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7 & 1/2 Acres |
2002-11-29 - 5:12 p.m. Today has been a hard day. Usually, I think I can take hard days--have even on occasion been able to get a jump start through them. But, not today. Not lately. I think I've been headed for this hard day for some time coming. On Monday, I had a hard day in Indiana on the side of the road when our truck ran out of diesel. We were towing this 2000 lb pompous "variation of the female" (as this mechanic at Merchant's tire nicely put it--explaining it to his co-workers). We got a job to go up there and bring this thing back which would of been a bunch of fun--which was a bunch of fun except that I underbid it and should of charged a hell of a lot more for our trouble--we didn't lose money, just didn't make much. This started the hard day. Running out of diesel just highlighted it. These kinds of things--running out of gas, flat tires, break downs, I have in the past really enjoyed. There was one time when I was trying to hitchhike home to MD from college in this Carolina state and I was just exhilarated about being on the side of the interstate with nothing else to do but wait. I think it was on this trip that I spent the night behind some pines on the median fearing all night some trucker was going to fall asleep and crash up the hill and into my pines. Anyway, the first round to go get diesel worked out really well. Frances stayed with the truck and I went jogging off down the interstate in the sixteen degree weather. Raymond picked me up in no time and took me to find diesel and then brought me back to the truck. I gotta digress a minute here. Even my digression is symptomatic of what my hard day is all about. What's this entry about? Is it about all these past adventures I've had hitchhiking around this country and how I used to be this---something--- or is it about my hard day? Or is it about Raymond because it was quite fortuitous that I met this great person? Or, is it about how I still don't have a clue what the hell I am doing with myself and what the hell it is I want and on what kind of basis am I going to live my life? It's about this last one. I thought I'd take a nice rambling and circuitous route to get there but was finding myself a bit quagmired as I didn't really want to go there anyway. The day of no diesel in Indiana---long story abbreviated, it worked out. We met some awesome people and were reminded why it is so important to not travel with a cell phone. I also put some real mechanical problem solving and ingenuity to the test and learned some valuable information about my truck that may help prevent such a breakdown in the future. Besides the cost of diesel and kerosene, it cost $25.00 to get out of this predicament. Five of that was the tip to the mechanic--I said, to the long haired greasy glasses fella named Rock who owned "Rock's", "Is it couth to tip your mechanic?" Couth. Don't misunderstand this and think I'm making fun of these Indiana locals--they were awesome. They changed our previous very insightful interstate diagnosis of the state. We had condemned it to having neglected the importance of nature and of being overdeveloped by man (even in this vast agricultural way--all we saw were huge farm fields and then these mysterious suburban sprawls that would spring up without indication of their economy and then back to farm fields). Anyway, there was more learned here. Raymond, besides being the former original Coyote Jack, the Wolfman Jack's cousin on the call in radio show (featured when I was a kid on DC 101) also renovated barns. He made a statement to me about how he's an artist and that's how he's been able to do that kind of work. This to me, is an arrow of hope to my heart. He also works auctioning horses and is writing a book. I love this. He's doing all these things and I'm going to look for his book (a how to about barn renovation) and send him a post card. I wish him the very best. I've gotten away from my hard day. I wanted to say that it was the lack of working water in the house today that pushed me to the "I'm not enjoying this" point. It's the damnedest thing so an appeal to any plumbers out there in diaryland. We got a well. The line at the pump was frozen but not cracked. I fixed that. We then get water to the house but at such low pressure it ain't even a dribble in the kitchen. The pressure switch is working at the water tank. I changed the whole house water filter. Water runs full blast out the spigot at the side of the house but the rest of the house is still a dribbling. There ain't no leaks in any water lines--checked them up and down. I'll be damned. I'll fiddle more tomorrow. Oh, and if we switch the breaker off on the water pump, we temporarily have more pressure when we flip it back on. I figured out how to make an oversized wrench fit a smaller nut on my chainsaw the other day but this has got me stumped. The trick with the wrench for you puzzle solvers was to use the tapered, squared end of a chainsaw file pushed in tight to take up the slack between the wrench and nut--kind of like "The Super Wrench" or whatever it is on late night T.V. or infomercials for $19.95. So, save yer money.
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