“Few people can say: I am here. They look for themselves in the past and see themselves in the future.” — Georges Braque (1882–1963)
Author Archives: Steve Mays
I knew him well
If a person were to read my ~6,000 blog posts, spanning 20 years, he/she would know me better than anyone who has ever met me. That person does not exist and I suspect never will.
Perhaps one day an AI (“I prefer the term ‘artificial person‘”) will read them and want to discuss what I wrote/shared.
I won’t be around but perhaps this future AP will be able to create a synthetic version of me, using everything I’ve shared (YouTube, etc) and we’ll have a nice chat.
What it means to age
1980 Ford Courier
I really can’t explain my love of old pickup trucks and while I only have room in my life for one, I enjoy seeing what my friend Paul has for sale. (He gets most of his trucks from Colorado where rust is less of a problem.)
Today he was showing off a 1980 Ford Courier. I can’t say I remember these but I wasn’t thinking about pickup trucks back then. The truck has its own Wikipedia page. This beauty can be yours for $3000.
Books and a place to read them
A place to sit
I’ve been spending a good bit of time in the woods and find there’s no good place to sit when I need stop and catch my breath. At least not in our woods. I’m not ready to put a store-bought bench along my hiking trail but spotted some nice logs in my neighbors wood pile.
After unstacking –and restacking– his logs, I would up with several that will do nicely, once I flatten the top with my chainsaw.
Invasion
Moving big rocks with new winch
The 20 page owners manual (yes, I’m one of those people) for my WARN cordless winch recommended “practicing” with the winch before getting into a real use situation. I guess that means you can pick the terrain and the size and shape of the object to be moved/lifted.
For my practice session I decided to move a couple of big rocks and use them to protect our new well head from the sleepy garbage truck drivers who turn around in our cul-de-sac.
The winch only has 15 feet of cable, which makes sense given its speed and “use cycle” (two minutes of pulling has to be followed by 30 min of downtime to avoid over-heating). So that means extra straps and re-sets if you’re pulling any distance. I anchored the winch to my pickup.
One of today’s first lessons was the importance of securing the strap. Took me a couple of tries.
In the photo below you see my Bubba Rope towing rope and soft shackle. I bought these for the Land Rover and never used them for that purpose. Yet. The idea behind the soft shackle is in the unlikely event it breaks, you won’t get the shrapnel you’d get from a metal device. But my shackle won’t break.
I tried moving a smaller rock using the sled but the weight was too much and I wound up using the strap on this as well.
Will have to wait on a front-loader for the big rock. Too much for the winch (and winch operator). We’ll probably add some more camouflage around the well-head down the road.
What did I learn today? For some chores it will be easier to hook a strap to the pickup (in 4 wheel drive). As for my intended use of pulling the wood chipper back up the hill, I expect I’ll do some manually rolling where the grade is not too steep, augmented by the winch.
Destin Sunset 10.10.22
Moving chipper down the hill
The idea is to get the chipper closer to the trees and brush that needs chipping, thereby reducing the amount of dragging, much of it uphill. When it gets cold I’ll have to put the chipper indoors. Depending how far down the hill I’m working getting it back up the hill with the winch will be much easier than my dragging it (maybe). At least that’s the theory.
The winch has 15 feet of cable so coming up the hill will take some time. In the sketch above I have the winch attached to the chipper (as opposed to the tree) so I can control the speed and steady the chipper as it creeps up the incline..