October 30th

Cosmos, the cuy (meat guinea pig), has been at UC Davis for the weekend.  He had his foot injured in an accident at his regular vet, and has been fighting an infection since then.  Vic asked me to talk to the doctor from UC Davis, as she wanted my opinion.  He has an antibiotic resistant infection in the only foot he doesn't have bad arthritis in, and they've been giving him injections of antibiotics twice a day.  He's obese, because he's a food breed, and is designed to get fat, quickly, so the possibility of amputating his foot is a problem because he'll just stop moving entirely.  They were talking about debriding the infection out of his foot, and at the same time taking a culture so they can figure out if whatever's eating one of the bones in there is the infection or cancer.  At this point, we decided to call it a day, as this would be a risky proposition in a young regular guinea pig - in a 4.5 year old cuy, it's very unlikely that he'll survive the surgery and the post-treatment (regular bandage changes and antibiotic injections - possibly for months).  We figure he had about a year of life left (we were originally told cuys lived 3 years, but as time goes by, more and more are getting better health care, so the estimate now is 5-6 years), and it seemed wrong for his to be miserable for a quarter of it, assuming everything went well.  We've donated the body so they can figure out what happened here.

October 28th

I went out to the airport and met Chris and Ken - after lunch, Chris and I went for a short flight together before he headed back to Placerville.  It was OK, I guess, but several fires in the area meant the visibility was crap and everything smells of burning.

October 27th

After pottering around in the house all morning, I went to the airfield and finished installing the strobe light on the mast.  I also replaced the blown fuse, and then took the plane out for a flight.  The annual is due at the end of the month, so I'm trying to get some flying in before I have to stop and do maintenance.

October 24th

I found that the DRZ is still leaking gas into the engine, so that suggests that the float O ring also needs replacing.  Joy.  I'll just order a whole carb rebuild kit and be done with it. Hopefully.

October 21st

I pottered around the house for most of the morning - I've put the DRZ back together while I wait for the oil change kits to arrive, hopefully that'll be early next week.  I went to the airfield and got the new mast strobe figured out, but managed to blow a little tiny fuse doing that.  After that, I took the plane out and did some circuits, then some other practice manoeuvres - I've been thinking my speed control sucks recently :o)

October 20th

I started the day cooking pancakes at the LRAA display day (for the last time this year - we expect the weather to suck from here on out).  I'd taken the Magni out, and Randy brought his M-16, and Ken brought his M-24 out and parked next to me.  After we'd packed everything away, I took Jim up for a quick flight, then took Randy's wife up to fly over Folsom Lake (he doesn't have his license yet).  That's 2 people off my list of people who want to fly - I don't think I'm keeping up with additions to the list at the moment :o)

October 17th

The new fuel tap for the DRZ arrived, so I installed that and left the tank with some gas in it to make sure it isn't leaking.  The oil change kits haven't shipped yet :o(