In the US of A

Well I am back across the pond for a while. It is time for the anual pilgramage to Alberquerque for the international balloon fiesta. As usual I have stopped off in Illinois first to meet up with my friend Ray and then drive the 1200 miles south-west.

This year has been a little different as on the 20th he was married in Jamaica to his fiencee Karen. A couple of days after I arrived they had a wedding reception / farewell party at Capt'n Ron's down on the Illinois river at Creve Coeur. It was a great party and I managed to catch up with people I have not seen for a few years as well at the other halves of guys that I meet every year.

Ray and his bride Karen with a friend, Chris

I will post some more pictures later once we get back from the balloon trip.

Today, Monday, we were running around getting things sorted before heading off to New Mexico in the morning. One task we had to complete was to remove the drivers seat from Ray's little red car, a mercedes SLK500, as the stitching had come apart and a repair was needed. This proved to be almost impossible. After asking the upholsterer how best to remove it we were told that there would probably be 4 bolts holding it down to the body of the car. In fact we found 6. After removing 5 with little bother the last one refused to unscrew. Instead the thread tore and all we managed to do was turn the bolt without it coming out. We tried all the usual things, sticking a screwdriver under the head to lift it, swearing and cussing the bloody thing, drilling the head once we had successfully managed to completely bugger the head. In the end we ground down the head completely and will need to drill out the bolt at a later date.

Unfortunately this did not allow us to remove the seat. Stumped we took it to the upholsterer, who had removed it the last time some repairs were needed, only to find that there were two screws holding the seat cushion to the seat mounting and it popped out in about 2 minutes flat. Oh did we feel stupid after sweating for over 2 hours.