The weeks news. A new pickup, and picking apples
It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven in the great northwest.
It’s October, and our fall rains have moved in, though not as bad as a normal year. I lit the stove last night for only the third or fourth time this fall as the days are still warm for the most part. Last year by this time, we had been running the stove since early September and had already had one snow fall. I’m hoping this rain helps the fires over in Washington state.
Our pickup was getting tired. It also had a few major issues that I could no longer work on, and since winter will be upon us soon, I also don’t have the time. So, the lovely wife and I went north to the city for our bi-monthly supply run and decided to also go looking for a newer pickup. We found one, and though it isn’t exactly what we wanted (a three-quarter ton or a one ton), it does have a canopy and is also much newer – a 2017 with very low miles and some of the warrantee left. It seems the last two owners didn’t drive it very much, as it only had 44,000 miles on it. It was a bit more than we wanted to spend, and we almost didn’t go through with it due to the lovely wife’s fears over the possibility of Covid-19 causing a shutdown at her job. However, the salespeople at the dealership listened and made adjustments to the financing that we could work with and we drove it home that day. It is definitely a noticeable improvement from our old truck and we both enjoy driving it.
The new truck has more places to put things than any other vehicle I have ever owned. There are cubbyholes and USB ports everywhere. It’s a bit overwhelming. Trucks used to be strictly utilitarian: rubber floor mats you could hose off, instead of carpet that gets packed with mud and dirt; simple gages to tell you speed, RPM’s, gas level, coolant temp, and very little else. This new one has an owner’s manual three inches thick, and a separate one just for the radio. I feel like I need a pilot’s license just to drive it. How far technology has come since the first model T rolled off the assembly line a little over a hundred years ago.
We didn’t have the time last month to go apple picking, something we both enjoy doing, and the lovely wife likes to can them. However, last Sunday we had nothing else to do, so we grabbed the grandson and went picking. It was his first time, and he really enjoyed it. When we got home, the lovely wife and the grandson washed and sorted the apples and he was able to pick out some to take home to his family. Yesterday, the lovely wife was able to process some of the apples we all gathered so we will have apples over the winter and spring.
This month I will be getting the snowmobiles ready, as well as putting tire chains on the four-wheelers in preparation for the first snowfall, though with the warm temperatures right now, that may not be until next month. Last year in December, we were driving the pickups all the way in. It’s too early to tell yet what this winter will be like, but I suspect it will be another mild one. Only time will tell.
That’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.
