I just came back from skiing. Had 12 runs and came home. It’s great not having lines. The first time I went up, I was only able to do about 6 run. The next couple times I did 8. So today was a big breakthrough. I was ready to go to the bigger hills, but the weather was getting miserable so decided to head home before the storm came in. Was home by 4:00.
Unfortunately, there are few people to ride the lift with because there are no lines. I did ride up with a 5th grader last time I went skiing. He and his family came up in a Motor Home. He was cutting school. Nice kid. He’d started on a snowboard and didn’t like it. Went to skiing and didn’t like it and was now back to snowboarding. He was riding the lift in a T-shirt and I thought it was cold. I had my earphones on listening to Country and Western, but forgot all about it as he was telling me about all the other runs at Shasta. The best part of riding up with him was after he got off the lift and told his friends, “I’m going to ride up with someone more often. That was fun.”
My news skies and boots are great. The skies are fast and easy to handle. It’s supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow and be sunny on Wednesday so think I’ll go again Wednesday and ski the tougher hills. May not get as many runs in, but I’d like to see how my skies handle the other slopes.
I’ve been working on major updates to A Warrior’s Son. Have been moving chapters around, taking anecdotes and back story, and moving them to more appropriate places. I think it will make it better. I’ve already paid X-Libris to publish a book and will do so if I can’t find an agent after this round of letters to agents.
After all kinds of trouble getting my volt meter to work and my solar panels to follow the sun, I got them both working. Guess what, the fault was at my end and not the manufacturers. A mouse had gotten into the conduit and damaged the cable to the volt meter. Fortunately, the company sent me another cable and it worked great. I sent all the solor controllers and converters to the company. They sent them back saying they worked fine. Again there was a short. I’d been unable to find it because I often got 48 volts where the lines went into the tracker. But other times I didn’t. The reason I discovered the short was after hooking everything back up, nothing worked. I hooked up new wiring and still couldn’t get 48 volts where the line went into the solar system. I’d bought new wire and there was lack of continuity. So I went to the store and bought new wire and ran it through conduit after checking to make sure it worked and Wa La, it worked.
The thing I learned is that often we think the problems lies somewhere else, when in fact the problem has something to do with us. I was a bit careless when I wired both the volt meter and solar panels. I didn’t put steel wool into the conduit at either end to prevent mice from getting in. I didn’t use conduit at all when I set up the solar panels and who knows how many times I’d stepped on the wire when I went out and tilted the panels. I guess I’ll be more diligent from now on.
