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TOTALLY RANDOM POST II

moose eater

Well-known member
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moose eater

Well-known member
Middle of the night, got a second wind to try and catch up with packing. Got out 4 racks of St. Louis style pork ribs to thaw, intending to smoke them after a dry-rub brine in the next day or so.

That's when I began charging (or attempting to charge) the batteries for my ice fishing sonar/fish finder; 2 of them are maxxed out at 3 volts output. Ooops!! 'Dead soldiers'.

So as I was trying to find another $50 to $100 in the budget for yet another trip-related expense, I took a closer look at the shelves near my ice fishing gear in the basement, and... lo and behold.. I had a brand new, unused, 12-volt, 10 amp-hour LITHIUM battery with a lithium battery charger in its box!!

Holy shit!! Not only do I not remember buying this thing, but I have no idea how long it's sat there.

Put a cheapo volt meter on it, and it glowed green at a 13-volts output!!

I may have a religious experience this morning!!

I honestly don't have a clue who bought this (me?), when (might've been last year?), etc. and it had to have been sitting there this last year when I went on my last trip out to the remote lakes, unless someone snuck in and placed it there (highly unlikely that the ice fishing elves were out and about at my home this year).

And if it were there last year, then why didn't I take it with me??!! (In my best Arlo Guthrie voice)

A happy mystery, I guess... I'll take it... Literallly. In the sled, with the gear, to the lakes... I'll take it...

Total coolness.
 

tobedetermined

Well-known member
Premium user
ICMag Donor
Packing for camping . . .

I have never camped as remote as you, moose. After a 2 night taste of Kruger NP in South Africa during an SA/Namibia trip, we were hooked and had to go back – which we did 2 more times. I say camping, but we were actually renting small bungalows with electricity and safe water, a bathroom, a reasonably stocked kitchen, a bedroom or two and a barbeque for a wood braai. And frigging maid service! So it was civilized camping. The bigger camps have restaurants and a small store for essentials but we preferred the much smaller remote bushveld camps that didn’t have these luxuries. All camps have a secure electric fence and the gate was shut from 6 to 6 - with no exceptions except for park-run drives with an armed ranger. In Kruger, the people are in the cage – which is as it should be. And . . . needless to say . . . no guns are allowed . . . so you only shoot with a camera.

Our last trip was our most organized. We took sharp knives, steak knives, spices, a cutting board, a tablecloth, folding cooler bags etc etc to augment the slim supplies in the bungalow – packing it all for 35+ hours of air travel with 3 flights. We started our last trip with a one-nighter at a remote resort near Pigg’s Peak, then 2 nights at the private Mkhaya rhino reserve – both in eSwatini (Swaziland). After that, it was 2 weeks of Kruger, staying in 6 different camps all over the park – with most of our time in bushvelds. I placed a pick-up frozen meat order with the manager of a Spar supermarket in Komatipoort for the start near the Crocodile Bridge Gate and another at a Spar in Phalaborwa at about the halfway point. The butchers in SA cut their meat quite differently than NA butchers and high-end meat cuts are much rarer, so it was a challenge to get what I wanted. You can get find springbok steaks in the frozen food section but you won’t find beef filet or a rib steak – just round. Shopping in a supermarket in a different country is always fun, with strange products, unfamiliar brand names, and all in a different currency - but at least they spoke English and they had English labeling. Everybody everywhere was really friendly and helpful to us, taking pity on the confused ‘rich’ tourists.
 

moose eater

Well-known member
Snowmobile repairs immediately preceding a trip to remote locations may just put me in the poor house, and on a diet of benzodiazapines.

Noted moisture on the inside of the tachometer for a machine for which that part is obsolete. My mechanic son and others apparently failed to consider the likely correlation between this sealed unit having moisture in it, and the engine trouble codes that came several years ago, as well as more recently.

Got the obsolete part coming from a vintage parts source, and the dealer here discounted it for me a fair bit to compensate for the 2nd day air freight that's now required to get it here in time.

Thankfully I have sufficient Ativan/Lorazepam on hand for this nonsense.

Took a cyclobenzeprine/Flexeril for the back and neck troubles last night for the first time in a LONG time, maybe close to a year or so, or more even, and the back was MUICH better when I woke up today.. but a slow start due to the moderate hangover from that and the several puffs of Strawberry Fields I smoked before bedtime late last night.. err.. early this morning...

Dr. Feelgood strikes again...
 

armedoldhippy

Well-known member
Veteran
in yet another astounding case of "oh fuck! shut up and sit down!" legislative ignorance here in east Tennessee, a local pol (Bud Hulsey) wants to create a "legal way to nullify federal laws, regulations, and executive orders" that the state legislature (he and his crank buddies) thinks are unconstitutional. this has been tried before, and the state ALWAYS loses. a state cannot declare a law unconstitutional, that is a job for the judiciary branch, including the Supreme Court. the local politicians can whisper to the local LEO that it is not a priority for enforcement, but they cannot nullify the law. gun sanctuary laws have universally failed along those lines when it came crunch time. sorry, Bud. the US Constitution states clearly that "Federal law is the supreme law of the land."
 

tobedetermined

Well-known member
Premium user
ICMag Donor
Imagine my surprise when we started shopping for venetian-style blinds to replace the ones that we tossed at the start of our current freshen-up reno. To protect the children, as of last year, blinds in Canada can no longer have a lift mechanism. No lift? WTF? They can tilt but the lift cord is gone. The very knowledgeable associate at Home Despot was happy to demo them using a small demo shade and to show us how truly stupid they are. To open the window behind the blind, you have to wrestle the blind out of the way now. How convenient. A definite case of 1 step forward and 2 back . . .
 

Ca++

Well-known member
Imagine my surprise when we started shopping for venetian-style blinds to replace the ones that we tossed at the start of our current freshen-up reno. To protect the children, as of last year, blinds in Canada can no longer have a lift mechanism. No lift? WTF? They can tilt but the lift cord is gone. The very knowledgeable associate at Home Despot was happy to demo them using a small demo shade and to show us how truly stupid they are. To open the window behind the blind, you have to wrestle the blind out of the way now. How convenient. A definite case of 1 step forward and 2 back . . .
If the hoop was a strangulation risk, some scissors would of fixed that.

What's next. Bathroom pull cords?
 

Three Berries

Active member
in yet another astounding case of "oh fuck! shut up and sit down!" legislative ignorance here in east Tennessee, a local pol (Bud Hulsey) wants to create a "legal way to nullify federal laws, regulations, and executive orders" that the state legislature (he and his crank buddies) thinks are unconstitutional. this has been tried before, and the state ALWAYS loses. a state cannot declare a law unconstitutional, that is a job for the judiciary branch, including the Supreme Court. the local politicians can whisper to the local LEO that it is not a priority for enforcement, but they cannot nullify the law. gun sanctuary laws have universally failed along those lines when it came crunch time. sorry, Bud. the US Constitution states clearly that "Federal law is the supreme law of the land."
Like abortion? LOL
 
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