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Within a week, the sun had dried out the new driveway and Mark fired up the skid steer to move the fallen gas tank to a temporary stand in the corral. The trick was to keep the vent above the gas level at all times.
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The other trick was to see where he was going once the large barrel was in place on the forks.
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In the meantime, I had found another little friend. Since Dilly was the most appreciative reader of my earlier lizard story, I decided to call this little fellow Dilly the Second (or D2 for short). He hung around, nipped at a few passing flies and eventually fell asleep on the back of my hand for a time.
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As you can see above, he was definitely in the Brou Zone and in danger of the classic 'flying coyote pounce' so it was a good thing that he decided to stay with me. Luckily, Brou was completely distracted by the crows flying over the mesa at that point. Rather than put D2 back down on the porch, it seemed wiser to bring him along to the corral where Mark was heading blindly with the fuel tank.
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By now, D2 seemed quite content to ride along on my upraised arm and seemed particularly impressed with what looked like a HUGE green bug headed his way through the corral gates.
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He seemed even more fascinated with the gigantic yellow cricket which was holding that big green bug in its mandibles. "Wow!"
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Finally Mark yelled out over the Deere noise "Would you PLEASE put your arm down, stop talking to yourself and tell me just where the hell I'm supposed to be going now?" It seemed a reasonable request and D2 disappeared as I lowered my arm. I checked my shoulders and pullover hood - no sign of D2. Great, now I was afraid to move lest I trample him as he lay well-disguised in the brown grass stubble at my feet. Finally I caught a glimpse of him scrambling off towards the Rat and I was able to walk towards the Deere without worry.
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The tricky part of the barrel roll off would be aligning the valve as close to 6 o'clock as possible since it was unlikely that we would be able to rotate the half-full barrel manually once it had dropped into position. Although Mark has developed a profound deafness to most of what I say on a good day, we have managed to contrive a series of hand gestures which work incredibly well when he has absolutely no other choice but to rely on my guidance. Accordingly, he was able to adjust the angle of the forks, drop down, come forward, forward a speck more, raise back up a little and hold it as we untethered the tank. We rolled the tank forward off the forks and TA-DAH! - a perfect landing position in the stand! Yee-haw! Times like this help make up for our other little communication disasters. I hope Dilly2 enjoyed his big adventure as much.
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The three of us stood chatting by the moving trailer when I started to feel the tug of a few playful pixie winds. I looked up and noticed some dark knots forming in the light clouds which had been passing over. My nostrils picked up a faint scent of rain which had been poised on top of the mesa, waiting to spring down on us at any moment. Blip - one drop on my arm, blip - another drop on my cheek. I began to consider the prophetic nature of Mark's last comment.
A few moments later found us all sheltered within the Rat and Mark put our coffeepot back on the stove. Quig was an affable man of broad interests so the time and conversation flitted by pleasantly as we waited out the now heavily splatting rains, heavy enough rains that we could see the chocolate torrents spewing off the mesa benches as furiously as we had ever seen them. "Ya got your 'turd-washer', Mark, ya happy now?" Good Heavens, this was certainly a supreme acid test in progress.
After a few of cups of Mark's fine, stout caffeine, we were all getting a little restless so a saunter back to the new porch was in order to assess the new run-off plan. We could see the odd low spot but we were all pleased at the new lay-out forged within a few hours time. Pleasure is never guaranteed to last long though, is it? It was about that time that Quig noticed the new and unusual stance of our two fuel tanks. "Uhm, they didn't install them that way, did they?" Three "Ohhhh crap!" bulbs lit up simultaneously.
I threw on my rubber boots and followed on Quig's heels out to the tanks. A quick look told us that I had not addressed the potential navy effect; that steel boats DO float on water. What we had here were two water-tight 'containment' tanks adrift in the mesa run-off that was now locked behind a new 3' tall berm, their own personal ocean of sorts. The good ship Diesel rode low at the stern, the 'regular' sat precariously low at the bow. Oh joy, the prospects of more water quietly haunted each of us with possibilities, all of them unpleasant. For some reason, I got the odd and uncomfortable image of a counter-intuitive bucking effect when I looked at the 'regular' tank.
Before I could voice those vague theories, Quig planted his arms (which were the size of my legs from years of arm-wrestling big Cats) and jammed the high-side of the 'regular' tank back downward into the swill. We both stood frozen for the long second following the tank's solo leap into the new road. Then we simultaneously issued the very same rude word at volume. Then another silent second elapsed before we both started to laugh.
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Mark broke the giggling stupor when he arrived with "Holy ----, the gas is gushing out the top vent!" The three of us were able to wrestle and rotate the tank quickly into a 'vent-up' position that stopped the torrent. We lucked out in that the fall had snapped off the fuel hose and filter but NOT the main valve at the tank. As it was, we lost about 50 gallons of gas but managed to save the rest. Mark was not amused by our guy-type frivolity but at least we made amends by placing 2x4 supports at the rear of the diesel tank to prevent it from also taking a swan dive.
It was late afternoon by now and it was time for Quig to walk the big Cat home for the day. Although I had been very worried about the downpours reaching and engorging the creek below us, Mark and I were ever so relieved to find Quig's Cat parked on the far side come Monday; there was nothing we owned that could have pulled out a D8R in distress, nothing.
As usual, this story has consumed more words than I expected it to so the final segment with Dilly supervising the remediation will happen in a couple or three days.
To be continued!
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Techno note: Our satellite connection has degraded to a mere 1.5 KB/second for the last few days so please bear that in mind before sending us anything over, say, a 10KB text e-mail. Sun spots? Who knows ... for now, I'm just calling it the end of any real life as we knew it. For that same reason, I am also limiting my blog photo uploads until the situation improves.
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