Bert's Musings

The tractor, trailer and I made it back to Missouri just fine. Below is a photo showing things parked in front of our house.   I left Tom and Mary Lou's around 7:20 this morning. The trip, 580 miles, took me 10 hours and 15 minutes. I stopped in Crossville, about 15 miles from Tom & Mary Lou's, to check to make sure everything seemed to be OK. Everything looked good. I got a couple of breakfast sandwiches and a coffee, to go, at Hardees and hit the road.    The next stop was mid way through Kentucky. I stopped for gas and picked up a couple of roast beef sandwiches, to go. Final stop was at Kingdom City, about 30 miles north of Jefferson City. I got gas and headed home.   Traffic wasn't bad until about 15 miles from the Mississippi River. Then it was BAD until maybe 30 miles west of St. Louis. About 10 miles before the river there was 3-4 miles of stop and go traffic. In St. Louis there was another mile of the same.   My on board fuel economy meter claims t...

The tractor is on the trailer and the trailer is hooked to my pickup, ready to start the trip to Missouri tomorrow morning (Sunday morning). I think Tom has given me two days of his life, a pretty awesome sacrifice, while I have been here. We spent more time working on one of the trailer brakes this morning and are now reasonably confident that everything is working as it should. In addition I've been fed quite well. Last night we had Shepard's Pie, corn bread, some other type of bread, salad, etc for supper. Everything was good, as expected when at Tom & Mary Lou's. Dennis & Jan, friends of Tom and Mary Lou's and people who I knew from previous time spent in TN, were out for supper. Jan had been out helping Mary Lou do some cleaning (Mary Lou has been having wrist/arm/neck problems). Dennis came out after he finished his Honey Do list <grin>. This evening I went to the festivities at the Pikin Barn. Merv, my father-in-law, and Lillian, his girlfriend, arr...

I bought a trailer this morning. The roads to get to the location of the trailer reminded me of the county roads we drove on in SE Missouri last year, except these were actually chipped and sealed. They was only one lane of road, and enough of a shoulder that two cars could pass, but you both wanted to be going very slow. I imposed further on my great brother-in-law and he and I worked on the trailer for at least four hours after I got it to his place. The wiring was in bad shape, nothing that was a shock for an old trailer. The frame is good and it has close to new tires. The deck will need some new boards soon, for hauling things on the road. For use "around the house" the deck is OK. With the wiring to the brakes, it only has brakes on one axle, repaired we now know for sure that the brakes work. In the morning I need to go into Crossville and buy a couple of new taillights and some more wire. The existing lights didn't look bad but once we opened them up they weren...

The good news is that my eyes checked out as being healthy this morning. The bad news is that I need new glasses because my prescription has changed and with me being incredibly near sighted I have to get special lenses (they don't make Coke bottles with thick enough bottoms <grin>) and they are VERY expensive. Praise God I can afford to buy a pair so that I will still be able to see well. I checked in to the Days Inn on the east side of Nashville, TN about 7:30 PM. I've spent the past hour unsuccessfully trying to make arrangements to go look at trailers tomorrow. I found out that one of the ones I wanted to look at doesn't have brakes on it, which makes it unacceptable for me. Another guy called me back a few minutes ago. He has to work tomorrow and he won't get home from work until after 5 PM. I'm still waiting for a call back from another guy. I did find a new trailer that is reasonably priced, for a new one, but more money than I want to spend. I may end ...

Spent the morning researching trailers online, and doing research getting ready to leave for Bryce Canyon, Utah in a couple of weeks. I was going to stop in Denver and have repairs made to our awning (see post dated August 15th) as well as the annual chassis maintenance. After the research I think I will wait and have the work done when I get to Arizona. I have my annual eye appointment in the morning. I am planning on heading for Tennessee after the appointment. Tom, my fantastic brother-in-law, has done some "leg work" for me and found a couple of trailers between Nashville and Crossville. I plan on staying overnight in the Nashville area, buying one of the trailers on Thursday and taking it on to Crossville with me. I will come back with my tractor and trailer on Saturday or Sunday. This afternoon I did manage to get our split wood stacked. I think I have about 2.5 cords in this building. We also have a little over another cord in the lean-to that houses the wood furnace. ...

We didn't do much yesterday. Kathy still wasn't quite up to going to church so we stayed home all day. I did get the lawn mowed in the afternoon. This morning I went out to split some wood that I cut and loaded in the truck Saturday. I couldn't get the splitter to run, I might have flooded it. I unloaded the wood from the truck.  I then cut up one of the logs that are out back.  The piece in the foreground required 118 blows with the 6# splitting maul, hitting the wedge, to split it. This piece was still heavier than what I wanted to lift into the truck so I split it again. I couldn't start the wedge, it just kept bouncing out. I  had to score the top with the chain saw to provide a kerf for the wedge. I think it took about 40 blows to split this piece.  Lydia at lunch time. Kathy was babysitting today.  The wood furnace guy came out today to check over our wood furnace. Everything on the furnace worked okay but I had him change the controls so that the pro...

I cut a couple of logs in two with my new chain saw. It did OK, but I'm not going to like the "break-in" procedure. You aren't supposed to run it at full throttle for the first couple of tankfuls of gas, that is going to take FOREVER. The "good stuff" that I have been cutting is HARD. Cutting 15-20" diameter logs at less than full throttle is a pain. I forgot to include this photo in one of my previous posts. Kelsey took it the morning Kathy was in the hospital. Lydia had been smiling but when I asked Kelsey to take the photo the smile went away.  Kelsey & Lydia left Kathy a note the evening that she had surgery. Kathy was still out of it and barely remembered them being their. The note on the side says, "We love you Grammy". It is signed Love Kelsey & Lydia.  Below is part of our wood pile. I have between 1.5 and 2 cords in the lean-to over the wood furnace. This stack is about 7' tall and 16' long. There are probably two pick...

OK. The weather was just awesome yesterday. High in the 70's and low last night in the low 50's. Today the high is supposed to be high 60's and the low tonight is supposed to be 39. Kathy and I both LOVE these temperatures. Tonight we might actually close the living room windows but the bedroom windows will remain open. The other good news is that Kathy is progressing well after her hernia surgery. Yesterday morning I split some wood I had in the back of my pickup and then move the truck over to where I found the good wood. I hand split a few pieces and had to cut up some that were to big to fit in the splitter. The large long pieces are only 25-26" long but the splitter will only take 23.5" pieces. We end up with a bunch of very short pieces. I had "touched up" the chain that was on the saw but my "touching up" doesn't last long. The yellow wood that I'm cutting/splitting, I have no idea what it is, is hard and HEAVY. I put a different...

The weather yesterday was great. The high was 78 and the low last night was in the mid 50's. I was amazed when I saw that it was supposed to be 78, I would have guessed that the high was around 70. I worked on the splitter, took the carb off and tried cleaning the main jet. My carb cleaning didn't get the job done, the splitter engine still doesn't run right. I'm pretty certain that it is just a carb problem, but I'm not smart enough to fix it. Hopefully it will keep chugging along until the guy who is going to borrow it takes it to his buddy who works on small engines. I found a cache of good wood yesterday, maybe a pick up truck load. It was back in an area where I had not cleaned previously. There are several trash wood piles back in this area, just like everywhere else, but it was great to find a decent amount of good stuff in one area.  I will probably start a burn pile in a new location today, but may not light it. I went to the hardware sto...

Yesterday I burned more trash wood. This was the start of yesterdays burn pile, about 11 AM.  I kept adding to it all day long. Below is what it looked like around 5 PM.  It is a shame that so much of it has been allowed to get to the point where I don't think it is worth the effort to split it. I already split one piece like the one shown in the photo below, and did split this chunk into 5 section so that they were small enough that I could lift them onto the splitter. I'm at the hospital today, waiting for Kathy to get out of surgery. She is having a hernia repaired. The Doctor thought he might be able repair it using laparoscopic surgery, small incisions and using a small camera to see what he is doing. As it ended up she had multiple hernias. He fixed a  couple of small ones laparoscopically, but for the two larger ones he had to do an open incision. The Doctor said that everything went fine and that Kathy is doing well. She is still in recove...

Yesterday we went to church at Solid Rock, in Jefferson City. It is a large church with two services. We have been to the later service a couple of times but yesterday we tried the early service, we didn't note any difference. One thing that is always amazing is the diversity of the worshipers, both age and race. It is LOUD. I put in my ear plugs as soon as the band started and didn't take them out until we were leaving. The Pastor was so loud that I saw Kathy stuffing pieces of Kleenex in her ears. After chuch we went to Walmart so that Kathy could pick up some yarn, and a few groceries she needed. Then it was on to the Chinese buffet for an early lunch. We got back home a little after noon. It was back to burning trash, and splitting anything that appeared to be decent. This was the start of yesterdays burn pile. I added several large chunks to it, and a lot of smaller stuff, as the afternoon progressed. I ended up with one and a half skid steer buckets full of good stuff....

We had a good trip back to Indy and arrived back here about 10 PM last night, we left here at 4:45 AM Thursday morning. About 900 miles driving during the two days. Both appointments with Doctors went fine. We stayed overnight with Doug and Anthony. We were able to spend a little time with Doug but didn't get to see much of Anthony. He didn't get home from work until late Thursday night and he had to be back at work before 9:30 on Friday morning. We went to Lebanon and had a great visit with Steve and Judy Acton. We even got to see some others from Harvest (where I went to church while in Lebanon) because it was their small group meeting night. We then had dinner with Phyllis, our next door neighbor while in Lebanon, and Ed, Cindy (Kathy's sister) and Oliver (their son). Oliver, who is working on his doctorate in North Carolina, was in the area doing some work for the USDA. He stayed overnight with Phyllis while he was in the area. Ed & Cindy came down ...

Yesterday I spent most of the day cleaning out one of the outbuildings so that I could stack firewood in it. I had been just dumping the wood in a pile but that was taking up to much room, with all the junk in the building. The building is 16' wide by 25' long (I think, can't remember for sure). The eave height is at least 8'. Below is the left side. The wood shown in the photo is what I had split last week and just dumped in the building.  And the right side. Note the two rolls near the bottom right of the photo. One is brown and the other is gray. They are 4' wide rolls of sandpaper. The brown roll weighs over 50#. Later in the day I found two more rolls in another area. After cleaning out the building and stacking the wood I mowed the lawn for the 3rd time since early June. The first thing this morning, around 9 AM, I started burning junk wood.  After starting the fire I fired up the splitter. Later I moved this wood into the building and stacked it. One of the c...

Below is a photo of our grandparents day gift from Lydia. The text says: This isn't just a butterfly As you can plainly see I made it with my feet Which is part of me It comes with lots of love Especially to say I hope you have av very Happy Grandparents Day Love Lydia 2012 The gift was great, even better Lydia & Kelsey spent a lot of time her yesterday and we got to enjoy their company. By the way, I have complained about the weather in Missouri a lot. Yesterday was absolutely beautiful. High was a sunny mid 70's while last nights low was in the mid 50's. Today is supposed to be a repeat. We better enjoy it, by Wednesday (Sept 12th!) the high is supposed to be 87. Have a great day. May God bless you and yours this day.

It rained yesterday. I did virtually nothing. Kelsey and Lydia came over this morning and picked up Kathy. They went to some type of even at the fairgrounds and had lunch at Red Lobster. They got back here around 1:30. Kelsey and Lydia stayed until around 5:30. I split wood and did more clean up. About 15-20% of the wood around here isn't worth saving. Another 25-30% is pretty crappy but should be burnable in the wood furnace. I split four skid steer buckets full and burned a lot. Below is what the fire looked like after burning for about 9 hours. The big piece at the back of the fire is about 27" in diameter and 24" long. I haven't added anything to the fire for three hours. Kathy saw a couch on Craigslist and we went to the northeast side of Columbia to look at it this evening (about 100 miles round trip). She bought it and we brought it home. It is a hide-a-bed and I'm going to need Andy help me unload it. It was around 8 PM when we got back home. We are watchi...

First, and most important by far, we got to babysit for Lydia Tuesday afternoon. Kelsey dropped her off around 2:30 PM, on her way to work, and Andy picked her up around 7 PM, on his way home. She was awake most of the time she was here and was a real sweetheart. Tomorrow she will be 3 months old. We (Kathy) gets to have her next Monday and Tuesday also. Elaine, Andy's Mom, watched her today. Below is a photo of her laughing at Kathy. This morning Kathy and I burned the last pile of brush that we had piled up. Then we split more wood, just two bucket fulls in the skid steer. We also cleaned up more junk wood. I started the fire before 10 AM and at 8 PM I went out and "poked" it again. There is still a nice fire. As we cleaned up we kept adding fuel to the fire. A lot of the wood laying around is junk. I've gotten to the point where I'm getting more picky about what I keep to burn in the wood furnace. The stuff I reject goes into the burn pile. There is just so muc...

Sunday I went to the worship with the Christian Fellowship of Jefferson City. It is a small group, probably only around 40 people were there Sunday morning. I had found them on the web and listened to one of  the Pastor's previous sermons. He is doing a series on Acts 2:42-47, guidelines on how a body of believers should function. I think both the message I listened to online and the one Sunday were spot on. Based on my brief encounter with them it seems that they are striving to be the "church" described in this passage. After church I had a chimichanga at El Jimador and then I went to Walmart to get a couple of prescriptions refilled. The lunch was good, the Walmart experience was not so good. They had no problems filling one of the prescriptions but the last time I had  the other one filled was when we were in Washington. For some reason the Washington Walmart cancelled the prescription. I have no idea how it could even do that. After two hours without getting the...

I went to California, MO for breakfast this morning. Breakfast was good but not anything great. On the way home I stopped in Centertown and talked to a guy who has used tractors for sale. He doesn't have anything with a loader right now. He said that when he does have one it usually sells quickly. We didn't get any significant rain today. On the way from California to Centertown it misted enough that I had to occasionally had to turn on the wipers, but that was about it. It was really humid all day. I didn't do much until late afternoon, then I split some more wood. Before Kathy left she and I move the splitter over next to another pile of wood. Goodnight and may God bless you and yours.