In 1975 I wanted to buy a lifetime fixed blade knife.
A lifetime knife is one that will last a lifetime, not one with a lifetime warranty. Lifetime warranties do you no good if the company isn’t around in 20 or 50 years.
My Buck knife will probably outlive me. It will be bequeathed in my last will and testament.
Continue reading 50 Year Review: Buck Model 121 Fisherman Knife
I can’t sew.
What I can do is replace a button or do a minor seam repair that lasts but looks awful.
I have no idea how a sewing machine works.
However, I can repair most of my backpacking gear, which usually requires a large needle and robust thread. I can do these repairs with the Speedy Stitcher that I bought decades ago.
So here I was, driving down a two-lane highway fifty miles from the nearest town, no cell phone coverage, and temperatures in triple digits. An ominous message appears on the dash of our 2020 Ford F-250 Super Duty:
WARNING: TRAILER WIRING FAULT
I pull off the roadway onto the shoulder that is a mix of sand and gravel. Turn off the ignition key. Walking to the back of the truck, I see the trailer wiring connector to the truck is in place. I disconnect it and then plug it back in, making sure it is completed seated and secure. Back in the truck I start the engine and watch the dash as the truck comes to life again:
WARNING: TRAILER WIRING FAULT
These are the steps I took to diagnose the problem, do a quick temporary fix, and then a permanent repair once we got back home.
Before our last camping trip, I did my usual pre-trip check on our trailer. I noticed that our tires were almost 5 years old! As I wrote back in 2020 in my article (When Should You Replace Your Trailer Tires?), I like to replace trailer tires every 3-4 years, depending on how much we drive and how worn out they are. Since we live and travel in the desert Southwest, often on two-lane roads dozens of miles from any town and lacking cell phone coverage, we need to be extra careful with our tires.
The tires had about 12,000 miles on them and only 5/32 of an inch of tread left. That’s way less than the new tread depth on these Goodyear Endurance trailer tires, which is 8/32 of an inch. Most states have a law that says tires need to be replaced when the tread depth is 2/32 of an inch. So, for this tire, it has 6/32 of an inch usable tire tread, which means it was about 50% worn out.
We replaced the tires before leaving on the trip.
I was inclined not to replace them before this trip, but Joyce recommended replacement.
A few days ago we returned home after a month of camping. The first two weeks were spent in California’s Sequoia National Forest. Then a stint in the Mojave Desert where an unseasonably cooling trend made things really nice for us.
The highlight of this trip is the best fishing Joyce has ever experienced. This was planned, so to speak.