The past few days I have been doing my annual clean up and maintenance on my outdoor gear. Part of that is deciding what to do with some of that stuff.

What are you doing?

Taking Care of the Gear – I

For example, my Kamado Joe grill, the side shelves are a bit worn. They are made from bamboo and were finished with a factory something. Last year I sanded them down and put several coats of a poly varnish on them.

They held up for a while, but they need to be refinished again!? Maybe this year I will replace the bamboo with cedar and see how that holds up. I need to wait until it gets a bit warmer outside. Today, my unheated garage is forecasted to reach a high of about 30 degrees. A bit chilly to do any painting.

I have a stack of really nice cherry wood I need to finish cutting down into smaller pieces for the Kamado Joe. I smoked two pork tenderloins with a cilantro rub last weekend and they were awesome. I got this really nice stack of cherry from sister and her husband, — THANKS again! I have it all nicely arranged next to my fishing kayak trailer.

Speaking of the kayak trailer, that is in decent shape, — nothing to do there at the moment.

Spent a lot of time going through the fishing tackle box. I am planning a camping trip here in a few weeks and deciding to swap out some stuff. I will probably repeat this a few more times after seeing what the weather will be like.

Then I wiped off the garage dust from the rods. I don’t know where this stuff comes from? The fishing line looks good, I had replaced it all just before our October camping and fishing trip down on the James River.

The fly rods all got a nice coating of paraffin wax on the ferrules. This helps to keep them fitting together nicely. It also helps keep them from coming loose and breaking when casting. I had cleaned all of the fly lines the last time I used them, so they still looked good.

I have a number of the Pflueger Medalist fly reels. In my opinion, they are the ideal fly reel. They are inexpensive and very easy to maintain. I have a bunch of the 1494 and 1494 1/2 sizes for my 6 weight rods. It was a sad day when I learned that Pflueger stopped selling them.

I have one Medalist that is made in the USA, the rest of them are made in China.

I understand they might be coming back? No doubt they will be different and cost a lot more!

I have a big batch of jerky going today, I had been out for a while. The local Walmart had a good price on thin cut sirloin, to include a few that were getting close to the best by dates. So I have 8 dryer trays all filled with some soon to be tasty teriyaki jerky for doing stuff outside.

As always, too much to do and not enough time to do it. The dogs are ready for their walk and we all need to get out and stretch our legs a bit, smell a few things, and just enjoy being outside. Looking forward to the warmer weather!!