SeptOber...
Now we are past the Autumnal Equinox, a day late here
according to the
difference between the common commercial calendar and the
Equinox
Stone; I have with great effort composed my Summer Letter.
Here is a picture from Nita's camera of the Equinox Sunrise
coming
through The Teeth of The Dike to the east. The image does
not do
justice to the sparkling blue-green diamond flashes of
sunlight just
before first contact. Easily a 7.4 on Little Jon's Scale of
Sunrises.
End of the Summer here in Pie Town, for me anyhow. Mad
Hatter's Tea
&
UnBirthday Party here this afternoon. Why
is a raven like a
writing desk?
Eat drink and be Merry for tomorrow we will drive.
But wait, there's MORE!
What do you call a nipple in the north?...
2014x10, Deming SKP
Park
Shorts in the wiring, not on me. This problem has likely
been brewing
for months. Years maybe. Seems I vaguely remember the fuse
blowing a
few months ago. Problem is in the main circuit that provides
battery
power to Ignition, Fuel Solenoid, Instruments, and who knows
what else.
October, the tenth month, could might may be the opposite of
March. A
month of transition. A month of adventure, of moving. The
Cat Drag'd
Out of Pie Town on the 7th and "the coast is clear" rang
through the
ether, moving The Cat
Drag'd Inn
eastward, pressing on regardless, driven by need, Jack Frost
nipping at
the fantail.
October 7th, Tuesday, The Cat Drag'd Inn carried Nita from
Pie Town to
Socorro—first PAX in years—so she could meet another ride to
ABQ. The
bus worked well after four months of sitting still; not too
many things
fell off tables. After some resupply of necessary
comestibles and
searching for parts to repair TinyTruck's rear brakes, I
headed south
to Bosque del Apache
for a
nap and a walk. Right along about in front of an RV park I
was trying
to avoid, the motor lost power. No place to go, no time to
get there,
dead in water so to speak. A fuse had blown. Engine died.
Coast to a
stop on a narrow two-lane-no-shoulder road. Replaced the
fuse and got
another mile along the road. Blew again. Replaced again. I
put in a
bigger fuse (Snoopy's Third Law—Once it smokes you'll know
what to
fix...)  and got to my favourite wide spot, a trail
head
near the Elmendorf Siding, where I promptly forgot about the
whole
thing and took a nap. A nice walk in the desert was the
second order of
business there but I should fix this wiring issue. No, on
second
thought, I think I will take a hike and save the shorts
ircuit for
another day.
Solar powered movie night... I've been studying Oliver Twist for
the past year;
read the book again and viewed around twenty of the nearly
hundred
movie versions or adaptations of Dickens's novel. Now I find
there are
four new renditions and not a few bar jokes.
Wenzday: Nice day. A quick walk and then a slower walk.
Lunch. Nap.
Letters. No thought of this loss of power issue. Rain over
night. And
then another walk the next day and some trash collecting
along the
roadside. On the third morning I headed back up the
fuse-blowing road
where the fuse blew again. This time a new fuse blew
instantly.
Something wrong here... Whatever's wrong is getting worse. I
left the
fuse blown this time and jury-rigged the fuel solenoid and
starter with
a couple of clip leads and got under way as far as a nice
smooth
carpark at a church in San Antonio where I set to work
looking for the
bad circuit in the ignition wiring.
That morning I spent searching and rewiring in the church
yard of San
Antonio was certainly productive but by no means miraculous.
There were
eight wires coming off the ignition switch's ACC and IGN
posts and one
wire, from a 10a fused source, going in to the common point.
I removed
all of them and attempted to measure the resistance of each.
For the
most part they were a few ohms each but not enough to blow a
ten amp
fuse.
Trying to trace them through the loom was out of the
question.
Energising them one at a time didn't prove to find the short
but did
help me identify the circuits of a few of them. The one
major piece of
knowledge was perhaps the not unreasonable assumption that
the short
had to be right nearby, under the instrument panel, since it
was not
present after moving the wires off the ignition switch. So I
brought
two new wires off the IGN switch to a ten-fuse distribution
block and
reconnecte d everything else with 1a fuses in
each slot.
In the course of all that I did find one old wire that
seemed to go
nowhere. Perhaps with my pulling and tugging I'd
disconnected the far
end but nothing seems to be not working. The far end of this
old wire
is a bare push-on connector that could well have been a
short to frame
ground so I left that one off the new fuse block. Perhaps
later I will
find something that does not work for lack of that wire. In
the
meanwhile the rest of the drive to Deming was without
incident. Been
this route before: South to Hatch, across the Hatch Cutoff
to Deming,
overnight at the SKP caravanserai. This time, for want of a
bit of
adventure, I took the road less travelled: a longcut into
the hills of
Hillsboro, twisty-turny-hilly-narrow road, to look for the ghost
town
of Lake
Valley, thence to Deming to the Rainbow's End SKP Park
for the
night of the 9th. On the 10th, after a few more attempts to
find parts
for TinyTruck's brakes, we pulled into Faywood Hot Spring to
sit still
and fix things until after the Thanksgiving Dishes are
washed.
I wonder if I could write an E-word using only the
construct: F-word,
R-word, P-word, B-word and W-word alike... And then would the T-word
make any
S-word?
Octvember—Six Weeks In Hot Water
My major task at Faywood Hot
Spring
was to rebuild the sun shades over several of
the soaking pools. My 1923 Singer is certainly up to the
task but has
no reverse gear so the first thing I had to do was borrow
Stef's newer
machine and make sure it worked. Not only reverse but it has
ten
patterns and does button holes!
Several spools of thread—and a few nice comments about my
work
togs—later it was time to put my famous pickle-upsidedown
pie in the
oven for Thanksgiving Dinner. That was fun. After the dishes
were done
and after one last sunrise soak The Cat Drag'd Out, on the
road to
Tonopah. Tucson, Eloy, Train Spotter Hill... More visits
along the Way.
Chuck, Virginia & Cliff, Ward, dump and fill and scale
at Gila
Bend. (the bus lost a few pounds since last year—so did I
for that
matter.). Eventually I found my way to Train Spotter Hill.
Huge long
freights rumble past here every hour or so. Two-three-four
engines
pulling and another one or two pushing, up the grade to the
height of
land. A great place to unwind and meditate on the Summer
past, get
ready for another Winter at the Food Bank.
And a HHappy HHanukkah As well.
Not to mention a Belated Winter Solstice! And a Bountiful
Boxing Day
too! And an especially nice Twelfth Night.
Nappie New Years—By The Time Zones
I did that once upon a long ago. In a lodge, with an
assortment of
other friends and five bottles of bubbly. Right after
supper: New Years
London. Then an hour later: New Years Reykjavik. An hour
after that,
New Years Thule, followed closely by New Years Halifax. By
the time we
got to local midnight and New Years New Hampshire there were
not too
many of the group remaining awa
ke
so the fifth bottle was able to make two circuits round the
table. This
time only me and Hurricane Hazel. Good thing the bottle was
only six
ounces.
Fireworks for New Years
Snaping and buzzing, smoke and flames. The electric heater
control
relay exploded in the PV Control Panel locker. Not
sure if the
problem was the cheap Chinese knock-off components or a
glitch on the
power line. Good thing I was sitting right here else I'd be
telling
this tale from a tent in the yard. Lesson learnt.
Twelfth Night—Time
to Get
This Letter Out
I have my W and my X back after an intermittent absence. No
inconsiderable effort expended in the process of retrieval.
Yesterday
was a trying day. Trying to keep my cool in the face of
adversity
whilst surrounded by R-word stupidity was very trying
indeed. Twice I
lost it and apologised after. More and more I wonder why
more people
are not shot by those whose frustrations get the better of
them. After
all, Lazarus Long is quoted as holding the opinion that
stupidity is a
capital crime and should be dealt with accordingly. But at
the same
time I have to marvel at those people who seem unfazed by
the inept
management of government and commerce. How do they manage to
remain
calm?
For the next few weeks, mostly I will be playing in the back
yard here.
If
you zoom in close enough you can make out The Cat Drag'd Inn
basking in the
sun.
Did I mention the egg factory abuilding just up the road
from El Dorado
Hot Spring? Big business has invaded this little village.
The skyline
of Tonopah is marred by seven bright steel barns where
several million
hens will live in cages on an eggsembly line. The egg
company is buying
out anyone who complains. El Dorado is for sale.
Oh yes... the nipple... It's called an Areola Borealis.
|
Greetings
Virtual
Travellers: 
I do not know what I may
appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only
like a boy
playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a
smoother
pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great
ocean of
truth lay all undiscovered before me. 
