Working Without A Parka - Finally!

Beautiful day yesterday - just what a Spring day should be. Temps were right around 70 degrees, blue sky with some nice white clouds, perfect. I spent the majority of the day picking things off the to-do list, including bolting the brackets I made on to the panniers. I went with the Plasti Dip to cover them. Menard's only had red in stock. I would have preferred black but on the plus side, I can tell in an instant which brackets are on the panniers - bicycle or motorcycle. They mount up nicely on the Himalayan and with a couple of coats of the Plasti Dip they shouldn't scratch the tank guards on the bike.

Cuzzin Rickie and I will be heading to Kansas in a few weeks. My Ford doesn't have much room behind the seat like my Dodge did so I needed to figure out where we could stow our luggage on the trip. Surly brought this tool box down to clutter up my barn a few years back. It had some casters bolted on to one end and the factory locks have been ripped out but it does have a hasp mounted on each side to lock it up. The box is just a bit too deep to clear the bicycle carrier I've got in the bed so I cut a 1x4 to raise it up enough to do the trick. I painted the board both to preserve it and to make it a little less noticeable. The "J" bolts for mounting it were inside the box so the whole operation went pretty smooth. I don't know how water-tight this thing is but we can wrap our luggage in a plastic bag and we should be golden. If I want to remove it, shouldn't take more than about five minutes.

The negatives from the roll of film I shot over the weekend came out looking good. This is Fuji Acros 100 film. I had read some good things about the film so I bought a five pack last time I ordered film and chemicals. I went online to see about the developing times and I found the developing info and the suggested exposures at the Fuji website but I also discovered this film has been discontinued. It was pretty cloudy the other day when we were out, so I shot most of these at 60th @ f5.6. The negs look like they'll be easy to print - contrast and the exposures look good. It's supposed to have a fine grain, so they should make nice enlargements. These aren't newspaper photos. Don't need a grainy faced young lady. I need to see how I'm fixed for chemicals and if good, maybe print a couple of these over the weekend. My darkroom is only dark after the sun goes down, so I always pick a time to print when I can stay up late.

I still have a bit more to put away after cleaning out my locker at the college. I had a ton of stuff in there - welding helmets, cutting shields, ear muffs, gloves, inspection tools, hand tools and my lesson plans and hand outs, etc. Also some material for a couple of jobs I was working on. I got most of it put away and organized. All of it, other than the inspection tools, is extra stuff I don't really need. I already had duplicates of everything at home. Maybe get the grandsons set up with a welding kit each.