Today’s lesson: Always bring more than one battery.
I was down by The Monster Brushpile early yesterday with the DeWalt chainsaw. I didn’t have much cutting to do, so I’d grabbed the next battery in my rotation, a 5Ah, and figured that’d be more than enough. Well, that one turned out to be low, possibly bad, and it wouldn’t run the saw.
Fortunately, I’d driven the buggy to where the work was. I scooted back to the cabin, threw the questionable cell on the charger, then picked up the next battery in line (a 6Ah) plus a known-good 5Ah.
Work resumed.
The reason I was sawing on the brushpile was to buck a stout round of red cedar and bring it back to the new firewood rack. I had to cut through a tangle of branches to reach my prize, harvesting decent chunks of cedar and oak along the way.
When I got to the 12-inch log I was after, I ended up cutting two rounds. I loaded them (and the firewood I’d collected) into the bed of the Ranger and hauled them up-top.
Now we have a pair of perfect splittin’ blocks next to the rack. Should kindling be required, kindling can be produced — right outside the cabin door, without trudging to and from the wood yard.
According to Deb, our water pressure isn’t what it was. She wondered aloud yesterday morning if, because of the drought, our well might be getting low.
I countered that it probably was time to replace the filter on the supply line.
That’s what I did. Checking the taps afterward, it seems to have helped.
There’s plenty of pressure at the hydrant. We’re fine (knock wood).
Then, with an electrician set to come out yesterday afternoon, I had some rearranging to do. Though today’s work would be limited to a 30-foot stretch of the east wall, I needed to move boxes, totes, fridge and freezer away from that wall.
In a game of three-dimensional Tetris, that required moving still other stuff. The inside of the cabin these days is part storage unit, part workshop and all dream factory, so comical that I chuckled to myself as I shoved things around.
The electrician we’d hired rolled up the driveway not long after 5pm, and by 7:30pm the work was complete. We have a breaker box connected to our meter pole, and two circuits inside the cabin — one 20A 120V utility outlet near the panel, and a 30A 240V outlet (for the dryer) in the bath-laundry.
We had him install the latter (rather than doing it ourselves) because it’ll be the only run of that kind of conductor, and paying for the job was more cost-effective than being stuck with a bunch of leftover wire we won’t use.
He and his family are building-out a barndominium home west of Hall Mountain and, like us, living on the property in a travel trailer ’til the house is finished. We got talking about the Hughes surge suppressor we use to protect our RV, and that he’s been procrastinating getting one for his.
I rummaged around in the basement of the fifth-wheel and found the 30A Hughes we’ve had since our Bumper Bunker days — we’d been hanging onto it as a backup, but we really didn’t need it. He does, so I gave it to him.
We didn’t talk specifically about the surge suppressor as partial payment for his work, so I can’t say if the gesture saved us any money. It was the right thing to do regardless, and it saved him 300 bucks.
He offered to come back again if we need any other electrical work. I’d say there’s a good chance that’ll happen. Great experience.
This morning, of course, it was my job to move everything back where it “belongs.” That included unplugging temporary feeds from the pole, pulling up extension cords and reconnecting loads indoors.
It was about 9:15am, I think, when I thought I heard the rumble of thunder. That struck me as odd, even though our skies had been cloudy since daybreak. Today’s forecast said nothing about storms, never mind rain.
A half-hour later, suddenly, wonderfully, heavy rain began drumming on the cabin roof. It came down hard for a while, then eased into a steady shower.
I picked up my phone and glanced at weather radar. There was just this one colorful blob, training east over The Mountain toward Mountain Home. Zooming out, I saw no other rain for a hundred miles.
The blob stayed with us ’til 11:15am and brought us a half-inch of rain. Though it wasn’t enough to bust our drought, we welcomed the unexpected gift.
I picked up Deb at work around 1pm. We drove to the Marion County Fairgrounds in Summit and cast our votes in the 2024 general election.
The place was hoppin’, if not packed. Most of the voters were elderly, clearly not hip to the high-tech machines, so the line moved slowly.
This is deep-red Trump Country, of course. No one was particularly bashful about showing their allegiance, either, despite the “sanctity” of the polling place. Even those supposedly non-partisan poll workers explicitly expressed optimism about the turnout — between 1,000 and 1,300 a day at that location since it opened earlier this week.
Short on time afterward, we had a quick lunch at Sonic in Yellville.
Here are seven photos capturing some of the autumn scene on and near The Mountain today.
Not long after I published that array of AI-generated photos the other day, I discovered that Facebook’s AI had figured out how to let users insert themselves into the images it produces.
Uh-oh…
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB