Tag Archives: animals

The Brother of Invention

Humane gunfighters

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Life’s so full of happy surprises here it took me a while to remember to be surprised when I awakened warm, still parked where once chickens scratched and pecked on mornings such as this.  Then I remembered what it was I ought to be surprised about – that I’d expected this post to be made on a fast WIFI connection somewhere out where it’s probably colder than it is here.  Which is plenty cold enough to satisfy the needs of the feline population, I’m informed.

I thought it was the money situation keeping the delays coming hot and heavy, but when I managed yesterday after the temperature dropped to 20 degrees F, to get the propane heater working in the RV, I knew a new reality had dropped in to flex its muscles.  That heater had to be why the Universe kicked in to impose good sense into my activities.

I don’t know how I fixed it.  Maybe just pulling things apart and putting them back together, tapping on things, testing, and taking them apart again was what did it.  Or maybe it was my genius brother, Invention.

So this morning I woke someplace warm for the first cold morning in at least a couple of years.  I hope today I’ll be changing the oil on the RV, wrapping up a couple of other details, and try to round up the cats to hit the road before the end of the week.

But it’s not easy to feel much dissatisfaction with life when there’s warm out there to be had.  I’m going to have to kick myself with some determination to impose a sense of urgency into my intentions.

But I’ve digressed.  I’d planned to tell you about that truck I saw parked in front of the Humane Society Thrift Shop new construction area.

Can’t recall now what I was going to say about it.

Instead, here’s wishing all of you plenty of warm.

Old Jules

Smug Self-Congratulation and Slow Rapid Advancement

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

When I brought up the screen to post I noticed it’s November 18.  Old Sol’s muttering to me that he’s becoming bored with all my scurryings and goings on every time I go around him again without becoming a bit wiser in any way discernable by alert human beings.

But tomorrow I’ll have gotten by with it 70 times despite a persistent, continuing foolishness and determination to smack head-on into heavy, solid objects.  One such object I’ll be telling you about here, but that’s later on in the post.  But first, a few other matters. 

My friend Rich and his wife Lisa came to visit a few days recently.  We spent a lot of time just savoring the company, hours and days flashing by in such rapid sequence I’m reminded of those strobes a person used to have a to deal with on dance floors during the 1980s when I try to remember the details.

All I can say for certain is the time passed more as a pleasant dream than some feet-on-the-ground experience anchored in reality.

But somewhere during all that Rich fixed my computer so’s it connected online through WIFI.  When I left one evening he was downloading several years of updates to Windows Vista and AVG, which turned out to be a considerable task.

Rich has an amazing music collection and he brought along an 8gb flash drive loaded with some I didn’t have.  Took a T-drive back with him I’d freed up 600 gb from and he’ll be sending me the rest of what he has.

Amazing times we live in, where a thing such as that can happen.

Reality did rear up and whinny, however.

The second night I was driving home, moderate speed, and saw a dim shape in the oncoming lane ahead.  Thought it might be a deer and moved my foot to the brake, but before I could press the pedal it became a frightened, full grown buck.

I stood the RV on its nose while the deer ran in front, reversed himself, ran back, then back again before the WHACK.  A catastrophy for the deer, but a wild stroke of luck for me.

The incident revealed all the cabinet doors in the RV suffered from metal fatigue.  Every item I’d carefully arranged in those cabinets, securely stored, came down, forward, cans of cat food hitting the back of my head, all manner of articles filling the floorboard underfoot.  A crucial piece of knowledge I’d hate to have learned under different circumstances.

So the past few days have been spent scratching my head about the best ways for securing belongings in a vehicle destined to travel at highway speeds with the potential for sudden stops.  Studying those cabinet doors for ways to lock them shut. 

Trying out cargo nets as an option.

Installing recycled refrigerator shelves and ways to secure what’s on them, along with a platform from a grader-ditch cooler-top for the comp to sit on when I need it as a GPS, a place for incidentals the rest of the time.

Which is all to say, these are things I needed to know, bought at the price of minimal damage to the RV, the life of a buck deer, and enough expense making repairs to cut into the gas money I’d been hoarding.

Well worth the cost of setting back departure clock enough to accomodate it.

I’ve been waiting almost 70 years for this trip and the cats assure me a few more days won’t matter.

Old Jules

The Trekster Saga Continues

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I won’t bore you with the details of preparations for the road, mostly.  Suffice to say it’s coming along gradually without tipping its hat to any deadlines and schedules I might attempt to impose.  I came to realize a few days ago I don’t have any alligators gnawing on my pantsleg to hurryhurryhurry, anyway.

So I’ll get on the road more-or-less soon, but not quite so soon as I’d told myself I will.  Which is okay by the cats and the Coincidence Coordinators as nearly as I can discern.

Shiva the Cow Cat opted out of the future with the other cats and me.  Refused to be cajoled into getting laid back about the RV, willingly adapt to it and think of it as a source of pleasurable quality time.  I finally decided I wouldn’t insist.

Jeanne’s son, Michael, drove down from Kansas and spent a couple of days I wouldn’t have missed for anything I can think of, then departed with Shiva.  Took her back to reside with Jeanne.

Second night he was here we were sitting outdoors talking and he pointed north.  “What the hell is that?”

We watched and gasped and wondered while a UFO performed impossibilities in the sky for a while.  Nice gift the Coincidence Coordinators provided to top off his visit.  Something to remember alongside Shiva’s departure.

Damn I’m going to miss that cat.  What the hell.

Otherwise, what the hell on everything else that needs it to balance things out, also.

Old Jules

Interlude in posting

Thanks for the visits folks.  Long hard days on the RV here, trying to get me and the cats something that will go all the way down the road.  Blown tires, support springs, damages, unanticipated other are dominating my life at the moment.

helper springs

helper springs

helper springs

trailer

trailer 2

exhaust damage

I’m obliged to all of you for coming by.

My current plan is to try getting out to West Texas on a trial run before November 1, establish something that rhymes with an address somewhere out there for various legal purposes, then come back and wrap whatever’s left to be done up.

After that it will be catch as catch can online, depending on imponderables.

The cats send their regards to all of you.

Old Jules

Rain, Feral Swine, Leaks and Yankee Soldiers

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

We were blessed with a few days of rain here, beginning with a frog strangler during the night.  Most of the cats and I were in the RV when the tree fell on the roof of the cabin, but it made enough noise to satisfy our needs to hear something.

I made a run for the cabin to see how bad things were, but it turned out nothing came through the roof this time.  Just a wake-up call, though.  Lots more dead trees around the cabin.

After the big rain came a day of light, intermittent rainfall which allowed me to chase down and caulk various roof leaks in the RV roof I’d noted and I plugged a good many of them.  Found a few more when the rain began again, but it’s coming along.

Second night after the rain the feral hogs came in, snorting and banging around between the RV and the cabin.  I just ignored them, let them do their own thing because I wasn’t needing any altercations with that sort of individuals. 

Meanwhile, the neighbor up the hill was able to burn a lot of the piles of cedar he’d been pushing up, clearing it.  Looked like a thousand campfires across there.  Beautiful sight in the dark.  Must have been the way it would have appeared for a Civil War army looking across the landscape at the enemy camps the night before a battle.

Next morning the cats and I had our muskets loaded, bayonets fixed crouched in our hidey holes, waiting for all those Yankee soldiers to swarm across the meadow, but I reckons we scared them off.

Old Jules

Perfect Man Shrine – Columbus, NM

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Someone during the 1960s built this, put up a small RV park with water and electrical connections around it, evidently for potential pilgrims.  It’s on the boundary between desert and Columbus, New Mexico.  I used to go hang around there most times when I’d visit Columbus for other reasons.  Never saw anyone there, though the shrine did have palm leaves fresh every time during the early 1990s.

But the RV park is grown up with cactus and creosote, doesn’t appear to have ever been used.  The power boxes are full of mud-dobber nests.  I’ve been thinking for some while about the place as a winter refuge.  I gather the place changed hands after someone died, the new owners live across the street and aren’t followers of Meyar Baba.  They work for USFS in Arizona several months a year. 

I was talking to one of the cats about the place last night when I was trying to sleep and she was trying to keep me from it by kneading her claws on my chest.  She likes the thought of it being somewhat remote, while having the potential for desert mice and lizards.  Probably fairly warm, too.  Suggested, once I get footloose, if something else doesn’t get in the way, that I try chasing down the current owners.  Try to get a feel for whether they’d take kindly to having someone park in there occasionally.

I’m thinking that cat might be onto something.

Old Jules

Tolerable Tolerance For Intolerance

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning. 

I entered a friendly discussion yesterday about the particular issue everyone’s bathing in today, yesterday on Cheaprvliving forum, so I’m cleansed of any temptation to discuss it here.  

 http://www.cheaprvlivingforum.com/post/Remembering-911-6005480

I’m gratified to have certain suspicions confirmed regarding a particular sort of individual in the virtual bathtub, but the thread got locked before all the usual suspects came up out of the woodwork.

Anyway, we ain’t going to discuss that here. 

Been doing a lot on the RV, filling in voids with insulating foam, preparing to lift the rearend to install the shocks and helper springs.  Devising a means of keeping the cats in the overhead during travel, and sleeping inside it nights with one, or another cat as company.

The felines tend to become a lot more affectionate when I’m trying to sleep in there, I’m finding.  I attribute it to a recognition we’re going to be on the road together soon and they figure I might put the top-cat position up for grabs.

They’re running for election, in other words, telling lies, saying lies about themselves and telling the truth about the others.

But Hydrox is savvy.  He knows Top Cat is a position comes without anyone having to vote, without me having to lift a finger or make any contribution to the process at all. 

So, shouldn’t be any reason at all for Jeanne to have to lock this thread.  I’m staying low-key, not planning any bathing in synthetics or simulations to influence the outcome of the Top Cat issue.

Old Jules

Me, Being a People Person, And All

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

A nice little norther blew in here the past couple of days, cooled things down something awful.  I slept in the RV, and by ones and twos the cats volunteered to join me inside for a bit of quality time, sleeping on my chest, purring and kneading claws pleasantly.  They tell me, with reservations, they think they’re going to be able to hunker down and live in there.

Came just in a nick of time, too, because what?  Three daybreaks ago?  I noticed something coming out of the now-open chicken house just after dawn.  Double-take revealed it to be a bobcat, small for a bobcat, but large enough to make a meal out of any of these wannabe toughies.  Last night the cats and I played fruit-basket-turn-over, two inside alternating with two nearby waiting their turn to come up next time I got up to pee.

Got my ‘Work for RVers and Campers Newsletter by email this morning:

Work for RVers and Campers: Employment, Volunteer Positions, Jobs, and Business

http://www.work-for-rvers-and-campers.com/.

Nowhere near as many listings in there for west Texas, New Mexico and Arizona as there were last issue, which had a couple I found exciting.  This issue only has a couple in Texas, neither far enough west to suit me, and one in Arizona up in the neighborhood of Sedona.  They want someone in an RV park up there to do various things in exchange for a place to park. 

But me going to Sedona would be carrying coals to Newcastle, I reckons.  Besides, they wanted applicants to send a photo of themselves, along with a resume.  With winter coming on I reckons I’d have to figure out which winter pic of me to send:

I’d naturally want to throw out the best possible impression of myself I could.

And  they want the resume to demonstrate how I’m a people person, which of course, I am.   Ain’t hardly any more people people out there than I am, taken from certain perspectives.  But I’m not sure how I’d go about conveying it to them.

Been a long time since I wrote a resume, though I used to count myself a fair hand at doing it.  If I was the one doing the hiring out there, I’d jump at me.

Old Jules

Escape Route [or Rout] Projects and Such

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

I suppose any vehicle as old as this one and built as this one was built would inevitably require some fixup before becoming a cabin on wheels.  I mentioned in an earlier post about the springs sagging, and the springs have arrived, waiting for the new shocks to get here.

But I’m going to remove that AC unit up there to get rid of the weight, replace it with a roof vent, which is in transit.    That’s a lot of weight up there to be carrying around for something I’m unlikely to use much.  And there’s evidence the roof structure doesn’t need the challenge it provides.

I covered that crack in the front window with Gorilla tape for now, but ultimately I’m thinking I’ll cut a flat piece of panel to place behind it and fill in the bubble-void with insulation foam. 

Probably put a compartment in it for a GPS receiver with a better view of the sky than I’d get from the dashboard.

I’ll run Delorme Street Atlas on the laptop when I’m trying to navigate around towns, but I truly love Terrain Navigator where there’s enough variation in the terrain to justify using it.  I’m rigging a stand for the laptop to swivel from one of the passenger-side neck-support posts.

This thing just posted by itself.  I’m just going to finish it, editing in the rest, I reckons.

Anyway, once I get the AC off I’ll do a complete over on the roof with this stuff, and new caulking anywhere my imagination leads me.  The critical path on this part is that I can’t pull off the AC until the 14×14 roof vent arrives to replace it.

I’ve been feeling the walls and ceiling inside and out, drilling through and squirting in a lot of that Great Stuff foam where I find a void, of which there are a sufficient number to allow me a sense of accomplishment.

Then there’s the matter of the cats.  I’m making that overhead into a travel space for the cats to enjoy themselves in while we’re on the road.  A place where they can’t contrive to get underfoot, or jump out at a gas station to find a new life for themselves.

Once we’re parked somewhere it will go back to being a bed, whatever, but on the road it will be a cage.  They won’t like it, but they’ll like it better than all the alternatives they’d find in the alternative Universe they’d be choosing for themselves if they got loose.

And against the advice of people who know a lot more than I do about these matters, I’m going to find, or construct a small trailer to pull behind for large bags of cat food, tools, extra clothing, and probably some prospecting gear.

This thing’s for sale in San Antonio [Converse] on Craigslist for $100.  If I weren’t so far from SA I’d snap it up, gut it and convert it to a light haul trailer with a top to pull behind the Toyota.  Might be a ragged out popup is sitting behind someone’s house within a 40 mile radius they’d part with at a similarly righteous price.

But I’ve messed this post up enough for now.  Maybe I’ll go into this more later on a post I haven’t already posted.

Old Jules

Silky Rooster’s Been Raptured Out

I told you that silky rooster was intelligent, but I thought he’d outsmarted himself by getting loose and left behind here.  All those hens he came up with as a chick, the surviving rooster.  Kay’s hens and rooster.  All now joined with a free ranging flock somewhere else.

And he was sorely depressed being alone here.

But he must have known faith would see him through.  A lady down the road with 17 hens and no roosters emailed me after I listed him on Kerrville FreeCycle.  We arranged to meet yesterday at a pullover midway between her and me.

“What a beautiful rooster!”  He preened.

What’s his name?”

I’ve never given him a name.”  She scowled and stroked him.

I always name my chickens.”  Attractive pucker.

To which Mr. NoName Silky replied, “I’ve been to the wild wood, mither.  Mak my bed soon.”

All’s well that ends well.

Old Jules