Hi Honey... I'm home!

 Lizzy's back from the car doc (Mel's Auto in San Marcos. Recommended) with all kinds of new running gear, brakes, tires etc. to make sure she's safe to drive, since she's nearly as old as the driver. Well, not really...

She's tucked away in her new "pole barn" carport, protected from the rain that's supposed to hit us for Christmas.

The gap to the ground is intentional, to avoid dark corners. There will also be a light inside all night, to help in the ongoing battle with mice who love to build nests and chew on things, like $1100 worth of wiring when I first got my truck.

 

The carport started with some pressure treated poles, which got another dose of wood preservative before being set in concrete.

The poles actually sit on gravel and are surrounded by concrete. The gravel allows any moisture that gets into the pole to drain out the bottom, to help avoid rot.

 

Please ignore the mess... all in good time...

Can you be too old for a mid-life crisis?

 I'm 76 years old. I decided that if I'm gonna have (another) mid-life crisis, I'd better get on with it.

So I fulfilled a fantasy that goes back to when I was about 12 years old:

I bought a little English sportscar called a Triumph TR3.

Built in 1959, the car is original and unrestored, and the odometer reads a few miles over 50,000. No rust or accidents. The man I bought it from said he bought it 8 years ago from the original owner, and the car has apparently always been stored inside.

I consider it an investment, because since it's a classic and an extremely rare find in this pristine condition, it will only increase in value (in spite of what a certain smart-aleck friend who shall remain named Eric says: "Yeah, yeah, Gary... you keep believing that...")

So far, it seems to run great, but when I get time I'll check it out more thoroughly.  I took my first ride in it today, a mile and a half up to the Malt Shop and back. A pretty different experience from driving a full-size pickup truck, but so much fun.

Now I have to build a carport for it to continue the tradition of inside storage. I've ordered the building materials from Lowes, and good old Eric came over to drill post holes for me.

Came home on a trailer

Four cylinders, dual carbs, 100HP

Ain't she cute??

Temporary carport

Spare tire compartment with lid removed

1970 whitewall spare tire! It will get replaced, but I will keep it in the attic.

Original toolkit

Lead hammer for the "knockoff" hubs

Beginnings of the carport

Been there, done that, got the T shirt...

Stay tuned!

The High and Low of it

 More Power, Part Deux

 

I already had a pole for the little radio-based internet antenna, so I connected a stainless steel cable with some turnbuckles and zip tied the solar wires to it.

Finalized the wiring with metal clips instead of the cheesy plastic ones.

Eric came over with the trencher and laid a nice ditch to bury the wire from the pole to the panels.

 It rained yesterday, so the Bobcat got a little mired down in the last few feet...

...But the same soft ground that gave us trouble also made the shovel work easy.

Had to hand dig the last few feet, but no sweat.

A little smoothing with the old Ford tractor, and job done!

More Power!

 Who couldn't use a little more energy...? My good neighbors Eric and Ofelia have been so generous with me since they moved in, and recently they made me an offer I couldn't refuse. They are building a shipping container temporary tiny home, and needed 8 window/door frames built and installed.  

In exchange, they gave me 10, count'em TEN solar panels, and the steel frame they are mounted on, plus a brand new charge controller, a bunch of wire, connectors, etc. 

 

The array started life as an emergency response trailer that could bring power wherever it was needed in a disaster situation. Our deal was that I would get the solar unit and Eric would keep the trailer.

For travel, the panels are locked upright, but they can be tilted to whatever angle is best when in use.

I drove the trailer to my place, and using their Bobcat in the front and my "cherry picker" lift at the back, we raised the whole assembly so I could pull the trailer out.

Today I'm doing wiring. I've had to order a few more parts and some more wire, so that won't be finished for a few days. Eric has a trencher attachment for the bobcat and has offered to come over soon to bury the wire underground.

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Old guy sitting in the shade working on wire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hopefully I'll be able to use all the air conditioning I want, and the batteries will get charged even on hazy days. Molly appears to approve.

 

A New Gadget

 One of my favorite memories from my Navy days is a bus ride I took up into the French Alps. It was 55 years ago, so I don't remember much about it, other than how beautiful and quiet it was, but one memory that has stayed with me for some reason is butter.

I remember going into a little café in the mountains for coffee and some kind of roll or croissant, and I just remember beautiful creamy butter. Perfectly spreadable, not too hard, not too soft.  It must have been pretty special to stay with me all these years.  Might have just been the atmosphere or the fact that all I had had for months was Navy butter, which, like most destroyer chow, was far from memorable.

Since then, like everybody else, I've had to make do with rock-hard stuff from the fridge, which is worthless, or a soggy mess from sitting out on the counter in Southern California heat.

No more!

Somebody must have come up with a solution to this First-World problem, and sure enough, someone has. An internet search led me to a company in England called Alfillé. The genius behind this company formerly ran an ice cream factory, and he invented the Temperature-Controlled Butter dish. It uses some fancy technology called the peltier effect that can seamlessly switch back and forth between heating and cooling as necessary to maintain the ideal temperature.

It's the little things...

It's sized for European butter, but they don't carry that in the Campo "Green Store."

There's a little knob for fine-tuning the temperature.

This new gadget will partner nicely with the new small-size Dutch oven given to me by my good friends Gary and Margo Warner.

At $88 US (nearly half of which was shipping) it's a little pricey, but for a trip to the French Alps, it was a bargain!

The dumbest kid in the world... or is he?

 My new favorite joke:

A young boy enters a barber shop and the barber whispers to his customer "This is the dumbest kid in the world.  Watch while I prove it to you."

The barber puts a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other, then calls the boy over and asks "Which do you want son?" The boy takes the quarters and leaves.

"What did I tell you?" said the barber. "That kid never learns."

Later, when the customer leaves, he sees the same young boy coming out of the ice cream store. "Hey son, can I ask you a question?  Why did you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?"

The boy licked his cone and replied "Because the day I take the dollar, the game is over!"

You never miss the water...

 

It's been a hard day. The sun has gone down and I'm enjoying a long hot shower after a full day in the shop.  Reluctantly, I reach to turn off the water when that suddenly becomes unnecessary. The water stops all by itself.

That cannot be good.

If you live in the city, you take for granted that when you turn on the tap, water comes out. But when you live on a well, you don't take that for granted. First thing I did when I bought this property was drill a well.  Without water, it's game over.

My first thought was that there must be an electrical problem.  It takes two pumps, two tanks, a lot of pipe, and an aquifer 350 feet down in the ground to get water to my shower.  

There are three circuit breakers between the groundwater and me, so I get dressed, grab a flashlight and head outside to check. There's one breaker on the back porch, one at the pump house, and a third one out on the well head itself.

None of the breakers are blown.

This cannot be good.

Nothing to do tonight but put on the jammies and go to bed.  In the morning, one of two things will happen.  If there's water in the storage tank, I need to call the pump guy.  If there's no water in the tank, I need to call the well guy.

Either way, I'm gonna need to call my banker...

As I'm about to climb into bed, another thought hits me.  There is another part of this system I  had forgotten about.  I had installed a timer to control when the well pump comes on.  The pump down in the ground comes on when a float in the tank tells it we're about 500 gallons down (out of 5000), and when the float gets down that low, it turns on the well pump.

Because I can't take electricity for granted out here either, I want the well pump to run only at predictable times,  because it draws a lot of power and it runs for an hour.

So I put on a coat over the PJs and get out the flashlight again.

Sure enough, the dial on this digital timer was blank. I don't know why, but it had shut itself off.  

I flipped the switch to "Manual" and immediately heard the lovely sound of water splashing into the tank from far under the soil of Sábado.

I don't know how many hours the well pump ran that night to refill the tank, but it used up all my battery reserve.  That wasn't a problem, because as soon as the sun comes up, the sky goes to work on my solar panels and gives me the gift of power, so by the afternoon of the next day my batteries were full, and so was my water tank.

Normally, I feel the tank to check the water level.  

The metal is cold until my hand gets up to the water level, and from there up, the metal is warm from the sun.  But I had neglected to do this check for several days.

Never take things for granted in the country...

Today, I rigged up a device that will keep me informed of the water situation by sight.

I drilled a hole in the tank's manhole cover, and inserted some fittings that will allow a rod to slide up and down freely. To the bottom end of the rod I attached a copper toilet float, and to the top, a bright yellow rubber ball.

Now I can see at a glance, even from the house, how high the water is.

Hopefully I won't be having my shower water dry up suddenly any more.  Next time I could have shampoo on my head and soap in my eyes!