Categories
Ham Radio Mississippi running

A big week

[Thursday: 3.4 miles; today: 5 miles]

We had kind of a big week last week.

Tuesday we drove over to Tuscaloosa and picked up a full size Ford van which I purchased from the University of Alabama surplus online auction. My Ford F-150 pickup seems like it is slowly going downhill. The last big blow was hitting that deer last fall. That messed up a lot of the plastic parts in the front. Anyway, I’d been looking and this van came up with low mileage and a good price so I bid on it and won.

I got that home, then I had to do a bit of work on the instrument cluster. In Ford trucks of that era the instrument cluster has some computerized smarts in the odometer/speedometer board which help the transmission know when to shift. The van’s board has some problem so the odometer/speedometer don’t work and the transmission doesn’t shift smoothly. I swapped in the instrument cluster from the pickup and it solved the shifting problem. I have ordered some electronic parts to attempt to repair the van’s board.

So we got the van running well in time to pack it full of ham radio stuff and drive it down to Jackson on Friday afternoon for the annual hamfest where we unloaded onto and under my assigned table and covered it all with a tarp. Then we went to the Mississippi Blues Marathon Expo where my wife picked up her volunteer shirt; then later to a pizza place for a dinner with a bunch of friendly Mississippi Coffee Runners (a facebook group).

We spent the night at the Marriot in Jackson. In the morning I took her to her assigned corner to manage the traffic and cheer on the runners in the marathon and half-marathon while I went on to the hamfest.

At the hamfest I sold a good lot of the stuff I took. I was very pleased to get things distributed to willing buyers.

In the afternoon I packed up the remains, also a couple of things I had purchased, and went back to her spot and picked her up. From there we went to visit another online friend and see his pet pig. And from there we went on home.