The Ultimate Answer to Kings

I’m getting casual about hopping on the ebike and riding the 25ish miles to and from town as opposed to hitching up the bike carrier, driving to the county road, and then biking the eightish miles back and forth.

Part of this is because the Jeep has laid its annual breakdown upon me, which this time doesn’t involve anything in the drivetrain or suspension but the power steering, which simply won’t hold fluid anymore. I assumed it was the hoses, replaced them, and that didn’t substantially help. So I’m assuming the steering gear has blown a seal which I’m not capable of dealing with in the driveway. I could gather the money to have it fixed in town but unfortunately that would take weeks or months and the only person previously willing to lend me a vehicle has learned his lesson.

Rather to my surprise, after I’d gone to the trouble of developing virtually a power-steering-fluid-based economy, the Jeep’s steering works perfectly fine tolerably dry, possibly because it’s so light. But driving anything like a long distance is still a sufficient hassle that it’s more pleasant to just use the bike, weather permitting.

I’m still coping with my new and substandard saddlebags…

Generous Reader Terrapod offered to make some shields that cover the top half of the rear wheel – I still owe him a reply – and I decided to test that idea by simply zip-tying a piece of cardboard to the frame on the side that gives me the most chronic trouble. And actually that seems to work just fine, though no doubt temporary, so I guess I should send him the information he requested. There are a few other mods I’d like to try once the cool weather sets in anyway.

The ladies are slowing down already this year, so I sent the latest full dozen to Neighbor S and planned on buying eggs during the Monday water run.

I had reason to regret it. Five and a half bucks a dozen? Yike.

First: It never stops looking kind of goofy. But that’s a minor consideration.

Second: You’ll be concerned with battery life, and so you’ll plan on leaving it turned off until you need it. Until you see what’s involved with turning the damned thing on, which sort of obviates the matter of needing the pistol at a moment’s notice. Then you’ll try leaving it on 24/7, and start waiting fearfully for the battery to have died just when you need the pistol.

I’m still working on finding the balance here. So far it involves buying batteries in bunches just in case.

Third: There’s the matter of the glass getting filled with dust ALL THE DAMNED TIME. Plan on carrying a microfiber cloth with you all the damned time. Like I needed something else to carry.

Fourth: Pistols are harder than rifles. Having the dot appear reliably on the glass without waving the pistol around as if you’re Harry Potter learning a new spell will involve lots and lots of dry fire practice. Which is always fun, so that’s kind of a plus.

Fifth: When you start getting it right – and when you have it zeroed right – you can very quickly put a bullet right where the red dot appears without your old eyes failing you in the matter of sight alignment, at any moment’s notice.

In short, if your eyes have gotten to the point where seeing the damned sights has become a problem…

But bring practice ammo, because you’re gonna need a lot before you get it right.

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*This is one of those posts I stayed up at night writing but refrained from posting till the morning, because “write drunk/edit sober.”

Coming back from town after the Monday morning water run, D&L stopped at the barn rather than going on to the house so that they could feed the horses without having to walk back and forth. D said, “There’s been a change in the way we feed, so you should come in and see.” Because sometimes I fill in for them when they’re out of town for doctor appointments and such.

The change was a reduction in the amount of pellets and the addition of hay to each meal, which they only used to get in the evening. I didn’t ask why: It almost certainly has more to do with my neighbors’ very particular natures than any special dietary requirements but I could very well be wrong.

But one change had to do with a horse’s very particular nature: “You can mix Coal’s hay with his pellets, but don’t do that with Doc or he’ll throw a fit.” And he will, too: I’ve seen it before. Doc is normally more laid-back than Coal, much safer to turn your back on, but in the matter of his food he suddenly becomes Rain Man.

Horses is weird. Civilization didn’t really become possible until the internal combustion engine: based solely on my admittedly limited experience with them, I don’t really understand how horse-based societies even managed to function.

First, it’s an old joke badly told.

Second, at no time in the long history of Eastman Kodak Company has its logo ever involved a bear.

That is all.

Heh.

It rained like six drops here earlier in the afternoon, and now the “dry” riverbed is running harder than it has all year. Has for hours. Good thing I did the chicken chores when I did, because the wash is going crazy.

You never know. Apparently it rained harder elsewhere…

I got it!

It’s the trick one with the funny cover, too. I’m struggling with the urge to just leave it in the shrinkwrap, since I actually have an electronic copy of an early draft with all the photos. Probably won’t, though. And …

Bonus item! Definitely going to unwrap this.

Thanks, Big Brother!

Ain’t that neat?

Problem is, I didn’t order it. That’s way outside my price range for something as frivolous as a collector book and anyway I have a copy of the galley proof, having edited it last year. And that email came via Big Brother, who wouldn’t normally be involved.

So I asked him if he ordered it, and he said yeah. Just because he knew I’d like it, and because he likes Ian. (Yes, they’ve met.)

And I thought that was really nice.

Rejoice with me!

I tried a couple of times to take it to a gunsmith, and nothing ever worked out. Was discussing the matter with a neighbor, and mentioned that the yoke screw threads are covered with what looks like but really can’t be red Loc-tite. He suggested hitting it with some acetone to dissolve whatever it is, and then maybe I’d be able to work out the thread fragment. Sounded like something I could try.

So yesterday during the Monday water run I popped into the one-and-only drug store and asked for some nail polish remover. Today after chores (touch-up painting on the Lair) I looked the pistol over. Hadn’t really paid any attention to it since the yoke screw broke, and upon closer examination it was clear that I’d be able to get closer to the fragment(s) if I took off the side plate. So I did that … and it turned out that then I could turn the thread fragment out of the frame with no problem whatsoever.

Yeah – I could have easily fixed the pistol two months ago.

I still don’t know what caused the problem in the first place…

…but I’m happy I at least had sense enough to stock a spare. Now I need to get another one.

And now my darlin’ Model 69 is fixed and back in the holster!

Commander Zero continues his crusade to get Paratus Day on the calendar of all right-minded preppers. And I got my card this morning when I went to town for the Monday water run.

It’s kind of a running gag that what makes me cool in CZ’s eyes is that I’m actually personal friends with Gun Jesus.

Here’s the card…

CZ has been doing this for years, and I’m not connected enough to know if his efforts are getting any traction. I do know he’s being very consistent about it.

Generous, too. He always includes some small useful gift with his card to me, and it’s always appreciated (and used.) I’m not big on holidays myself but this is one I could get behind. Might, even, except my list of prepper friends isn’t really very long.

Tobie and I went for our morning walkie at sixish, me lugging a hamper of dirty clothes.

Up until a little over six years ago I washed my laundry by hand in the front yard, weather permitting – it tended to pile up in winter but I did what I could in the sink. Then S&L moved in full-time and Neighbor S insisted on washing my clothes for me once a week, and that became part of the routine and I grew dependent on it. Now recently I’ve scored a second-hand washer that works fine once I figured out how to properly install it, and I’ve been fining in the procedure(s) for doing it myself just like a regular person.

I’ve put several small loads through the procedure to get it right, but this is the first morning where I brought the hamper and got it all done at once – except for gel socks, which are separate. Just like a regular person. Tobie and I took our walkie while the machine was doing its thing the first time, and I had some work to do in Ian’s place during the second load.

This is a process that’s been going on since I got here, really. At first I was virtually camping, everything was improvised, nothing was settled, and life could sometimes be quite uncomfortable. Progress away from that was halting and fitful, with long intervals where I sort of settled into “by my standards” but then punctuated with sudden major improvements that were almost disruptions in themselves, like…

* Moving into the cabin
* Getting a woodstove that worked
* Getting an electrical system that worked
* Getting the cabin sided
* Getting a decent set of batteries
* Building the bedroom addition

…and so forth. I gradually came to a point where I wasn’t improvising anymore: I recall writing two years ago “I was just thinking the other day about how it might be time to retire the blog because it’s less and less about the adventure of roughing it out alone in the boonies and more about an old man quietly living in a cabin with a Corgi.” Well, Bad Things happened to the Corgi only two months later and now it’s an Anatolian Shepherd (who tried to have an adventure with some cattle this morning, BTW, and was rather miffed with Uncle Joel for interceding) but the principle is the same. The point of moving to the boonies was not to have hair-raising adventures but to live quietly.

And the quiet life is getting more comfortable all the time.

Never seems to fail, dogs get all unhappy when you run the vacuum cleaner. Some are worse than others: Tobie acts like you’re chasing him with an axe.

And when the torture is over…

…I have to work at getting him to calm down and believe that I’ve decided to let him live.

…be careful of dry washes.

Continue reading →

…Talk to Tobie. He knows just which button to push.

And he pushes it with apparent glee. From time to time.

Having confirmed the meeting time for the Monday morning water run, which is variable lately, I discovered that I had an hour and a half on my hands. Decided to spend part of it on clearing up several minor somethings that have been bugging me lately…

Sometimes I have to march around the property with a wrench, tightening various loose bolts. Which strikes me as kind of a steampunk thing to do, but you know. DIY infrastructure always ends up having steampunky elements.

First both clothesline crosstrees, of course, they’re new and have to settle in. The regulator bracket on Ian’s propane station for some reason: One morning it’s fine and the next the top of the regulator points at ten o’clock. Doesn’t really matter, but it’s annoying. Then up the driveway where both signs are loose again.

Some of this involves a certain amount of cross-country on rough ground and the use of both hands. And if Tobie’s going to come along, he’s going to be tethered to my waist. Which normally goes fine, but…

…this is Tobie’s second morning walkie, which is unusual, and unusual is fun. And fun means play, and play means the zoomies. Which in his case means running back and forth like a maniac to the full extent allowed by the leash and as much beyond that as can be managed. As fast and frantically as possible.

Which, when Uncle Joel is trying to get a wrench on a nut while crouched inside a tiny propane booth precariously perched on a rather steep and very rocky slope, and the aforementioned leash is attached to Uncle Joel, well…It’s not helpful. Not even a little bit helpful.

Tobie, I’m quite convinced, is perfectly aware of that. Yeah, I could have left him home but I’m already going to do that later in the morning and there’s no point unnecessarily making him sad.

On the subject of attaching a large strong young and therefore unpredictable dog to your waist in a world full of rabbits and lots of other fun things just out of reach, Tobie taught me early and – since Uncle Joel seems to be growing a bit thick-headed – repeatedly that clipping the leash to a belt loop is as pointless as building a chicken coop on a termite mound. I got tired of chasing dogs and repairing trousers.

So I made three adjustments to my dog-walking gear. I spent fairly serious money on a real ‘you can’t break this’ belt. I replaced the cheap snap link on the loop of his leash with a real carabiner. And I made a loop of 550 cord…

…which goes around the belt between the holster and the front-most belt loop. And so far he hasn’t been able to defeat that, no matter how successfully he catches me by surprise. And he sure put it to the test this morning.

On a whim I took the ebike all the way to town and back – to the other side of town, which in this case only makes a little difference…

It behaved itself beautifully, though these pannier bags are not working out at all. After several attempts to mod them, I still end up with one side or the other bungee’d to the rack to keep it out of the spokes.

Part of it is that I’m just more canny about power management now, but I’d still swear the bike gets better mileage out of a battery than it did at first…

That 12.5 is the mileage for the return trip, which is about a mile more than the trip out was because I took a side jaunt for chicken chores. So a little less than 25 miles on the clock, and the power bar is showing three bars at rest. That’s misleading, of course; there’s not nearly a half charge left but still. That’s a damn sight better mileage on a charge than I got the first year, on dirt roads with lots of sand and ridiculous grades. With a steady diet of paved roads and reasonable grades, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could squeak 50 miles out of it.

…and it’s really gross.

I drilled out Ian’s new burn barrel this morning. I knew the drum had held some sort of animal feed, didn’t care, didn’t think about it at all until I finished drilling 32 holes and then tipped the drum to get it off my workbench. At which point one of the lower holes did something impolite on the benchtop.

So I unsealed the lid, rolled the drum away from the cabin and upended it. I was going to take it to Ian’s straightaway but now I think it can wait till later, lest I smear that goo all over the inside of the Jeep and then find out how it smells.

I can’t even think up a good excuse. I’ve worked in that tiny room for hours at a time, and completely blanked on the very obvious presence of a vent stack with a very obvious fitting for an appliance drain. What’s more, I did it over and over.

Then when it all went wrong, I blogged about it to spread the embarrassment around as thickly as possible. Thank god hardly anybody reads the blog anymore.

Alert Reader Jerry is the one who noticed the actual cause of my pain – and the solution – though quite a few commenters were right in more general terms. We did it right after all, back in 2009. And then I forgot we did.

Anyway, I ran the washer through a cycle, of course now it works perfectly. (Oddly it seemed to work fine the first time I ran it before, too.)

Tobie did not approve of my sitting around in the Dark Place doing nothing while he wanted to finish his walkie, but such is life when you’re Uncle Joel’s dog. Ran the vacuum hose down into the cool air inlet as far as it would go to ensure that we weren’t accumulating any more water. We weren’t.

Then in an effort to dry things out down there to avoid mold, I dug out a duct fan Big Brother had sent me for another purpose. I’ll let it run for a while, off and on as the sunlight permits. For some reason that fan pulls a lot of juice and it looks like it’s going to be overcast today.

Anyway, thanks for the comments and suggestions, and for this opportunity to publicly air the most damaging senior moment I’ve had in quite a while.

ETA:

“I’ve always understood why [Landlady] left.” I muttered.

Sometimes DIY infrastructure fails but that’s not what’s discouraging. It’s the cascading failures that get under your skin. Where one relatively minor fault only points out another, which would have contained the problem if only it had worked right, which it didn’t because you’re an idiot. And between the two of them they turn a merely irritating problem into a disaster that just ruins your whole *&^% day.

Consider if you will:

I’m not a virgin when it comes to the possible pitfalls of free appliances. Or the possible effects of bouncing free appliances around on eroded desert paths for a few miles before installing them.

So… Continue reading →

Ran a second experimental load through the new/old washing machine. No mechanical glitches worth mentioning, no utility closet flooding, but…

Yeah. New 550 cord does stretch for a while. Good thing there weren’t any pants. Which reminded me…

And so this morning I dragged out the saw and generator and ripped that old gnarly 2X4 I’d selected into four sections, Dremeled some notches, and voilà…

Old school clothesline props.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go medieval on a previously-unimportant ant colony. Also I need to find another hamper. Details, details…