Snow Storm?

We have interesting weather coming.  Some forecasts say it will be just rain.  Others say it will be snow, sleet and freezing rain.  Others say a few inches of snow.  One says we're going to get hammered with snow.  When?  Well, Tuesday.  No wait, Wednesday.  No, no... Wednesday night into Thursday morning.

In other words, who knows?  The guys at the Bleecker weather center aren't too much on the ball.

All I knew is that I needed to fix the flat tire on Bessie the Tractor and move her from our property to our rental Unabomber Cabin.  We have a parking area by the road, and then it's downhill, down a long muddy or icy driveway to our cabin.  First, I moved the Buick from the landing to down by the cabin to make room for the tractor.

Nice looking car for a '98, eh?  It belonged to an elderly friend of ours who lived aboard her boat at Isle of Hope Marina in Savannah, as did we.  Only 71,000 miles, in very nice shape, with all the bells and whistles.  This is our Sunday go to meetin' car.  No dawgs allowed.

Next, Bessie.  I got over to our property and removed the front wheel with the flat from the tractor.  I then hied myself to Tractor Supply and bought a new tube, 5.5" x 16".  Back up the mountain where Earl and I swapped out the tube.  We used Earl's small backhoe to break the bead.  The whole process took less than an hour.  Then it was back to the tractor, mount the wheel, and I drove it the mile to our rental cabin and parked it on the landing.

Kind of a contrast in vehicles there, eh?  That's Pam's Miata, which will be going into storage very shortly.

This is our "driveway".  I decided to park the tractor up on the landing so my first pass with the back blade will be downhill.  I don't have chains, so I might not be able to plow uphill.

The driveway then goes back uphill to the Unabomber Cabin.  

My last job for the day was to fix the stove pipe.  The woodstove's chimney never drew very well.  I blamed that on the fact that it is long, and has three 90 degree bends.  But Earl came over with a ladder the other day and we cleaned the chimney.  The cap was plugged solid with creosote, so half the smoke was coming out of the bottom of the outside chimney.

The bottom?   Yep.  Actually, the bottom was missing.  Rusted away, I presume.  So the smoke would work its way from the inside to the outside where the draw stopped, and the smoke went up a little and down a little. 

The right way to fix it would be to replace it, but we're only here for another month, and then (hopefully) we head south in R/V Drift Away.

If you look carefully, you can see my elegant solution.  You can also see that it is working very well, as the chimney is smoking like a... chimney.

Don't worry.  I wrapped wire around the aluminum foil to hold it in place.

Do any of you take photos instead of notes? 

 My handwriting is awful.  I should have been a doctor.  Sometimes I look at my notes and not even I know what the heck it is that I'm writing about.  It's easier to take a photo of what I need.   In this case, I need to know the size of the back tire on my tractor so I can buy chains.