Sunday - Adding Insult to Injury

Car dilemmas continue.  My flight to Portland was on Tuesday and the Subaru would not be fixed until Wednesday.  This would mean that Jeanne would have to borrow a car to drive me to the airport.  She does fine with the manual transmission on short jaunts but 5 hours times 2 would be too long in the Hyundai.  This is one place that Jeanne has noticed a change due to Guillain-Barre. She used to love driving a manual transmission vehicle.  Her friend Margie was planning on going into Duluth on Wednesday anyway, so we came up with the plan of my changing my flight to Portland to Wednesday instead of Tuesday.  Then I would go with Jeanne on Wednesday to Duluth to get the Subaru and then we would drive to the airport from there.  I called Delta and made the change.  No change fees at least.  

After breakfast we headed to church in time for choir rehearsal and then church.  Ely seems to be a no mask community.  They have had very few Covid cases here.

Rehearsal

Singing

After church we walked to the Boathouse for lunch.  There were 11 of us. I had wanted to check out Southminster's service on zoom.  This was a little awkward at the restaurant.  I had an earbud.  The main thing I wanted to check out was the handbell performance.  To see how they did without me.  We were almost done with lunch when the bells came on.  I stepped outside to listen.  It was very difficult to hear on zoom, because there is no mic over by the bells.  After lunch we went to do a quick stop at the grocery store for a few items.  One embarrassing thing was that somewhere during this time I got unmuted.  I was muted at the beginning. I had made sure of that.  People kept typing in the chat for me to mute myself.  Of course, I did not see that because I was just listening.  Also the chat box does not open up on the phone like it does on the computer.  I was in the grocery store and I got a call from Marsha telling me to mute myself!! Then I checked the chat box and my texts to see how many people had told me to mute myself.  Boy, was I embarrassed. The host should have muted me but they were not paying attention.  Oh well.  

We got home and changed so that we could go to the Kawishiwi Falls.  

 

Kawishiwi Falls this year

2019.  What a difference!!

The water level was very low this year.

As we were heading home Jeanne noticed that her mail box had been hit!!  Argh!! What else could go wrong (no, I am not really asking).  We tried straightening it out a bit.  Then went back for some tools to remove the door since it was sticking out.  A neighbor came by and offered to try to straighten out the door.  Amazing neighbors.  We found a piece of a rear view mirror on the side of the road.  So someones car was damaged by this incident as well.

It was now time to relax.  We needed to put our feet up.  We sat on the deck overlooking the bay with our Smirnoffs.  Ah, what a life.  I found the Sunday service on YouTube so I could listen to the bells properly.  

Jeanne made cheeseburgers for dinner.  Yummy.  

We decided to watch a movie, "Luca" was enjoyable.  I had seen it before but Jeanne had not.  I checked out the moon.  It was more hazy so the moon was not so clear.  I am glad that I got the pictures  when I did.

PS. An update on the cool Coravin wine gadget.  It appears that each compressed air cartridge goes for one bottle of wine. That is a downside.   It would be intended for people that did not plan to drink the whole bottle, so the intermittent drinkers.

It's All About Cars

Jeanne got a package from Amazon.  It was a small item in a big box with no packaging material.  Luckily it was not a fragile item.

Daily deer run

Today we had our leisurely morning of coffee and breakfast and then we headed into town to run some errands.  We got about 1 mile away from the house and the car just died.  Jeanne got it to the side of the road and then we started the process of dealing with this dilemma.  Several people stopped to see if we needed any help.  That was nice.

• Called AAA ... no good because of membership renewal issues.
• Called the local towing company ... no answer since it is a Saturday 
• Called Subaru and they suggested the Subaru Roadside Assistance
• Called the SRA ... ah ha! right number.  No problem they will take care of it.  They will text us to give an ETA.   Jeanne has another car at home which has a dead battery. Jeanne called a friend to come pick us up to take us into town to buy a new battery for the Hyundai and then to take us back to the house.  Margie just dropped everything to help Jeanne out. Amazing friends.

Jeanne and Jay were leasing the Subaru.  The lease is up next month.  They are trying to decide if they will buy the car when the lease is up.  We just had joked about things falling apart when the warranty is up. 

Once we got back home, we put in the new battery.  That is the royal "WE", actually, Jeanne put in the new battery.  I just held the flashlight.  Jeanne is amazing. I think that she could do about anything. 

Yippee! The car worked!  So, we went to town to do the errands we had tried to do earlier.  Whew!! 1:30 pm - it was time for lunch.  We still had not heard from Subaru, so Jeanne started calling.  Quite a number of phone calls and "on holds" later.  They kept assuring us that they would take care of everything.  We felt like we really could not leave the house in case they showed up to the car.  Finally, they said they were sending a local guy who would try to jump start the car.  We had told them that we were pretty sure that it was NOT the battery.  Tony would be there in 15 minutes.  We jumped in the car and drove down to the Subaru.  Tony was already there.  He tried to jump start the car.  Surprise, surprise, that did not work.  He checked a few other things.  He thought that it was the fuel pump.  He towed the Subaru back to Jeanne's place.  It will probably have to be towed to Duluth on Monday.   We found out that his name is NOT Tony but Jake.  Tony was the previous owner of the towing company.  Jake thought it was just easier to leave the name on the towing company. At least the Hyundai is working now.  

Poor car

Our plans for today sure changed.  Jeanne got the AAA straightened out just in case the Hyundai has problems but Subaru Roadside Assistance is the way to go with the Subaru.  Good to know.  Now, it was too late to try to go to the Kawishiwi Falls.  Maybe tomorrow. Jeanne made an appointment for the Subaru on Wednesday.  She also arranged for Jake to do the towing.

Margarita time

The squirrels are fun to watch.

Blue Jay

What a cutie, but the squirrels sure make a mess of the deck.

Some of Jay's arrow head collection

Some of Jay's shell collection.

Dinner time.

Delicious dinner of BBQ ribs (which Jay had made), carrots and red potatoes.  The ribs were left over but that was not a problem for me.  Jeanne kept apologizing for serving so many left-overs.  I kept telling her that they were not left-overs for me.

After dinner we decided to go sit down by the bay to watch the moon rise.  

Jeanne did a better selfie, but I liked my background better.

It was very pleasant out but no sign of the moon.  Then we noticed that actually we might get a better view back up at the house.  Yup.

First, we had to get our beverages and then we sat out on the deck and watched the moon.  A very relaxing way to end the stressful day.  I really felt for Jeanne.

Pictures with my phone camera.

I took these with my actual camera.  It is not officially full moon yet.  Full moon won't be until Monday, when it is predicted to be raining.

Boat, Bridge and Zoom

 Friday, September 17th

I got to watch a momma and her fawn roam around.

The stickie bun was as good as it looked.  

After breakfast we headed down to the bay to check the small boat.  The pontoon was covered but the small one was not.

Unfortunately, the picture does not show the 4-6 inches of water in the boat from the rain last night.

Bailing the water was a job.  Christmas gift idea - a water pump! 

Then we headed out to go to Virginia.  I had researched where to go to get the view of the Rukavina Bridge, the highest bridge in Minnesota. 

Too bad the fence was in the way.

After taking pictures from the Bridge View we walked out on the Mesabi Trail to get on the bridge.

Stretching from the Mississippi to the Boundary Waters, with almost 135 miles of paved trail, the Mesabi Trail is like no other in the county, Grand Rapids, MN to Ely.

It is hard to believe that we are 200 feet up.

This is a lake created by the iron mine.

We went to Kunnari's Farm Market for lunch in Virginia.

Then we did a brief Virginia Street Art drive through.

Giant Loon on the lake.

Once we got home we checked out the path that Jay and family made.  A bunch of trees had been either taken down or fell down and were turned into chips.  So they spread the chips to create a path through the woods. There were also some big trees that were down.

The path made it easier to create this pile of wood. They could roll each piece down the hill, instead of carrying them one by one up a hill.  They loaded them one by one on to a truck and drove them to the top of the hill and rolled them down.  Quite a job.

They have quite a stack of wood that will keep the house warm for years. Of course, it will have to be split.

The deer were back.

Then we had two delightful zoom calls with friends.  We fit in a delicious lasagna dinner between the 2 calls.  And we even had some lime pie, not key lime, but still yummy.

We had fun figuring out Jay's Coravin, a fun gadget that Jay's brother had given him a few years ago.  It is an advanced wine preservation system. It is a cool way to get wine out of the bottle without actually opening it.   It works.  

Tomorrow, I will try to get a picture of it working.

Nearly a full moon. But visibility is difficult with all of the trees around.