Android 365: Day Fifty-Seven

This barn... actually it's more of a house, anyways... it's right outside of Lawrence, KS on HWY 59. It was worthy of making it on Day 57. Dang it! I should have made it Day 59 to go along with the HWY!

Nate (Motorola Droid X)

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Android 365: Day Fifty-Six

Meagan, Liam, and I went for a run down by Clinton Lake this afternoon. We had a great time. I stopped and snapped these of the prairie grass along the way. Oh, and one of a small water tunnel.

Nate (Motorola Droid X)

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.9

Android 365: Day Fifty-Five

I didn't forget about or miss yesterday. I actually took yesterday's photos after doing some track work (running sprints on the track) in the morning. I attempted to upload them all day yesterday and they would never post. Finally about 10pm I looked more into it and blogger was down for some reason. It remained down through this morning and into this afternoon. So, finally I was able to post these!

Nate (Motorola Droid X)

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.9

Android 365: Day Fifty-Four

I was waiting around today to try and get pictures of the storm that was going to be rolling through. I wanted to get some lightning photos, but not a whole lot has shown up yet and I didn't want to wait around forever to post tonight. So, then I was hoping to stop some raindrops hitting the porch, but couldn't get it. These are option #3 for the evening. I like the lines and the reflections. Frame worthy? Probably not, but not terrible.

Nate (Motorola Droid X)

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8

Android 365: Day Fifty-Three

On my way home from the store today, I decided to take a detour down towards Clinton Lake to see if I could find today's Android Pic. There's a little outlet where the overflow runs down and it's pretty cool and usually attracts some fishermen. So, I figured there'd be something interesting down there. As I got closer, I noticed this really weird looking car. At first I thought, "Hey that must be the Google Streets car" but it didn't look at all what I figured it would look like, so I dismissed that thought. Then as I approached it, I was RIGHT! I've always wondered what they looked like and now here I was face to grill with one. The guy driving it (Tim) was cleaning the lenses of the umpteen cameras mounted on top. We talked for a while then I asked if I could take a photo of the car. It was fun, I'm glad I ran into him.

The rest of these photos are the stairs going down to the outlet.

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Android 365: Day Fifty-Two

Have you heard that song by Jack Johnson? Pictures of People Taking Pictures.

Pictures of people taking
Pictures of people taking
Pictures of people taking
Pictures of people taking

(Sounds like a difficult song, eh?)

Anyways, there's more words and I just bought that CD, so I was inspired to take pictures of people... maybe somewhere in there someone else is taking pictures of people.

Nate (Motorola Droid X)

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8

Android 365: Day Fifty-One

Just had a rather interesting occurrence a few hours ago. Meagan, Liam, and I were driving home in our 4Runner. I know everyone's heard about the Toyota stuck throttle issues and well, it happened to us. I still wouldn't trade this thing for a Honda Pilot or Jeep, I really like the 4Runner. In my case it was purely a mechanical issue.

I had set the cruise at 75 and a bit later I realized I was going 80. I tried to cancel the cruise and nothing happened. Hit the brakes, nothin', still cruising at 80 without my foot on the gas. Then I turned the cruise OFF, still nothing. At this point I began to realize something wasn't right. I removed the fuse panel inside and began to look for the cruise control fuse. Couldn't find it. Still going 80 and haven't yet told Meagan anything was wrong. So, I then politely asked if she could get the owners manual and try to locate the Cruise Control fuse. Which prompted the question, "What's going on?" So, I explained it and she got a little scared (panicky as I later found out) but I couldn't tell at the time. There wasn't a cruise control fuse to be found inside the car.

At this point, I didn't know it was a mechanical issue. That's why we were looking for a fuse. I thought it had just malfunctioned and I wanted to disable it by removing the power. So, now the goal was to stop the car safely while trying to keep the engine from over revving. I'd depress the brakes and slow us to 60 or so, it wasn't easy, then I let up and it'd speed back up to 80. I shifted it into neutral to see if it would cancel the cruise. It didn't. The engine quickly revved to over 5000 rpm. This is when I realized it must be a mechanical problem and I was just going to have to get it to a slow/safe enough speed and then kill the engine and come to a nice controlled stop.

I could have at any point just shifted it to neutral and slowed to a stop. However, I was trying to save the engine as well.

So, I commenced stopping it the only way that was left. I applied the brakes and muscled it down to below 20. It wasn't happy to be slowing down, it was shaking quite a bit. Side note: I need to replace my rotors. It was actually shaking quite a bit. We got to below 20 and I turned the key to ACC and shifted it to Neutral. The engine shut off and I continued to apply the brakes and pulled the e-brake to come to a complete stop.

I hopped out and opened the hood to figure out what went wrong. That's when I discovered the linkage was physically stuck. I unstuck it and checked a few other things prior to starting it up again. It started fine and we made it home safely. Once home, I sprayed the linkage with lubricant to keep it from happening again. I'm also going to call the dealer in the morning to see if they'll do anything about it.

Yeah, pretty crazy huh?

Anyways, here's the photos for today.

Nate (Motorola Droid X)

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8