Have No Fear, the Pink Spider is Here

One of Char's favorite games is "chase". She runs around the house, and you have to pretend you can't catch her as you follow her path.

To make sure you can't get your hands on her, Char has invented two super powers. Her first super power is "speed button". When she thinks you are getting too close, she'll shout, "Speed button!" and start sprinting. Her other super power is the ability to shoot a spider web. She momentarily stops, points her bottom at you, and makes a "pew" sound. Your job is to abruptly stop, throw up you hands, and mime being caught in an invisible web. Usually I say, "Boing!" when I mime her web catching me.

Last summer her super powers morphed into a super hero persona. Now when it's time to play chase, Charlotte becomes the Pink Spider! Like her super powers, I have no idea where she came up with this name, but I like it.

Last month Char announced she wasn't going to be a fireman or a witch this Halloween. She is going as the Pink Spider. Okay, that's cool. We want to support her creativity, but that means we can't just go to Target and buy her outfit. We have to make it. Hmmm...

Luckily, my friend Tim is an artist who teaches art at my school. I asked Tim if he could design a Pink Spider logo for a super hero outfit, and he took the job seriously. First he did some preliminary sketches for us to look over.

We chose the design in the middle, and Tim concentrated on getting that design refined. Once he was satisfied with the spider and it's "speed button flames", he experimented with different fonts.

In the end, Charlotte chose the design on the left.

I made the decision to have Tim remove the word "the", and then it was time to do some screen printing after school.

Here's Tim laying down the textile ink to test the screen on a piece of paper.

Now it's time to try it on a test shirt of mine.

Looks good!

Drying time. Looks like I can now be an official Pink Spider henchmen.

Now it's time to get nervous. Here comes Char's costume.

Yea!

Daphne got a henchman shirt, too.

But wait, there's more!

Daphne thought the costume needed webs to connect the sleeves to the sides of the shirt, so she got to work.

Throw in an eye mask from Target's "Dollar Stop" (I take back what I said about Target not helping us), and you're all set.

Tonight we went to the Blank Park Zoo's "Night Eyes". And the Pink Spider was ready for action!

Did people "Ooooh and Ahhhh" over Char's costume? 

No. Everybody else was more concerned with their own children... as they should be. But Charlotte was so excited to be the only Pink Spider in the crowd. Silently I was bursting with pride.

I think I know what our RAGBRAI team name will be next year.

Bug Update: Out with the Old, In with the New

My shipment of new parts from Wolfsburg West arrived yesterday, and as soon as I had time I popped the hood open on the Bug and got to work.

Here's the old fuse box before I removed it.

To get the old box out I had to cut one wire, and I ended up replacing one female connector, but other than that it was a straight-forward job.

A couple of posts ago I wrote about using Gorilla Glue to hold the far left terminal to the fuse box, and I have to say the hold is rock solid. I twisted and pulled on the terminal once I had the box out of the car, and it wasn't going anywhere.

The problem is that I have no idea what electricity would do to the chemical makeup of the glue. For all I know it would melt, or worse emit a poisonous gas when heated. Why take the risk when a new fuse box is only 20 bucks?

Here's my newly installed fuse box. I first disconnected the battery, and then I labeled the wires before I started yanking them off. With the help of the metal clip, the box snaps in place.

I briefly considered buying a used fuse box from a Samba seller in order to keep the Bug as original as possible, but that's silly. It's like buying a used light bulb - it can't be useful for much longer. Besides, the original fuse cover keeps everything looking authentic on the inside.

The trouble with Wolfsburg West is that their minimum shipping cost is $10. It doesn't matter if your part is only a buck, you're going to shell out ten more to get it. To save money I buy parts I know I'll want in the future, even if they'll sit on a shelf for awhile.

When I bought the Bug in the early 90's it didn't have sun visors, and I bought a new pair from JCWhitney. They were cheaply made, and there was no way to anchor them to the support bars. As you drove, the vibration of the car would cause them to slowly descend until they were in your way. All you could do was push them back up and wait until they got in your way again.

Last year I rescued a used pair of visors from a junked VW, but I didn't know the padding inside of them had rotted. Any time you squeezed the visor it would cough out a spray of putrid grit and dust. I ended up tossing them away.

So for this Wolfsburg West order I threw in a pair of new sun visors in my online cart.

I think they look pretty good, "A visor for a visor!" (Sorry. I taught Romeo and Juliet for 13 years, and sometimes I can't help myself.)

I'll get to that headliner sometime...

Link to Beetle Junkyard

How 'bout Them Apples? Center Grove Orchard Revisited

As I mentioned in my last post, we took a trip to the Center Grove Orchard last Saturday morning. It was a bit cold, but that just thinned the crowd, slightly. The place sure is popular.

This will be our third year to visit this farm, and you can see how much Char has grown from the first time we were here.

2012:

2014:

2012:

2014:

2012 (name this movie):

2014:

It's strange, but looking at these pictures makes my heart hurt a little. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because my little two-year-old girl is gone forever. 

Oh man, just typing that makes me tear up. But that makes no sense. Four-year-old Charlotte is funnier, more flexible, and more independent than the terrible two version of herself. So what's with the emotions? I can't explain it. Parenting does something to your head, I guess.

Oh well, on with the photo essay.

The corn pool is a neat idea. It's a large oval of hay bales filled with about two feet of corn kernels. The corn itself is surprisingly cold, and I bet it would feel refreshing on a warmer day. 

The sign says you can't bury people, but it doesn't say you can't cover 'em up a bit.

K'pow!

Of course you're gonna get kernels down your pants when you play in the corn pool, but the weird thing was that every time we thought Char's clothes were corn free, we'd find more. By the end of the evening Daphne thought Charlotte had smuggled home about 30 kernels of corn. I wonder how much lower the level of the corn pool is at the end of the season.

Also, It's all fun and games until you put your hand on someone's used Band-Aid. Gross.

We had lunch at the Feed Bunk. I appreciate that they use charcoal to prepare the hamburgers, but the real star of the show is the applesauce. That may seem silly, but wow, that stuff is so good. It's too bad they don't sell it in the orchard's store.

The orchard has live entertainment on the weekends, but when we were there the stage was empty. That is until Char climbed up to do some ballet moves for us. She's been running around on her tiptoes since she could walk, so this isn't a stretch for her.

The orchard keeps on growing, no pun intend. This year they added a second jumping pillow, one pillow for children under 52 inches tall, and the other for everybody else. On the morning we were there a slew of college sorority girls were having a social function, and a bunch of them were jumping on the big kid pillow, but I didn't take a picture of that. Sorry, Uncle Pervie.

Instead, here's Char catching some air.

And just like at the fair, Char stuck her head in stuff.

Here's Char and I on Daphne's favorite orchard attraction, the hayrack ride.

I keep reminding myself that grey hair is better than no hair. I suppose I could dye it, but I spotted one of the sports guys from channel 8 at the orchard, and even a colorblind guy like me could see he was sporting a dye job. You can't tell when he's on TV, though.

Char got an apple smoothie before we left.

Time to write the Center Grove Orchard a fan letter and see if they'll tell me how they make that applesauce. 

Link to 2012

48 hours later:

And you thought I was kidding.

Bug Update: Brushing Up

Ordering a part is a lot easier than having the confidence to install it. I've been dreading installing the brushes into my generator for two years, but I finally gave it a shot last weekend.

Here's what the brushes look like.

The brush is basically a block of carbon with a wire attached to it. Do you see the box at the top of the picture with the word BOSCH stamped into it? That's the voltage regulator, and it's sitting on the generator.

I first removed the two screws that connect the voltage regulator to the generator. The regulator was blocking my access to the small screw that attaches the brush's wire to the generator's body. The angle was pretty severe, and I had to use my thinnest screwdriver, but I was able to remove the screw.

Next I needed to move the tension spring that holds the brush down against the communicator. I was worried that I'd break the spring, but I was lucky enough to slide it off the brush. Here's the top brush installed. You can see its shiny, braided wire and the tension spring holding down the brush to the left of the wire.

The bottom brush is an entirely different animal. There's less space for the screwdriver, the angle is more severe, and you have to work upside down with a mirror. Barf.

To loosen the stuck screw, I used the insert from a four-in-one screwdriver and a small Vice Grip tool. It took me about a half hour to stumble upon this combination, and at 12:15 AM I called it a night.

On Saturday morning I spent 15 minutes getting the bottom brush out, and another ten minutes installing the new one. All I had left to do was get the last screw in place.

That took me seven more hours.

For an hour and twenty minutes I tried balancing a screw and it's washer on the tip of a screwdriver. I used a small magnet near the tip of the screwdriver to hold the screw on. Then I used two small magnets on the tip. Then I tried using a cow magnet on the neck of the tool. Nothing worked, and after each failure I'd have to waste five minutes trying to find the screw and the washer after I dropped them. It was beyond frustrating.

Luckily, at 10:15 AM, it was time to get to get cleaned up and to take Charlotte to the Center Grove Orchard (more on this later). I needed a break. I was starting to go a little crazy.

I hate to leave an unsettled problem behind, but I also knew I needed to give this problem some time to breathe. I spent a lot of my free time at the orchard thinking about my screwdriver problem, and on the hayrack ride the solution came to me. I needed to tape the screw to the screwdriver!

Why hadn't I thought of this before? The trick is to get the screw started, and then I could pull the driver and its tape free if I lost contact with the screw head's slot.

I ended up using a screwdriver from my cheapo set of "precision" screwdrivers from the Dollar Store. I make fun of these screwdrivers, but I can't tell you how many times they have saved my bacon.

Here's the angle I needed to get the screw seated. I don't think another screwdriver would have fit.

Once again, thanks Dollar Store! 

It's hard to see, that was the problem after all, but here's the bottom brush in place.

Whew, seven hours later (well, five and a half of those hours were spent thinking), and I'm done! I don't think I'll have to do that job again for another 30, 000 miles (aka: never).

And best of all, my "to do" list from July 2012 is finally complete!

Found Them!

"Mom! I found the comics!"