Category: Observation

Anatomy of a Pumpkin Carving – A Tutorial

Happy Halloween Everybody!! Yeah, I know it’s a little late for that, but this post was suppose to be done last weekend. I was awaiting a response to an email that has not come yet and decided waiting any longer would be wasting the moment. Those that know me, are aware of my passion for this particular holiday. Of all the big ones, this has to be my favorite. The reasons for this are not entirely clear to me except there are many fond memories of reading horror book after horror book while in my early school years and always had fun carving up the scariest pumpkins my brother Ron and I could dream up. By the way, the former did result in a note of concern to my parents from my 7th grade teacher. Apparently reading Amityville and The Shining is not normal for that age. Never mind those books were huge and I was spending my time reading instead of boob tubing it – oh, and not to mention I haven’t had any urges to ax murder any members of my family – must be all those right from wrong discussions my parents were instilling me at the same time. To this day, the house gets decorated with all kinds of Halloween related items and as mentioned on a previous blog we have an annual Halloween Party.  Every year I also try to add a new pumpkin carving to the collection.  Try is an accurate word since it often requires more time commitment than is available.  The carving concepts have remained over the years, but the implementation has changed significantly since the days Ron and I laid out the newspapers, found the sharpest knives in the rack and splattered pumpkin guts all over the place.  These days, it is all about the foam and Dremel.  The hardest part about spending all the time carving real pumpkins is always watching the shrivel process destroy all your hard work.  Technology has come to the aid of us pumpkin aficionados.  Some genius has developed the fake pumpkin created out of an orange coated thin foam shell.  This shell even mimics the two toned orange found in real pumpkins providing for the same half cut shavings we have cherished from our real pumpkin experiences.  Adding the fact it can be carved with power tools, we are truly living in a golden age.

This brings me to the topic of this post.  This year I took the time to add another carving to my collection and in addition decided to give a little something back to all the up and coming carvers out there looking to branch out from the store bought stock patterns.  For the last 6 or so years I’ve been perfecting my abilities to create unique patterns and scene combinations.  The following is a mini tutorial on how to create that special pumpkin to impress all your friends.  But first off, a quick notice regarding a copyright issue.  Although drawing is a pastime of mine, my skills have a long way to go before being able to capture exactly what images are floating around in my conscious.   When it comes to the horror genre I tend to defer to the absolute stunning talents of others.  As a result, I tend to lurk on Google Images searching on horror related keywords looking for a image that would translate well to a pumpkin.  None of my creations are for sale nor do I market any of the resultant patterns so there is zero monetary gain on my part in this effort.  With that said, I still want to honor any copyrights and bring appreciation to the talents of others.  This year, I stumbled on an image from an illustrator in the UK name Paul Mudie.  It took me awhile to find the owner of the image I based my pattern on, but through the use of Google located his website.  I also sent him an email detailing my use of the image as a base for the carving and even sent him the actual finished pattern as a small token of appreciation.  He has yet to respond (thus the delay in this post), but want to point out that the original image rights remain with Paul Mudie.  Any use of his original image must be approved by him and any monetary use of the images in this particular post must be approved by both Paul and myself.  Thank you for your understanding in this situation.

With that said, you can visit Paul’s site at: http://www.paulmudie.com/index.htm and specifically, the base image can be seen here: http://www.paulmudie.com/werewolf.htm. Enough of the words, let’s get to the carving!.  So this is the subject of today’s tutorial.

To see the details on the tutorial, just hit the jump!

Continue reading Anatomy of a Pumpkin Carving – A Tutorial

Frightened by Allegiant – Oh, and Happy Halloween

It’s October 31st, do you know what day it is?  That’s right, the last day for me to get my blog quota in for the month.  Thankfully I had a long month or just might have missed it.  As a strange coincidence, there happens to be another event going on today so in that spirit Happy Halloween everyone.  I have to make this post short today due to a big decision that is pending regarding whether I want to take the effort to carve a new pumpkin this year, but first things first.

The topic today is actually a result of a recent trip to our local Peoria Airport to purchase some tickets to escape to our favorite warm, bright, gaudy and decadent place.  Yep, we’re heading back to Vegas for our fall trip.  To be more accurate, we are heading back to Vegas and then heading up to Zion National Park from there for a few days.  If there is one part of this that annoys me more than anything is the nickel and diming we have to through these days to actually get flight tickets.  First off, Allegiant (our local direct flight to Vegas carrier) charges you an additional 30 dollar per person to book online.  Can you believe that?  When did ordering stuff on the Internet become more pricey to a company than brick and mortar operations.  You would think the reduction in ticket order staff and the improved accuracy delivered by automated processing would drive incentives to use online options as opposed to bottling up their ticket counters.  We are 15 or so minutes from the airport so last Thursday we trekked out there to get our tickets.  Per their website, they do ticket sales for one hour after the flight leaves.  They had a flight going out at 7:55 so we got there ahead of that.  There were people checking in so we hung out to give them a chance to clear.  While sitting there, Linda noticed the flight had been delayed until 10pm.  Clearly waiting around  that long was not worth the $60 of savings, but we decided to see what they would do once everyone was checked through.  About 10  minutes later, the line was cleared (this included the now common scene “your carry on is too large and needs to be checked through for a one way $35 charge”).  We walked up to the counter and asked if we could purchase tickets.  The ticket lady mentioned they usually only sell tickets after the boarding, but quickly followed up that the plane was delayed anyway so agreed to process our order.  Finally, service with the customer or may be viewing it as a fish nibbling on the hook.

Now the price jab cycle started.  I don’t recall how the clerk initiated the conversation on checked luggage, but she expected us to say we didn’t need that charge.  Linda replied we don’t have a choice which was quickly countered by “you can take carry ons”.  This will not work because our carry on items will need to cover all of the photography equipment for the national park shoots.  Chalk up another $50 each round trip.  Note, this is $20 each cheaper than if you pay to check baggage the day of.  Then there are the seat assignment charges if you want to pick your spots.  For that pleasure it is 12 or so dollars per seat per way and if you want a good seat (read as exit row) you have to pay a couple dollars more.  About this time I’m feeling like a pin cushion.  We ended up having to go with standard reservations on the way out in order to get the 2 seat side, but were able to get the exits coming back.  The clerk completed the transaction and printed out the papers for us to sign.  The ever diligent Linda noticed our seat assignments didn’t come out on the papers.  Turns out the clerk screwed that up so we went back through that process.  This time we scored.  The software glitched (let’s hope it isn’t the same system controlling the flight controls) and it didn’t charge us for one of the expensive seat reservations on the way back.  It still showed we had reserved it and it printed out on the sheets so we’ll see how this turns out on travel day.  At that point I start scanning down the list of charges, curious as to the damage that had been inflicted.  It is at that moment my mouth dropped open.  One of the charges was for 9/11 Security.  I immediately asked Linda what that was for.  She didn’t know and really wasn’t eager to start an interrogation of the clerk – especially at an airport.  Probably a little too loud I asked why I was getting charged, “I didn’t do anything bad to cause 9/11”  At that point I think my loving wife shooed me out of the terminal.  This charge bugged the crap out of me aaaaalllll the way home.  I still have not discovered the purpose for this $10 charge.  As far as I can tell, it should be charged to TSA for their complete failure in keeping my travel experience safe and non-eventful.  In fact, due to their incompetence, they should be paying me $10 for completely ruining air-travel for the masses.  These days I feel like I’m putting people out for having the audacity to fly to my destinations.  My friend Skidmarks recently sent me a few articles on how I should expect a firm hand (literally) if I request a manual scan instead of going through the full body x-ray porn scanner.  At this point, if I have to pay $10 of my own money to protect myself while traveling… they can earn the money by having to staff someone for a pat down.  I guess the good part of all of this is for 8 hours of inconvenience I get to be in Vegas!

Happy Ghouling everyone – stay safe and be sure to give rocks to anyone with the nerve to dress up like a clown.  (oh, and this makes the 6th for the month – yeah!)

Ramming It

The good news is I’ve calmed down a bit.  The bad news is I’m still torqued (or maybe the word is shocked) over a recent service experience with my Ram 1500.  Let’s step back a tad shall we?  A couple of weeks ago, my garage was in disarray due to the all the projects that were in flight at the time.  This resulted in the need to keep the truck outside and for some reason it was not driven for a couple of days.  When it came time to move it into the garage, I noticed there was a grease spot left under the right (passenger side) of the engine.  An audible groan quickly made its way out.  A closer inspection identified it was a greasy substance.  Based on a quick inspection under the truck, it looked like it was coming from the passenger side shock.  It was time for an oil change anyway, so scheduled an appointment at a local Dodge dealer.  For those loyal followers out there, this particular Dodge is owned by the same person who owns the BMW dealership – Dun Dun Duuuuun.  The only other option was to take it to a dealership 50-60 minutes away.

I had to drop it off the day before due to other commitments.  While checking in, the service rep starts by writing some numbers down (year, VIN, etc.) and then proceeds to walk all around the car.  Back in the office, he takes his piece of paper and starts entering the data into the computer.  The guy still hasn’t said anything to me so I decide to break the silence and request that someone call me with an estimate before addressing the leak.  He acknowledges that and continues typing.  My patience level was starting to strain.  Giving my best Bender (BClub) effort, I tried to hold back, but eventually blurted out “Do you have my cell number?”  I received the following response “I’ll get it, I’m not there yet”  I almost lost it and told the dude to hurry the f* up I have better things to do than stand hear and listen to you finger peck, but the inner voice won out (and probably for the best).  Eventually he found all those tricky letters on the keyboard, entered my contact numbers and printed out some papers for me to sign.  But first, he circles the license plate on a vehicle diagram in a section of the papers and then gives me a pen to sign.  Concerned, I interrogated him as to the reason behind that marking.  “Oh, there were holes there and we don’t want you thinking we were shooting at your truck”  WHAT?  there are no holes in my truck – there are two cut outs in the plate holder area, but those were factor installed.  Bored of the whole experience I waved it off, signed the sheet and left.

Okay, so now it is the next day around 12:30pm.  The cell phone rings and sure enough, it is the finger pecker.  The diagnosis was my right front strut was leaking.  I asked him how much to fix and I hear the price of $120.  He followed up with the mechanic recommends replacing both at the same time to keep the balance right.   I was also in luck because they had the parts in stock.  I then asked him if the price he quoted me was for each or both.  Again I think I heard both but figured he meant both parts and labor for one was $120 (and not both strut replacements were a total of $120).  Lastly I verified that it was actually struts they were changing because it sure looked like shocks to me.  Struts it was and I gave the agreement to proceed.  A decision I’ve been kicking myself for ever since.

Around 4:30 we showed up at the dealership to retrieve the truck.  It was not ready so I took a seat in the waiting room for a very bearable 10 or so minutes.  The same service rep comes up and tells me it is all done, the oil, tire rotation and the two struts replaces.  Cha-ching went the inner voice.  He handed it to the clerk, thanked me and walked away (oddly somewhat faster than expected).  Out came the Discover card and started to hand it to the lady when all of a sudden the TOTAL line enters my view.  Any guesses what that little box had in it?  anyone?  Obviously I do not know what you said, but with confidence I’ll say you are WAAAAAY to low.  Try this on for size over $977.  That’s right folks, nearly a grand to get my truck back – oh, key piece of information – get my truck back that had only 46K miles on it.  Ever have a rage moment?  I politely asked the clerk if I could take the papers back to the service rep and hurried off.  I asked him if the price is right because I heard him say it was going to be $120 on the phone.  He denies he says that and claims he told me was $200 each for labor and over $200 each for the parts.   I’ve tried and tried to put those numbers together and see if any of it sounds like $120 with absolutely no luck.  With no evidence to back my position, the only option was to pay it and shop around to see if they pulled one over on me or not.  To their credit, the truck did ride better… not a “grand” better, but better.

I did end up calling the other Dodge dealer.  They did confirm there were struts on the front of that particular vehicle but his final quote came to $600 range.  Guessing their labor was cheaper so next issue that comes along I’ll take it to them or Midas.  I should probably clarify that a tad – if I keep this truck long enough to have another issue I’ll make the extra effort to drive it out to them.  I think my days with Dodge have come to their end.  Speaking of end, I did feel obligated to change their logo a tad.

Let the Ghoul Show You the Way

Let’s just keep the Halloween theme going.  The previous post was driven by our annual Halloween Cookout Party.  While I was gathering up the materials for the fire pit patio, I decided to go ahead and pick up some extra items in order to attempt a new decoration  idea that I had been kicking the tires on for some time.  Each year, we try to add one new decoration to the collection.  Typically these are the latest air blown offerings, but this year we went in a different direction.  Living out in the country, it can be difficult to actually navigate to the house.  This is even more difficult at dark since there is little ambient light in the area.  This makes for a great stargazing, but not so great on the driving.  Oh, and to top it off, the GPS directs everyone to my neighbor’s driveway which is a down the road a bit.  What started as a internal debate on how to ease the difficulty for our guests resulted in this new decoration:

This particular shot was taken before darkness fell making it look a tad less scarier than it did once the guests started arriving.  Not only did this fit the overall theme of the party, but due to the clever hand placement, it also provided a functional role since it was placed at the road as an indicator for drivers to turn left into the correct driveway.  I wanted it to last from year to year, be able to withstand various weather conditions and (most of all) be relatively easy to disassemble and store away.  I don’t know about you, but those types of conditions almost always lead me to PVC.  In the sharing spirit, hit the jump to see how it was built.

Continue reading Let the Ghoul Show You the Way

Operation: Party on the Patio [Block]

I’m slacking off this month for sure.  I need to get this kicked into gear soon or I’ll be cutting my quota close for the month.  The good news is the smug site is now uploaded with material for this post and a couple more while I was at it.  From my previous post, there was a foreshadowing of upcoming additions on new “operations” that were underway around the lot.  Well, one of those particular tasks was a transformation of this particular part of the lot:

This is a shot of an area of my backyard that happened to be where the builders shoved all the brush and trees during the clearing for the house building phase (about 4 years ago).  A lot of work went into getting it looking in this shape since all the trees were simply piled up with a dozer and excavator.  It took about 3 months to systematically cut free the tree logs (on the right) and deal with the leftover brush it came from on the left.  It reminded me of the old pickup-sticks game having to work my way through the mashed and twisted trees one exposed foot to the next with a chainsaw, loppers and a shovel.  One of the reasons for all this work was the desire to put in a bonfire area.  We put on an annual Halloween cookout party and enjoy starting a fire every once in awhile to roast some hot dogs and have some tasty s’mores (food of the gods by the way).  For the first few years, I simply dug a fairly big hole in the ground and lined it with some of the large logs saved from the clearing pile.  This worked great as long at the weather cooperated (fortunately, the grass finally came in), but the uneven ground wasn’t the ideal situation for chairs and standing around.

This brings us two about one month ago and more accurately, a Friday exactly 9 days before this year’s Halloween party.  The night before my inner voice convinced me to do something to improve this particular area – knowing full well this voice always gets me into trouble by convincing me to take on tasks that have impossible time frames to deliver on.  “Build it and they will come, build it and they will come” kept bouncing around in my head until I finally caved and decided to build a quick patio around the fire pit.  How hard can it be, go to store, get large patio blocks, throw them into place and be done – one day tops!  There is another thing my inner voice always does to me … LIE!  Except for that time when it tried to convinced me to NOT do something on my skateboard (for the record a skateboard given to me by my brother) because I would likely smack headfirst into a concrete stoop… at that particular time it was actually telling the truth ..but alas, I ended up ignoring it and chalked up another visit to the emergency room.  But I digress.    I had already invested in a bunch of 16×16 concrete patio block to help shore up the ground under the bridge so decided to go ahead and just get more of that.  I had a couple left over from that effort and figured if something went wrong I could use one of those.  So Friday after work I cleaned up the area where I wanted the patio to go and made sure the area was mowed and trimmed up.  I also tried to set the dimensions to get and estimate of the block count.   The next morning bright and early I headed off to Menards in the Ram1500.  The blocks were on sale but still came out to around $2.34 each.  I went out and checked the yard to make sure they had enough and then went inside and placed an order for 30 16x16x3 concrete blocks.  At the yard gate, I asked the attendant if he could get someone to lift the block palette up for easier loading..  A clerk eventually came, got the forklift and raised it up to the tailgate where we proceeded to load them into the truck.  While loading them it became apparent each block was running from 30-40 pounds each.  It was then stark reality set in remembering how far the fire pit was from the driveway.  The dude was not willing to come home with me to help on the unloading phase so that left me hauling the blocks out of the bed, putting them on a cart behind the ATV  (max 8 per load), driving out to the pit and unloading them.  I wanted to see how this was going to look so went ahead and placed them down in a loose approximation of where they would go.  As soon as they were all dropped into place, I repeated the entire process with a load of 40 more concrete blocks.

Hit the jump to see when things started going off-course and pictures of the finished product

Continue reading Operation: Party on the Patio [Block]

It’s So Big

It’s been awhile since new words made their way to the ol’ blog.  The two main reasons are due to being swamped with some new projects around the homestead (foreshadowing upcoming “operation” posts) and quite frankly there has not been a lot of interesting observations as of late.  I am not sure if that is because people are becoming boring, people are becoming more “normal” or my observation skills are on the fritz.  The jury is still out, but the current thinking is putting the blame on me.  The good news is the post processing work has been done on about 40 pictures which are now awaiting upload to our photography site.

But, it’s 10/10/10 (or the answer to the universe day – #42 for all you fellow geeks out there) and I didn’t want to miss a post on this special day.  One potential content option was a recent experience with a mole in my backyard.  Once again, they have breached the defenses and were wreaking havoc.  That is in the past tense due to a bizarre scene I stumbled upon.  Some small holes showed up one morning in and around a pretty large tunnel system one of those demon spawn had decided to taunt me with.  From the evidence, it looked like some animal with paws had engaged in a digging activity resulting in the holes ranging from 2 to 3 inches in diameter.  In all there were about 5 holes at various locations.  Following the line of holes, I eventually came to a dead mole laying on top of the ground.  It was very dead, but there was no obvious blood or physical trauma.  On closer inspection, there looked like tiny indentations in the fur around the head.  What animal has come to my aid?  Any opinions would be greatly appreciated… I might have to get a few to keep around the house!  The only guess at the moment is it was a cat.  One showed up the night of our Halloween Party and proceeded to settle in with the guests for the rest of the night.  This might have been a present for us much like the dead mice a neighbor’s cat (Arnold the female cat) used to leave on my doorstep back in my apartment days.  I had a bunch of stuff to do that day so didn’t bother heading back to get the camera.  I am sure you are disappointed not being able to see another dead mole on this blog!  Anyway, that mole had met its match.

However, the original intent of this blog was to comment on an experience a friend of mine had at a local Chinese restaurant.  Pakage is in his 40’s (think a year behind me) and definitely gives Techno-Bob a run for his money.  He is always showing up with the coolest technologies including the latest gaming units, mp3/video players, the geekiest toys off of ThinkGeek and nifty gadgets like network hotspots.    One day he was at the register of the restaurant and happened to put his Zen down on the counter.  This resulted in the following response from the Asian lady behind the counter, “It’s So HUGE”.  Now, in other circumstances this might actually be considered a flattering compliment (think about it..).  But in this particular situation, it had the exact opposite effect.  Essentially the woman was making fun of his “large electronics” in relationship to today’s sleek new gadgets.  I liken it to the transition days when the cool people had the smaller form cell phones while the not-so-cool people were still lugging around 5 pound bricks with antennas on their belts.  What made this so funny to me is Pakage is the exact opposite of her first impression.  He had been profiled based on an MP3/video player he was currently using while his sleek and techno-sexy-spectacular iTouch was getting fixed at the factory for about the FOURTH time.  To his credit, he did try to explain this to the lady, but I’m guessing he had already been labeled as techno-illiterate.  I forgot to ask him if he was going to put a bright red ‘A’ on all his shirts now to honor the “Analog” era.

Anyway, thanks to Pakage for letting me in on his experience… oh, and hand model I am NOT.

I Hope It is Worth It

First off, Happy Birthday Ron!

Okay, we’re down to the final hour with all the marbles on the line.  Let’s do a quick check 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, …. 5…. oh crap, I’m down a post.  What to do, what to do.  Actually, there are no worries, I have been loading up my SmugMug site with a ton of pictures.  One of my recent favorites is a set of macro shots I took on our porch a few months ago.  I was was walking on the porch one sunny day when one of the more interesting insects decided to take a stroll on my siding.

Probably out of the insects I come upon around here, the praying mantis is the one that fascinates me the most (the stick bug comes in a close second).  From a photographer’s perspective, they have a nice vibrant color and a ton of cool features that pop out nicely under the macro lens.  They have a number of dynamic features ranging from the hook like feet, highly articulated legs and fine hairs running along the edges.  The best part of working with these specimens is that they are fairly docile and do not tend to panic at the presence of a camera glass shoved close to their face.  Speaking of which, this one was practically posing for the glass.

In case you are wondering, in this particular shot he is gnawing on his own foot.  Check out the creepy pupils.  They can track just about anywhere around the eye bulb and basically remained on me the entire time, regardless of what position or angle the camera was in.  Here is another on of the face with the pupils transitioned up to the top of the head.  Based on nature’s law, typically, animals with such range of vision are considered the prey where the more forward fixed animals fall in the predator range.  By that rule, one would think the mantis was somewhat docile, but the male mantis probably has a different opinion of that seeing as how the the female rips the cranium off of him after mating.

hit the jump for more shots!

Continue reading I Hope It is Worth It

An Interesting Visitor

A week or so ago, Linda called me regarding a creature that was staring into our great room patio doors.  The odd thing is she was unable to tell me exactly what it was other than it was big, furry and the dogs were quite upset about it violating their space.  Short of a large rat, I still was not sure what it could be. One idea came to mind – “did it look like an otter and have a long skinny tale?”, I asked.  That resulted in a negative response which ruled out my arch nemesis the muskrat.  Luckily, she managed to take some  pictures.

It definitely was not a muskrat.  Turns out it was a groundhog.  Oddly enough, this is probably the first groundhog we have seen on our property since we acquired it.  We have had our share of squirrels, snakes, ground squirrels (or chipmunks), plenty of deer and that damn muskrat, but not one of these oversized rodents.

Apparently they are pretty nimble seeing as how it managed to balance itself on a single 4 inch board on our deck.  By this time the boys were in full bark so it was probably figuring out what its escape plan was.  Guessing it was more afraid of the large human yelling at it and taking pictures through the glass doors.

Finally a shot that showed its bushy tail confirming that it wasn’t the devil spawn muskrat (yes, I harbor deep hatred).  Not only is it nimble, it apparently does not have any bones in that fur.  That railing is only about 5 inches off the deck and it managed to squeeze its whole body under it.  To be honest, it looks kind of cute with its perky ears and plush fur.  Cute or not, it still needs to find another place to roam – their holes tend to be fairly large and destructive.  We had one living under a shed at our old house and it managed to dig a huge ditch all the way around the skids it sat on.  I had to put up a screen all the way around the shed to keep it out.

Hit the jump for a few more shots

Continue reading An Interesting Visitor

Crap, Go Ahead and Pass that Back

Hey, does everyone remember my latest accomplishment on the photography front?  You know, the one where I am no longer bogged down by gopher duties.  Why don’t we let that accomplish settle in for a little bit… tick tick tick.  Oh hell, let’s relish it for a few more moments.. tick tick tick.  No that is a wonderful feeling and looking forward to basking in that glow for 5 long, long SECONDS.  My lovely wife was unable to let me have  a small and infrequent moment all to myself and felt compelled to let the air out of my ego with comments on my previous umbrella post.  Truth is, I was late getting to that post and in the meantime we had submitted a number of entries in the Knox County Fair Photography Contest.  Since our last entries in the fair, she also pulled a miracle shot out of her a.. I mean leveraged all her photography “skilz” to produce a pretty impressive picture.  As a result, we were once again head to head in competition with me holding on to bragging rights based on my strong showing (yea, I’m living it up as much as I can) at the Peoria County Fair.  We eventually made our way out to the fair to see how our efforts compared to the local offerings.  Any guesses on what the results were?

Well, the good news is the photo that won an Honorary Mention at the Peoria County Fair took a first place!  Of course, I also have to openly admit that Linda’s new photo also took a first place in her category.  Now for the kicker.  Her shot not only took a first place, it took Best in Show (as in top photo from all the entries) meaning technically she slightly out did me.  In case you are making your own quality judgments, keep in mind that on the right side of her sunflower picture at about the horizon is an approaching bee perfectly stilled with a Macro lens on full aperture.  Did she compose that shot and purposely plan to have that particular effect when she took the snap?  Was it planned with great scrutiny as to required timing and composition elements?  All elements, of course, with the outstanding photograph on the right.  Rather than drag this discussion out any longer than it already has between us, I’ll just man up and simply congratulate her on this achievement.  Oh, you might also like to know how the rest of our entries did.

In somewhat of a pleasant shocker, we made quite a ribbon haul.  I took a first with the awesome Tree picture and two thirds with my Twin Eagle picture and the B/W Raven.  Linda took a first with the Sunflower and Bridge (middle) shots along with seconds for her Waterfall image, the Watered Leaves and the B/W Rapids shot in the upper right.  The pink ribbon keeps staring back at me for the overall Best in Show.  Linda has been continually jabbing me with that accomplishment, which I could probably get over if she was not doing the poking with the end of her umbrella.  So, my triumph was short lived, but I have a bunch of new shots taken last Saturday along the Illinois River.  Shots that were planned, composed, required zoom  “skilz” and ISO wrestling… not that I am pointing that out for any reason.

Now to go find where the next Photo Contest is going to be at – and take note, this is probably the first time in a looooong time I finished my monthly quota so early.

Bemmer Bummer

Okay, so what are the first things that come to mind when you hear the name BMW?  Maybe one of those words is “Fast”.  How about “Expensive Import”?  Maybe some derogatory words like “Elitist” or “Smug”.  By any chance does the word “Quality” come to mind?  As it turns out, my wife (who apparently likes to add untrue comments to some of my posts) owns a 1 series (135) black convertible BMW.  I can definitely attest to the fact they have some pep.  The twin turbos on this particular vehicle give it some nice snap at the low and high end helped by the relatively light weight of the vehicle.  There is a pool on when she will get her first ticket in it – too many of her memories coming back growing up on the dirt track circuit.  For those familiar to the local tracks, legend Bolander used to drive their race car at the Peoria Speedway when they came down from the Quad Cities.  As far as “Expensive Import” goes, we have already proved that with a $650 windshield replacement thanks to a well (more like poorly) timed rock thrown from a truck.  “Elitist”  and” Smug”, hmmm, not sure I really want to touch that being that she is my wife and all.  She grew a Chrysler girl thanks to her Father and Brother both being service managers at local Chrysler dealers.  I had to actually force her to drive on the BMW lot and she’d probably be just as happy with another Jeep Wrangler (if they hadn’t messed with it and put a yuppie second set of doors on it ruining the whole Jeep lifestyle).  She also tends to make fun of Pooorshay owners, but then again, don’t we all?

That leaves us with one other word, that being “Quality”.  If this came to mind with the name BMW, I’d like to challenge this a bit.  If you recall, we ended up having a number of issues with our previous Durango.  (We actually had similar issues with our Jeep Cherokee).  Eventually we traded this headache in for an import on the belief that they could produce a better vehicle.  I don’t think I need to go into the whole Toyota accelerator issue, but knock on wood, our SUV has had zero problems since we bought it beyond that recall notice which I doubt we really needed.  Having stepped up to German engineering with the 135, we figured our quality issues were behind us.  One thing to note is this vehicle is Linda’s fun car and therefore gets very little use unless the weather is perfect (living in IL, this means it sits a lot especially in the winter and late fall months).  A month or so ago, Linda got in to drive it and noticed the Check Engine Light was glowing.  Somewhat stunned, she called the dealer and they told her it probably was not a big issue and just bring it in when should could.  Not wanting to wait too long, we dropped it off a few days later.  What was the prognosis for her little baby?  We were informed that it was a loose gas cap which was causing a loss of pressure in the system.  Ugh, our fault, slightly embarrassed we drove back and got the vehicle.  Sure enough, the car ran fine for a few days but then that evil engine light came on again.  Now I know we had learned our lesson, so it was doubtful (at least in our opinion) that it was the cap again.  Off to the dealer AGAIN to have it looked at.  The prognosis this time?  There was a bad fuel pump which is located somewhere in the fuel tank.  We had been vindicated, but it still left us a little concerned since we invested a lot of money with the return of not having to worry about breakdowns.  After a two days, (overnighted parts), we picked up the vehicle and assumed the situation was finally resolved.  Honestly, I doubt if that was the case it would have been worth taking the time to write about it.  A few days later I decided to drive the 135 in order to alleviate some hassles with parking in a local parking garage in order to attend an SAP class.  Sure enough, the check engine light stayed on after doing the self diagnostics.  I think my words at the time could be understood by a number of different languages including German.  For the third time, our quality machine was puking up an engine light.  After some profuse apologizing by their service representative, we drove the vehicle back in.  As before, they did provide a loaner vehicle which turned out to be a 328.  I don’t want to offend anyone that might have these particular vehicles, but I recommend not driving a 135 unless you plan to trade off that wuss of an engine.  I think it only has a 2.3L or so engine in it and with being accustomed to a  low end turbo (135 has a twin turbo in it), this car felt like it had to wind up to go anywhere.  You would think they would give us a better vehicle in hopes of us wanting to trade up.  All it ended up doing is making sure I tell as many people as I can to avoid that particular car.  The assumption is they would call sometime during that day to let us know what the problem was.  By 4:00pm Linda decided to give them a call.  Turns out they were unable to locate the problem and the vehicle was “currently on the service floor in pieces”  How is that for a comforting statement?  The next day came and again no word until we called later in the afternoon.  Still nothing to report on the cause and therefore not available for us to pick up.  Sigh, my confidence in German engineering had sunk to new lows.  The next day we call and find out the car was losing fuel pressure (which prompted the initial gas cap resolution the first time).  Apparently they thought it was resolved and had put it all back together again and took it for a test drive.  Lucky for us, the engine light came on again during their test drive.  Once again, the vehicle was taken all apart, but this time they called back to Germany for some help.  It had now been at least  5 days with a weekend and our patience was wearing thin.  That along with the uber annoyance of them continually asking us how the loaner car was working out.  All that could be said was that it was running better than OUR car was at the moment – but the hamster under the hood was really getting tired.  Eventually they determined it was a flaky DMTL pump which is apparently responsible for checking the fuel pressure and signals the dashboard if there is something wrong.  So there was nothing wrong with the fuel pressure, but the sensor was randomly failing.  Once replaced, the car was put back together, but the home office in Germany would not allow them to return it to us until they performed three complete cold to hot test drives.  One they did that day, and the other two had to be performed the next day.  So, exactly one week later Linda’s baby was nestled back in the garage.

I’ve decided to write this particular event off as a fluke.  They were very accommodating and apologetic as they went about resolving the issue (better than any American dealer experience we have had for sure).   The car is also under a full bumper to bumper warranty for four years so in essence beyond time and inconvenience it did not cost a penny.  This is where the “Expensive” word comes into play.  Can you imagine how much this bill would have been out of warranty? – CHA CHING.  It is still the funnest vehicle we have ever owned/driven.  Oh, and BMW also sends us a gift every year for owning the first series of one of their vehicles –  including a book on the history of our vehicle with our actual VIN number in it and this year a pretty sweet ink pen.  So for now, no harm done, but if that light goes on again, we’ll be having some “pressure” words for sure.