Recent Happenings

Wow, so much has happened since my last post! I'm going to attempt to touch on some of the 'bigger' or more unusual things that have happened over the past month.

Over the weekend of May 17th the Rock Valley College Chamber Singers went on tour down to St. Louis. This picture speaks for itself!

Here I am headed over to the St. Louis Arch to enjoy a short nap at the museum after a wonderful lunch at Max and Erma's! THANK YOU MR. LAPRADE!

Part of our group in St. Louis

Then school let out and we headed straight for the lake! Well, not quite... Some friends from California (the Hector family) visited with their new sailboat, so we just HAD to test it out on Lake Geneva.

Actually the Hectors tested the boat while we just rode along :) For more about the adventure, click HERE

For the last week in May, Joseph and I headed out to Virginia to record and run AV at Witherspoon School of Law and Public Policy.

A reception for Chief Justice Roy Moore on the patio outside the conference center.

Everything went very smoothly except the last three hours in this room. Due to "dirty power", and flat out power failure, things got a little chaotic! Fortunately, none of it was our fault and considering the obstacles, it could have gone much worse!

Last week the Strands hosted a group of guys for some paintball fun! Here we are preparing to be attacked on the first round. You can see our opponents just beginning to walk out of the trees on the opposite side of the field. I definitely preferred attacking the hill rather than being attacked.

Last but not least is all the work I've been doing on my truck! Here you can see I ripped out the headliner. I'm planning on reupholstering it, and hopefully getting CHEVROLET put across the ceiling just to the back of the visors.

I have also been rebuilding my vegetable oil conversion, after having it brutally ripped off by a mechanic that I won't be sending any more work to. :/ So far all I've got under the hood is the mounting brackets and the wires. I have everything for the conversion assembled, I'm just waiting for the final mounting plates from a machine shop that a friend in our church works for. I can't wait to finish this job! I haven't skimped on anything, and it should run without a hitch!

One of the new additions to this conversion is a fuel level sender, and gauge that I installed. It'll be nice to know how much grease I've got back there! Haha...

My dash in process. By the time it's done I'll have added four switches and four gauges.

The switches will control the:

• VO/Diesel valve
  
• power to the VO fuel pumps
• electrical glow-plug fuel heater (for an extra heat boost in cold weather and cold starts)
• return fuel line valve (to the VO tank)

The gauges will show:

• VO tank fuel level
• VO fuel temperature
• fuel pressure (not absolutely required for the conversion, but HIGHLY recommended)
  
• turbo boost pressure (unnecessary for the conversion, but will allow me to safely tweak things for higher performance)

Here is one of the gauge pods that I made with the design help of my Dad (having a Dad who is an engineer is GREAT!).

Aside from that there is always summer work to be done around the house, including some less expected work projects like cleaning tornado damage! I was washing a window in my parents room when the tornado came through and we lost the tops of three trees, as well as one that was pulled up from the roots!

I had never experienced such unbelievable winds before, but I had heard that "hurricane force winds" were due to be arriving soon so I didn't even think to run, I just thought 'well the wind has arrived!' :) The most amazing thing was how quickly and without warning it came and went. If I had run for the stairs immediately, I doubt I could have made it to the main level by the time everything was over.

Praise the Lord nothing was damaged besides the trees!

Thanks for letting us use your saw Jeremy!

The ever growing pile of branches. We finally burnt it all yesterday. WOW! What a fire!

Relaxation! :) Well not really, with the little nieces and nephews around you've got to always be on your toes! Here I am whacking Winston on the head with a foam float... I made him cry, but he got used to it and eventually returned the fire :)

Well, I think that wraps things up for the most part. In early July I should be putting up a video of the Veg' Oil conversion install! Until then, ttfn!