Adaptive Curmudgeon

FINALLY!

You’d think it would be no big deal to go camping. My kids are grown and I eliminated my livestock. What’s holding me back? Probably me. That gets into all sorts of metaphysics doesn’t it?

I hadn’t been camping for 4 months. That’s too long.

Granted, it’s  winter. Sane people don’t camp in winter. But I specifically equipped myself for winter camping and sane has never been my favorite adjective. I guess the war between “sit on the couch and turn to mulch by the warm fire” and “get out there and live” had been shaping up on the lazy side.

I can’t blame the weather. Aside from one spell in the -20s (during which I tried hiking while ill) it has been amazingly, happily, mild. One Thursday afternoon it was ridiculously, stupidly, spastically, unthinkably warm. Warm weather in February is not to be ignored. Like a hottie that wants to dance, when you get the option you go!

So I burned my own bridge. I called my boss. Lets me state this loud and clear, my boss is a nice guy. I don’t want him lumped in with some anti-boss complaining in the comments. He’s an actual human, he’s a good person to work with, he’s reasonable. I’m damn lucky he’s between me and the brass who happily pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining. In response, I do a good job (which comes naturally) and try as hard as I can to avoid rocking the boat (which does NOT come naturally). Nor does my boss know I have a blog. Since he didn’t sign up to be a blog persona I’ll mention my discussion with brief paraphrased generalities. I just want to highlight that there are still good people out there (even in the wasteland that is the modern workplace).

“Hey boss.”

“What is it Curmudgeon? Are you going to bitch about filling out the new 27b/6? Last time you complained you tied it in with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and you have to stop doing that. You confuse people! People don’t know you’re not referring to Italy, they don’t know an empire named Rome existed, they don’t know the sky is blue. Now everyone is wondering if we’ve got a customer in Italy. You’ve got to stop scaring the squares!”

“Sorry about that.”

“Have you considered some work life balance… maybe move to an island? Talk to coconuts?”

“Funny you should mention that. I’d like to take Friday off, I’ve got oodles of vacation saved up.”

“Sure.” A pause. “Are you OK?”

“I’m OK. It’s just too sunny out. I can’t work.”

“I get that. Take Monday off too if you need. Sand off the edges. We all know it’s going to be a long year.”

“Thanks. Will do.”

See what I mean? Good guy! I think he’s genuinely worried about me. For that matter I’m genuinely worried about him. The modern world of work is trying to crush everyone and neither of us deserve that. Also, I recognize it’s probably not the best news when your boss is delighted you’ll be gone but it is what it is. Last note, I really do a good job (not that doing a good job matters but I still do it).

Once I’d lined up vacation time, I made reservations at a (gasp!) State Park. I’m always a little embarrassed to be in a “park” but it’s better than sitting on the couch.

It was in the 40’s. It was so warm my driveway started thawing! Dirt roads around here are supposed to stay frozen rock solid until April or May. Then they turn to a quagmire for about 4 weeks. We call this “break up”. After “break up” the soil is thawed and the snow runoff has percolated to where it needs to go and everything is once again “driveable”. The thing to know is break up driving sucks! Sketchy steering on dirt that feels like a marshmallow is just one aspect of the hassles. It’s unusual to deal with this condition in February.

I didn’t pack until lunchtime on my vacation day. I just couldn’t get my ass in gear. As I packed I got a little shivery. It was mid-afternoon when I gingerly spun the truck across my marshmallow driveway to the dirt road out front. The county road had a hard crackly surface on top of a melted nougat interior; call it creme brulee.

I wondered why I was shivering. It turns out I was a dumbass. I’d been wearing a sweatshirt, which was ideal for previous day’s temperatures, but the truck’s dash told me it was 23 that day; too cold for a sweatshirt. (23 Fahrenheit is eleventy zillion degrees below zero in Metric.) Lucky for me I’d grabbed a warm jacket. I’d tossed it in the passenger seat (almost as an afterthought) and it turned out to be a key piece of camping gear.

I hate paying for campgrounds but if there’s a time to “wimp out” February is it. The last time I tried hiking to a free dispersed site (when it was -20f) had gone wrong. Also the roads were thawing. If that gets out of hand the mud will eat even a truck with excellent tires (which I don’t have). I’m deliberately procrastinating on the necessary purchase of better tires since I drive so little in the Bidenverse. Part of why I’d made reservations (!) at a State Park is that I’d stay on pavement most of the trip.

You can’t bring firewood into the State Park (for decent reasons). My earlier approach of bringing a garbage can full of processed kiln dried pallet wood wasn’t happening because my pallet supply dried up. I stopped at the only store. (Just outside of the park there’s one store… either the store has what you need or you go without.)

I bought a six pack of beer and two bundles of firewood. I paid a usurious $7 each for the bundles! There were 3 packs of wood at the store and I bought 2. It seemed too mean to buy the last one! I grumbled over the expense. I have several truck loads of firewood at my house. I paid $14 for a couple armloads of what I own in tons!

The wood was shitty too. I did my best Paulie Walnuts act:

“Yo! Dis wood bundle. It looks a little light. You’re holding out on me.”

This had absolutely no impact on the store guy. “No shit. My boss is lazy. Tell him not me.”

There was no boss to bitch at so I drove to the State Park. The front gate had a Checkpoint Charlie type booth. Theoretically they check if I’d paid my annual “vehicle pass” fee. I hadn’t. It had expired. Being a contrarian, the booths are never manned any season I’m out and about. Since nobody was at the booth, I drove through. I’ll probably buy a pass someday. On the one hand it goes to a service I value and I’m willing to pitch in for road service. On the other hand it goes into a bureaucracy that probably pisses it away on vegan poetry.

I’ve scouted this campground before. It was summer and I remembered a crowded campsite ghetto at the end of a ridiculously long access road that has yet another Checkpoint Charlie booth. In the summer it would take a couple miles excess driving just to sit cheek by jowl with 150 other dweebs. Winter is different. I passed a sign that said “winter camping” where I didn’t expect it. I made a quick turn and was on-site in no time. It was weirdly convenient.

Out of 150 odd sites, four were occupied. I found mine and now the count was five.

It’s a reflection on human nature (and the corresponding small minds of management) that out of well over 150 spots only about a dozen were even available and for no good reason whatsoever they were all clustered together. It’s as if the goal is to maintain highest possible people density. Given how bureaucracies work, that’s probably the exact goal. For that matter, most people are herd animals and maybe they like it that way too.

In a campsite like this, five occupied sites could be a quarter mile apart! That’s how I’d have done it.

My neighbors were; one camping trailer, an exotic looking camper van, and two ice shack trailers. Ice shack trailers are a subset of camper trailers. They’re built to be towed onto lake ice and spend anything from a weekend to an entire winter there. It’s impressive they can handle one of the world’s least hospitable environments. In my eyes, they’re the coolest type of RV out there. (Though they are rare in a lot of locales.) One weird feature is that the axles squat down on the ice so you can drill a hole through them to catch fish. On a State Park pad, they settle down and sit as rock solid as a little cabin. Originally conceived as crude boxes on wheels, they’re now full comfort travel trailer beasts that serve as super tough alternatives to the usual “summer camper” trailer. I want to own one soooooo bad! Probably the reason they were in the campground instead of a lake was the unusual warmth. The ice is just too sketchy for a heavy truck and trailer right now.

Only one guy was dumb enough to be out there in a tent. And that guy was grumping about being within 50 yards of other camping vehicles while also getting all giddy about how much he wants one. What else would you expect from a goofy blogger?

I needn’t worry. I had near perfect solitude. The excellent camping vehicles all kept their humans hermetically sealed within. I was the only one sitting at picnic tables and maintaining a campfire. As always, I’m an outlier.

More in the next installment…

I’ve said many times before, I’m a bit of a loner. I’ve lived more or less everywhere without growing attached to any of it. I happily ride alone, hunt alone, camp alone, sail alone, and drink alone. Attachment to particular physical parts of society eludes me. People from where I grew up were all “Springfield is better than Shelbyville” but I was “this town is much like any other, adios”. I blew town as soon as humanly able.

This means I don’t have the deep well of social capital which comes from long residence and deep connection to any specific society. It’s a resource most people use to great impact; often without even knowing it.

Which brings me to my second point. I want people to be happy and fulfilled but I’m prickly. Even my best warmest thoughts come out like less like I’m a huggable Curmudgeon and more like I’m a serial killer who needs to switch to decaf. I’m not complaining. It has its benefits. Even vegans leave me alone.

Which is why Mrs. Curmudgeon was calling plumbers. She has social capital. People know her. She knows them. They know me too, but I’ve forgotten their name, have no idea who they are, and would rather talk to their dog.

Mrs. Curmudgeon is friendly in a way that I can’t manage. In my ideal world I’d call 1-800-PLUMBER, rattle off my Visa number, and a highly skilled plumber would arrive (possibly by helicopter) to bill me but also do a good job. Would I care who this plumber is? Nope. I wouldn’t care if the plumber is gay, missing a leg, is painted green, speaks only Swahili, likes disco, eats tofu, thinks Sanka is good coffee, or speaks to Martians. We don’t have to be friends or share a worldview. So long as the plumbing is good that’s all I’d want of a plumber. (I have some limits, if a plumber shows up in an AMC Gremlin and demands I use specific pronouns I’ll throw rocks at the car.)

What I really want is Harry Tuttle, Heating Engineer.

Back in reality Mrs. Curmudgeon was using that foreign magic that I’ll never understand, charm. Unlike me, she speaks human… fluently!

After a dozen plumbing companies didn’t answer their phones she called a guy we’d hired like a decade ago. Even back then he was older that dirt. I think he was working under the table part time… I didn’t ask. I don’t remember what he looked like or anything else. He helped me install a tub. Maybe he really was Harry Tuttle.

Anyway the nice old guy answered the phone, but explained he’d retired long ago and had debilitating illnesses and was very old. I, having the human interaction ability of a sea urchin, would have said “oh that’s a bummer, I hope you get better” and I’d have clicked off the phone instantly. I’d be halfway thorough the next call within 30 seconds. In my defense, I’d have meant good wishes, I don’t hate people, I just sound like it. But I also would have missed the opportunity to talk with a duffer who might need a conversation.

Mrs. Curmudgeon has a lot better human skills than I. She chatted with the old guy for a while and I think they both had a nice discussion. (I was in the basement fucking up pipes at this time. I only have a second hand idea how the conversation went.)

Anyway nice old geezer guy gave Mrs. Curmudgeon the name of not a plumber but a well driller. Like he’s got a drilling rig and cores into the ground installing wells. Calling him a plumber is like calling an Optometrist an Oncologist. Very different skill sets. I suspect the idea was that anyone who drills a well might work with new houses and thus know the number of a plumber who installs stuff in new houses. How would I know the train of logic involved? This is human stuff… I was in the basement thinking about wrenches.

Turns out well drilling guy was a very interesting fellow. In lieu of his actual name lets call him Bill. Bill is also as old as dirt but not yet debilitated by age as the Biden-esquely suffering retired plumber. He wasn’t busy drilling because it’s winter and things are frozen… and also I think he sold his drill equipment and is also retired.

Except men who are useful are never truly retired. His daughter runs a coffee shop in a little farm village a zillion miles away. She, like everyone, has staffing issues. So she calls Dad. Our stoic helpful heroic Bill, was stuck clearing tables and otherwise “waitressing” at the coffee shop. This meant he was busy until about sunset.

After a full shift at a totally important job (coffee is important!) Bill, who is not a plumber and is no longer a well driller and who is absolutely retired and who had worked slinging coffee and eggs all day, got in his truck and drove to my house.

God bless Bill!

Bill arrived while I was still glaring at my two new wrenches. I showed him my plumbing problem. He took one minute to assess the situation and pronounce his ruling:

“Meh.”

I take that to mean Bill gave me a solid C- on my workmanship. Which I deserve.

He removed everything I’d done, which wasn’t hard because nothing was tight. Then he looked at the 2′ extension I’d painstakingly installed some decade plus ago.

“This is shit.”

I agreed. It sucked. I explained that was the plastic pipe coming from the well and it’d been a stone cold bitch to install that 2′ extension many years ago. Before I finished this, Bill had whipped out a knife and cut it off. I remembered the struggle to install it and had organ failure… but I masked the symptoms. There was a real live Plumber on site and he surely knew what he was doing. Also, every second probably cost a fortune.

The crawl space is terrible and the pipe goes literally through the area of just one cinderblock. But Bill went to the nearest human sized access, and by human sized I mean a Chihuahua could get through it, and he plunged face first into God knows what. Soon there was nothing but his boots and ass crack visible in the land of the living. The rest of him was in the alternate universe of my inaccessible crawl space. I think plumbers are secretly shaped like Elastigirl.

Somehow, and I’m still wondering this myself, he got himself back out of there. Having verified whatever he verified, he attacked the scene of my battle from 10 years ago.

Bill heated the location of my battle with his Bernzomatic and SCHLORPED new pipe on the end like nobody’s business. I almost wanted to applaud!

Looking at the bits of leftover plumbing that he tossed aside, I realized the hunk of “plastic pipe” I’d installed back in the day was actually a rubberish material and slightly different than the hunk of plastic pipe that I’d bought at the hardware store that morning. The plastic pipe had been quite SCHLORP-ABLE and that was a big deal.

Finally! After all these years, I learned why the long ago battle had been so annoying.

Pipe ain’t pipe. I got the wrong stuff a decade ago. I’m still emotionally scarred from that mistake!

After that, Bill made short work of the stuff I’d been messing with. I noted with some satisfaction that his final act was to use two nice pipe wrenches, just like the one I’d bought, to reef shit together like Godzilla won’t be able to open that pickle jar. At least I’d been on the right track.

In fact, all the shit I’d bought at the hardware store that morning was used. I’d gotten the right stuff. I may have made mistakes but I wasn’t 100% clueless.

Having finished in just a few minutes, Bill assessed the maze of pipes that is the rest of that area of my house. I have EVERY plumbing era represented there. There’s copper from the old days when copper pipes and copper pennies roamed free. There’s PVC pipe, some very old, some installed by yours truly. I can do wonders with PVC. There’s PEX, installed by real modern plumbers who are pretty much all members of the one true faith of PEX.

“Where’s that go.” He pointed to an old copper pipe.

“Um, it’s embarrassing to say this, but nowhere.” It’s true. I think what I call a laundry room was built sometime after the core house and it served most of a human lifetime as some farmer’s introduction to the exciting world of indoor plumbing. It’s funny to think that some dude in America had to learn to flush in maybe the 1920’s or 1930’s when Rome had it figured out in 300 AD. I’m guessing indoor plumbing in my location came after Prohibition and before AM radio. The world advances unevenly.

After several decades, the old copper lines were de-activated and new PVC lines sent to newly built parts of the house. This was probably in the 1970’s.

“That pipe has no outlet?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve been here a long time and I don’t know how to solder copper. It was done at least that long ago and probably before I was born.”

“It’s leaking.”

“What! Nah. The only leak is the input side of the pressure tank. At least today.”

“Leak.” He held a finger to the tiniest drop on the old copper line. It was wet, but so was everything in the vicinity.

“But…” I looked at the wall behind it. There was a rust stain on the concrete. It must have been an imperceptible leak but also it had been going on for a while. How long? Had that iron stain always been on the wall? I started scratching at the wall… as if it was forming stalactites in real time. Now that I think of it, at the very slow speed of stalactite, that’s exactly what was happening.

Bill beamed. “You see it. It’s leaking.”

Somehow I was pleased that Bill noticed that my simian brain was at least trying to catch up.

“You sure it goes nowhere?” Bill was reaching for a copper pipe cutter.

“Yes? Um… no. I’m not sure of anything today.”

Shrugging his shoulders Bill dove back into Chihuahua land. I held a flashlight and wondered if he’d find a dead skeleton or a live badger in there. He emerged covered with dirt but not badger eaten. “It goes nowhere. Man, your house is old. How old is this place?”

“Older than indoor plumbing. I know that.”

With that, Bill cut out the copper tubing, and about 3′ of PVC that was serving to link an obsolete old brass T fitting with mystery tubing to an otherwise functional house.

I was delighted! I like when leftover legacy shit is removed! My house’s utilities have as much cruft as Microsoft code and every foot of useless pipe removed is a cause of celebration.

It took both of us working together to remove the copper. It was about 9′ of bendable copper tubing that terminated in a gate valve that probably pre-dates the Reagan revolution. The gate valve, closed of course, had been lying in my crawlspace like a crusty old IED; charged with water, pressurized, just itching for an excuse to freeze and spring a leak. I’m lucky the old valve held that long!

I thanked Bill a thousand times and cut him a check for half what he was worth. Bill did not rake me over the coals. Bill is a hero.

Bill apparently sells water softeners as part of his defunct (?) well drilling business. I mentioned that my water softener is shot. I suggested I buy one from him in the summer when it’s warmer and easier to install stuff. Bill agreed, or I could buy one from anywhere else, he wasn’t trying to make a sale. He explained that he was retired.

“A man who knows how to fix stuff is never retired. He’s too valuable. I really appreciate you fixing this for me.”

Bill smiled, packed his wrenches and was about to go. “Well I can set you up with a water softener in the summer. I’ll sell one if you’ll buy one. But I’m retired.”

Then his phone rang. He glanced at it and shook his head gently.

“Slinging coffee tomorrow?”

“Yep, morning shift. My daughter can’t find decent help. Retirement is busy.”

With that, my personal version of Harry Tuttle drove away. I hope I can find him this summer. If he doesn’t answer, I know where to go get coffee. He’ll be there.

And that’s the story of my Non-vacation.

You know what happened next. I turned on the water and it leaked. I’ve experienced worse. It wasn’t a catastrophic WHOOSH of utter failure. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the leak I’d discovered that morning.

It was the steady drip, drip, drip of “nice try but you suck”.

The drip was small and I had a plumber coming in 3 hours. I thought about giving up.

But that’s not my style. I’d done what needed doing, I just hadn’t torqued down to a watertight fitment because my channel locks were shit. What I needed was a real pipe wrench… maybe two.

So tried again. I turned off the water, removed stuff, re-torqued stuff as best I could and wound up soaked again. Finally I realized you can’t “outthink” the lack of wrench. I went to the hardware store again.

So if I started agitated, progressed to hangry, and had drifted into the next level of hell what would that be? Depression. On the drive to the hardware store for the second time that day I flat out gave up on living.

At Mrs. Curmudgeon’s urging, I pulled into a coffee shop and ordered a sandwich and cup of hope. Half an hour and several ounces of caffeine later, I was willing to try again. I had mixed feelings. It boils down to the “three rules”:

1. If your only idea is to do what you’ve been doing but harder.* You’re probably doing it wrong.

2. If you’re getting bigger equipment to address #1, you’re probably still doing it wrong but now you will break more shit and spread devastation. Lessons of rule #2 cost lots of money.

3. Sometimes #1 and #2 don’t apply. If all you really need is a cheater bar, then a cheater bar will work. The question is how do you know? If you know through experience, have at it. If you think this is true but don’t know a fucking thing, put the tools away and take a nap.

[Warning: Political rant about “do the same shit but harder”. Skip ahead if you wish.]

*”Do the same thing but do it harder” is the problem solving approach used in politics. It never works. It’s why problems never go away. Shit that’s got us in a panic in 2024 were problems 50 years ago too. They’ll stay problems until something changes the pattern. (If 350 Congressional incumbents and the top 20% of both parties all decided to run off and join the circus, old problems would vanish in a fortnight. A new crop of new idiots would use new ideas to create new problems but at least the problems would be interesting. Subsequently, they would work hard to cement their ass in the same elected offices and thus cement their asshole problems in place for forever too.) For example, most voters are too young to know illegal immigration was an issue during the Carter/Reagan election but it’s true. Now, 50 years and many million people later and it’s still the same fucking “urgent problem”. After 50 years of ignoring the will of the people instability is rampant. The State of Texas is in active revolt against the Federal Government which is using Federal resources specifically to break Federal law right in front of God and everybody. I’m confused about the Federal Government choosing to break Federal Law but it’s a half century old tradition now. That’s what “more and harder forever” looks like.

[/Rant]

I went back to the hardware store and bought two big ass wrenches.

The first was a gift to myself. I just plain wanted a nice wrench. It wasn’t cheap but if I’m going to waste a weekend afternoon fucking with pipes in the basement, the least I can do is get myself a good pipe wrench.

OK this is interesting. The photo is of the one I bought. I tried to link to one on Amazon and they’re sold out. Pipe wrenches… sold out. Can you imagine those two things in the same sentence?

“I wanted a good 14″ pipe wrench and tickets to a rock concert. Both were sold out. Also, we apparently live in an alternative universe where pipe wrenches are rare.”

Also, it makes my little gift to myself seem a lot nicer. I have a new pipe wrench and you can never have the tool that I bought! My plan for world domination is progressing! Bwa ha ha ha ha ha…

By now I was probably cracking up. The other wrench I bought was nothing special. Here it is next to a slightly smaller wrench I’ve owned forever (I probably found it in the dirt somewhere).

Back at home I eyed my two big wrenches and thought about the mistakes I’ve made in life that put me where I am now. I wanted to rush to get it done so I could cancel the plumber, who would justly rake me over the coals for a weekend “emergency” visit. But…

All I was going to do was reef on some fittings. Just bitch slapping components is never a good idea. Unless you’re Jeremy Clarkson fixing a BMW with a sledgehammer.

I poured a drink, sat on the couch, and rested. The plumber would come. I’d tried. I’d failed… though only a small failure. But failure is failure. And I’ve hit the stage in life where you cut a check when the fix it guy shows up and are glad to have the chance.

I waited. As I did, Mrs. Curmudgeon told me the story of the plumber. Stay with me…

I hadn’t eaten breakfast in anticipation of a yummy “city meal”. Several hour’s drive away there’s a Mongolian grill I like. To most people it’s just a form of fast food but for me it’s a once a year treat. This was the pre-plumbing plan but I hadn’t had time to deal with food. I was fighting a certain amount of “hangry” I dropped $130 at the hardware store.

The last time, that friction fit fitting had been pure hell. This time I was loaded for bear. I bought a tube of plumbing lube. I’ve never used that before. Also I always fuck up Teflon tape. I’ll twist it, wrap it backwards, just generally mess it up… so I bought pipe dope instead. Plus of course all the fittings and a couple feet of that damnable plastic pipe. Back at the basement I’d staged all the plumbing tools I own. My Bernzomatic torch is out of gas but I had a little heater I use for wiring and it was likely good enough.

I also bought a little 2 ½ gallon wet dry vac which became the day’s winning purchase. It was cheap and I think Craftsman tools (as a brand) have been swirling the drain since 1975 but this little pup saved my bacon. (Link to Amazon, and yes I get a kickback if you buy anything. But the little vac really did win my approval.)

I salute you little vac, not all heroes wear capes!

Back in the basement, I sucked up the water. This took several iterations of filling the little 2 ½ gallon vac to the brim. I dumped the water into the sump pump hole and nothing happened. WTF? After some confusion I found out it was on a GFCI outlet (I think that’s what it’s called). The fucking thing had tripped. How long ago had that happened?

I clicked reset and the sump pump surged to life. Fat lot of good an emergency sump pump would be if the damn outlet is unreliable! I’ll have to add “check the sump pump outlet” to the ten million things I need to remember.

I setup a stepladder in a few inches of standing water and started removing the shit I’d installed sometime in the early Obama administration. I had two hose clamps upstream and another two downstream of a valve. I loosened the clamps and nothing happened. I pulled it like Hulk lifting a boat anchor and nothing moved. So much for Plan A.

It’s never a good sign when you reach for the hacksaw but I didn’t have a better idea. Also when shit’s broke it’s not like you’re making it more broke. Luckily plastic pipe is easy to cut. I cut above the valve and a small bit of pressure sprayed my face. No biggie.

Then I cut below the valve and unleashed Old Faithful. DAMMIT!

I’d depressurizing the lines but hadn’t really done that at all. I hadn’t remembered that I was on the upstream side of the pressure tank and taking the pressure off the post-pressure tank faucets and stuff means nothing.

Eventually the chaos subsided. I stomped upstairs to get a fresh shirt, wipe down, and eat a granola bar (I was now ravenous). Mrs. Curmudgeon was full of sympathy. I was miserable.

Back in the basement, I redeployed the brave little Wet Vac and started all over.

Examining the mess, I could see that I’d mis-remembered the epic struggle of 15 years ago. There was a juncture about 2’ back from where I was messing… it was 6” deep in a pass-through busted into a cement block wall between one piece of house and the crawlspace of an adjacent addition. That had been the site of the epic struggle. We’d installed a nipple and added about 2 ½’ to that hellish unreachable spot to move the activity to a more sane location. That nipple, with four hose clamps (two in each direction) was still holding up. I swear I have nightmares about that inaccessible piece of hell.

I’d shortened the 2 ½’ to maybe 2’ so I still had plenty of room to work. I wasn’t going to touch the scene of misery and I didn’t have to!

I cleaned off the cut pipe with a utility knife and slathered a friction fit fitting with lube. Then I heated the pipe with a gadget I use for shrink tubing on wiring. I wasn’t feeling good about this. Last time I did this it was a clusterfuck. It was the kind of pain in the ass that makes you want to sell your farm and move into a condominium. I gritted my teeth…

SCHLORP! The thing slid in almost effortlessly; like it was meant to be there. Cool but also WTF?

I made a few jokes about my houses’ slutty loose fittings and how much I appreciated them. Keeping with dirty jokes, the deeper it went the tighter the fit.

I’m… I’m just gonna’ stop making jokes about such things while I still have a soul.

Anyway I managed the last bit with pliers and channel locks. I had a cheap ass set of slip joint pliers and one decent set of channel locks. It worked. Then I tightened on two new hose clamps. Easy peasy!

I did the same thing with the other side. Soon I had two ends of plastic pipe with nice threaded male ends. I didn’t ask for this job but I was doing it reasonably well. Good for me!

Then I slathered pipe dope on the male ends of the threaded fittings and stuck the brass valve fitting in the middle. I had this idea that spinning the valve would tighten both ends. I was wrong. If you spin one side the other can’t spin and so forth. Fine!

I took it off one side and spun it on the other. It seemed pretty tight. The fitting had flat sides to facilitate an open ended wrench so I dug around in my garage for one that was big enough for the job. I couldn’t find one. So I grabbed my biggest adjustable wrench… which was also too small.*

*(In retrospect it occurs to me that the spud wrench I keep in my tractor for arguing with three point hitch implements would have done the job. I didn’t think of that at the time. I was thinking with blinders on.)

The slip joint pliers weren’t up to the task but I found a second channel lock; this one probably made of Chinese pot metal in a back alley in Bangalore. Whatever I paid for it, it wasn’t much. Whatever I paid, was too much.

My tools from left to right: “useless”, “inadequate”, “barely adequate”.

Sure enough one channel lock gripped like the hand of Thor but the other was weak and uninspiring (like Woody Allen in the middle of a monologue about ennui). It did work, but not well.

I de-schlorped the friction fit on the opposite side, channel locked it onto the doped threads and spun it on. That looked OK too. Then I re-schlorped (insert joke here) into the plastic pipe and re-tightened the two pipe clamps.

I’d done it!

My God! It’s beautiful!

Intellectually; this was the easiest job ever. A fuckin’ monkey could figure out what needed doing. However, this particular monkey isn’t experienced or tooled up so it had taken a while. Regardless, it was done. I was so happy!

Just then Mrs. Curmudgeon called down (no way was she going to venture into our basement personally… too many spiders and icky things and also a wet grumpy husband).

“I found a plumber! He’s coming in 3 hours!”

Wow, just wow. I finish the job and a plumber manifests exactly then? God has an amazing sense of humor.

Rather than call him off, I let it ride. I had a few hours before arrival and when a plumber says they’re coming there’s a 70% chance they’re not anyway. Plus, I hadn’t tested the line.

I took a beautiful picture of my excellent work and turned on the water.

Stay tuned…

I’d felt like shit all week and then Biden took an intellectual (or rather an anti-intellectual) dump on my TV which really bummed me out. I needed a break in the cycle of suck. Also, all this negativity had me crapped out with the squirrels. I’d been making progress with the squirrel story but lately I’ve been doing naught but treading water.

It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness so I decided to take a “mini-vacation”. A chance to rest, do no homestead chores whatsoever, and maybe get my groove back with the squirrels. It was a spur of the moment weekend morning idea but why the hell not? My plan was to drive several hours to a city of no particular interest and spend the night at a hotel that’s nobody’s idea of a destination resort. I’d maybe walk the dog inside a Cabela’s store. (It’s always fun to do an indoor dog walk.) Possibly I’d get some sushi. The next day I’d hammer a few thousand words of squirrel at a coffee shop and go home. It’s not a beach in Tahiti but even the lamest of vacations is better than nothing.

It’s surprising how quickly I perked up. I started having visions of an indoor shooting range. Mrs. Curmudgeon was on board with that! She started a web-search to see if one was available.

While she was Googling, I jammed a toothbrush and a handful of wadded clothes into a bag. I tossed it in the car. While I was there I might as well grab some junk that was cluttering the car. I decided to put the junk in the basement.

I walked to the basement and found an inch of water on the floor. BAM! My simple little plans took a headshot!

Adulting sucks.

Every hope, dream, positive vibe, and spring in my step evaporated. Game over man!

I alerted Mrs. Curmudgeon that there was a leak, that the mini-vacation was canceled, and also that life was a useless slog of misery. (I was not a happy camper.)

Now there are plumbing issues and there are plumbing ISSUES. This was definitely on the minor side of the spectrum. For one thing it’s an unfinished basement so the leak was spraying water on concrete. Technically, nothing was damaged… yet. My pissing and moaning was because I had things I’d rather do than standing on a ladder getting sprayed with funky water. Who doesn’t?

Unlike the dickheads in politics, I can’t talk problems out of existence. (They can’t either but they sure try.) When plumbing gives out I must drop everything until it’s fixed. There’s nobody else who’ll handle it for me. I’ve no landlord, authority figure, God, or roll of the dice that will heal a busted pipe without blowing a hole in my day. In particular, living in East Bumfuck nowhere meant I can’t easily call a plumber.

It was my job and mine alone. It’s just my “white male privilege” manifesting itself. Lucky me!

Lets start by saying this isn’t my first rodeo. My house, when I bought it, had barely functional plumbing. It froze often and catastrophically. I patched and replaced and rebuilt and insulated and fixed until it was much better. It does what it needs to do and it’s even reliable (well at least I thought so before the leak disabused me of that notion). I suppose the plumbing is “good enough for some definition of good” and today’s definition of “good enough” had stochastically failed. The long-term alternative is to tear everything out and replace it all, including the hard stuff behind drywall and in crawl spaces; an approach that’s prohibitively labor intensive and expensive.

This particular leak wasn’t rocket science. It was visible, obvious, and near a similar situation I’d battled about 15 years ago. There was a fair chance I’d fix it myself with minimal drama. But I’m no fool… I wouldn’t bet on an easy fix.

I live in reality. As a plumber, I am barely adequate. I know that. We are all human. Nobody can do everything. Unless it’s stupid simple, I’ll fix things temporarily and let the guys with professionally certified ass cracks handle the permanent situation.

We wisely decided on a two prong approach. Mrs. Curmudgeon grabbed the phone and started getting rejected by every plumber in the time zone. Simultaneously, I grabbed a wrench and started getting wet. In theory, either her phone calls or my struggles would work out. I doubted she’d get anyone on the phone. It feels like the last plumber in the county retired a decade ago.

Without going down a plumbing rabbit hole, the problem was the flexible hose that leaves my well pump and goes to my pressure tank. (Technically what I call “flexible hose” is “plastic pipe”. It’s the kind of shit that comes on big reels, is 1” diameter, and is not really flexible at all. I hate the stuff!)

Back in the day, that hose split causing a 1” pressurized hose blast from hell to flood the basement big time. At the time I didn’t have a way to drain the basement. I shut off the flow from the well pump, begged a handyman for help (not a plumber because those hardly exist), and we spent days unfucking the situation. $3500 later it was fixed.

We fixed it right, or as right as we could. After mucking out a billion gallons of water with an array of pumps I set out to make sure I’d never need to do it again. The solution included hammering a hole in my concrete floor! The handyman and I sunk a receptacle the size of a 5 gallon bucket below floor level and cemented it in place.

If you’ve never took a pickaxe and shovel to the concrete floor of a skeevy basement your life is good and you should offer thanks to the Gods of Plumbing. If you’ve never hauled endless 5 gallon buckets of rock and concrete up basement stairs you’ve no idea how much life can suck! It was exhausting and I never want to do it again.

Take my word for this, if some horror movie plot left a murder victim cemented under your floor… just leave it there!

Into this hard won “pit”, we installed a sump pump with float valve. Later I had an electrician wire a special circuit just for that pump. It’s plumbed to evacuate water into the septic system, complete with check valves that, should they fail and siphon from the septic, I’m going to move.

Since building that sturdy (and expensive) backup, I’ve never needed it. This particular leak had soaked everything in the vicinity like a mist irrigation system gone rogue. But it was still only a few inches deep and hadn’t flowed to the sump pump yet.

As for the flexible hose, it emerges from underneath one of my sketchier crawl spaces. Some parts of my house are well over 100 years old. Actually, my house isn’t really a single house at all. What I mean is it grew. When the farm family that lived in it popped out another kid or two, they built more space. They did that for nearly a century. I live in a mishmash of random unplanned additions glued to a decrepit core.

In case you’re wondering, the core pre-dates both indoor plumbing and electricity.

I don’t like where that hose comes from! I’d like to replace it. Unfortunately, someone in the 1970’s saw fit to build a floor directly over it. Short of taking a chainsaw to my laundry room floor there’s only so much I can do. The best solution I could come up with (15 years ago) was to cut the hose (pipe) at the failure point. From there I crammed a nipple (friction fit one side and male threads the other), added a valve (female both sides), and installed a second nipple on the other side to rejoin the undamaged portion of the hose (pipe) that goes to the pressure tank. It’s an ugly solution but it is what it is.

It worked fine right until it didn’t. I’m glad. I didn’t have many other options without hurling a bank loan at it. Such are the compromises between practicality (“it’s weird but it works”) and Utopian ideals (“nuke it from space and build a house that isn’t crap”) that rural folks (especially broke ones) have to face. I swear, half of our nation’s political divide is between people who’ve installed a “Sharkbite” fitting into a crappy old broken pipe and those who’d wave an entirely new plumbing system into being in their mind but never made a fitting water tight in physical reality.

Danger Will Rogers! Mid-stream bitch session to ensue!

As an aside, I once had a discussion with an urban dweller about how I don’t pay water OR septic bills. I explained that I maintain a well and pump and pressure tank and all the assorted things. I am literally my own independent water supply. The labor and capital to do this is all my burden. Regardless, he thought it was somehow “unfair” that he has a water bill and I don’t.

After that the conversation turned to “sewer bills”. I tried to explain my entirely privately financed independent owned septic tank and leach field. I think the guy had nightmares. He assumed that every dump taken by every human in every house in every nation is always piped to a municipal treatment plant. I explained that “leach field” and “treatment facility” are similar or related technology but it did no good. Municipalities are special because they employ magic elves which use the power of government to turn shit into rainbows.

What’s worse is that the fact that I live miles and miles from the nearest treatment plant. That true fact just didn’t fit with his world view. Nobody can run twenty or forty miles of pipe from just one house! If you live miles from the nearest town, your morning shit can’t be piped to an urban treatment at the crap spa.

(I once met a person who couldn’t drive at night where there were no streetlights… same thing.)

I tried to explain that’s just how it is. Many things can’t exist in a low population density. Many things are not provided to hinterland people. I can’t have light rail or subway service. There are no street lights. I haul my own garbage, pump my own water, and treat my own sewage. (He’d have a stroke if he knew I cut my own firewood and that I use FIRE as a form of heat.) Heck, I can’t even get pizza delivered.

The analogy never took hold. He refused all my explanations. His opinion is that I ought to pay for services like he does and it’s somehow immoral to simply provide them myself. If I can’t use a city bus that can’t come to my house I still ought to pay.

Sigh…

In his mind it was somehow “unfair” he had monthly bills. When I dropped ten large on a new septic tank and paid for the whole fucking thing in one shot that didn’t mean anything. It didn’t count, for reasons that aren’t clear. The gulf between urban and rural is larger than either side fully understands.

Back to today’s story, I was carefully remembering the last time this hose (pipe) broke. It was a stone cold bitch to insert the friction fit into the hose. I remember a big struggle.

I killed the power to the well pump and depressurized my house’s pipes. But the little pinhole leak was still pressurized and spraying. I closed the valve to isolate it from the pressure tank input. I don’t think that’s how pressure tanks work (I don’t even know if the valve I installed 15 years ago made sense. I just tend to prefer valves to avoid “there’s nothing I can do other than let it leak” locations.) At least it stopped spraying me in the face.

In the meantime, Mrs. Curmudgeon had gotten nowhere finding a plumber. Nobody would even answer the phone on a weekend. I shouted upstairs that the water was off. Just then I heard the toilet flush.

“I hope it was worth it, that’s the last one.” I thought.

There’s more to follow but it might not go live for a few days… After the plumbing event, I decided to run away and go camping. I’ll be back when I get back. See ya’ then…

Hur said Biden was non compos mentis. That’s not great news for Captain Corn Pop but it’s not a surprise or insurmountable. All Biden needed to do was hide (as he usually does). He could enjoy another “committed a crime but nobody will touch it with a ten foot pole” moment by simply doing the same thing he’s done for years.

Hur provided the perfect timing too. All Biden had to do was stay under a rock until the Super Bowl. Nothing does a mental reset to the masses like bread and circuses. If Biden was really lucky TayTay would have a wardrobe malfunction or something and make everyone forget. (Yes, that stupid thing also happened. It was another of THOSE days. During superbowl 2004 Janet Jackson flashed a tit at halftime. Otherwise adult humans pretended they’d never seen such a super inappropriate thing before. A boob? Heavens to Betsy, who could imagine such a thing! We were just sitting here reciting hymns about how threshing wheat is fun! Sixteen years later the society that pretended it was shocked that Janet Jackson had breasts made Wet Ass Pussy a hit. That’s exactly how a reasonable society of mature adults behaves. Right?)

Anyway if Biden hides long enough, something stupid and weird will happen and everyone will officially forget he’s simultaneously too mentally declined to stand trail and Commander in Chief of the biggest nuclear armed military on earth. (Isn’t that a great thing to ponder?)

Biden knows how to hide. His 2020 campaign was from a basement. The press informed me that serious leaders of major countries routinely hide in their basements while campaigning. It must be true because he got more votes than any other presidential candidate in history!

Because the wise thing to do was take the hit and then smile, Biden insisted on doing the exact opposite. He decided a live response would prove he’s a crack thinker at the top of his game. And that portion of THOSE days popped up on my feed.

I haven’t seen Biden live since… um… I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him perform live since he was sworn in behind a wall of concertina wire. He used to do live stuff as VP but that’s a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. His amazing, unquestionable, statistically astounding, and legally flawless record setting vote tally sure as hell didn’t come from live performances.

I was curious. I watched the whole 16 minute disaster and it was “cringe”. Youths win on that slang. I normally wouldn’t say “cringe” but the 16 minute fuck up I watched was deeply uncomfortable to watch. I literally cringed watching him.

I don’t like seeing grown men having tantrums. I don’t like zombie level word salad mutterings. Alternating between rage and mumbling senescence is unnerving. It’s just not a good look.

You know how kids sometimes melt down on some hapless mom in the grocery store? The kid is screaming like a wild animal and flopping around in the canned goods aisle. Everyone is uncomfortable and embarrassed for the mom. They’re trying to pretend they’re not annoyed but they hate the situation. The mom is trying to contain her unholy offspring but the fucking kid is carrying on like a retarded banshee. We get that toddlers are toddlers. But it’s still awful for everyone involved… except the kid who’s too undeveloped to know how disgusting it is. That’s what a “cringe” press conference feels like.

At the grocery store the mom is miserable. Often just standing there, tear in her eye, thinking about how tired she is, wishing it were over. I wonder how Jill Biden felt?

I breathed a sigh of relief when Biden walked off stage. I really did. I’m not sure anyone enjoyed watching Biden fume (aside from maybe Trump). I was worried about the guy and I don’t even like Biden. I was relieved when he called it quits. He’d forgotten the location where he got his son’s rosary beads and that’s about it. The rest of the time he was mostly explaining he was “as sharp as a tack and the way you know it is because I’m shouting and angry”. I don’t associate shouting and angry with intellectual merit, but then again I didn’t get more votes than any other candidate in history.

Then, when a very ugly experience was almost over and all that was left for stunned staffers and “journalists” to spin away as much reputational damage as possible; he returned. He took the time to explain about Mexico’s border wall between Gaza and Egypt. Yep, he did that. He was at the finish line but he picked that moment to snatch defeat from the hands of… Well, it sure as hell wasn’t victory, but having a tantrum is one thing and confusing Mexico with Egypt is another. American’s aren’t great at geography but we know that Egypt borders Gaza, the Mexican border is with America, and the two aren’t even in the same hemisphere!

That gaffe doesn’t on it’s own prove he’s non compos mentis but it sure as hell doesn’t disprove it. The whole thing was embarrassing to watch. I feel like disinfecting my TV. Watching lizards fuck on the Discovery Channel is spiritually uplifting compared to Biden’s emotional incontinence.

Couch potatoing had NOT been a success. I wasn’t feeling good to start with and now I felt like Biden had peed on my leg.

Trying to save something sane for the last moment of the day, I tuned into Justin Johnson. Johnson playing Gravediggger Blues on his 3 string shovel guitar. He’s everything that bitchy decrepit political hacks aren’t. He’s got plain old excellence. It’s not country, it’s not heavy metal, it’s not WAP on the top 40 schlock radio, it’s not “performed” by TayTay, it’s pure blues essence. I encourage you to watch (listen!).

I have no formal education in music theory but there’s something about 3 string makeshift guitars and the blues. For blues (and I think it’s only blues?) 3 strings can sound fully soulful almost more perfectly than the usual 6 strings. I think there’s something in the root of blues that makes the 3 strings work just right. (I don’t know what bluegrass would sound like on 3 strings but I’m guessing it wouldn’t fit as well.)

I tried to master guitar and it wasn’t in the cards for me. I liked playing but I’ll never be anything but mediocre (or worse). What Johnson plays, I can almost understand but not really. It was a nice “recovery” from one of THOSE days, to witness excellence.

Anyway I encourage you to listen to Justin Johnson.

If I had known the future, I’d have known the blues was appropriate. Stay tuned for the rest of the story.

Having beaten the definition of THOSE days to death, let’s address what happened when I innocently tried to be a couch potato. Basically everything went wrong because I’d picked one of THOSE days.

Tucker Carlson had just interviewed Putin. Tucker was fired by Fox News and now gets more hits than Fox News and several other media outlets combined. Obi-Wan Kenobi told Darth Vader “If you strike me down, I’ll become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” Obi-Wan is a wimp and a loser compared to Tucker. Tucker didn’t just outshine Darth Vader, he routinely gets more hits than his former employer and the whole fucking market combined. When you fire a guy and he soars while you take a dump on your own shoe… it’s you that failed, not him.

An interview with Putin is this thing that used to exist in the old days; journalism. Tucker landed the interview that nobody else could because he doesn’t have a political party’s hand up his ass like a fucking Muppet. This happened shortly before I settled down to vegetate.

At first I was happy. An adult thing with adult interest for actual adults! What a fine distraction! Neither Putin nor Carlson are drooling idiots so I’d find a transcript and read it. Tragically, I’m literate. I’m from a generation that doesn’t need to be spoon fed every fucking word. I much prefer 30 minutes reading a transcript to two hours watching dudes sitting in chairs. (Who thinks as slow as people talk?)

There were a zillion links but 99% of what I saw were carefully selected “clips” of “talking points”. These were complete with reactions by “journalists”. Journalists are skull splittingly stupid. I’ve scraped smarter things off my shoe. Nobody needs or wants some ass-clown who took journalism because it’s the easiest college degree (aside from education) “interpreting” what I can read for my own damn self!

(Note: I delivered newspapers as a child. I read the paper I delivered. Journalists seemed about average back then. I was 12. I need to repeat that because it’s important: half a lifetime ago the giants of print media back when it was a legit industry seemed more or less “average” to a 12 year old. Notice they didn’t impress me with their wisdom of depth of thought. If you can’t outthink a 12 year old delivering a paper for a few cents a shot, you’re a nobody. Since then the press has declined considerably. They’re now semi-sentient herd mammals who can do naught but cut and paste press releases.)

I really wanted a transcript. Go to the primary source if you can! If I wanted to know what the New York Times editorial board thought of a Putin interview I’d bend over and let them insert it rectally… which appears how most people get their news. (Credit to Vox Day who linked to an automated English translation based on Russian media. Unfortunately, machine translation is not great for complex speech. Putin wasn’t talking like the mainstream media or a third grader (roughly the same vocabulary) so the slurred translation was less than ideal.) I grumbled about it; probably sounding like an old man bitching about kids on his lawn. Then I gave up.

I started watching videos of clever rednecks rebuilding antique tractors. They were short videos. Each time a video ended I had to wade back into the interface to find another. As if the algorithm had gone into heat, my screen started loading up with non-tractor bullshit. One of THOSE days was just winding up.

The proximate cause of the bullshit was the release of special counsel Robert Hur’s report. He listed many instances of Biden flat out breaking the law relating to classified documents (as Obama’s VP Biden didn’t have the powers of President in relation to classified materials but Biden decided he could do whatever the fuck he wanted because since when do rules apply to anyone named Biden?). Hur punted doing anything about it. Raise your hand if that surprised you. Then hit yourself with your raised hand, dumbass.

So we all knew what would happen because the relationship between “law” and “executive branch is now based on partly affiliation. The interesting part was Hur’s novel excuse for inaction. He said that Biden would present himself to any jury as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”. By some interpretation of the law that isn’t written in actual words, everything is fine if you’re old and infirm… and of course a connected member of one of two parties.

Hur’s report is just “the Comey defense / excuse” so I hardly even noticed. But Robert Hur upgraded to the improved Mark 2 variant and that was neat. I note that it’s also delivered several months earlier than usual. More timely delivery than Door Dash. Biden got his “it’s a Dem so we’re not going pursue it” announcement in February of an election year. Hillary Clinton had to wait until July of her election year; which wasn’t ideal timing to use James Comey’s identical conclusion for the purposes of her coronation.

Also Hur (as fitting an improved turbo powered Mark 2 variant) gave a reason. Hur said Biden clearly broke the law but Biden is just too clueless and cuddly to prosecute. Hillary didn’t get that. Comey gave no reason at all. He just said “she broke the law but let’s face it nobody’s going to prosecute”.

It would have been nice if all that bullshit happened on a day when I wasn’t watching TV.

It didn’t immediately vanish like I expected. Hur said Biden was non compos mentis. It means “of unsound mind” and he handed it over like a get out of jail free card. If someone gave me an “out” for a crime I’d done, I’d take it! Hur also said Biden had broken the law “willfully”. Comey said Hillary didn’t have “intent” (though particular crimes with classified documents don’t require intent). Hur basically said that Biden had will in the past but if he’s currently non compos mentis and no longer possesses will.

That’s a thing that happens… though rarely. Suppose ten years ago you shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. That’s murder! Possibly it’s murder even if a Democratic politician does it. Like if, I’m just spitballing here, it had happened to Epstein, which is silly because of course that was all totally on the level. Anyway, if you went on the lam to evade prosecution and held out until you subsequently turned into a drooling idiot who doesn’t know what day of the week it is… you might walk on the grounds of incompetency. (Note: I’m not suggesting you break any such laws… even if you’re connected enough that the law doesn’t apply to you, it doesn’t change the fact that immorality has it’s own punishment.)

Anyway it’s generally illegal to break the law, as Hur had noted Biden really did. (And Comey noted Hillary really did.) But if you’re lucky they’ll dither a long time until you can barely remember the name of your pudding cup. (Which was not true of Hillary but is likely true of Biden.) It’s at least theoretically possible to say “Biden is non compos mentis and we don’t want to convict a dude who can’t remember his own name, so lets leave him here to watch Matlock”.

I thought Hur’s investigation would be memory holed. Coverups are nothing new and also Biden has a good shot at the “I’m too damn clueless to be held responsible” defense. He’s had years to master the perfectly calibrated level of (in)competence needed to do stupid things and then act like he had nothing to do with him. If anyone can thread the needle between “too fucked up to understand a court proceeding” and “super sharp president that’s definitely who you want accessing the nuclear football” it’s Biden.

We’ve seen the “barely alive / fully in control” cover up before. Biden could consult with the ghost of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The press reported RGB was sharp as a tack and winning chess competitions while preparing for a triathlon? They did this for at least a few years when she could barely fog a mirror. Who knows how many staffers for how many years functioned as an extra-legal committee to exercise RGB’s official authority?

They kept RGB out of live events and propped up in a corner in a real life Weekend at Bernies plot for years. So far they’ve done the same with Biden. RGB was intellectually flawless until she finally dropped dead. Biden is a tower of brilliance, just ask him. One thing brilliant people do is tell you how brilliant they are. (That’s sarcasm y’all and it applies to both Trump and Biden.)

By the way, if you think a decrepit American president propped up by a dutiful (or power hungry) wife is a new thing, it’s not. Woodrow Wilson had a stroke on October 2, 1919 and stayed in power for the rest of his term. He was largely or completely incapacitated and at first an inner circle knew about it and eventually everyone knew about it. Edith Wilson functioned as the president’s unelected secret brain for 16 months until March 4, 1921 when he was replaced by Warren Harding. She and Jill Biden are the two “wives of vegetables who grasped the wheel” that I know of. (Also, Jill Biden is the only human on earth with a doctoral degree in education who thinks you should call her “Dr.”) I’m not sure about Ronald Reagan. He was definitely in decline during his last term and I could see it for myself on TV but he was still pretty sharp and did things Biden doesn’t, like make public appearances without looking like a Roomba.

Anyway, there’s the way things would play out in a sane world of rational adults and the way it played out in our demented shadow of reality. Stay tuned for more rambling.

[Warning #1: This post meanders. What can I say? I wandered into the weeds addressing astronaut shit and covfefe. You expected linear thinking? Here? Good luck!]

It’s an odd, disjointed, winter. The weather is tame and that’s fabulous luck. But it isn’t not doing me any good. I “recovered” from an illness that nuked me during a routine winter hike in January only to “unrecover” in February. I’ve been slogging it out and even missed a few day’s work. I keep trying to do good things for my health but it doesn’t seem to work out.

[Warning #2: I was mugged by politics, feel free to skip the rest of this post.]

One evening I was out of energy and sleepless due to illness. Most Americans are couch potatoes so I thought maybe I should try that for a while? A lifetime sitting on the couch will ruin you but what harm comes from a few hours? (That’s foreshadowing y’all!) I forgot… TV is evil. My bad luck (and likely this will happen often in 2024) was that it was “one of THOSE days”. Idiots reminding me that everyone has lost their goddamn mind started coming out of the woodwork!

As a non-political aside, I feel like I should define “THOSE days”. It’s a special combination of something silly and the media (and in fact society) climbing up their own asshole to experience the true level of their inanity. Here’s an example story to help define “THOSE days”:

Back in 2007 (also in February… it’s a bad month) an astronaut named Lisa Nowak freaked out. She’d been through a painful divorce and subsequently hooked up with another astronaut. He (presumably) dumped her and she lost it. I have nothing but sympathy up to that part of the story. Life sucks and sometimes a person just breaks.

However, unlike an average jilted ex-wife, who drinks a box of wine and adopts a cat to get over it, Nowak went off the rails. She packed a car with latex gloves, a black wig, a BB pistol, pepper spray, a trench coat, a drilling hammer, black gloves, a folding knife and various other items that make for interesting mob stories. Then she hurriedly drove 900 miles. She did this to confront an air force captain who was landing at an airport. Apparently the female captain was bonking Nowak’s former main squeeze. (I’d like to point out this story from 2007 has no throuples or videos of anal sex in the United States Senate hearing rooms. Freaky astronaut drama in 2007 was practically wholesome compared to current Congressional staffer shenanigans.)

Luckily for everyone, things didn’t go much further. Nowak didn’t effectively follow through on whatever mayhem was in her jilted mind. She did find, confront, and pepper spray “the other woman”. But she had enough sense to refrain from murder. She cried, made a run for it, and was picked up by the fuzz. A master criminal? Nope! Which is good. Really, it’s very good. This is a story where a clearly unhinged woman didn’t kill anyone and I feel like Nowak deserves a pat on the back for pulling out of a very deep dive.

What makes that dumb event into “one of THOSE days”? The press went apeshit! On some level I understand that murdery astronaut love triangles are fun. But in the overall scheme of things, the event wasn’t that big of a deal. Crazy chicks do crazy shit every day and there’s no reason to wallow in a distraught (crazy?) woman’s messy interpersonal drama. What really made the whole thing into “one of THOSE days” is the diapers.

You heard me right. Diapers! Astronauts and air force pilots sometimes wear adult diapers to do heroic sitting sessions. This is entirely logical, there’s no shitter on an F-14 and you can’t step out of the Space Shuttle to whiz on a passing asteroid. If you’re an astronaut having a nervous breakdown and need to drive 900 miles to off some bitch…. you use the tools you have at hand. It makes sense to me but something about adult diapers lit the press’ fucking fuse. It was like crack served to howler monkeys. The press had to report on those diapers all fucking day.* I was driving that day. All day! All fucking day! Every 15 minutes or so every single radio network interrupted my boring drive to rehash the fucking diapers. It was pure hell.

Astronaut diaper media feeding frenzy is a prime example of THOSE days. Stay tuned because in my next post I have another of THOSE days.

A.C.

*Incidentally, the press lost their figurative shit over literal astronaut shit but never addressed my first thought. My initial reaction was “BB Gun”? That made me think the crazy chick was either less nutso than she could be or astronauts were now officially weenies. Astronauts have real jobs and can pass a background check. Why did the crazy chick have a BB Gun instead of an actual firearm? WTF? Even crackhead Hunter Biden has (or had) firearms. If you’re going to drive 900 miles to re-enact a scene from Goodfellas, wouldn’t you equip at least as well as some dipshit thug who carjacks an Audi in Oakland? Nobody cared about that or even noticed. It was all “here’s another expert opinion about astronaut diapers”.

P.S. Mass hyperventilation over astronaut diapers was not the worst THOSE days I’ve experienced. Ten years after the astronaut non-murder, Trump mis-typed “covfefe” into a Tweet. Holy shit! The press went into rut. The only reason it wasn’t insufferable was that I wasn’t trapped in my truck cab that day. “Journalists” spent all week pretending a typo was some mysterious secret code Trump uses to communicate with the space aliens that live in their refrigerator crisper. Normal human being instantly identified it as a harmless if amusing typo. The press has no normal human beings. They knew it was a typo but chose (and yes they made a conscious choice to act this dumb) to flake out over invented shit they know to be false. I think they get some sort of masturbatory high out of it. Trump, who has a sense of humor and also knows how to let his enemy prove themselves a fool, though it was funny. He let them run with the idea. Since they have no filter, the press fucked it into the ground. I mean they really went at it like an Olympic event. Watching supposedly sentient beings get into a feeding frenzy of stupid over something that dumb is profoundly ugly (and it’s worse than twice hourly reports about astronaut diapers). I don’t like to see it. The invented covfefe anal inversion was the worst THOSE days I can remember. Although I did think about buying a covfefe coffee mug because it was also funny. (A few years after the typo they kicked Trump off Twitter while he was the President of the United States. There are beings who live on earth and, probably, breathe oxygen who lost their shit over covfefe and then later cheered when the sitting president of the United States was censored. They walk among us and we have to live in a world that internally inconsistent.)

[First, a complaint. I tried to write a post earlier. Sadly, it veered into politics. Regardless of good intentions, my post went off the rails. It’s not my fault. Nor is it your fault. Current politics is a black hole of mental ruin and we didn’t do it.

It’s impossible to wisely consider what is reason free. Are we to discuss adult things, like stoic philosophy or the calculus of economy, in a world of hyperventilating toddlers? The clownworld ass-rodeo of current politics is decrepit, debased, degraded, demented, corrupt, and weird. It behaves in blindingly illogical ways. It’s so extreme that it’s hard to assemble words to address the true form of the world.

I wish to ponder in depth, not merely point and shriek. Yet politics is shielded by walls of emotional incontinence. A tsunami of childlike thinking leaves no room for adults. I’m rendered (temporarily) speechless. It’s amazing really! I have a decent imagination, I ought to be able to bridge the gap between the unicorn dipshits and the solid earth. Fer crissake, I write about talking squirrels with disco based mind control! Yet I can’t do it. The unreality event horizon that is politics in 2024 (or if you will 2020 part 4) cannot be breached.

I drafted a post. I deep sixed it. I tried again. It too was inadequate. Rationality in an irrational environment is elusive.

Finally, I gave up. I wrote this post about tractors and snowplows. What can I say? If you gaze long into an abyss of dipshits, the abyss of dipshits will gaze into you.]

I live in East Bumfuk nowhere. The local supply of goods and services is scant. We all need snow removal but it’s not like there’s a “dial 1-800-plowsno or www.clearmydriveway.com” solution. I meet people who cannot believe there are places like this. I assure you it’s true.

Over the years I’ve tried everything. The obvious solution was hiring guys with trucks. My favorite was a big green truck with a utility box. Sometimes the guy showed up, sometimes he didn’t. One winter the same truck showed up but with a different driver every time. One time the truck showed up when there was the merest dusting of snow. I think the driver desperately needed alimony money. I’d dealt with his ex-wife and know why he got divorced! I paid in full even though I didn’t need a plow. This one time had no bearing on whether he would show up the next snowfall (even if summoned by phone). I assume some sort of clan used the plow truck as a sort of “communal property”? Possibly, whoever actually got out of bed that day got to use it. Who knows who maintained it or registered it? I wonder if it was insured? The last time I saw it, the truck was driven by someone’s grandpa. (I think the proximate owner was in jail.) After that, I never saw the truck again. I assume it no longer ran. Nobody answered the phone anymore. As far as I know, the truck and the clan that collectively owned it, just disappeared.

Trying a different approach, I bought a snowblower. I beat it to death. It was a good machine but I forced it into a job 10 times what any sane person would do with a snowthrower. I did get a lot of exercise.

Another time I hired a guy with a bitchin huge UTV. I think he was trying to justify the fancy toy to his wife? He did a good job but had no heat and was shivering every time I saw him. He lasted a winter and then disappeared.

For a few years I used my 60 year old antique tractor. Like the UTV guy I nearly froze to death. Being an antique, the tractor started or didn’t start based on a roll of the dice. I reverted to my ATV, which always started. But trying to clear the driveway with a little 325 cc ATV is like draining the ocean with a teaspoon. It was even colder than the antique tractor too.

I found another truck guy and he was a solid worker. Sadly, I watched him beat a good new truck to absolute smithereens in one season. I don’t know how much he earned pushing snow, but I know trucks ain’t cheap. He vanished too. I hope he managed to pay off his wreckage on wheels.

One winter, I got bronchitis. You never know what causes such things but freezing my ass off battling snow didn’t help. It was time to stop fiddle-farting around. I gave up on a core value and financed a heated cab with a tractor under it. I paid extra for the snowbucket. It was a game changer. The payments are brutal but the heat is a big deal. My problem is solved.

I still see plow trucks come and go. It’s a cycle. They last a few years slowly getting battered to death, then someone somewhere else buys a shiny new truck or perhaps resurrects a different heap. I’ve seen the same blade mounted on different generations of truck too. On a harsh winter plow guys clean up, on a mild winter they barely get by. A heap might limp for years or die in a week. One blown transmission on a new truck eats the season’s earnings.

Meanwhile, I plow my own driveway. It’s convenient to have my own equipment and tractors seem generally tougher than trucks. It’s still work but it’s not miserably cold.

This winter I haven’t had any big blizzards. I’m not complaining! Sometimes it snows so constantly that you need to plow 3 or 4 times in one week. Even with a good tractor, each effort takes anywhere from 45 minutes to a couple hours. I have a “day job” and a blizzard consumes all of my “spare time” until the weather shifts.

My tractor is several years old now. I’m still freaked out I bought a thing that expensive but it’s “broke in” enough that I don’t get it serviced at the stealership. I begged a friendly neighborhood mechanic to do an oil change and he did a fine job. While he was swapping the oil, I was drinking his garage beer and sitting on his garage couch. Good service and free beer! What more could a man want?

His garage is a bit of a gathering place. The bar from Cheers was never so welcoming. While I drank, a bunch of fellows showed up. One of many topics was snowplowing. This year’s mild weather means every dollar invested in a plow truck is “wasted” (same could be said of my tractor). This devolved into talking shit about every brand. Chevies are gay. Fords fall apart. Dodges have an unstable front end like Dolly Parton. The usual.

Plowing is hard. Trucks have more complex steering geometry every year. They’re not built to be used as bulldozers. They do it of course, but the delicate balance between paying too much to buy a new one and servicing a dying old one is a knife edge. A winter without blizzards throws a monkey wrench into the whole profit / loss calculations.

Blue city dweebs shit on rural people as clueless rubes. They’re utterly wrong! An urban dweller may bitch about municipal services while wearing pajamas but what has he actually done? Rednecks “invest” unknowable maintenance to gain unpredictable returns using machines of uncertain lifespan. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. But they definitely play the game.

My tractor does the job so well I sort of forgot the annual struggle to hire a plow guy. I think one guy (let’s call him Frank) is the main resource. The rumor was that Frank said he’d be “in it” as long as his Ford held up, and then he was “moving the fuck out”. He’s earned his retirement. Think about it, for a rural man bitching about municipal services rather than carrying on the fight is “relaxation” while for an urban man that’s the whole battle. I wish Frank well.

When Frank packs his shit and bails, nobody knows who’ll be the next plow guy. With three beers in my gut and a forth in my hand. I had an idea. I looked at my tractor, still dripping oil from the drainplug. Why not?

It’s more or less ready for that job. To become “tractor plow guy” I’d need two upgrades; a flashing light on the roof so I don’t get clobbered on the road and a radio to kill the boredom. Beyond that? Time.

Right now I don’t have time. Day job and all that. But the future is uncertain. A few years ago I was almost fired over a vaccine that doesn’t provide immunity. Given the mess that is this election season, what comes next? In a world where Texas and the Feds are inches from playing Fort Sumter part 2, who among us knows what the future holds. Frank’s Ford might outlast the union. Anything could happen. But it will always snow.

I decided to prep the tractor as a “backup”. I certainly wouldn’t buy a tractor trying to make a profit, but if I already have it… why not? Maybe in a few years Frank will be bitching about the heat in Florida? Maybe at the same time I’ll be free enough to put in 50 hours a week during blizzards? It could happen.

I haven’t purchased flashing lights yet but I did purchase a radio. I bought the radio specifically wired to “plug and play” with my tractor’s cab (which is pre-wired with a specific plug). Amazon charged about ¼ of what the dealer wanted. I have a Kioti. If I had a Massey-Ferguson or a Kubota or any brand I could probably order the same radio with that brand’s plug installed. The sole exception might be John Deere. (John Deere is the driving force behind “right to repair” lawsuits and legislation. Like Apple, they’re nice products with built in anti-competitive proprietary structures. On a green machine who knows if a simple radio swap would require firmware only the dealer can access? John Deere is also like Apple in that it seems to cost about double what you’d pay for an equivalent “off brand”.)

The radio took a while to arrive. I assume the plug was installed “as ordered”? I’ll probably for the summer before I open the dash and add the radio.

This whole “vignette” got me to thinking about resilience. Getting snow plowed is a bitch but Frank has things covered for now. Half a dozen rednecks with half a dozen trucks in half a dozen various conditions might take up the torch when he leaves. Or maybe another fancy UTV will emerge. Or maybe yours truly will throw his hat in the ring. Whether it’s worth it to me (or anyone else) depends on things like inflation and diesel prices. No city bureaucracy can be as flexible (or colorful) as the local people. It seems like chaos but it becomes a form of resiliency.

My truck has two 12v batteries in series to make 24V. I know everyone is rushing to the keyboard to tell me I can work around that but I’ll stop ya’ right there. I decided to make it independent of the truck itself. After all, if I want to heat a tent or whatnot it can’t be hardwired to the truck. Also, I’m reluctant to unnecessarily draw power from the thing that is supposed to get me home. The truck doesn’t have a radio. (It did but that’s gone too.)

I wanted to power the heater with something like a Jackery Explorer 1000 but that’s not going to work for me.

(Note: I don’t own one of these. So don’t think I’m linking to Amazon because I’m recommending it. I lust after one, but I can’t vouch for it. The reason I went to Amazon is because I read the specifications in detail and it’s not up to snuff for the heater.)

The Vevor heater, and most like it (I think) draws 15 amps during the brief start up phase. Then it drops precipitously. The cool sexy power stations that people buy for camping seem to top out at 10 amps in 12v DC. That’s just how it goes.

Ironically, if you have a plain old stupid 12v deep cycle battery, you can pull 15 amps no problem. This is where some redneck with an electric trolling motor on his fishing boat has an advantage over a hipster who remotely charges his drone. Who knew.

Lucky for me, I’m a stupid redneck who tried an electric trolling motor on his homemade (!) sailboat. The battery is long dead but I still have the battery box. My battery box is the “deluxe” type. It has external terminals, a cigarette lighter port, and a battery tester. A fancy box will cost you about $50 (or did before inflation). My battery box is buried in my garage but here’s a photo of an equivalent box from Amazon.

It’s funny that a deep cycle in a box is better than a fancy power station. But it saves me money! I figure $50 (for the box, but really $0 because I own it) and a deep cycle 12V (who knows how much they cost in the Bidenverse but they used to be about $120). That’ll do what a $1000(!) power station can’t. I’ve seen various YouTubers complain that their camping power stations are too weak to handle the start cycle so I know the specifications matter.

I wanted to test it on AC. So I bought an AC to DC power supply. I didn’t really need this but I’m a HAM. A HAM is always needing another power supply. Most HAM power supplies top out at 10 amps. You’ve been warned. I purchased this:

This funky gadget is a Ham Radio Power Supply Analog DC Regulated 13.8V Fixed Output 30A Designed for Communication Equipment. (Don’t blame me, I don’t make up these names.) This was taken as the furnace was running, see that it’s pulling just over 8 amps? Most of the time the furnace is that low or even lower, but it did peak somewhere around 12 amps during start up. This is further evidence that the sexy power station would trip a breaker even though a plain old battery would be fine.

The point is, the power supply can plug into 120v AC and provide with all the 12v DC you’ll need. It’s enough to run enough radio equipment to get you put on a list. It’s enough for two (!) Vevor heaters. I’ll find a use for it long after the heater has been bolted into the truck.

My photo sucks, here’s one from Amazon. Notice that it has a cigarette lighter outlet and it says “Max 10A”? That’s because getting more than 10A in a cigarette lighter is not standard. That’s why people trying to run diesel heaters (at least some of which need more like 15 amps during start up) off a cigarette lighter get pissed off.

The back of the object is where the real power terminals live. You’ve got 30 amps on tap back there. Also, this little critter is smaller than it looks. It’s pretty sleek actually.

I wanted to be able to plug in and unplug the heater. I had a high amp 12V plug I got for a different project. It looks like this.

I took a million photos while I was setting it up but the photos are on another hard drive. Suffice to say, I put one plug end on the heater and made pigtails from the other end that hook to the AC/DC power supply OR a 12v deep cycle battery box. (I tested that the ring terminals fit.)

In case you’re wondering, I could plug the fancy AC to DC power supply into the AC port of a power station and that would almost certainly work. Turning battery power (inherently DC) to AC with a power station, just to go back to DC with a power supply… that would work. But it’s also an abomination.

The last part is not the least. It’s exhaust. I’m still working on it. For testing I just jammed it out of my garage door. I was impressed, once it’s warmed up and running, there’s hardly any exhaust. The exhaust is the silvery tube. It gets dang hot! The black cylinder is the air input for the combustion chamber. That stays cool. AIr intake for the heat is a vent at the back of the machine. Hot air output is at the front of the machine.

Combustion air and heat air are two different things. There’s no crossover. Properly vented, it won’t smell like exhaust and it won’t kill you off.

This is what my “testbed” looks like:

I’m not done yet, but I’ve got most of the pieces of the puzzle. The only thing holding me back is an (ironically) unheated garage. Wish me luck.