Yes, you should load up the Vintage Chief and head for the mountains. A trip to the Smokies on my bike, as well as a month or longer trip out thru the west/southwest, are on my bucket list before I stop riding. Want to plan the trip out west with one or two buddies for safety reasons. I have not been on many overnight trips with either of my bikes, the longest being 4-days, 3-nights. I know you've been on some monster long hauls before!

 

Chris/ Norm

Before you go on a road trip. Be sure to get a hair cut and watch Easy Rider

 

Norm.....do you have help putting that scaffolding up?
If not, damn your ambitious and in good shape

 

Ray...no help.

 

Jim - Saw Easy Rider at least twice during the summer of '69' - great movie. '69 was a great year for movies:
Midnight Cowboy
Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Paint Your Wagon
True Grit
The Wild Bunch
The Italian Job
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
They Shoot Horses Don't They?
Les femmes
Alice's Restaurant

 

No scaffolding or such nonsense today. Tee time @ 8:30am, run around shopping & 9 hole shoot-out @ 4:30pm.

 

Norm Yes it was BUT When i walked out of the picture show after seeing "They shoot Horses" I was exhausted

of course now I've got, ;I was born under a wandering star stuck in my head for the rest of the day

 

Good morning everyone.

Work is off to a good start. For the past couple days my hand/wrist feels like I've sprained it. But I haven't. I had a touch of the gout in my elbow, I think it moved down. The elbow is about better. The hand is useless and is terribly painful. It just saps all my energy. Acetaminophen isn't doing anything.

Into a long stretch of nice weather and no rain. It's a little chilly in the mornings but the stars are out when I leave the house. Very nice.

Hope everyone has a good Hump Day.

 

Mini road trip went array in a big way in the Money Pit, I got about 3 miles from home and I smelled raw gas, turned out it's a gas line was leaking, like a lot. I barely got home when the tank went dry, lucky I didn't go up in flames, 13 gallons spilled in about 3 miles. I left the M/P in the driveway where the rollback could load it easily and begun unloading the car as it had the top down and would probably spend the better part of a week at European Motor Works exposed to curious eyes, plus I thought I would take the Miata and the tools and com pleat the trip at Eagle Lake and do the repairs and come home the next day. Not to be so. I fell with my hands full of overnight bag and tools in the other, couldn't catch my self and landed (piled up into the edge of the sidewalk) on rough concrete. Tore up my right elbow pretty bad, took 23 stitches to get me whole again and no Eagle lake repair for a week or more, maybe next year. I can't win for loosing... Tedd

 

Mike - I hope you can get some relief from your wrist. You might try Ibuprofen rather than Acetaminophen, it is a better anti-inflammatory. You may have a repetitive motion injury from the physical labor you do, in which case, it probably won't get better without rest from whatever motion is causing the inflammation. I hope that is not the case.

Jim and Norm - I love all the old classic Westerns. Since I'm a little younger than you guys, my favorites are Jeremiah Johnson and Outlaw Josey Wales.

Supposed to be coming with the roofing materials and probably the dumpster for my roofing job tomorrow. Have to go out in a minute and move my truck into the street so they have the whole driveway open for the crane truck..

Saturday is supposed to be sunny and 65°, and I'm looking forward to a car show about 25-miles from me. When I leave that show around 1530, I'm headed for a cruise-in at a large church where I won the Pastor's Choice award early in the season. It's the Church's last cruise-in for the year.

Hope ya'll have a great day!

 

Tedd - That's horrible, and must have been one helluva fall to do that much damage! I feel for ya pardner, and we've all went through those times when it feels like ya just can't catch a break. I hope you're on the mend soon, and are able to plan another trip to get away for some R&R.

 

Thanks Chris. I switch back and forth. Funny thing about westerns. I'm not a fan but happened to have one on one day. This beautiful young woman was in town and I couldn't place her. It was the voice, I knew the voice but was drawing a blank. This woman was stunning. It finally came to me. Yvonne DeCarlo, aka Mrs. Munster. Wow what a difference! No idea what the movie was. I also saw a western with Dr. Bracket from Emergency.

We're doing pretty well and will probably finish up around 2. For being a short week, this week is sure going slow.

 

Tedd, Be careful and FWIW, Sell Hitlers revenge and keep the Miata

 

Had to have the GF drive me and the Miata to urgent care to get sewn up. Good thing she can drive a stick, she got more complements by the stander byes than I ever have, must be the way I comb my hair.

Picked up Ruby from the extended care facility at noon today, maybe she will make it this time, I'll see how this goes.... Tedd

 

Well, the roofing materials have been deposited on the roof, and some items (new vents, drip edge, etc.) on the front porch. They were also kind enough to leave me two soccer ball sized puddles of hydraulic fluid in my driveway, and their cigarette butts in my driveway and my yard that I had to clean up. Now I don't have a million dollar home, but it's a nice home, and I try to keep it that way, including putting a board under my old truck so the minor leak in the rear end does not leak in the driveway. My roofing contractor and I are going to have a talk in the morning!

 

Chris, i hate to say it but I just finished a meeting with a guy to lay 100' of black gas pipe. He drove up in a brand new $80,000 truck I hate to see his estimate

 

Jim - Ya, your contractor is gonna have to pay for that new rig somehow! My roofers rig that was leaking crap all over my driveway was the big dual axle conveyor hoist used to get the shingles up on the roof.

 

Finishing getting up the last cutting of hay

 

Well that brings back fond memories. Went to highschool in a very rural area and several of my buddies lived on working farms. They would always recruit me when it was time to bale. All the families I helped had the old standard rectangular bale type balers, so you had to have a driver, a walking picker upper, and a stacker on the wagon. Even though it was hard work, we always managed to have a good time!

 

Fruits & vegetables will take care of your gout...in a heartbeat.

 

^^x2^^ I'm all in on Jim's suggestion.

Tedd. Be careful out there...

 

Chris - I suspect the roofing contractor had/has no control over the crew who unloaded the material since the materials are generally delivered by a roofing material supply house & not the roofer. Yours may be the exception. Whoever did the material drop were douche nozzles for sure. Cigarette butts on your property & leaking hydraulics is B.S.

 

Hitler's Revenge is hilarious. Be careful Tedd, you are not as young as you feel.

Got my finger cut when a bandsaw took a piece of metal yesterday. Now I'm a safety incident.

 

Norm - Good point, I never thought about the material delivery guys being a separate company! Guess I'll find out tomorrow morning when the roofers get here and I can talk with my roofing Project Lead. Glad you brought this to my attention, gives me new insight into how I should start the discussion tomorrow.

 

Chris, I never met anyone that worked getting up hay that enjoyed a hat ride

 

Jim - I’ll have to beg to differ with ya on that one pardner, all it took for me to enjoy a hay ride was for the right gal to be there! 😉

 

Chris, Not me, I've had enough hay down my shirt and in my pants that I NEVER wanta go on a hay ride

I soooo glad I don't have cows anymore I don't know what to do. Getting out in the rain to put out round bales with a tractor and having mud come off the wheels in the winter ain't my idea of fun

 

Culligan Water Co. performing some minor maintenance & inspection of my water softener this morning. All of Mom's family had square balers. This was one of the two most vigorous & arduous times of the year for dairy/swine farmers. Milking ~120 Holstein each morning @ 5am then feeding ~100 pigs began the day followed by a large breakfast of back fat, potatoes, eggs, sausage & pancakes before heading into the barns to oil/grease/move equipment/machinery - combines, square balers, tractors, flatbed trailers, gravity flow box trailers, etc. Weather & availability of help determined if we left square bales in the field. Most of the time (with enough help) we never dropped bales in the field. A flat bed trailer was hooked up behind the square baler w/ the baler shoot directing bales onto a flatbed trailer. Two guys on the flatbed would retrieve & stack the bales. We'd take the loaded flatbeds to the dairy (milking) barns. At the dairy barn we'd fire up a tractor, load the 20' long leather pulley belt between a tractor & a bale elevator, then unload the flatbeds to the elevator & send the bales into the hay lofts where we'd then have to stack bales in the lofts for winter feed storage. Then milk ~120 Holstein and feed another ~100 pigs ~5pm before dinner. After dinner back to the barns to grease/oil/move equipment etc. if time permitted or back into the fields if time permitted. Not much time for hay rides but my H.S. had homecoming this time of year and there was always the big hay ride to the football field where we had a huge bonfire to start off homecoming and the football season. This was followed by dance - like a Harvest Moon dance. I can't think of the name of the dance it began with the name "Sally" as I recall. Anyone know?

 

Good morning everyone.

We started the day with the lead lecturing us on how to change our culture. We hear this from time to time, I think he gets yammered at for something and then it rolls downhill. If he would have worked anywhere else in the company instead of his whole time in this shop, he would know the culture runs deeper than just him spouting off that he wants to change it. Maintenance is like the ice age. It doesn't come over night.

Norm I disagree that the contractor has no control over the unloading crew. If he hires the same crew for each job, and starts getting complaints, then he stops hiring that crew and they have to go find other work. The guy that's responsible is the guy you're paying. I think my head would explode if I had a nice, clean driveway and some old truck came and leaked hydraulic all over it.

Jamesbo when my AC went out in June the first guy that came rode up in a new Ram special edition, big wheels, leather seats, pulling a custom trailer. His quote was 3K over the guy who I actually hired. I don't begrudge a man having nice things when he works for them. I also don't want to pay a premium to prop him up.

Well it's break, and despite our half hour dissertation, we're at a pretty good place. Hope everyone has a good day.

 

Norm I think you're referring to a Sadie Hawkins dance, where the girl asks the boy to dance instead of the other way around. We called it turnabout, or some such thing.

 

Mike - Yes, Sadie Hawkins Dance. Wouldn't you know as soon as I walk away from the keyboard and begin washing dishes I remember the name.
Hate to disagree with you but a roofing contractor has basically no control over the building supply yard where the roofing materials were purchased and from where the building materials are loaded onto the boom delivery truck and delivered to the job site - think liability. Yeah, they can have conversations but price & availability is going to win on where those materials are purchased.

 

Norm, I can't believe you didn't have automatic pig feeeders

I only had 6-8 pigs and had a 4 door one BANG all day long as they opened the doors with their shouts

 

There existed automatic feeders in various areas of the yards/fields. Swine were often segregated based upon age/size & time of year. You know those automatic feeders have to be refilled right? The feed doesn't mysteriously arrive into the center hoppers.
Piglets were often kept in shelters attached near the barn(s) where feed storage was contained - basically silage. Feed shovels were used throughout the barns.

 

Jim - When each farm has ~300 pigs - you have to move/handle lots of swine feed.

 

Jim - I don't have any desire to go on a hayride now. I was referring to +40-years ago when all my thinking went on below my waist!

 

A swine farm raises swine from start>finish & rotates swine stock throughout the year. Select barns or areas of select barns are cordoned based largely on age/size of swine. On any give farm you may have 15 - 20 birthing sows. Each sow is capable of delivering ~10 - 20 piglets. At some stage gilts are separated from barrows & you generally need to manage sex - at some point, since you're actually raising swine which will hopefully lead into the production of pork. It's really, really easy to go from 200-300 swine into 500 - 600 swine twice each year. Your average sow can deliver two litters/yr. That's a significant amount of back fat baby. Careful management and lots of grain to move.

Anyways, it's time for me to "...make hay while the sun shines..." as I have scaffolding to climb, boards to wash & paint.

 

Well the roofers were here at 0700 and got rolling about 0730. Monty is totally freaked out, just like when there is a thunderstorm. Plus, he woke up lame this morning, limping with his right rear leg. AiYiYi, these dogs are killing me. He's still fighting and taking antibiotics for the infection he has in his muzzle folds, although it looks to be improving. He has an appointment next Tuesday for a recheck on that. Hoping he gets past this new injury with just rest over the next couple of days, and isn't something more serious. What's worse than all of his current ailments is the effect it has on my wife, it tears her up to see either one of them in pain or distress, and in turn it tears me up to see her upset! This is gonna be a longgggggg day!

 

And the cigarette butts + hydraulic fluid leaking conversation?

 

Norm - You were correct, the delivery crew belonged to the roofing supply company. I brought it up with the owner of the company that is replacing my roof, as he was here at 0700 this morning, replacing my Project Lead (his son), who had to go to another job this morning, but will be here later today. The owner apologized, and took pictures, and said he would be having a discussion with his supplier. No mention from the owner on any compensation for the spots in my driveway, and I didn't want to ask yet and **** him off before they even got started. When it's time for the 1st check later today, I will be asking for some compensation, might get a couple or $500 off??? With all the $hit going on with Monty, I'm not really in a fighting mood, but I will ask!

 

Suggestion when working w/ a roofing/building contractor. Depending on "how" the dialog/conversation is approached, it's going to be literally impossible for the roofing contractor to take responsibility for the suppliers inadequacies since they really do not control that aspect of the material(s) delivery. About the only compensation you can expect is what the roofing contractor can expect in terms of compensation from the supplier - you're in a Catch-22 here. But...with that said...these types negotiations can often be managed when another party's fault is subsumed by the party doing the work. Think perhaps of negotiating for additional work or materials rather than monetary compensation. Let's face it, hydraulic fluid can be removed with a 3000 psi handheld portable wand high pressure spray cleaner. At any rate....do you need any/more/better flashing, 3" drip molding instead of 1.5" drip molding, better under layment, better roofing material, another spot fixed, etc. Just some thoughts as a blanket $500 compensation might be met with greed rather than need. Good Luck.