Is New Better?

New vans we got in 2009. Run pretty good but new thing do have there problems.
A Ford Vans E-450 with a 6 liter diesel.
One of the thing that I would like to bring out about this motor, is the trouble with inspecting and changing the fan belts.
The radiator has to be remove to inspect belts and the many pullies.
You can not see, but the very top pullies and a very small part of the belt.
I think there are 15 pullies, you can see 12 of them here..
So about ever 50,000 miles, you just going in and change every thing, and hope it last another 50k.
This job takes about 6 hours, and if the shop rates is $85 per hour plus parts, this could be costly.

In the old day you could always inspect, and replace belts pretty quick, like one hour.

Geo Caching In the I V Area

Went after about 10 caches, and only found 4, not a good day caching, but better then and good days work, Ha Ha.
The IV fall cache, never found it

This one was not found, may be missing.

I had never been  down here all the years I had been coming down here to the swing bridge area.
Its about a 10 foot high and all the river is flowing over it, or most of it. a small amount is going around through  a fish ladder, I did not get a look at this.





I. V. #3 ( aka Horn Bend)
This one I found ok, about 1 mile hike in, to some table and a nice place along the river.
No pictures of this one.
But I did come across this little guy watching over one of the caches.

I have been told that the black ones are not as poisons as the gold colored ones, but I can't seen to find much on this. This guy was a dark one and only about 1 inch long. I had to move him around to wake it up, He was found under some rocks I was looking for the cache under, that I did not find it. I have seen a few of theses, before. one of the first timing was when I was fighting a night fire in the Murphy area and I was using the hose to cool down a hot spot, when I looked down and saw this one in the fire light from the fire that I was putting out, a beautiful golden scorpion about 2 inch long running from the heat of the fire, and it was about  12 inch from my foot. So I got a piece of wood and move the scorpion along ways from were I was working. This was one of the first fire of the season, I did not have flash light, there could have been others, who knows.

Sun Eclipse 2012

This is what it looked like on May 20,2012 at about 5 PM.

 As you can be seen we were using some of my old welding hoods and lens to watch the eclipse through safely.
Rochelle, Auston, Alex, Robyn and Dan.
The last time we had a eclipse in our area, or being able to see it in our area.
I think it as about 1980, I was in Wolf creek, Oregon, in the middle of town about 8 AM and it went dark in the middle of the day, weird.  This time it was not as dark as before.

Fun at the Boatnik 2012

This is a little late, May 30, 2012
Here is the picurtes.

Where has all the time gone??

I had almost forgot I have ablogg, It has been so long.
A lot has happend, and not sure where to start with up dating this thing.

Ben was sick in the hospital for 14 day in Portland. All started when He had his appendick taken out, and was not able to recover, but He is home now, interesting side note, Ben went in the hospital weighing about 165 and left at about 213 pounds, He pick up a little water in his body, I here its coming off OK.
Ben running from the Hosp.

I have another Geo Metro red this time, I pick up for a fair price and will be rebuilding and selling later. I'm driving the sky blue Metro now and rebuilding the motor in old white 1992 Subuar.

At the company barbeque they roast a hole pig.
The finish up the roast in the big box barbeque and the head was the last part to finish up.
The hog meat was really good,

My running stuff,
I planned four races, one long run and one fast run.
So I run the Pear Blosson 5K   30:53 (10 sec. slow then last year)
Then I ran The YMCA Bridge Run 5K 29:33 PR much faster.
Then came the Rooster Crow Run 3 miles (I think)  26:33
The last, the Rogue River Dual. I only did a 5k 28:50 PR my fastest to date.
Then came the longe run, I had been training up to 6 miles in one hour, but I needed more.
I ran a slow 10 miles around the loop, up Evans crk, down Pleasant crk back to house the time was really good, 10 miles in 1:51:15 so the mile pac was 11:05. Not bad.
Last is to try and run an 8 minute mile, maybe this week.