The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Regular readers will recall me spending much of the late wet winter bitching about the mud on Laddie’s path, in the ashfield at the foot of the ridge. I thought caliche clay made the worst mud, but that was before I moved here and met volcanic ash.

In February I hauled in some flat rocks and tubs of sand from the wash. The rocks weren’t much help – the sand was, but bringing it in two tubs at a time took a lot of time and effort and spread it too thin.

Enter a stranger, who rode in from the west… Continue reading →

A number of commenters in the post below have chided me for not upgrading from the Taurus Tracker I started carrying about three (four?) and a half years ago.

And the truth is – I did. Late last year.

Regular readers might recall that last October I posted an article comparing my Tracker to a neighbor’s new-to-him S&W Model 69. My reaction to that pistol was positively inappropriate – it was like lusting after your neighbor’s wife. You just don’t do that ’cause it’s nothing but trouble, right?

I mean the 69 was exactly like the Tracker in every way – except better in every way. And the Tracker would have been perfect for me – light, easy to carry but good cartridge choice – if it were only … better in every way. It’s basically the difference between a range toy and a serious working gun.

Well – it turns out my neighbor really didn’t like his Model 69. It’s light for a .44 Magnum, he doesn’t reload, and you can only buy magnum ammo locally. You kind of have to be a recoil junky to like it*. And if your neighbor doesn’t really mind you lusting after his new pistol, well … one thing led to another. Trades ensued.

As with the Tracker, it really needed a better grip. Hogue makes two that fit the L-frame; a svelte one and a big ugly one that takes some of the pain out of the recoil. You see the one it has now.

But it did develop a mainspring problem. My theory is that its previous owner swapped in a lighter mainspring for a lighter trigger. Certainly somebody not a gunsmith took the sideplate off at some point because a couple of screws are chingered up slightly. It never was 100% with hard primers, though it worked fine on commercial ammo until this weekend. When I took the grip off I found that the tensioning screw had backed out, and it should be cranked all the way down and Locktited. So I have a heavier ‘duty’ spring coming.

As to why I didn’t mention it on the blog even though I was giddy as a schoolgirl at the time – I dunno. My weapons have been upgraded somewhat over the past few years and some private things should remain private. But not talking about the S&W, which I carry every day, may have been taking that policy to extremes.

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* It’s pleasant to shoot with .44 Special. But I can roll my own Specials and need to because they’re not sold locally. My neighbor was stuck with Magnum ammo only.

…that was before the Internet. He’d probably also approve of specialized online commerce.

I’ve marveled before on this blog at commercial websites dedicated to meeting very specialized needs, that seem to do good business. Often you can freely buy things online that are restricted (mostly senselessly) by state law. This weekend I discovered another, even more specialized, example.

You know what you don’t want to happen? You don’t want your favorite everyday carry handgun to completely crap the bed during a weekend with frickin’ Gun Jesus. That would be … embarrassing. And that’s exactly what my .44 did. It has always had a fraught relationship with the hard primers on reloads, but worked just fine with commercial ammo. This weekend I started getting light strikes on everything.

In some settings, “click” is the loudest noise there is.

An adjustment allowed me to slightly ameliorate the problem and rescue the situation somewhat. But it was definitely time to replace yet another mainspring – because that’s apparently going to be a running theme of my experience as a budding young revolver guy. The regular retail sites weren’t any help but Ian put the question out there to his Facebook crowd. Later he texted me a link to these guys. Wolff Gunsprings makes – you guessed it, gun springs and sells them online. Probably competitive shooters know all about them so I shouldn’t be embarrassed by never having heard of them – but waitaminit: Ian’s a competitive shooter and he didn’t know about’em either. Of course he’s likely to show up at a 2-gun match with an 1811 Elbonian matchlock repeater, so maybe that particular knowledge isn’t relevant to his specialty. 🙂

Somehow it seems I haven’t been getting notifications and there are probably people out there thinking I’m some kind of ingrate because I haven’t acknowledged you. I just got an email from TUAK’s unpaid CFO, who said…

So it occurred to me I haven’t looked at the PayPal account in a while. Yeah, you had $740 sitting in there…

And whoever you are, thanks a hell of a lot! I had $27 and some rolled coins to my name and was wondering about groceries.

(heh) and then as I typed the above paragraph I received an update…

…mostly Patreon from march/april/may but [Big Brother] sent like $200 a couple months back and there were a couple other donations. I’d forwarded all of the notifications to you (and you acknowledged so you’re good there)…

…so hopefully we’re good. 🙂

Haven’t slept well the past couple of nights for various reasons, so today when not driven by the usual necessary chores I just sort of hung out. Finally got around to baking bread, which I needed, …

…and that was pretty much it for being useful. Everything fine here but I haven’t said anything this weekend because there wasn’t anything to say. Did some more shooting yesterday morning and had a nice get-together at S&L’s in the evening but nothing I could think to write about it. Just sort of hanging around today.

We set up the target stage yesterday afternoon and tested the new hardware…

…and then spent a couple of hours in the sun shooting guns and video of guns. Fun! I’m in the wrong business; we went through more ammo in two hours than I do in two years.

Took some snapshots when I wasn’t working…

…and now the old man is ready for lunch and a sit. Hope to finish up in the morning when it’s still again.

…and it appears that tomorrow is gonna be kinda busy. Fun busy – Ian brought all the toys. Shooting guns and video all morning long. And probably also Saturday. I’ll report as I can.

Hit the ground running this morning, had a bunch of chores and started knocking them out early. I needed to go over to Landlady’s and drop some stuff off, and while there I borrowed her vacuum cleaner. The only other time I did that was in the middle of the day and I never really paid much attention to how the batteries were getting on through it. From earlier experience I knew it wouldn’t be nice, but it’s also short and not destructive and as long as the inverter doesn’t actually switch off it’s good.

You’re never going to keep up with Torso Boy’s uncanny shedding superpower without at least occasionally resorting to a vacuum cleaner.

For the record, quite a lot.

Before/after recovery:

During:

Actually it can go a bit lower than that, but it never threatened to dip below 12 volts. The inverter shuts itself off down around 11.7 or so.

So the lesson, I guess, is go ahead and use the vacuum but preferably in the late morning/early afternoon and in short sessions to allow the power to come back up in between. Nothing really surprising learned.

I tried to post the first part of this earlier this morning but couldn’t connect. Can’t wait to try that passive signal booster when it gets here; I’m motivated.

Yesterday was the first day it got hot enough that the porch served its core purpose; give Joel a comfy place to hang out while the inside of the cabin cools off.

But there’s always been a problem with that in the two previous summers: Just about the time you want to sit in the evening breeze, the sun comes around and blasts in your eyes.

I’ve had it in mind since last summer to make a sun shade that might hopefully cut the glare. Finally got around to it yesterday, using materials already at hand. It would either work fine as is, prove the concept but require different materials, or discredit the concept entirely.

And actually it seems to work just fine the way it is. So that happened, and I sat outside till nearly dark.

This morning Neighbor D and I had our third session with D&L’s tractor, trying to replace a leaky drain fitting on the engine block. Last time we determined that the only way to unscrew it around all the impediments was to send away for a metric crowfoot socket.

This morning, unfortunately, we succeeded in removing the leaky fitting.

🙁 Found the leak, too.

The block is nearly as chingered up as the fitting; I figure the threads will need to be drilled out and Heli-Coiled and we can’t do that in the driveway. So now they’re out their tractor until they find someplace they can trailer it to. Sometimes jobs don’t go just right and it’s nobody’s fault.

I’ve been waiting to see if the Prickly Pear were going to bloom this year, and it looks like the answer is yes and in a big way. Yesterday morning Landlady came over for coffee before heading back to the city and told me that one hidden under a juniper beside the path to the Lair was jumping the gun…

…and that sent me looking later at some bigger patches out in the sun; they’re budding like crazy but aren’t ready for the show yet.

Another sign of Spring, less welcome with every passing year it seems: My allergies are going nuts. Nose was streaming to an embarrassing degree as we set out on this morning’s water run…

…and after ten minutes in the truck’s AC it dried up entirely. Now I’m back out in the pollen-strewn breeze and it’s right back at it.

Whatever: I need to get some range time before the wind picks up this afternoon and make sure a couple of things are sighted in because I got some news yesterday: Ian’s coming to the Gulch next weekend to shoot video, and he’s bringing toys! I gather maybe the range he normally uses is still closed, or maybe I misunderstood that, but either way he’ll need somebody to help futz with cameras and he’s bringing fancier targets than we usually see up here – as well as probably a Forgotten Weapon or six. Good times!

Maybe we should just put the Babylon Bee in charge?

Get a load of this kind gift from Generous Reader MM:

This is the same guy who, hearing last year that I was low on 550 cord, sent a 400 yard spool.

🙂 So now I’m in good shape for drill bits, too.

Elk tracks have sometimes been a problem for me because they’re not unlike certain cattle tracks, which come in all sizes and a variety of shapes. Elk and mule deer are easy to tell apart; elk and cattle, not always so much. But yesterday morning during my walkie I saw fresh tracks and decided they were (almost) definitely elk, which was good news because the elk usually disappear when cattle are grazing this area, which they are. It was also possible I was wrong about the identification, because see above.

But look who showed up in my driveway two nights ago as if to personally confirm that I was right for once!

That ain’t no cow. Okay – it’s a cow elk, but you know what I mean.

I may be condemning them for a crime they didn’t commit, and even now I won’t just go hunt them out. But the very next infraction I catch them at, I’m not shooting into the ground.

Torso Boy greeted me in the usual way at half past a little too early, waiting for me to stir and then pouncing – to the extent that a Corgi can be said to pounce. The early morning ritual is invariant: Wait impatiently for Uncle Joel to get his leg on, go out to the juniper grove beside the porch for a pee, rush inside for a cookie, then begin politely but firmly bugging Uncle Joel for breakfast. Caveat: Don’t push it till he’s had his coffee. Humans wake up cranky.

But this morning TB was distracted by a brown lumpy gift somebody had left us right at the base of the closest juniper. And also somebody had peed all over that tree.

This was, at first glance, an unbelievable trespass on the part of a coyote that must be mentally ill. They don’t do this – the very closest coyote scat I ever found was halfway up the driveway. NEVER right next to the cabin.

And yet … Even from the porch this didn’t look like coyote shit. It looked like dog.

(SIDEBAR: Okay, I know what you’re thinking. All I can reply is that if you live in the desert – the real desert, not Scottsdale – you will become more of a connoisseur of shit than your mamma ever told you you’d need to be. It’ll just happen. Moving on.)

Dogs – kept dogs, anyway – and coyotes have completely different diets, and completely different scat. Take my word. Anyway, my first thought upon deciding it was dog shit was “Landlady’s here.” A rational conclusion since she’s due this weekend and Dharma often comes to visit alone. Taking a dump by my front porch steps is rude, but not a shooting offense if it’s Dharma. I thought this was confirmed a little later when I saw fresh dog tracks in Ian’s yard.

Except Landlady isn’t here, and neither is Dharma. I could be drawing the wrong conclusion but I only know of two other dogs that have been hanging around and they’re already on thin ice. Ergo, those dogs seem determined to come to blows with me.

I’ve found many desiccated party balloons stuck in many junipers over the years. This morning on my walky is the first time I ever saw one still somewhat airborne.

Two of them tied together, to be more factual, and I had kind of a hard time catching up with them until an eddy in the breeze stuck them to this bush for a moment. Finished them off with my belt knife and they will litter no more. Not hard to guess how long they’ve been on the run from home. 🙂

Sorry about that; we had a little (a very little) weather change and my connectivity went away to the point where I couldn’t even send texts to neighbors. It’s been bad this year, not really sure why.

Not at all sure this will even work, but here goes…

May is my very favorite month, even with the wind. Still running around checking on my favorite flowers. You have your garden and I have mine: In order to have anything pleasant to look at mine must necessarily be several square miles across. Though I’m trying a minor experiment this Spring, sprinkling food plants in some of those Hugelculture pits we dug several years ago. It worked once before but I don’t have a lot of hope for this year. If they come up at all they’ll probably just feed the rats.
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My initial estimates of the RadRover’s practical range on hilly country roads were excessively conservative. That much is clear and last summer’s truncated experiments in high desert biking left me thinking the whole matter of using the ebike for actual trips to town was going to be a bigger deal than more recent experience suggests. I’ve taken it to town from the county road several times and that’s no problem at all except for the obvious matter of not being killed by limestone haulers from an inconvenient quarry. But I only rode the bike to the road once last year and I was so concerned about battery range that I took a shorter and not-very-pleasant route that proved it could be done but left me not all that enthusiastic about doing it.

But lately it has become clear that I had things to learn about power management on an ebike. And I’ve either learned them or the bike is just working better than it did when it was brand new because range has lately proven not to be that big a deal. Yesterday I took the main ‘road’ to the cattlegate for laughs.

The Jeep allows for shortcuts: Even with the fat tires the bike is still a bike and doesn’t do well in sand so I have to stick to the bulldozed roads, and so…

…it’s 6.7 miles from Ian’s front door to the cattlegate. That power usage indicator is not very precise; the battery is not full, as soon as you goose the motor the indicator will drop a bar.

And when I got it back in the barn…

…the battery was clearly still well more than half charged. So throw that “20-mile range” nonsense away.

As for the actual experience…well, I’ve done it on a more conventional skinny-tire bike without shock absorption and found the experience unacceptably unpleasant to say the least – and that was 12 years ago when I was a mere stripling of 54. On the RadRover – okay, you want to slow down for the worst of the washboarding and you really had better anticipate any sandy patches. But even those things aren’t the deal breakers they are on a more conventional bike. In general you can toodle along at 15-20 mph and it just isn’t that big a deal.

I recognize that publicly using a bike like the Rad Rover makes me a official jackass, loser, fat tire biker. But I’m prepared to risk that. I like this bike. It has the official TUAK Stamp of Hubris.

I call it Post-Apocalypse Monk Walks His Mutated Dog.

For the record, Torso Boy is an idiot.

We went out for the evening walky, same as we do every day around this time. Usual routine, he’d have a pee in his regular spot and then we’d saunter together down the driveway, take a turn around this one juniper and head back at the foot of the ridge along a path we’ve trampled together, and somewhere along there he’d take a nice dump.

Except we never got past the pee spot, because Dipshit the Corgi found a bull snake. Now, last year around this time he was just obliviously walking along and stepped on one, and I saw the snake ahead of time and let it happen. He found the whole thing startling but not as alarming as the snake did. THIS time, he saw the snake ahead of time and moved in for a very excited sniff. I did not see it starting, and if it had been a rattler I’d be holding him down through the convulsions rather than calmly writing this.

Another 3-foot mama, wanting no trouble with this furry lunatic. I kind of wish it had been a baby, because they’re excitable and hostile and it would probably have done him good to learn that snakes bite and snake bites hurt. This one just wanted to get away and heal from the trauma, which is why I didn’t get a very good picture afterward…

I cut this pic bigger than usual but you’ll only see its head and tail portions; the rest are coiled up under the corner of the trashcan corral and when I went closer for a better pic it pulled in those ends. Poor thing just wanted the world to go away for a while.

It was funny but also not funny, because if TB tries that with a rattler and I’m as oblivious to the situation as I was this time I’ll be burying the little idiot and feeling really bad about it.

I’d forgotten all about this experiment in going too cheap until I set the reloading shack back up and began sorting through some old brass. The most embarrassing part is how many of these it seems I actually loaded…

The idea was to see how lightly it was practical to load .44 Special. Most of the time I use ammo for noisemakers and varmint control, I don’t need elephant loads. Most of the time. So I started underloading cartridges until I ended up with 5 grains of Bullseye behind 240 grain cast whatever. And that’s when things got messy…

That grainy stuff is unburned powder. The charge was so small, and the cases so large, that you could never be sure how much of the powder would actually burn. You could be sure your hands would be covered with unburned flakes, though…

…and it kinda had an effect on practical accuracy.

Intellectually I knew not to do this – in fact oldtimers, much more advanced handloaders than I ever was, used to publish articles on filler material to pack the powder against the primers. I don’t recall any details except for warnings to approach that subject with caution bordering on a determination to just never do it, and I don’t remember why. But I do know I won’t be doing this again.