I spent a little over a week on the road with a trip to Lodi, New York to visit Felicity and Peter and work on a few of their house projects. These are stories of that trip, along with a few photos.

I left Elma on October 13th and returned home on the 20th. The first night I stayed at a place in Nappanee, Indiana, and this led to my first story.

I had pulled into a parking lot to do a search on my phone for lodging in the area when a gentleman approached the truck and asked if he could help me. I explained what I was doing and he offered this advice. ” Go back to the hotel (Countryside Inn) just up the road and give them my name. They will give you a discount.”

So I went to the Inn and gave them Ken’s name. They did indeed give me a discount, explaining they do so to encourage local businesses to refer their clients and representatives to stay at Countryside. Discount was about 1/3 of the regular nightly price. My thanks to Ken, a stranger who took the time to help out a traveler!

On the road in Indiana, I had a problem of my own making with the truck. I had replaced a front caliper before I left and, apparently, had not tightened the mounting bolts correctly. One fell out, leaving me to scramble to find a replacment. I ended up at a supplier that specializes in nuts and bolts, Sanders Indiana Hardware in Valparaiso, Indiana. They had the correct hardware and even stayed after closing to make sure I was able to install and tighten the bolt and be on my way again. Very good people!

Much of my time was spent on the Indiana and Ohio turnpikes, both toll roads. For this trip I obtained an E-Zpass transponder which enabled me to roll through toll booths without having to stop and pay tolls in cash. This made the trip a bit faster and more convenient. However, there is an $8.00 yearly fee to have the transponder active. (Account established through the Ohio Turnpike web site.) Considering I made two trips to upstate NY this year, the annual fee will probably be justified in the future.

I guess it is a sign of our times, but I found this sticker in a rest area men’s room.

It appears a number of stickers have been torn off.

Once at Felicity and Peter’s house I worked on a number of mundane but important projects. These included:

** Winterizing / sealing the basement door. **Adding pull-chain lighting to the basement light fixtures. **Cutting and sanding pegs for a coat rack, then installing it. **Adding a downspout to the gutter system. (More on that in a bit.) **Trimming around a dead tree so the branches did not hit the power lines. **Helping Felicity assemble a compost frame. **Assembled a firewood rack. **Tightened the clotheslines. **Cut and installed insulation panels for the basement windows, complete with handles to ease installation and removal. **Even mowed a little bit of lawn using a reel mower.

The biggest project was the installation of an additional downspout in the front gutter. The original installation was poorly done, with the gutters leaking at several joints and water pooling up in one corner of the gutters. (The result of wrong angles, not draining correctly.) I installed a new downspout in the corner that was leaking the worst and trying to seal the other joints.

The downspout drains into a 4″ diameter black pipe which is then routed under the porch and empties out behind the house on a downslope. I had to buy a 100-foot roll of drain pipe as it did not come in any shorter lenghts. Felicity and Peter will use the drain to water the garden next summer, so the extra pipe may not go unused. Supplies for projects were purchased locally, including the sheet of insulation for the basement windows; hauling stuff is the reason I drove the truck on this trip instead of taking the more economical Kia.

The final project of the trip was the trimming around a dead tree near the road. The center of the tree had died but many shoots had sprouted from the base and were threatening to hit nearby power lines. I had intended to take down the entire tree, but it was getting late in the day and we had planned to go out for dinner that night, so I settled for removed the shoots and stacking them nearby.

All in all, it was a busy time in New York and I think I accomplished most of the items on my list. The projects will, I hope, make Felicity’s home a bit more energy efficient and more convenient to live in during the upcoming winter. Pam, in particular, has reservations as to how Felicity and Peter will negotiate the hardships winter in a vintage house will throw at them.

Back in Elma, one of my first tasks was to do a lawn clean-up, as we are in the peak of leaf season. Pam is beginning to cut back the hostas and other plants; the first hard frost has pretty much ended the local growing season. Pam is also trying to refresh the paint on the east side porch steps, a project she waited for cooler weather to attempt — but then it started raining and raining and raining…

There are a few routine projects left to be completed this fall, such as preparing the bird feeder area, covering the A/C compressor, and tarping some NW areas of the fence line to create winter wind buffers. We still don’t know on what timeline the dead oak will be removed by the tree service. If the company still plans to do it this year, the dog enclosure will require relocation.

A random side note for what it is worth. We were having on-going buffering issues with our streaming service. Very irritating! Digging into the settings on the router, I found the DNS settings, primary and secondary, were pointing to servers out of New York. Since I bought the router used through eBay, this may have been the original and default setting. I changed to DNS servers in Iowa and the buffering issue has disappeard. (We use Mediacom, and both sets of numbers are used by them.) This may be something to check if you happen to buy used equipment or are having similar issues.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

Only two months until Christmas Day — I continue working on the holiday cards. Toby turned 39 — yikes. (Realizing that makes us somewhat ancient.) Grayce is almost a year old — still waiting for her potty training to be reliable.

Rock on.

Today’s Humor: