It Sure is Dark in Here

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One thing we all take for granted: a reliable source of light.
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Fortunately, I rarely have to get up in the blackness of night for a nature call. This morning was not one of those fortunate times. I woke up to the call and tried desperately to ignore it, to roll back over and resume my zzzzzs. It was Not to be denied, however, and I knew that any delay could cause dire consequences - something far worse to deal with in half light. I leapt out of bed, grabbed the flashlight off the nightstand on my side and clicked it on. It emitted a meager yellow haze for a second and then dimmed completely out. Lovely ... there was no time left to stumble around for Mark's lantern by now. But that was okay, I would rely on my excellent memory and my cat-like ability to wander around in the dark. I was computing all this on the move in the dark with an increasingly more desperate mission at the forefront. It was about that time that I tripped over a box of burn trash in the hall which I swore was not there when I retired to bed. And it was about that time that I realized in my sleep-groggy state that my cat-like senses had guided me into the storage room and that there was little chance of relief in there.
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On high alert by now, I frantically bashed my way through a maze of pinball flippers which are normally boxes, walls and doors in daylight. Oh God, please let this be the right door and NOT the one to the pantry because I don't have time to back track by now! Yes, yes, these walls all feel familiar in a good way! Now if only I can find the loo (which is the repository for liquids only, really no more than a five gallon plastic bucket with a molded seat-type lid). It wasn't where I expected but I found it accidentally with the back of my heel while I was flailing around blindly in the wrong place with my hands. Close enough! I am now beyond desperate! Luckily I guessed the right position of the loo and was able to flip the lid up, drop my britches and sink down to the seat below creaky knee level. That's how you spell relief - a true disaster diverted. And a great, satisfying sense of victory washed over me there in the dark. Life was not only good but stellar at that moment.
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I'll admit it, I sat there enjoying this sense of victory over darkness for far longer than was necessary to simply finish the initial mission. Out here, you tend to seize upon such moments when they present themselves and savor them fully. But the night's chill began to dissolve my reverie and it was time to move on. As the old British shop manuals were infamously wont to say "Assembly is the reverse of disassembly" and I began the process. It was into about step 2 or 3 when I realized that I had missed part of the disassembly process in my frantic rush. The cold, wet sensation on my backside made me realize that my drawers had not adequately cleared the area of operation. The previous fleeting moments of victory vanished as though they had never existed.
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By now, every other living creature in the Rat was awake and listening to my laments. A sleepy offer from Mark to use his lantern was not exactly a salve at that point. Yours truly, the adrenaline-filled human pinball, made the reverse trek back down the hall to the bedroom. I fumbled around in what was hopefully the right dresser drawers to find a dry replacement for my folly. Mark finally roused enough to fumble around and click on his lantern. In this sudden burst of real light, I saw many pairs of glowing eyes nervously watching my every move and I asked that the stage lights be extinguished to preserve some minor part of my remaining dignity, thank you.
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As I dropped back into bed and the night's misery concluded itself, my eyes snapped open again as I became aware of a cinching tightness around my lower torso. In this last dance in the dark, I had somehow managed to put my underpants on askew with one leg hole now tightly around my waist. S-I-G-H! I then heard one of the cats deftly, merrily and noisily using their litter box in the Rat's pitch black as if to thumb his nose at this irritated mere mortal.
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While you have it, don't ever, EVER cease to appreciate light on demand 24/7, I'm just tellin' ya, okay?
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Humor of the Day (from Ken):
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One day my wife and I were discussing anger management. I asked her, "When I get mad at you, you never fight back. How do you control your anger?"

She said, "I clean the toilet bowl."

I asked, "How does that help?"

She said, "I use your toothbrush."
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Brou and the Stink Bug

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One thing I really enjoy about having young animals around is sharing in their insatiable curiosity about everything that moves, unless it is something dangerous like a rattlesnake, of course. Brou came to us as a puppy and I followed him on his new life discoveries with great amusement. This post is really for Goddess who loves dogs and had also asked if we had strange bugs out here . This is a tale about both.
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Say hello to Mr. Stink Bug. He is a common sight around the Rat and pretty benign ... if you don't annoy him. He's a comical soul, bumbling along on whatever mission he has chosen for the day. This stance is his defensive posture which he is willing to assume at the slightest disturbance. He stands on his head and positions the tip of his abdomen upwards, ready to emit a stream of obnoxious scent. Once the threat has passed, he continues on his merry way, usually without any dire measures taken. Add a curious young pup and you have quite another story.
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Here he is from a side view. You can now see how he tripods himself into firing position with his rear legs and head.
.Now add the curious Brou. He was fascinated by the bug's awkward waddling movement and took a flying coyote pounce at him, knocking him over in mid stride. The stink bug uprighted himself immediately and let loose a flatulent burst most vile to a young dog's nose.
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If I have ever seen Brou truly offended, it was at that moment and he learned the consequences of his rough puppy socializing with such bugs forever. But not to be dissuaded, he leaped back to a safe distance to avoid another olfactory blast and to rethink the next attack.
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The stink bug repositioned himself for another round and Brou obliged, still outraged by the initial blast and heading in for revenge, teeth bared.
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He administered another flying coyote stomp which fully buried the stink bug for the moment. "There! How dare you try THAT again, infidel!!!" The bug finally dug himself out of the sand and continued on his way long after the young Brou had lost interest in pursuit of the next new thrill.
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Another geeko test

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Please bear with me again. I want to see if Blogger has improved and will now accommodate animated .gif files. A while back, I had spent quite a fews hours making the animation A Thank You from Brou only to find that, within a few weeks, it would no longer play on the main page and that you had to click on the image for it to play on another screen.

So here is an eye-teaser sent to me by Alphonse Da Moose. I happen to love eye and brain teasers and I think you will enjoy this one as well. I even examined it frame by frame in an animation program to make sure that it was genuine.

Read the instructions and the commentary on what you willing be 'seeing' and then click on the image if it doesn't function on this page.
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If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, the dots will remain only one color, pink.

However if you stare at the black " + " in the center, the moving dot turns to green.

Now, concentrate on the black " + " in the center of the picture. After a short period, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see only a single rotating green dot.

It's amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don't disappear. This is proof that we don't always see what we think we see.
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Hiking Ms. Daisy

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Here is the conclusion to Just Daisy and Me Hiking where I discovered the Spanish rock inscriptions. I figured that you wouldn't mind less talk and more photos for a change. This is as much to let you know that we haven't fallen into a bottomless sinkhole yet. We're just both running tired with the growing 'To Do' list before the REALLY cold weather sets in. We have been enjoying high 60s daytime temps and balmy overnight temps of high 20s and low 30s i.e. no further pipe freeze-ups (touch wood!). Great sleeping weather with just the pilot lights burning on two of the propane wall heaters for the most part. The extra Rat insulation is paying off nicely.

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These cacti are the first of their kind which I have come across here. Don't ask me what they are (Belle - any ideas?) but I have noticed that so many desert plants out here may only grow in one small area. This is why I was so upset with the new well location up top when they failed to give us notice and time to survey and salvage any unique plant specimens per our agreement. I'd rather take a chance on transplanting them than having them dozed under with absolutely no chance of survival.
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Here is another view of the creek. Hard to believe that a creek which spends most of its time sleeping in this deep, dry state can inflict such damage when it awakes.
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At one point, the sandstone wall rises dramatically straight upwards to the first bench. For one exhilarating moment, I thought I had found the eerie of an eagle. Follow the yellow arrow and notice the accumulation of white bird dropping just below a dark hole (you might have to click to enlarge to follow this). The crow who showed up and circled above it quite vocally told me that it was probably his nest though.
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Here is a view of Rat City from our hike. It gives you a better idea of the scale of the mesa behind us. Compare this view to the view in The Rock of Damocles. The rock is resting at the very top of that mesa.
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Above is the last inscription treasure that we found that day. This one had survived the weather better by its location under the shelter of the much larger rock shown in the initial account. There were some fainter, intriguing inscriptions above it to the right but the shadow hides them completely. Wait 'til you see the petroglyphs we discovered yesterday though! Woo-hah!
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Just Plain Nuts

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I know, I know, some of our friends and family worry about us being out here on our own and wonder if we have any protection. Well, I have my own ways of doing things which usually preclude intervention on Mark's part when it comes to strangers stopping by. I learn well by observation and anecdote, you see. In this case, it was the experience and advice from a mutual friend of the Katlady's and mine. Bob had bought a small house cheap in a neighborhood which may or may not have been inclined to come back to respectability but the key was CHEAP entry price. I could never fathom living in what his friends called Fort Apache Newstead. I remember working in those neighborhoods on urban housing rehabs and the guys forever lamenting the loss of tools, etc., if they left anything unattended for more than a minute or two. And yet Bob seemed to survive it all with little trouble so I once asked him his secret. He said "People don't like to mess with crazy people. Every once in a while, I'll do a wheelie down the street, maybe aiming for a couple of the belligerent folk in the process, maybe shoot off a couple of rounds for no particular reason. Trust me, crazy just works, that's all." Hmmm, crazy does it, huh?
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So ... when people who are clearly not regular gas field workers stop at the a Rat and wander towards the porch, I am the official greeter. Just me, no overly-friendly dogs to give away anything. Let's face it, they are already a little on edge when they approach something resembling a clandestine meth lab in the middle of absolutely nowhere. I walk out with a very welcoming grin and, before they speak, I say "You are lost, aren't you?" I follow it up with a bit of a head-back quasi-insane chuckle of appreciation, something just short of a genuine "Brou-ha-ha-ha!" Although they have probably never heard of the infamous family of cannibalistic McLeods of Scotland, they now notice the bone collection around the tatty front door. What I learned from realtors is that you only have one chance to make a great first impression and they guilt you into making your front door as homey and hospitible as any door in Colonial Williamsburg at Christmas. Yep, I figured that one out all right (see photo below).
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Might we have them for dinner? Okay, so maybe the collection belongs to Brou and Daisy but the visitors don't know that, right? At that point, the front man will usually look back nervously at the person(s) waiting in the vehicle who usually step out to join him as a back up. I take this moment to carefully appraise the body language and movements of all parties and carefully assess my steps back to the door in comparison to their positions. So far, that hasn't been necessary and the people have been quite pleasant and appreciative of our help. But curiosity gets hold of them once they have established that we aren't about to Hannibal Lector them and someone invariably has to ask "S-o-o-o ... just why do you live out here in the middle of nowhere anyway?" I have to throw in one more nutso chuckle before replying "... because we're just plain nuts." They usually nod in a quiet understanding at that point.
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FALL - it certainly fell

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Rather than the usual homestead tales, this is just going to be a hodge-podge news update for friends and family. If you have stopped by a few times in the past, you're already considered friends so don't wander away unless you want to!
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The above photo was taken at 5:30PM this afternoon, looking West from the Rat. As Virgil said, the sun has changed places with the moon in their trails across the sky and so it is the sun which skips along the mesa on our south, dipping early into hiding now. The shadows and the absence of direct sunlight bring the quick drop in temperatures. Standing on the Rat's front porch at this hour, you can feel the chill beginning to ride up your back. From now until Spring, it will be below freezing before 11:00PM. Our outdoor working times will become shorter and more urgent and disciplined now.

We have already had a night with a low of 10 degrees. By this latest unintentional experiment, we have now established that the water facilities within an addition without doors yet WILL freeze at that temperature. Sometimes we need such pressing conditions to shift into high gear since we are still enjoying a certain degree of intentional irresponsibility.

The 'build your own door from scratch' project is proceeding nicely. We couldn't buy 'off the rack' doors because of the low wall heights of the addition and we had put off the project since the demise of the big Kawasaki generator which had mysteriously come up lame with a stripped spark plug hole after it had been pressed into general service when the Honda generator died.

The solution to my table saw's big amp needs was a cable which links the output of TWO Honda's running simultaneously. Yes, we got fed up and bought a second Honda EU3000. Mark cabled them together and the big saw fired up nicely without stalling out either Honda. I spent the next few hours cutting door pieces which would overlap to make good solid door frames when assembled. Two by four frames with one inch foam insulation, 7/16ths sheathing on both faces, these buggers are going to be SOLID!
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In this photo from the porch looking East, you can see the rising moon above the mesas if you look carefully. If you have been following along for a while, you can also see that a portion of fence has disappeared, along with the chico and sage beyond it. Mark cleaned out this whole area over to Quig's new circular driveway to accommodate a couple of new buildings that we just ordered! Yesh! Yesh! Yesh! NEW buildings on the way! Can you tell that I am, ohhh, just a little excited? They probably won't arrive until New Years given the builder's backlog but the vistas of long suppressed imagination are suddenly opening up once more. The ability to unload the rest of the moving trailer looms, the prospect of having my various work shops re-established, too. I am just short of delirious with the possibilities and that has been a feeling long absent for me. I am one of those people who need those feelings, needs a place of their own to work, repair and create. It is so close now.

Of very recent news: I have perpetually warned Mark not to use his hand as a mallet. It is such a tempting thing to do rather take five minutes to find the proper tool. No ... he's just fine. It was I who broke my own rule and might have broken my hand in the process. Oh, the shame of it all. And it has slowed down our projects accordingly. As I watched Mark from the sidelines today, he would still bash the occasional piece into place with the heel of his hand and I would grimace painfully but empathetically. He is still a very large cat when it comes to subtle torment, methinks.
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Just Daisy and Me Hiking

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I awoke Saturday morning to Daisy's mournful howling and barking. Since she refuses to ride in the truck, Mark had loaded Brou up, put Daisy on the lead and then departed on his mission of the day. Daisy was not in the mood for any sort of consolation so I pulled the Dakota out of the barn and slowly headed East. As always, she fell in behind at a trot. If she starts to overtake the truck, I speed up since I don't want her anywhere near the wheels, just in case I have to take sudden evasive action. She was still game for the hike, even after following along for a mile. These pups aren't suburban couch wimps by any means.

Our mission? I had been looking out the window a few days ago near dusk and saw the sun play on a fascinating rock formation about 3/4 of a mile east of here and on the far side of the creek. The sun and shadows are forever revealing things you had never noticed before. Today was our day to satisfy my curiosity.

I pulled in to our ranch's farthest well site east of here. It is not far from the creek and, as you can see in the above photo, the large cottonwoods along its banks were in the late stages of Fall color. Just two weeks ago, they were a uniform brilliant yellow. If you want to find water out here in the desert, look for the cottonwoods. What you see in the foreground is the usual mix of sage, chico and grass. The practical part of my mission was to survey the grasses. Between the more plentiful rains of last year and this year, they were starting to recover from the decades of year round raiding by the stray cattle from next door. Our program of patiently herding them back and their owner's help in replacing the fences across the washes after the rainy season has made the world of difference in the grass recovery in just two seasons. Grass is cattle feed and our main source of income is cattle grazing. This inspection trip was heartening.


Daisy and I found a way down the banks to the creek and crossed over to the far side. It took a while to find a way up the far bank however. It doesn't matter, the walk is always enjoyable, with or without detours. In this photo, you can see the wide zigzag and erosive path of the creek. In this case, it was stopped from taking further liberties by the hard sandstone base of the mesa. Our concern is the eroding away of our access road which is often built on deep deposits of silts, part clay and part sand.

Without the influence of the bounding Brou, Daisy was actually a very good hiking partner, never more than 50 yards away at any given time. She was there within seconds when I called and often pointed out navigable paths through the boulder outcroppings ahead that I might have missed otherwise.

A delightful find was a piece of petrified wood sitting by itself. Above, you can plainly see the original form of the bark as well as a healed over branch knot. The iron minerals lent it the russet color and the tiny white spots were dazzling crystals flashing in the sunlight. This tree had been laying in state at least 200 feet down in the sedimentary layers before it had been exposed by ancient flowing waters. Now it's sum parts are scattered irretrievably by time like so many artifacts out here.

Pay dirt! We had hiked back towards the Rat about 1/2 a mile when I came across this huge billboard quality rock with a rich iron water patina, a former part of the mesa which had broken away and fallen to the base many hundreds of years ago. What looked like faint scratches became inscriptions as we drew closer. Some were still legible such as "Je M.U.F - o4", "Benino Gonsales - 1911", "Dona Cian" (who was likely Benino's gal back home according to the similar undisciplined etching style). Above Benino's scrawl was a weathered script so flourished and perfectly genteel but I could not decipher it. Some of these inscriptions might have dated back to the first Spanish incursions into the region over 400 years ago. The first two dated to just before New Mexico became part of the U.S. Remember that you can click on any of these photos for an enlarged view. What wonderful finds for one day's hike!
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Erode the High Road

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As much as this is a brutally tough and rugged appearing land, it is also a very delicate and sensitive one. It will bleed profusely when scratched even ever so lightly. As time goes on, I will show you more photos of what even the fairly benign elements of wind and rain can do to this landscape sporting the tough-guy facade.
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Mark decided to go east to start this week's sign posting chores 'up top'. We had not been through the locked gate at the ranch's end since mid-summer and he was back within the half hour, insisting that I come see the summer rain's work on the road beyond for myself. "No, you won't really appreciate what I ran into unless you see it for yourself, I kid you not. C'mon, jump in the truck!" Since Daisy won't jump into the truck but WILL run herself to death following us, we tethered her to the moving trailer and headed down the road with the ever well-behaved Brou in the back seat. Mark did the honors at the gate and began his play-by-play narration; "Okay, so I'm through the gate and mostly thinking about the crossing at the creek itself when I hit the brakes because I am suddenly looking down eight feet, dead in front of the truck ... right about ... here!" Thanks to that impressive re-enactment, my breakfast was now requesting an instant replay. "Yes, thank you, I can see how this might have commanded your full attention, I can, really."
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Then he noticed a new trail blazed through the rough grasses to the west and pointed the Ram's head to follow. It generously skirted the old road (now a committed arroyo) in a rough and bumpy manner and finally met up with the work of a back hoe which had placed a bridge of dirt across the new gap at a narrowing much further up. At this point, we parked on the other side and walked back to the edge of the old road.
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This photo above was taken after we found a less treacherous path down into the wash. I have placed a yellow line in the photo to indicate the original path of the road as recently as July. Although I cannot describe our rains this season as being exceptional or even plentiful, there must have been just the right downpours in this exact area to incise 8 feet of earth away from the road bed here.
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We wandered down the arroyo to find the matching end of this now defunct road (marked with a yellow spot). It was nearly impossible to imagine this much material ripped away by one season's rains. I thought of a ditty occasionally murmured by an eccentric engineer I once worked with in phone plant; "Rooty-toot-toot, Rooty-toot-toot, We are the boys from the institute, We are not rough, We are not tough, But - we - are - determined!" He'd always turn to face me for that last line, one index finger up in the air for accentuation and that madman grin on his face that I so adored. Now, that may seem like a strange recollection to make at this moment but it struck me that this was how our rains operate; not in vicious assaults but by gently overwhelming their surroundings with a doggedly patient determination. No tsunamis, no crashing white waters, just a constant relaxed flow, unebbing and thoroughly resolute.
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We wandered even further down its now dry course to where its path was less incised, to where it was beginning to make concessions to the normal grade of the land at either side. This photo above shows Mark standing in front of a pile of flotsam caught in an exposed gas pipeline. Perhaps that debris pile will someday become a starter bed for new silts and sands to form a new deflecting bank. In our lifetime? It is more likely that the 40 or 50 feet of newly exposed 6 inch pipeline will rupture and fill our canyon with gas at impressive compressor-driven volumes. I followed the fresh tracks of several cows up to and either over or under this line. Since there are far more hazardous cases of exposed pipeline in the region which have gone long unaddressed, we don't expect any miracle of responsible maintenance to occur any time soon. Tell you what; if you hear of our demise by massive inferno, the first one of you to investigate and prove that it was corporate negligence, you get what's left of the ranch, too, okay? There will still be a goodly amount left, I can assure you. I will only hang around to haunt the corporate bean-counters and budget wonks responsible ... promise. I'm sure any one of them would freak if I performed my infamous Daytona hairspray blow torch demonstration in their living room but it's okay for them to do it to us on the Russian Roulette macro scale.
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I did get a consolation hike in the process. Mark was quite willing to hang out by the truck while I scaled a new mesa bench with Brou. I will admit that it took longer than I had planned (AS USUAL) but it was such a joy to wander through the trees, over one odd formation of worn terraces and rocks to another and yet another. Soft, dense area rugs of pine needles under foot, the natural sandstone steps, the smooth open paths of old rains, the strewn gravel of old glaciers, the hidden niches and shelters in the worn rock. Occasionally, I would pass by a shard of ancient pottery which whispered to me that someone else had once loved this place as much as I. It is in these places where I am most free of time's shackles, most fully aware and most joyfully alive. I hope you all can find a place like this in your lifetime.

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Roll Out The Barrel

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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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Rippin' It Up Part 3

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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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Rippin' It Up! Part 2

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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.
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Rippin' It Up!

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At this point, I'm not even going to try for a background set-up. Let's just say that we had some dozer time coming to us from a previous agreement with the gas field. A couple of wise souls suggested trying to work from the field level up rather than the corporate office level down. That made perfect sense since the guys who get things done in the real world know their schedule and exactly where they will be on a given day. They can call their bosses who go up the chain until someone flying a desk will hopefully say "That makes sense, do it."

And so it was on our way up top when we found Quig out dozing around in the boonies. Gads, have these operations ever become obnoxiously safety anal; we had to stop at the little cordon and warning sign, Quig had to stop his dozer at an annoyingly safe distance from us, jump down and make us fill out a visitor sign-in sheet before he and Mark could talk mano a mano. Had Mark ventured beyond the cordon, I'm sure Quig would have been policy-obliged to wrestle him to the ground to place a hard hat on him. I guess the days of rough and tough real guys are long gone, like everything else in this society. The old school boys are retiring at first opportunity in droves and I can't say I blame them.

Our idea of working off the remaining time over here at the Rat did fall on receptive ears uphill (most likely since this loose end matter was holding up our next deal). We're just funny like that, I guess, we like to finish up old business before bending over to a new handful of promises.

It was a week later than planned, what with the heavy rains turning the canyonlands into a big mud pie, but eventually Quig 'walked' the big D8R up the road to our place. 'Walking' is the term they use when they just head on down the road by themselves rather than take the time and aggravation to load it onto a trailer. Quig and I had already done a walk around and we both had a pretty good idea of what I had in mind so he pulled off the road and got at it. This beast is HUGE close up!!! It startled the every-loving begeez out of our little Deere when it passed by. I almost expected the skid steer to crawl up the wall of the Rat to yipe itself out of harm's way. See photo below. LOOK at that thing, it's carrying TWO HUGE ripper teeth off the back end like a doubly-armed scorpion! Woo-hoo, I was getting all sorts of weak-kneed already - this was SERIOUS horsepower about to inflict some really serious change without too many objections. That drive train is something that really got my attention. Notice the large drive ... uhm ... sprocket well above the usual track configuration. Quig calls these models 'high tracks'. It puts this beast miles above your garden variety Abrams M1 in my books. I'll get all mushy over that feature later.




Why am I a horsepower junkie?
That question probably needs to be addressed sooner or later. I suppose it's my continual comparison of myself (incapable of lifting X times my weight like the average ant) and those mechanical things that can exceed my capabilities (or the ant's) without even noticing. I constantly compare the work being accomplished against my own ability equipped with, say, a shovel and a strange desire to blister my fingers and ruin my back for the weekend. That's where my awe factor comes in. It's pretty much the same reason why I adore a machine which will propel me along at 120 mph when I couldn't achieve a tenth of that with my own two feet. See below



Mr. Smiley-face has just now returned after several hours of playing with the Deere and I find myself suddenly lost of any desire to write further so I may continue on in a day or so from now. Cooking well or writing at all - I find that I have to be in the right mood, something that my mother had pointed out as a truism many, many years ago.
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Small Cats at Play

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I tried to write a prologue to the big Cat adventures for the last couple of days but it just didn't work. Even Mark thought it was a pretty poor showing. We're both feeling extremely tired in the evening lately by the time the generator comes on but we are generally doing well health-wise. I haven't a clue what is slowing us down but I will post again as soon as we both liven up a little. To give you an idea of the lag here, I forced out a miserable piece and then asked Mark to proofread it. He immediately spilled his very large sticky red drink over my entire work area; desk, floor, monitor screen, post-it notes, magazines and keyboard last night. It was not a pretty sight and I became more than discouraged. Now I am using his keyboard until a new one arrives. He tried to wring out and resurrect the drowned keyboard last night and today but it is not responding well to his triage. He went on-line tonight and found a 'spill-proof keyboard' so, with any luck, he will have his keyboard back in about three weeks time.

In the meantime, I am going to cheat and post a cat video. It's not the big Cat that Bruno is waiting for but the small variety, sent to us by John E. in Phoenix. Sure, it's a tread-water move that I don't like to do but it does let you know that all is still relatively well out here and that we will be showing up shortly with the continuation of the latest news and misadventures.

This is about a 3 meg download. Hope it works!

Privy Counsel - Strangers in the Night

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Retrospect: September 2006

How did that Sinatra tune go?

Strangers in the night,

Two lonely peepers

Staring at the sight ...

...... ... or something like that

Okay, so I left off the potty tales with noises in the bushes around the outdoor throne, followed by the recent story about strange noises in the barn . These events were within a couple of days of each other and both occurred after darkness had settled in. I'm thinking that commenter JennyE came the closest to guessing the identity of the unseen culprit(s) but we may never know for sure one way or the other, quite thankfully.

A day or so after those events occurred, I headed out for a walk and stopped by the little forever puddle about 30 feet east of the moving trailer. I noticed an unusual splat of dark in the grass and took a closer look.



Hmmm ... juniper berries and all sorts of half-digested things that gave some wild diner a real good run for their efforts. I immediately thought of raccoons but this offering had a little more serious volume to it.

I took a careful hop over some open water and came around through the sage to the mesa side of the bog. What's this? Look at that heel! That was certainly no coyote passing through nor was that scat anything passing through a coyote! Fortunately, this was long before Brou and Daisy had come to live with us.



Before the next rain could obliterate the tracks, I brought some plaster of Paris over from the Rat and made castings of the prints. I decided that if I ever get around to casting my own stepping stones someday, I wanted to include those prints in some of them.

Virgil and Earl both stopped by that week and confirmed my thoughts - that we had been visited by a bear. Earl was very concerned that it had made itself at home so close to the Rat. He suspected that it might have been a nuisance bear which had been relocated from a populated area. Fortunately, that was the last time we saw or heard anything of the like again. T-o-u-c-h wood.

If nothing else, it made for great conversation when Slim arrived back that winter with his cattle. And as usual, Slim was up to sharing a good story of his own. Now you gotta know Slim to really appreciate the telling of it. He's got that charming boyish intensity that takes you right along with him. He leaned forward, elbows on knees and looked at each of us intently eye-to-eye as he began:

"Yeah, I had me a run-in with a bear once. Had cattle up in the mountains, noticed something not right and promised myself to check it out first thing in the morning. Well ... I had too much of a good time that night and woke up a little ... you know ... under the weather? So anyway ... I haul my draggin' butt into the pick-up and head back up there. I get out at the gate just about the time a big ol' bear wanders out from the trees, couldn't a been 30 feet away! Well, I'll tell ya, I never lost a hangover so fast in my life as when I realized that I had only one bullet in my pistol and a pocketknife and that was it." We fell into uncontrollable hysterics when he did a quick wide-eyed double take as he concluded "Just then the bear took a couple of steps in my direction and, I ain't kidding ya, I sh-t mehself!!!"

Now here's the strange part; it wasn't until trying to write this down tonight that I realized that we never did hear the end of that story! Last thing I remember about it was me sliding down the wingback unto the floor, holding my aching sides and wiping the tears out of my eyes when suddenly I smelled the lasagna and garlic bread in the oven and realized that supper was probably ready a long half hour before. At my mention of food being well beyond ready, they stampeded past me to the table and the story got trampled along with me in the rush. Remind me to have him finish that story when he shows up for the winter again.

Next story? It'll be back to current events (as in - "there's never a dull moment around here"). This little photo snip below is a hint for Bruno of what's coming up. We're talking SERIOUS guy fun plus ... sigh ... the usual "Whuh, Geez, who woulda thought THAT would happen?"


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The Luddite Ventures Out

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Forgive me for sharing a techno experiment with you here. I have been fascinated with this movie feature ever since Blogger introduced the capability a couple of weeks ago. Mark and I got a laugh out of this one tonight (I think it came from pal John E. in Phoenix). Don't try it if you can't handle a 2 meg download, okay? Here goes:







I will continue our regular journal by very late Friday night. BIG day tomorrow since I am going to make my semi-annual trip into town. Hopefully the doctor will have something encouraging for me to report. Wish me luck, okay?

The temperatures dropped down to 28F during the last couple of nights. We're into Fall, no doubt about it now. Time to get the last of our winterizing projects done!
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Let There Be Light (some at least)

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No, your monitor is working just fine. The first image is what living off-the-grid away from light pollution on a moonless night with no generator looks like. It IS that black, that deeply black and consuming! I kid you not; it is like a black velvet painting without any trace of Elvis to illuminate it. I found this out one night when we got home a little later than expected. I forget the circumstances but we had probably been socializing with the cowboys a few places up the road from here. As much as it only happens maybe once or twice a year, it is still a fine ol' time to be had. I wouldn't say that I had earned any designated driver status by merit that night as much as an ability to hit the driver side door the quickest. Not to worry, that little aside has nothing to do with the story here.

We came home and realized that we needed to fire up the generator before Mark could even find his way around inside the Rat. I parked in front of the barn at such an angle so that he could find the generator. It wasn't long before light sprang up from within the Rat and I could see Mark through the windows. He quickly put up our window shades and the Rat sunk back into darkness from the outside world. I backed up and headed the Dakota into my usual spot in the barn. In one smooth motion, I killed my headlights, turned the beast off and hopped out, locking the door behind me. And found myself immersed in the most intense and drowning darkness I have ever experienced. Other than the keys still in my hand, I had just relinquished any vague connection to the lit world - and I could not even see those keys now, let alone the truck. I put out my left hand and was relieved to find the familiar bed of the truck at least within reach. I knew that if I followed the line of the bed far enough back that I had a chance of making it through the barn door without running into a wall or a pile of potentially lethal junk.

It was about that time, with me being about five foot into groping along the bed, that I heard something. Something loud, something moving, something BIG by the sound of it. In the following seconds, it appeared to me to be something immense and bipedal, all according to the steady beat along the row of old well pipes that we had salvaged and laid out in one area of the barn. Clang, clang, clang, clang, resounding like a church bell death toll - heavily, steadily and quickly it continued towards me. I felt the invisible keys in my hands. I gauged the chances of returning to the truck door and finding the keyhole in just the right way to insert the key and find myself within the locked safety of the cab. My heart started to pound a little when I realized that I wouldn't likely have the time to execute that option - the creature was getting closer by the nanosecond. Clang, clang, clang, clang, ever closer. What to do, what to do next?!

I guess such situations are where major personality traits come into play. With what I thought was little to lose at this point, I stopped, turned on my heels and addressed the advancing unknown. "Knock it off! Get lost or I will kick your butt on the way out! Make my day, bud - I will enjoy it." And despite the still advancing noise, I turned around again and headed back towards where I presumed the door lay. Somehow I managed to clear that door with my dignity intact and found myself out in the larger engulfing darkness but the hairs on the back of my neck told me that I still might be grabbed from behind at any moment by the unseen predator. Sometimes you just have to understand that you may only have two options; that you are either totally screwed or you're not and so I kept walking vaguely in the last known direction of the Rat and hoping for that latter option. After much pawing ahead of myself in the dark and stumbling, the door of the Rat and its light within greeted me. A small eternity passed by in the process.

Didn't seem worth alarming Mark at that point however; some things just don't seem worth the stress of a re-telling at the time.

The second photo? Well, that is my collection of skulls and antlers tacked along the back inside wall of the barn. Do they sometimes come alive at night and stalk hapless victims? Nah ... probably not.
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