It’s been a fairly um… aggressive… winter. Mother nature ‘aint pulling punches. The bitch!
But I’m up to it. I have the tools to get by. Barely.
It was a very cold in the morning morning and I was working in an outbuilding with fair insulation but weak power. I have a little heater that does the job perfectly in reasonable conditions but it just can’t keep up once the ambient temp approaches -20. It’s just underpowered. But I’m not equipped for more power load so I blasted my Mr. Buddy Heater a few minutes to take the chill off. It did great but the area isn’t vented so I turned it off and tried to just power thorough. The day started cold and got colder. The electric heater kept the room tolerable, if not comfortable. Then right after sunset I blew a fuse. One of those shitty old screw in types. Worse yet, the fuse is located in a dilapidated barn behind many snowdrifts. Yuck! (Photos are grainy because I was using a half frozen cheapskate phone.) Kudos to Mrs. Curmudgeon for bringing me some fresh fuses from town!
After wading through nut deep snowdrifts to the old barn I had juice back on. But who knows how long? I decided to brush off and test out “plan B”; my little generator. It took a few pulls but once it was running it was a sweet as ever. It’s been sitting several months so a “shake out run” was in order anyway. I can run a single heater with the generator and a heater with shore power (and alternate a bit to take the pressure of the barn’s wiring). It’s crude but it works.
The real hero of the day was a slick little flashlight Mrs. Curmudgeon got me for Christmas. Without it I’d have probably stuck my finger in the blown fuse socket in the pitch black barn… which admittedly would have at least warmed me up. Damn is it cold out there!
The flashlight is very clever. I had it on my “wish list” on Amazon. It has a USB charging feature which was the real draw. I intend it to be the backup power should my SpotX crap out somewhere remote in a situation that’s… significant. Unlikely but I like to prepare. There’s a reason parachutes have a reserve. The flashlight, which saved my ass, as a feature was almost a second thought. You might want to check it out. I’ll add the Amazon link to the bottom of this post when I’m near better WiFi.
After all that I was so cold I was ready to climb inside the woodstove. Burning to a crisp has never sounded so warm and inviting. Instead I wrapped up some potatoes, sliced carrots, and meat into little tinfoil packets and cooked them on the coals. (This gave me an excuse to hover over the stove and thaw out properly. It was delicious.) Caveman food; yum!
