Year: 2006

Today the news bulletins and updates were all about FIRE. First the fires mentioned in my last post. Next a fertilizer plant in Solano County. Then the fire outside of Napa near Yountville. A small fire on Hwy 70 outside of Yuba City and many small grass fires throughout the area.

The Pentax is out of warrenty go figure – so I have to decide if I should take it in to be repaired or throw it in the dead do something about it later drawer.

Still working on the transducer thingy placement . …

The sky is an eerie orange if I were not so lazy I would drive to the river and get some sunset shots but I am lazy right now. Made some beans for dinner – life is good.

Catfish woke my up early this morning – no apparent reason. The news is showing miles of fire line. The first blaze started at County Road 82B and Highway 16 just before 1 a.m. The second fire started at County Road 14 at Highway 505. The third fire is burning at County Road 12A and Highway 505 north of Zamora. The fourth, burning at County Road 19 and Highway 5 is beginning to merge with the fire north of Zamora. There is another fire near Travis Air Force Base at a ferilizer company. The winds are blowing with 40MPH gusts. Amazing news video before sunrise – a world of fire as far as the camera panned.

Todays plans (silly me) are now changed. I was planning on setting up the pontoon and working on installing the fish finder and transponder. I thing the boat would take flight! I am disappointed as I motivated my sorry butt to the hardware store and robbed my piggy bank to purchase some PVC pipe, nuts and bolts, a spring, and a velcro tie down strap.

The OptioWP is off to the shop today. I think it is dead and will be sent back to Pentax repair – it is under warranty – but ya know how that can go.

Now a car fire just started a grass fire near the Sacramento International Airport

Today we loaded up our pontoon boats and drove to Rancho Seco for the first launching. Both disassembled fit into the truck along with the pontoons deflated in duffle bags.

We started putting them together near the dock.

It took us about 45 mins. to work through all the small unplanned assembly glitches and get the two boats together. The hardest part was lifting the larger one with the motor and taking it down to the dock ramp. We must have gotten it right since it did not sink. 🙂

Well here I go – trying to figure out steering with the trolling motor – beats rowing anytime. The shaft of the motor is a bit to short – need to go get one with a longer shaft – umm – sounds like the cash register going cah chang…

Here we are rowing and trolling away.

Altogether I think after a few more figure it out days we will be prime time for Bass fishing. We need to mount some pole holders and figure out where we are going to store the tackle . . .

Now hours at DMV, boat stores, marine supply stores, and a tank of gas later. I can show you a inflatable pontoon boat with the proper regisration numbers displayed.

• At least three inches tall
• in block letters
• spaced even
• air brushed on with my model paint gun
• not covered by any straps or framework
• visable
• painted with the proper type paint for the pontoon material
• registration stickers three inches from the numbers that can not stick on an inflatable boat without falling off
• two seal a meal bags and four zip locks

As for the stickers being to close to any other writtings or letters the DMV and everyone else can go jumb in lake!

Sometimes my brain goes to sleep :). I know this is one of those DUH – Big Red Truck – moments. But where oh where in the css is the color code for the background of the page? Time to go back to sleep …