Time Management: Lesson Learned

Trying to get as much outdoor stuff done as I can before the first snow comes which is usually shortly after Thanksgiving. When I was running the indoor soccer facilities we would make phone calls from each facility to build teams for any upcoming leagues that were short. Most facilities just had two to three phone lines but a few had three to five. We only made phone calls from 6:30pm to 9:30pm on weekdays feeling like that was after dinner and not too late for bedtime. If you only had one phone line you could call out on you weren't very effective. But if you faxed or emailed your list to a facility that had extra phone lines and gave them the details they could compliment your calls and go through three to four times as many phone numbers per evening. It wasn't just that. If the call center was in Michigan where we had four facilities we could help the Wichita facility until it was 9:30pm Wichita time and then still help a Denver, Colorado Springs, Salt Lake, and or Boise facility for an hour as it was only 8:30pm there. When 9:30 came to those locations we still had an hour we could call to assist a San Diego or Sacramento facility. It was very effective.

Here I just have two locations about a mile from each other and though it's hardly recognizable as the example above it still works. This time of year the sun comes up from behind the Anti Cline which Base Camp is not far from the base of. When the sun comes up it makes about a five to ten degree difference almost right away and the same when it goes down. If I have a busy day trying to accomplish a lot of outdoor tasks I've found that the sun hits Last Hurrah because it's further away from the Anti Cline nearly a half hour earlier than it hits the lodge and because it's at a higher elevation goes down about 20 minutes later. Despite a mile a part there's nearly an hour or one time zone difference in sunlight and warmer temperatures.

Ringtails

There's a new ringtail, smallest of them all. He's pretty funny. When I hand him a hot dog he bites it hard as if it might escape. The other ringtails delicately pull the hot dog out of my hand or off of the marsh mellow stick. The new one only gets a half to a third of the hot dog each time as the rest falls to the porch. It's taken a little bit of work to get him to catch the hot dog when I throw it to him. Most of the others can catch it first time. This one usually gets hit in the face once or twice before he figures it out. However, he's getting better.

Water

In previous years my ghost time began right after Thanksgiving with nearly 100 days of almost no guests. Just me and the little people and the ghosts of the past that I was free to explore for 100 days.

Now with revenue having doubled for the second year in a row it takes nearly two weeks to close down and prepare for next year. Just water at the lodge to fill the extra tank takes a day and then I have one propane heater that will only work on the pilot light so it's perfect to put in the well house which will keep it heated and the pump from freezing up and since it's just on pilot it takes almost three weeks to drain the propane bottle.

Next door at Last Hurrah it's much more work. It takes a day to pump water from the pond to fill the two underground water tanks. It would be nice if I could do that while at the same time pumping water from the river into the pond but then the mud is all stirred up and going into the holding tanks so filling up the tanks is first. At the same time though I pump water from the pond into the truck tank and take that water back to fill up the cisterns at the lodge that I use for watering.

Just putting the tank in the back of the truck by myself is a bit of work. I run two motorcycle ramps from the ground into the back and then muscle the 420 gallon tank into the truck. Fill the tank, drive back to the lodge and gravity feed the two cisterns so they're full for the winter. Then muscle the empty tank back to it's storage place.

When all the water for other purposes is transferred then it's fill up the pond again from the pump next to the boat house and into the pond.

I've heard that in some places when people want a drink of water they turn on the tap. It's a little more work here.

The Big Horn of Last Hurrah

Some More Stuff

Things have settled back in since the brief trip to San Diego. I keep my trials bike outside ready to go so that when cows show up I can run them off the property. Trials bike roundup.

The moon is nearly full and it's Thanksgiving week. I await the arrival of the mountain lion who comes down from the Anti Cline this time each year, takes a deer or big horn and then goes back up. Both the lodge and Last Hurrah are full and it's pretty much the end of the season. Then I have about 100 days of ghost time for exploring. My list of things to accomplish this winter is huge.

I ran out of time to get everything done by myself before the big weekend so I hired a cleaning company in Moab to come do some work and after just three hours or so inside the Condo it looks better than it ever has.

With Thanksgiving night the moon comes up just to the left of the Two Trains. There should be one more vehicle in the parking lot but with darkness there's a vehicle missing up on Hurrah Pass. Somebody knocked the sign down and they took the mining road. I drive up to tow strap them but it's perilous so at midnight it's another call to Chris at Nations Towing.

Returning to the lodge no fox or raccoon show up for food which tells me all I need to know. The mountain lion is here. In the morning next to the Base Camp hogans guests who slept in them find mountain lion tracks outside the door.

Some Stuff

I hiked Mission Trails with Kobae on Tuesday, came back to the house, got three or four hours of sleep and took off around 11pm. Massive traffic jam out of Riverside and sat there at midnight not moving at all so I just put my headlamp on and read two more chapters in the book I was working on.

Michelle hung when she brought Jax back to watch the place saying she needed some rest. It didn't work out that way. I've had three maintenance cleaning guys in a row that drank a little, than drank a little more than wrecked my jeep. This time I decided to skip the wrecking my Jeep part and let one go early. However apparently he hooked up the water to pump from the pond into the tanks and on Tuesday Michelle found that the Condo had flooded and it took 50 something shop vac loads to get it out. Then just before I left the cowboys came by and said they were taking some cows out to Jackson Hole but they'd keep an eye on them. When I got back on Wednesday Michelle and Jax had left and there were cows everywhere. So tired or not I pulled a trials bike out and I've spent the last three days herding cows out with the trials bike and closing the gate. Fortunately they were hanging out at the muddy water hole and not the main house pond which they could have done significant damage to.

One more Hayduker came through, pretty late in the year. Said he didn't have a trail name but Chris said he was just going to focus on the Hayduke most of the time. Then on Saturday night a lady knocked on the door at 10pm and said her friends had called her earlier in the day and said they were going to hike from Hatch Point to the Wind Caves and she needed directions to the Wind Caves to see if they made it. I explained that within the next 20 miles there was only one way down on this side, and without much daylight this time of the year it would have been borderline if they could make it. The most difficult part being the trail, if any, is difficult to read, and, get this, it seems like it ends at a big old tree but if you know you can climb through a hole in the tree trunk and find the continuation of the trail. She left I never saw her again so don't know the outcome.

It turns out the barber in town and I have something in common besides when I need a haircut he happens to be able to cut my hair. We both read a lot so we exchanged some books. When he told me he had a book from many years ago about the Potash Mine when they had the big explosion that killed everybody I ask him to bring it in and last time I was there we exchanged books. I pulled it out on the Saturday before I left and was just skimming through it to get an idea of how long it might take me to read it when the phone rang. It was some radio station asking me if I lived close to the Potash Plant and I told them I did. They said there were multiple emergency vehicles heading there what did I know. I saw a plume of white smoke coming out and told him that was the extent of my current knowledge. Turns out a boom touched an electrical line and three men were killed, all of who were well known and liked in town.

Having spent so much of the last couple weeks with Jax and Kobae it feels weird to not have either one of them here but there's plenty to do. Just out of habit when I get in the truck to go next door to work and clean I hold the door open for a second expecting Jax to jump in and then I remember.

It's that time. The moment the sun goes down the temperature goes down by ten degrees. The raccoons that show up to eat has dropped to six or eight each night, two ringtails and two skunks are solid, and the number of gray foxes has dropped in half to just five or six. I heard the first animals under the house last night tearing the insulation out and making their beds to prepare for winter.

I'm preparing for winter too. I checked all the engines, generators, and pumps today to make sure they all had plenty of oil and anti-freeze and covered up the entrance to Kobae's house so not to repeat the mistake of a few years ago when I didn't and a badger moved in who was extremely determined not to get kicked out. Both places go vacant tomorrow and one more massive cleaning job for the Thanksgiving weekend where I'm completely full at both places and then the season is pretty much over. I'm ready for over.

Tuesday: Mission Trails

Kobae and I got six hours of hiking in Mission Trails on Tuesday.