Saturday August 9, 2014 Jenner CA.
I got up this morning with the back sorta on the painful side, so I tried to take it easy most of the day. I did do a little dirt work on the great ditch, but tried to keep it light and not use my back much. Right. I did try. The cold pack helped a lot.
Worked on the car problem some more too
I also did some more watering and worked on the car some more.
For the first time the car was stumbling most of the time now, with the idle going up and down, so I had a chance to check some things out. I sprayed all the vacuum lines to check them out for leaks and all was ok with them.
I read up on my idle air control valve to see how to test it. Seems when I unhook the plug to it, with it out of the circuit, the car runs smoother, but dies at the stop signs, as it should, with it disconnected.
So, I decided to leave the part disconnected and drive it down to Jenner this evening. It ran fine on the way down, and the engine dies at stop signs as it should with the part disconnected, so I was thinking maybe this part is bad.
I hooked the part back up before driving home, thinking that it should run crappy, but it ran smoothly all the way home. I guess I’ll have to do a bit more testing and wait for it to mess up again, but I’m pretty sure there is something wrong with the idle air control valve. At least, I think I’m in the right place after trying to track this down for the last six months or so.
Looked at some older videos I took
Since I now have a new computer that is fast enough to play the HD videos that my camera takes, I did some sorting and reviewing of all the video I’ve taken in the last several years with this camera. Lots of them were jerky, because the kayak is never still in the water, so getting good HD videos from a kayak isn’t the easiest thing to do, but some of the videos were still quite good.
The new video camera
So, that brings me back to the new video camera I’ve been looking at. The new one would have a much faster processor in it and better stabilization, among other things, so this could improve my getting better videos from my boat. I’m looking at Canon’s top of the line Pro-consumer unit, called a G30. I’m getting closer to ordering it. My main concern is, it’s like buying a new computer. Will the newer, better one come out just after I buy this one?
Headed to Jenner for an evening kayak
I headed down to Jenner around seven PM and put my boat in the water. The sun was out and there was a fairly strong wind. I decided to just head on down to the river’s mouth area, as it wouldn’t be long before the sun was going down.
This is how things looked as I put my boat in the water, looking down towards the ocean.
I paddled over to the west end of Penny Island and watched some harbor seals playing in the water.
Seagulls catching and eating Dungeness crabs
There also were about a dozen seagulls diving for Dungeness crabs in the water, as I watched. The small two inchish Dungeness crabs must have been swimming in with the high tide coming into the river as the seagulls were getting them in deeper water which indicates to me, the crabs were swimming into the river with the high tide. They were catching quite a few of them, without much trouble, so there must have been a lot of them in the water. I’ve looked to see these crabs in the water, but as someone once told me, I’m not a seagull, so I usually can’t see any of the little critters.
Here’s what it looked like as a seagull starts it’s dive for a crab.
You can see the seagull in the water has a little Dungeness crab, it just caught.
Full moon is up
Looking back to the east, the full moon has come up.
The sun was getting ready to set for the day as I continued paddling down to the river’s mouth.
River’s mouth is wide open deep
When I got to the river’s mouth, lots of ocean water was ripping into the river as I sat in my boat, just inside the mouth.
The sun just went down as I turned and looked to the east at the rising moon. The wind calmed a little, but only a little.
More seagulls eating crab
I spied some more seagulls on the west end of Penny island, so I went over to check them out. They were still catching the small Dungeness crabs, one right after the other. Crabbing was good. It’s starting to get darker.
Headed in for the night
I headed on in as I wasn’t planning to stay out for the moon. And the moon being out, washes out all the lumens, they turn off in the light, so no use staying out to look for them.
This was my view as I headed on in to the visitor center boat ramp, just as it was getting darker.
I went on home for the night around 9:00PM.