And now some news that is much easier to take than it would have been a month ago. Our washing machine started to show signs of having chosen some other path in life, like being not-a-washing-machine. The clothes weren't being fully spun dry, for example, and then we started getting a couple loads where it doesn't seem like they were spun or agitated at all. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger found a load where she could prove water never touched some of the outfit and so we put in a call to the appliance guy. Also took some bundles of stuff to the formerly-Sunshine-Laundromat. (This included getting our nie big rabbit rug for the living room washed for the first time ever, a process that I was terrified would destroy the thing. Nope, although it was a little hard to squeeze the thing into the largest washer and the largest dryer they had.)
The appliance repair guy --- the same guy who repaired our dryer vent three or more years ago; neither of us remembered the other party but he remembered the job --- examined the washer and gave the sad verdict. Our machine, which has to date to no later than 1984 because it's Harvest Gold and the appliance industry discontinued that color that year, is a lump of rusted metal. The immediate problem was that the very worn fan belt had a particularly worn spot up against the engine's axle, so it couldn't get started. That's so easy a thing to fix the guy didn't even charge. But even if we were to replace the fan belt with a new, we wouldn't get the agitation or spinning we should because the transmission fluid is more sludge than lubricant. And even if we replaced all the grease, we wouldn't get the spinning we should because the sliders, on which the engine is supposed to moveback and forth, are completely rusted out. Fixing everything else would give us a machine that shook itself apart. In short, we need a new washer.
Fortunately it's not critical. The machine is limping along, providing clothes clean enough to go into work in. If we get the belt stuck in the same position again I know what to do to tug it free and get us another couple weeks of okay-ness. Obviously, what we would like is a new washer that will give forty-plus years of basically uncomplaining operation, but, as the appliance guy said our choices are to get someone else's used junk or brand-new cheaply-made junk.
Also the question of just how we're going to get a new washing machine home. I'm very curious whether the Prius hatchback will be wide enough, or if we'll have to arrange delivery by some more complicated method.
And now, back to Cedar Point and our Saturday at Halloweekends, when we expected the place to be packed and it was but somehow wasn't as bad as we expected.
Gate onto the beach outside the Hotel Breakers. In the summer it'd be packed; in October, well, you can't see the cold in this photograph but you can probably infer it.
A flock of seagulls all copying each other in how they sit.
Looking up the beach towards Magnum (the roller coaster in the background), and ... I guess they're volleyball nets set up in the middle foreground there?
And looking down toward Windseeker (the huge tower there), plus the Giant Whee and you can just barely make out in the background GateKeeper.
A glance back at the Hotel Breakers, with the octagonal section there part of the oldest part of the much-rebuilt structure.
A sign I believe is new, for the Boardwalk Cruisers that I believe are to start operating next season, when the new boardwalk's built up. Their version of the Atlantic City Rolling Chairs.
Trivia: Ron Evans's transearth-coast EVA lasted one hour, 5 minutes, 44 seconds. It was televised to Earth. Source: Apollo By The Numbers, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029.
Currently Reading: King of All Balloons: The Adventurous Life of James Sadler, the First English Aeronaut, Mark Davies.
