Always Something

My first eight or so years out here I made the same mistake every year. For 30 plus years I did financials for my various companies, mostly indoor soccer. The goal always was to have your facility finish in the black, positive cash flow. In the red, was negative cash flow. You don't want that.

Every time there was a dead battery needed jumping I'd get the cables out, put them on my vehicle right, but the vehicle I was jumping I'd put the red cable on the negative and the black on the positive and immediately hear a popping sound when I fried the battery. I went through a lot of fried batteries. You can take the guy out of the financials, but you can't take the financials out of the guy. There's a dog one like that too.

Well I finally got it right and it's been three or five years maybe since I fried a battery. Then I got the boot issue solved by buying three pair of every kind of boot and then if one right or left wore out I'd have an extra of the other. Sort of four pair of boots for the price of three.

Now it's gloves. I've picked up so many little cactus in my fingers, really little ones that you don't even know they are there until you type P or Q on the keyboard. Then it's a headlamp, magnifying glass, and tweezers to get them out.

So I bought gloves, lots of them, same kind. Once they make a good gloves and you buy them they last forever so sales go down and they don't make them anymore or order them anymore then I have to find alternative places to buy them.

When I get out on the property I almost always wind up taking them off because whatever I'm doing requires more delicacy or grip than the gloves can give me. Then I forget and leave them. I find them days, weeks, or months later next time I'm at that site working on whatever. One time I was out hiking and had to go to the bathroom, dug a hole with my boot, and then buried it. Three months later when I was out hiking in that area again I found a pair of my gloves right next to the burial site.

I keep a pair in the Jeep, the truck, the small garage, and two in the lodge. After three days out working around the property digging up weeds and repairing stuff I got back to the lodge and when I unloaded everything I only had one pair of gloves left. I don't know how I did this and I'm pretty sure I don't want to try and figure it out.

Mad at Me, Not Talking

Partly Cloudy

The weather report said partly cloudy over New Years and I wound up escorting everybody over Hurrah Pass in six or eight inches of partly cloudy. For three of four days it will melt. The forecast will say partly cloudy and the next morning I'm pushing snow aside to make places for the birds to eat. It melts for a couple days says partly cloudy.......

Water Part One (Not a trilogy)

Two years ago my water mistake was that I did all the wash for both places over here at the lodge. In time, right when 168 people showed up for the disc golf tournament the well went all but dry so was tough getting through the tournament. Then I put in an extra 1700 gallon tank, filled it up from the well at one gallon per minute, which is what the water pressure was, then put in a jet pump for it so designed that whenever the water pressure fell off inside the lodge the jet pump would kick on and take up the slack. But when I quit doing the laundry over here and moved it to the garage next door, the well eventually filled back up and I never needed the reserve tank or pump, though it was expensive, I'm glad I have the back up.

Next door at Last Hurrah, now part of Base Camp, it's a whole different story. I use to pump water from the river under permits, to the pond up on top by the main house, let it settle for a few days, then back down the hill to a settling tank for a few days, then through some filters and into the holding tanks, then into the houses and hogans. However the first year the former owners maintenance people winterized the place but never told me so when I pumped water into the settling tank it filled up, flooded and ruined all the pump equipment, and now won't pump into the holding tanks. So I've had to improvise, as usual.

I pump water from the river up the hill to the pond. Let it settle for three or four days or weeks sometimes if I don't have much demand. Then I run an extension cord from the house to the far side of the pond.

I hooked up a couple hundred feet of hoses to a pump and slide the pump into the pond. Then ran the hose uphill for 30 or 40 feet and then a couple hundred feet down the hill to the holding tanks just above the second house or Condo as it's called.

Earlier this week when I went to fill the tanks back up the hose was on a north facing slope and frozen the entire length to the holding tanks so I pulled it up and laid it out on the road for a few days to get some more sun until it unfroze.The pond was also frozen and the pump was in it so I had to break through and get the pump out to let is dry out.

I run the hose up to the pipe at the top of the holding tanks. With the pump going it fills up about a hundred gallons an hour.

There were problems. I didn't want to run an extension cord across the porch and patio at the main house while people were staying there and they might trip over it and it looked bad so I couldn't fill up the tanks while they were being drained. I had to wait for the house to go vacant and then get in there quickly and fill up and chlorine as much as I could while it was vacant. So one day I was pumping water when the new guests arrived. I yanked the hundred plus something feet of extension cords, wrapped them up and forgot about it. Figuring that with no electricity the pump would quite pumping. Later that day when I came back to clean the lower house where the holding tanks are just above it, was flooded with hundreds of gallons of water. I ran up the hill and pulled the pump out of the holding tank and then the pump out of the pond. That's when I learned about gravity feed. Even though there was no electricity pumping the water out of the pond up the hill and down again, it was being sucked out by the water already going down the hill. Took many fills of two wet vacs to get the lower house dried out and a permanent stain on the wall where the water came in.

I realized I didn't need to run extension cord and hook up the pump every time. I just needed to seal off the water so the hose stayed full and then when I released the seal it would automatically start running again. So I bought a little shut off nozzle. Actually I bought a lot of them to make sure I had it right.

Now I could go over and turn the water on whenever I wanted without it being a nuisance to the main house. That's when I learned that it doesn't fill up the tanks as fast with the nozzle turned on because the outlet at the end of it is smaller than the hose. To get it to fill up faster I take the nozzle off and then put it back on when I've filled the tanks.

There are more issues but I'll save that for when I have some pictures and can better explain.

Raven Talk

I learned a lot last year that I hope will help me this year. Mostly by mistakes made.

When I took Kobae back to San Diego for the winter in November, Rachel watched the place. She stayed over at the main house instead of here at the lodge so the feeding schedule thing didn't work out quite right for all the critters. She threw the hot dogs out in the parking lot before it got dark, put the hot dogs in the skunk hole just fine, stuck food out on the porch before it got dark, and instead of coming out and checking for the ringtails or putting hot dogs in the rafters for the ringtails she threw them on the roof.

The ravens got it all figured out and when I got back I couldn't figure out why the ravens stuck around until dark. Usually they are on their way home 30 to 45 minutes before dark. Then when I got back every morning the ravens stomping around on the roof and awking on the porch would wake me up while it never had before. That's when I learned they were searching for any hot dogs left over from the roof. Still, to this day, almost two months later, they still wake me up every morning bouncing and stomping around on the air cooler ducts on the roof though I haven't put a hot dog up there since I've returned.

Plus they've learned about the fox food bowl out in Kobae's pen full of Kit&Kaboodle so when they can't find hot dogs on the roof or parking lot they go out and munch on the Kit&Kaboodle.

There are three pair of ravens that come here often of which one pair dominates and is here much of the time and one in particular that I spend time with. We have conversations though I don't know what they're about and it is teaching me raven talk. Unfortunately I used my regular camera instead of the Go Pro so you can't always hear the back and forth. Some days it will teach me different sounds and I'll try and duplicate them. Other days it doesn't want to talk so I mock it and even when it calls other ravens and wants to ignore me I mimic it which irritates it and it flies off. That's my revenge for when I use to walk outside and call Jax to go hiking and then it would be sitting on the garage roof mimic-ing me. I'd walk inside and hear it say "Jax......Jax." When I'd walk back out side to see who called Jax, knowing no one else was here I'd walk to the end of the porch and look at it on the garage roof and it would hurry and turn it's head away from me. My turn.

Actually four good things have happened out of this mistake or procedural difference. When the ravens are here the hawks or any sort of predator bird never shows up. Ravens kill the hawks. I have four hawks buried in the animal to animal graveyard, three of which were killed by ravens and the one from the back porch. It's like having a scarecrow in the dead cottonwood tree.

Second, they've quit raiding the trash cans at Last Hurrah. They would either pry the lids off if the guests didn't put the bunji cords back on or they'd punch a hole in the plastic lid and reach down inside pulling trash out. I spent a lot of time last year picking up trash the ravens spread around next door. I bought ten extra lids at Walker Hardware in town. They always have a meal leftover in the fox bowl in Kobae's pen or the raccoon bowls on the front porch.

Third, I'm learning raven and getting better each day and picking up a new sound occasionally.

Fourth, I'm getting my revenge on that jerk that use to call Jax name and mess with both of us and it really irritates it.

Disc Golf Tournament

Sign up started yesterday for the March 14th (two rounds) and March 15 (slightly more than one round) tourney. It's limited to 100 players and I just checked and it's at 64 already so if you're interest I'd go there soon.

I don't have any rooms, hogans, mud huts, boat house, or houses available. Everything has been rented. I will ask Doug if he wants to rent his hogan up above the mud huts but last time I talked to him he wanted $700 a night. I have camping and you don't need a reservation for that. Just show up.

The Mail

I got a chance to open up the mail I picked up Tuesday and got this pretty cool shirt from Amy of the movie. Said they are about a month away from finishing up, no more than a month, then got to find a distributor.

I got a package from Innova with a card a disc and a calendar. On the front of the calendar, hey I think I know that place. Photographer Mason Nowels. When I open the calendar up to see what other courses might be in it for March I find this. Thrower Carolina Tilton and Photographer Michael Tilton.

Though I haven't gone to a meeting in a few years it's almost time for Jeep week again. I think I have about ten years worth of these where I kept at least one magazine for each year. I have one room, one hogan, and one house left for those days and everything else is gone already. I still have the male hogan left for the disc golf tournament in March and everything else is gone except camping.