It's almost Friday again

Here it is Thursday and we're ready for Friday again. We especially love it because the weather man has been very positive that it is going to be a great weather weekend. I normally wouldn't care, but we're expecting 25 to 30 people Saturday morning here on the farm by 7 AM. When we planned this event, Sandy was very concerned about the weather. My response was "we'll deal with it when it happens!" Once again, no need to worry; obviously, we can't change anything anyway.

It is hard to imagine that we can come up with something so interesting that people will get up and in some cases, drive 50 plus miles to be here by 7 AM. But they are. The reason is that a friend we met at the park in Florida is driving here from Fond du lac, Wisconsin with a utility trailer behind his pickup. In the specially built trailer are cages for 200 homing pigeons that he is going to release here on Saturday morning, some at 7:30 and the rest at 8:30 AM. Two years ago, we witnessed a release at a park in Waterloo, IA. The pigeons charged out of the cage when he lifted the door, rose to about one to two hundred feet, made a wide circle and then headed east (the right direction.)

It is kind of amazing that those birds can find their way back to their respective coops by sundown Saturday. That is about 300 miles of continuous flying in one day. Bless their heart.

Since I finished the house battery installation mostly last weekend, I've been relaxing kind of. We picked up some new terminals in Cedar Rapids so that I can finish the project the right way, perhaps next week after this big weekend! In the meantime, we can use it and measure its performance.

What have I done this week? Mow the lawn (twice) and burn my stump on the lawn. Perhaps one would say even "not much". But then one needs a few days like that. Okay, Cedar Rapids one day, field day at the seed corn supplier and watch my Ampere-Hour meter. I'm happy to observe that the solar panels completely recharge the batteries by 1 pm every day. Now I'm ready to see what happens when we have one of those gray-overcast days, all day. The solar will recharge some, but I doubt if I'll get a full load. (With the batteries I have now, I should be able to go for 3 days with no sun.) Since we have electric here on the farm, the only load on the batteries currently is the lights. The computers, microwave, TV etc are all plugged in and using electric from the power line.

Sandy has been going in circles, getting ready for Saturday (we're providing breakfast) and planning a rolling rally for our Escapee's RV chapter the last week of September and working on the Iowa Chapter Newsletter. Yes, she has her schedule and I lay low or stay out of the way (or try to).

Gene