Wednesday, October 24, 2018

No Fishing This Weekend

Engine Winterize Screen for the Evinrude
Time is starting to run out on Soft water fishing as deer hunting is now 2 weeks away.  Earlier in the week I visited with my new Cardiologist, Dr. Sigurdsson  With the 2 ss's in his last name I was sure he was of true Swedish origin however we got that cleared up pretty fast.  He is originally from Iceland, and a good doctor he was.  We discussed my aortic replacement surgery back in 2010 and the discussion that was had at that time with the surgeon regarding a possible aortic valve issue, which according to the surgeon at the time, was not an issue back then  Well, Dr. Sigurdsson heard something he didn't like and ordered an Echocardiogram last Friday afternoon.  Of course they don't tell you anything other than the doctor has to review.  On Sunday, while watching the game at my neighbor Tim's I got a message on the MyChart app, from the Doctor, he was working on Sunday morning!  Basically I'm going to need a valve job sometime in the near future.  The obvious symptoms are shortness of breath,  and here I thought it was because I am getting fat and old.  The next step is to followup with my regular doctor and discuss my options but at least it will not require open heart surgery again.  Apparently aortic valves can now be replace via arthroscopic surgery techniques where they get into your leg artery then push a catheter with a new valve up to your heart then deploy it.  Although it doesn't sound fun, it's probably much better than the alternative.  All of this explains why I have a hard time doing anything these days that involves some physical work.  Sunday was going to be the ideal day to take the Ranger out and do an end of the season run as well, winterize it.  The boat is powered by the new generation Evinrude Etec which is a two stroke and has oil injection.  Not feeling too much like doing anything Plan B was to put muffs on the water intake and start the engine outside my garage.  The Evinrude has a very nice system for winterizing.  There is a screen on the main engine display that is on the dash, one find this screen, then while the engine is running, press the red Winterize Engine square and voila!  The engine idle speeds up to warm the engine up before injecting more oil than normal into the system, which essentially fogs the engine.  Pretty slick if you ask me!  I changed the lower unit oil this summer so that is good to go as well.  All that's left is to vacuum it and put everything back in its place before the cold sets in.  Of course this marks the end of the open water fishing for Minnesota this year, with the current weather, ice fishing isn't too far behind!

New 14 Bushel collection system with 54 inch dethatching rake on front
Staying with the "getting old and lazy" theme, Fall is here and the leaves are dropping like crazy from
the trees.  Last spring I sold my old Lawn tractor system to my good friend Greg Kimblom.  Along with the tractor went the dethatcher/bagger system, the 47 inch snow blower attachment, and the soft cab for the winter.  This meant that the newer model John Deere lawn tractor needed to be completely reoutfitted for the fall and winter.  As stated early, not having the energy to install it myself I simply hauled the tractor to Rogers, MN to the big JD dealer there and had them install the first of what will help me to minimize my work come this fall and winter!  My wife found a contact that sells year old management units, similar to what we used to do when Lyn worked for Polaris, we could buy a new snowmobile and ATV every year, keep it for a set period of time then sell it for enough to pay for the next years new model.  This spring we bought a 2017 John Deere 734 27.5hp, all wheel steer, fully hydrostatic drive, with a shaft driven 60" mowing deck deck.  The old one had a 54 inch deck and I really wasn't sure of the 60" but it turned out pretty good as well it doesn't take as long to move the entire 2 acres that I do....Duh!.  This unit can really vacuum up the leaves as it has a separate blower attached to the mower deck pulley, and with the amount of leaves, it really fills up fast.  After deer hunting the tractor will go back in to get a new 54 inch snow blower as well as a new soft sided cab.  The new blower will be 7 inches wider than the old one, that should be nice if it moves the snow a quickly.  Maybe we will get lucky, buy all this stuff then it doesn't snow.  Trust me, I would not mind that a bit!  Maybe we will have to go back to this post next March to see how we did.


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