Benjamin Scribner's Blog, page 8

The weeks news. Some work around the cabin, and another couple leaves the mountain for good.

 

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

We set a record last month for the most days without sunshine – a total of 28 days. It looks like this month will be about the same.  Winter is here to stay for a bit, though we haven’t had anywhere near the snow of winters past.  However, it’s not over yet.  We have been using our 4-wheelers on the first mile of road, since there is not enough snow for a snowmobile, yet too much for a pickup. Maybe before spring we will be able to ride our snowmobiles all the way down, but for now, we transfer everything from a sled to the 4-wheeler, and back again for the return trip. This can be exhausting at times, since it doubles the work, but it can’t be avoided. Luckily, we only have to do it a couple times a week.

There have been many people who have tried, and failed, to live up here. Most have left because of the hardships of living up here, though there have been a few who have been trying to hide from the law, or have gotten into trouble with the law while up here.  The law always catches up with them, eventually. They are all gone now, either running before they could be arrested, or were arrested and taken off the mountain. One such couple in particular has been a real pain. The husband drove the road like it was a highway, almost running into every one of us at least once, then trying to shift the blame onto us for his bad driving. His wife wasn’t much different, though she drove slower, but they were both trouble nearly from the start. Then, a year ago last October, he decided to take a few shots at some loggers he thought were on his property.  The following day, when sheriffs’ deputies came in with the loggers to question him, he thought he’d take some shots at them as well.  Well, long story short, he was scheduled for sentencing this past Friday, and while trying to find out anything online, we came across an arrest and conviction on his wife. It looks like she will be in prison at least until 2022, if she behaves, if not she will be out a few years later. So, another couple who thought they could live off grid, and escape the law, is now gone, and we are breathing a sigh of relief. There’s rarely a dull moment up here, that’s for sure.

I have been puttering around the cabin this week. First, I built a door for the kitchen so we could keep the puppies out of the trash, and the dogfood that’s under the counter. It is half a door, kind of like the bottom half of a Dutch door you would see on old farms many years ago. Today, I added a narrow shelf to the top of the door so we can set coffee cups or plates there when needed. The cats enjoy sitting up there, as well, to taunt the puppies, so now they have a more comfortable seat from which to watch the goings on in the living room.  I also finished wiring in the last of the 110 outlets in the bedroom and bathroom, something I have been meaning to do for the last couple of years. Now, the lovely wife doesn’t have to run an extension cord from the living room to her sewing machine, and I can run a shorter cord to the washer in the tub, rather than one from the living room. We won’t be tripping over cords, and there’s less chance of the puppies chewing one up while the power is on.

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

 

The weeks news. A tale of my Railroad days.

 

It’s been a crazy few weeks up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven in the great northwest.

Since my last update, the lovely wife had to have her gall bladder removed, resulting in a two-night stay in the hospital. She is doing much better now, and recovering nicely.

Winter finally arrived, dumping four feet of snow on us over a three-day period, forcing school to close on Monday and us to spend a few days digging out. A sports trip the lovely wife was supposed to go on was also canceled due to the snow and road conditions.

The puppies are growing, and testing our patience every chance they get. We bought a kennel for them to sleep in at night and stay in during the day when we are gone. This has resulted in less things destroyed here, and we can now clutter up the living room once again, much to our delight.

I have often talked about my childhood in Castine Maine, but I haven’t yet written about the later years living in another small town in New England, or my summer job of working for an old-time steam railroad.  We moved to Brookfield, New Hampshire, when I was around twelve, moving into a small house in what was supposed to be a housing development, but had at this point failed.

Around the age of fourteen, a group of rail enthusiasts decided to bring back a long defunct rail line that, in its heyday, ran from, I believe, Boston, Massachusetts, to Sanbornville, New Hampshire, then on to Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, ending near the dock for the Mount Washington, a steam ship that took tourists out onto lake Winnipesauke. They named it the Wolfeboro Railroad, but instead of running from Boston, it would run between Sanbornville and Wolfeboro, a distance of thirteen miles. Back in the day, Sanbornville was quite the rail terminal, having a turntable, complete with a round house and coaling station as well as a water tower for filling the locomotives that came through. Part of one railroad building was still there, cut in half, moved across the road, and turned into apartments. What happened to the rest of the structures is anyone’s guess. My mother had a gift shop in a building near the tracks and sold tickets for the train.

These men restored a few old wooden passenger cars, found and bought a steam locomotive and an old self-propelled car we called #10. I don’t remember the reason for the number, but that’s what it was called, and the number was even painted on it when it was restored. I say “we” because I was fascinated by the whole steam train thing at that age, and went to work on #10 selling candy and postcards soon after it went into service.  I will give you a brief history of #10 as I remember it.

It started life as a combine coach on a narrow gage line back in the late 1800’s. A combine coach, for those who don’t know, carries baggage as well as passengers. The first third of the car was an open compartment with sliding doors on both sides for baggage, and the rest of the coach was seats. Sometime in its life it was converted to standard gage and a diesel motor, with the necessary gear to move the coach, added in the baggage compartment, along with controls for its operation. Later, when it served on our line, it had a gas motor.  As with all passenger trains, we had a conductor, who would take tickets, and talk about the history of the #10. I had his spiel memorized pretty quickly, and when we would stop for lunch and the engineer and conductor would leave the coach, I would often stay behind because tourists would come by and want to take a look inside, and ask questions. Since I knew the whole story, I often got tips after they left, telling me what a smart kid I was.  I worked there for a couple of summers, once even running fire patrol, a nasty job and a tale for another day.

That’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

The weeks news. ‘Twas the weekend before Christmas.

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

We had what appeared, at first glance, to be winter. Cold temperatures, and a foot of snow, made it seem like winter had finally made an appearance.  However, it was not to be. After a winter storm that closed school a day early for winter break, temperatures have risen into the mid 40’s, and even crossed the 50-degree mark in town a couple of times this weekend.  This has been melting much of the snow and made traversing the road a nightmare. Snowmobiles can only go so far down; pickups can only get so far up. Thereby, forcing us to use 4-wheelers in between, and even those are having difficulty at times. Hauling in supplies has become a challenge, to say the least, but we are getting it done.

The lovely wife has the next two weeks off for the Christmas break; though she does have one trip near the end of the month, it is a short one. It is nice having her home. School won’t start again until after the new year.

The puppies are growing and becoming quite the handful these days. They are learning, though at times it seems like they never will. They can find more things to get into, and we are constantly picking up things they might chew on. So far, we have had to put up the kitchen trashcan and have decluttered the living room; it’s the neatest it has been in years, thanks to the pups. However, everything is now cluttering up the bedroom.  It seems like every time we turn around the pups are getting into something we thought was safe from them.  Last night, they got the phone book and were happily tearing it to shreds when the lovely wife was awakened by the noise.

There isn’t much else going on this week, and as I have said, it is the weekend before Christmas. So, I will tell you a story about a Christmas long past, when we lived in the small town of Brookfield, New Hampshire.

My father was working in Boston, and wouldn’t be home until the weekend. My mother had a giftshop in the Newington Mall in Newington, NH, and wouldn’t be home until well after dark.  My sister and I were teenagers, able to be home alone and trusted not to get into trouble. We had some of the neighborhood kids over after school and were bored. It was two weeks until Christmas and there was already a couple of feet of snow on the ground. Someone came up with the bright idea to set up the Christmas tree to surprise our mom. Well, we didn’t have a tree handy, our parents hadn’t gotten one yet. I think they were waiting until closer to Christmas before cutting one, which is what we did in those days. We never bought one as I recall.

While my sister and her friends dug out the trunk full of decorations, my buddies and I went in search of a tree. Not just any tree would do, oh no, it had to be a long needle White Pine, and the only one we knew of was in a field owned by someone else.   Well, one of my friends got their snowmobile and ran it around the field while myself and another friend chopped down the tree. We got it home, then had to go down to the nearby sand pit for sand to fill the bucket that the base of the tree sat in. By the time that was finished, my sister had Christmas music playing on the turntable and hot cocoa steaming for all of us.

We spent a good couple of hours decorating the tree, then it was time for our friends to head home. We knew mom wouldn’t be home until late, as the mall closed late during the Christmas season, and it was almost a two-hour drive home. So, around midnight, we spied mom coming up the road. Just as she pulled into the driveway, exhausted from her week and wondering how she was going to pull of decorating our house, we flipped on the lights of the tree.   I think it was the best Christmas ever, and one I remember fondly.

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

 

The weeks news. Winter is here at last.

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

Winter has finally arrived, leaving almost a foot of snow behind as the storm moved off. It’s snowing gently, now, as I write this. The first snows of winter are always peaceful; the snow falling, turning the world into a quiet wonderland. The snowshoe hares are now camouflaged, since they have been white since mid-November. I’m sure they’re happy not to be seen by any of the local coyotes now.

During the fall, I make sure our snowmobiles are serviced and ready for the coming winter. But, as with every best laid plan, things can go awry. Our big machine, which has a fairly new battery and started a few weeks ago with no issues, decided to die right when we needed it. One of the cells is either weak or dead, as we can charge it and get the machine started but can’t leave it shut off too long or it won’t start.  This means I need to go outside and fire it up every so often and let it run a while, wasting gas. I have a new battery ordered and should have it next week.

The smaller machine has had its share of troubles as well.  Before I bought the machine, for some unknown reason, someone had put anti-freeze in the fuel tank, messing up the carburetor and leaving a white crusty film in it and the fuel tank. I drained the tank, added fresh fuel and additives to remove any residual anti-freeze, and tore the carburetor down and thoroughly cleaned it. For a while after this, everything was running normally.  However, the other night, it would stall, and I would have to wait a few moments before it would start again, only to have it die again a few yards later. I pulled the carb off of it again yesterday and found a few flakes of residual anti-freeze clogging one of the jets. Also, the needle valve in the barrel of the carb, which controls the amount of fuel going into the jets, had gotten bent somehow and I had never noticed. Another cleaning and a new needle valve, along with more additive in the fuel tank, and it’s running again. I will probably have to fiddle with it some more over the winter until what remains of the anti-freeze is gone.

Amaroq and Shikoba have had their first taste of winter, both of them running around in the fresh snow. It is fun watching animals that have never seen snow playing in it. They loved it until it got deep, then they had trouble moving through it, and would only go so far before wanting back inside again. Amaroq, I discovered, doesn’t like the cold and bolts for the door as soon as his business is finished, wanting back inside near the fire and warmth. Shikoba will follow Jade, our St. Bernard, around the yard all day if we would let her, braving the deep snow and cold as long as she can be near her new “big sister.”

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

 

The weeks news. A story from my childhood.

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

It’s December now, and the temperatures are still above average for this time of year. By now, we should have had a foot or more of snow on the ground and be using the snowmobiles to get in and out. However, that isn’t the case. Since not much else is new, I thought I would tell a tale from my childhood while living in a small town on the coast of Maine.

The town of Castine is on a small peninsula jutting out into the Penobscot bay. It is home to the Maine Maritime Academy, a school for training merchant marines, and if memory serves, they also produce a few officers for the US Navy.  It is also home to the ruins of a British fort from the revolutionary war called Fort George. When I lived there, the fort was little more than dirt mounds in the rough shape of a square. I have since seen pictures of it, and the historical society there has been restoring it to its former glory.

I was eight, it was summer, and my parents owned a rather large three story, twenty-room house on Main street, called the McClusky House, after some prominent owner from the past. My parents had a restaurant on the first floor, named the Beanpot Stagecoach Inn, named after a stagecoach by the same name that used to stop there when stagecoach was the preferred means of travel.  There was also a gift shop tucked off to one side of the main floor which my grandmother would run while my mom and dad ran the kitchen and dining area. The second floor was rented out as apartments, and the third floor was where our family’s rooms were.

A few weeks into summer, I and my best friend had managed to damn near cut off my right index finger while amusing ourselves with an extremely dull hatchet and a piece of rope on an old stump out in back of the house.  The only thing that saved the finger was that the tendon and artery bowed out away from the hatchet blade.  This earned me a short stay in the local hospital while they put my hand back together.  I was eventually paroled from the hospital, a pin through my finger holding the bone together, a splint holding everything in place, and my arm in a sling.  It was several days after my release that I had an encounter I will never forget.

The day was sunny and warm, and sail boats were out in the harbor coming and going from small towns all along the coast. One, in particular, decided to tie up at the wharf where I spent my days, prior to my unfortunate encounter with the hatchet, fishing. Its occupant was nonother than Edward “Teddy” Kennedy, younger brother of John and Robert, along with his family. They wanted to take in the local sights of our small town, and headed up the main street. When they arrived outside our restaurant, they decided to stop for a meal which caused quite a bit of excitement to the patrons already there.  It also brought in a few more who had been following at a discreet distance.

They were seated, and after placing their order, took a look around the gift shop. My mother says that my grandmother tied the shoes of one of his children. Teddy even went into the kitchen to ask my father a question about the town.  My father, at the time, was up to his elbows in dishwater, but that didn’t bother the senator.

While they were at the table, I went up to them and asked for his autograph. He asked what had happen to my finger, and what I wanted to do when I grew up. Being an eight-year-old boy, I wanted to raise frogs, and told him that. He wrote a nice note, saying he hoped my hand got better and that I raised lots of frogs.   I still have that note tucked away in a strongbox. Someday, I will have it appraised and see if it’s worth anything. But for now, it’s a memory of my childhood, and growing up on the coast of Maine.

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

The weeks news. Happy Thanksgiving

It’s been a quite time up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven in the great northwest.

When we last spoke, I had recently been diagnosed with PTSD and was taking some time to work my head around that.  I have begun seeing a counselor, and so far, it has been a positive experience.  I am also in the process of adding PTSD to my VA disability rating and hopefully that will be accomplished soon.  For now, I am taking things day by day.

Today is Thanksgiving Day, and families have been traveling to relatives homes this week for the big meal, preceded by the annual Macy’s day parade and followed by football and a nap.  Up here, we are putting together a small meal for just the two of us. My son is cooking a meal tomorrow for his family since his wife is working today. We aren’t doing much else.

So far, the weather has been unseasonably warm for this time of year, and in a normal year we would have enough snow by now to need to be riding our snowmobiles up and down. This year, we have been driving the pickup all the way to our cabin every day, so far. The previous two years we were able to drive in on Thanksgiving Day, though we had been on snowmobiles earlier in the month.  The current long-range forecast isn’t calling for any snow until January, and warm temperatures before and after the storm. We shall see.

There have been a lot of ups and downs since I lasted posted. For starters, I ended up in the hospital with necrotizing pneumonia that almost killed me. After leaving the hospital, I had to go in every day for an IV of antibiotic. This went on for four weeks, ending this past Sunday. I lost the use of the upper half of my right lung to this, and am now making adjustments for the lack of air. It’s a good thing I had quit smoking a few weeks before this all happened or it could have been much worse.

Sadder news, the day before I was released from the hospital, my faithful traveling companion, Kiyo developed another infection and we put him to sleep a couple days after I got out of the hospital. I am still devastated by his loss.  He was with me longer than any other dog I have ever had, and I miss him daily.  We have, however, adopted two puppies this past week.  Though no dog will take the place of Kiyo, there is no reason not to find, and love, another dog. We were only looking for one, but after a little female fell asleep in the lovely wife’s arms, we ended up with both a male and a female. They are a handful, as puppies will be, but also a joy to have around. We named them Amaroq (The male), Inuit mythology for a big black wolf that would waylay hunters, and Shikoba (the female), Choctaw for “little feather”, which is appropriate because of a marking on her forehead.

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

The weeks news. I am taking some time away.

 

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

I am early this week, and will most likely be taking some time off from posting for a while, so I thought I would talk about something that has been near and dear to my heart since my return from the war back in 2005. Something that has hit home with me just this past Monday when I went to see my primary doctor at the VA for the first time. Something I have been living with these past 14 years and needs to be addressed.

We teach our young boys to “man up”, “boys don’t cry”, etc., etc. Then, when they are old enough, we send them off to fight our country’s battles, and wonder why they are committing suicide at the rate of 22 a day when they come home again.

Though I never served in a combat area, we were in the war zone, and when I was medically evacuated out on Christmas day in ’05, I saw a few things on the plane, and later at the hospital in Germany, that had a profound effect on me, and with which I have been dealing silently all these years. Monday, when my doctor asked specific questions, ones he is trained to ask, I completely broke down into a mass of sobbing tears. I now know that I have been suffering from PTSD, something I didn’t believe I had, since I had not seen combat. I thought that term was reserved for those poor souls.

Isn’t it time we stopped telling our young boys and men that they cannot have emotions?

We men have been holding emotions in all our lives, and now, veterans are having issues that they can’t control, leading 22 a day to end their lives because they think it’s unmanly to seek help. I find this unacceptable. I myself am now 58, and finally coming to grips with this.

I will be taking counseling, getting through these memories, and working to move beyond them, and I will be encouraging others to do the same.

As always, the lovely wife is beside me through this and is my rock.

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

 

 

The weeks news. My injured pup gets a ride, the stray cat, and my eye appointment.

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

It feels like fall up here, though, it’s the middle of August and supposed to be the dog days of summer. We had three really hot days, then the temperatures dropped twenty degrees and we are back to temps in the 50’s in the mornings.

I have finished a few of my smaller projects, and now, will be looking to build another shed to store our pop-up camper, my old Arctic Cat snowmobiles, and our 3- and 4-wheelers, before the snow flies. Today we are going in search of logs to use as posts, like we did for the woodshed/workshop. I have a few, but need more. With the help of my son, I should have the shed finished in time. My son is erecting his own shed from a kit he bought at one of the chain building-supply centers north of us. I thought he could have built one from scratch, but he isn’t as confident in his building abilities yet as I am.

Our stray cat is back, and we are going to trap it this coming week. It has pretty much either decimated the chipmunk population or frightened them away from here, and the hares that normally reside under the cabin aren’t out and about anymore. We will take the cat in to see if it has been fixed, then release it elsewhere, since the shelter won’t take feral cats, and we cannot find anyone who will take it. I hate to do it, but it will surely freeze up here this winter and we don’t need another cat.

I had an eye appointment this past week, the first one I have had in the seventeen years since my cataract surgery. I am still seeing 20/20 after all these years, which surprised me. The doctor said I could use a prescription pair of reading glasses, though it was a slight prescription. I have been getting along just fine with the cheap store-bought glasses, but since it costs me nothing through the VA, I ordered a pair. I should have them in a few weeks.  This next week, I will be going back for my first appointment with a primary care physician.

My faithful traveling companion Kiyo loves to ride in, or on, anything with wheels. I trained him when he was just a pup to sit in front of me on my 4-wheeler, though he has never gotten used to a snowmobile. Since his injury, he hasn’t been on a 4-wheeler.  However, that changed today. I rigged up a basket on the front of my 3-wheeler, and the lovely wife got the 4-wheeler. I put my poor injured pup in the basket and off we went. He was so happy, and when we stopped for a break, he started barking as if to say, “Keep going!” His excitement was all over his face. He was one tired, but happy, puppy when we returned home, and fell asleep almost as soon as I put him on the couch.

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

The weeks news. Thunderstorms, berries, and the stray cat.

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

Today is foggy and damp.  Yesterday, we had rain during the day and again last evening. The lovely wife and I spent a few hours at dusk watching the lightning moving to the north of us. The storm put on quite a show for about an hour, until it was too far north to see any longer. Thunderstorms have rolled through the past few days, bringing much needed rain, but also lightning. So far, we haven’t had any issues with fire, and I hope it stays that way.

With my son’s help, we got the wheel bearings and front brakes changed on my pickup, and we also changed the brake shoes on his. I am mostly supervising the work, letting him learn the tricks I have learned over the years so he can pass them down to his son when he’s old enough. I still have a few things to repair, but they can wait a while longer, though I do hope to have them done before the snow flies.

Huckleberry picking is almost over.  The berries are going past their prime now, and won’t be worth the effort much longer, or they are too small to be worth the effort to pick. Either way, it’s nice not having berry pickers crowding up the road and ignoring private property signs, which many of them do. Their attitude is they have picked up here for years, before the land was sold, and they believe it’s their right to continue to go where they please. I wouldn’t have a problem with them, except they have no regard for other people’s property, parking their vehicles in inconvenient locations (or expecting us to move out of their way) and leaving behind trash. I have run a few off of land owned by people that don’t want them picking there and have heard all manner of excuses. Some even go so far as to take down cable that is blocking where they want to pick, disregarding the no trespassing signs they can’t miss seeing.

There’s a cousin of the huckleberry up here, the serviceberry, and they are ripe now, almost past their prime as well. The lovely wife and I spent a couple of hours this morning picking a gallon over near Allen’s cabin. Nobody picks them up here which I don’t understand.   They are quite edible and taste a lot like a blueberry, of which they are also related. The lovely wife will use what we picked in something sweet later this week, and we might go after more when it’s a bit dryer. There are many edible berries up here which people ignore in favor of the huckleberry.  They are just as tasty and easier to pick; serviceberries being on a high bush instead of right on the ground so you don’t have to bend as much to pick them.

Our stray cat seems to have moved on.  The food dish we put out for it hasn’t been touched for a couple of days now (though, it has been stormy of late). We were going to try to catch it, but found out the shelter won’t take feral cats.  We were hoping it would get used to us, and maybe, we would be able to tame it and find it a home. But now, I think it has gone, moving on or a wild animal may have gotten it.

Between small projects here, the pickup, and the weather, I haven’t been in town lately, though when the lovely wife and I do go, we stop at a new coffee shop near the local market. The owner is building a bigger shop that will be a drive through, as well as a few tables inside for people to come in and sit. The owner says she will have internet eventually, and when she does, I will spend my days there this winter when the lovely wife is at work and I need to be in town. It’s not Always Grounded, or our favorite barista, Sam, but it will have to do. We miss Sam very much and wish she was still here.

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

 

The weeks news. The babies leave home, and getting ready for the end of summer.

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

Our baby birds have flown the nest, and most of the birds that were around this summer have left as well. I don’t know if they have started their migration south already, or if the hawk is back. So far, the hummingbirds are still here, fighting over the feeder. All-to-soon, they will disappear as well.

We had another warning of an impending lightning storm this past week, and set about packing things we didn’t want to lose to fire into the pickup. Fire is a real danger up here, and I track storms when they roll through. This one dissipated before it even got close, which made us breathe a little easier and sleep better knowing we wouldn’t have to bug out. I even had the pop-up camper hooked to the truck, even though it isn’t registered, or even ready for the road yet (the rear lights don’t work).  Just in case we had to leave, we would at least have someplace to sleep that wasn’t on the ground or in the pickup.

The fireweed and daises are starting to wilt, either from lack of rain or because it’s near the end of summer.  The end of summer – something we don’t like to think about too long up here.  We just started getting used to the warm weather, and now are looking at fall, with its rain and cooler temperatures, followed soon after by the snows of winter. It always seems like we won’t be ready when the first snows arrive.  Somehow, though, we manage to have most things in order, the yard raked, and all gardening tools, as well as shop tools, put away before it snows.

We have had a black cat show up twice now on our deck. We don’t know where it came from. It’s a long way from town, and if someone dumped it here, it’s a stupid place to do so. Our road is a mass of ruts and washouts that no normal person would traverse.  We have left food out for it in hopes of eventually catching it and taking it to our local no-kill animal shelter. It has been eating the food, and drinking the water left out, and has even meowed at us a few times, but refuses to get too close. As for keeping it, that is out of the question. We already have two cats, and my son has five. That’s more than we need, or want up here. So, it will find a new home, if we can catch it before a coyote does, or winter sets in.

The huckleberry pickers have started to peter out, the berries are almost out of season now, and with the lack of rain, most are dying. The lovely wife broke down finally, picking a couple of gallons before she decided her back wasn’t going to allow it any more. I knew she couldn’t resist. Chances are, she will be back in the berry patches again this weekend, even though she claims to have enough now.

Now that it’s August, I will be getting started on the snowmobiles, making sure they will be ready for the coming snow. I will also be buying pellets, five tons this year, and storing them. My son is building a shed this year for his since he doesn’t want to have to come up every couple of days for a few bags. He will now have them right outside his door.

I have been working on a few projects in preparation for the coming winter. One has been our roof, which has needed some work. Ice melt has been getting under the seams of the metal roofing the last two winters, causing icicles to form under the porch roof.  I have been up screwing down the seams in hopes of preventing future trouble with ice where it shouldn’t be.  I didn’t know what I was doing when I put the roof on.   Since then, I have learned and am making the corrections. The other project is the pickup. I changed ball joints and tie rod ends last fall, but it seems the wheel bearings are giving out. We bought new ones and are in the process of changing them. These aren’t the wheel bearings of old that I am most familiar with and easy to change. No, these are quite the opposite, and taking them out is a chore. I, with my son’s assistance, should have everything back together this coming week, despite the difficulties. My time working on my own rig has served me well when it comes to repairing things – that, and a tech manual on this truck.

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