Stupid Summer Solstice

The summer solstice occurs when the "tilt" of the earth is the farthest away from the sun.

I am solar powered.  I love the sun, and daylight.  I dearly want to go to bed when the sun sets, and arise when the sun does.  It is 4:20 AM as I'm writing this.  The sun is not up, but it is threatening to.  I can hear an owl hooting closeby.  There is dead silence on the mountain otherwise, except for the whir of my laptop's cooling fan.

Yesterday was a productive day.  First, I cleaned the house in preparation of Pam's arrival home.  Then I ran errands off the mountain, returning returnables and hieing myself to Tractor Supply for dog food, a top link for the tractor's three point hitch, and to look at the back blade I called about the day before.

At the checkout, I asked to see the back blade.

"Who did you talk do?" said the somewhat annoyed Tractor Supply Clerk, hereafter referred to as ATSC.

"I don't know.  Does it matter?  I'd like to see it."

Slight eye roll.  ATSC picked up the telephone and dialed a number.  No response.  Bigger eye roll.  ATSC pushed an intercom button, announced a couple of names and asked them to call her.  No response.  Deep heavy sigh.

"You don't know who you talked to?" asked ATSC.

"Look, I have a dog (Olivia) in the car.  It's no big deal.  I'll come back later."

And with that, I was checked out and gone.

Back on the mountain, I put the dogs in the car and drove over to Earl's.  They were happy to be out of the rental unabomber cabin and bounded about.  Earl came outside and announced that he had an idea.

"You don't need a back blade and that shit.  I have something I used here." he said, gesturing to his land.  

We walked over to some bushes and there, deep inside, was the vee shaped front end of a mobile home frame.  I fetched Bessie and dragged it out.  We tied a board on top and then tied five cinder block to the board for weight.  I hauled the contraption down the road to where the land was graded and proceeded to drag it about.  This process is called smoothing.  Basically, you pull a blade of some type about which cuts off the high spots and fills in the low.  It worked good.  Real good.  That is, until I sunk Bessie into muddy clay up to her axles.

The land looked fine, but this soil was a darker brown than the surrounding soil.  We've had a lot of rain lately, and this soil has a large clay component to it.  In places where the heavy logging equipment made big ruts, water accumulated into small ponds. The dozer just drove right through it.  I guess the dark brown soil would have set off a red flag to a farmer, but not to me.  I drove right into it.  Earl was watching the proceedings with amusement.  He came over and proceeded to come assess the situation.  

Puffing on his pipe, I'm sure he was thinking "I don't need this shit."

Long story short, it took the backhoe raising the front end of Bessie out of the mire and pulling to extract her.  I'll leave out all the shoveling and failed pulling by Earl's tractor in the name of expediency.

After being freed, I then dragged the trailer frame smoother about for the next four hours, avoiding the mucky dirt of death.  Let me tell you, driving an old tractor is tiring.  I know, you're thinking "You're just riding around.  How hard can that be?"

Well, let me tell you.  The sun was intense and it was hot, made hotter by Bessie.  You have to keep in mind that a tractor is nothing more than an engine and transmission on wheels.  All the heat just wafts around the driver.  To boot, here is no power steering, and turning 4,000 pounds of tractor in loose dirt ain't easy.  Plus, there was the constant getting off the tractor to tie the cinder blocks back on.  Add to that the constant watch for Chevy the Dog who felt he must follow alongside Bessie for most of the day, and often in front of the tractor, and sometimes stopping to nip at flies on his butt.

But the end of the afternoon came.  I went home for a couple of PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbons for my young readers) victory beers and a hot shower.  Pam came home, the dogs went nuts (Yay!  Momma is home!  We're not gonna die!), we went to Vrooman's for wings and beer, and life is once again is   good.

It is now 4:50 AM.  It is light enough to see clearly outside.  Clearly, my circadian rhythm is messed up due to our move from down south to back north.  Stupid summer solstice.

The Grading Is Done

Yesterday was a beautiful day here on Bleecker Mountain, sunny and warm.  I noticed that there was more activity than normal outside.  There were more birds at the bear feeder, and many bees and butterflies at the flowers on the berry bushes that surround the cabin.

I hied myself over to our property at 11 AM.   The excavator was gone.  Tim and Craig were finished.   I think it looks pretty darn good.  There's a gentle slope all across the cleared property so rainwater won't pond anywhere.  I took a bunch of photos, but you readers wouldn't be able to see much really, so I stitched three of them together into a panorama using some old Windows 95 software I got with a scanner.

Small version.

Large version.

I got the color balance as close as I could without spending too much time at it.  That's Tim's car on the right, and to the right of that is where the pole barn will go.  The house will go where the bulldozer is, and to the left of that is the road in.   This is looking east.  As we cut trees there for firewood, the view will improve.  Behind me, looking west, is about 500 feet to the main road.  That's all wooded and will stay that way.

Tractor Supply has a six foot back blade for Bessie the Tractor that I might go pick up today.  I can use the tractor now to pick up the small rocks left behind, and the back blade to smooth out the land.  I also asked Tim and Craig to leave that brush pile, the one to the right of the tractor.  That's firewood, kindling, and wattle fencing in an easy to get to spot.

Pam gets home from Florida tonight.  What a relief that will be, for both me and the dogs.  The dogs are visibly upset that Pam has been gone for over a week.  Ruby has been moping around, and Chevy is stuck to me like bubblegum on my shoe.  Even Olivia has been showing me some affection.  I guess she figures that she's stuck with me now so she might as well make the best of it.

Grading Land Is An Amazing Thing To Watch

Yesterday started out cold.  It was 43 degrees, but for some reason I didn't mind it a bit.  I trudged up our long driveway in a tee-shirt and sweatpants (Pam isn't here) to deposit the garbage to be picked up.  I could see my breath.  It felt good, particularly after spending a summer in Georgia last year.

There was a heavy dew, creating a mist as the sun warmed the earth.

This spider web looked like a cradle.  That was probably its evil intent.

After Earl and I did some bachelor grocery shopping (pre-cooked meals, cans of ravioli, etc.) we hied ourselves to the property where Tim and his son Craig were making good progress on the grading of the land.

We have rocks.  Lots of rocks.  If any of you need any rocks, you let me know.

Do you want this tree?  Nope.  OK.  I'll just push it over.

And that's all it took.  No wonder so many trees get blown over in windstorms.

When down, Tim cut off the roots.  Tim said this is much easier, and safer, than cutting down the tree and then pulling the roots.  The roots were bulldozed over the hill...

while the tree would go to the log pile.  Might be a good pole for the pole barn.

Does anyone need any rocks?  I have lots of rocks available.

The old mobile home posed a problem for me.  What an eyesore.  Not for Tim and Craig.  They just picked out the metal and put it in a recycling pile, and pushed the crap over an embankment.

Our rock pile.  Free rocks!

Tim's bulldozer does an amazing job at cleaning up stumps and such.

The powerful excavator can not only pluck out rocks and stumps, but under Craig's skillful touch, surgically remove recyclable metal from a heap of trash...

and the trash was sent over the embankment.

Hey Craig, would you grab that little rock?

Uh... like an iceberg...

Craig dropped it for Tim to push away.

The mobile home is gone and buried.

except for the metal recyclable parts that we saved for the folks carting it away.

Still photos don't do justice to the speed and skill of these guys, so I made a video for you.  Watch, if you have the time.  The machine with the claw is an excavator operated by Tim's 21 year old son Craig, who operated his first backhoe at age 9.  The guy on the dozer is Tim.  The debris is the old mobile home that is being buried.  The debris pile that's left is recyclable metal.

I think heavy machinery is pretty awesome.

Here Be Monsters

I think that many of you who love the outdoors, the mountains, or rural living are probably readers.  After all, you're reading this blog, and probably many more.

I'm not a big reader.  I was when I was a kid, I just about lived in the Waterford village library all summer long.  Most of the books I enjoy reading, even back then, are "how to" books.  How to build a house, how to fly fish, how to... well... when I was maybe eight or ten, I noticed a book high on shelf that was about sex.  I looked around.  No one was near.  I reached up for it, opened it, and...

"Would you like to check that book out, David?" asked Mrs. Lavender, the librarian and possibly the nicest lady I've ever met.

"Um... I dunno what it's about.  I guess not."

Mrs. Lavender smiled and put it back for me.

I've read novels that interest me, usually about sailing in the South Pacific or the North Pole (Tristan Jones) or something.  Not too many novels.  Maybe it was because of a bad experience with an English teacher in 10th grade.

We were assigned to read "The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane.  It was about symbolism in writing.  I'll never forget the question on the test.  What does the dead fish in the swamp symbolize?  I wrote what I thought was a very insightful and reasoned answer.  When I got my paper back, my answer was marked wrong.  My hand shot up.

"Yes, Mr. Gibson?"

"You marked my answer about the dead fish in the swamp wrong."

"That's right.  Because it's wrong."

"How do you know?  The only person who really knows what it symbolizes is Steven Crane, and he's dead!"

It didn't go well for me in that class after that.  Nor in any other classes, for that matter, because I started questioning things.

But I digress.  Sorry.

We don't have cable or satellite or over-the-air TV here.  We feel we don't need it.  But we've had so much rain lately (it rained again all day today!) that I'm getting bored watching old westerns even.  I noticed a book on the bookshelf - "Here Be Monsters" by Jamie Sheffield.  Jamie was the best man at my daughter's wedding last fall, and he was just about to publish this, his first book.  I ordered it for Pam as a gift.  She loved it, and demanded that I place an order for any upcoming sequel.

Well, I pulled the book off the shelf and opened it mid-morning.  I finished it late in the afternoon, all 282 pages.  I've never done that in all my years of reading, even as a kid.  Rather than me trying to describe it, here is the back of the book.

Like all good books, it is based on the experiences of the author.  Well, all except the gruesome parts, I hope.  But it's based in Jamie's world, the Adirondacks, and include some of his activities, such as camping in the dead of winter, sleeping in a hammock.  And I'll bet there's no symbolism in there at all.

I'm sure that many of you are avid readers, and love mysteries and detective novels.  I don't think you'd be disappointed with this one.  It's available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle versions.

Making the Grade

The grading has begun.   This is quite the thing to see.

First, Tim's son yanks up stumps and rocks with the Caterpiller and deposits them to the side...

Where Tim pushes them over the embankment.   Simple really, but made so by two experienced guys with the equipment to do it.  If our bulldozer was running, it would take me all summer to do this.

Earl moved our backhoe out of the way.

Even their tow vehicle is serious business.

I'm impressed.

It also rained AGAIN yesterday.  I was going to run more fill over to our rental cabin's driveway, but Bessie the tractor's battery was dead.  I removed it, hied myself to Tractor Supply down the mountain and bought a new one (6 volt, positive ground).  By the time I came back and installed the new battery, it was clouding over.  I decided to make it a pizza, PBR, and old John Wayne western movie day.

Pam is still in Florida.   Shhhhhhh....  don't tell her.

Rainy Day Blog Post

Yesterday was a nice day.  Oh sure, it rained.  Again.  I can't recall ever having so much rainy weather here in upstate New York.  It wasn't a gully washer, just one of those miserable, dreary drizzly days.

It was Father's Day.  My dad passed away a few years ago.  Pam is in Florida, so there's no going to see her dad.  That left Earl, my dad-in-law.

Earl is a pretty cool guy.  I've mentioned him here a few times.  For 83 years old, he's pretty spry and witty.  He has no qualms about running the backhoe, especially when it comes to knocking down a mobile home, for example.   Earl's wife, Judi, was in Florida with Pam and so Earl and I were "baching it".  I had to go off the mountain for groceries, and picked up hamburgers and potato salad for a BBQ.  On the way home, I swung by Bill's house and invited him.  Bill and Earl have been buddies for a number of years, the kind of buddies who bust each other's asses and enjoy it immensely.  Three guys drinking beer, eating hamburgers, and watching "The Patriot" on Earl's satellite TV... all in all, a good day.

Today Tim comes with his bulldozer to start grading our property and to get rid of stumps, logs, and rocks.  Lots and lots of rocks.  I don't know how America's early settlers dealt with all of this.  I can't imagine cutting down acres of trees, hauling the logs away, pulling stumps, and moving all those rocks to make rock walls, all without chainsaws, log skidders, tractors and bulldozers.  Amazing.

I'll head over there in a few hours to talk to Tim.  I want to save as many of the big rocks as possible for landscaping and such, and certainly as many of the logs as we can for firewood.  There were many that I couldn't get to with the tractor.  The land is also stepped at different levels, and I need a road from the main pasture area down to the lower one.  Many of the rocks can go there as fill, I suppose.

The folks taking away the old mobile home didn't show yesterday, probably because of Father's Day.  That's a problem, because the land can't be graded there, but I suppose I can deal with that with the backhoe.  I'll have to.  Hey, if early settlers could do it with oxen, I should be able to with a backhoe and Bessie.

Happy Father's Day!

Yesterday was a good day.  I used Bessie the tractor to fetch stone from our property to the rental cabin to start filling in the driveway, which was pretty much a total disaster because of all the rain we've had.  It's about a mile between, and each trip took about an hour.  That counts shoveling the bucket full of dirt and stones, driving to the rental, dumping it, spreading it out, and then back again.

My daughter and son-in-law came by for a Father's Day visit.  They, like everyone, had a hard time finding this place.  The only tell tale sign that anyone is here is the Miata up by the road.  We had a nice visit, and Rick brought over his gun collection for me to store here for him.  I need something more powerful than my little .22 and more accurate than my shotgun.  One of the guns Rick brought over is an AK-47 type hunting rifle, sure to do the job if need be.  I put them all away, but on the next rainy day I'll go through them to see what we've got.

Ah, Father's Day.  For me, it brings remembrances of many pleasant days gone by.  The Gibson family was pretty close.  I recall many visits with family with great fondness.  Grandparents, aunts and uncles, and great-grandparents.  They're all gone now, as we will be one day soon.  Please make sure to visit your dad today if you're lucky enough to still have him.  I'm not so lucky anymore.

My dad was born in 1929. He graduated as salutatorian from Lansingburgh High School here in upstate New York in 1948. He wanted to go to RPI to study engineering, but because so many WWII vets were going to college on the GI bill, he couldn't get in. Instead, he joined the GE Apprentice Program and learned drafting. He eventually became the manager of the largest drafting department in all of GE at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Niskayuna.

Dad retired at the age of 60. He never made a great salary while working, but he lived frugally and invested wisely. He wasn't wealthy, but he was comfortable. He had enough to do anything he wanted to do.  At first in retirement, he played softball and he and my mom travelled. They were active. Then my mom passed away in 2000 and Dad stopped doing much. I was concerned.

Dad always liked tinkering with automobiles, a genetic gift from an uncle who had a used car lot and often had Packards, Duesenbergs and the like around. Dad was a great shade tree mechanic, and my job was usually to "hold the flashlight" or go through the magic pretzel can looking for a washer or nut as he worked on cars.

As an adult, I had bought a few classic and antique cars and enjoyed them, and so I suggested to my dad that he should consider buying an antique or classic car to keep busy.

"Oh no. I would never spend money on something silly like that."

"You're not spending money, Dad. You're investing in something different. Something you can have fun with. How often do you play with your stocks and bonds?"

Well, the next thing I knew, my Dad had a '56 Thunderbird. I went to look at it.

"Do you remember the '56 Ford Fairlane I had when you were a kid?" asked my Dad.

The blue and white one?  Sure.

"Well, what I really wanted was a '56 Thunderbird. I didn't buy it, and bought the Fairlane instead. Do you want to know why?"

I dunno Dad, why?

"Because Ma and I had you, and we needed a back seat."

So Dad finally got his Thunderbird at age 72.

When Dad passed away, he willed his '56 to me, and his '57 to my sister. I enjoyed the '56 for awhile, going to car shows and such. I even had it trucked to Georgia while we were living aboard there on Drift Away. But now, I really don't have much time for it, being busy building our little place in Bleecker. I gave it to my daughter and son-in-law as an early inheritance. They'll put it to good use, and Grandpa would be very happy.

Happy Father's Day Dad. I love you, and miss you.