The Ultimate Answer to Kings

No, not people with dirt on Hillary…

Tragic: Every Single Bump Stock In Nation Suddenly Lost In Boating Accident

It’s not clear why gun owners were taking their bump stocks boating. Some have theorized they were using them to fish, or just wanted to make sure they weren’t stolen why they were away. Whatever the case, it’s tragic that the bump stocks are now all at the bottom of lakes, rivers, and oceans from coast to coast.

So, problem solved, then. Bump stocks will no longer rampage through the helpless throngs of Las Vegas. Good show, everyone – now the ATF can go back to policing paperwork violations among high-dollar collectors.

D&L have space for about 50 haybales for their horses with 25 bales on each side of the bay, topping it off whenever one side or the other gets low. L broke her knee, taking her off the work crew, so D and I hit it this afternoon. He also brought me a bale of straw, which means I needed to transport that to Landlady’s place and then clean out all the old rotted straw and chicken shit. So naturally I went to get the Jeep trailer, only to find…

…that one of my BRAND NEW TRAILER TIRES WAS PANCAKE FLAT. Which was quite annoying.

I could have aired it back up on the trailer but that wouldn’t have helped me learn why/where it lost pressure in the first place. I figured on taking it off and bringing it back to the cabin but ran into a kind of amusing problem…

Picked the wrong place to put the jack. I was watching the tire, and began to wonder why it didn’t seem to be rising. Looked around and found the trailer tongue was moving instead. So I found a rock and a piece of driftwood that got flung out of the wash during that flood in August. Appears to have been used as a fencepost at some point. Anyway, that weight got the wheel off the ground without my needing to reposition the jack.

Tomorrow’s supposed to be a lot less busy and the weather no less pleasant. I’ll air up the tire and go over it with soapy water, try to figure out what went wrong and how bad it is. If it’s a problem with the bead, which is probable, I’ll need to take it back to the shop. But we need a dump run the next time Landlady is up, so if it’s a minor leak I’ll put the repair off till after that. Unless we picked up a nail the shop owes me a freebie.

“Dude. I’m going back inside now.”

It rained last night, and also overnight. Then the water on the porch floor froze. Also the water on the stairs. Also the water on the railings and handrail. I stepped outside at seven and slid all the way to the rail, happily keeping the rubber side down this time. Aaand went right the hell back inside. Laddie and I will talk walkies when the sun comes up – and possibly use the back door on the sunny side of the cabin. That’ll be entertaining – I’m pretty sure he doesn’t suspect that door even exists since I haven’t unbarred it since the end of building season.

It’s that time of year when I get to feed and tend to the various needs of chickens and they give me nothing back at all, not even eggs. So now I’m paying attention to the local price of commercially-produced eggs.

So tell me: What’s wrong with these pictures?

I eat a lot of eggs, they’re a major part of my diet. I came into that store with the intention of buying three dozen eggs. I appreciate being offered a choice as to how much I want to pay for the three dozen, I guess…

Boy, I was feeling rich when I went to town yesterday. By the time I was done replacing the (nearly new) rear shocks and a coolant hose on the Jeep, not so much. But the rules of synchronicity have always been that I don’t always get what I want but what I need usually comes around if I keep my eyes open. In this case, a cash windfall arrived a few hours before I learned I needed to spend more money on the Jeep. So I’m not bitching. The busted shock is fixed (I’ll get to the other one probably tomorrow if the weather holds) and a leaking coolant hose is replaced.

Somebody asked for a photo of what happened, and the above pic should illustrate it clearly enough. The tops of both shocks have shifted over (that apparently being what the shop manager meant about there being a problem with the bushings) and the one on the left then got torqued and broke right in two allowing the top of the shock to become the bottom of the shock, dragging on the ground.

I bought the February shocks online, basically the cheapest thing available and that may be what led to my having to buy them twice. No doubt they’d have worked okay on pavement but the Jeep sees pavement once in every two or three years. The new new ones are more expensive and at least appear more robust.

When I had the Jeep at the shop a couple of weeks ago the guy wanted to replace all four shocks because “the bushings are beat to shit.” I blew him off because I only put these shocks on in February.

Apparently the bushings are beat to shit. Nothing came loose, nothing was done wrong: This shock tore its upper mount right in half coming down the Bumpy Road yesterday. Both halves of the mount and the bushing are still attached to the Jeep.

This morning (I’m typing this before sunrise but posting it later so as not to step on the Care Package post) I hope to score some new bushings and mounts at the local auto parts store. If they don’t sell them, I’ll get new rear shocks. Speaking of care packages: FYI that statement wouldn’t be possible without green stamps sent very recently by Generous Readers.

Landlady came up yesterday after a fairly protracted absence and announced she had “a ton of packages,” which didn’t turn out to be quite literally true…

But they were pretty heavy, because canned goods. I got two regular monthly care packages from Big Brother, and am now richer by a bunch of Spam and snackies and a couple of really nice long-sleeved t-shirts which will get a lot of use in the next few months…

…and a case of that nice canned bread we reviewed in the summer. I bake all my own bread and so usually save this for a treat, kind of like sweet bread. But there’s a couple of cans in the sick box, and it’s good to have a bunch squirreled away in case the flour supply dries up which it certainly could. I eat a lot of bread.

And to keep Zelda engaged with the blog…

…and a new mousetrap to try out and review! None of my other traps are doing any good right now, but I know there’s a bunch of rodents in the powershed so I think I’ll try this one out there first.

And Colorado Hermit had the Christmas spirit, for sure…

Canned meat! I love having canned meat around. And enough sugar snackies to ensure that the long morning walks continue, so that I may continue to fit into my second-hand jeans. 🙂

Private to CH: That Cabela’s gift card really did get used immediately. The synchronicity department called and said it was perfect almost to the dollar for a purchase of the “want but can live without and really shouldn’t spend money on” persuasion.

Landlady brought coffee…

I like a really dark roast and am still looking for a new favorite coffee after Trader Joes, the fascists, discontinued the House Blend I’ve been drinking for all this century. Why do they hate otherly-abled hermits of color? Ask yourself that. They go on about “fair trade” this and that but I think they’re all closet Trump voters. Anyway I’m looking forward to trying their French Roast of which there’s a can in the rotation but I have to wait to get to it. And while I don’t normally like Columbian Supremo because it’s kind of acidy to me the TJ CS isn’t bad. So she brought me a can of that.

Plus there were a bunch of green stamps, and some folks have been hitting the Paypal button lately, relieving any immediate anxiety about filling propane bottles. And that’s always a comfort in winter since propane expenses do go up in winter.

So thank you guys very much!

Okay, it’s 4:30 in the frickin’ AM and I’m staring at this screen with a zombie-like open-mouthed moronic expression but apparently just at this point in the day I can move some photographs around. I dunno: Something in atmospheric conditions for the past few days hates the thought of communications between a cell tower and a smartphone. Excuse me, the teapot is whistling and I really need coffee.

Okay, that’s done. Let’s try this.

(ahem) The Gulch’s Boot Hill got its fence yesterday! At last!

This stuff has been sitting in boxes on a flatbed trailer for quite a while. The project got pushed back two weeks because of weather cancelling Landlady’s last visit. Hey, it’s December. But yesterday was nice, lack of connectivity notwithstanding, and Landlady, S&L and myself got it done in a couple of hours.

And it came out quite well, really. It’s nice and square and the sides are straight. My only unique contribution was cutting off some juniper branches to make room, otherwise I just held stuff for other people who were actually constructive.

I was there, honest.

In the fullness of time I expect to spend quite a lot of time there. Starting a long long time from now.

…twice a day for five days. This won’t be the ordeal it was last time because numerous Jeep problems have been dealt with since then and it’s only five days. It gets old after a week or so, plus there are gasoline issues.

I do love the scenery, though…

At least I don’t have to climb the mesa on foot twice a day. If all goes well.

Given the temperature, I had to get up there fairly early this morning if only to break ice. We had a cold front come through yesterday afternoon and the wind was really something. Last night got cold, today’s not supposed to warm up much, and then tonight is supposed to be colder. Private to J&B:

As I work my way through a layer of 2X6 and 2X8 scrap lumber in the woodshed, needing to be split before it’s of any use in my little woodstove, I’m getting use from that spruce round you brought me all the way from Montana and thinking fond thoughts.

Also thinking of defense, since the mesa isn’t in the best neighborhood for dogs and it’s all the way across some fairly wild country. Thinking of our discussion a few days ago, I dug out a crossdraw/pancake holster kindly sent by a Generous Reader a few years ago…

I find it a little cumbersome for everyday wear but it does work better for under the coat. So that was a pretty good suggestion.

I know I’ve missed a day or two’s posting, but the weather’s been unsettled and my connection went all to shit. It’s not real bad this minute but still slow, it’s kind of an off-and-on winter thing. I have a bunch of elk pics I simply couldn’t upload yesterday or the day before.

They shat all over my yard. That’s just rude.

I’ve spent hours trying to make gifs from all the stuff on the game camera but for some probably weather-related reason the connection has been shit all day and apparently it isn’t going to improve today. But get a load of this guy…

Wow, it took nearly an hour just to upload one picture. Not a lot of Youtube in my immediate future, I think.

Maybe more tomorrow, can’t say.

Occurred to me a few days ago while the weather was still crap that it really didn’t look like I was going to get back to woodcutting any time very soon…

…which meant it was way past time to put that nice Honda generator to bed for the winter, to ensure it would run come the building season. I’m really bad about preaching “mothball it, never store it with gas in it” and then ignoring my own advice. But this is such a nice little machine, it would be very stupid to hurt it by blowing off fifteen minutes’ work.

So I ran it to make sure it was … you know, still working. And then I poured out the fuel, ran it dry till it died, then opened the valve on the bottom of the carb bowl to drain out every bit of fuel. Checked the oil and air cleaner…

…put it back in the powershed and covered it with that nice dust cover BB sent me. Now I’m sure it’ll be good come Spring – or mid-winter, if I get a craving for freshly cut firewood. Which I probably won’t.

Speaking of the powershed…

I make it a point to never buy things frivolously or impulsively. But we’ve already established that I’m not always the best at taking my own advice, and I do like funny metal signs. So I ended up with this – and then it ended up cluttering the cabin till I decided what to do with it. Finally screwed it to the powershed door.

BTW: The sign is level. Unfortunately that only points out that the door is not.

Neither do I. The older I get, the more I have to fight the urge to ridicule keyboard kommandos who think “prepping” is all about guns and gear and a case of MREs. I try to suppress the urge because I despise hypocrisy in all its forms and especially when I’m the hypocrite. And the truth is I was a proto-keyboard kommando: I was into “guns and gear” prepping long before keyboards – and preppers – became so ubiquitous. Yes! I was a faithful follower of Father Mel Tappan. I wore out my copy of Survival Guns in a way that would have made a Christian quite proud if it were his Bible. I was … a dumbass. And I kept it up for far longer than was wise.

These days, of course, in some ways I’m safer than you. I don’t worry about college kids rioting, or terrorism, or street crime, or even much government. I carry guns mostly just because I like guns. I’d be sufficiently armed against the worst animals likely to threaten me with just a good handgun and a .22. There’s not a lot of danger from people here.

Normally. Exceptions are possible. There’s at least one group nearby in the west, and scattered lowlifes farther away in the east, that will be nobody’s friend if bad times come. And – probably unlike you – I do know one man who lived not three miles from this spot, a smelly hermit like myself, who was murdered in his bed at night. Continue reading →

This is not quite infinite or perpetual motion as implied, since of course you’ll need to stop the generator now and then to feed the cat. Also you’ll need a soundproof enclosure to drown out the anguished yowls. But other than that I see no flaw in the logic.

The picture is also non-specific as to where the shaft is supposed to go. The implication of the picture wouldn’t work out well, so I guess you’ll need to use your imagination.

It’s nine days to the solstice. I took this picture at about quarter to nine…

…and if Landlady’s batteries were under any evening load at all this picture would not be acceptable. In fact this only happens in the month or so before and after the solstice. But if the house were occupied…

I would suggest that this tree be sent to meet Juniper Jesus. Or at least severely trimmed. Landlady prefers a tree there to a stump, so there it stays. But come the day the house is occupied, that rule may need to be revised on the first winter it becomes a problem. Shadows are one good reason to position solar panels as high as possible – of course there are also good reasons to keep them low, like snow removal. Either way: Location, location, location.

There has to be a way to persuade him to stop this.

I really thought we were past it, it hasn’t happened in months. He arrived with a bloody sore on the same paw from obsessive licking: After a few weeks he let it heal, then promptly licked a second one right next to the first. That one healed, and all seemed well. I figured it was a stress thing, and that it tapered off because he had accepted his new home. He’s a nervous, serious little dog but he doesn’t seem at all unhappy. Then just now he took it up again. Always the same paw, but I don’t get the impression there’s anything wrong with the paw. He doesn’t favor it at all, he just gets into this obsessive licking mode and that’s where he always goes. Don’t know what to do about it.

The sky cleared after a few cloudy days, and all the moisture froze out of the atmosphere overnight…

Should have anticipated it and parked the Jeep where early sun would thaw it out. Now I doubt I could even get the door open, but that’s okay. It’s not as cold as the frost makes it look, and lately I’ve been back to walking to morning chores and not even using the Jeep very much. I should leave the hood open to discourage rats nesting on the engine. In fact I should get into that habit, I think: A neighbor does it and it seems to have solved her problem.

I certainly meant to. But it was probably a money thing.

When I lived in the RV I scrounged every 30-pound propane bottle that came my way. I think I topped out at six at one point. But some of them were quite elderly and the valves aren’t forever. You can get the valves replaced but (surprise!) it costs slightly more than the cost of a replacement bottle.

Anyway attrition brought me down to four, which was still more than enough when the only propane draw was the cookstove. The moment I lit the pilot on the bedroom heater, it became an issue. I bought one last winter and intended to get another but for some reason probably involving poverty never got around to it. Now I’ve hit the mark where every single empty bottle doesn’t become an immediate action item.

Hand hurt all the way home. 🙂

And that was all that was on the card for 3 days, too. I know they’re around, even saw a doe yesterday, but they haven’t been coming to the waterer or at least the camera doesn’t think they have.

Winter has come to the Gulch, and I have settled into winter mode which is just plain slothful. I do my daily chores and then I sit in my chair and read. This does not make for scintillating TUAK posting.

Normally it’s been my habit to fill in the gaps with snarking at the news I read on the Internet. But lately I’ve been almost completely indifferent toward it all. I surf the news a little bit, but none of it seems worth spending any mental bandwidth on. So those filler posts haven’t been happening, and sometimes I’m down to struggling for a single post a day.

Sorry about that – wish I could say I anticipate it changing soon.

Woke in the middle of the night to the sound of heavy rain on the bedroom’s metal roof. Kind of comforting, since I’m convinced that the roof is tight and the rain won’t come in and wreck my wallboard or grow mold in my insulation. Plus a rainy night means heavy cloud cover which means the morning won’t be very cold – and it wasn’t, the outside temp was high thirties and the inside was in the low fifties.

I used to have a rule, back in the unheatable RV trailer that served as the interim lair: I heated with propane, which cost money I didn’t have and needed to be hauled from town which back then was often catch-as-catch-can, plus propane was also needed for cooking. I can battle cold with a few layers of sweatshirts but I can’t cook beans that way. So the rule was: Never run the heat when the indoor temperature starts with the number 5. And seldom when it starts with 4, in actual fact.

Of course the perception of heat and cold is often very subjective. This morning the thermometer said 51^o which just isn’t very cold, but I felt cold. Still it wasn’t likely to get much colder, so for a couple of hours I resisted lighting the woodstove. I’ve largely shaken off the chimney fire phobia caused by the Great Stovepipe Fire of 2012 and can run the woodstove without a lot of tension but I can’t say even now that I get any pleasure from it. If I don’t need it to keep from shivering, I don’t use it. And anyway, thanks to Patreon and regular gifts from Big Brother and dependable weekly access to town the propane situation is a lot less problematic than it used to be. I can sit in my bedroom reading chair with the temp in the low sixties without feeling completely dissolute.

This morning was different: Maybe it was the unfamiliar humidity but I just couldn’t get warm. So I’m putting on my vest over my hoodie, and then I dig out my half-gloves, and finally around the time Laddie started clamoring for a proper walkie around seven I said “screw it” and lit the fire I had laid the night before. And now the cabin temperature is climbing – and I felt a little silly for even going to the bother of toughing through a chilly morning in the first place, when ten years ago I’d have beaten myself up for wasting fuel.

It’s kind of a thing I’m working through, I guess. My physical situation is much more comfortable than it was ten years ago, when at the same time my physical condition is not as good. I’ve got old injuries bothering me for the first time since I (thought I had) healed from them in my 20’s, new injuries that apparently don’t plan to ever entirely heal, and my back pain shows signs of wanting to become chronic. I can’t just shrug stuff off as easily as I could as little as ten years ago. Fortunately I have more resources than I did then, and I need to relax a little more about using them.

Longtime readers know that problems with the water system situated on the top of the ridge between Ian’s place and my own are not unknown. We’ve had fittings freeze and break, an unburied manifold freeze and just seize everything up, flexible pipe kinks, one-way valve failure, and out-and-out pump failure.

The problem with all of these is that if someone is not in the habit of checking the water level in that big beautiful water tank…

…the first clue of a problem is water ceasing to flow through the pipes to the kitchen sink, yard spigot, and all-important Genuine Flush Toilet. That’s bad.

Which is why last winter, when a fault developed with the float switch inside the tank, I didn’t get all worked up. I tried to fix it in the spring by replacing the float switch itself, and when that didn’t work I decided, “screw it.” Because over the previous winter I had finally, out of necessity, developed the useful habit of checking the water level every week or so. By backing off the tech a level and manually flipping a switch whenever the level got low enough to justify running the pump, thus forcing me to periodically check the tank…

I gained a useful several weeks of warning when something – inevitably – went wrong. It’s a 2500 gallon tank. I don’t have a shower – I don’t actually use that much water, and especially not in winter.

I say “inevitable” because it really is. That one time the pump failed, which is the one thing I can’t fix on my own, an internal diaphragm was attacked and gradually defeated by the chemicals in our very hard well water. That situation has not been corrected, and as far as I know can’t be corrected. Therefore the pump will fail again. I took two precautions against that day: I revised the inside of the pumphouse to allow me to pull the pump out myself, rather than recruiting Ian or Neighbor D as with the last two times the pump needed pulling out of the casing…

…and I begged a spare pump from Ian. See, I can pull the pump but I can’t repair it: I have to wait till Landlady comes up, send it to Ian, wait for him to send it to Sun Pumps, wait for them to repair and return it, then wait for Landlady to come back here. Last time it took like six weeks, as I recall. Ian, smart guy that he is, saw the wisdom of that and now I know exactly where there’s a safely-stored and clearly-labeled box containing a brand new 12v Sun Pump.

The existing pump is still humming away down there, but I’m beginning to fear it’s not actually pumping water…

…because I’ve been running the pump but the water level is either not rising or is taking its dear sweet time. I’m getting a little worried – but not very worried, because precautions!