With the framework complete, I tossed four planks onto the joists. Given the length of the boards, I decided to start in the center and work my way out. This worked very much like the support beams: put a deck screw on one end (using a hip square to space them), scoot across to the other end, space and screw down, then work back and put down more screws along the way.
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 No comments
Backyard entertainment, Phase 1 (part 2, deck and rope swing)
Backyard entertainment, Phase 1 (part 1, framework)
This has been going on for a while, but I wanted to make sure it got done before posting, so I didn’t end up with a start without a finish.
Mason and I talked last year about setting up a treehouse. I had plans for an octagonal one, with the tree in the center, but I had neither the skill nor the equipment for tackling something like that. But as fall started, we were poking around the backyard (that got expanded about a year ago), and Mason looked at a trio of trees… arranged in a near-perfect equilateral triangle, about 12 feet (about 3.6m) on a side. “We could put it up here!” he said.
I remembered a smaller platform I set up for The Boy, when he was about 9. It was arranged similarly, in a triangle of trees. Definitely something within my skill and equipment sets, as both had improved in the past 20+ years. So that night, I sat down and started mathing it out—how many 12' 2x10 boards for the supports and joists, how many 5/4x6 decking planks—and made my grocery list.
The order was ready the next day, so we jumped in M.O. the B.B. to “pickup” the load. A few hundred pounds of lumber doesn’t even start to settle the suspension, but the support lumber did stick out somewhat past the lowered tailgate. I tied a safety flag to the end, and clattered home.
I got the first two boards up without much effort: put one 6" Timber-Lok screw through it and into the tree, lift up the other end, level it, then screw it in. You can see I put three screws in each end; if I’m reading the box correctly, that should support about 700 lbs (317kg). There’s two supports for each corner, so (assuming weight is evenly distributed) the platform should be good for about 4200 lbs (950kg) minus the weight of the platform itself. Over-engineered? Maybe. Mason and his friends are 8-10 feet off the ground. It needs to be safe.The third, highest off the ground due to the slope of the yard, took some more effort. I finally tied a rope around it and used one of the other supports as a pulley. That actually worked better than expected, and I soon had it bolted in place.
Monday, November 08, 2021 1 comment
Rope-a-dope
A Saturday afternoon mini-adventure started with a text from Daughter Dearest: Can you take big butt truck to help get sizzles truck unstuck
This was quickly followed up by a phone call, asking me to pick up Sizzle’s boys and take them along (in the slim hope that they could push Sizzle out). Charlie had been jonesing for a ride in M.O. the B.B anyway, so I loaded him up, got the boys, and headed on down. Sizzle was at the campsite, presumably for some deer hunting, and I don’t know what possessed him to get off the high ground… but when I saw the situation, I figured pushing would not be enough.
Of course, I was right. :-P
Another project, that shall soon see the light of blog, entailed my having a spool of 1/2" rope handy. We clattered back up to FAR Manor, got the spool, and returned (turning around at the dam to get oriented for pulling stuff). Meanwhile, Sizzle had attached a heavy-duty ratchet strap to the front of his truck… a Nissan, for which The Boy and Daughter Dearest had taken a road trip up to Nashville to get a replacement motor for… but I digress.
He tied the rope to the ratchet strap, while I wove it through the hitch on M.O. the B.B.'s end. We put our trucks in gear, and mine did its usual “Pfft, I’m towing something?” routine as I crept forward. I stopped, because it was clear that Sizzle was going to get pulled into a tree before he got clear of it. We rearranged stuff to bypass the tree, and started anew. This time, we got Sizzle up on the two-track. “M.O.” stands for Massive Overkill, and that’s what it is… except when nothing else will do.
At Sizzle’s request, his guys piled into his truck, and I clattered on home.
I was too busy doing the tow to get pictures, so I’ll leave you with a shot of the pond, ringed with weeds in glorious flower (I took it while turning around). Wife is planning to nail them, so they might not be around next year.
The balloon goes up
Everybody around FAR Manor got a letter, week before last: Verizon wants to put a 190' (58m) tower on a hill across the highway, but (and it’s not a bad idea) they want to make sure the tower will actually do the job before they sink a bunch of $$$ into building it. Therefore, they planned to do a balloon test on November 1. This basically entails (I think) lofting a balloon carrying a microcell, and seeing if it will link to the nearest existing tower.
Some of the neighbors, especially the ones who know the wife, came by to talk about it. Not that it matters… Verizon already had good coverage out here, but they do seem to think that Lily Tomlin as Ernestine is their guiding light. They don’t care, they don’t have to care; if they want to put up a tower than up it goes.
None of us really knew what the balloon test was going to look like, so I was thinking I might launch a drone if it was calm enough. My oldest drone, a Sharper Image DX-4, had just received a new controller. Since it has a Wi-Fi connection that can transmit video and stills to a connected phone, I hoped it would let me get a good real-time view. Well, the app hasn't been updated in years, and froze showing the sidewalk.
Monday arrived, and I found it calm outside. I thought maybe I could launch the Holystone, which meant I'd be flying blind, but would get something. But there was enough wind to push the drone around, and make me continually be guiding it, to make it worth trying.
OK, time to pull out the Big Gun (aka the Canon). I put the long zoom lens on, and walked down to the road. About 50 feet before the intersection to the dirt road, there’s a break in the trees… and I saw the balloon.
Rather anti-climatic, if you ask me. When I first saw it, it was actually below the tree line. But it rose up, and bobbed up and down for a good while. I took pics, but nothing really stood out. One neighbor said the pic is "ammo,” but we’re talking Verizon here. It’s maybe a .22 against a tank. The only way I can see their affecting things is to use the tower as target practice. With as many guns as there are around here…and some of the people are likely to have swallowed that 5G/vaccine chip/boogabooga nonsense, it could be a volatile situation.
I don’t call it the free-range insane asylum for nothing!
Monday, November 01, 2021 1 comment
Trick or treat!
The wore-out Grim Reaper might not worry you, but Charlie could cute you to death in his Power Rangers outfit.
Candy… or else! |
Yes, that's a real scythe. The blade is very rusty, and about 1/3 of the snath (handle) is missing. The sign hanging off the blade reads, Wore OUT (I hate pandemics!). Yeah, as Death said in his New Year’s message, he’s had enough. I’ll hit the edge with my Dremel, and we can use it to hack weeds under fence lines.
But, as I so often do, I digress. A local charity sponsors trunk-or-treat at the biggest county park, and I took Charlie. We went to about four booths, then there was a line longer than Charlie was willing to deal with. He grabbed my hand and started walking at random.
Finally, I suggested, “Do you want to go to the playground?” He often considers such questions thoroughly before answering, but not this time. “Yeah!”
We were early adopters. There were two or three kids in the playground area when we arrived, but there were well over a dozen by the time we left. Charlie did really well climbing around on the jungle gym, and even tackled the scariest climbs to the high slide (he only slipped once, and I backstopped him). He stumbled on some steps in the mid-section, and bonked his head on the railing. That required a few minutes getting cuddled on a bench, then he went back to it for a few minutes before retreating to the bench… then telling me he needed a potty run.
Wife suggested I get us Taco Bell, since I was 2/3 of the way there, so that’s where we went next. Charlie came home with a small portion of candy… but Mason brought a gigantic bag, hitting a subdivision with a friend of his, so there’s more than enough to go around.
Oh… and if you want to know about the next Accidental Sorcerers book, I’ve finished the draft. I’m looking for beta readers, now.
Sunday, July 25, 2021 2 comments
Pitter-patter, part 3 (home again, home again)
The dynamic completely changed, once Charlie was in the mix. Mason went full-on micromanager, completely losing his shorts over the most trivial things.
As for Charlie, his happy place is the pool. Put floaties on him, toss him in the pool, and he’s good. The outdoor pool at the clubhouse is usually pretty cold (with 2018-2020 being exceptions), but Charlie doesn’t care about a little cold. (A lot cold is enough to get him out, but this wasn’t a lot cold.) Mason insisted on the indoor pool, but the outdoor one was tolerable even for me. So Charlie and I played around, while Mason sat in a chair and sulked because he wasn't getting his way.
After maybe an hour (I’m not keeping track of time on vacation, what’s the point?), Charlie decided he would be okay going to the indoor pool. Mason, finally getting what he wanted, joined in.
At this point, I should point out that there’s a third pool, next to the waterslide and close to the diner and country store. It was closed for much of the week, since some moron had gone tubing, didn’t shower, and introduced algae. For some reason, this pool is often warmer than the outdoor pool at the clubhouse, but it had a definite green tinge. I’m not sure why that would be a problem, since the lake is also a good place to swim (and is often warmer than the outdoor pools, and I have no idea why). Maybe the algae had some irritant qualities.
But I digress. By Friday, they had dumped enough chlorine into the pool to kill the algae, and re-opened it. Charlie was so happy to be in the pool, he wanted to hug everyone in the area… literally. He spun around with a huge grin, arms wide open, making his happy noise. Several folks thought it charming, anyway. It was noticeably warmer than the clubhouse outdoor pool, and it also has a “real” deep end (8 feet). People invited Charlie, then Mason, into their games, and I just hung out and kept an eye on the rugrats. Mason complained about the amount of chlorine in the pool, but he was wearing a diving mask so I’m not sure what his actual issue was (besides just complaining).
Mason brought a couple of R/C vehicles along for the final leg of our outing. Charlie enjoyed watching them whizz up and down the lane. Someone came up in a golf cart, and suggested a “race.” The R/C truck won (those electric motors can go from zero to top speed pretty quick).
By Saturday morning, I’d had all I could take of Mason’s attitude, his constant ordering everyone around (especially Charlie) and refusing to help. He’s been throwing up all this anti-spanking “evidence” at us, trying to dodge the consequences of his actions, so I simply told him he could have no electronics (no iPad, no Xbox, no Switch, no nothing) until his attitude got better. That probably hurt more than any spanking, anyway.
I’d loaded all the non-essentials into M.O. the B.B. Friday evening, so (with Mason’s ultra-reluctant help) we broke camp Saturday morning and headed on back to the manor. The outdoor rug stank with mildew, and needs a good cleaning, and the Starflyer needs some attention as well. I’m trying to decide whether to get the A/C fixed, or just replace it with an exhaust fan and stuff a window A/C unit in a convenient spot. Whichever way I go, I’d like to have it completely functional before I sell it and go with something else. Then again, campers are going for a premium right now… anyone want a lightweight camper with a few minor issues?
We got home, to find the wife there. They had drove up to their retreat, then the sister-in-law hosed up her foot when they went to get groceries. And when I say “hosed,” it was several times worse than either of mine. They ended up coming back. BUMMER. The wife needed a break more than I did, and I had somewhat of a break even with Mason making things as miserable as possible.
Back to work, and everything else. The boys will be in school soon, although I don’t know how long Delta will let that happen.
Thursday, July 22, 2021 No comments
Pitter-patter, part 2
Rain on a popup is a special kind of noise. What hits the bunkends is a nice pitter-patter sound, actually quite soothing. What hits the roof in the middle is anything but soothing: it’s somewhere between a pop and a snap noise. And that’s what we contended with for much of the night.
The Starflyer’s A/C isn’t working, despite my replacing the starter capacitor, so we had to make do with fans. I claimed the fan/light combo, since Mason swiped it last time. He groaned, but didn’t press the issue. Fortunately, it never got out of the low 80s (F) for highs each day… I guess the rain helped with that.
Staying dry on a wet night |
Sunday, July 18, 2021 No comments
Pitter-patter, part 1
Pretty similar to last time |
Thursday, July 08, 2021 1 comment
Ah… the crunchy nuggets
Fast-forwarding 45+ years…
Mason’s current obsession/YouTube rabbit hole is making replica weapons from cardboard. He has made several decent axes (and spears), and is working on more. We have plenty of unused cardboard around, and (due to disrespectful yapping) is now grounded off the iPad, so he's doing something semi-creative.
I told you that to tell you this:
While I was trying to get supper together, Mason had made a spear out of cardboard and some unused utility handle, and was hassling Rosie the Stupidog. Charlie was yelling “Stop, Mason!" over and over, and I joined the chorus when I saw what was going on. Of course, Mason kept on doing what he was doing.
Then… Charlie took matters into his own hands. He swung an arm around and smacked Mason square in the nuts.
Ah… the crunchy nuggets.
Mason staggered around, trying both not to laugh nor cry out in pain. Meanwhile, I was trying to not fall on the floor in laughter while telling Charlie that was NOT an appropriate thing to do. #parentingfail
The thing is, Charlie picks up on pretty much everything that Mason does. Mason likes to play rough with Charlie, and Charlie thinks it’s fine to do the same things to Mason (who often goes full-blown Drama Queen when it happens). So when Mason acts like he’s the substitute parent, Charlie doesn’t recognize the dynamics… and things like this can happen. Just not so spectacular (or hilarious). Most of the time.
So what will the boys come up with next?
Monday, June 21, 2021 2 comments
The next generation of information management
Some 15 years ago, I was enjoying Journler. The thing I really liked about it back then was, it could post an entry straight to Blogger. Of course, Google likes to screw around with Blogger. They broke the posting mechanism that Journler used, and now they’re concentrating on keeping it deliberately broken for Safari users. Over the years, Journler slowly sunk into the morass of apps that got left behind by advances in MacOS. I continued to use it to capture flash fiction, scenes, and chunks of longer stories, until it became unusable. The source code for Journler has been available on Github for a long time, but I just now found out about it.
But I digress. As Journler wheezed and died, I tried a variety of paper and app systems to capture stuff I wanted to come back to later. Evernote was okay, until they crippled the free version to support only two devices (previously five). Google Keep held my interest for a long time; but I’m trying to extricate myself as much as possible from Google these days—and if I could find something better that isn’t WordPress, I’d go through the hassle of moving everything. Perhaps my longest-running attempt has been using Tines to keep notes and to-do lists organized. And yet, I’m always keeping my nose in the air, sniffing for a better way of doing things.
Recently, I started looking at journaling apps. Day One came highly recommended, and had the huge advantage of both Mac and iOS apps that talked to each other. I gave it as honest a chance as I could—downloading both the MacOS and iOS apps—and even with the daily prompt on my phone, I never really warmed up to it.
Someone suggested Logseq last week, and it sounded interesting enough to give it a try. The developers describe it as “a privacy-first, open source knowledge base,” and the videos they link to from the home page (an enthusiastic user who describes how to make the most of it) convinced me to give it a try. It can run either as a webapp, writing to your hard drive, or as a standalone desktop app. The developer says he was heavily influenced by Roam Research, Org Mode (Logseq supports Org Mode, although it defaults to Markdown), Tiddlywiki, and Workflowy.
The interface looks invitingly plain, at first. You’re presented with a journal page with today’s date on it, but otherwise blank. Start typing, and it supports Markdown (a big plus)… oh, wait. It’s also an outliner (and given my long-term relationship with Tines, that’s another big plus). Oh, type two square brackets and enter a title, like a Wiki link, and you get a new page that you can click to enter (yeah, I’ve always been fond of Wikis). Oh, type /TODO Download the desktop app
on a line, and you get a to-do entry. Put hashtags on entries you think you’ll need to come back to later.
Clusters show groups of related entries |
It took me a day or two to realize that this is the most natural approach for working with Logseq. There’s a lot of layers to it, and this brief post isn’t doing it justice. I’m using it at home with the desktop app, and at work using the webapp (because Doze complained about how not safe the desktop app was). Either approach works fine.
There’s a mobile app called Obsidian that can be set up to work with Logseq’s files, but it’s a private beta right now and I don’t need it just yet.
Now I have to figure out how to pour all the different entries in all the different paper and pixel systems I’ve accumulated over the years into Logseq. Someone wrote a script to convert Google Keep to Markdown, so that’s settled. I hope I can write a script to pull all my old Journler entries in.
Monday, June 14, 2021 2 comments
Resurrecting an old dirt bike (part 1)
1978 Yamaha DT100E… and Mason, who blinked at the wrong moment. (The seat is also flipped up.) |
Tuesday, May 11, 2021 2 comments
Busy weekend
- Do it yourself.
- Pay someone else to do it.
- Tell your kids to NOT do it.
Quejio Fresco |
Monday, May 10, 2021 2 comments
A second (frosty) bullet, dodged
As I mentioned earlier, I bought new tomato plants after a late frost whacked the first set. But winter wasn’t done dicking around with us—another frost was on the way. I’d put the first set of plants in the ground, and they had started to revive. Since the bottom set of shoots (that had been covered in mulch) still looked healthy after the frostbite, I decided to cover the in-ground plants in mulch and put plastic over them.
The containers, I hoisted onto a pickup truck and put them in the garage for the night. Why take chances if some of your garden is semi-mobile?
This worked pretty well, in the end. The mulch-covered plants endured the freeze without (further) damage, and started growing better soon after. The container plants had no problem spending a night in the garage, either.
All the plants, even the in-ground ones, are sporting blooms now. A couple of the container plants have small greenies on them. I’m looking forward to the first harvest!
Tuesday, April 20, 2021 No comments
Action shot
A few weeks ago, one of the other parents on Mason’s soccer team sent some pictures they took during the game to the group text. I cropped some extraneous stuff to get this great shot of Mason booting one:
Here it comes! |
Sunday, April 11, 2021 1 comment
What I did on my Spring Break staycation
Mason was out of school, this last week, and I’ve decided to try taking days off when he’s off—just in case we get the chance to do something together. But I had a week, and there was no rain forecast for the first half of it, so I decided to try getting as much stuff done outdoors as possible. I had seriously considered taking the Starflyer down to the pond for the first half of the week, but realized it would clash hard with all the stuff I wanted to deal with.
First, this year I wanted to have a container garden (mostly). The farm has plenty of plastic tubs laying around, the containers for minerals given to the moofers. There are several places in the back yard where dirt piled up against trees, and much of it is loamy stuff with some clay deposits. I dug out enough to fill four tubs, drilled drain holes in the tubs, and stuck container-friendly tomato plants in them. A late frost whacked them pretty hard (despite our covering them with plastic sheets and leaving buckets of water underneath as heat sources), so I got replacements and stuck the frostbit ones in the ground… along with two jalapeño plants. The bottom shoots, that were covered in mulch, survived the frost. Maybe if this happens again, I’ll just pile mulch over the plants as well. Or, I’ll just wait for that first April frost next year.Buried treasure |
Good as new! |
Tuesday, we loaded the washer and dryer onto the trailer, plus the furnace we replaced last year and a lawn mower with a bent crankshaft (I hit a small stump… it’s FAR Manor, why are you surprised?), plus the aluminum cans we’d let pile up for years, and took it all to the scrapyard. Mason and Dizzle rode along, and had great fun launching the lawn mower off the edge of the concrete. The only snag we hit was when they went to cut the check—it turns out that The Boy (who shared my first name, although he mostly went by his first middle name) had brought loads to the scrapyard. When they said, “Lawrence?” I assumed the wife had used my name for whatever reason. But she had been there as well, so I had them re-cut the check in her name. It all goes into the same accounts, after all. So we returned to the Manor, $41 richer (and more importantly, less crap laying around). They promised to set me up with my own account, next time.
But the trailer was not quite finished. It has a mesh ramp, that doubles as a parachute when towing it. When it was new, it had spring-loaded pins that would hold the ramp up for traveling, but they broke. Bobcat just flopped the ramp onto the trailer when empty, and used rope to hold it up when loaded. I used ratchet straps, but I really wanted it to be properly functional. Back to Tractor Supply… I found some long 1/2" pins that would do the job. To get everything back into alignment, I used a four-pound maul (the flat end) to bang things into place. Yes, percussive maintenance is a valid way of fixing certain issues, and quite satisfying. It was even more satisfying to have two such opportunities in one week. “This is how we fix problems at FAR Manor!” (Or as one of my college friends was fond of saying, “Don’t force it, get a bigger hammer.”)
By Wednesday, I was pretty stiff. Monday had included soccer practice, even though Mason’s team had two weekends off, and the head coach (I'm the asst. coach this season) knows exactly what motivates his players: a scrimmage. Last season, we did a series of scrimmages against the parents, and the parents pwn3d them because they weren’t passing. Something must have clicked between last season and this one, because they’re mostly holding their own now. They’re passing better, and are 1-1 vs. the parents and 2-1 vs. the real teams. (They were like 1-7-1 last season, and never beat the parents, so this is already a huge improvement.) To toot my own horn, I took the assistant-coach position so I could advocate (guilt-free) for more passing drills… I’ve observed that, at least at this level, the team with the better passing game wins at least 85% of the time. The head coach came up with some drills that emphasize passing, and it has helped a lot.
Mason’s team has practice on Mondays and Thursdays, and we were planning a parent-team scrimmage. I was slightly less stiff, but there was still a lingering muscle pull in my right leg (just under my butt). Monday, I pulled the left side, but slightly less. I joked about needing a butt replacement, but mostly held up my end. Of the three who played goalie on our side, I was the only one who didn’t let a ball get past (OK, that was mostly luck). Now the rain was supposed to come in by Thursday, but retreated to Friday except for an occasional sprinkle.
But when Friday came around, the rain retreated again. Now I have to admit, Charlie thought this was wonderful. It meant he could spend more time outside, and we did some “throw disc” long after I figured it would be far too wet. I didn't do much, but that helped a lot with the stiffness issues.
Yesterday morning, our friends came by with more chicken. Last time, we got six. We gave two to Daughter Dearest and Sizzle, two more to the preacher (who returned one smoked, yum), and the others went into the freezer. This time, they brought about two dozen. Since this was a freebie, and there was no way we could deal with that much, the wife started making phone calls while we broke out the vacuum sealer. She hit upon a great idea, to stuff a couple of them in the Instant Pot and then de-bone them. I found some suggestions online, and we bagged up the rest for both us and several others. We had chicken casserole for supper, and at least two more chicken-based meals bagged and frozen. Meanwhile, I have to figure out where I put my beer-can chicken stand. I used it once, and it turned out very well.
The rain finally arrived, and pretty much went all day. I had planned for more rain days, and a few improvements to the homemade worker’s paradise, but there was one I knew I could tackle: I wanted a shelf above the coffee station, to keep things that didn't need to be on the table all the time. I’d found some shelf brackets a few weeks prior, and a wrecked bookshelf provided the actual shelving. A nail head poking out of the paint told me where one stud was, and I measured to find the others. I had to run across to the detached garage, during (of course) one of the heavier rain periods, to grab a pack of wood screws. I had to reposition brackets a couple of times—I think the studs weren’t placed evenly—but eventually all the screws found something to bite. I only had to take off and flip one bracket, that I’d put on the wrong way.A little yard work today wrapped things up. I went after the smaller (diameter) stumps that dot the back yard; I focused on those because they’re not so easy to see. Some I sawed out, some we dug up, several got the loppers. There are a couple dozen larger stumps, but they’re easy to spot and shouldn’t give a lawn mower a fatal surprise. If next weekend cooperates, I’ll rent a stump grinder and have at 'em.
So, back to work tomorrow. I’ll probably spend most of Monday weeding emails.
Sunday, March 21, 2021 No comments
Take our best shots
Friday, March 05, 2021 No comments
Up too soon
Image source: openclipart.org |
Wednesday, March 03, 2021 No comments
A glut of meat
As I’ve said, there were a few upsides to the pandemic (for us, anyway). Avoiding restaurants, for one thing, meant we made a dent in our overloaded pantry and freezers. So there was space… fortunately.
As Mik Dragonrider observed, cattle are born knowing all profanity, and gladly teach it to anyone around them. Like people, adolescent cattle like to test boundaries. In their case, the boundaries are usually physical (i.e. fences). Younger calves can (and often do) slip between the barbed wire strands—the grass is always greener on the other side, after all. Larger calves, and full-grown cows with a taste for adventure, have to probe for loose (or broken) wires. The SOBs are always finding—or making—holes in the fences.
But one particular bull calf took a different approach. Instead of finding loose spots, he just jumped over the fence. Whenever he pleased.
Devolved T-rex |
Back to the calf. We have a holding pen, where cows going to market get diverted, and somehow the wife got Jumpy in there. With grain and alfalfa pellets, he decided he preferred it to jumping out to the pasture. The family who re-roofed the manor, and generally hangs out with us, went in halfies with us on the calf. It helped that they have a trailer and a 4x4 pickup (it has been seriously soupy in the pasture, with all the rain this winter). The wife wielded a stick, and Jumpy found himself in a trailer. He tried to jump out a couple of times, but only banged his head against the lattice over the trailer.
While we were waiting for the processors to do their thing with Jumpy, the other family gave us a few packs of venison. Most of it is ground, but there are some tenderloin “medallions” in there. I refer to the latter as “douche steak,” because the wife uses a vinegar/water marinade (then rolled in bread crumbs and pan-fried… it’s really good stuff).
We have steak! |
We ended up with two boxes. One was all the really good stuff: brisket, ribeye, strip, filet, flank steak, one roast, and a few other cuts. The second box was ground chuck, still good stuff, partitioned into one-pound packs (perfect for us).
So, Jumpy’s last jump landed himself in our freezer. I did half-and-half venison and ground chuck yesterday evening for tacos, and the wife kept raving about how good it was (she was really hungry, but still). There are leftovers for my lunch, which is even better.
With all the beef and chicken in the freezer, I expect the wife will be craving pork before too long…
Friday, February 26, 2021 1 comment
I want to ride my Franken-trike
With near-incessant rain earlier this month, we brought one of Charlie’s tricycles inside for him to ride when it’s too soupy to ride outside. He has a Radio Flyer “Fold and Go” (it folds up quite nicely for transport) and one I got off the Zon (it has a push/steering bar for a parent). Encouragement and getting bigger means he doesn’t need to be pushed quite so much, and he’s quite happy to hop off and push his trike around just for grins. The Fold and Go is the inside trike, when one is needed.
Lately, the wife has been requiring me to go with her to take hay to the cows. This usually involves a huge roll of hay, and it’s more convenient (for her) with someone else to cut the twine holding it together before she rolls it out in the pasture. Charlie comes to watch. I really ought to get video of her hay-dispersal technique; it takes quite a bit of coordination. The tractor has an end-loader attachment, except there's a five-foot spike in place of a scoop bucket. She spears the hay on it, takes it out to where she wants it in the pasture, and drops it off. Then she uses the spike like a huge fingertip to flick the roll down whatever slope is convenient (this is Georgia, flat ground is a rarity unless it’s been leveled).
But I digress. Earlier this week, after returning from a hay-dispersing session, Charlie jumped on his trike and began riding. “Uh,” he said, then spun the pedals. The trike didn’t move.
I pulled the front wheel off the fork, and had a look…
It’s broke, Jim. |
“I’ve been expecting that,” the wife opined. “He keeps running it into things.”
Charlie was going “ride?” and making his sign for cycling, so I thought things over. Back in Mason’s day (or maybe earlier), we picked up a Mongoose trike at a yard sale. It was fine until one of the rear wheels broke, then it got put aside. I used the good rear wheel when Charlie parked his Zon trike too close to the edge of the driveway and Big V’s widower caught a wheel. So my first thought was maybe I can pull the front wheel off the Mongoose and Frankenstein a working trike. No such luck—the mounts are completely different. I briefly considered an entire fork swap, but that would require both the Radio Flyer and the Mongoose to have the exact same fork tube diameter. They’re close, but it would be a lot of work to verify…
But hey! Why not pull the rear wheels off the Radio Flyer and put them on the Mongoose?
Sparks fly! |
The Dremel already had a metal cutting wheel on it from the last job (and I can’t for the life of me remember what that was), so I let 'er rip. I was very careful, and put only a small notch in the plastic. It wasn’t necessary to cut all the way through the push nut; just grooving it was enough to weaken it to where I could pull it off with pliers. The axle was in a frame tube, so it slid out and I got the second wheel off for the price of one.
With the wheels off, I put the big wire wheel on a drill and skimmed the surface rust off the Mongoose’s axles:
This, of course, took longer to get the drill and mount the wire wheel than to do the actual work. I sprayed some lube on the axles, more to prevent re-rusting than reduce rolling resistance.
With the axles ready to go, it was time for a test fit. OOPS, the inside of the wheels rubbed against the step. Fortunately, it required only a pair of thick washers to add the needed space:
Just a little extra space was all we needed. |
The second test fit left me satisfied, and I waited for a box of push nuts I ordered off the Zon to arrive. Then, I had to re-assemble everything after I turned my back and Charlie tried to ride it. Fortunately, I managed to find the outside washers (one outside the garage and one in the gravel driveway), and Dizzle (Sizzle’s #2 son) found the missing bearing.
The new push nuts didn’t want to cooperate—it was afterwards that I remembered a reviewer saying to use a socket to even out the force—so I found the old Mongoose push nuts and popped them on instead.
Ready to ride?
Yup! I moved the seat as far back as it would go for Charlie, but a little time with a drill press might let me move it back a little farther. The Mongoose’s pedals have a longer… throw? moment arm? than his other trikes, so he seems to be able to get a little more power out of it, letting him get up the driveway a little better.
I wonder how long it will be until he realizes he can stand on that back step and push with one foot…
Sunday, February 14, 2021 1 comment
Got root?
Life on a farm—or FAR Manor—is a constant hack-fest. Sometimes, heavy equipment is required (and at other times, the heavy equipment is the subject).
A few weeks ago, I talked about the yard expansion (and roof work). The driveway loop/guest parking/equipment yard was most of what the wife wanted… except for one little thing. There had been a gigantic white pine, almost straight out from the front door. The same lightning strike that fried our light switches (and DSL box), 3.5 years ago, also nailed that tree. It was still green, but dying from the top down. So, while Bobcat was working general mayhem on the scrub and other flora, I finally relented and had him drop the big pine.
All well and good, and I rented a stump grinder to level it out, but Bobcat “forgot” to deal with the roots. Several of them were as big around as a decent-sized tree in their own right, and made humps in the driving area. This did not please the wife at all, and she complained about it off and on pretty much all the time. Finally, I realized that she actually wanted a solution, not just a gripe-fest.
“Maybe we can dig up the roots and pull them out with a tractor,” I suggested at last. She dismissed the idea at first (it was my idea, after all), but then warmed up to it. And so, a semi-dry evening found me outside with a shovel and a crowbar, loosening dirt around the offending roots and tossing it out of the way, until we had room to slip a chain underneath.
Up-rooting |
Now for the main event… um, nope. I couldn’t get the chain to stay around the bigger root, because there was a small branch diving deeper into the ground right where I’d cut it loose. I dug around it, then chainsaw’ed the branch away (but left about an inch to help keep the chain in place).
As the root started coming up, the rain started coming down. We got the thing out of the ground, I slid the chain toward the middle, and then raked a mat of dirt and gravel off it. Finally, she carried it out of the way.
The rain got close to being a downpour, and the wife put the tractor in high gear to get it back to its dry garage as I bolted inside and hit my head with a hair dryer.
Root has been got |
Too bad it’s pine… it would have been great firewood.