2011 - Dec. 6 - St. Louis to Honolulu

Yesterday, we had an uneventful drive from home to the Comfort Inn - St. Louis Airport. We did the Park-n-Fly thing because we would have had to get up way too early to make our our 9:00AM flight time if we had left from home this morning. Besides, in total, it's cheaper than parking at the airport!

So, we were at the airport this morning at 6:45 and at our gate at 7:05. Plenty of time! They wanted to passengers to take the 8:00 flight to Dallas instead of the 9:00, so we actually left an hour earlier than planned. What the heck - sit and wait in St. Louis or sit and wait in Dallas.

We arrived in Dallas with plenty of time to get to our gate, check out some shops, and eat lunch before boarding our 1:00PM flight. We landed in Honolulu at about 5:15PM, 9:15 Illinois time. After the 30 minute ride to the hotel, it was dark, so we did a little exploring in the neighborhood, had dinner at one of Wolfgang Puck's places, and checked out the beach before hitting the sack about 10:30.

Long day!

BTW, the hotel charges $16.95 per day or $6.95 per hour for WiFi Internet access. We'll be finding a McDonald's!

2011 - Nov. 16 - 20 Work Detail at Lake of the Ozarks

My friend, Mark, and I left on Wednesday morning, headed for his lake house near mile marker 31 on the Lake of the Ozarks. Our mission was twofold.
1. Use two backpack leaf blowers to gather the leaves on his property into a pile and burn them.
2. Tap into the electrical feed for an exterior light and add another fixture in a different location so that it would illuminate his boat dock.
Wednesday and Sunday were travel days, so that only left three days to get our chores done. Seems like plenty of time until you factor in drinking beer and sightseeing!

Thursday morning at the crack of 11:00, we fired up the leaf blowers and proceeded to construct a mountain of leaves down by the water. By 1:00, we had so many leaves that we decided that there were too many to safely burn, so Mark blew about half of them into the lake. We used the other half as fuel to burn some branches that had been trimmed from a couple of trees by the electrical company. It was a pretty good fire, but not as spectacular as when we burned an old vinyl sofa a couple of years ago.

So, by 3:00 when the fire died down, it was too late to start on the electrical project, so we decided to go to town for some lunch. We ended up at this great little Mexican place where we each had a hamburger and a couple of beers! Then back at the hose, it was still too late to start on the electrical project, so we had a few beers.

Friday morning about noon, Mark climbed up into the attic to see if he could find the wire that we wanted to tap into. That turned out to be way easier than expected. Next, drill a small hole in the eve from the outside and run a coat hanger thru it to see if Mark could locate it from inside the attic. Again, much easier than expected. Once he located the hole, I enlarged it and fed the wire in to him from the outside.

Mark made the necessary connections to the existing fixture feed - black to black, white to white, ground to ground - and we headed for the hardware store to get a piece of PVC pipe thru which to run the wire down the side of the house. I think feeding the 3/8" OD wire thru the 1/2" OD pipe was the toughest part of the project. I think they had 3/4" pipe! Once that was done, we attached the pipe to the side of the house and stapled the remaining wire under the upper deck, down the stairs, under the lower deck to the place where the fixture would be mounted.

After mounting the fixture, inserting a flood light bulb, and aiming it in the general direction of the boat dock it was 3:00 and time for lunch. We went to a little bar and grill called Gull-Ables and had a hamburger and, of course, a couple of beers. Then it was back to the house so we could fine tune the light after dark. Problem was that we got home before dark, so we had to fill the time somehow. I have an idea. Let's have a few beers! By the time it got dark and we turned the light on, it looked great to us. Lit up the boat dock just like Mark wanted it to. So we celebrated with a few beers.

Every few minutes, one of us would turn on the light to admire our work. After the light had been turned on and off a few times, I flipped the switch and .... "Houston, we have a problem." No light! We installed another light bulb and that fixed the problem. Mark thought it was ironic that his dad had been saving that bulb on the shelf for about 25 years and it crapped out in less than 15 minutes of use. Go figure!

We got up Saturday morning only to find ourselves with a day and no chores to do, so we went sightseeing. I won't bore you with the narrative. The pictures can speak for themselves.

After sightseeing, eating lunch at Smashmouth Subs ( http://www.smashmouthsubs.com ), and stopping by Walmart for, you guessed it, more beer, we went back to the house to sit on the deck and watch the water. Marks' neighbor, Terry, came over, so we had a few beers with him. Then he left and we had a few more beers after turning our newly installed light on so we could admire it and see the water better.

Sunday morning, we were on the road at 9:00, the earliest we had done anything on the whole trip, and home by 1:15. We had a great time and even managed to get some work done. Now, as soon as I post this entry, I'm going to have a beer, a fitting finish to a productive weekend!