Month of August 2023 (Nat’l Avg $3.780)

Bill , I will probably go to Discount Tire , whre I have been
buying tires for the last five years. Even though this car still has the OEM tires,
they treat me like a valued customer. the first thing they do is ask fi my phone # ,
so they can see if I am in their computer. When I had the 2014 Civic , they fixed a
slow leak for free. These tires only have 26K miles , so they are good for a while.
But I will definitely buy the next set from them.

 

Wish I had a Discount Tire nearby. Town Fair is the closest thing for me as far as services, but their prices are higher.

Same treatment whether the tire was bought there or not...

 

Perhaps the four tree trunks around you when you saw the fawn were the mother's legs...

 

Walking the bottomland the long way to the Senior Center today. With the Nikon binoculars, I saw 5 otters swimming upriver on the opposite shore. Like all otters they moved back & forth, playing with each other. Moved on thru the bottomland, eventually signing up at the SC & onto the library. Back to the SC, the lunch was again, excellent. Lots of people & it took a while to get chow. The Salisbury steak, salad, mashed potatoes, gravy & fresh nectarines must have caused such a crowd. As far as animal sightings while going back to the apt., I may have glimpsed a Red-Shafted Flicker darting into the trees.

 

Hmm.....From the Health app on my phone, it appears that I've walked 200(+?) miles in a month & a half, most(?) of that because of my bottomland walks after moving into the apt. Its surprising that I have walked that much because of my health issues. Much of the walking is because of my marriage collapse, cutting the driving to nurture my much lowered economics AND the price of gasoline, stopping almost all my driving. However, seeing so much wildlife has truly supported me emotionally, encouraging me to walk more. I've lost a fair amount of weight, which is good.

There is increasing amounts of smoke from the Canadian & Eastern Washington forest fires. Yellow Knife in Canada is being evacuated as quickly as possible with the fire approaching. The stop & go traffic would have been devastating, if local winds had been high. In my Washington state, forest fires near Spokane are threatening communities I've been through, as communities I've also been thru in the past, which have burned years ago. Global warming is having savage effects, even now & will only increase in the future.

 

Took one of the cars for a long neglected drive. Nothing special, just around the area. There have been some upgrades on the back roads, that were prepared AND completed before I even knew about them! Yes, it HAS been a long time of neglect!

However, I wouldn't trade it for all my sightings of 17 deer, 5 otters, Bald Eagles, Osprey, Kingfishers & their young that I have enjoyed, while on my walk-abouts.​

 

Oh, yes. Yesterday, as well as taking one of the cars out for a neglected drive, I also walked the bottomland twice....for 2 of my shorter walks. BBBUUUTTTT, saw some nice bikini dressed(or undressed) ladies. Man, oh, man….I mean woman, oh woman…..80 years of bikini development have made bikinis.... only slightly developed, that's for sure.

 

Across the bottomland, saw a flying Blue Heron. Wouldn’t have seen him, except I did one of my occasional rotations, to see if any animals pass behind me. Sure enough, there he was passing behind me. Further along to another bottomland, I saw 3 birds on a sandbar half a mile away, I thought might be Bald Eagles, except they looked weird. Viewing with the 10x40mm binoculars one raised its head & I could see that it was another Blue Heron. Focusing the optic critically, one of the other birds had the straight back of a Turkey Vulture. Got a little closer & confirmed they were Vultures. Onto the Senior Center & signed in. Over to the library but no deer yet, today. Some of the blackberries were very good. I think I’ll skip lunch at the SC, & feast on blackberries today. We’ll see.

 

Today , 68 deg F in Naoerville,69in Elk Grove.

Wind NE 5

33.3 miles, fcd = 56.8 x .942 = 53.5 MPG

 

Today, repeating yesterday’s in the following:
across the bottomland…….Onto the Senior Center & signed in. Over to the library but no deer yet, today. Some of the blackberries were very good. I think I’ll skip lunch at the SC, & feast on blackberries today.

 

Today , 76 d eg F in Naperville,77 in Elk Grove,
My car said 80 deg at 4:15 AM. That's the hottest morning
temp that I can recall for this area.

Wind : In Lombard (which I drive thru) weather.com said SE9.
In Naperville , they said SSW 7.
Either way , the southerly wind helped.

33.3 miles, fcd = 59.8 x .942 = 56.3 MPG.

 

Oh, up this morning & it was raining. That's good(keeps things green & little chance of fire). Hope things are better in Canada & the rest of fire-prone US.
It stopped raining now, so we'll see if I get to walk the bottomland to the Senior Center today. Supposed to be decreasing chances of rain, with about 10% chance while walking to the SC. The SC lunch is baked chicken, mac&cheese, dinner roll & mandarin oranges. Maybe I can trade off the zucchini for a bit more mac&cheese. Ya know, these Chefs are really tough...ya know....NO MORE SOUP FOR YOU!

PS, later...Whoa! Raining fairly good right now. Appears to be quite local according to the radar screen AND looks like blue sky coming this way, too. I'll delay, before heading into the bottomland & try to avoid some rain drops. Maybe, I'll carry my umbrella & scare any lingering rain-filled clouds away.

 

Today , 80 deg F in Naperville , 82 in Elk Grove. If I choose to believe
these numbers, it seems like the Fit thermometer reads about two degrees high.
Most of the way home yesterday it read 100. (I did not use A/C)

Wind WSW 7

33.2 miiles, fcd = 60.4 x .942 = 56.9 MPG

 

You do run it occasionally to keep it functioning, right? We do that on the Prius Prime even during the winter, along with using the friction brakes occasionally.

 

Yesterday, I turned in 19,200+steps & 7 miles of travel. Probably will remain a record for now. It was too much & my back nearly went out.

PS....Today, was the local parade. Was going to stay away, because it is so hard to find parking & get around. But later, hey I decided, I'm used to walking now, so go for a walk to & around the parade. & it was great! My fairly new phone, altho it doesn't have a super telephoto like the Samsung phone, has an excellent camera. The local high school band, drummed & played well, accompanied by the local cheerleaders. Later, there was a really good band with good clarinets, flutes, trumpets, trombones, drums, & saxophones (even had a contra-bass Saxophone & Tuba). There were a few floats, but not like in the big city parades. The local Food Bank had a cute float with some of the flowers & colorful fruits & vegetables from the Food Bank garden. It was really quite an extensive parade, with lots of cars (& convertible Corvettes from the local dealership) carrying beautiful girls.
The end of the parade had a large(very large) contingent of Mexican horses (even dancing horses), spectacular Mexican sombreros, & clothes. One horsewoman had an eye-catching, long & brilliant flowered yellow dress. There were no Mexican cattlemen doing rope tricks, but the horsewoman with the yellow dress more than made up for the loss. At times, the riders moved very near the line of spectators & let children & adults pet the horses, who were exceedingly well behaved (yes, both children & horses). An excellent Mariachi orchestra with trumpets, trombones, violins, & a chorus of singers, playing lots of upbeat Mexican music, got a parade long & enthusiastic roadside applause, & approving shouts of happiness.

Anyhow, I had 20,414 steps & my back gave me no problems, which surprised & delighted me.

 

Down in the bottomland 3 times today. The 2nd time, I met a dad trying to fish & he had his 2 kids. He said he caught 2 fish in the morning, but nothing since. Hours later, I went down to the bottomland for my third walk. Met him again....still fishing with nothing to gain. I sat on the rocks watching the many river rafters drifting down the river. Later, the fisherman & his kids were gone without catching any more fish. There was a long pause between the groups of rafters & things were quiet.....until.......yeah, you guessed it. Fish began rolling & breaking on the surface of the river in great numbers. At the same time, I saw as many as 5 fish in a 15 foot square area, break the waters. I don't know if the fisherman could have caught any of the fish, but on his casts he would have had a good chase to knock one of them unconscious.

 

I try to do that, Bill. I had an experience with my
1989 Civic Si. I almost never used it. After 39 months , the compressor failed
and I had a $400.00 repair bill. Since then . most cars automatically turn on the
compressor when HVAC is in Defrost mode , I believe. I think the Fit does that , but the A/C light doesn't come on.
I will remind myself to use it.

 

I'd heard that comment several times & tried to run the rare A/C units that some of my cars had. Sometimes, I forgot to do such, tho. I never had a malfunctioning A/C unit, altho maybe the A/C units didn't function quite as cool when needed tho. Would that be considered an A/C malfunction?

 

If you noticed the AC not cooling as well as you thought it did before, that's a good sign some refrigerant may have leaked... for me, that's the main reason to run occasionally to keep the seals lubricated.

 

Today, I went to the Senior Center, back to the apt., & then went to the local fair. Did some other trekking around. The 19K steps I took & thought it would stick as a record has now fallen twice. Today, 23,811 steps were taken (excluding steps I took without the phone on my belt), for a total of 8.9 miles. If I'd known I would travel that much, I wouldn't have done it. This is crazy. & outside of some minor muscle problems, they have proved to be just that....minor & temporary (I hope). Quite something for my broken down condition. I really do have to ease off, tho.