Let's Go Fishing With Chiu & His Wife!

We joined Chiu and his wife for their weekend ritual of fishing off of the Tierra Verde Bridge. The views are really nice, and the fishing action can be good at times.

For a few months now, Chui had been telling me stories of a guy that was practicing his sailing skills in the bay. Well, here he is in full sail, getting ready for his morning workout.

On the other side of the bridge, you can see the Sunshine Skyway in the distance.

You can see Chiu and his wife came prepared. They have these cool sun blockers attached to their hats so they won't have sunburn on their necks, good idea!

Here is a view of Chiu with his sun-blocker on and Dad working on his line after Chiu just unhooked a small catfish from it. You can see that the drawbridge has opened up in the distance.

What, the drawbridge opened up for that dinky little sailboat?

Actually, a whole herd of boats came through in one shot. We weren't sure if they were going make it through there without hitting each other. Geez guys, one at a time!

Whew! Somehow they made it through.

Whoa, what a minute, I think Chiu caught one of the boats! Reel it in buddy, you can do it! (I wonder how he's going to land it up here on the bridge...)

It seems like that bridge went up and down a bunch of times, but Chiu said it only opens on the hour. We must have been there for quite a while. I betcha the bicyclist feels that way too...

Within minutes of arriving, Chiu caught a pompano, but he said it was too small. Then, his wife caught a keeper. After that, there were a couple of throw-back catfish and this shark Chiu caught. Since the fish really weren't biting (and Dad was feeling tired and a bit dizzy from the heat) we decided to call it quits. Besides, as we were packing up, a porpoise showed up on the scene and that usually kills the fishing activity in the area when they move in. Just in time to head home...

Bye-bye guys!

A Little More Work On The Van...

We took a pounding, weather-wise, yesterday. When I came home from work, there were tree branches strewn all over the yard and lots of standing water. Seems we had a strong storm blow through the area and according to Dad, the power even went out for about 10 minutes. In spite of all that, we fared pretty well even though about half the traffic lights in the area were offline.

Since I had wanted to work on the bike tonight, I was a bit disappointed, but after a dinner of Gado-Gado (thanks Dad) I decided to change out the radio in the van because it was acting up. I had a spare unit that I had taken out of a Chevy truck back when I was working for B&B Stereo, so this should be a snap, right?

Well, it turned out to be quite a bit of work adapting the faceplate, mounts and casing to make the radio fit in the van, but it does look good. I ended up trimming the faceplate facia by about 1/4-inch all the way around, then reworked (cut down) the mounting ears that are used to bolt it into the dash. While I was at it, I brought the radio inside, dug out my box of cassette deck and VCR belts and replaced the belt in the cassette deck, then put it all back together. Somewhere in the middle of all this activity, I watched Bender on Futurama get turned into a water heater and Leela & Fry get stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits. Oh, and somehow, while I was busily dividing my attention between working on the faceplate and the television, I cut my thumb with an exacto-knife. No big deal, slip on a band-aid and I was back to work, even more focused on my task than before...

Well, the re-mounting of the radio went off with no problem, the thing works great and sounds good. Unfortunately, the improved radio makes the not-so-good rear speakers sound bad, so I'm going to fish around in some boxes of electronics I have and see if I've got a better set of speakers to put in back there. While I'm at it, I'll work on repairing the rear, left-hand window shade that has a broken guide string. I'll need to find some braided fishing line to replace it with.

I think this weekend, I'll clean out and detail the interior of the van after I replace the driver's side window lift assembly and fix the motorized system for the rear seat.

A Little Work On The Van

Dad and I had to get some parts to fix up the van, so I put together a shopping list and off we went ot the locate salvage yard...

We needed to get a replacement blower for the rear air conditioning, a power window lift assembly for the passenger window, wing window locks, a side door latch and a wheel center cap. And we were quite fortunate to find practically everything we needed.

When we headed out to the salvage yard, we had to drive through a heavy downpour of rain, but since we were headed south and away from the strong weather, we weren't too worried. When we arrived at our destination, the rain was well north of us and the sky directly above us was completely clear of clouds. After signing in, we walked out into the yard and located the Chevrolet section. We checked a couple of vans, only to realize they were Chevy's version of a mini-van called an Astro Van. Now that we discovered what they looked like, we weren't likely to fall for thinking they were the G20 van we were looking for.

After finding a conversion van like ours, we started assessing what it had in the way of parts we would need. Just as I climbed inside to pick through the interior, it began to rain a bit. I helped Dad climb inside the van to use it as shelter in the rain, and then the heavens opened up on us.

It was at about this time when I looked at Dad and said; "Just like old times, huh?" Seems we've been stuck in a car while waiting out a bad spell of weather in a junkyard before, back when we were both just a little bit younger.

To shorten the story a bit, we found all that we needed, paid for it all and started installing the parts. So, the rear AC works good now, the wing window locks have been changed from black plastic ones to a pair of metal chrome units we found, the latch for the side door was replaced (we even adjusted the side door so it closes smoothly again). And we did all this work in the driveway under the cover while a heavy rain was coming down with a full chorus of lightning and thunder. The following are a couple of pictures of the van after we finished up.

Dad Went Fishing Yesterday

Dad met up with Uncle Frank, Karen and crew to do a little bridge fishing off the Gandy Friendship Trail.

Details and pictures, coming soon.

Actually, I never got any pictures of their fishing fun, so the best I can do is relay the story...

Apparently, they had some luck and Dad brought home a sail catfish and a mangrove snapper. Unfortunately, the catfish is extremely oily and filled with small bones, so we really couldn't do anything with it. But the snapper gave me the chance to show Katrina how to scale, clean and fillet a fish. It wasn't long after the snapper was cleaned that it went straight into the frying pan. Mmmm, good!

Dad told me he had a situation where he was sitting in one of of those collapsible chairs when he saw his fishing rod jump to the left. As he tried to jump up and grab the pole, he got tangled up in the chair and fell forward. The line snapped, his glasses were torn off his face and thankfully, his pride sustained more damage than his body did. When he got home, he showed me his mangled glasses, so I broke out my jeweler's tools and spent about an hour getting the frames back into proper shape. After a couple of trial fittings to check my progress, all was good.

Uncle Frank The Super-Cacher!

Stopped by Uncle Frank and Aunt Martha's house last Sunday to help out Uncle Frank with his new GPS. He got himself a nice one and since he needed to create and save pocket queries from Geocaching.com, he signed up for a full membership. Well, his GPS is now loaded with tons of caches in his area, so he is ready to start logging some finds soon. We'll keep you posted...