Happy Halloween! Here's a classic image of Mike and Pete from 1996. These two would hide in the bushes and scare the pants off the neighborhood kids.  Really miss you Pete, I hope you're having fun scaring little kids tonight somewhere.

After last winter's major wind storms and painfully long power outages, I bought a tri-fuel generator to "be prepared" for the next blackout. Beside gasoline, the generator runs on propane and natural gas. I thought it would be simple to get a matching natural gas disconnect for it and just pop it onto the quick disconnect I have for the BBQ. But of course nothing is that simple. The QD on the BBQ is no longer made, or at least I can't find anyplace that sells it as the store I bought the BBQ from has long since gone out of business.  I thought about adding another natural gas tap close to the garage, but that seems to be more work (read $$) than I want to spend this year. While talking to a friend of ours who is a pipe fitter, she said it could be done, but you need to drain the whole house, tap into the main, re-pressure test for some amount of time before you can recharge the lines.  Meh, sounds like a project for next summer.  I don't use propane so that's not much of an option either.  So I have a couple of gas cans filled and added gas stabilizer in case we need to run the generator for a while.  

A few days ago we had some good winds, around 20mph with gusts to 40mph+, and lost power for a couple of hours. Good thing I had the generator - NOT. Michael and I were at work, Michelle doesn't know how to start it, we didn't really have the extension cords ready to protect the refrigerators so it sat cold in the garage. Ugh!  I left work early, picked up a couple of long cords and headed home. By the time I got home the power was back on. No harm this time, but the fragile power grid that surrounds our neighborhood reminded us just how unstable it can be during moderate weather.

Not again! So I bought a generator transfer switch and after watching the included video and reading most of the instructions, decided it was easy enough to do myself.  Like everything I do, it took a couple of tries and some special mods to make it work my way. I wanted to flush mount in the wall and hide the wires, but thanks to my shitty builder there's a water pipe that run right through the middle of the wall where the power panel is.  So surface mounting was the other option without re-wiring the switch which I was not going to try since all the wires in the kit are nicely labeled on the insulation sheathing.

So I mounted the box to the wall, added the armor conduit and of course I couldn't flex it enough without covering part of the power panel. Ugh! You're supposed to mount the switch box parallel to the bottom of the power panel, but I wanted it higher for convenience.  Off it comes, and I remount it four inches to the left to accommodate the limited flexibility and now it routes ok.  I cut a small hole in the wall below the panel, knock out the knock-out in the bottom of the panel and realize I've knocked out one size too big. Damn It.  I route the wire bundle up anyway and start connecting the circuits. It's now 5pm and getting dark fast. I want this done so I don't have to finish it tomorrow. In under an hour I finished wiring up 6 circuits including the furnace, both refrigerators and the hall lights. I still have 4 circuits available in the switch but I don't need to use them at this point. There are 2 circuits in the power panel that are AFCI circuits for the bedrooms I'd like to connect, but I need to figure out how to connect those up first. I'm sure I can Google the answers, but not now.  If I need emergency backup power, I'm covered and will be able to stay warm and out of the dark for a few days. 

Let the winds be damned, just don't drop a tree on my house.

I added a couple of upgrades for the BMW, my touring bike and winter bike. With the end of daylight savings time around the corner and the days getting colder I decided to add some running lights and built-in heat controller for my Gerbing electric liner.

I added the permanent controller to the left trim panel near the dash. At first it mounted right up and looked good, until I realized the big circuit board behind the know would hit the inside of the turn signal when reassemble. So I ended up drilling a second hole to mount it further up and covered the first hole with a stick on thermometer. Time to scour eBay for someone selling an extra trim piece to replace the first on I screwed up.

Next, I added a set of PIAA 1100X Sport Running Lights purchased from Pirate's Lair to light up the street once it gets dark before I leave work. The lights mounted up ok, but there was like a mile of cable they give you to connect everything up. Seeings as how I mounted a full fuse box up front last winter, I didn't need to all the cable but I was reluctant to cut it too much in case I want to remove the kit when I sell the bike something in the future.

Here's how they look all mounted up.

and here's how they look lit up. note they're quite adjusted yet so one seems bright then the other. I'll fix that up soon.

I should be giving these a trial run soon, but I'm looking forward to the benefits already.

The owner of a local Mexican food joint knows I'm from Boston and likes to taunt me with the power and dynasty of his beloved Yankees. Well the Yankees were thoroughly trounced by Cleveland in the American League Divisional Series while the Red Sox handily defeated the Angels in a clean sweep.  As a man of honor, he congratulated me on my teams' victory and paid for my lunch today.

To Craig from OOBA TOOBA's, you're a class act. Thanks for lunch!