The recent rock slide is still causing excitement around here. The main highway to the flatlands was closed all day today for more dynamite blasting of the rocks above.



Fortunately the Barney Fifes in town are letting the fishermen through the road blocks to get down here and fish. I had to wait until 5 pm to go get my mail. No idea if they got it all done today, but I'm sure they want to do a good job before the holiday weekend.

Mr. Troutbend emailed that the spring on the garage door in Las Vegas broke and it was too heavy (180 pounds) for him to lift without that assist.



The repair guy said that those springs only last 7 years or so, depending on how many times the door is opened - sometimes as short as only a couple of years, and when they go out it usually damages the door so much the whole thing has to be replaced. The new galvanized, 10 year warranty spring cost $230 installed.

This is a broken one:


But in the course of the man looking at the door, Mr. Tbend needed to move the car, and the electronic key didn't work. So he ran in the house and got the second electronic key, and it didn't work, either. Strange that both key batteries would wear out at the same time, but apparently that is what happened.

In case you don't have one, these are the new ignition keys for cars where you don't insert an actual key, you just have the key with you and push a start button like you see on a computer to start the car.

Fortunately he remembered that he could hold the key fob up to the start button and that would work. I would not have remembered, and this failure would have happened to me at the worst possible time, like out in the middle of Wyoming hundreds of miles from a town. Don't ask what I would be doing stopping in the middle of Wyoming.

At the time he was more concerned that the garage door guy thought he was a fool because he couldn't start his own car in his garage. Better him than me.