Benjamin Scribner's Blog, page 10

The weeks news. Rain, rain, and more rain. Another 4 wheeler.

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

The spring rains are still with us, as the joke goes; it only rained twice this week, the first time for three days, and the second time for four days. It washed enough snow off the bottom half of the road that we can now drive our truck up to the spring, the halfway point. From there, it’s a short hike up to the snowmobile, or if supplies are ready to haul up, a short trip with the 4-wheeler from the truck to the snowmobile. Though I worry about the lack of snow pack, I will be happy to be able to drive back into my yard once again.

My son bought his own 4-wheeler this week, getting a newer one than ours for less than half of what it would have cost on the market. Seems it had been in the local shop in town for repairs a couple of years ago but the owner never came back to pick it up. So, the shop decided to sell it for the cost of the repairs only. My son got a very good deal. This will give us three machines up here for next fall: our 4-wheeler, the 3-wheeler, and my son’s 4-wheeler. I can breathe easier now. Now, he only has to find a bigger snowmobile with a better track, deeper paddles on it, for hauling in his supplies. Right now, he is using our big machine, with the two-inch paddles on the track, to get his family up from the spring.  It doesn’t care what the snow conditions are; it just tears up the road.  His will no longer haul anything with this sloppy snow we now have. His current machine has a track with only ¾ inch paddles on it, and with the snow conditions, just can’t get moving by itself, let alone pull a dogsled behind it. I don’t mind, he keeps gas and oil in it when he uses it, and he uses it more than we do.

My faithful traveling companion Kiyo is feeling much better since his surgery, though he still can’t use his back legs and doesn’t know when he does his business. The lovely wife and I have been giving him baths, which he hates, almost daily since he is covered in filth by morning and smells. He should be able to get back in the wheelchair I made next week, and that will help improve his mood. I hope. Once he is able to get around on his own, I think things will get better for him. Our other dog, a St. Bernard, is jealous because after a bath, or when giving medications, Kiyo gets a treat to help his anxiety over the trauma of the bath or the medicine. We give the St. Bernard a treat sometimes, but not as often as Kiyo gets them.

I’ve had time to start writing again, and am working on a new story, though I don’t know yet if it will be a novella, or a full-length book; only time will tell. If it’s a novella, it will be included in my next book, Meanderings of a Muddled Mind, and most likely be the last story I write for that book. The lovely wife said, “Yeah, right; I think I’ve heard that one before,” last evening when I told her that. But I am ready to end the book, so I think it will be the ending tale.

Still missing Always Grounded, though I haven’t been in town much, as usual.  When I am, I enjoy a good latte, and now we have to use one of those drive up coffee shacks to get our fix; no relaxing at one of those. The lovely wife and I went into My Kitchen, where the old loggers hang out in the early morning hours.  However, we were there later in the morning and missed them. The waitress we know was working though, and we got caught up on the goings on there, as well as filling her in on our winter. She promised to let the old loggers know I was still among the living and would try and get back there soon.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weeks news. Spring rains have arrived, early.

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

April showers bring May flowers, or so the saying goes. The spring rains have arrived, early.  Yesterday and today, it has rained, washing more snow off the road below us and making the snow up here soft. As is normal this time of year, there is no snow in town and things are starting to turn green with flowers beginning to poke their petals up from under the earth. Up here, we still have three feet of snow in places. Walking in the yard is becoming a challenge; you can walk on top of the packed snow, but the next step might find you sinking to your waist. My son’s snowmobile has been having trouble getting around in this soft snow. His machines track has only got three quarter inch thick paddles on it, which can’t get a lot of traction in this snow. Our new machine has two-inch paddles, making it much easier to move as it digs into the snow.  Of course, this means that it throws snow up behind the machine from underneath and that snow then winds up all over the dogsled being pulled behind it. My son wanted to use it and the dogsled to bring the grandkids and his wife home, making only one trip, but after he saw how much snow was piled up on the dogsled, he decided that making two trips wasn’t such a bad idea.

The family we have nicknamed ‘the Weekenders’ have been wanting to come up, calling me to ask about the road conditions. I tell them if they don’t mind hiking from the bottom, they can come up, but they want to drive in with UTV’s or their vehicles.  UTV’s, without tracks, aren’t getting past the spring located a mile down from us, and vehicles aren’t getting past the second gate for at least another week. Most years, it’s the second week of May before anyone can drive up, but this year, as last, I think we will be driving in before the end of this month.

Keeping the rain barrel full has become a challenge as well.  We normally take it from the deck where we don’t let the dogs go. But now the deck is cleared off, and we are having to get snow from anywhere we can find it that isn’t dirty, or someplace the dogs have roamed.  Having to wash one dog (and his bedding) daily has depleted the amount of snow in the barrel, and right now, hauling water jugs in is still not easy.  It would mean a trip to town every day to fill them.  So, we stretch our drinking water and hunt for the cleanest snow in the yard to keep the rain barrel full, until I can once again bring our water trailer into town and fill it. We have been talking about keeping the rain barrel full this summer as well, leaving it in the bathroom instead of emptying it and putting it out in the shed for the summer. This will keep us from having to drag the water trailer into town once a week as we can pump the water from the trailer into the rain barrel and keep it in reserve if we need it.  Another option is that I might set the barrel up outside near the porch and rig a tarp to funnel rain into it until the rains stop for the summer.  I will have to wait until all the snow is gone before I can even think about putting it outside.

The four-wheeler we bought is working as I had hoped, hauling up our supplies from the truck to where we park the snowmobiles. I have started moving our pickup up the road as the snow melts off, breaking through some of it to help it along. There are three gates off the road below us leading to logging company property.  In the spring, we count our progress by which gate we can get to with our truck. Right now, it is between the first and second gate, and by tomorrow, I should have it parked at the second gate, if not further up. We don’t have to worry about blocking the road, as we are the only ones living up here, besides Allen, year-round, and Allen doesn’t leave the mountain very often. We do try and stay to the side of the road, however, in case someone wants to come up with a four-wheeler or snowmobile, which is rare this time of year.

My faithful traveling companion, Kiyo had to go back to the vets this week. He was developing sores on his underside that were turning black and the skin was dying. Surgery to remove the dead skin and two nights stay at the vets, and he is back home, confined to a small box so he can’t move too far. He can’t be in his wheelchair, or move around much for the next two weeks, and we have to keep that area dry.  Keeping the area dry is hard to do since he has no bladder control. We also discovered that he cannot take the pain/sleep aid medicine the vet prescribed.  It makes him restless and causes him to pant so hard we were worried he was going to stop breathing.  We don’t know yet if there is anything else we can give him, but since we need to make a follow-up appointment with the vet, we can ask them on Monday.  Needless to say, Kiyo isn’t a very happy pup right now.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

 

 

 

 

The weeks news. An old Dutch oven

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

The snow is melting off at a rapid rate, and I believe by the end of April we will be driving the pickup back into the yard.  To get us through in the meantime, with the aid of a friend, we purchased an older four-wheeler this week. It will help get supplies from the trucks to the snowmobiles and dogsled for the rest of the trip home. The first mile of road below us is a mixture of snow, ice, and dirt; nothing we can ride a snowmobile on, yet we also can’t get the pickup up either. So, the four-wheeler with tire chains is the answer.

My faithful traveling companion Kiyo is still getting used to his new wheels, and not sure he likes them at all. He’s also never been fond of baths, but has had to have one almost every day since the accident because he has no longer any bladder control and has to sleep in a diaper at night to keep the bed dry. I refuse to change his sleeping habit because of his disability.  It has been, and continues to be, a learning experience with several conversations with the local vet.

Not much else has changed up here this past week, so I thought I would tell a tale from my childhood:

My mother had an old Dutch oven.  I don’t know just how long she had had it before I came into the world, but I know it’s been around.  My fondest memories are of her cooking homemade chili in it when I was a boy. She would let it simmer on the stove all day, stirring it occasionally until it was just right. I loved her chili and my mouth would water the whole day until dinner.

When I was seventeen and about to join the Navy, we lived in a two-hundred-year-old house in the town of Ossipee Village, New Hampshire, near the foothills of the White Mountains.  There was an old hand-dug well near the house that was lined with stone and was around twenty or so feet deep.  Later, residents of the house installed a pipe and pump to the house so a bucket was no longer needed, and a wooden cover was put over the top to keep out unwanted critters and other refuse.

While I was away at boot camp, I dreamed of my mom’s homemade chili and couldn’t wait for my first leave to get home. Upon arriving home, I was informed that the pump had burned out, and until my dad had found a replacement and made the repairs, my family had used the old Dutch oven to bring water up from the well. At some point, the rope broke and the Dutch oven was lost in the depths of the well, thought to never be seen again.

Well, that just wouldn’t do! I pulled off the cover, and with a flashlight discovered that I could see what was left of the rope just below the surface of the water. I made up my mind that chili was important and I was going to retrieve the Dutch oven no matter what.  As I said, the well was lined with stone, and barely big enough around to fit in, add spiders and whatever else might be found down there, and it wouldn’t be easy.  One slip and I would end up in the cold well water too, and I had no idea just how deep it would be, and was not sure if I could even be rescued if I did fall in.  Add to this that nobody was home when I decided on this little adventure, and things could have gone south in a hurry. However, I would not be denied my chili!

I climbed slowly down the stone side, watching where I placed my hands to avoid any spiders that might be lurking there, until I was just above the water. Now, I had to reach down and fish the rope out, keeping my balance while I did this. Then, I tied the rope to a belt loop and slowly climbed back out again. Mission accomplished! Imagine my mother’s surprise when I presented her with the now rusty Dutch oven. That chili was the best I ever remember eating!

That Dutch oven now resides here in my cabin.  Not only do I make chili in it, I also bake bread and a host of other delicious things.  It is a happy link to my younger days and brings back these memories with every use.

Well, that’s the news for the week. Bye for now.

The weeks news. Spring seems to have arrived.

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

Spring arrived, all at once, it seems. Temperatures climbed from the thirties and lower forties into the high sixties almost overnight, and our packed trail started getting mushy, making travel by snowmobile difficult once again.  Dirt is showing through in places down below, so it may not be much longer before we will be moving the trucks up as the road clears. It’s that time of year when a snowmobile isn’t working, yet there’s too much snow for a four-wheeler to get around without sinking.  I have been letting the stove go out during the day, as it has been so warm, I see no sense wasting the pellets; relighting it again as evening comes and temperatures start to drop again. Soon, I will be throwing open windows and changing out the stale winter air for fresh spring air.  Spring birds are returning, we have spotted them in the trees and are hearing them in the mornings. The moose are also moving on the road again, we have seen sign of them nearby.

My faithful traveling companion Kiyo is still without the use of his back legs since the accident, and, according to the vet, he most likely will never get the use of them. We are making adjustments for him; I built him a wheelchair, and have been making slight improvements to it this last week trying to make it comfortable for him as well as easy to maneuver around our cabin.  He has not wanted to leave the comfort of the cabin much since his injury, and the few times I have taken him anywhere near the snowmobiles, he has started shaking, refusing to move from the spot where I set him down. I am hoping that when the yard clears of snow and he can get around easier, he will, once again, want to be outside with us as we work. But for now, I take him out to do his business and let him stay by the fire, or on the couch near me as I write.

One of the old loggers got ahold of the lovely wife a few days ago. They haven’t seen me lately and were wondering if I was still among the living. The lovely wife told him I have been busy up here, and hadn’t left the mountain much. I guess I need to drag myself into town soon and have coffee with them one of these mornings. But, with the lovely wife working out of town, getting there might be a bit of a problem, since I would have to borrow my sons truck early in the morning.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weeks news. A sad week, but some good news as well.

It’s been a sad week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

To start on a good note first. The lovely wife started her new job this week, and is currently commuting an hour and a half north to Spokane every day for training. When her training is done, she won’t have that long trip every day, she will only be coming home once a week, if not longer, depending on where her charter takes her. Learning the ins and outs of a charter bus company, as opposed to driving a school bus, is quite different, but she has been picking it up pretty fast, as I knew she would.

Always Grounded, our only sit in coffee shop for good lattes, have closed their doors for good this past week. Business has been almost nonexistent since the holidays. It was a great place to sit and relax with a latte, while listening to good music and enjoying company. The lovely wife often worked editing my books there in between her school bus runs, and I pestered Sam when I had to be in town. I think they would have done better in a collage town, where students could have had access to internet, and pastries, good coffee and hung around with friends. Sam will be missed. Her wit and sense of humor, her smile and good coffee is, I believe, what kept customers coming back. But it wasn’t enough to keep the doors open.

My faithful traveling companion of eleven years, Kiyo, had an accident this week. Nothing broken, but his spine was injured and he no longer has the use of his back legs. He doesn’t understand what’s going on, and has been miserable. I have been taking him outside when the call of nature hits, holding his back end up until he is through. He has had many accidents in the cabin as I have been doing my best to read the signs that he needs to go out. I’m getting better at it, but things still happen. Today my son and I are building a doggie wheelchair for him from plans I found on the internet. This will, I hope, relive some of my poor pup’s anxiety and make his remaining years bearable. He and I have traveled many miles together, and even though he is going blind, and has arthritis, I am not ready to let him go.

I have to add here that I am very proud of my son this week. Things I normally take care of, like going to town to do laundry, or pick up supplies, gas, or drinking water, he has stepped up to make sure these things get done since I can’t leave Kiyo alone now.  I couldn’t ask for a better son. He has his own family that needs him, yet he still manages to jump in when needed.  He is a stay at home dad, taking care of his two sons, one of which has severe autism and needs constant supervision. That alone makes me proud. Taking care of my needs right now while I am taking care of Kiyo, puts him at a whole new level. Yeah, he’s a good kid.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

The weeks news. Getting old isn’t for sissies, falling apart, and a new job.

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

The lovely wife starts her new job soon, leaving me to my own devices while she’s gone for days at a time.  This could be a bad thing, as I forget to eat when I get busy in a project or my writing and she may come home at some point to find me a shell of my former self.  She will miss the children, but not the job as she has grown tired of the petty, small-town mindset here. I don’t blame her, I have been avoiding town as much as possible lately myself.

Winter, it seems, is making up for the lack of snow earlier in the season, and we are getting more now as I write.  Though it helps when hauling in supplies, I am looking forward to spring now. At least, the lovely wife won’t have to traverse this road on a daily basis, saving fuel and repairs on the snowmobile.

I have settled into writing again, leaving for the time being Meanderings of a Muddled Mind, and picking up where I left off in Living Deliberately, continuing my account of my life up here. I have become hopelessly stalled in Meanderings, and don’t want to force it and wind up writing something I would regret later when it’s in print. So, for now, it will sit until I get an inspiration again.

My sciatic nerve in my left hip decided to act up again, the last time was years ago while I was still driving a rig. Why it chose now to strike, I do not know. I have been moving with the use of a cane the past couple of days, but now my right shoulder has chosen to separate at the same time, leaving me in a lot of pain. Using my right arm and a cane isn’t going to happen, and using my left arm just doesn’t feel right. I am reduced to moving from the couch only when nature calls and I have no other choice.  The hip is becoming less painful with rest and, hopefully, with the recession of hip pain, the shoulder pain will also recede.   I separated my shoulder as a boy, and during my active duty time in the Navy, it separated several times. The doctors told me then that surgery might help, but there that was no guarantee of improvement.  Therefore, I opted not to have the operation. It hasn’t bothered me in many years, but chose to earlier this winter, likely from turning snowmobiles around so much.  It has not really had a chance to heal since it started bothering me and had, initially, subsided only with resting my shoulder in a sling for a couple of days.  The pain resurfaced now due to use of the cane for the last couple of days.  This has left the lovely wife and my son doing my chores which is driving me crazy. Being unable to move, or get things done around here, is not fun for me. However, since there’s nothing I can do about it, I try not to pull my hair out with this enforced idleness.

Instead, I am planning what I will tackle this spring, as soon as I can drive our pickup into our yard once again. I have a few plans that shouldn’t take too much effort to complete before next winter. The most ambitious undertaking I have in mind is building another room off the east side of our cabin. We want a little more room here, a larger bedroom with a bigger bed and more room for the lovely wife’s crafts to be stored while she’s working on them. I don’t know if I will finish before next winter, or even start, but it’s in my plans. Time, money, and my failing health, will determine if I can get it done or not.  Rain water storage is something I have been wanting to get set up for a couple of years now.  It was planned for last spring but building my son’s cabin took priority.  I’m also going to find newer, and bigger, snowmobiles. Ours is too old and not powerful enough to haul a dogsled, or even two people, up this mountain. I have blown two clutches, so far, this winter trying.  Thus, better machines are near the top of my list.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

The weeks news. Old man winter finally shows up.

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

Winter finally arrived, bringing over three feet of snow to our mountain, and over a foot down below in town. This caused schools to be closed for three days because of wind driven snow and bad roads. At least now we can get all the way down to the pickup and haul in supplies. The downside: the snow was all powder and very hard to pack. The last day of the storms, it took my son and I over four hours to pack the two miles down to our trucks, even though we had packed it each of the previous two days.  We are still having issues with packing. There is an internet tower up here, a mile or so above me, that I help service when it’s needed. Neither myself nor the internet company have had any luck getting up to that tower due to the deep powdery snow. As a result, the few homes that the tower sends internet to haven’t been receiving service for nearly a week now.

Out of necessity, I have been learning how to repair my own snowmobiles this year. As an owner-operator truck driver, over the years, I often had to work on my own rig to save money, and these snowmobiles have been no different this year. I was paying the local shop whenever I had a carburetor cleaned or rebuilt because I didn’t want to mess with it.  However, after problems developed with one that had recently been rebuilt, I learned the inner workings of it, and now, can rebuild them myself. The same applies with nearly anything else.  I spend a few hours online watching a video, or reading a tech manual, then go out and complete the repairs. My philosophy has been that I can’t break it any more than it already is, so why not try and fix it myself.  I learned many years ago, while serving in the Navy, how to read a technical manual for maintaining torpedoes, and have been able to decipher almost any technical book since then, from our pickup to a snowmobile. So far, it has served me well.

Yesterday, the lovely wife went for a driving test at a charter bus company in Washington. She impressed the trainer, and things are moving forward to a better paying job. Although it will mean she will be away from home for days, she won’t have to travel up and down this mountain every day, thus saving gas and maintenance on the snowmobile. It will also mean she won’t have summers off, and I will miss her help around here, but I will manage.  She is worried that I won’t eat when she’s not around, which I admit, is something I tend to forget to do if left alone.  I’m sure she will make sure my son reminds me.

Down in town, business has been slow at Always Grounded, and Sam has been bored.  It’s a combination of the weather and after holidays slump, nobody has any spare cash for a latte or hasn’t wanted to venture out in the storms. I hope things pick up for her soon, as I enjoy sitting there when in town and giving her a hard time, which she is more than happy to return.

Things are settling back to something somewhat resembling normal up here, and I hope to finish another book soon and turn it over to the lovely wife for editing. With this new job, she can take her laptop with her and work on editing in the evenings while enjoying a hotel room. Yes, this job has great perks, and I only wish I still had my CDL, as it would have been a great change of pace from hauling freight around the country.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

The weeks news. Winter can’t make up it’s mind

 

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

It’s the first of February, and the weather can’t seem to make up it’s mind what season it wants to be in. While the Midwest has been locked in sub-zero temperatures, with killer wind chills, we have had spring-like weather here. Sun and rain have been in the forecast for the week, melting off the snow down below us and exposing the ice underneath, making it hard to haul in supplies yet again. Last year at this time, the road was dirt for the first mile, allowing us to drive right up to the snowmobiles and transfer our supplies. This year, the ground had a chance to freeze before the snow hit, and then, due to us packing trails and the hunters driving up and down in the fall, everything below the snow pack turned to a thick sheet of ice.

Things have gotten so bad that I found and bought an old ATC to use. For those of you unfamiliar with these, they are three wheeled machines that were popular in the 70’s and early 80’s. They could be unstable if used incorrectly and caused many injuries and a few deaths.  When used as they should be, they are good, reliable machines; you just can’t “hot dog” on them. I should know; I had one back in the 70’s that came pretty close to killing me a time or two. But, I am hoping that if the ice melts along the edge of the road, as it has been doing in places, there will be enough room to ride this machine up from the pickup to the snowmobile, thus allowing us to haul in what we need again. I am also looking at buying a couple of four wheelers. My goal is to have four wheeled-machines and four snowmobiles up here by next fall, so we can all get around no matter what the weather throws at us.

I have not been in town much lately.  However, when I am, I stop by Always Ground and enjoy a latte with the lovely wife in-between her bus runs, and of course, joke with Sam.  Business has been slow there, so I try and stop when I’m in town, even bringing donuts when I go by the local market first. Sam has a love for sugar-coated donuts, so I try and include a few just for her.  I haven’t seen much of the old loggers because the diner started opening an hour later due to lack of early morning diners, so I haven’t stopped in.  By the time it is open, I am usually on my way to do the laundry, or to finding parts for our snowmobile.

Regarding snowmobiles, my son has had the worst luck this year. First, the Alpine, a heavy, twin-tracked machine and perfect for hauling just about anything, broke down and is currently waiting on a side road for spring when we can tow it home with the truck. Then, this last week, a machine he bought used and was having issues getting it to run, burst into flame at the local shop when they went to start it. From what I was told, the flames went all the way to the celling and needed the fire department to put out. Luckily, no one was injured and no damage occurred to the building.  However, the machine was a total loss. This leaves us with only two working machines, and many headaches, as ours is built for speed, not power.  This means we can’t haul anything in with it, leaving the other machine my son has to do all the work, but taking many trips to do so. We were counting on the bigger machine, now junk, to take up the slack. We are not looking for anything else this winter. We will wait for summer now because of the way this year is panning out.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

The weeks news. Or, Murphy’s law in full effect

 

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

Crazy weather, snowmobile troubles, and a broken foot, have kept me too busy to keep up on my postings of late.

The weather has been spring-like which is odd for January, where we normally have colder temperatures and lots of snow to make travel to our pickup an easy trip. That hasn’t been the case this winter.   These unseasonably warm temperatures have caused us no end of trouble, since we have had nothing but freezing rain, or a rain/snow mix, leaving the first half of the road a sheet of ice that nothing can cross. Getting in supplies, such as much needed drinking water, food, and fuel, has been extremely difficult. Once or twice, snow has fallen with just enough accumulation to run a snowmobile on, and we have scrambled to get in what we could before the snow turned to rain, washing the road clean down to the ice once again.

Just prior to the troubles with the weather, we began having trouble with our snowmobile.  The trouble started when it blew a clutch, leaving us without any means of transportation off the mountain other than our feet until we could get and install a new clutch.  This resulted in the machine sitting off to the side of the trail for nearly a week before we could get to Coeur d’Alene for the new clutch.  Once the new clutch was replaced, I discovered that somehow all the gas that had been in the tank when the machine broke-down was gone.   Obviously, there was a leak somewhere in the system.  After bringing more fuel to the snowmobile, I was still unable to get the machine to run causing me to suspect that moisture had gotten into and frozen in the carburetors.  This required me to remove the carburetors and bring them home to thaw out.  After replacing the carburetors in the snowmobile, we were finally able to get the machine home.  Unfortunately, this was not the end of our troubles with the machine.  I wound up removing the carburetors a couple more times, adjusting the clutches to align properly, replacing the choke cable, replacing the belt, repairing damaged fuel lines, and replacing bad sparkplugs, before finally having the machine in reliable running order.

During the troubles with my machine, my son’s machine broke the drive chain, and because of its age and size, finding parts, or even getting it home before spring, has been a concern. Right now, it’s sitting off on a side road waiting for dry roads, and my pickup, to tow it home.  This, of course, won’t happen until sometime in May.  Also, when his machine broke down, my son somehow managed to get his foot caught between the bogey wheels and the track on the machine, running over his foot and breaking a couple bones. He is still healing.

We were able to acquire three more machines.  My son found the first two machines online and spent time working on them at our local shop where they were gracious enough to let him keep them as well as allow him to borrow the tools he needed to accomplish the work.  He was able to get the smaller of the two machines running and, with the help of a friend, got it to our road and finally home.  The larger of the machines is still in town at the local shop.  After spending many hours trying to figure out what was wrong with it, my son finally handed it over to the shop and asked them to take a look at it.  The third machine is much like the machine we already have and I found it when I contacted a local individual about parts for our machine.  This person has a large quantity of parts from defunct Phazer snowmobiles, and while I was there picking up a couple parts for our Phazer, I discovered he had a running Phazer that he was willing to part with.  Unfortunately, we are currently unable to get either of these two machines home due to the road conditions on our mountain.

Our little generator also decided to quit working, leaving us to have to run our big one. The big one uses far more fuel than the little one does; a gallon runs the little one eight hours, compared to the big one, which uses five gallons in the same amount of time. Fortunately, the little one was under warranty and I currently have the replacement generator sitting in our pickup.  However, I have no way to haul it home without the struggle of hauling it uphill and over ice, for over a mile.  We are trying to come up with a way to bring it up here so we can stop using the large generator and save fuel.

For the time being, we can get down the mountain about halfway before we have to hike. This leaves the lovely wife hiking down before work and up after, though, something she doesn’t relish doing, but has no choice. She is worn out by the time she makes it home and we pretty much fall into bed early and sleep straight through until morning.

I am really hoping for snow again in the coming week, as I would like to get our “new” machines up here; though, the way this winter is shaping up, I doubt we will see any major snowfall until next month. Until then, we will continue to struggle to bring in supplies, and hope for the best. That’s life off grid on a mountain.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

 

 

The weeks news. Or the month from hell.

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

 

It’s Thanksgiving week, and everyone is preparing for the coming meal, making plans to head for relatives, or staying home and having everyone come to them.

Up here, it’s been a rather hectic month, starting with my son’s truck catching fire the first week, right after he got home from a trip into town.  The fire started immediately after my son turned off the truck, throwing a blast of smoke and flame into the cab. The end result was a total loss of his truck, with him getting lungs full of toxic smoke and me getting a bad burn on my hand.  We both ended up in the ER, and the less said about that particular experience the better.

We have had our first snow.  Thankfully it occurred over a weekend so we didn’t have to get our truck off the mountain until the following Monday, with the assistance of tire chains, which we ended up using for most of the week. The road is now clear, thanks to warmer temperatures, so even my son’s car can make it in. Winter is reminding us that it’s just around the corner, and we are making the final preparations for it.  Snowmobiles are being made ready and any bugs worked out before we really need them.  Cleaning up outside from summer projects is finished, and we also moved the camping trailer my son and his family had been living before their house was completed.  We moved it so it won’t be in my driveway, and in the way, this winter when we need to bring snowmobiles in.

My son and his family are moved into their cabin now, and he is slowly working on making it ready for winter, as well. They haven’t been able to insulate the upstairs yet, so he insulated the ceiling on the first floor and they plan on living on the first floor until spring. This is a bit crowded with four of them, but they have been making it work for now. Things they don’t need right away are being stored on the second floor, and they are making themselves as comfortable as they can on the first floor.  He still has a lot of things to do inside, enough to keep him busy for the winter season, at least.

I have been working on a few projects I wanted to finish before winter.  Though a few, like rainwater storage and finishing the bathroom, have been put off now until next spring. I have been forced, because of the burn and a pulled groin, to take it easy; something I find hard to do. I tend to chafe when I’m forced to be idle and I wasn’t even able to write due to pain issues. I still have repairs to make on our truck which I hope to complete this weekend, since the weather is nice and temperatures are supposed to warm up into the 40’s.

With all the delays due to lack of supplies and injuries, we have been rather fortunate with the weather so far.  This year reminds me of four years ago, when we didn’t have much snow to speak of, and the following summer ended up being the worst fire season around here in years. I am hoping that things change soon and we get the snow we need. Having our truck in the yard at Thanksgiving is unheard of here.  Yet, here we are, parking in the yard, snowmobiles sitting unused.

 

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.