canyonwalker: My old '98 M3 convertible (road trip!)
Inland Empire Travelog #6
Bonners Ferry, Idaho - Fri, 14 May 2021. 10pm.

It's been a busy first full day here in eastern Washington and the Idaho panhandle. This area of the country is variously called the Inland Northwest— as opposed to the Pacific Northwest as it is hundreds of miles inland from the Pacific Ocean— and the Inland Empire. Tonight we hang our hats in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, after a day of 280 miles of driving and hiking several trails.



I've already written about a few of our hikes and one of our misses earlier in the day: Meyers Falls and Sheep Creek Falls, Douglas and Crystal Falls, and Sweet Creek Falls. We did make a few more stops after those including another miss. We tried to hike the route of a historic log flume, but the area was closed. It looked like it suffered flood damage in the winter and Forest Service hasn't been able to fix it yet. During an impromptu visit we made to a Forest Service station this morning we saw a crew getting briefed to go out in the field. A ranger explained that they're only getting to a lot of Springtime maintenance just now that the CDC has revised guidance on mask wearing.

Free map of waterfalls & hikes in northeastern Washington [May 2021]
This free brochure was handy to find hikes listed in our poorly written waterfalls guide
While the flume trail was closed we did check out a few other areas. Mostly they were roadside points of interest... without having awesome waterfalls lurking behind them.

Our guide to these stops was a free pamphlet we picked up at the hotel last night. See picture left/above. Its handy map on the front side helped us quickly locate treks that were hard to locate with our poorly written waterfalls guidebook. And on the flip side it contained concise directions that were generally more cogent than the book's— though the map also had faulty directions for Meyers Falls.

BTW, the guidebook— which we've dubbed Professor Smedley Q. Boredom's Very Dull Book Of Waterfalls— has a companion website now. We consulted the website for better pictures of the falls. The site is... let's say, precious. It seriously looks like they hired teenage MySpace users in 2006 to design it.

Dinner and a Room with a View

We checked in this evening at a casino/hotel on the Kootenai River. We don't care about the casino; we picked the hotel because it looked nice and had a reasonable price when we booked. Plus, we could reserve a room with a river view and balcony for just $10 more. Which we did.... And then when we arrived this evening we noticed that pretty much all of the rooms have balconies overlooking the river.

The hotel is conveniently located adjacent to Bonners Ferry's historic downtown... about as much of a downtown as a town of fewer than 3,000 people has, anyway. But it has a few restaurants within walking distance.

We walked a few blocks out to Mugsy's Tavern. There we ate hot sandwiches on the covered patio and I enjoyed a couple pints of beer. The food was merely okay but sitting down like old times again felt special. Unwinding after a long day made it doubly special.

Now we're back at the room. I sat on the balcony overlooking the river for a while then came back inside. It's getting a bit chilly outside! But we'll probably leave the sliding glass door open all night for the fresh air. It's nice that the balcony is angled so we have privacy even with the door and curtains open.


canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
My mom got her shot of the Coronavirus vaccine recently. Up until a few weeks ago she was dead-set against it, citing various conspiracy theories from the fever swamps of conservative TV "news". It turns out the big stumbling block for her was having to deal with anything involving a computer to get it. She explained that while she was driving the main road through town recently she saw a sign in front of the recreation center advertising the vaccine and encouraging people to stop in to make an appointment. Once she was able to get a shot in the good ol' 1950s way— no searching online, no using computer, not even having to make a phone call, just go to the right place— she did it.

It's tempting to point out this is an example of how expecting people to use online mechanisms is unfair to the elderly and the poor, who may lack skills or resources to use the Internet. It's tempting but not entirely accurate because my mom lives with one of my sisters, who is Internet savvy and begged Mom for months to let her set up an appointment for her. Mom is in the sad zone where lack of computer skills intersects with belief in conspiracy theories. I believe she looked at it as, "If you can't get the vaccine just by walking into a clinic, it's a scam and it's not important."

Either way, I'm glad she's on Team Vax now.
canyonwalker: WTF? (wtf?)
Earlier this week I got a text from FedEx that "my package" will arrive Friday. I quote "my package" because I haven't ordered anything. I'm not expecting anything.

My first thought was it's a phishing attempt. The text message has a link to click for info. Classic phishing ploy— tell someone they've got an unexpected package and get them to click through a bogus link to a malware site. Except it's a legit fedex.com link. Oddly, though, the FedEx page doesn't indicate the sender, just that it's being sent from El Cajon, California. I don't know anybody in El Cajon. I haven't done business with anybody in El Cajon... aside from staying at a hotel there a couple times, most recently over a year ago.

Just now I got an update text. My package is out for delivery today! Good news, right? Except, no, because I still don't know whom it's from or what it is. Maybe it's a coffin.

UpdateIt's not a coffin. Or a bomb.


canyonwalker: Driving on the beach at Oceano Dunes (4x4)
When our Xterra developed transmission trouble over 200 miles from home Monday afternoon I felt pretty put out. I was put out not just because I was worried about being over 200 miles from home and in an area with weak cellphone reception with the possibility of being stranded, but also because it was just ten days after getting the car back from the shop from another set of repairs.

"So much for Nissan reliability," Hawk groused. And I agreed. Although repairs other than regular maintenance have been few they have been expensive. The repairs two weeks ago cost $1,400. The repairs a few years ago— when we did get stranded, and it was not just 200 miles from home but nearly a thousand miles— cost just over $2,000. And on top of that $2,000 for the mechanic we spent at least $2,000 getting un-stranded!

How much would this transmission problem cost to fix? I was actually somewhat optimistic about it. The reason was that the problem didn't seem to be with the transmission itself.

When a transmission goes bad, it goes bad in a big way— and is expensive to fix. With this problem there was no crunching or groaning of gears from inside the transmission. When it slipped out of gear it wasn't the torque converter slipping; it was the shift lever physically slipping to disengage it. Likewise, it's the shift lever that physically wouldn't move into position to select lower gears. The problem may well just be in the shift lever.

But still, it seemed like a $500 repair job at a minimum. So soon after the other repair bill, and with the car now at 103,000 miles, we were wondering if it's worth it. Yeah, $500— or even another $1,500— is cheaper than a new car, but if keeping this car going is going to be a stream of this, that, and the other thing going wrong... maybe it's time to cut our losses.

Before I called the dealership on Tuesday I did a bit of research to gain an understanding of what the problem might be. My search hit on a few web forums describing similar symptoms, and one of the posts in them had a link to a really helpful YouTube video showing a fix that requires only a screwdriver, needle-nose pliers, and a bit of forearm strength. Could it be? Would I be able to fix it myself— or would DIY stand for "Damage It Yourself"? Stay tuned!

UPDATEI attempt a DIY solution... on video!

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
Today I saw the hashtag #WorstFirstDate about, well, people's worst first dates. It's promoted by TV host Jimmy Fallon, presumably to share on his show, or at least remind people he's still relevant. My worst first date was quite a number of years ago... so it's apropos I saw on Thursday, aka #TBT - Throwback Thursday. For this story set your wayback machine to 1994.

BTW, when I told my wife I remember my worst first date after all these years, she asked, "Is it the one when I threw up?"

Ha ha, no. That wasn't a first date. It was a third date, depending on how you count it. And in the grand scheme of all dates it was only the second worst. 😅

A story of Netflix and Chill, being wrong-numbered, and ghosting— all 1994 style! )

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