At the Park – Days 47 – 53

This has been a real “interesting” week to say the least.  One challenge after another.

Early in the week Sasha was sick – vomiting and diarrhea.  I am thankful she only vomited in the trailer and saved the diarrhea for outside.  Because she didn’t feel good, she thought I should stay awake all night to keep her company.  She did not let me get very much sleep Monday and Tuesday nights.

Wednesday there was a storm to the east and we lost power with the crack of lightning.   Uh oh.  That’s not good.   It had been my limited experience at the RV park that power outages were pretty brief, so after it had been out for an hour I was thinking there is a good chance it is not coming back on that night.  Given that DSL should be powered by the central phone office, I felt confident that if I got the trailer connected to the generator to power the network and computers, I would be able to work.  So, off to the property I went to get the generator before it got dark.  Given I was just going between the shed and the truck and I would be backing the truck up to the shed, I decided to forego the snake boots.  Loading the generator onto the truck by myself without giving myself another hernia or otherwise injuring myself was an interesting exercise.  I credit some youtube video that I don’t even remember for the working solution that I ended up using in the end.  On the way out the driveway of the property, I saw a big stick  that I didn’t remember seeing there on the way in.  Wait, it is moving.  That is definitely not a stick, that is a snake.  Quick, grab the phone and shoot some video (which you can see unedited here).  As I get closer after getting out of the truck for a better view, I can see what I believe are the rattles on his tail.  I couldn’t see his head and I wasn’t about to chase after him to get a better look.  After reviewing the video and some quick googling, I’m sure it was a western diamondback rattlesnake.  For more info on that particular breed of snake, here is a link with info provided by the desert museum.

Thankfully Sasha let me sleep Wednesday evening.  I got up earlier than usual Thursday morning to unload the generator and get it ready.  I had two neighbor RV’ers so I was trying to wait as long as I could before firing it up.  As soon as I saw life from both RV’s, I fired up the generator and plugged in the trailer.  Power and internet.  Life is good.

After working for an hour or so, internet went out.  Ugh.  Not good.  I have a meeting in 50 minutes.  Guessing what ever backup power they had for the internet, it has gone out too.  Not enough time to get cleaned up and head to Douglas before the meeting, so I pack up and head to Animas (a very small town on the other side of the mountains to the east) remembering that I had been told they have sufficient cellular data service to tether from there.  I find a suitable location where I shouldn’t be in anyone’s way, get online, and join the meeting.  After the meeting, I head back to the trailer, fire up the generator once more to confirm the internet is still down.  Confirmed.  Ok.  Get cleaned up so I can be around people without offending their noses and head out once again but to Douglas this time given it was my usual day to go to Douglas anyway.  On my way out, I notice that cellular signal in the RV Park has gone from 2-3 bars that you can use for voice but not for data down to between no service and 1 bar.  Must be the cell towers are impacted by the power outage too.  Driving through Rodeo I note that there is no/very weak cell signal  through the valley where I usually have adequate signal.  It was numerous miles south before I picked up cell signal again.

Stop at the Blueberry Cafe for a mocha latte and a salad.  Both were delish.  Grab a table by an outlet, fire up the laptop, hop on their wifi and get to work – two more meetings in the afternoon, email, and work an issue in China.  I bought a smoothie during that time so I wasn’t totally freeloading.  They closed at 2PM local which was 5PM eastern so it worked out ok.  Dinner at La Fiesta Mexico as usual.  This time I tried the Gaucamole Tostada.  Not too bad.  Then the usual stops of the hardware store, TSC, Walmart, and the gas station before heading back to the trailer.

Once back to the trailer, still no power.  After taking care of the groceries, fire up the generator and confirm still no internet.  Get back in the truck and drive to Animas for internet service to check on the status of the issue in China as they would have been working for a few hours by that point in time.  Not knowing when power and internet would be restored and given my calendar was free of meetings Friday and I wasn’t working any critical issues (China seemed to be operating ok), I opt to take a vacation day Friday.

Power comes back on around midnight local time Friday night while I was sleeping.  I am thankful I didn’t leave any lights in the trailer on.  Do some cleaning around the trailer and the truck while I wait for the tractor delivery driver to call me to tell me he is getting close.  After a while, I get impatient and I leave to head to town where we were supposed to meet.  Step out onto the makeshift steps in front of the trailer and they start to give way.  Oh boy.  Need to re-prioritize projects for this weekend now.  I haven’t been using the steps attached to the trailer because they are causing the floor by the door to slope down and Sasha likes a big step.  Grab a pad of paper and pen to work on a design for the new steps.  Finishing up the design when the tractor arrives.  Escort him to the property.  He unloads while I sign my life away then shows me how to operate it (not that I am going to remember everything).  When he leaves, it is already an hour past when I wanted to head back to the trailer to start preparing food for the potluck.  Snap a photo and say good bye to my new toy and head back to the trailer.

Back at the trailer, I rush around to prepare southwestern rice and guacamole.

Before dinner, I snapped a photo of a low level rainbow.  This photo does not do it justice.

During dinner, power goes out again.  Stays out for a while.  Comes back on during the night while I’m sleeping.  Thankful for that as I had to be online to monitor changes at work Saturday morning.

After I’m done with work Saturday morning, I head to Animas for supplies for the new steps.  Drop the lumber at the trailer and then head to the property to grab the necessary tools and such out of the shed.  Add a coat of urethane to the seat while I am there.  I’m tired of working on that darn seat.  I think I’m going to call it good and be done with it.

Back at the trailer I setup and cut all the lumber to length before calling it a night.

This morning (Sunday) I get up and finally remember to make juice out of the grapes and prickly pear fruit.  Ok.  What I made was absolutely not juice.  I learned many things this morning, mostly what not to do with prickly pear.  OMG.  That is definitely a unique fruit.  So, I started with the juicer but it clogged up and was not passing the juice.  Determined, I went to plan B.  Put it all in the blender, I will blend it then strain it through one of my nutmilk bags.  This is where I learned what I was really dealing with.  A fruit that when blended with grapes creates substance reminiscent of mucus, slim, the cheese from hot cheese pizza that has cheese strands that never break, they just stretch and stretch and stretch.  My hands were covered in the stuff.  I spread my fingers and the thought of human frog came to mind with the slim bridging the gap between all my fingers from the knuckle to the fingertips.  What now?  This stuff is not going to pass through this nutmilk bag.  Grab my colander, throw it over a bowl and dump the slim in.  Time to clean up.  Glad I was not learning this while on the property and glad we had power to the parks well, because I used gallons of water trying to get the slim off my hands and the nutmilk bag.  Finally, I rationalized that that was an old nutmilk bag and I had others so I just threw it away.  Made a smoothie for breakfast before heading out to work on the steps.  Dumped what had made it’s way through the colander into a jar and put it in the fridge to figure out what to do with it later.

Corrected a couple of angle cuts for the hand rail then started sanding.  Eventually the belt sander broke.  I was about 75% done with the sanding.  I had completed sanding all the critical pieces so i decided to move on with the next phase of the project.  Playing with fire.  Ok, maybe not “playing” with fire, but certainly “working” with fire.   I charred all the boards as done in an old Japanese wood preservation technique called “shou sugi ban”

Brush them with a wire brush (forgot about needing a wire brush but the dog hair brush I scrounged up worked well), wiped down with wet sponge, let dry in sun, stain, let dry, assemble.

I must say, other than the angle cuts being wrong initially, I am surprised at how well it went together.  Usually, I always forget some nuance in my woodworking projects, things never go together well, and they rarely look nice.  I must say, other than picking out some really crappy wood to use for the project, I think it came out pretty good for me.

In case you forgot or didn’t know, note in this older picture what I had been using as steps – two upside down recycling bins with a board laying across the top.

 

An now, this is what I built this weekend.

The new steps are Sasha tested and approved.  She came right up them and in with no issues.

You are now up to date and I am beat.  Off to bed.

Night all.