Third Week

A week has passed since my last blog entry.  This is a reflection of a quiet time when life has settled down to pleasant days around the house with Arnold, Sandra, and Denver the Dog, as well as drives in the RX7 for local shopping and visits to Kingston and Port Townsend.  All of this has been in day after day of clear and sunny weather with temperatures reaching the neighborhood of 80F - call it La Paz Weather Lite.

Sneak shot of Arnold and Sandra enjoying the weather

Three days ago we got a visit from Larry Conlee who drove from his home in Olympia.  Brenda and I had met Larry at the Posada Luna y Sol hotel back in June 2010 when Pachuca was receiving her engine transplant, and I had seen him during his several return visits to the city.  I had last seen him in January, when he took me on that overnight tour of the mountains in the Loreto area.

Larry loves travel and adventure, and true to form he offered to pick me up here in Kingston and take me on a camping trip in the wilds of Idaho - really wild - a hard-to-get-to area with year round hot springs.  I explained that in normal times I would jump at his offer but because I was on a short visit I couldn't spare the time.  He understood and drove up with his dog for an afternoon visit to the Morales hacienda.  Sandra, Larry and I had lunch in Kingston on a deck overlooking the bay.  Afterwards Larry pushed on to headed north toward Port Angeles on a drive around the Olympic Peninsula, which he had never visited before.  There is a small chance that he'll visit La Paz before my departure, and we also spoke of meeting in Viet Nam in a couple of years.

Jean and Arnold at the Vespa

The next day Arnold and I drove to Port Townsend to visit Jean Davies and help her out with a couple of things.  Arnold didn't waste much time in starting work on the task of getting Jean's Vespa motorcycle running again.  It is a beautiful little machine, but unfortunately has sat in the garage largely unused during the 7 years since Burl gave it to Jean for her birthday.  It has only 175 miles on the odometer.  We were amazed in the changes to Vespa since our teenage years in the middle of the last century, e.g. 4-stroke engine, automatic transmission, hydraulic brakes.

While Arnold worked on the Vespa I helped Jean with her computer.  Later Arnold came up and had a look at some of the connections to the machine.  Soon we discovered that the PC had no sound.  Arnold found that the sound card was loose in the chassis and we were forced to remove the cover.  It was a good thing that Arnold was present because I would not have been game to do it myself.  Arnold found that the sound card had come loose from the motherboard because the wrong type of screw had been used to fasten it down.  We found an old Dell machine in Jean's basement and as luck would have it Arnold quickly found the correct screw on the Dell and soon the machine was up and running.  Before closing the machine up Arnold gave the fan a few blasts of compressed gas to clean it good as new.

Arnold fixing Jean's PC

This is the first day of the 3-day PT Wooden Boat Festival.  I hope drive in this afternoon and hear talks by the Pardeys, Nigel Calder, and someone named Leif Terdal who will speak on "Northwest Sea Disasters."  Arnold will then meet me at Jean's and we will proceed to Jak and Corine's home for a barbecue where we will also see John and Priscilla, who are visiting from San Diego.  It will be great to be together again one more time.