BACKHOE ALERT

Sunday night (July 16), about midnight as we rushed headlong to bed to begin perhaps our worst week ever, since it involves a trip to the mighty Curve, plus Jack’s wedding (isn’t it Rachle’s [doesn’t matter] wedding?), I noticed my digital watch was reading a time of 8:55 p.m.
Like everything, so it seems, resetting it meant shoving it to mañana. I managed to balance our checking-account that night, and set up an online payment of our Visa. (Our bank has an online bill-pay, which to me is the only way to do it online, since I initiate it.) Balancing the Visa will be mañana.
Later I surmised the watch was probably displaying Californy time. It has multiple time-zones; zone 2 is Californy time.
So I reset it Monday morning according to my ‘pyooter which gets the exact time over the Internet from the dreaded atomic clock in Boulder.
The seconds were right, but the minutes were still four minutes slow. My previous watch carried both the minutes and the seconds over to Californy time. You only reset the hours.
This one only carries the seconds. You have to reset the minutes.
Then I had to make the watch display the local time instead of Californy time.
I pored over the cryptic instruction-sheet, translated by Japanese monkeys, in type so small you need a magnifying glass, but I couldn’t see any indication how to change the time display.
“Aha,” I said. “I think this button does it.” Viola! Back to local time.
So much for the instructions. No indication whatsoever. Real men don’t need instructions.
The CR-V is ailing — it sounds like it’s dragging an emergency-brake shoe — and I expect to farm it out. Getting a service appointment will be near impossible; the CR-V will probably get shoved in the garage, and we’ll take the bucktooth-bathtub to the airport and hope it doesn’t get stolen (I have a steering-wheel lock).
The Husky is also ailing — it spun a pulley that drives a cutting-rotor. The Husky doesn’t slip its rotor-belt like the Greenie, so it stalled three times in the Back 40.
Then it spun a pulley. At least two hours Sunday was tied up removing the spindle-housing — something I could have farmed out to the Husky-guys, but I wanted to look at the pulley myself.
The rotor-spindle has star-teeth, and I bet the pulley did too, but no more.
The cutting-blades also have star-teeth so they can’t slip under the blade-bolt like the Greenie.
The pulley is just a double-thickness sheet-metal stamping with the star-pattern cut with a die. The grass wasn’t that high — just thick enough to stall it.
We visited the Husky-guy before setting out. He replaced the entire spindle-assembly and pulley under warranty.
“How many more of these am I gonna have to replace?” I asked, pointing to the pulley. But the spindle was supposed to be starred too. Mine had stripped.
“That’s the first one I’ve ever seen. Make sure you install this spacer.” Maybe the spacer had never been installed. We never saw any sign of it.
The funicular at the mighty Curve was closed for maintenance. Jack would have had to use the steps, in which case he would have been toast. We bombed up the steps as if they weren’t there, even in the 90° heat.
All they do is wick up the old ticker.
Seems like we never come here without having some sort of insanity to report.
Monday night was the vaunted spaghetti-joint where we sat next to a bloated 350-pound girl and her stringbean husband/boyfriend/significant-other/whatever. The girl was a dead ringer for Aunt Ginny: same mannerisms, same demeanor, same noisy overconfidence, even sounded like her.
Significant-other was upset the spaghetti-joint was an Italian restaurant — he couldn’t get wings. Aunt Ginny fielded all her little boy’s eccentricities with exquisite aplomb. And when her cellphone played Ride of the Valkyries, she asked why her mother was calling on a weekday instead of the weekend.
As we were leaving Aunt Ginny was clambering into her tiny red Pontiac sedan just like Aunt Ginny: grab the windshield-post and then hurl her gelatinous heft into the seat, after which her side of the car dropped a foot on its shocks.
At Tunnel Inn we had the “MO Tower” suite, named for the old Pennsy tower at Cresson which still exists. “MO” was the suite I always asked for in the past, since it’s on the opposite side of the building farthest from the tracks. (“MO” were telegraph call-letters.)
But I don’t know. All the suites get shaken by passing trains, and last visit we had “Alco,” the other suite on the opposite side of the building.
Bed locations have been changed in all the suites, so that now the air-conditioning in “MO” blows on your head. We had to kill it, after which the suite became hot and stuffy.
“Aren’t you the guy who wrote that big article on Horseshoe Curve?” the owner asked.
“Yep; that was me,” I said.
The owner is a railfan too, which is the whole reason Tunnel Inn exists.
The steps at the mighty Curve were easier this time compared to the last, which means mighty Jack is even more likely to get skonked. At first I was worried Jack might beat me — after all, he is 13 years younger.
But now I have no doubt at all. What we’re worried about is him blowing a gourd “not about to be beaten by no history-major.” He hasn’t been working out, and keeps a-sluggin’ that ‘Dew. Putting him on-the-trailer is okay (putting a blowhard on-the-trailer is always great fun), but we don’t want to have to drag him to Bon Secours.
Part of a visit to to the mighty Curve is a visit to Cassandra Railfan Overlook, west of Cresson.
A couple of years ago a patron at the Tunnel Inn told me about it, and it’s fabulous. It gets the train frequency of the mighty Curve, and is shaded by trees.
Cassandra is a dying coal-town out along the Pennsy Main. The railroad had to dig a huge cut, so eons ago highway engineers used the high cut-walls to mount a single-lane iron highway-bridge.
The road is long abandoned, but the bridge is still there, so railfans were using it as a viewing-spot — so popular the town decided to install benches and improve the area.
So became Cassandra Railfan Overlook; right up there with the mighty Curve, part of the local railfan agenda.
The eastbound approach to Cassandra is a long tangent, so you can see approaching trains miles away.
There also is a distant signal-bridge, so if it lights up it means a westbound is approaching.
There also are detectors my scanner gets.
Cresson built a railfan observation-deck, but it’s right out in the sun. We skipped Cresson this time — except for the Philly Cheese-steak at the Cresson Family Restaurant.
It’s becoming apparent I have to look out for my old friend as much as she looks out for me.
For years it seemed to be the other way around, what with exasperating stroke-effects, poor balance, and deteriorating health.
But the poor balance seems to be slowly going away.
Linda has a trick knee, so I drove the whole way so she wouldn’t have to, since driving is painful for her.
I also try to be the one walking the little monster, since he pulls you off-balance with sudden hard lunges.
No problem. I already decided it wasn’t worth my getting exasperated with her not hearing I said. She may have gotten hard-of-hearing (I’m not yet).
We used the steps every time. No problem there either (six times). Jack is toast.
Jack attempted to call me on the cellphone Tuesday night. I suppose it was an ongoing attempt to apprise me of various tunnel-closings around Boston. Something about concrete (cement; whatever) tunnel-linings crumbling off and falling onto cars.
Sounds like more backhoe shenanigans to me.
Whatever; despite all his bellyachin’ about me having my phone turned off, I tried to call him twice this morning (Wednesday, July 19), and each time got referred directly to voicemail. (Musta been on one a’ them secret Porta-John monitoring projects.)
He finally called up as we were gassing up at the mighty Sheetz gas-station on 764 in Altoony, and mumbled something about “charging.”
Excuses, excuses. At least on the phone he’s a pussycat, which he ain’t on this here site.
He also said something about the famblee-site being awfully quiet. “No screaming,” he said.
Well of course; we’re incommunicado.