Yesterday afternoon forest-fire smoke from the Tamarack Fire blew over the hill and down the mountain, causing poor visibility and a pervasive wood-fire smell. Temps topped out in the high 90’s depending on location. I spent part of the day in the garage with the box fan blowing out, working on the Deluxe Auxiliary Lamp Kit I’m attempting to install on the Fat Boy.
Baby steps, I got the handlebar mounted turn signals removed and separated from the rear view mirrors… I already jumped ahead a couple steps and assembled the light-bar shell just to get a look at it, but there’s a bunch of wiring and a partial harness and the old headlight front panel to disentangle. It’s a bit more complicated than expected and I’m reluctant to just start cutting wires when the bike is an ’08 and the instructions say “2011 and later FLSTF.” My moto-wiring skills are being challenged when the instructions don’t include a why-for…
A little cooler today, so just the mid-90’s – but it’s been very dry and warm throughout the night. The morning clouds are a bit unusual to see, but we are not surrounded by fire-smoke like last year. The doggie is enjoying her splash-pool and during the more extreme heat last week I added block-ice to keep her cool.
We are getting a bit of everything on this first day of Spring: clouds, bright skies, wind, a touch of rain…and the doggie is loving it as she begins her fur-depletion cycle. Little white tufts of fur are ejecting from her winter under-coat, and furry little dust-bunnies are collecting in places she doesn’t even go. Pretty soon the black truck will have a white interior, and I’ll be vacuuming every day. Pretty soon when I go driving down the road with the windows down, a fur-tornado will cascade out behind me in tufts and waves – and so she is banished from the new, red truck for the time being.
Yesterday the skies were clear and blue and criss-crossed by contrails from high and distant aircraft traveling north and south and east and west like a giant game of tick-tack-toe… We enjoyed an afternoon of digging-up and separating iris rhizomes, and planting them in new locations. The embankment is erupting in daffodils and stinky narcissus. But winter is not quite over, and we are short on rainfall this season.
A few hours later after going to the store for jugs of fresh water, my plumber friend stopped by on the way to a job up-country, and did a quick assessment: start digging here and I’ll see you tomorrow. So I laid-out a half-folded tarp and got a shovel, and after about an hour had uncovered the main, and a T-junction that went to the house, and what appeared to be an un-glued elbow where separation had occurred.
At any rate the flood had subsided so it was just good to let things dry-out in the hole, besides I was muddy and sweaty and there was just one big jug of water with which to clean-up. Civilization is practically defined by running water, even if just cold water, and plumbing apparatus to deliver the water. My Civilization had failed, temporarily, but I still had a dog that needed her walk and she doesn’t think quite as highly of Civilization as I do since she is rather independent of it.
After the dog-walk, I heard my neighbor (the free-range chicken rancher) motoring about on his Craftsman tractor. Ah-ha! He’s a retired Plumber! So I called him over and we talked and he went off to get some of that two-part PVC glue, and then came around the fence to see what I had gotten myself into. He inspected the pipes and said that it looked ti him as though a bunch of the joints were only stuck together with the purple-primer, and that whoever had done previous work had missed a few spots. The Main t-junction showed evidence (blue) of glue, but other joints were just smeared with purple.