Back where we began

We stopped in Airdrie on Thursday because we just couldn't imagine passing that close to Al & Camiel without stopping. When Marilyn phoned Camiel to tell him we were going to stop in he said we would be stupid not to stay for supper. Which was right so we let them feed us. Not that it's ever a hardship to eat with them. We got the lowdown on their trip to the Bahamas to not buy a boat. It sounds like the virtual boat was a lot better than the physical one so they just cruised for a week and came home.

That night we made it as far as Cactus Corner, just east of Oyen. We've stayed in their parking lot several times. On Friday we pulled into Eagle Creek Regional Park west of Asquith and settled in there for what turned out to be a 5 night stay. They got absolutely deluged with rain over the weekend but that didn't bother us because we had no plans to go anywhere. We both got a lot of work done and the rain wasn't hard to take because we knew how desperately they needed the water.

On Monday we picked up Marilyn's car from the storage lot in Saskatoon and she headed for Prince Albert. I had a couple of meetings in Saskatoon and then headed out west of Biggar to do some crop inspections. There is a farmland investment company in Regina who have contracted me to make contact with some of their tenants and at the same time do some new land inspections. That is turning out to be a really fun project. I've been poking into some corners of Saskatchewan that I wouldn't have found otherwise. On Thursday we left the Regional Park and moved to Harris where we parked next to the caboose. From there I toured some more local land and that evening we moved down to Swift Current and got settled in at Ponderosa Campground on the east side of town. Yesterday I did some more visits in the Vanguard area and this morning I did a couple of field visits at Frontier which let us work in a visit with Al & Gail Balfour.
There's some good crops in the southwest - for a change. Its nice to see the countryside green and the crops waving in the neverending wind. The crops look good but they are really late. Coming down from Rosetown we drove past canola in full bloom, maximum yellow. My rule has always been that canola should start blooming the first week in July and bloom the whole month of July. The canola we saw last week was at least a full month behind that schedule and therefore susceptible to fall frost.

Tomorrow we will get moved to Regina so we can spend some time with father. Marilyn has to fly up to the mine on Monday but I will spend the week in Regina. We haven't fully decided when we are going to head west again but it will be in early September. Patti is supposed to be spending some time in Calgary so we will time our trip through Alberta to meet up with her. I've got another contract I'm working on in Saskatchewan - a grain farm refinancing and management turnaround & I'm waiting for news on a strategic planning contract so we may have to adjust our schedule to accomodate those as well.

I spent this afternoon with my head buried in the arse end of the bus. We're still having intermittent non-starts. When we pulled in here I shut it down in front of the office and it wouldn't turn over about 10 minutes later. It started immediately on the rear start but the front key was still dead when we got parked so I had high hopes that I would be able to track the problem down while we were here. Unfortunately once again it healed itself after sitting for a couple of hours. I'm sure there are people who can diagnose intermittent electrical problems when they aren't being a problem but I'm not one of them. Beyond cleaning everything and making sure all the connections are tight I'm not sure what else to do while the miserable SOB is working. Right now I'm inclined to blame it on an intermittent ignition switch but that's really only because that's nearly all that's left. It's a really simple circuit: key -> front panel -> rear panel -> front/rear switch -> start relay -> solenoid. I've already replaced the start relay and solenoid plus they are common to the front and rear start so they can't be the problem. Right now it appears that it has to be either the DPDT switch that selects front or rear start or the ignition cylinder itself. Today I hooked a wire to the DPDT switch and left it sticking out of the panel so I can easily check to see if power is getting that far the next time it acts up. Of course it never gives any problem when we can take our time troubleshooting. When it fails it is always when we are pulling into a campground or away from a fuel pump - IOW times when I don't really want to stick my head up the bus's arse and start troubleshooting.