Gettin' Ready.

   Sure a great time of the year, my favorite maybe, and I'm enjoying it while I can.

Mowed the grass a few days ago for what I hope will be the last time this year.

Getting plenty of exercise out at the wood-shed.

 

I brought home this backup generator last week, a used 10kw propane job I rounded up on craigslist.
Before you write in and ask what happened to the 10kw propane genset I brought home and wrote about this time last year, it acquired some sort of electrical gremlin that I'm going to need some time this Winter to figure out. So this is a backup for the backup.

I set it up under cover next to the house, it was handy to wire in and access but I just hate the thought of something like that so close to a structure in case of fire. I ended up moving it into the orchard, splitting the difference halfway between the house and the propane tank and set a structure over it.

I ran a propane line over and after a bit of cranking it fired up. I hope I don't need it, but I'm sure I will. I'll leave it set-up and ready to go until March.

It would be nice if it stayed like this until Spring, but I know theres some nasty Coast Mountain weather on it's way this Winter.

Thanksgiving Weekend, and the day after.

 The Canadian Thanksgiving was this past weekend, and it was sure a wet bugger. The tail-end of some disturbance out in the Pacific apparently. Another one of those times I almost felt sorry for all those campers huddled under their tarps down there at the hot spring campsite.  I wandered down under my umbrella, but it looked like they were all having a great time regardless. Having a hot spring sure helps in nasty weather.

The hot spring source was steaming in the rain.

The weather brought the river up. It was wet all right, and windy too, blowing down a few trees across the road.

I spent most of the weekend holed up in the shop on my back under pickup no.1  

Before the weekend I had decided to check out a little annoying noise from the rear end, and next thing I knew I had rear-end guts all over and the place stinking of gear oil.

In the olden days out here, I would of had to hitch-hike all the way to town to order parts, and probably end up walking most of the way, or flag a local down on the road and give them my credit card to round up parts for me in town. Come to think of it, in the olden days I would have been working outside on the wet ground too.  These days I can get on the Internet to round stuff up, usually. I emailed the owner of the auto parts place up in Pemberton. I received an automated message back almost immediately that read...'Gone hunting'.  

I dug around for the card I recalled I had from a parts kid down in Squamish, then wrote him a detailed note about the parts required. After about a day and a half waiting for a reply, I started working my way down my email list of anyone who might be coming up for the long weekend. 

 Finally,  some long time hot spring folks Rick and Gail offered to round up some Ford parts down in the big city and dropped them off on the way by Friday. That's pretty good service way out here, and I had something to do for the rest of the weekend.

I remembered another little emergency I had going on. It seems there had been a mis-calculation on the cat food order the last trip to town. My two chubby guard cats were in danger of having to fend for themselves. 

 At the last moment I got on the T'sek Hot Spring Official facebook site and posted if anyone was coming up, there was a cat-food emergency at the Lodge.  

 I posted a picture of my pitiful looking, soon to be starving cats, for effect.

Camper Liane offered to include a huge bag of cat-food with her camping grocery order and thus averted a certain feline famine. That's pretty good service too, especially considering I didn't have enough money to pay for it.

Today it broke clear as a bell, now that all the campers have gone home of course.

ChUk and I pulled out the hot-tub heater today to check out, its developed some problem.
If it isn't one goddamn thing, its another.

Back In The Saddle.

   Well, looks like it's been a few months since I've posted here. I get out of the habit and it is always difficult to start in again, like I don't know quite where to start. So I suppose the best idea is to just start right up again like it never happened.
  Fall is here early feels like, and I need to take advantage of this decent weather to bring in some wood. I usually keep a season or two ahead in the wood-pile but with all the storms and electrical problems we had this year I burnt through the entire contents of the wood-shed. Firewood is not as easy as you may think to find out here, and I should have been working at this a long time ago, but during the Summer it was so dry it was unwise to work in the woods, anyways it was too damn hot. Then it got too wet to go out for wood. Then along came that little matter of the heart attack I had a few weeks back. Oh I'm OK, not much of a story there, it came on while chasing a bear out of the yard. I got a  ride in the back of an ambulance to the big city and a stay at Vancouver General for a bit. They stuck some little part up in there and turned me loose again. Like I say not much of a story there and I'm as good as I was before, but it sure interfered with some Fall projects I had planned.

 I went out on the bike a few days back scoping out some year old log slash I knew of about 10 miles down the road then took the truck down the next day.

I took along a 100' cable to drag logs out to where I could get at them. They usually got hung-up on a stump but close enough to buck them up and toss the rounds out towards the road.

 Oh bastard. During one of my numerous tea breaks I left the thermos on the rear bumper and backed away. I heard a couple crunches as both wheels went over it about the same time I noticed it wasn't on the seat next to me.

It didn't break inside, and the flattened out cup is actually easier to drink out of I found.

 I brought in and split two of my little pickup loads over a couple sunny afternoons and didn't fall over dead so it looks like the old heart is good for go now. That's a good start and I'll try to half fill the shack over the next few weeks if the weather holds.