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Somewhere in my schooling, I learned that the process that uses the most energy is phase change. So to take a lot of heat out of something, put water on it and the boiling will take up the heat from the object, leaving the object cooler.

Fast forward some years and I was about to get a pan out of the oven and a hot pad was not readily available. But a towel was right nearby.

My brain recalled the bit of trivia about how to consume a large amount of heat and it came up with the plan of using a dish towel that was wet.

The pan in the oven should have been about 350 degrees, which is about the 212 for boiling water, so all the water in the dish towel should boil off and drop the temperature of the dish to something that can be handled with a dish towel instead of a hot pad.

I was glad I grabbed it cautiously because I was able to set it right back on the oven rack instead of dropping it on the floor when my hands felt the sensation of searing heat.

I think two things happened:
1. My hands were grabbing the wet dish towel, surrounding the part that touched the hot pan. So all the steam that was produced had to go past my skin. And:
2. Thin wet dish towels are a good conductor of heat. So even if my plan had reduced the temperature of the pan to 211, that meant I was essentially grabbing a 211-degree pan with my bare hands.

Not quite the best plan, but I didn’t know that at the time. Now I do, and now you do too.

Our dryer stopped working last week. It would heat things up but it didn’t spin anymore, so the clothes just turned from a cold wet lump to a warm wet lump. As head of the household, it was my duty to repair it.

I haven’t fixed a dryer before, but no time like the present to learn. At best it saves us $100+ for a service call, at worst it delays the service call and annoys the technician who would have to undo my mistakes in addition to fixing the original problem.

I got the top off the dryer fairly easily – two screws. The side was a little trickier, but once I got that out of the way it was obvious what the problem was because the broken drive belt was right there. I pulled it out and went to the hardware store. Five dollars later, I was home with a new belt. I took the old one into the store and compared it to the new one to make sure it was the right length before I bought it.

Getting the belt on was an adventure. I couldn’t just wrap it around the drum from the side, so I had to take off the front of the dryer. With 3 sides out of 6 off the dryer, it gets rather wobbly. I slipped the belt over the drum and then put the front back on. The belt was around the drum and I found the motor easily, with its pulley open so the belt just slid on there too.

Side note: if you ever have to take a dryer apart for anything, take your Shop-vac with you and clean out all the lint that has found its way inside the dryer.

Side side note: I don’t know that I would have messed with a gas dryer, as tinkering doesn’t always go well with flammable gasses. Our dryer is electric, which is easy to work around because you just unplug it.

Back to the story…

It took me a few minutes to figure out how to get the belt around the tensioner pulley too. Tip: the tensioner is going to make the belt really really tight, so you’ll have to push the tensioner down more than you expect in order to get the belt on it.

I couldn’t test it before putting the dryer back together, as the drum won’t stay in place without the front panel secured, which needs the side panel fastened back on. At least I was able to leave the top off. When that was accomplished, I plugged in the dryer and turned it on. It worked! First time, too. The drum was spinning smoothly and it was blowing hot air. So I put the top back on, buttoned everything down, and put the wet laundry that had been patiently waiting in the washer into the dryer. I turned the dryer back on and it didn’t spin.

I took the top back off and spun the dryer. I was heavy but it moved. I took the laundry out and turned it on and it spun. The belt was looser than I remembered, so I took the side panel off and saw the tensioner pulley was caught and wasn’t able to pull the belt all the way tight. I freed the pulley and the belt was tight again, so I put the side back on the dryer and tried it. It worked fine, so I put the top back on and started it, only to stop it because it was making a horrible scraping sound.

Ugh.

I did not want to take the dryer apart again, so I took the top off and tried to hear where the sound was coming from. Looking down at the front of the tub while it was spinning, I noticed the dryer wasn’t square. So I pushed on the diagonals to square it up, relative to the drum. That made the scraping sound stop, so I put the top back on, which made the scraping sound start up again. I took the top back off and maneuvered the dryer until the scraping stopped.

So now if you stop by our house and see our dryer, you’ll notice the top is resting on the dryer but not fastened down, with a large-ish gap between the front of the top and the rest of the dryer. Please don’t try to help fix it by pushing down on it, as then I’ll just have to fix it again.

Continued from last week

Day 8

This was a travel day. A few hours through the UP and then the upper LP. A lot of 2-lane highways and not much of the freeways, which made for some scenery. I was doing most of the driving, so I didn’t get to take many photos of the scenery.

Except for this one: our rest stop before the Mackinac Bridge:

Followed closely by this one:

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Continued from last week

Day 6

We had a typical breakfast that we would have at home – cereal and bagels and stuff like that. And then we were off on our day of adventure in the greater Marquette area. First up: Presque Isle.

Fun fact: Presque Isle was designed by the same guy who designed New York City’s Central Park. Maybe “designed” is the wrong word for it – more like “conserved”.

Our first stop was to the mini lighthouse. I think officially it is a beacon, not a lighthouse. But either way, the walk out there was something that the boys liked. It was somewhat harrowing, but the lake was rather calm so it could have been worse.

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Continued from last week

Day 3

Our hosts offered us the use of their jetski. But not just any jetski – it was a stand-up jetski.

For those of you who have ridden a jetski: it’s not like a normal jetski. The difference is like between driving a car and driving a motorcycle. It requires a lot more balance and a lot of concentration. With a normal jetski you can slow down or stop and not have to do anything. With a stand-up jetski you must balance all the time. Imagine riding a bike or motorcycle and not being able to put your feet down, or a kickstand either. Because there’s not ground under you.

And the handlebar moves up and down when you don’t want it to. That was the hardest part for me – I wasn’t keeping the handlebar down all the way when I was starting and I couldn’t steer very well. Anyway, here’s some guy on a stand-up jetski:

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Day 1

After last year’s excursion to the west coast, we took a shorter vacation this year, staying in the Midwest.

First off, we drove to Green Bay, WI. I had fond memories of going to tour Lambeau Field, so I wanted my kids to experience that. Actually, I have only one memory of the tour, but I do remember going when I was a kid. So day 1 of vacation was driving to Green Bay and then going on the official tour of the stadium.

First up: the statues. We parked near the statues out front. One of Curly Lambeau

And then one of Vince Lombardi:

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If I asked “What is the largest mountain?” you would probably answer “Mt. Everest”.

There is an unambiguous meaning concerning what makes mountains big: it’s the height.

If I asked “What is the biggest lake?” you would probably look it up and find there are two answers because there are two meanings concerning what makes a lake big: area or volume.

My vote is for area.

What is the purpose of a lake?
To provide lakefront property? That requires shoreline, which is a function of area.
To run boats and jetskis? That requires area.
To provide scenic views and relaxing sunsets? No one cares about the volume of the lake for those.
To give waterfowl room to live? They care about the area.
To hold water for humans to use? That’s not a lake, that’s a reservoir.

Part of the problem is that we don’t have a word to describe area like we do for height. You can ask what the tallest mountain is. That is specifically for height. How do you ask what the lake is with the largest surface area? What is the area-est lake? No, you ask “What is the biggest lake?” Same thing for volume. What is the hold-mostest lake? No, you ask “What is the biggest lake?”

Any ideas for a word that means “largest surface area”?
Any ideas for a word that means “largest volume”?

And no, you are not allowed to suggest “loudest” as the answer for that last question.