It's been another busy week

I have been working in the dispatch center 3 days a week this month, and then I come home and try and catch up on the project time I missed while I was gone. That's rough on an old fat guy like me, but since the project elves aren't going to show up anytime soon, I suppose I just have to keep plugging along. I don't know, but this all seemed a lot easier 30 years ago. 

My number 1 project yesterday was to replace a fruit tree that was dying. I've said before this place had not been taken care up properly for a good number of years, and there was a small fruit tree, of unknown type, that just wasn't coming around, so we decided to replace it. Mrs. Goodwrench said she wanted a nectarine tree there, so I located what might have been the last one left locally, and picked it up yesterday morning. I brought it home, and me and a shovel had a date with the old and new trees, and now Mrs. Goodwrench has her nectarine tree. Of course I had to put some protection around it to keep the two Bambis from next door from eating it, so after it was in the ground I grabbed the remaining fencing scrap and wrapped the tree. It'll work for now, and maybe someday we'll be picking nectarines from it.

We have one peach tree out there. Last year it was half a step away from ceasing to exist, but we tried to make it happy this spring, and it worked. If you zoom in a bit you can see that it's got a bunch of fruit on it. Hopefully they all mature and we can have a few to munch on later. 

And, in the dog world, the new puppy is getting along great with the old dog, and they have already become good buddies. I'm sure hoping old dog can help me train new dog.

 A new family member

This morning, after my wife's doctor appointment, we headed east a bit to pick up our newest family member. We've been talking about getting current dog's replacement for awhile, but when Silas suffered his spinal injury in December, it kind of put that more at the forefront. Si has been the best dog ever, but with his injury he's never have the full use of his back right leg again. As a hunting dog that will slow him down tremendously, and I will never be able to send him out into a river to retrieve a bird because of his limited swimming capabilities. Since I have no plans on quitting duck hunting, it necessitates a change, and that means a new pup. I'd love to get one fully trained, but that is cost prohibitive, so here we go. Our lab Si, is named after Uncle Si from Duck Dynasty. We have decided to name the new pup Jep. In the real world, Jep is Uncle Si's nephew, so now our Si can really be Uncle Si. Here's to puppy days!

 A long Week

Not much activity here from me this week due to the fact I was down south working fires in dispatch for 4 days. 14 hours a day having fun without the sun. The three new dispatchers did a good job, and being this early in the year the fires weren't going to go big, so these were actually good training fires for them. I like making the extra money, but dang, at age 67 this is getting tougher and tougher every year. After coming home for a short break last night, I'll be headed back down later today as I'm working again S/M/T for the rest of May. I will say it was nice to be greeted by blooming flowers this morning, and that made me smile. 

Pickin'

Yesterday we had our monthly bluegrass jam here at the house. 80 degrees, sunny and calm, but plenty of shade provided by out big cedar trees out front. Between players, and listeners, we had 40 people here, and everybody seemed to have a great time. We had a good number of new folks come, and they all had a great time. Folks are really loving this time of music. Might only be 2-3 hours, but there's no politics, no division, no hassles...only music. It's hard to beat that. 

 The Hand of God

I have a 2016 Dodge RAM 2500, with a 6.7L Cummins engine. It's been a great rig, but like anything mechanical there's always something here or there that needs attention. One item on that engine is the air heater grid. It's a plate under the air intake that heats the incoming air during cold weather starts. On that grid is a bracket with a nut and bolt. The bolt is standard steel, while the nut is stainless steel. One potentially huge issue with this grid is that it may overheat, causing the bolt to melt, and the nut to fall off. That's bad enough, but when it drops it can easily roll into the #6 cylinder and destroy the piston and/or the entire cylinder. It's an issue the Dodge knows of, and will do nothing about. New engines can run $20k. I recently got a code saying there was an issue with the grid heater, and our mechanic said to park it immediately and he'd get the replacement kit coming from Banks Power. They were changing it yesterday, when I got a call to come down. I went down and he showed me the grid, and where the bolt had melted. 

He said he didn't think it had gone into the cylinder, but it was in there
somewhere, and they had to find it before they could put everything back together. Finding it could get as bad as pulling the head, which requires taking the entire cab off the chassis, and that means a LOT more money. While I was there they hunted up a small camera on a wire. We all went over to the truck, and he carefully slid the camera into the engine and started looking. He was moving the camera, and watching the small screen, when two of them said, "There it is!" They found the nut, and there was still a piece of the bolt in it. Being stainless steel, the nut is not magnetized, but the bolt was. At this point, while leaving the camera in place, they fished a small magnet into the engine, very carefully moved it over, and connected with the bolt/nut: "Got it!" Then, he very carefully snaked it back out of the engine. All four of the mechanics in the shop immediately told me to go buy a lottery ticket, because what I saw never happens. That bolt/nut had dropped down, and was sitting right at the edge of the cylinder. He said one bumpy road, or one hard acceleration on the freeway could have put it into the cylinder, and now we'd be talking many thousands of dollars of work. 

There is no doubt in my mind that the reason it hadn't dropped into the cylinder was nothing short of the hand of God. And now, thanks to divine intervention, and the work of an excellent mechanic, I'll get my truck back today, fixed and running great, and I'll never have to worry about that particular problem again.