Good Morning!!!! 61F @ 4:15AM. Plenty of sunshine. High 86F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
Good luck with your next attempt with the water drill, David. Keep pecking at it, and you'll get 'er done!
I look forward to the event next year, Eric, when hopefully I can leave the tent at home and sleep inside the finished interior of the van. I'm thinking four inches of foam will also feel a lot better than a couple inches of air mattress!
I haven't noticed any specialty parking places out here, but I have found several lots with isles so narrow it's almost impossible to get a full sized pickup truck into a space. Perhaps that helps explain your crooked parker, Randy?
Thanks for the reminder about Tiltmeter, Ron. I'll get one for both the tractor and Kubota side-by-side.
Do the foxes use their barking to flush their prey, Thomas? Now that the weather has warmed, the windows are open and I hear them out there most nights.
Yesterday's adventure with the pole saw blossomed into another wood harvesting job as half a dozen fire damaged trunks were removed four feet at a time, some of them almost too big for me to lift onto the forks mounted on the FEL. All were damaged at the base by last year's fire, and likely would have come down by themselves once the rains returned over the next winter. I continue to be amazed at the ease with which the little pico chain on the Stihl saw cuts through the oak, even twelve or fifteen feet up at the end of that spindly pole. I was once again reminded, as the saw coughed it's last gasp as the fuel ran out, how much easier it is to cut the wood than it is to load it up and cart it off. Several times the stiff branches would lever themselves off the forks, forcing a stop to wrestle them back into place for their ride to the burn pile. At times like those I almost wished for a battery to go flat in the saw, perhaps requiring a nap to let knotted muscles recover while the juice was replenished.
By 3 PM I thought both the saw and I had earned a rest, and decided to pull two of the awning brackets off the van so that the paint that there was no time to apply could be done. The old canvas tarp was pulled off the bead blaster for the last time this year, a couple handfuls of black blast furnace grit added to the hopper, and oxidation and burned powder coating vanished with a wave of the gun. There was still plenty of semigloss black paint left over from the last motorcycle luggage rack build, a two part urethane that should last a good long time. This morning I'll put the parts back and remove the remaining set and repeat the process. The locks for the awning brackets showed up yesterday as well, so I'll see how they work today, too. I'm hoping they'll fit just as well on an M8 nut as they're intended to work on a 5/16 one. If not, there'll be an additional stop at the nut and bolt store this afternoon while I'm in town for groceries.
Hang in there, gang, Friday's commin'!
