Family reunion...

Flew down to the lower 48 to see our respective families. We first visited with my cousin Rosemary, her son Mark and his family. Had a great time but unfortunately forgot to take any pictures. Will try to get Mark to send a family photo.
We then drove to Wisconsin and stayed with Andy's brother Carl, who lives in a renovated 1890's farmhouse. All of her siblings came up for the weekend. This was the first reunion they'd had in almost twenty years, so it was a special time for all, and the local consumption of Leinenkugels likely increased exponentially.

Andy's brother has a new pickup truck, so of course we had to have our picture taken in it.

Afterwards, we spent some time with Andy's sister Debbie and her husband Peter. Here's a shot of the Shmigelski girls on our visit to Morton arboretum.

Last ride?

With the weather forecast for the weekend bringing rain and cooler weather, I figured I'd better get out for at least one more ride. While not as warm as a few days ago, yesterday was still a pleasant sunny fall day. Like last year (Fall rides, 9/20/14), the colors in the trees were beginning to fade a bit, but still vibrant enough to enjoy as I rode down to the Chena River. You get a great panorama of the valley as you head out of hills into the flats and similarly, a view of the hills northeast of town on the way back.

This definitely is my favorite time of year. It's just too bad it only lasts for a few weeks. But we had a good run of fall weather, about ten straight warm, sunny days , so can't complain too much about the rain. As in most things, when the weather changes, so do you.

Fall colors...

The fall colors really blossomed out this weekend. Pretty spectacular with the sunny weather. There even was an aurora out Sunday night. Not often that you can see it when it's this warm (well above freezing).

Andy and I took the bikes out for a ride on Monday. It was a little cool, upper fifties, but felt a lot warmer in the sun. Just hoping the fine weather will continue. Like every year, there's always lot's of projecst to finish before the snow flies.

Cool and rainy...

After a very warm May and early June, which led to numerous forest fires through out the state, July and August were cool and rainy, effectively ending the fire season. One interesting thing is that while the airport in Fairbanks had about 2 1/2 inches of rain for the month, we had over 5 inches in our un-official rain gage in the hills northeast of town. This is likely due to what meteorologists call the orographic effect.

According to Wikipedia, orographic lift occurs when an air mass is forced from a low elevation to a higher elevation as it moves over rising terrain. As the air mass gains altitude it quickly cools down adiabatically (its pressure and temperature both decrease without the gain or loss of heat), which can raise the relative humidity to 100%. Precipitation can then occur from this orographic effect. Here's the weather bureau's summary for the month (lightly edited for brevity):

National Weather Service's monthly weather summary for August 2015 for Fairbanks, Alaska

August 2015 was the third consecutive month of below normal temperatures for Fairbanks. The warmest temperature of the month occurred on the 4th when the temperature soared to 80 degrees; this was the 11th 80 degree or warmer day of the summer.

An unseasonably cold low pressure system brought heavy rain to much of the interior and boosted the monthly rainfall to 2.58 inches...which was 0.70 inches above the normal of 1.88 inches.

The average high temperature was 62.0 degrees, which was 3.9 degrees below the normal high of 65.9 degrees. The average low temperature was 47.1 degrees...which was 0.7 degrees above the normal low temperature of 46.4 degrees.

The average temperature for the month was 54.6 degrees, which was 1.5 degrees below the average temperature of 56.1 degrees and ranks as the 37th coldest of 109 years of record.

A very fall like storm moved into the interior on the 25th and 26th and ushered in unseasonably cold temperatures that continued through the end of the month. Although snow was not reported at Fairbanks there were reports of snow in the hills north and east of town.

A frost advisory was issued for the morning of the 31st with the temperature at the airport dropping to 33 degrees, that was the coldest temperature recorded during the month. Many of the local cold spots in the area dropped into the upper 20s and lower 30s.

Looking forward to September...possible sunshine continues to decrease by 6 and a half minutes per day with day light hours decreasing from 14 hours and 38 minutes on the 1st to 11 hours and 25 minutes on the 30th. The average daily high temperature decreases from 60.5 degrees on the 1st to 46.2 degrees on the 30th. The average daily low temperature decreases from 41.3 degrees on the 1st to 30.1 degrees on the 30th. The average rainfall is 1.1 inches and the average snowfall is 1.8 inches.

 Source: NWS, Fairbanks Forecast Office, 9/2/15.

Most years, fall comes early in September and this year is no exception. The leaves are a turning!

All Railed Up...

When we first built the deck, it was meant just for Andy and I to sit out in the sun with coffee in the morning or a beer in the afternoon. Later on it became the focus for an occasional barbeque and pot luck get-together. Often, we'd squeeze 8-10 chairs on it, forcing some to sit perilously close to edge and more than once, nearly fell off. Just recently, a neighbor slipped when he was getting up, but fortunately, only the chair went flying over the edge.

Here's an old photo of the original deck. 

So figured it finally was time to build a railing. The main problem with adding a railing wasn't doing the carpentry, that's pretty basic,  it's the snow and ice that periodically unloads off the roof during the winter, often burying the deck in 2-3 feet of heavy wet snow. So we'll see how it goes this winter. If the railing survives the gods of snow and ice, we'll add some sort of cable guard system beneath the railing to fill in the space, but still allows the snow to pass through. Or we might be cleaning up a pile of splintered wood in the spring.

So at least now there's a place to set down your beer.

All Guzzied up...

After 3 months, punctuated by short spurts of wrenching (Angst...5/7/15), interspersed with long waits for parts, the Moto Guzzi is back together and ready to roll. My neighbor Bert gave invaluable help, especially when an extra hand was needed to move the engine/transmission unit or to re-connect the drive shaft.

Besides replacing all the engine and transmission seals, it got new air cleaners, spark plugs, tires, front brake pads, and head light. But like my grandma used to say, "All dressed up and no place to go." Since it's been raining pretty hard the last few days, I'll wait until tomorrow to fire it up and take it out for a test ride.
Postscript: It took a few days, had some wiring mixed up to the starter relay, so finally called Moto-International and Mischa set me right. Pretty sweet to ride a bike that was parked for the last 5-6 years.

Alien growth?...

What I first thought was an alien growth in the compost pile:

Turns out it was just a box of red potatoes that was left over in the garage:

And after I confirmed the lack of an alien invasion with Andy, she wanted to include some photos of the current garden':

It's a blooming...
:

Smoke in the background is from the forest fires. It's close to a record this summer for the burned area.

Tomato plants are in the the greenhouse tent. We're already eating ripe tomatoes.

Wasp wars...

This is the time of year when wasps start to be a problem. Locally, they're called yellow jackets, hornets, or simply bees, but technically they're relatives of the european paper wasp (Vespula sp.). They over-winter as adult queens, often underground, but then in summer build their paper nests in trees, shrubs, or roofs. This year they chose a corner of the porch roof where there was just enough of an opening to squeeze through, then started a nest inside. Within in a week or so, there were dozens of wasps flying in and out. Since we have to pass that corner to go into the house, well it didn't look too promising for their future there. In the past we've tried to co-exist with them, but in the fall, they start getting very territorial and aggressive towards anything that approaches the nest. Since I've been stung many times,  it's quite painful even if you don't get a reaction to the the venom, I figured I'd better gear-up before taking action. I'd tried several outfits before, but the best thing I've come up with is an old leather welding jacket and gloves, full-face motorcycle helmet, and a hooded sweatshirt.

Suitably attired, I crept up to the nest and sprayed, only to have the can malfunction. After some adjustments, I was able to repeatedly spray the area around the opening until the wasps were no longer flying around, then caulk the hole closed. Lots of excitement for a few little bugs.

Aspen errors...

When we first looked at our property back in the late 70's, what really impressed us was how big the trees were. Mixed stands of aspen, birch, and white spruce seemed huge, some of the spruce were likely a 100 feet tall and 3 feet thick. A fews years back, Andy's friend Val cored some of the bigger trees for some obscure project and found they were all 200 or more years old. Pretty cool, except for the fact that most of trees in interior Alaska seldom live much longer. So now we're seeing the end of the mature forest; in the last few years, I've dropped at least a dozen dead aspen. This spring I noticed 2 large dead ones right behind the house, so figured I'd better get to 'em before they fell on something useful. The first one went down more or less according to plan and landed right between 2 piles of split wood .

The second, not so much. It hung up on another aspen and no matter how hard we pulled it with the come-along, it stayed stuck. When we finally took a break to rehydrate and think things through, the tree it was hung up began to split half way up, then the stuck tree fell, just missing the power drop and Ski-doo. The interesting thing was that when we finally got the third tree down, it fell right on the stump of the second tree, then folded back on itself where it had split, with the top landing on it's own stump. Lot's of angst, but all's well that end's well, I suppose.

The photos were taken after starting to buck up the trees, so all the stacked wood's from the dropped trees

Growin' Taters...

When we first got the dog Tatalina (Taters) about three months ago (Another dog run...4/8/15), we didn't realize how shy she was. And while she has warmed up quite a bit around Andy since then, she's still pretty wary of me. But we've found that dog biscuits rule, so no matter how shy she's acting, she'll still come to me for a treat. In fact, since Andy's taught her to sit and give paw, she'll almost immediately jump on her house, sit down and lilt her paw when she see's a biscuit. But the real interesting thing is how much she's grown in these last few months. While she seemed like big fuzzy puppy when we got her, she's grown into a long, sleek sled dog.

A note to Don...

About the same time as this article came out about how the Department of Labor and the Obama administration wanted to expand the fiduciary standard (the legal requirement that financial advisers and brokers put your best interests first) to cover retirement accounts, Congress decided to make your retirement worse by blocking the new regulations:

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_bills/2015/06/fiduciary_standard_for_retirement_accounts_republicans_don_t_want_to_expand.html

Then I got this interestting form letter from our lone congressman Don Young (original formatting was lost in transfer):

DON YOUNG Congress of the United States
Congressman for All Alaska House of Representatives
WASHINGTON OFFICE: Washington, DC
2314 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-5765

Dear Sir,

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) was designed to protect the beneficiaries of company pension plans in the private sector.  A major point in the legislation was outlining rules for fiduciaries, or providers, of pension plans. For example, fiduciaries were responsible for distributing plan rules to employees with pension plans.  Additionally, ERISA protects beneficiaries by giving them the legal rights to sue for benefits.

*******
Although the Department of Labor has the goal of protecting pension participants, the new definition of "fiduciary"(the fiduciary is the main person giving advice; the new definition would remove the stipulations "regular" and "primary basis), unnecessarily hurts all parties involved.  The providers newly classified as fiduciaries will have extra responsibilities and will be burdened by more clients than the provider can handle.  By overburdening providers, there will likely be a swath of errors in the private sector retirement system and massive destabilization.  Opponents point out that the fiduciary would be able to retroactively declare exemption from fiduciary liability if the fiduciary feels that he or she was not impartial when giving retirement advice.  In essence, should the participant's retirement plan not go as planned, the fiduciary can seek exemption from responsibility.  The employer also faces challenges as he or she has to disregard decades of regulations. Especially during these difficult economic times, it is unwise to destabilize the private sector's retirement plans.

Americans have a right to be concerned with the continued expansion of federal regulation over retirement fund policies.  I have often said that Congress passing regulation is not nearly as bad as giving unelected bureaucrats the power to create their own regulations.  The proposal gives the Executive Branch too much regulatory power. The new definition can easily become burdensome, even though it is only a small part of what it means to save for retirement.  This issue and other new requirements, that I believe will be overly burdensome on employers and the financial sector, are just a few of the reasons why I oppose bureaucrats who overstep their powers.  In conclusion, this legislation will upset business practices and hurt the American economy at a time when it cannot afford it. Please know that I will be watchful as the Department of Labor reviews ERISA.

If I can be of any assistance in the future, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,
(signed)
DON YOUNG
Congressman for All Alaska
DY/PM


Now I do understand that the Repugnants in Congress feel it's their sacred duty to disagree/defeat whatever their most hated adversary, the commie, socialist, fascist, muslim loving, american hating president does. But opposing increased regulation on an industry that had almost bankrupted our country? That's just too much.  I over-rode my normal aversion to politics, took him up on his offer and contacted him:

To: Rep. Don Young, Congressman for All Alaska
Re: From the Desk of Congressman Don Young: "burdensome fiduciary regulations"

Dear Don:

Moran (sp) noun: Conflated with moron; one with an opposing view, considered especially stupid or foolish. “Get a brain, moran!”
After the economic collapse of 2008 when the unregulated derivative markets made many retirement and investment funds worthless, it seems inconceivable that anyone with an once of perspective would consider the regulation of anyone who gives investment advice a bad idea. But there you go, keeping the world safe for the investment establishment while the individual investors are left to fend for themselves. Your justification is a gross oversimplification and postulates unlikely consequences. As the lone congressman for Alaska, you seem more concerned with the east coast financial community than with the retired citizens of your home state.
And congratulations on your recent wedding.

Sincerely,
BJ

Haven't got a reply yet, I suspect I won't be hearing too much from the lone congressman for a while.

Who's wiring?...

It all started out just as some simple wiring to finish a project that'd begun last fall. In the course of getting stuff together, I found a connector that belonged on the wiring cover (wire mold) going to the water pump. But when I tried to snap it in place, somehow it shorted out the hot (black) wire. When I moved the wire to see what happened, the hot wire to the water heater also shorted. So now we had no water and no clue why.
After shutting off all the breakers to the basement, I disconnected the wires and saw that a sharp edge of the metal wire mold covering had cut through the insulation and shorted it out. So decided to replace that section of wire mold with BX conduit (flexible armored pipe). I had some laying around, so was able to scab together a bypass for the shorted-out wires. The funny part was that after it was finished, it reminded me of the wiring hanging about in Dr Who's Tardis.