At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, we’re not fuckin’ around with the Ozarkansas heat today. I fired up the generator at 7:45am, just before the outside temp reached 80°F. All windows shut, Reflectix covering every one.
I switched on the AC at 8am.
People wonder how we can stay cool and comfortable under these circumstances. The short answer is, we don’t — we do the best we can with what we have, and that has to be good enough.
Discomfort is not hardship. Sweat happens. Complaining is self-sabotage. Attitude carries the day.
Besides, it’s a hand we dealt ourselves.
Deb and I were enjoying our coffee outside around 8:30am when I heard the grumble and clang of heavy equipment coming up The Mountain — power company trucks, two of ’em, bringing our transformer pole and a boom-mounted auger to drop the hole for it.
That was the plan, anyway.
The crew wasn’t optimistic about their chances and neither were we, but they had to give it a try. Over the next 90 minutes they repeatedly drove the auger into the ground, usually getting three or four feet deep before it began screeching, indicating that it had struck ledge.
After taking 12 stabs at The Mountain, they admitted defeat, packed up their gear and left. The pole stayed behind, as if to taunt us.
The company’s “rock truck,” as the crew called the drilling rig, is still out of commission. Because it’s larger and heavier than the trucks that were here today (which themselves struggled to get in and out of where the pole goes), we may have to clear still another access route.
But there also was talk about equipping a skid-steer with a rock drill or rock hammer. That’d be ideal, actually — it’d require no more work on our part.
We should know more soon.
Based on a phone conversation with our site contractor yesterday, we were expecting him here around 12:30pm. Two hours later, we were still waiting.
By that time, the heat index had reached 115°F. Our generator, which had run fine ’til its first refueling shortly after noon, quit on us ten times in three hours. At first I attributed that to overheating (again), but I happened to be watching the control panel once when it shut down — the carbon-monoxide LED flashed yellow, only briefly, and the damnable little government nanny killed the engine.
The function of a generator is to generate power, and a federally mandated CO monitor plays no role in that. It serves no useful purpose. There’s a way of bypassing it, described all over the Wwweb, and while I won’t do that to this unit while it’s still under warranty, you can be sure I’ll modify the generator that replaces this one as soon as its own 90-day warranty expires.
It was after 5pm when this generator stopped fighting me and decided to cooperate. And we never did see our site contractor today — he called around 7pm and said he’ll be out in the morning.
We’ll be here.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB