My car is going in for it’s annual check this Saturday. I took it down for Erol to give it a thorough check over and do any necessary repairs. It cost me two hundred and thirty five lira but if it gets through first time it will be worth it. I was never a great one for administrative things but dealing with officialdom these days just wears me out. Everything seems to take forever and I shudder at the thought of it. Just one thing I’ve got to do myself, the connector for the back lights is a bit dodgy and occasionally they don’t work properly. I’ll take it apart, clean it up and tighten the connections.
The new marina is coming along well. Shells of buildings are ready for finishing, the main breakwater is done and bouys are marking the anchorage points for the pontoons.
It looks like it will make a big difference to Kas and probably bring in a lot more tourists. I hope it’s a success in every way.
This time of year my thoughts turn to smartening the place up after the wild weather of the winter. I’m making plans to do a lot more to the projects I’ve already started and hopefully I’ll get them finished this year. I’ve decided to do a bit to each of them each day. If I’m lucky that will mean things get done without too many injuries this year. I’ve had a lot of small injuries in the last couple of years that stopped me working to best effect so finally in my life I’m learning from my mistakes! Only took 61 years!
I have a small solar panel for charging batteries. Around this time of year I start thinking about using my scooter instead of the car so while the car was in Erol’s garage for two days I connected up the panel to my scooter battery and let it charge up. It worked well but when I tried to start it petrol came pouring out from underneath the fairing. A rubber hose had perished. It’s not like it was when I was a lad, then there was one pipe from the tank to the carburettor and replacing it was simple. On this scooter there are about five pipes and they go to strange little valves and things, you’ve also got to remove all the plastic fairing and stuff to get at it. A two minute job that takes an hour and a half. I called in at a motor accessory shop in Kas to get a new piece of pipe and after being sent to three different places I managed to get some. It was the wrong size and an astronomical price and when I got it home I couldn’t use it for the purpose intended. I managed to use one of the other pipes and the new one substituted for the one I cannibalised. Hope you followed that, the upshot is that I fixed the problem and I’m now using the scooter. It’s cheaper to run too so that makes me feel good.
I stopped at the corner in Ağullu a couple of weeks ago where a guy sells fruit and veg most days. While buying some of it I saw another guy selling jackets and I bought one that seemed as though it would be windproof. I wore it today on the scooter and it turned out to be an excellent buy, I’m very pleased with it. Of course it has a fake badge on it, Lacoste might object but I can say that even if it didn’t come from their factory they should be proud of it bearing their name. Not every fake is crap quality.
This is a photo of a very dear friend of mine called Rachel. She is American and lives in Houston, Texas.
Rachel is a professional restorer and conservator of ceramics and glass and if anybody out there needs help in this regard I can thoroughly recommend her. Her work is of the highest standard which is probably why she does work for museums. This is a link to her website. Every year there is an event in Houston called the Valley Lodge Trail Ride where groups of folk with horses ride in from outlying districts to the Rodeo Parade in Houston. Rachel’s group travel from Brookshire to Houston, seventy one miles on horseback looking like they’re headed for a roundup, this is so cool and I wish I could do it, and is she cute in that hat or what? Yeeehaaah, you go girl!
Social networking is a phenomenon that I’d managed to avoid to a large extent. Recently though a few people have been bending my ear and inviting me to join various sites so much that I felt I was being churlish in not wanting to. Consequently a few weeks ago I joined Facebook and have been amazed by all the friends I’ve connected with. It’s been very nice to see and link up with them but I’m still not particularly happy about joining it. Maybe it’s that I don’t really ‘get’ it. It seems that you have to be at your computer for a large part of your day to tell everybody what you are doing, what you have done, what you are going to do and comment on other people’s plans and achievements. Well I’m not usually in front of my computer that long and would rather write about what I have done and leave it at that. I’ll give it a try and see if I feel any benefit or get warm fluffy feelings about it but quite honestly I wonder if I’ll still be interested in it in three or four months time. I might get used to it though.
Cukurbagli's Blog 
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