Just Another Monsoon Day In Eden

.
Two days in a row now; eight tenths of an inch of rain. I remember our very first big rain and Virgil describing it as either a 'gully washer' or a 'turd floater'. The latter nomenclature seemed most fitting when that rain hit because, sure enough, all the collected cow turds that Mark had so carefully scraped out of the old barn and herded into a sinkhole came floating up and past like a sail-by at the Royal Yacht Club. Virgil looked like he was about to execute a back flip amidst his laughter when Mark recounted the event and erroneously used the term 'turd washer'. And so the term 'turd washer' stuck, so to speak.

The first image shows a classic 'turd floater'. Any ground that is very light in color is really a sheet of muddy, flowing water. You can see the rain drops bombarding the surface. Meanwhile, I was out back with my shovel in the lightning, trying to divert the torrents which had crested over our old, sanded-in ditches and were threatening the foundations of the new addition and the rat trailer itself. This is my Zen time.

We were waiting inside for the sun to dry things out a little when we heard an unusually loud shooshing noise. Our first concern was that our propane tank had let loose but it sat there well-behaved and the noise was simply rebounding off the mesa wall behind us. We tracked it down to the second nearest gas well from us where impressive amounts of gas were venting under serious pressure. It's amazing how you can know nothing about the strange plant around you but eventually come to know when something is just not right. In this case, we were both glad that we are not habitual stogie chompers. We called the producer and a recalibration occurred in reasonably short order.

Later on (WELL after the escaping gas dispersed), Mark fired up Robin's homemade barbeque grill. At 88 cents a pound, Mark had recently brought home a rack of pork ribs so big that it looked like the keyboard off someone's Steinway. It was time to cook them up since the freezer was not about to hold them. I made up a good and gooey soy sauce-based sweet and sour glaze for the event and would occasionally go out and massage a bit more of it into the ribs.

During one of my looks out the window to make sure the grill hadn't blown up yet, Ming the Merciless caught my peripheral vision. Right dead ahead of him, I saw what looked like a short length of variegated garden hose disappear into the big chico bush. Ming was in HOT pursuit. A sudden flash back to a comment made by an Indian gas field tech: "The heavy rain brings the rattlers down from the mesa tops." Two and two came together. "Mark, grab some iron, come QUICK!!!" I threw open the window to yell "MING ... NO-O-O-O-O!!!!!!!!!" Ming's prey had disappeared into the bush completely by then but I was able to do a running scoop on Ming like he was a fumbled ball. I dashed him back into the rat before he could get a bad attitude about his ruined hunting trip. Brou, the ever good dog, also came in when I called.

Meanwhile, Mark saw the snake exit at the far end of the big bush and yelled "All clear, no rattles!" What a relief! Mark suggested I get the camera out and he promised to do a little snake herding to keep it around. By then, this six foot long snake was heading into that open area that you can see just beyond the semi. This fella was no water moccasin and you can see in the second image how cleverly it is bridging itself across the puddles to avoid getting wet. Much to its frustration, I ran around to the other side of the puddles and was able to get a head-on photo before he swerved off into the brush again. Sigh, I still have not mastered the close up shot in focus with this digital camera.
Click on image for larger view
.

Rippin' It Up Part 3

.
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.
.

.
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!

----------------------------------------------------

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.
.

Rippin' It Up! Part 2

.
I'm sure I must have given Quig the dozer operator plenty of safety-related anxiety as I appeared first here and then there and everywhere else with my camera but I was very thoughtful in my personal placement since I have a deep aversion to being run over by anything heavier than an Australian Shepherd (which is a regular occurrence).


But, as usual, the shot I wanted most was the one which was not in the downloads that night. My digital camera chooses its revenge VERY well in that respect. We had discussed "The Rock Behind the Barn" the week before and Quig had shown us a cell phone image which pictured a gargantuan rock which he had previously done battle with and won. I knew that I would witness a battle of Titans early on that day and set myself up to record the conflict. That vile little beast of a camera chose NOT to record it for posterity ... but at least I got to see the show-down.



The D8R sized up the rock and nipped in from one side, the right edge of its blade catching the monster by surprise at a 45 degree angle. The 40 ton Cat snarled and then screamed as the rock hunkered down vehemently in place and stood its ground. What I thought was a plume of steam was, in reality, smoke curling off the enraged rock as the blade cut in and gouged away mercilessly. The rock had been wounded but remained unmoved by the initial assault. The big Cat was now so locked in purpose and determination that the entire Cat beast started to swing around as if to meet the behemoth face-to-face. I became concerned about the corner of the barn which was about to become part of the battle field at the Cat's rear but Quig predicted the Cat's natural posturing quite casually and pulled back on the reins well before any such disaster could occur. In the end, it was a sturdy chunk of nature which bested us but the bout was worth it, recorded for posterity or not. We would simply alter our plans and work around the monolithic victor.



Below shows the rear ripper teeth in action. When the blade finds the cutting too hard, the ripper teeth do a fine job of loosening the material and our materials were apparently no great challenge for those teeth. Quig said that the tooth tips will survive for a year before having to be replaced under our conditions but that they will wear down within a few days in other locales within the region. You know that this can't be a cheap replacement. What I find amazing is that all usual contact points are so work-polished that they look like a high grade stainless, not a speck of rust to be found. Quig described the process of renewing the blade faces and other high-wear parts and it left me convinced that there are many true Vulcan artisans still out there.



By the time lunch rolled around, I had formulated a million questions from my many perches and Quig kindly had a million answers and then some. He confirmed that this drive configuration was not traditional. And he liked it. He said that the 'grousers' (what we would call the tracks) definitely suffered less wear. It also made the process of disconnecting the transmission from the tracks much easier. Actually, this part of the conversation came up after we asked about the misery suffered by another operator in the area recently. It led to an informative dissertation about the many ways in which a truly pathetic creature could inflict serious damage upon such a venerable beast. I will not post those lessons here for obvious reasons but, for a gearhead, it was truly a fascinating tour. But there are engineers somewhere out there at Cat Peoria HQ that I truly respect for this indirect drive feature. Simon was right, this is one magnificent feature!

Here was the game plan: Since we were settled in along the base of a mesa near the spring where the original homestead had been, we were subject to the ranting torrents of run-off water which had been de rigueur for epochs already. My idea was to level off the effluvial mounds beneath the heaviest drain areas while creating a large circular drive behind the entire barn and trailers area. This would also ameliorate forward drive access to our propane tank and our vehicle/generator fuel tanks. The big Cat would have to cut into the hill behind the barn to the tune of about 6 to 8 feet and also bring some areas up at least 3 feet to form an even drive capable of intercepting the run-off waters and diverting them to either side of the compound.



The last photo below will show you that Quig managed to do just that in a few hours time. Again, I think about an entire lifetime that I would have devoted to this task if armed with nothing but a shovel. Awesome, truly awesome by comparison.



Mark had been unusually absent during this entire process. He emerged at lunch time when the Cat shut down and caught up on the project and subsequent discourse. I cringed when he said "Well, maybe what we need now is one of my infamous 'turd washers' to test your theories." Sigh ... why, why, oh why does he say these things?

To be continued , partly from the prospective of Dilly the Second, the tiniest of dragons.
.
.