The Ultimate Answer to Kings

I think he suspects…

I’ve never particularly enjoyed barbecuing. The only way I know to get a unique taste is to use charcoal which is a time-wasting pain in the ass just to broil some meat, then there’s the mess, the space it all takes up on the patio, it just never seemed worth the bother.

EXCEPT if you’re in a non-air-conditioned house in the hot part of summer. I do recall that in Michigan, which for a couple of summer months gets muggy as hell, cooking your meat outdoors can make evenings indoors much less completely ghastly than the kitchen oven would otherwise help them to be. So it was for a while our habit, when there was a ‘we,’ for me to do the cooking portion of the evening meal outside on the barbecue. Worked pretty well.

I tried to set myself up a summer kitchen with an old RV oven at the Lair a few years ago but I didn’t take the time or spend the resources to do it right.

I baked bread in it several times and it worked, but it would have worked better with more wind protection. Keeping mice out of it was a pain, and even wrapped in a tarp it didn’t appreciate being out in the weather. It didn’t last.

Winter before last, a neighbor asked me to haul this off…

That falls very firmly in the category of “People throw away the damndest things.” I would never have spent a dime for a propane barbecue but since this one virtually landed unbidden in my lap, it behooved me to re-learn how to, you know, barbecue.

I’ve baked on it a couple of times. It’s probably better than a campfire, but not by a lot. Temperature control is a real issue. One of these days I’ll get creative and drag out my dutch oven, but for my daily bread nothing beats the kitchen stove.

So, since it’s way too hot to bake in the cabin in the middle of the day, mornings like this I start my weekly bake as soon as I’m properly out of bed and before it gets hot.

And while it’s cooling, it’s time to go do morning chicken chores.

Yellowstone is called a “park,” which misleads some visitors into believing they’re in a park.

The buffalo and moose and wolves and whatnot do not share that illusion, a fact which occasionally gets people hurt. Wild country is wild, whether tourist roads have been built through it or not. Just saying.

When I got back from being away in June it looked as if Monsoon was upon us. But then it dried up again and got hot for a couple of weeks. In the past few evenings we’ve had wandering storm cells but no rain – overnight, though, we hit the jackpot. It rained for hours in the middle of the night.

The wash didn’t run, of course. That would be freakish so early in the season. But we got enough rain that some of the individual gullies ran a bit.

Floods last year and the year before have resculpted the far bank of the wash’s horseshoe turn into more of a wall, incidentally threatening the newly-rebuilt target stands and also leaving the various gullies that drain at that point high and dry.

Watching the situation slowly self-correct has been entertaining, for a value of entertainment perhaps perceptible only to your friendly neighborhood old desert hermit. 🙂

The increased weather has had the usual effect on my cell coverage. I thought at first I would be entirely unable to post this morning, and those few pics took forever to upload. It’s just that time of year, and it was far worse back in the satellite dish days. So for that reason and also because there’s just nothing blogworthy going on, posting may be sparse. I’ve pretty much concluded that posting political filler just to honor the “post every day” rule is not worth the aggravation caused by paying that much attention to the news.

Picture this: Two old guys are filling water bottles in the hot July sun at a remote vending station…

…and just for something to talk about, the two get to discussing Donald Trump’s apparent habit of tweeting random passing inflammatory thoughts for all the world to see.

“Didja hear his latest?” says the first man. “He said one of those women in Congress he’s been feuding with should be shot. ‘She should catch a round,’ or something like that.”

To the second man this seems extreme even by Trump’s admittedly extreme standard. “Trump said this?”

“Yeah. Saw it on television.” The first man watches a lot of cable TV.

From the truck, the first man’s wife agrees that this was indeed reported on television, and was therefore incontrovertibly true.

The second man goes home and forgets the conversation until the next morning, when he looks for any mention of the incident on the Internet. And he finds…

A Louisiana Cop Said AOC “Needs a Round”

…in which some idiot in Louisiana did in fact say exactly that on Facebook. There was further reference to said idiot losing his job over it, because cops really shouldn’t say things like that out loud.

Precisely how this “story” – “Obscure Louisiana man says something stupid on Facebook” – morphed into an example of the U.S. President’s murderous racism is still something of a mystery to the second man. But American political discourse does seem to have devolved into a high stakes national game of Telephone.

I was going to title this “gelsock information bleg,” but in rooting around in my supply I answered my own question and also reassured myself that my gelsock stash is doing fine, so never mind about the bleg.

Two years ago the gelsock bleg went exceedingly well. I was hoping to build a 2-week rotation of the expensive things but the final count turned out to be…

…a fact of which I was reminded when I saw that I still have 17 new in-package. This is good, because…

…they’re really not that durable. But as I sorted out the question that had arisen, I was reminded of how great TUAK readers are. Thank you!

I took the Jeep to the shop in the little town nearest where we live this morning because on Monday mornings D&L always go to town for water and groceries. I asked them to follow me in their truck, because the Jeep is ailing and also deliberately very low on fuel and besides if they’re behind me no cop is likely to tuck in behind me. That’s all I asked for, in fact I didn’t even load my water bottles into their truck until I asked one additional favor, that they plan on dropping me off on the ridge overlooking the Lair.

They didn’t do that. Instead…

That Jeep is D’s baby. It’s roughly the same vintage as the one I’ve been abusing for 12 years and you can clearly see how much better shape it’s in, right? In fact he didn’t turn over the key until he finished delivering detailed instructions on when and when not to put it in 4-wheel. He was under no obligation to loan it to me and I would never have dreamed of asking without much greater need. But he did, without being asked, just because old one-legged friend needed wheels.

Living close to the desert requires a certain hardness most people rationally choose not to encourage in themselves, and frankly it doesn’t always make you a nicer person. I know, and know of, people not far away I don’t even want having the knowledge of where I live and when my doors are unlocked. But I got so very lucky in my immediate neighbors.

A couple of weeks ago I learned that the Jeep’s fuel pressure was less than half of specification. Since the engine was actually running pretty well, that meant the ECM had cranked the fuel injector pulse width to eleven to compensate for the low pressure. The only real issue the (probably) failing fuel pump was causing was vapor locking. I wondered what would happen if I ever had to clear the codes before getting the problem fixed. Then a couple of days ago, chasing my ignition system problem, I disconnected the battery to clean the contacts. I knew that I was thereby testing my theory about the fuel injectors, possibly to my detriment. It just seemed unavoidable.

Yeah – Theory confirmed.

I use the Jeep to haul all the chickens’ water to Landlady’s ridge, which has no water pressure at all. So before I lose the Jeep starting tomorrow I really needed to fill 5-gallon water bottles.

That meant drive to the ridge, get the bottles, take them back to the Lair and fill them, drive them back to the ridge. It’s a little over a mile by road, about half a mile across country with some steep hills. No way I’m walking with those bottles. Ergo, we’re going to find out how the Jeep behaves in heavy sand while possibly running super lean. Hey, I had to do it sometime anyway: No way it’s climbing the driveway hill cold, so the only way to the road is through the wash. If it bogs it bogs. But I should have warmed it up first – I can’t say exactly when the ECM on a 2001 Jeep updates its a/f settings but it can’t possibly happen before the oxygen sensor warms up, right? So that was dumb.

Down the driveway to the wash was simple enough, it’s a straight line downhill. Could have gotten there with the engine off. But as soon as I hit the sand and turned right, the engine sagged and I truly didn’t think I was making it through the wash. I did, barely, and fortunately the ECM considers air/fuel ratio really important because by the time I had to do it again the Jeep was running as well as it ever does.

So really, that just sets me up for tomorrow’s trip.

I’m getting old. Also I was a dealership mechanic many years ago, HATED it, and willfully forgot all about it when I finally had a chance to move on.

It was years before I’d so much as open an engine hood. In that time I forgot simple, common sense things that are a mechanic’s bread and butter. Things like, if you can turn the ignition switch on but can’t crank the starter, jump the solenoid.

Now, when I was very young I had some bad experiences attempting to jump starter solenoids and I’m as shy about it as a dog that’s had his paw pinched. Also the solenoid is way down there under the engine and I’m old and lazy. But if you jump the starter RELAY, things get much simpler. I like simple.

I pulled out the starter relay, which in this case should go in the upper socket of that row with only one relay in it. Jumped between the two vertical slots, and the starter cranked nicely. Turned the key to ON, did it again, and the engine started just fine.

So I’m still taking the Jeep to the shop but I don’t need to tow it to town. I’ll take it in on Monday with D&L on our regular water run.

I was misled by some clumsy writing in my Haynes manual and initial appearances to fear that the ignition lock cylinder of a 2001 Jeep was some peculiarly unserviceable example of proprietary black box. But it turned out in the cooler evening to be just a lock cylinder, and very easily removable.

Unfortunately it also turned out not to be the problem. A lot of surfing came up with a new theory: There’s something called an ignition switch actuator pin that is made of plastic and can fatigue to cause precisely the symptoms I experienced before and during the failure, the need to apply force to the key to engage the starter followed by a complete failure of the starter circuit though all the electronics still work. That’s replaceable with special tools I’d rather not buy, plus it would probably take a week to get the part.

So I’m going to see if I can get a neighbor to give me a tow this weekend. What the hell, I’ve been planning to take the Jeep to the shop anyway…

I have this lengthy list of things I want the shop in town to fix or at least check while it’s up on a hoist but I keep on procrastinating about driving it to town…

Right now driving anywhere is out of the question because I can’t get the starter to crank. For the past couple of days it’s been kinda funny – seems as though I had to twist the key a little harder to engage the starter. I put it on the list. But now it won’t work the starter at all. Everything else seems to work. I cleaned the battery connections in case it was as simple as that, no joy. Shift interlock cable maybe? I’d better hope it’s not screwed up inside the steering column because according to the manual the fix for that is a new column. Might it be the key cylinder? Never heard of that but it has felt weird the past couple of days.

It not only cleaned out the trap, it apparently cleaned up after itself as well.

All my rat traps are worn to pieces; I’ll try again after I can score a new one.

A pile of fresh rat droppings on my brand-new porch floor.

Eight o’clock this evening I let Torso Boy out so he could give the juniper a squirt before bed. It’s about the only time he’s allowed out without a leash, first thing and last thing in the day, and we started working on it right after he first arrived: I stand on the porch and light up the juniper with my flashlight and he knows to go straight there, pee, and come straight back for a cookie.

I fumbled putting my light back in its holster, it hit the porch floorboards and rolled right down through one of the gaps. I had a feeling I was going to regret that; I’m going to bring back a couple more pressure treated 2X6s when I go to the big town at the end of the month.

Anyway. I let Torso Boy back in, then went down the stairs to find my flashlight … with the second flashlight in my pocket. And – I dunno, I caught myself doing it and thought it was funny as hell. I have become a stereotype.

…is a good $50 water distiller.

And I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t have one.

We’ve talked about water purification numerous times on the blog, since drinking water is a constant concern here at the Lair. I’m not terribly concerned about drinking water as such, since it is filtered with existing equipment right in the crappy little town nearest where we live. Not a lot of reason to fear the supply will dry up, and even if it does our well water isn’t actually toxic – just really hard and you’ll be dealing with kidney stones after a few years of drinking it*. But we all run our electrical systems on numerous big deep-cycle batteries, which means we also need a reliable source of distilled water. And last month for reasons never fully explained, the one local supply dried up. There’s a whole big shelf of drinking water at the one local food market, and on that shelf there’s a slightly less big empty space where the distilled water ought to be. Lots of people here go through distilled water for the same reason my neighbors and I do, and either the demand suddenly skyrocketed or the supply suddenly dried up. I had to advise Landlady to bring several gallons up from the city to ensure her own supply, and that’s ridiculous.

So okay: I already worry about my lack of a Plan B for drinking water, as you can imagine. Now suddenly my supply of distilled water is uncertain. That brings me back to a subject I have long dismissed: Why don’t I have a distiller?

To reiterate the reason I don’t have a solar distiller, which in my situation would seem on the surface to make the most sense: They barely work at all, their output is minuscule, and the cleanup is constant. For reference, I have a stainless steel cooking pot in which I heat water for washing, and this is what it looks like inside…

That’s calcium laid down on the surface just from bringing the water to a boil: Never mind boiling the vessel dry, which you mostly do in a distiller. Cleanup would be a constant issue.

As would energy usage. As far as I can tell your typical electric countertop distiller requires 800 watts of electricity for several hours just to produce a gallon of water. I’ve got a 600-watt inverter and nobody has that kind of battery capacity. That means burning gasoline in a generator – while you have gasoline.

I go through 2-3 gallons a month on batteries alone for three different installation. If I were drinking it, I’d need a minimum of a gallon a day. Call it 5-6 hours of an 800 watt draw, every day, rain or shine.

A non-electrical distiller such as this one makes claims that even the friendliest reviewers don’t seem able to match. Call it two quarts an hour, either constantly burning propane or tending and feeding a wood fire. Between tending the fire and cleaning the equipment you could make a usable supply of water doing that, if you had next to nothing else to do all day. But if you really needed it, chances are there are other things you’d need to do with your time – like finding food.

I’d like to experiment with these gadgets but they’re quite expensive and so far my research suggests they wouldn’t match their promises or my needs. It’s a concern.

—
*ask me how I know.

Wanted to get on the Jeep’s rear shocks before it got hot(ter), so I hit it first thing in the morning. Yesterday afternoon there was nothing to do but sit in the shade, which fortunately I can now do…

…and that’s probably where I’ll spend this afternoon. It never really cooled off overnight but still if there is ever a good time to crawl around under the Jeep knocking mud down on yourself it’s not while you’re being baked by the afternoon sun. I’m genuinely getting too old for some of this shit.

I had high hopes that this was finally going to fix my rear shock problem. At a minimum the new ones are substantially longer, so the rear axle articulation won’t exceed the rebound capacity of the shock and pull the damned shackle right off the damned Jeep. Repeatedly. Should have done this a year ago, frankly. These new ones are more than twice as expensive – but I already bought stock shocks three times. How expensive was that, Joel?

I did the job before morning chicken chores, so as soon as I had the shocks on I could load up water bottles and take the Jeep through the wash to Landlady’s place. And I must say – though the Jeep still has a harsh ride, I don’t think I’m kidding myself (this time) when I say this really did make a difference in a good way.

I never ordered away for fancy aftermarket shock absorbers.

I’ve gone through three sets of stock rear shocks in less than two years – granted the third set is still working but it’s only a matter of time because they’re just clearly too short. The jounce is fine but the rebound is murder, pulling them right off the Jeep. So I wiped away a tear and spent some of my housesitting money on these, and we’ll see if that helps.

I’m still procrastinating on leaving the Jeep in town for a week or two to get the fuel and cooling systems fixed once and for all but it’s pretty clear it’ll have to happen before long, whether I drive the jeep there or have it towed. There’s a new nasty front-of-the-engine noise I suspect is coming from the already leaking water pump, and I’m absolutely not willing to replace that in the driveway.

Just came in from fastening down those porch floorboards I took up yesterday, and found that it finally got into three figures.

I wasn’t here for most of June but I’m told it was unusually cool for what’s usually the hottest month of the summer. Down in the city of course it did this every day (did I mention my friends have a shower?) but this is the first 3-figure day I’ve seen at the Gulch this year.

It’s pre-monsoon summer, and kind of hot. Walk into the Big Chickenhouse in the afternoon and you’ll see a whole bunch of chickens with their beaks open and their wings held away from their bodies, praying for the evening cool. So not surprisingly, egg production is off a bit.

But when you go to collect eggs in the morning and the count is zero, it’s time to start looking for their new hiding place.

The Leghorns have never been enthusiastic about using the nesting boxes. They normally all (or most) use the same hollow in the bedding so all the eggs end up in one place. And one of those girls right there has gotten very serious about hiding the eggs from the Bad Man. I come in in the morning, look around for eggs and find none, but here’s a little white hen sitting very still in an obscure corner and apparently paying no attention to me at all. When I shoo her away she spends the rest of my visit screaming and squawking bloody murder and when she moves she uncovers…

…the literal mother lode.

And she doesn’t always give it up without a fight. She’s a biter, that one…