, but not near as many as I expected her to.

After grocery store and gas station stops we went home. I did some work on the layout. I completed the ramp off the plateau. I also modified the viaduct ramp to fit the latest change. After that I was getting tired of working on it. I don't want it to turn into a job, so I went inside to do something else.

The something else was ebay. I had a watch on a bunch of auctions that closed today. People are idiots. In most cases the auction price was more than they could have gone out and bought new ones for. I was very disappointed. Tomorrow there are two auctions that I really want to win. I hope at least one of them isn't ruined by ebay idiots.

We spent the evening watching taped episodes of Top Shot. I like the show, but after 4 of them I was burnt out on it.

Day 152

I can't leave it alone. I spent the morning going over the layout again trying to redo two of the curves to make them wider. I finally managed to do it without requiring any more track (just using the left overs). Then I went out and implemented it. Of course it required modifying the benchwork.

Then I spent a bunch of time looking for a piece that I thought I'd lost. It turns out that I had mixed up the extra pieces from the switches. At least I wasn't going crazy. Finally, I modified the benchwork for the start of the curve off the plateau. I'll finish it tomorrow. I'm getting close to completing the bench work.

I discovered ebay "watch lists". Now it tells me in an easy to access manner what's happening with something I've run across. So far I've let everything expire either because I found something better, or the price got too high. Tomorrow I will be bidding on a couple of things that I really want.

The Kato switch machines are weird. They run off 12 VDC and can't be left on. I spent the evening looking for a cheap way to do the switch controls. I think I've found one that will provide control for about $1 a switch. I'm going to add LED's, which will add some to the cost. I may already have some of the components I need though.

Day 151

I spent most of the day on the layout. We did go out in the morning to look at an estate sale in Circle-C. It was a good sale, but there wasn't anything there that we were interested in.

The dog went with us, but she wasn't particularly interested in doing anything. I think she's tired from yesterday.

I got a fair amount accomplished. I put the rest of the track together. The layout is going to be nice. I installed the viaduct, finished removing the wood from the plateau, and recut the base for the siding.

Tomorrow I'm going to finish the benchwork. Then I'll have to remove the track so that I can install the new benchwork. I may drill some of the holes for the wires at the same time. Then it will be time to attach the track and start to do the wiring.

Day 150

I forgot to snipe the guy on ebay today. Damn. Also another guy raised the price of a locomotive I was looking at by $17. I might have bought it at the lower price. All in all a bad ebay day.

I spent the morning tying up loose ends. I installed the printer driver so I could print w/out having to ask Ellen. I just can't do it wirelessly. I also put all of the cars back in the display case that I dumped out a few days ago. Then I made the bed.

I went out and started to build up part of the layout so that I could check out the benchwork. I couldn't do much, because I lacked some of the parts I needed. I did determine that the last minute change I made would cause me to redo some stuff. It's worth it.

I'm not going to be able to use commercial tunnel entrances in two places. So we went to Hobby Lobby so I could by some foam material to prototype some. We also went to Staples for some ink. They didn't have a box for the rugrat's stuff, so we'll have to look elsewhere. We also took the dog to Circle-C to go swimming. She had a great time.

When we stopped at the Post Office the rest of my track was there. The package from Walther's with the two dump cars were there too.

After dinner I went back out to work on the layout. I put together enough to check the bench work on the corner and plateau. I redid the corner (it's finished) and repositioned the one plateau that needed it. I'll have to layout a little more track before I finalize the plateau positioning and carve out the relief areas on its bottom. That's going to be a pain.

Now I'm going to do my weekly estate sale search on Craig's list.

Day 149

I woke up early today to open the gate for the UPS guy. Yesterday he came through the neighborhood about 10:00. Today he didn't get here until mid afternoon. Go figure.

I got two of the three shipments, with everything that I ordered. The third one is coming by Post Office, so I don't know when it will be here.

While I was waiting this morning I changed out the supports for the second raised area so that it will be at the new height. I also cut a little of the support board away for clearance. After that I decided that I shouldn't do much more until I had the track. So I went inside to read up on wiring.

That turned out to be dangerous. The text described operations, and I realized that a small change in the track would make a big change in the operability. So it was back to the layout program. I spent hours figuring out the optimal way of making the change. In the end, all I have to buy is two switches and a small package of track.
The switches are expensive though. I'm going to order the extra stuff tonight. I wanted to wait until I'd unpacked the track and fitted a couple of switches together. I wasn't sure that it would work, and without that the change couldn't be made.

It's good that I didn't do anymore benchwork. The change I made today will affect the remaining benchwork quite a bit.

In the evening we went out to get the mail. We stopped to run the dog. She did half a dozen retrieves and then stopped to eat grass. I'm tired of that, so she got packed into the car and we left. I'm going to keep doing this until she starts retrieving all the time again.

Day 148

I went to bed early last night, so I woke up early this morning. I just sat in bed though and surfed. I don't know why I do that - it just makes me mad.

When we got up we went to the grocery store so Ellen could buy something to take to the neighborhood party. When she went to it I went out to the garage and put track in the second display case. I also got out the train boxes and put some of the stuff in the well house where it would be easier to get at.

While I was looking in the boxes I found a couple of things that I was thinking of buying. One was some Chessie decals. The price on them is half what they go for now. The second was a Chessie collector car. They go for $20 or more now. This one had a $5 price tag on it.

I have to get up early tomorrow to open the gate for the UPS guy.

It rained last night. It's wet and cloudy, so I can't spray.

Day 147

It was too wet to spray today, so I went to work on the layout. I unsoldered all of the power tracks. I also cut off the leads to the switches and removed them. Then I removed most of the benchwork. All of the ramps except one need to be repositioned. The two large upper levels need to be raised. I removed one and will replace it after I know how the new track fits. I raised the second an replaced it.

All of that was a full day's work.

I won one of the ebay bids I was after at an OK price. Some asshole is bidding up the other item I want. I've decided to quit bidding and snipe him at the end of the auction.

In the evening I went to look at one of the engines in the cabinet. I tipped the cabinet over and several cars hit the floor. So did my C&O engine. I found all the parts for the cars rather quickly and put them back together. The engine took a lot longer. I had to move furniture and sort through the closet to find everything. Then putting it back together wasn't easy. I'm hot, tired and have a bad headache. I'm going to bed.

Day 146

There was thunder and rain for most of the night. We took the rugrat back to the airport today. It started to clear as we left. By the time we got back, there were large patches of blue in the sky. By the afternoon it was sunny and warm.

I converted the new golf cart that I got on Friday to the new rack. I threw the old one in the garbage. I also threw away the old battery charger that didn't work. It was old - we bought it at Montgomery Wards. I used the new charger to charge both the mower and sprayer batteries. I'll do some spraying when it dries out a little.

While Ellen weeded I took apart my old train layout. I removed all of the track except the switches and the power links. I also pulled up the track bed. It took hours.

In the evening I did e-bay. I lost out on some passenger cars and a switcher. I was a little disappointed about the cars, but the switcher was all right. Another person is listing repair parts for the one I have. They ran up the price on the locomotive that I wanted. So I bid on another identical one with another road name. I can get decals to change the name for $5. I won that auction, although I had to pay $57 when I really didn't want to go above $52. I did it by placing a bid in the last 30 seconds.

The Galaxy is pissing me off. Twice this evening it decided not to connect to the internet any more. Fortunately it kept going during the auction.

Day 145

It was raining cats and dogs in the morning, so we stayed in bed until the rugrat got up. After breakfast/lunch we went up to north Austin to a combination arcade/restaurant. We had a good time. I was getting pretty bored until I found a game that involved dropping coins through a set of pins onto a push plate. If the coins dropped in the right manner, you got tickets.

Ellen and the kid ran the coin controls. I watched the push plate. It was lots of fun to see the way the coins moved. We spent hours, and most of money on it. Halfway through we stopped for a early dinner. It was also a chance to get some more arcade credit. The bar had a lot of TVs set to sports channels. I watched the last seconds of Duke losing in the ACC. I love it.

At the end we had collected almost 4500 tickets. We spent them on a sweatshirt for the rugrat and a couple of small presents for the nieces.

Traffic wasn't bad on the way home. Now we're surfing while the rugrat does homework.

Day 144

All three track orders that I made yesterday shipped today. I should be getting stuff by the second half of next week. I've got to pace myself though. I need to get the weeds sprayed before I spend any time on stuff like trains.

We went estate saleing today. The rugrat was happy. At one place I found a toy rifle that was priced for $6. It goes on ebay for about $50-$70. He also found an Xbox game there for $1 that he thinks he can sell for $25. I bought a Coca Cola bear and a Coca Cola bear Christmas ornament. I also got yet another $5 golf cart.

We stopped by the library so the rugrat could download a video for a class. We all took computers. I'd forgotten how nice a real internet connection was. I used the time to find some more train related auctions. When I got home (to a secure connection) I bid on three more things. I'm in a bidding war for one of them.

It rained hard while we were at the library as well as all evening. It's also cold, no warmer than 47 degrees. We might as well be in Oregon.

Day 143

We went over to the auditorium park today. The dog had a good time retrieving and swimming. We walked over to downtown and walked around a little. We saw some of the preparations for SXSW including setting up a couple of outdoor stages and a temporary display building. We also saw a couple of cool old buildings dating to the 1870's.

We stopped by the visitor center and got a thick "newcomer's book". I'm going to look through it for things to see/do. The rugrat got pretty hungry by the time we got back to the car, so we took him to Golden Corral. He was full by the time we left.

I also went ahead and ordered all of the train stuff. We'll see how long it takes to get here.

Day 142

The weather sucks. It's windy, a little cold, and off and on raining. That makes it hard to do anything. We went out and did a little shopping, but that was about it.

I sent off the gauge to get fixed today. They said it would take about a week.

I got back an e-mail from the guy I've been messing with about the track. He quoted me prices that were much above what his website says. I spent the afternoon looking around the web for the best prices. No one had everything inn stock. I found 3 sites that covered everything. The total from the 3 sites is over $100 less than the one guy wants. I may order everything tonight. I haven't decided yet.

The rug rat is getting bored. I don't blame him. I'm hoping that the weather will be at least a little better tomorrow.

Day 141

The living room light burnt out last night. I got the ladder today to fix it, but we didn't have the right bulbs. So the ladder stayed in the middle of the living room until we went to pick up the rug rat.

I didn't do much else in the morning except to try to fix the tire gauge. Unfortunately the hose has a non-standard end. I e-mailed the company to try to get another. They said mail it back to them. Crap.

After we picked up the rug rat we took him to eat. Then we went home. He wanted to watch a zombie movie, so I surfed while he watched the movie. Then we ate dinner (only three hours after his snack). Now he's shooting zombies on the WII.

I read some e-mails from yesterday. I dealt with some lawyer issues. I also e-mails the track guy. He immediately returned my mail, but I haven't read it yet. I can only put up with so much of that a day.

Day 140

I didn't do an entry yesterday because I just didn't feel like getting out the computer when I got home.

The trip back was long and tiring, but uneventful (that's good). We took the loop around Conroe. That helped some, but there was still 15 miles of traffic and stoplights to go through. Next time I'm going to take the back farm road.

When we got home there was the usual pain in the ass about parking the trailer. That of course was followed by a lot of work unpacking it. When that was done I sat for about twenty minutes for the traffic to die down (it was 6:30). Then we went out to get the mail and buy some groceries.

The rug rat comes in tomorrow. Apparently he likes to eat. So we'll probably be going back to the grocery store.

Day 139

Second day of the shoot. I shot at least as badly as I did the first day. It's the same kind of slump that I was in last year. I'm just not reading the birds correctly. Oh well, I had fun and the weather was perfect. Not a cloud in the sky and warm, but not too warm.

After shooting we hooked up the truck and changed the tire on the trailer. I'll get another tire when we get back to replace the spare.

The internet connection is almost unusable. I'm going to go read.

Day 138

This was the first day of the main. We started on station 14, which meant we had to walk out to the end, shoot a station, and then walk all the way back to the beginning. At the end we had to walk all the way back again. Tomorrow is worse because the second course is out farther than the one we shot today.

We both shot very poorly. My score was in the 50's. Ellen didn't hit half.

The weather sucked in the morning, heavy rain. We got lucky, it cleared up and was nice in the afternoon when we shot. Tomorrow's weather is supposed to be OK.

We were going to go to the dinner this evening, but the line was long and we met Ted. So we went to a local restaurant. It was packed. We waited there for about 40 minutes. The food was great though. I got to have alligator. It tastes like I remember, chicken.

It's cold tonight, in the 40's. I had to turn the heater on. That's quite a change from last night's walking around at 11:00 in shorts and no shirt.

Day 137

Ellen shot the prelim today. She didn't do really well, but they were pretty difficult targets. It even rained on us for two or three minutes. They were a hard two or three minutes and we got wet. We dried out pretty quick though.

That was about all we did today. It's so hot and muggy that it's not pleasant to walk around. This place is out in the middle of nowhere, so there isn't anything around to go see. So we sat in the air conditioned trailer and surfed.

In the evening we went to a drive in for dinner. It was one of those places that you walk up to and order at a window. There were some picnic tables to eat at. We both had the shrimp baskets. The shrimp was some of the best I've ever had. And they were big, too.

We have to get up early each morning. The practice fields are really close to the trailer and they start shooting at 7:00.

Day 136

I shot the 20 gauge today. I did pretty well except for two stations where I shot a 1 and a 2. Oh well. They weren't hard stations, my eyes just went bad on me for awhile. We did a lot of walking. We walked back and forth to the clubhouse 3 times and then all the way around the subgauge course. That course was at the far corner of the grounds from the trailer. We put in a good two miles.

We had fun looking at all of the vendors. I finally got a chance to shoot and purchase some B&P shells. I shot them through a demo A400. Life's good. I didn't buy anything other than the shells, chiefly because I already have just about everything.

We talked to Ted some while we were buying shells. I don't agree with everything that he says, but at least he's enthusiastic.

The showers here really suck. When we saw them yesterday afternoon the floors were wet and a little soapy. I thought it was because they had just cleaned them. No, I don't think they ever clean them. They were soapy because the showers don't drain properly. If you look a long the walls, there are soggy butts and all kinds of detritus. I'm impressed. I think it's even worse than that place in Abilene.