The Ultimate Answer to Kings

My summertime routine for going to town in the middle of the week, a relatively rare practice, is to drive the Jeep to the county road and then take my ebike the rest of the way. This is, admittedly, a fairly eccentric thing to do even by cedar rat standards. And since I don’t bother hiding the Jeep, it raises occasional comment. It’s perfectly obvious why I do that, and so I’m basically announcing to my tiny corner of the world that Joel Doesn’t Have A Driver’s License.

Nobody speculates aloud in my presence about the reason for that, but I can guess what they’re guessing: Joel must be an unrepentant drunk with some DUIs on his record. In fact that’s not the case: I’ve never driven (very far) drunk in my life and I have no criminal record of any kind. But I’m a little sensitive about drawing attention, even the benevolent kind. I’m also neurotic about any involvement with any woman I don’t know well. My social record proves that I should never trust myself to know how to behave around strange women.

What do those two things have in common? Well…

Yesterday I went to town in the morning to pick up my pistol’s new electronic sight. I went straight there and straight back and I had just finished strapping the bike to the rack when a small sunbleached car pulled up next to the Jeep, from the direction of the desert, with the driver clearly wanting a word.

The driver was an older woman, somewhat weatherbeaten as who wouldn’t be but actually rather attractive. She asked if I wanted a ride to town*, and I replied that I had just come from there but thanks very much.

Then she asked, quite out of the blue, if I wanted her telephone number so that I could call her for a ride in the future if need be.

Alarm bells and klaxons! A list of possibilities was instantly composed, typeset, printed, bound and opened to page one before my mind’s eye:

1) She’s just a nice person who’s being more kind than is really good for her.
2) She’s an obnoxious temperance missionary.
3) She’s looking for a hookup with an unattractive total stranger. (TL/DR: She’s crazy.)
4) She wants something else, TBD but don’t get involved.

Desert folks can be, well, eccentric. Most of the ones I know are perfectly nice people. The ones who aren’t are why I bar my cabin’s doors at night.

I thanked her kindly and said no, I just rode my bike into town for fun. And then we went our separate ways with smiles and waves. I’ll probably never see her again.

And I drove home to play with my pistol’s new sight, wondering very hard what the galloping f*ck was that all about?

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*Sidebar: It occurred to me later that this is why I love it here: I had taken off my ‘going to town’ overshirt and so my magnificent cedar rat panoply was naked to the world. I’m a short squat desert hermit in worn dirt-colored clothing with a rag tied around my head and a bunch of aggressive shit strung from my belt, and a woman I’ve never seen before in my life stops unbidden and asks if I want a ride.

One of the things that pleased me about my third-hand Model 69 was that in the redesign S&W was farsighted enough to take the possibility of aftermarket sights into consideration. I found an adapter plate from a site called EGW Gun Parts, which may be well known to everybody else but was totally new to me. To keep things simple I also got the sight from them, so I was pretty sure they’d be compatible.

I’m glad I made sure the sight worked before taking the pistol apart. The Vortex Venom, it turns out, has a real problem with the battery housing. I put the battery in and then couldn’t screw the cover down no matter how I tried! Thank the Lords of Shooting for the Internet, because this is a common problem. The Vortex solution (Poke a screwdriver into the printed circuit housing [!] and press down the contacts) did not work for me and it also did not work for many other users who took the time to scream about it on Reddit. But prying the gasket off the inside of the cover worked great, and doesn’t seem to interfere with sight function.

Taking off the stock rear sight is simple enough…

…and may I say I patted myself on the back once again for having scored a set of gunsmith screwdrivers. Not a big deal with semiautos but essential with revolvers.

I decided to make sure I had the installation figured out before I broke out the Loctite because between the plate and the sight I was faced with a bewildering variety of screws to choose from. And I got it wrong the first time…

Even though the threads were right, I was pretty sure those were the wrong screws for mounting the plate to the pistol. I was proved right – about being wrong – when I tried to mate the sight to the plate. Took it apart and did it again right…

And then mounting the sight to the plate was just another two screws.

I went out to the driveway target and popped off enough rounds to confirm that I’ve got a real zero problem … and then it started to rain! Hadn’t even noticed the big storm cell that had rolled in while I was preoccupied. That was a problem since the ebike was still strapped to the back of the Jeep. So Tobie and I took a quick trip to Ian’s place.

Now I’m going to take it all apart again and apply Loctite, and then weather permitting I’ll go to the range with some paper and a shooting rest. Once I have it zeroed, I can turn my attention to the next problem…

Oh, I’ve been waiting for this. Got the email late yesterday afternoon and just got back from riding my bike into town. Lords of shooting please don’t let me screw this up, because…

…I’m about to put a red dot on my everyday revolver.

I’ve got nothing else planned for the whole rest of the day. Stay tuned…

I heard that phrase on a podcast that was playing in my ear while I cooked breakfast, and rushed over to write it down before I lost it.

It pretty much encapsulates the upside-down world I’ve been trying to wrap my boomer mind around for the past few years. Bizarro world. By nature I’m more of a news and politics junkie than is good for me, and lately I’ve tried to isolate my thinking from – as I constantly repeat to myself – all that bullshit. In my situation I can mostly get away with it, but never entirely. It all came back to mind when I ran into some neighbors a few days ago. These two are like my smarter, older brother and sister: I love them to pieces and would do anything for them, but I swear they get their entire worldview from what they’re spoonfed by the big box in their living room. They hate Donald Trump with all their collective heart and soul, had just finished raptly watching the first night of the “J6 committee hearing,” and they were both – how shall I put this – righteously outraged anew.

Longtime readers know I’m no big fan of Donald Trump, or republicans, or politicians and bureaucrats in general. But sheesh – I’ve never seen such a stereotypical example of ‘drinking the Koolaid’ and it makes me wonder how many people like that there are, waiting faithfully for the voices from the television to tell them what to think, say, feel, believe…

The bread shelf at the crappy little market in the crappy little town nearest where I live…

Glad I bake my own, though of course the price of flour is going the way of all things.

The rise in the local price of gas has paused. Last week it passed $5: Yesterday I poured the last of my bottled gas into the Jeep and brought all the empties to town. Last time I did that, it cost just about $80. Yesterday it was a hair over $85. And regular gas was the same price as last week. First time that’s happened in a while.

Really don’t know how you guys put up with it.

So shortly after I posted the below, my connection to the outside world abruptly went away.

I live down in a hollow in the middle of the wilderness, nowhere near line-of-sight of any cell tower. Until a couple of years ago there was nothing unusual about my cell service dropping out completely. It’s always slow. Part of the price of entry.

But this was like somebody threw a switch and turned my service right off. No variations, no edge-case almost-connections. Just “No Service.” I walked my phone up to the top of the ridge where I can always get a signal. Nothing.

Next day, same thing. This was starting to feel personal. After 24 hours or so I actually drove to a neighboring house to see if they had service. Alas, nobody home. It’s not like I could phone around.

Yesterday I went over to D&L’s for the Monday water run and learned, rather to my relief, that they had exactly the same problem. We went to town, and…

It was quite the topic of conversation. Everywhere.

And it wasn’t just the crappy little town nearest where I live. It was widespread, at least half the (large) county. Maybe more. And the rumor was…

…somebody took it into (his? Pronouns, Joel) head to shoot a remote transmission station with a shotgun. Dunno if it’s true, but I heard that in two different places. Dunno why somebody would choose to do that, assuming it’s true. That’s one mighty shotgun. Or one very poorly designed communication system.

I don’t know what it’s like in cities – I suspect it’s like this but more so. Nothing gets done if the Internet goes down. And though we’re repeatedly told differently, nothing really stops the Internet from going down at any time.

It came back yesterday evening, so slow at my end as to be unusable but that’s really not unusual for a normal evening let alone one where every smartphone-addicted teenager in the county rushes to get his or her fix. Seems fine this morning.

Yup. I’ve been dad to a daughter. I got things this wrong on a fairly regular basis.

It’s funny: The political climate in this country has gotten so toxic that even ‘living green’ has an element of hostility to it. I’m kind of living the stereotypical green dream, but I imagine that your average greenie would rather see Redneck Joel dead.

I was thinking about that this morning, while reducing an old stepladder to its final incarnation. I’ve got this backbreaker somebody was going to throw away – oh, many years ago now…

Wow, it’s a wobbly thing and I haven’t used it in maybe seven years, because – cue the “people throw away the damndest things” logo – I have a much nicer old stepladder somebody was throwing away. It’s been cluttering up the yard and I kept meaning to get rid of it – and, since I scrounge all my firewood, “get rid of it” meant…

…break it to pieces…

…and cut it to stove lengths. Not much meat on its bones, of course, but every little bit helps. And the only part that ends up in a landfill is a little bit of hardware.

Tobie has apparently gotten to enjoy keeping me company through these little yard projects. He just sits there in the shade like a big boy, never gets bored and demands attention. Except for some evening zoomies Tobie has outgrown the more obnoxious puppy phase now, and he’s a lot easier to live with.

I was futzing around in my desk drawer last night and came up with a thumb drive that had gotten smooshed to the back. Had no idea what was on it.

Among other things were a bunch of stories I wrote 13 or 14 years ago, my last gasp as a would-be fiction writer. They all concerned a desert hermit called Shadow, who had kind of taken things to extremes.

The other thing the stories have in common is that most of them aren’t very good. The problem with Shadow’s life, as a fictional character, is that it wasn’t very interesting. Even when I wrote him half-mad, so that he was never quite sure if he was hallucinating or living in a magic world, I found him dull.

This is one of the best of a bad lot, and unfortunately he spends half of it doing a valve job on an old Briggs & Stratton engine. Which, take it from me, cannot be made to seem exciting.

But hey, it’s free. This is a short story in a never-to-be-finished anthology, and it’s called Shadow and the Water Well. Continue reading →

Or until that expensive water pressure system’s sudden but inevitable betrayal, in any case.

I’m quite pleased with myself this morning. Right now the only thing in Ian’s place that uses propane is the water heater. Gas to the kitchen stove is turned right off, since I don’t want to spend propane on a useless oven pilot. So I know exactly when the propane bottle sucked empty: It did so during yesterday evening’s heavenly shower. But – heh – I didn’t notice at the time because it wasn’t important.

This morning while taking Tobie on his long walkie, I saw at a glance…

…that the indicator on my brand-new bypass regulator had turned red. Empty bottle! Been waiting for that: It was nearly empty when I put it back online. In fact it lasted longer than I expected.

So during morning chores I threw a third 20# bottle – from my barbecue, which I never use – into the Jeep, adding it to the shower propane rotation.

I can fill the empty at my leisure, and running out of hot shower water is no longer a worry.

Me so smart!

I was late in my conversion to the Church of the Bypass Regulator, as applied to a handmade house. I always thought of them as an RV thing. Should have put one on the kitchen propane at the very start, because it invariably got me out in the cold and dark on the most frigid morning in the winter before I could make coffee. But that was a rare and tolerable hassle. I didn’t decide the matter was important until the winter of ’17, after the bedroom addition and that wonderful vented heater. When that bottle sucked dry it was an enormous hassle. So the following summer I put a bypass regulator on the bedroom propane. Then I figured, what the hell? Why not do the same thing for the kitchen stove? Now I consider them pretty much standard equipment.

I have questions.

‘Breast milk bag’ is self-explanatory, I suppose. But is a bag really the best container for that application?

And why do people keep sending me this absolutely hopeless spam? Can’t say it often enough: I’m a desert hermit. Definitely not in the market for quantities of Chinese bags.

I had quite a number of big tumbleweed-gathering sessions in April, trying to clear my yard of them. Unfortunately April generally marks the start of the windy season, this one was exceptional, and of course tumbleweeds are really only famous for one thing so I knew I hadn’t seen the last of tumbleweeds in my yard. I’m still fetching them out from under bushes, though not in the wholesale lots the April sessions saw.

And when I get one I have a, dare I say, final solution…

Don’t tell Greta.

Brought home everything I needed for a nice pot of spaghetti. Opened a can of sauce, poured it into the saucepan, and after scraping out the can I gave it to Tobie. Little Bear loved to clean the sauce can. He liked it better than peanut butter. Laddie did not share his taste. Tobie…

…wholeheartedly agrees with Laddie.

That’s his full-on “have you completely taken leave of your senses” look.

…and horses eat a lot. Expensively, if there’s nowhere they can graze. So…

…midmorning found me at D&L’s barn, helping unload and stack yet another pallet of pellets. Nice morning for it.

Yesterday D&L gave me first refusal on a big pile of dog stuff they’re getting rid of since they plan on never having another dog. I suggested they might want to defer that decision for a few months, because nearly everybody I know who buries a dog swears off ever going through that again and most change their minds within a few months. But their minds were made up, they said: They were both old and getting older fast with numerous health issues each. They were determined not to leave a dog abandoned in a shelter when they were too old to care for it or dead.

From a humanitarian viewpoint, of course I completely approve. I’ve mentioned myself recently that I might regret taking on a puppy at my age, in the fullness of time, if it turns out the dog outlives me. As we saw with Laddie, the dog can take that kind of hard.

But, I suggested, there was still the possibility of a compromise. What if they decided they really wanted a dog in their house – they both complained about how quiet and empty it suddenly seemed – and so looked for an older dog that had been abandoned under just those circumstances? No, no, they insisted: They were done with dogs at their age.

I follow their reasoning, I certainly didn’t argue, but upon reflection I’m not sure I agree. There’s being reasonable and realistic about your age and prospects, that’s always rational. I won’t be taking up skydiving or MMA fighting very soon. But that’s not the same as giving up, turning your face to the wall and getting ready to die, which is kind of what I heard in their voices. Personally I’ve become a strong proponent of living till you die.

They lost both their dogs in less than a month.

Just got back from helping them bury the second one. They were both quite old: The female had been sick for a while, got much worse and they euthanized her in early May. Other than sore hips the male was in better health, or seemed so. But not long after he lost his lifelong housemate, he stopped eating and basically faded away.

I’ve known them both since they were obnoxious adolescents fresh from the shelter. They had happy lives.

A sentence virtually never spoken concerning my attempts at improvised infrastructure is “It works too well.” In this case it originally worked so well it destroyed itself, repeatedly, so really didn’t work at all – at least never for very long.

There’s been a lot of simplification since the beginning, because every “improvement” I originally thought up turned out to be a disadvantage. But the biggest problem was that I was using a real proper solar collector box that a neighbor gave me, and…

…it just got way too hot in there. Hot enough to melt epoxy. Hot enough to melt PVC, for heaven’s sake*. Rubber gaskets couldn’t survive it. And anyway, when you open the hot water tap in your house you don’t want live steam. Which is what I was getting.

So the final and probably the most effective simplification has been to just not close the glass cover. This had a dramatic effect: Water temperature went from way too hot to barely hot enough. It’s been a cool May and I expect later summer water temperature to increase.

Overall, simplifications continued until my water heater was just a bunch of black hose in a fiberglass box…

…terminating at a bit of pipe stub and a faucet. And so far it’s working…adequately, but only just. I have hottish water in the afternoon, basically. Which saves me some propane for dish washing but is nothing to get excited about. With no cover on the box, the water temperature goes cold immediately at sunset.

This would all be more disappointing if not for the irony that my finally getting around to trying a solar water heater happened almost simultaneously with the appearance of a real shower at Ian’s place – after almost fifteen years of sponge baths at my kitchen sink. So the most important reason for wanting quantities of hot water disappeared just as I was getting some.

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*Yes, I did try to replace it with CPVC but ran into the “no available fittings” problem. Ended up just running the hose down to a bit of galvanized pipe.

Sweartagod, every propane system upgrade goes like this.

This fitting/hose/pipe/whatever doesn’t fit. Wait a week, get the right part (alternate version: Wait a week, get the wrong part.) That hurdle cleared, move on to the next fitting/pipe/hose/whatever. Which won’t fit. Repeat.

But success always eventually ensues.

For the benefit of any reader who wasn’t raised in an RV park, the bypass regulator is the answer to the very important question, “what happens when my propane bottle sucks dry?”

This has been an unusually cool May. I don’t object to that particularly, but normally the Spring wind has backed off by now. Instead it has carried on, and in fact has been starting up first thing in the morning the past few days. And that means…

In Spring my last decision before the long morning walky is ‘hoodie or not?’ Before the sun comes up ‘hoodie’ is definitely the right call, but things warm up fast after that. Unless the wind is blowing hard, which it wasn’t down around the Lair but definitely was on the ridgetop. Shouldn’t have taken it off. Hope the coat rack is nice and warm. Ah, well. Carry on…

…says Tobie, who wanted to know why the hell I stopped suddenly to fiddle with my camera for no apparent reason. Let’s go, Uncle Joel, you’re the one always pestering me not to dawdle.