Modern Vespa

I'm considering running a class for GS riders who need to learn

Get a long sheet of paper in that case.

At the FIAT dealer I was pleased to find the service manager remembered us, even though the computer didn't. I was in there but the car wasn't. It's been about two years since I've had to have any service performed.

In fact, I asked if there was any scheduled maintenance to be performed while it was in having the window fixed. He said that he's had the same question from other people, but no ... there's really nothing to do. Check the tire pressure, top off the windshield washer fluid and change out the battery cooling system at 100K miles.

Not that I'm complaining, but there's really nothing to do with this car other than drive it and replace the occasional bulb.

Oh, and they had three new MC-20s in the showroom.

^^^^ They are bloody brilliant.

And tires. It kind of eats tires. It doesn't help that the ones that are officially spec'd are made of cheese.

We're about to get new tires. We were considering the cheapest - but then MIL said she'd pay for them. So it'll be Costco with the super-dooper ones in our future.

I think the new Renault 5 might have it pipped!

Fab day out riding in the mountains at Peneda Gerês national park. I forgot how tight the hairpins were and also that some of those were cobbled!!

Beer now.

Yeah, I drive like an old lady, mostly. But it's why I'm getting 5m/kWh.

I think it had original tires on it when I bought it and I replaced them with just over 30K. We'll see how the Falkens hold up.

Packing up for a few days camping at Mt Rose Campground (Nevada) this morning. Should have nice cool weather at 9,000ft. This cheers me up!

This post was not quite
What we were hoping to see
Try again, perhaps?

We made jam from the mulberry tree in the back yard. Not the last, by any means.

Nice!

How do you harvest the mulberries? We have a tree too, but find it difficult to pick the berries. It's hard to reach picking by hand, and shaking branches has limited effectiveness. Do you have a trick? Maybe your tree is smaller and easier to access?

Our tree used to be a bush, but now it is like the great oak under which the whole village meets. I'll bet it's forty feet if it's an inch. We miss a lot of the berries.

We have a yet untested method that we may attempt this week. My wife and my son holding four corners of a blanket whilst I rustle the branches with a long handled broom /rake / shovel.

I'll let you know how that goes.

Oh there were also some raspberries thrown in there. We planted a couple of bushes a few years back, and they are really coming in nicely.

Black currant jam on the list today. Last time didn't go too well...there was orange zest in the recipe, which wasn't at hand, but we had dried orange peel so I tried that. Kind of overdid it. My wife is letting me eat it myself.

And yeah, currants are a treat to pick too, especially the tiny ones.

Addendum: Made the batch, thought it was quite good. Mrs. fledermaus comes home, give her a taste of the new batch and her face was hilarious. I guess this is going to be all mine. The girl has low tolerance for acid....

'tis the season for berries! The below photos aren't mine, but from a friend who went picking a few days ago.

As is red wine

Saúde!

I've eaten them off the tree but that jam sounds awesome! Nice color too.

I love black currant jam. We have a ollalieberry vine and I eat them faster than my wife can pick them. She makes cupcake out of them but it's not my fav.🤫 She can cook but that particular cupcake never turns out right. Easier to not say anything.

Not cupcake, WTF? I write P I E and it keeps showing up as cupcake. Lame.

The rental house we found in CO has raspberry and blackberry bushes, and we're taking our booberry bush from here. Plan to plant at least one if not two of each when we eventually buy, along with an apple tree of some sort. Make some ciders and such.

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Got notification from FedEx (but not Torklift, weirdly) that the replacement hitch is due to arrive Friday.

It is day 10 in our new country. The constant swirl of crazy that has defined my last two months is starting to subside. We have barely had a look around. The only thing left for my mental health will be the eventual arrival of my GTS. A shipping company claimed 4-6 weeks for delivery. They have had it sitting in a warehouse New Jersey for five weeks so far. When I asked if it will be here in a week they said 4-6 weeks once it is on a boat. And no word when that will be.

So in the meantime I drive a rental car and enjoy the great food, fantastic people and the sun setting into the sea.

The hail was small this morning, that cheers me up....I guess.

Todays mushroom hunt on woods was a succsess, chanterelles, plenty but small ones, appr 2 kilos.

The school district I work for has set the work week at Friday through Thursday.

We're currently in summer hours, so we work four 10-hour days, Monday through Thursday, and have Fridays off. So technically we start the work week with a day off, then the weekend, then work four days.

We also have the entire calendar week that contains July 4th off as a paid holiday for Independence Day.

So by combining the summer hours Friday (June 27), the Independence Day holiday week (June 30 through July 4), and one PTO day (July 7), I was off from work for seven week days, but used only 10 hours of PTO.

This morning our office manager was running around telling most of the staff that they had to clock out and go home, because they've hit their 40 hours already. Most of them only had to work two hours today. The Bindery Supervisor has to leave at noon, and I have to leave at 1:54pm. I said that didn't make any sense, because I'd left early on Tuesday to go to a doctor appointment. She said that we all received 8 hours of holiday pay for Friday, July 4, hence the reason why everyone else had to leave after two hours.

So I get most of the afternoon off, and an early start to the weekend!

The annual "True-up" stated we are $71 in credit for the whole of last year's electricity usage. Yay for solar! That's with ordinary household use, using our mini-spit A/C for all our house heating over last winter, and a year's worth of charging the car every day.

My first year charging eh FIAT we also got on a benefit plan with the electric company that prompted us to use our AC a little more conservatively. That summer - even with charging the FIAT up every night - we actually used less energy. I wish we had made that adjustment sooner.

Went in to AT&T last night to purchase some additional data for a wedding I'm running a Zoom meeting for this weekend. Plans have changed a little. We had an old plan with a data cap that was ... limiting. They switched us over to a different plan that gives all four lines unlimited data and 60GB of hotspot data for my line for $10 more than we were already paying.

After the wedding I am switching over to another plan that keeps unlimited data on all four lines, includes somewhat less hotspot data (which I don't do often anyway) and will save us about $50/month.

The visit was well worth it.

Enjoyed a couple days camping at Mt Rose Campground in Nevada. Escaped the mid 90s temps in Reno and enjoyed lows in the 30s and highs in the low 70s. Did some hiking from the campground to the summit of Slide Mountain (Mt Rose Ski Resort). Only about 700' elevation gain, but when you are starting at 8,700ft it will take your breath. This cheered me up!

I picked a lot of those in RDR2.

Ah, one of MV's unique quirks...I think the wiki covers it.... There's still Torreador Pants to deal with.

There is a long, long history with pie here at MV. If you know, you know.

(And if you know, you know how to circumvent the substitution).

I just read about all the Fiat owners up the page, so I took a look. Scottsdale Fiat shows a 2024 Fiat 500e Inspi(RED) for $134,000
First of all, the price, WTF? Second, doesn't Fiat/RAM/Dodge import new Fiats to the US?

Most of us are driving 2015-2018 Fiat 500e models, which were an entirely different beast than the current Fiat 500e. I paid $13k out-the-door for my 2015. It was a lease return and had about 18k miles on it.

That said, no idea what's up with the listing you saw. That's not how much they cost, not by a long shot.

Earnt my beer today 🍺

Successfully decoded the canbus packets of my obdstar performing piaggio / miug4 specific commands including things like reset adaptive params and turn fan and headlight relays on/off etc.

Used a cheap canbus sniffer connected via usb to a phone that I'm writing code on and logged the decoded and reassembled packets onto the laptop.

Ours is a 2015, dealer price $6,000. Fiat stopped making the 500e for a while. The 2024 model is currently priced at ~$36,000 in the US - plus, of course all the hidden add-on fees that seem to get charged.

They begrudgingly sent a replacement which is substantially straighter than the original.

Still a lot of engineering issues as the support brackets that tie the tow bar into the subframe rails were nowhere CLOSE to flush with anything. But it's on finally. Just need to go get a hacksaw blade to trim the bumper cover for the receiver and drill a hole for the wiring ground and good to go.

Wow! They really abused the first hitch. Looks like it got dropped on its end during shipping.

Box was perfectly fine, so I suspect it was dropped in the warehouse before even getting boxed to ship.

i can identify with that - years ago, I bought a Craftsman 10 drawer toolbox. The box it was in was in fine shape, but when I. opened it, one lower corner of the toolbox was smashed badly. Someone must have dropped the box - from a height - and re-boxed it. Nertz!

Watching Celebrity Jeopardy this evening, where I heard there is an exceptional Library in Porto. You need tickets, even.