When was the last time that Ubi Libertas Blog went dark for two days without a new post? Can you recall another three-day span lately when I didn’t recap The Minutia on The Mountain? This past weekend, I chose to detach from this medium and put my full attention on living my American Life (instead of documenting it).
Hell, even my April Fool post was written on Friday and scheduled to hit automatically this morning.
Taking a brief break was the right thing to do. It freed me to work, to relax and simply to be present without pressure to publish before the clock struck midnight.
Today’s installment of Ubi Libertas Blog will be more images and fewer words. It’ll catch up on some of what’s happened ’round here since last week, both the significant and the trivial.
Our final weekend with arm’s-length distance from the total solar eclipse began Saturday with laundry (at the laundromat) and groceries (Walmart and Dollar General). We stocked our pantry and fridges, then drove the buggy down The Mountain to visit with a neighbor — specifically, to ogle the Jeep Wrangler he’d just picked up.
On our return, we detoured to the summit. We expect that’ll be one of our last unobstructed views from the high ground ’til late fall.
The day’s sunset, enjoyed from The Amphitheater, was magical.
Sunday would be a big push for me, the way I’d planned it — a combination of striking our winterizing scheme and putting in place a few routine preps. Some things that weren’t possible during the colder months could be readied now.
I pulled the heat lamp from the well shed and removed the heating elements from our fresh-water feed, along with all of the pipe insulation I’d installed. (I did leave the heat wrap on the well head, just in case.) The heated RV hose and a protected 20-foot length of conventional hose were swapped out, replaced with a 50-foot fresh-water hose.
Everything got stowed in a utility tote, which I tucked under the end of the cabin.
Next up was restoring our backup supply of water, which we’d gone without since late last fall. I flushed, treated and re-filled the camper’s onboard tank, then did the same with a pair of 55-gallon barrels, and I made sure that our transfer pump’s batteries were fully charged. When I was finished, I’d given us close to 150 gallons of fresh water in reserve.
That’s a good feeling.
Sticking to the readiness theme, I ran both generators for a half-hour and topped them off with fresh fuel. The little bit remaining in the cans went into the Ranger, bringing it up to full as well.
Late yesterday afternoon, on Easter Sunday, Amazon showed up with a part I’d ordered for the Jeep. See, there’s a gizmo called a “check strap” with internal stops that hold the tailgate open as well as preventing it from swinging too far. The design works, but it’s notoriously weak and is prone to failure.
The check strap on our Wrangler was bent badly — we’re not sure when that happened or how — and wouldn’t allow the tailgate to close. Street price for a Mopar replacement was $65. I found a Chinese version for less than $20 and pulled the trigger. (Don’t give me any shit about not buying American when I can replace a thing three times and, compared to just one OEM bit, still have five bucks in my pocket.)
Two bolts to move a trim panel out of the way, two more to detach the check strap from the tailgate (which we’d already removed to get it closed), and four to liberate the mechanism from the body — a simple proposition, complicated only by the confined space. The new check strap works just fine.
Today, no foolin’, is the first of the month. Certain things have to happen when that rolls ’round, and after Deb left for work today I took care of the necessaries — paying bills, archiving and filing my March records, etc.
Some tasks will keep ’til later this week. I’ll haul trash to the transfer station tomorrow, probably. It looks like we’ll do a mid-term laundry run on Thursday, Deb’s day off.
What I could do today, I decided, was fill those three empty five-gallon gas cans. I found out recently that the Casey’s in Flippin has a couple of pumps offering ethanol-free gasoline, which is much better suited to small engines (generators, chainsaws and the like), so that’s where I went.
The benefit came with a penalty — whereas the pump price of ethanol-spiked fuel at Casey’s is $3.199 ($3.159 at Murphy USA down the street), I paid $3.749 a gallon for better, undiluted gas. It costs what it costs, however, and for this purpose it’s well worth the extra eight bucks it set me back.
One reason for not postponing the gas run is that we have severe weather headed our way tonight. Though all of our tanks are full (or full enough) and we had two cans (roughly nine gallons) in reserve already, there was no excuse not to do the prudent thing.
I think that pretty much catches you up. Barring calamity, tomorrow I should return to posting daily.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB