a trip, the refrigerator, the motorcycle, and a busy Saturday

Let's start at the beginning. . . And I will warn you... this is a long post!

The Trip

Michael spent last week in Connecticut for a Leadership Training Course. He left Sunday afternoon and arrived back home very late Friday night. He had arranged his flight home so that he would be home on Saturday for a benefit motorcycle ride that would be taking place Saturday morning.

The Refrigerator

Monday morning, I had an appointment for a repair man to come to our house to look at our ice maker. The ice maker had quit working about 2 weeks earlier. I had resorted to making ice the old fashioned way. You know. . .fill an ice tray, wait for it to freeze, dump it into a container, and then repeat. Over and over and over.

So, bright and early, and actually on time(!), the repair men show up. After taking about a 5 minute look, they determine that my freezer is not as cold as it should be. The temperature is about 14 degrees when it should be about 8-10 degrees at the warmest. Their assessment was it would cost about $400 to fix. Their recommendation was that a new refrigerator be purchased instead.

And so it was. Before the men had pulled out of the driveway, they were on the phone and asking to come back in to measure the space available. By 3 o'clock that afternoon, I had a new refrigerator in my kitchen.

The only problem was that the ice maker was not hooked up. It needed a part. . . I didn't find that out until later.

The part finally arrived on Thursday and was installed later that morning. However, Tuesday and Wednesday, my kitchen was in shambles waiting for the fridge to be pulled out and put back again.

Thursday was a great day because I finally got my kitchen cleaned! YAY!!

The Motorcycle

Michael was so excited to order a new (and comfortable) seat for his motorcycle. He placed the order in February and waited (im)patiently for it to arrive. He estimated that it would arrive sometime near the 14th of March.

It actually came on the 10th. I opened the box to see if I could understand the instructions well enough to put the seat on his motorcycle to surprise him when he returned from Connecticut.

The instructions were simple. Take off the old seat. No problems there. Install the bracket. Easy enough. Put the new seat on the bike and screw the 2 screws into the bracket. Sounds simple, right?

Nope! The instructions said that the screws on the bracket were 6mm hex head cap screws. So, I got out the 6mm hex key. (a.k.a. Allen Wrench) It was too big. I tried the 5mm hex key. Still too big. My next option was a 4 mm hex key. I thought surely this would be the one to work. Once again, I had the wrong size. Except this time it was too small.

So, Tuesday and Wednesday, the box and the seat sat out in my living room. The box was not small.

I went by a friend's house on Thursday morning with the seat and borrowed the correct size hex key. 4.5 mm. I didn't even know they made 4.5 mm hex keys.

Once I got back to the house, I was able to take the bracket off of the seat and install it on the motorcycle. Then came the seat. I aligned the front correctly and pushed it forward and down as the instructions had said.

The holes did not line up. They were about a half inch off. I called my friend to ask that her husband stop by to help me. He couldn't make it move quite far enough forward.

I worked on it off and on throughout the day, but I put a call into another member of our church who was organizing the benefit ride. I thought that since he knew more about motorcycles than I did, so maybe he could figure out where I was going wrong.

Ken stopped by Friday morning and managed to get the seat to within a quarter inch of where it needed to be. But still not quite close enough.

Friday night, after Michael came back home, he worked on it for a while longer. I am glad that we spent the 2 days prior trying to get the seat into position. Otherwise, Michael may not have have had the new seat for the ride.

Saturday morning, we got up bright and early. Ok, maybe not so early... About 9:30, we went to an auto parts store to buy some heavy duty zip ties. One of the screws had been stripped in all the efforts to force the seat into place.

So, Michael rode on Saturday with his seat held on only by body weight and 4 zip ties.

Did I happen to mention that the seat was designed specifically for the motorcycle that Michael has??

A Busy Saturday

As I mentioned under the motorcycle post, Saturday started fairly early. I got up around 8am to pick N up from her friend's house. She had spent the night there because she had not seen her friend in "forever!" (N's words, not mine)

After that, came the trip to the auto parts store. On the way there, we stopped by the church to allow Michael to register for the motorcycle ride. A woman in our community needs a lung transplant and has been required to have at least $15,000 before her name can be placed on the transplant list. The motorcycle ride was a fundraising effort for her.

With the weather, only 8 men showed up to ride. It was cold and supposed to rain, but N decided that she wanted to ride too. However, we still raised over $500 to help this woman. $160 of that was from the 8 men who registered to ride since there was a $20 registration donation.

After the motorcycle ride came nap time for A. N had gone home with a friend and I headed over to N's friend's house as well. I wanted to help my friend Cari prepare for her daughter's birthday party that afternoon. We did some last minute cleaning - washing dishes, sweeping and wiping down the tables. Then we got to decorating! Once people began to show up for the party, I left to get Michael & A. I ended up collapsing on our bed and taking an hour long nap. It was wonderful! We headed back to Cari's house to drop off clothes for N and found that the food had just come off of the grill. We were invited to stay and eat, so we had a great dinner, though not what we had originally planned. The party was also a sleepover for the girls, so after we ate, we left the clothes and headed out.

It was a LONG, but productive week. And now, I get to focus on next week! Rachel & her boys are coming!!!