Slept late and once again woke up all stuffy and sinus'y. Felt much better after a cup of tea and a shower though. Had decided to take Marge and George out for breakfast this morning, since we hadn't done one of those yet. We ended up going over to one of my favorite place's, Lucile's, for a very nice brunch of Cajun influenced food. Started off with an order of benieghts (sp) (hey, it's French for donut, why should I know how to spell it), of course, yummy and oh so bad for you. But what can taste better than deep fried dough, covered all over in thick powdered sugar. Both Marge and George had eggs over easy with home fries and grits, while I went for the Cajun breakfast of red beans with meat, along with potatoes and grits. Each of our meals also came with these huge homemade buttermilk biscuits that you can load down with an assortment of homemade jams and jellies. My favorites are the strawberry and rhubarb and the apple butter, but there are at least a half dozen you can try. I wash it all down with glass after glass of there own spiced ice tea, while the other two drink a couple of cups of there own fresh brewed coffee. The only bad thing about the whole meal is the feeling that you need someone to roll you out the door when you are done.

    Spent most of the day just hanging out around the house. Needed to research a couple of things and make a few phone calls, but also had time to work on some photo's and read part of a new book. Went over to my sisters house this evening and had a wonderful meal there with her and Mary.  Grilled hamburgers and foil wrapped sweet corn. The first corn on the cob I've actually eaten this summer. A couple of beers and some nice conversation and it turned out to be a very nice evening for sure.

   Tired now though, so I am glad I got most of the photo's shown below loaded up and annotated before I left this evening. For those who didn't know, I nearly lost the bumper on my house trailer last year as I was travelling from Colorado up to Vermont. Somewhere in New York a car full of guys pulled up alongside the truck and told me that my bumper was nearly dragging on the ground and that I needed to stop and take a look at it. Pulled into a near by church parking lot and sure enough my bumper with my bike rack and my generator was bent over and close to breaking completely off. I managed to take everything off the bumper that mattered and stow it in the back of the truck for what I thought was only going to be a little while. I figured I would find someone who could weld a couple patches on it and that would be that. Actually had a guy do just that when I got to Maine, but after putting everything back on the bumper, I looked at it and I just didn't feel good about it for some reason. So back off everything came, with the idea that I would wait until I got back to Colorado and could dump the trailer off for a couple days while someone did the job right.

   Stopping at my sisters place in Nebraska on the way home and my brother-in -law asked to take a look at it, and then volunteered to take a whack at it. As the pictures show below, he did an amazing job of it and I ended up with a bumper that is actually better than new. I think I owe him a little bit.

New Trailer Bumper - June 2013

First thing on the agenda; remove existing piece of c*** bumper and all of the attached pieces of metal that had been welded on to keep it working. Here we have the main tube off and my brother-in-law, Mark, is trying to get some of the remaining welded material off.

Use of a disk grinder to not only remove material but to smooth what is left and to take off paint, rust and scale to make welding a new bumper in place easier.

Here you see the ground for the cutting torch Mark was using, but more importantly you can see the back end of one of two main support beams for the trailer. This is what the new bumper will be welded to just as soon as 'Mark' gets it all cleaned up. (I want to make it clear that he was the one who did all of the work on this, and what magnificent work it was. Where as I pretty much just stood around and got in the way).

Cutting more of the old stuff off using the cutting torch. Isn't it cool to use tools that have fire coming out of the end of them?

So here I am trying to pretend that I actually have a clue about what is going on.

More grinding. I like this photo because it has the sparks bouncing off the faceplate of the welding helmet.

Just about done with the tear off. I'm actually doing something constructive. I'm tying the old trailer hitch wires up with a couple of zip ties.

What I do best.

Pre-welding a couple of support pieces onto the new bumper prior to welding it to the trailer. Check out that great concentration on my part. No job is to much for me.

Mounting the new bumper on to the main trailer beams. Mark is tack welding everything on while I keep it level and in position.

Starting to weld the rest of the seams between the new bumper and the existing trailer support beams.

Now we get to see the actual boss of the whole operation. It's a tough job, but somebody.....

Nearly done with all of the welding. I had Mark weld on a couple of steal eye bolts so that I would have some tie down points for ropes and cables.

Adding the first coat of enamel.

The new bumper in all it's glory. Mark just did a wonderful job and I think this time it will hold up. Sweet!

So here we see the whole reason why the new bumper was so important. On the left is my Yakima bike rack holding several lounge chairs as well as my bike, all in an add on hitch rack that Mark welded together for me two years ago. We added a couple additional things this year to keep it from bouncing up and down as much, which is most likely what caused the last bumper to fail. On the right is my portable generator that can run the whole trailer if need be. It is also on a custom rack that Mark welded up a couple of years ago. It is so nice to have all of this stuff out where I can get to it and use it instead of piled in the back of the truck. I think my brother-in-law is a genius.