Jonny

My understanding is that WD-40 is kerosene-based, which makes it less suitable for water-displacement and light lubrication when there is a chance that it will come in contact with rubber, plastics and other synthetics. LPS is "non-reactive" with virtually anything. WD-40 can be good stuff, but given a choice I will always choose LPS.

Parkerization was a process developed for military firearms and the abuse they take. A sporting firearm is never subjected to the same abuse, at least in the hands of a hunter who has some pride in his craft. Just a simple point --- that being... a gun with a blued finish will stand up to decades of use (including cold, wet duck-hunting weather) and still have a perfect finish IF you treat the gun well. The so-called hi-durability finishes are IMO for those who are too lazy to take good care of their guns, and they do not match the classic look of a fine firearm with blued metal. Dry your gun and wipe it with an oily rag after every use or handling, even if all you got on it were fingerprints; never store the gun in a damp gun case; swab the barrel with solvent and a lightly oiled rag after firing. I would also highly recommend LPS-1 spray for the action. It drives out moisture, prevents rust and does NOT build up any residue (it's even suitable for fine electronics). Also, any excess will drip out. It's a little hard to find but a can will last you for years. WD-40 and other products do NOT hold a candle to LPS. BONUS - LPS is great for fishing reels and other uses as well. It will not degrade plastics and synthetics.

It's pretty warm down here in Washington DC at the moment.

Remember to whom the remark was addressed - the members of the G20, many of whom DO have a history of colonialism, so I doubt whether there are any semantic qualms involved in how they understood it. This is a non-issue, IMO.

The older Wingmasters did not necessarily have any checkering at all --- just a plain walnut stock. If the gun looks well-cared-for I wouldn't worry about firing it in the least. If the action cycles smoothly and locks up well when you push the pump slide forward (you can't pull it back without having pressed the trigger or the release), you're not going to have to worry about blowing it up. MAKE SURE that you are using only 2 3/4 inch shells if that is what is marked on the barrel. 3" shells will cause a constriction in the forcing cone at the front of the chamber and make firing the gun UNSAFE. Other than that, you should be good to go! I think you absolutely lucked out on this one. Happy hunting!

Great old photos! There's nothing left of the Meadow Inn docks now except some sections of rotten wood you wouldn't want to step on. There's also a rotten shack down by the shore. A couple of the cabins at the top of the steep slope have been refurbished as private homes, by the look of it. You can pass right by the place on the highway and not even know there was a thriving business there. The docks on the other side (in the background of your photo) are pretty well all gone too. My parents and I were launching from the steep launch right beside the highway in the 50's and early 60's to fish the Jocko Point and Goose Islands areas. My wife and I canoed up the river from the lake in the spring. The picture below is taken in the opposite direction from your photo. You can see the shack just above my wife's arm. Basically there's nothing else left there except muddy, overgrown riverbank.

Pointing out the obvious, but a gallon or two a minute is 60 to 120 gallons in an hour. That's a lot of water. Do you use a front-load washer, by the way? They use a ridiculously small amount of water compared to a top-load and, with all the wash for a young family, that's a consideration. Every little bit helps when you're up against it. I can feel for your problem. After our well was drilled to 440 feet (all the pipe they had), the water flow was small. We spent an anxious night wondering whether we had spent $10,000+ for a dry well. They next day they "hydro-fracked" the well and the flow was good and we breathed a sigh of relief. You can't run a modern household without a good supply of water. Please keep us posted on how it turns out, Ryan.

I'd heard about eggs from reading the odd sailing yarn, but not about bacon. I guess this was a tip for the vac-pac bacon we buy in stores? Was there something about oiling the shells of the eggs, besides turning them every day when unrefrigerated?

An 18th century wanna-be vegetarian. He must have been quite an oddity in his day!

Is that like de-natured alcohol?

Never heard it called that! There are Chinese restaurants in Northern Ontario (maybe that should be were, I don't know if they do it any more) where you would get an order of toast automatically included with your meal. I always thought that was strange. But toast for breakfast? You can't have a proper breakfast without toast! If I ever have a chance to try "Deep South" biscuits and gravy, I'll try that too. But I'll treat it like wine - sample it first and see if I approve of it to serve to my lady.

We live right beside lake Nipissing. My well was drilled about 50 feet from the shore and goes down 400 ft. (Still seems really weird to go that deep with a big lake sitting right beside!) The drilled well goes down through 130 feet of overburden before it hits bedrock (so there's 130 ft of 6" steel casing). Are there any drilled wells in your area that hit bedrock or is the overburden too thick? Most of the wells where I live go down 300+ feet and all of them penetrate the bedrock. Cost for a completely installed well, pump (down 300 ft), electrical circuits, etc. ---- $12,000. Not cheap, but we have excellent water.

Good info on inverters. I wanted to avoid those because they're so damned expensive!

Yeah, we'll have ham and eggs too for a breakfast, at home. Pork breakfast sausages and eggs too, on occasion. Bisquits? (Is that how you spell it?). No, we always have toast with eggs. Maybe you mean the kind that's used for biscuits and gravy? We had that at a Best Western in Billings Montana a couple of years ago as part of their complimentary breakfast. Everything was familar to us except that. The old fella who did the breakfast buffet was proud of his biscuits and gravy so we tried some. Not bad, but gravy was an unusual thing to have at 7 AM. It was kind of a neutral colour and didn't seem to be a meat gravy. Something we have pretty regularly when camping is French toast, to use up some of the "aged" bread. That's also good with a side of breakfast meat.

In this age of airborne contaminants, I don't know if this is a good idea any more but your house sheds a lot of rainwater through its eavestroughing. Could that be diverted into your well or a cistern to "top up"? Used to be that rainwater was the purest you could get.

Ginger capsules from the Vitamin section of your pharmacy. Take a couple two hours before you go out. If I was really prone to the heaves I'd follow all the other advice as well.

I love quotes. The good ones are so good that the sense of them hits you right away. Your sig: "The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment." Will Rogers said it even better: "Never miss a good chance to shut up." But this is probably my favourite of his: There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading, the few who learn by observation, and the rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

Of course if your camping breakfast has to include a pork fix, here's the Canadian king... KLIK. And here's a guy who takes his mystery meat really seriously... http://forums.beyond.ca/showthread/t-187965.html But hey, those of us who eat hot dogs and bologna can't complain!

I just checked a regular vac-pac of bacon bought yesterday. It says "Keep Refrigerated" and the expiry is "Oc 29 2009". Let me know how you make out with your vac-pac kept in the pantry for 3 months.

Those are probably on a par with this:

Probably the best way to go. But the canned bacon I used to be able to get was all sliced. Just poured off the bit of liquid that was in the can and gave the bacon a quick rinse of water and it was good to go. It was not pre-cooked or smoked and cooked up just like regular bacon, and tasted like regular bacon, except for being slightly saltier. I got a kick out of the AV club review. If you're at home, there's really no reason to use canned bacon when you can keep the regular stuff in the fridge. Maybe that's why the canned bacon I was buying disappeared. It was handy for camping but probably little else. The "reviewers" seemed to forget, in judging appearance, that regular bacon is no real treat to handle and cook from raw either! Prize for the Best Comment goes to: —"It looks terrible—disturbingly precise and exact, like a child's plastic toy version of bacon, or like fruit roll-ups with bacon patterns printed on it. Unheated, it has almost no flavor. It's like cling-wrap with a little smoke scent on it."

OK, thanks Terry. Now I know what to look for in time for the 2010 season. --- I wonder how we're going to pronounce that --- "Two thousand ten" or "Twenty-ten"?

Yes, that looks like the kind of thing I need! So you're saying that in bewtween the charger and the winch there would still have to be a 12V battery?

The stuff I'm talking about was raw salted bacon, in strips rolled to fit the can. Each can would hold about 1/2 to 3/4 lb., I would guess. It was best to rinse it before throwing it into the pan. In your ration packs the bacon would have been pre-cooked?

You can be guaranteed that if there's something you really like and would keep on buying, eventually some corporate "bright light" will decide it should be discontinued.