The Ultimate Answer to Kings

This is a great day! Neighbor D finally found a horse.

They had to put his old horse Bud down a few months ago, planning to immediately replace him but finding that for one reason or another good riding horses are currently scarce on the market. D&L have gone through numerous failed prospects, but apparently they’ve finally found their horse because they’re off to the Big City Far Away to pick him up. This means:

1) I need to feed their one current horse at mid-day, and…

2) The range is free to use without fear of noise complaints!

TB had me out earlier than I really wanted to be, insisting that the cattle were running wild and he needed an immediate Jeep ride to get them under control. So I did my chores early, including setting up some not-permanent targets…

But D&L aren’t the only neighbors and 6:30 in the blessed AM is early to make a lot of noise even for neighbors who don’t usually complain. So even though it’s nice and cool now and won’t be later, I’m gonna have another cup and wait a couple of hours. Hopefully the cattle won’t knock’em down in the meantime.

The reason the pipe is a funny color is that it used to be painted black.

The heat not only made the paint and cement go away, it warped the pipe.

I’ve never seen that before. And I’m not at all confident the CPVC I brought home yesterday would survive inside the box any better than regular PVC did. Whoever suggested that the only way around this is copper with silver solder might really be right – and since that’s not going to happen, I’m going to change things up just a little: The black hose seems to be okay so far, so I’m going to pull the outlet end of the hose out of the box and connect it to the CPVC outside. That should keep the in-box heat from melting the cement.

Any time I run out of some needed thing it tends to leave a mark. Several years ago the crappy little town nearest where I live ran out of matches. Seriously. In winter. Just when I was about out of them myself.

It’s not likely to happen again…

…unless something happens to the ludicrous stack of matchboxes in the pantry. 🙂 Weird thing is I don’t even use them for lighting the woodstove anymore – last two winters running I’ve used a propane torch – and the thought of running low still bugs me.

BTW if you ever decide to stock up on kitchen matches don’t get the “strike anywhere” kind unless you really plan to strike them on something besides the box. They cost twice as much and need so much more pressure to light than the “strike on box” kind that the box won’t survive till it’s empty.

Something I kept noticing whenever anybody used the permanent targets at the range with any centerfire long gun…

…they only got one shot at that 4-inch one because every time it was hit it flipped right around and landed on top of the rack. Kept meaning to fix that…

…and yesterday I finally remembered to take it off the rack and bring it home. Cut a couple of rings off the chain, and…

…now that’s probably fixed.

Went to town this morning…

…and I think a state law might have changed because all of a sudden most of the stores had these “You gotta wear a mask or you can’t come in” signs. Nobody actually tried to prevent me from coming in but yeah, some Karen standing behind me at the convenience store actually gave me a hard time about it. I was polite … you know, by a certain measure of polite. I might need to send away for a fright mask.

Got a nice surprise at the post office…

Big Brother found and rehabbed a nice old Milwaukee Sawzall for me! That’s going to come much in handy in a couple of months when it starts to cool off signaling woodcutting season, because my cheap (and only 2 years old) Craftsman corded saw is giving up the ghost. Thanks, BB!

Now it’s hot…

And I’m going to finish my lunch, open a beer and find myself a shady spot to hope for a breeze.

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Okay, that water heater thing is getting scary.

I was doing some yard work around noon, sunny day in the mid-nineties, when I saw that the water heater was dripping off the powershed roof again. Shouldn’t have been, the pressure to it has been turned off for about a full day and I bled the pressure when I turned it off.

I opened the faucet, and…

…well, okay. That doesn’t show up so well but it’d be more than your hand is worth to stick it under that faucet because after blowing out half a gallon of hot water it started venting steam at impressive pressure for just inflating a long garden hose.

The water in the bucket wasn’t record hot, but fairly hot.

Pity I already baked bread and washed dishes. 🙂

My plan was to start simple and improve/revise in increments but I’m starting to think my current design is too simple to work. Water lying static inside black hose in the summer sun just keeps getting hotter and hotter until something fails.

Happened to be at my workbench when hot water started pouring down off the powershed roof…

…and to be honest I’m surprised it took this long. PVC cement melted, I’m guessing. That water gets hot when the sun is really shining. Need to find a different sort of plumbing to connect to the hoses.

I’m no wiser as to exactly what broke on the ebike than I was yesterday, but I have a surprising resolution. I mentioned yesterday that the bike is under warranty – I don’t know off the top of my head what the terms of the warranty are, no doubt they’re on the website – and it turns out the bike is really under warranty.

Like, “there’s definitely an intermittent open circuit somewhere in this wide array of related parts, so we’re just going to send you one of all those parts. Sorry about not including a technician to attach them.”

Wow. Okay. So here’s me, saying nice things about Rad Power Bikes customer service.

While still mentioning for the benefit of anyone interested that the bike did develop a fatal fault at mile 316 of bumpy roads.

Anyway…

As it happens I already have all those parts loose from the frame. The only way to comfortably get at the harness connectors which are wrapped rather tightly around the crank is to unbolt the battery tray and the charge controller so they’re already hanging loose. I won’t be re-installing them, of course.

Instead I’ll wait patiently for their replacements. And since I’m the aforementioned frickin’ hermit etc., the logistics of that are kind of clunky. It might be a bikeless week or three, but I can now at least confidently await resolution.

It’s been a lackluster summer for hummingbirds, until the last few days. Since then a whole flock of Rufus moved in, and now it’s a little scary sometimes.

Until this week that feeder needed filling every four or five days. Now I’m afraid to leave for more than a few hours lest they get mad.

Fortunately they’re not known for their learning ability. Because if they find out I’m a white male…

Those big fancy targets Ian brought up at the end of May didn’t really attract me because they’re also heavy targets and a real hassle to transport and set up. But last weekend he brought something a little more down-to earth…

There are six of them – I only need five, of course – and in the wash you don’t need a hammer to mount the stands. Scatter them around at various ranges and they’re perfect pistol practice.

Trouble is, they make a big rattly mess in the back of the Jeep…

…so this morning before it got hot I took some measurements, cut up some of the last of my old cabin siding, and made them a thing.

And now they fit neatly in the back of the Jeep! 🙂

Leaving water in the hot water bucket has an add-on benefit…

How long can you tread water, parasite?

Of course this has always been obvious, which is why bucket traps are common in the desert. But as I learned during my winter rodent jihad of five or so years ago, what kills rodents must first attract rodents – and we never run out of rodents to attract. In the end it just doesn’t pay.

But since I kept finding droppings in the nearly-dry bucket I decided to see how Nijinsky here liked a not-dry bucket.

For the benefit of anyone thinking of getting one, the RadRover broke this week. Oh – physically it’s fine but electrically it’s an ex-ebike. This came as terrible news but the cause wasn’t hard to find: an open circuit shook loose between the battery and the charge controller. I figured that out through the highly scientific method of wiggling wires until something changed.

The RadRover is under warranty, which in my situation is both good and bad news. I know approximately where the problem is but getting too intrusive in finding exactly where the problem is can void warranties, especially since I think the intermittent is inside the charge controller case. So I’ve been corresponding with Rad Power Bikes. This didn’t begin promisingly:

Hey there, thanks for writing! This robot response is just to confirm that your request has been received, and a human support agent will get back to you as soon as we’re able.

Due to COVID-19 changing the way that so many think about transportation, we’ve seen an unprecedented increase in the demand for our products resulting in a higher volume of inquiries than we ever expected. Because of this, please note that it will take longer to get back to you than normal,…

…but let it be said that a “human support agent” did get back to me in the fullness of time and has been pretty johnny on the spot about communication since then. He had me check the obvious – “loose connector?” and then wanted a video of the problem.

This is probably my generation’s equivalent of the VCR that always flashes 12:00: The only reason I know how to upload photographs is because I’m a blogger. I never “just send a video.” I literally don’t know how.

Then there’s the small matter of my being an actual frickin’ hermit in the frickin’ desert…

Rad Power Bikes has some sort of account with Dropbox. Don’t ask me to explain it, you’re far more likely to already know than I am. But the Human Support Agent sent me a link and asked me to put a video file there.

It took me two tries to figure out how, even though the instructions actually were almost as simple as “drag files here.” Then it took another two tries and into the wee hours of the night/morning for the file to actually upload without timing out. For a one minute video.

But, good news of a sort. I woke to find…

So that happened. How much good it will do is, as they say, yet to be seen.

Now I have to quick go do something useful before it gets hot or starts raining again, those being the current choices.

With only intermittent full sun…

…I ran water into a bucket and onto the thermocouple wire…

…with visible steam coming out of the bucket and a temperature reading almost 30 degrees higher than the highest ever recorded.

Yeah – the cover had a dramatic effect.

Neighbor S very carefully drove the glass cover for the heat exchanger to the Lair this morning. And between the two of us…

…we got it ten feet in the air and mounted on the box.

So now I’ll be monitoring temperature over the next couple of days, as different sky conditions ensue. Right now it’s pretty cloudy though not completely overcast and normally the water would be no more than tepid, especially with breeze. Now the breeze should stop being a factor, and hopefully the inside of the box will capture and hold the heat. So in an hour or so I’ll break out that thermometer Big Brother sent me and we’ll see what happens.

I can’t show you what Torso Boy did with that herd last Monday. But it turns out I can show you some of the effect of what he did…

ETA: In honor of his having found something useful to do, I have officially added Torso Boy to the TUAK sidebar.

The speculation has ended: Ol’ Remus, of the long-running Woodpile Report, has died. No more updates, alas.

We saw it on the way home and decided Monsoon is Here, which always means race the storm because even if it isn’t over your home you don’t know how long it’s been lingering over a dry riverbed, or the plateau that feeds the canyons that feed the dry riverbed. In short, hurry or you might not get home.

This early in the season it’s not a very realistic worry, but that’s what a lot of people have told themselves just minutes before settling down to wait hours for the wash to stop flowing.

As it is the washes aren’t flowing and likely won’t, but I did get wet going home from D&L’s. Not bad, it’s just … well, Murphy’s having a big laugh at my expense this mid-day. See, when I left the Lair for the Monday morning water run, I absently locked the doorknob instead of the deadbolt. I never lock the doorknob, since it’s about at secure as a hook-and-eye. I so never lock the doorknob that I don’t even carry a key for the doorknob.

Normally this would be no problem, barely an inconvenience, since it’s so easy for even the stiff old one-legged man to climb through the front bedroom window.

Yep – first rain of the season. Big, fat cold drops – about a million of them, making so much noise they almost drowned out Murphy’s happy laughter as the soaked old man stood in the downpour, took out the screen, removed the fan, reached inside for the sash prop, tied back the curtains and grumbled his way through the window…

There’s a fourth one already in the Jeep. I/we keep a dispenser working at Ian’s place, for a sort of way station, and it went empty yesterday as well. And…

…yesterday afternoon I ended up going back to Ian’s place a second time to refill this gallon bottle I thought would tide me over till this morning. Used up the first gallon boiling Torso Boy’s chicken and rice.

It’s been hot. I’m very far from actually out of drinking water, of course: There are several full older bottles at the back of Ian’s Cave. But the Lair’s only so big and I don’t like them proliferating here – and I never went through my whole 9-gallon ready supply in one week before.

…it felt hotter yesterday because I was out in the sun longer. Today just feels like July, so, y’know, of course it’s hot. No need to be a pussy about it. Yesterday felt like an ordeal by sun, even though by now it had clouded up and cooled off a bit.

Now all I need is the glass, which to be safe is a 2-man job.

This should exactly double the output, which basically means I can get 1.5 big buckets of hot water instead of 3/4 of one – and that’s enough for dishwashing AND a bath any time the sun’s shining. Luxury!

Right now the temperature is dependent on both the sun and the wind, so I’m very interested to see how much more dependable it gets when the cover’s on.

…with a few rifles to zero, his local ranges being closed. Not for any bullshit Covid shutdown, but for fire season.

Along with a couple of videos it was three hours in the sun on the hottest day so far this year. After he went home I went straight to the Lair’s “shower,” and then spent the rest of the day in the shade.

He always brings fun stuff, though. Early developmental rifles like the AR10, Spanish rifles, weird rifles, and of course his FAMAS…

Always good to see Ian. I can honestly say I knew him (long) before he was Gun Jesus.