Happy Anniversary, Blog!

I was looking over my blog yesterday and realized that its 2nd anniversary is here.  I started the blog to chronicle the trip to Washington DC that my son, David, and I took.  He had been talking a lot about Washington DC and how much he'd like to go there, but with his anemia, I was scared to fly.  Then my mother said "Have you considered the train?"  I looked into it and, before long, David and I were on Amtrak on our way to DC.  The blog chronicled the trip and I kept it up when we got back.

In recognition of 2 years of writing this think, I spent some time reading back over the whole thing and I was struck by just how MUCH has happened in 2 short years:

Year One:

I had water problems in the house.

David and I went to DC.

We both got sick upon return- I was down for over a week

Our water froze and then the pressure switch stuck, blowing valves.

I did an emergency extension of our septic tank...

...During which our backhoe broke down (and is still broke).

Derek requested and received baptism. [a GOOD thing!]

David started on blood transfusions.  Lasted 3 weeks at first.

We entered what would prove to be a severe drought.

I took a wild peregrine and prairie falcon to use for falconry.

David's transfusions increased to every other week.

Moved into a new guitar shop.

My grandmother died.

The ranch got hit with a lawsuit.

The peregrine died from an eagle attack.

David's transfusions increased to every week.

We struggled financially due to reduced income from drought and increased expenses from lawsuit.

David started on steroids.

More drought.

More expensive legal wrangling.

David died.

A critical well went down.

That was all in the first 15 months.  After that, things seemed to turn and this past year has brought:

Year Two

Drought continues thru summer- worst since the '30's but we still shipped some nice cattle.

Saved the well thanks to "well fishing" and improved the well while fixing it.

Daughter off to college and doing good.

Lawsuit settled.

Drought still in effect but we got some much-welcomed snow.

I know life's supposed to be exciting, but, believe me, "cruise control" for the next 2 years would be just fine with me.  :)  However, I don't think that will happen.  There will be challenges and adventures and we'll face them just like we've faced these.

My prairie falcon loves me:

Winter’s Come and Gone

Well, not quite, but it’s a cool song and it’ll soon be true.  Here’s my friends Kenny and Amanda Smith doing the song:

We still have some (probably) cold weather ahead but on the whole, it’s been a very mild winter.  We’ve had just a few small snowfalls and we definitely need some more moisture to get started growing grass in ’13.  The forecast isn’t calling for rain but I’ve seen it rain here and not there, so I’m hopeful that we’ll get something.  Just in case, though, we’re reducing our cattle load to 60% of normal operating capacity.  Now, that sounds easy on paper, but that means a 40% reduction in income, too.   I should be able to make that up by working on guitars, but we’re anticipating a lean summer.  But, I’m confident that we’ll be okay.

Christmas came and went and went enjoyed spending it in Santa Fe at my mother’s house.  I’ve otherwise mostly just been working on guitars, working on sermons, and doing what I normally do this time of the year.  One new thing is that I’m going to make an effort to shoot in the State Championship archery rounds, and to prepare for that I’ve been tuning bows and practicing.

We got a new-to-us Harris' hawk right after the NAFA meet back in Thanksgiving and we've been working with him.  He's doing okay but we just don't have any game.  Maybe next year.

I had a nice surprise the other day. I was wanting a drum track to practice electric guitar with and I thought "Garageband!" So, I fired it up on David's former iPad and guess what I found on there? A recording of us jamming. Before he got his little drum set, he played our Ashbory Bass. If you've never seen one of these, they have a very short scale and literally rubber bands for strings. They are super-easy to play.  David started fooling around with it and I could see he had a good sense of rhythm, so I said “Why don’t I show you a chord progression?”  I showed him a simple I-IV-V in G and it didn’t take him long to get it down.  I remember the day he set his iPad down in front of the amp and recorded himself and then played it back thru the amp (using some connectors I'd put together) and then recorded me playing along with him. We did that _once_ and that was the recording I found today.  I edited a rough start out (I was trying to figure out if he had the right number of beats) and added a few more photos of him and threw this little video together.

I also found on Garageband  a recording of him singing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" along with a Garageband keyboard which he presumably played.  What a couple of special finds, huh?

We’re continuing to work through David’s passing.  The hardest part is going to the cemetery.   They called and said that David’s headstone had come in and so we drove out to see it.  It was a little crooked so I reached out to straighten it up.  I was able to touch his casket at the burial but something about touching the headstone just wiped me out.  We came home and I slept for 4 hours.  We’ve been back twice to put plastic flowers back in place and both times I’ve come down with gout which, in me, seems to be stress-related.  However, I continue to be given little “comfort circumstances” and am gaining peace.  Here’s an interesting story...  I’ve been using E-Sword software for years but have never used the reference library downloads.  Well, I moved to a new computer (originally supposed to be Georgia’s but ended up being mine) and in the process of updating everything I re-installed E-Sword and while doing that, I looked over the reference library downloads and found this book:

Have Heart

So, I downloaded and read it.  I was an amazing read.  It’s a story of a pastor whose 18-year old was killed in a car wreck and the things they went thru while dealing with it.  I’ve read quite a few books on death, but this one really hit home. I recommend it highly. 

Well, let’s wrap this up.

Mom and Derek at the gravesite

 

A Fender Esquire that I put together

Looking Back, Flying Forward

We have just returned from the annual North American Falconers Association (NAFA) Meet, held this year in Kearney, NE.  This is where a bunch of falconers get together, fly their hawks, visit, eat, buy/sell stuff, and so on.  It's fun and I've been to about a dozen meets over the years, although we had a gap in attendance between 2000 and 2010.  David was born in 2001, Derek in 2003 and we were just too busy raising kids to do much falconry.  In fact, although I had a few birds during this time, I'd pretty well dropped out of falconry and was probably going to quit altogether.  In 2010, though, I took Derek to the meet in Dodge City KS (just 4 h down the road) and he got really interested.  That's when I decided to try for a wild peregrine falcon, rebuild my hawk house, and all the stuff you can read about earlier in this blog.  

Falcons in the weathering area

A red-naped shaheen

Derek loved this little merlin

Dead 'possum.  Derek had never seen one.
All above photos by Derek

I missed 2011 (more on that below), but we made plans early to attend this year’s meet in Kearney NE.  The last time the meet was there, I lived in Boise ID and drove solo in an old beat-up blue Toyota 4WD pickup that burned a quart of oil every tank of gas.  On the trip home, I was approaching Casper WY when I realized I was the only person on the completely frozen-over Interstate.  A gust of wind suddenly spun the truck around and and I did 2 complete 360’s before coming to rest backward in the median.  After putting the truck in 4WD, I made it to Casper where I planned to spend the night, which just happened to be Thanksgiving Day.  I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and driving past a 7-11, I figured I’d check in to the Super 8 and then come back and get a burrito or something.  When I came back, though, the 7-11 was closed!  Back in the room, I pooled all my change and came up with just enough $$$ to get a “Grandma’s”  cookie and a Coke for supper.

The next morning, the wind was blowing so hard that the flags were like painted boards stuck to the flagpoles.  I got some real food and headed home, taking the scenic route across Wyoming to Jackson Hole and then into Idaho.  It was so cold in the old truck that I drove wearing a full-length winter coat I’d bought at Cabela’s for Georgia, a hat, gloves, and my winter boots.  I’d stop to take a nap and wake up freezing an hour later.  I finally made it back about 4 am.  When I woke up around 9-10, I noticed a big indoor car sale advertisement.  Long story, short, I ended up trading off The Blue Peril for a much newer and nicer Isuzu Trooper II.  I later had some driving adventures in that rig, too, but we’ll save the telling of such for another time.

Going to this year's NAFA (falconry) meet reminded me of last year's meet.  The plan was for Georgia, Derek, and Brianna to go down south to Pinon NM, and me and David to go north to Vernal UT for what would've been his first falconry meet.  Unfortunately, he wasn't responding well to transfusions and the last place I needed to be was 600 mi from home, so I cancelled and he and I stayed home.  We went to town on a Wed to get his blood checked.  It turned out to be one of the lowest results we'd gotten to date.  With the Thanksgiving holiday looming, and a weekend after that, both of which would've required an ER visit rather than his normal doctors, we all made the decision to push for ABQ on Monday.  Georgia arrived home on Sunday, took one look at David, and immediately re-packed and took off for ABQ.  I didn't see them again for 10 days and when they returned, David was on the steroids that gave him an unexpected and unexplained boost.  He didn't get another transfusion until the week before he died in May. 

The period between early December, when they returned from this long hospital stay, and his death in May was the only really hopeful period we ever had.  David responded to the steroids with never-before-seen energy, strong appetite, and good mood.  His blood levels stayed up for several weeks before slowly dropping and we were all hopeful that this course would buy us some time to find a definitive diagnosis and a cure.  In spite of the steroid’s boost- and we could see him getting puffed up and bloated, not a healthy look at all- I still had a strong sense that his time was going to be short and I tried hard to make the most of it.  I wish my feeling would have been wrong, but it wasn't.   I remember telling Georgia sometime in April that, whatever happened, I was just thankful that we'd gotten to see David strong and happy.

This time, last year: David with his new Ruger .22 and 1st prairie dog

This time, last year: At Ronald McDonald House during The Long Stay

  

It's a hard thing to say, but David's death freed us to do all the things we suppressed when he was with us.  Since his passing, we've gone to Bandelier Nat'l Monument where we climbed the tall ladders, gone elk hunting in the mountains, gone to the falconry meet where we beat the bush for hours, gone swimming in the hotel pool, and so forth... all things I couldn't or wouldn't do with David.  He would've tried and he would've given it all he had, but these things would have exhausted him or exposed him to too many germs and, for his sake, I would not have suggested them.  So, I dunno… doing these things is a mixed blessing.  We’re glad to be doing them again, but the reason we are is because David’s no longer with us and doing them reminds us of that fact. 

In retrospect, this time a year ago, we started moving down “the final stretch” of David’s life and I’m sure I will be thinking about this over the next several months.  David passed many milestones in these few short months- participating in 4H, shooting his first rocket, learning to shoot his Ruger .22, shooting his bow in competition, reading and writing extremely well, and so on.   As we pass those milestones a year later, I’m sure they will bring back those memories.  I also feel that when we reach the 1 year anniversary of his passing, that it will bring closure of a new kind.  From that day onward, we will be moving forward in a time in which 365 days previously David wasn’t with us.   Until then, every annual event we do reminds us of what we were doing last year, with him.  So it was with this year’s NAFA meet.

For now, though, we are, once again,  "waiting on winter."

Psalms 30:5 NKJV  …. Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning.

Dad and Derek discuss birds at Bosque del Apache

Derek exploring at Bandelier Nat'l Monument

 

 

Looking down the ladder at Bandelier

Shades of Jacob's ladder

I Bow Down

There's something I haven't talked about much on my blog here and that's my archery habit.  I've been shooting bows since I was 13 or so and here at 50 am still shooting.  There were a few years in Idaho where I didn't shoot much, but I still had my bow.   In spite of all this time, I'm not that good of a shot.  I'm a pretty good finger-shooter, but about 6 years ago I switched to a release.  I shoot better with a release, but I'm not good enough to win my class in competition (which, okay, is the toughest class aside from the Pro class).  This year, I decided to work a little harder on my archery and consequently, I've been playing with different bows, different arrows, different rests, different releases, learning how to tune my bows and so forth.  I've learned a lot and I think my shooting has improved.

Hoyt Vectrix, Hoyt Maxxis 35, Bowtech Allegiance

Let's talk about my bows.  For the past 4 years, I've been shooting a Hoyt Vectrix.  I actually have 2 of these, both from 2007.  One is a 50-60 lb and the other is a 60-70 lb.  I set the first one up for target and 3D shooting and the other for hunting with broadheads.  They are 33" axle-to-axle.  I like the Vectrix a lot and shoot pretty well with them.  I originally started with a 26" draw but after posting some pictures on the ArcheryTalk forum, it was decided that I was shooting with too short of a draw.  So, I hunted down some cams, installed them, and went up to a 27" draw.  That did indeed make a big difference in my shooting as I was able to hold much steadier on target.

First, here I am with the 26" draw:

And now, with a 27" draw:

2007 Hoyt Vectrix

You can see that my bow hand is much straighter in the bottom photo. 

I've shot Hoyt since about 1989 and mid-summer I decided to play around with a different  brand.  I investigated and decided to try a Martin.  A new Onza III Pro came up on Ebay and I won it for a great price.  Unfortunately, Martin's specs are incorrect and what was advertised as a 26"-31" adjustable draw was actually 27.5"-31".  I tried, but it was just too long.  However, this showed me that a longer axle-to-axle (ATA) bow might be steadier.

When I switched to a release in '06, one of the first bows I tried was a '05 Bowtech Allegiance.  That was my first foray into a modern bow and I was amazed at it.  I stuck with Hoyt, though, and ended up getting a used '03 Ultratec  that I shot for a year before  picking up a used '05 Vtec to go along with it and use for hunting.  Here's a picture of me and David shooting back then:

Shooting in '06- Hoyt Vtec

After I re-sold the inaccurately labeled Martin, I was surfing around when I ran across an '07 Bowtech Allegiance at less money that I'd just re-sold the Martin for.  I was curious to see if my earlier impressions were correct and so I bought it.  Setup was a snap and,  unlike the Martin, I was able to easily set it to my 27" draw length.

2007 Bowtech Allegiance

It's also fun to compare the 2007 Bowtech to the 2007 Hoyt Vectrix.  The Bowtech is considerably lighter, simpler, has a more solid "back wall", and draws easier.  At 60 lbs, the Vectrix is a pretty stiff pull while the Allegiance is a much easier pull.  And yet I have to use a stiffer arrow on the Allegiance because of its more aggressive cams.  The Allegiance has much more hand shock and jump while the Vectrix is very smooth and dead-in-the-hand.

So, after shooting the longer ATA Allegiance for a few months, I decided to see what a longer ATA Hoyt would be like, sort of trying to combine the best features of the Allegiance (longer ATA) and the Vectrix (smooth).  More reading and research and before long a 2010 Hoyt Maxxis 35 showed up at my door.  This is 4 generations down the line from the Vectrix and has a 35" ATA.  It didn't take long to get it setup and shooting pretty well, although I think I have a little more tuning to do with it to bring out its maximum potential.  But, my experiment was good and I got the steady hold of the Allegiance coupled with the smooth Hoyt feel.  As you can see from the below picture, the limbs on the Maxxis go "beyond parallel" which means that the energy upon release goes up and out, rather than forward.  The bow is absolutely dead-in-the-hand, even more so than the Vectrix.  It's a lighter bow than the Vectrix, too.

2010 Hoyt Maxxis 35

So, how do they shoot?   Today it was nice and calm, so I got all 3 bows out and shot 1 bunch of arrows at 55 yards.  I used the same release, even though I normally use a different release for the Allegiance (as part of the reason I keep it- I use it to experiment with stuff).  Here's what my groups looked like:

Hoyt Vectrix group @ 55 yds

Bowtech Allegiance group @ 55 yds

Hoyt Maxxis 35 group @ 55 yds

I think it's pretty clear that the Maxxis is shooting well for me.   The Allegiance is probably the worst of the bunch for me, but I haven't really played with the tuning much yet.  I'll likely do that soon, moving the current rest a little and then trying an entirely different style to see what happens.  I have shot better with the Vectrix but I've been shooting the Maxxis for 2 weeks and have gotten used to it.  As for the Maxxis, there's really only 1 flyer in that group and that's otherwise a pretty good group for 55 yards.  A tiny bit more tuning and I think I can bring that group into the bulls eye.

Those are my bows.  Derek has a bow, too, but he hasn't really gotten into shooting it much yet.  Archery takes a lot of focus and practice and he's not quite there.  David was just starting to really get into it and the week David died- the same day we got to see Natalie MacMaster, actually- David shot his first real 3D shoot with me.  He won a set of headphones at the shoot and he was so excited about that.  Later that week, we set up our targets down on the creek and did some practicing since David was now "experienced" at 3D and wanted to tell Derek how to do it.  At one point, he beat us all, and I took the moment to whip my phone out and take these photos.  These were taken 4 days before David died and you can bet that I'm glad I took the minute to take them:

Little 3D shooters

David had the high score!

After David's death, Derek and I talked about it and we decided to sell both bows (Derek having outgrown his!) and get a new Diamond Atomic.  I had seen the Atomic at the Santa Fe shoot but didn't think David was strong enough to pull it (cams being harder to pull than wheels) and thus hesitated getting one since I didn't want him to get frustrated.  Derek was ready for it, though, so we did as planned and sold both bows (to, appropriately enough, a 4H club- I think David would have approved).  I will get some pictures of Derek's bow up next time but he did shoot a 3D shoot with me a few weeks ago and did okay.  Again, I don't think he's quite ready for the mental discipline that it requires and I don't want to push him and discourage him, so we'll just go at his pace.

That's my archery habit!

Another Year Bites the Dust

Last time we talked, I was complaining about things breaking. They continued to break; I fixed the Kawasaki generator, it ran for awhile, then it broke again. Finally, I broke down, drove to town, and bought a 2^nd generator like my reliable (so far) Honda-engined “Master” brand. That was a good move and I made it thru the summer with 2 working generators, happily pumping water. A few other things broke along the way, but in the end, we got our cattle shipped and ended the summer.

Cattle-wise, it wasn't that bad. The cattle gained good weight and my numbers came out almost dead-on, meaning that I didn't have any unaccounted missing cattle. That's rare and great. I took a little video of the shipping process:

Moving Cattle the Slow Way

We also used a helicopter again, to gather the north side of the ranch. Here's some footage from 2006, to illustrate what it's like using a 'copter to gather cattle:

Moving Cattle the Fast Way

Ranch-wise, we shipped a little early because the grass is pretty much gone. This is the worst drought period since the 1930's and we're fighting hard to maintain as much cover and stability as possible. It is DRY out there. Last year, I was flying my falcons on ducks, this year there are no ponds.

Financially, it's been a tough year. For a single reason that I still can't talk about, we're spending a lot of money. As a result, the ranch couldn't pay my salary for 3 months. I was too busy with the ranch to get much guitar work done and a job opened up in the local school district, so Georgia went to work. This lead to me taking full-time care of our youngest son. It's hard to work on guitars when you're cooking, young son sitting, and home-schooling but with cattle finally gone, we're getting into the swing of it and with cattle gone, we got our final payments, which allowed the ranch to start paying my salary again, albeit at a lower rate. We're pulling thru but it's been a little shaky. On the upside, Derek and I are spending a lot more time together and I think he's matured a lot in the past few months. He always looked up to David and now he has to be his own man.

Otherwise, things are okay. I'd be lying if I said that David's death hasn't affected us. When we're busy, we don't think about it but it's the quiet times in the evening and morning that are the worst. “Ambushes” occur in conversations, things that spark memories, and so forth. This is common and it happens to everyone. The things that help me the most are to go back and re-read the things I wrote immediately after David's passing. That makes me re-focus on the amazing things that happened before/after his death and gives me assurance. I've also been doing a lot of reading about life after death, both from a Christian and non-Christian perspective. The Bible is the authority- sola Scriptura- but even though “Scripture Alone” is sufficient, it is not a “Scripture that is alone”; there are confirmations out there. So, when I read from scientists that life after death is a recognized phenomenon but they just can't explain certain parts of it, it's just fuel for the fire. Applying Scripture, I think I can explain the parts they don't want to touch, but, in any case, reading philosophy and scientists on the topic has gone a long ways in giving me comfort. Among the books I'm reading are:

Dinesh D'Souza

Chris Carter

As well as this article:

Scientist Rethinks Life After Death

What's striking about the last article is this paragraph:

Very early one morning four years ago, I awoke with an extremely intense headache. Within hours, my entire cortex—the part of the brain that controls thought and emotion and that in essence makes us human—had shut down. Doctors at Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia, a hospital where I myself worked as a neurosurgeon, determined that I had somehow contracted a very rare bacterial meningitis that mostly attacks newborns. E. coli bacteria had penetrated my cerebrospinal fluid and were eating my brain.

This is very much like David's death and “meningitis” was an early diagnosis, changed to “a bacteria”, and finally to “I've never seen anything like this”. A friend sent me the above link and it not only struck me in its parallel to David's death, but it came at just the right time. Anyway... I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking.

As winter moves toward us once again, I'm getting back into the swing of working on guitars, reading, training my prairie falcon, and moving on into my typical winter stuff. I haven't' hardly touched a guitar since David's death. Instead, I've been playing mandolin and I've been playing Celtic stuff where improvisation is not encouraged. On guitar, I'm all about variations and improvisations, but my creative juices are at a low (witness my lack of writing here....) and playing Celtic stuff on mandolin is kind of therapeutic. 

I guess that's it for now.  Next time, I'll tell you about our new Subaru, trout fishing, and- hopefully- have another successful elk hunt to recount.

If it ain't broke.... it soon will be!

Hello, and welcome to Broke-Down Mountain Ranch.   I'd like to document some of the many broken things here.  It seems like my days are filled with fixing broken things.  I fix 1 thing and 3 others break.  It's probably not that bad, but it seems like it.  Here's what I dealt with today, just today!

First up is my finger.  It's not broken, but it's badly bent (and cut, too).  See, there's this broken door (note to self: another broken thing... need picture) in the barn that can only be opened by pushing the latch in from the side of the metal frame.  Normally, I get a hammer and punch and hit it, but this day I tried just pushing it.  With my finger.  It opened and since the wind was blowing, it opened hard, catching the tip of my finger between the door and frame and neatly slicing the tip of my finger off.  This is gonna cut down on my guitar playing for a few days, at least.

This is a 25' tape measure.  It quit retracting and after WD-40 didn't work, I took it apart and found a, yup, broken spring inside.  Into the trash with it.  I already have a new 30' Stanley with metal housing in the shop. Maybe it'll be my buddy for a few weeks.

 Oh, cool- this is a two-fer, maybe even a three or four-fer!  On the trailer is a Kawasaki generator.  I'm using it to run the formerly broken, now fixed (I hope!) well.  This has never been a particularly reliable generator and we've long since replaced/supplemented it with a much simpler and, so far, more reliable Honda.  But, since it's just sitting and since we paid good money for it, I wanted to put it back to work.  It ran once.  Then I brought it home and filled it with gas and took it back to the well.  It refused to run.  Gas was pouring out of the carb and that could mean only 1 thing.  I took the carb apart and after careful searching found the broken float bowl that was not doing its job, which is quite simple, really:  Shut off the fuel, and "don't let it leave the carb!"  (Monty Python fans will recognize the allusion).  New float bowls are $25 plus shipping and JB Weld is impervious to gas, so I restored to globs of the latter.  After determining that the float pins is uni-directional and must be installed "just-so" or it'll bind the float, I (hopefully) fixed the carb and float and returned the generator to work.  I'd still better order a new float.

In the background is the Yellow Peril, otherwise known as a John Deere backhoe.  This thing...well, where to start?  First of all, it doesn't!  That's right- it doesn't start.  I don't really know why.  I do know that several years ago, I took it to a neighbor's to dig a new septic line for him.  Loading this thing is a really scary deal and after I did a wheelie trying to get it loaded, I decided to just drive it home.  About 1/2 way, it seized and quit running.  I'd hit the starter and get nothing.  I left it there and went home for my skid steer, with the intention of using it to lift all the arms and buckets up and chain them in place so that I could maybe tow the Yellow Peril home.  After getting the skid steer on-site, chaining everything, and etc, I thought I'd try the starter.  It started!!!!  So, I drove it home.  A few weeks later, I needed to dig on my own septic system.  After starting the tool via a complex system of cables and extra batteries, I went to work.  All was well for awhile and I was nearly finished with the job.  I went into the house to get something and I returned to find smoke pouring from the engine.  I took a quick look and determined that the fan belt was off.  The last thing I wanted was a humongous piece of dead yellow metal on an open sewage hole, so I quickly moved the backhoe off the hole and drove it to near the barn.  It needs a new fan belt but to get that on, I have to remove the hydraulic pump.  I've never done this and it sounds messy and oily and I have procrastinated for nearly 2 years.  So, the Yellow Peril sits.  Oh, yeah, did I mention that it also doesn't have any brakes?

My skid steer does 10x the job of moving dirt that this backhoe does but, alas- take a wild guess!!!!-  the skid steer is broken!!!  It has a weird oil leak that I haven't been able to diagnose yet and can't afford to have a pro diagnose.  Thus, the skid steer also sits.  In between them, visible to the right of the child's play set (which, coincidentally, has a broken slide) is a Ford 8N tractor that- imagine!!!- is broken!!!  It has a rusted-out exhaust pipe that'll need replacement. 

I don't think the lights work on the trailer holding the generator but I'm scared to check.


Here we have a new driveshaft carrier bearing on my 1980 Toyota.  Now this one I'll cut some slack as the original bearing lasted for 32 years and 170,000 miles.  It was a fairly easy replacement and (hopefully) I installed it correctly.  We'll see.  If you see something wrong in this picture, PLEASE let me know!

This broken item is a Makita battery.  It just quit working.  All was fine until I put it on the charger one day.  I got the flashing/alternating green/red lights which indicate a failed battery.  No hope here.

My go-to-mailbox bike (an old Gary Fisher Supercaliber) has a flat-tire.  I can probably fix this and it'll probably just go flat again.

And finally, for now, my boots.  These are Wolverine work boots that I made the mistake of going rappelling in one day this spring.   My ascending rope cut the soft soles of these boots a-part.  I filled 'em up with Gorilla Glue and I'm getting a little more use out of them, but they are not far from the trash heap.

I think that sums up the broken stuff I had to deal with just on this one day.  Next time, I'll chronicle the stuff that works.  That will be easy as it will be a much shorter blog.

Until then, keep on the sunnyside.

Well, well, well

YES!!!!!!!! Do you know what this means?!!!?!!!??

The renegade pipe

This is the pipe that was lost in the well. After 2+ hours of fishing, aided by my home-made camera rig, we snagged the pipe. It was extremely tough pulling so we sent the camera down again and saw that our fishing spear had gone past the head- we figured we'd snagged the outside of a joint past the bad part. In other words, the fishing spear never went down the pipe but snagged the _outside_ of the pipe. Amazingly, we were able to pull the entire pipe up w/out losing that grip. It was tense at first because the pipe refused to budge and I was afraid we'd break the lifting cable and lose the whole thing, but we got it moving (it was probably snagged on a joint gap- watch the video and you can see them).  We ended up pulling 6 20' joints of pipe to clean the hole. I am SO relieved to have gotten this pipe.

Next step was to re-pipe the hole with PVC and put a solar-capable pump down. This cost about $5000 and I'll have to run it with a generator until we can afford to put the solar panels in, but at least we're spending $$$ toward solar. Otherwise, I'd have to sink at least that, probably more, in repairing the windmill and pipe.After pulling the pipe and installing an electric well, we dismantled the old windmill head.  It has some issues that made it next to useless and the best solution was to just get it down.  This, obviously, is MUCH easier when the right equipment is at hand.

Windmills are HEAVY

Dismantling the mill

WATER!!!!

 Here's my next Well Challenge. The "East Slater" mill sits in a "hole" about 3/4 mi from the Bent Pipe Well. It's a rough road down into the hole and the road washes out every time we get a big rain. The mill head developed some problems- worn bearings, worn holes, etc, and it sits on an old bolt-together tower. About 6 years ago, it stopped pumping and since the road was washed out, I just shut it off. With the other well in danger of being lost, I decided to try to revive the East Slater well.
After dismantling the mill head, we discovered that the well was "sanded-in". We barely recovered the pipe and then the sand collapsed and plugged the well hole. My mission- should I choose to accept it, and I probably will since I have nothing to lose and a well to gain- is to unplug the plug. I have a water trailer, a generator, and a portable air compressor, so I'm going to try flooding the hole with water and then using a homemade PVC tool to blow air thru that tool, creating suction and lifting the sandy water (watery sand?) to the surface.

If I can get the plug opened, we can re-line the casing with PVC to hold the sand at bay and and install a solar pump. I don't think the the sand goes down very far and I highly suspect it came in thru the top during a heavy flooding rain (like one that washed the water tub into my neighbor's pasture).

David:
We are still awaiting some sort of word on what caused his seizure.  An autopsy had to be done and they discovered that all  his organs were grossly swollen and that his brain was nearly jelly.  The pathologist said he'd never seen anything like it and all of his tests came up negative.  So, tissues samples have been shipped to the CDC for analysis.  We heard from David's doctor and he said he was having a hard time dealing with the fact that David is suddenly gone.  This is the doctor who said he'd wake up at 3 in the morning, thinking about David and how to heal him.  On the last visit, he and David spent 10-15 minutes talking about rockets as the doctor was a big fan of them.  So, this week, I picked out a picture of David with one of his rockets, printed and framed it, and we sent that to the doctor with a little note.  We may never find out definitely what the issue was and I guess it doesn't matter, unless it helps someone else avoid the same thing.

David and rocket

The dynamics of the family have certainly changed a lot, esp with Brianna getting ready to leave for college in a month.  We're going very quickly from 3 kids at home to 1.   It's quieter, cleaner, and there is less fussing going on. I guess this is what The Next Stage of Life is going to be like.  For me, the worst times are the quiet times when I'm in my shop.  That's when the busyness gets shut out, I have time to think, and I miss David the most then.  When that happens, I go back and re-read my own blog, remind myself of the things I wrote then, and look thru the pictures of him when he was declining.  I feel better then and I look forward to the hope of reuniting with a healthy, vibrant David. The other thing that made me feel better was when we stopped by the cemetery to visit  his grave for the first time.  This is a cemetery about the size of a postage stamp, serving a community currently pop 22, and I was absolutely floored at the number of children's graves there.  I think that 1/3 of them are children under 10.  Oddly, it made me feel better to know that we're certainly not the only ones to lose a child.

Georgia and Derek at the grave

We're going to get a headstone for the grave after I've put some thought into what it should say.  I kind of like the verse we used at the memorial service:

Zechariah 8:5 NKJV  The streets of the city Shall be full of boys and girls Playing in its streets.'

 
Well (ha!), that's it for now.  Over and out, from the High Plains.