Waves of summer heat

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That’s what the summer of 2016 was made of.  Heat wave after heat wave.  According to our local meteorologists, there have been seven of them, so far. Another is predicted for this week.

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According to Wikipedia, a heat wave is a prolonged period of excessively hot weather, which may be accompanied by high humidity. The wave is measured relative to the usual weather in the area and relative to normal temperatures for the season. (Yeah, very informative.)

Considering there are 93 days in summer, that’s a heat wave about every 11 days. It seems to me though that the heat waves occurred in the last 10 weeks so the 11 days can be whittled down.

Now, it’s taken me literally years to learn to stay out of the heat and not aggravate health issues. Needless to say, not much progress was made on the bikes.

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On the upside, the summer heat gave me a chance to start a gun collection.  It’s nothing much, mainly SKS rifles from the Cold War.

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Collecting has been a learning experience.  I learned about cosmoline and how to decipher listings on www.gunbroker.com. I learned quite a lot about Eastern Bloc firearms and how their simplicity of design translates to flawless reliability, accuracy and low costs…which is to say “right up my alley way.” It’s been a course in appreciation, really.

Back to bikes. Because yesterday was the first ‘nice’ day in a long time, there was enough motivation to brave the electrics yet again. It all started off as I thought it would—forgetting where I left off in diagnosing the problem, forgetting what my handwritten notes meant, forgetting what this wire is for and what that wire is for, forgetting…yeah, there’s a pattern here.

Basically, it was another lesson in frustration. I was tempted to call it quits and hire someone to figure it out. Of course, that would have gone against my stubborn nature to see this thing to completion.

As I sifted through the mess for what seemed to be like the tenth time, a light bulb went on.

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Suddenly, it was simple. Spark is going into the coils but none is coming out. That MUST be the problem. Well, duh! I took readings with the ohmmeter several more times, read the manual several more times and was satisfied that I had the answer.

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The next couple of hours were spent on eBay (the link is here just in case nobody heard of it) finding the best deal on used ignition coils which are now in the USPS system from the left coast.

One can’t live sixty years and not have been here before—the ‘answer’ was staring at me and all I had to do was open my eyes. Then it works out easy enough…

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…or it doesn’t

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The new coils should be here by the end of the week.  We shall see what we shall see.

Next: I’m back

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