Terlingua or Bust

TEXANS CAN

2012-01-26T20:04:00.001-06:00

Don't know how many people out of the DFW area know about this, but I think its a good thing. When I lived in the metroplex occasionally I'd go out to see what they had. The way it works is people donate cars, trucks, RVs, Buses and so on and in turn they get a write off. The money the auction makes goes toward kids collage educations.

You can bid online, but I personally wouldn't buy anything sight unseen, but I have known of people that got a great deal. Anyway I've been intending to blog about this for a long time and am just now getting around to it since there wasn't anything else to blog about right now.

The link to it is here: TEXANS CAN

Cool Aerial Vid of Terlingua

2012-01-22T11:11:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Bigfoot for sending me the link to this video. As he said it is truly Amazing and I'd add Awesome to that. The video was made by Alex Whitmore and it appears that it was shot from an old Piper J3 Cub. (Which I also think are Awesome vintage aircrafts.) I'd love to fly one, but the closest I've ever come to that was a Cessna 150. Anyway the camera used to make the video was also Awesome! I'm starting this thread with a screen capture of the final seconds of the video which show 9 Points Mesa and Santiago Peak which I post a lot of photos of from here. I'm posting the video here, but I'm also posting the YouTube link and I'd highly recommend using it so you can go to Full Screen view because the video is that good.

You can find Alex's web site at Alex Whitmore

Link is My Secret Canyon

Ring came down Friday and bought a couple of quads for us to go exploring on (which we did yesterday). Had a great time and saw a lot of great things. We were trying to find an ancient lake that has been dry for no telling how long, but unfortunately someone has bought the land between here and it or maybe the actual property its on and they have it cut off by a cable fence and No Trespassing signs so we couldn't get to it. We still found some great views. I'm still kicking my own butt because I forgot to take the camera and there is no way I'd try to get back to some of those areas on anything other than a quad. We would have kept going, but finally came to a place where even quads couldn't tread. Well we could have made it down the gorge, but we'd have never made it out. Ring should be getting near Odessa by now as he pulled out earlier this morning.

It appears that someone decided to let the air out of one of the tires on Ring's pickup Friday night while we were at the legion. We took the tire to Gil for him to fix it and he couldn't find a single leak. Not only that, but he put the tire back on and it was still up this morning. All I have to say is that someone obviously doesn't value their life too much because IF I'd caught them doing it they would have probably lost it.

New LEDs / False Claim

2012-01-19T10:18:00.000-06:00

My neighbor Robert Dawson dropped off a new LED light for me to try out yesterday and it turns out that it is GREAT for lighting up this place at night.

There's a couple of drawbacks to them though. For one they are 6 volt and powered by 4 AA cell batteries. This doesn't go well with trying to run them off of a 12 volt battery bank and the 4 AA batteries would only be good for a matter of hours before the LEDs started dimming.

There is a work around this though and that would be to use a 120 volt AC to 6 volt DC transformer soldered in to do away with the internal batteries. It could then be run through the inverter. Another option would be to find the right resister to drop 12 volts to 6 volts and then wire it in and run the light directly off of the battery bank. I'm leaning toward the later. I'm going to have to round up one of these for my own and will see about doing that. Between one of these and the other three 15 LED lights I have in here the lighting level would be very comfortable. This light is a 48 LED and disperses the light a lot better than the others I have, but those are good for tract lighting.

As for the false or maybe misguided claim.

BULL S__T! Truth is that the only one that posted out-of-line posts on the blog that got nuked was the blog owner. After I posted two messages that were meant to be helpful (so called out-of-line posts) attempts were made by the blog owner to insult me and I was blocked from posting on that blog again BEFORE it was ever nuked. I hate it when people do stupid stuff and then try to blame it on other people.

Now with that said I'm getting real tired of this BS and if it continues I have plenty of backed up blog comments and witnesses as to why all of this started. Hopefully this isn't going to go any further???

Sad Sunday (Updated)

2012-01-15T12:40:00.000-06:00

Francis Edmond Mitchell Nov 22 1925 - Jan 15 2012

For those who have followed this blog since I started it Oct 4th 2009 The second post I made on it titled (Saying Goodbye) read like this.

Now comes the hard part of saying goodbye to my family, friends and especially my elderly family members that lives in this area and all the time knowing that I won't ever see them again. I don't plan to ever come back this way again after I leave.

Unfortunately one of the elderly people I was referring to has gone on to a better place as of about 3:30 this morning. He was/is my uncle and a special uncle at that because he was more like a Dad since my dad got killed when I was 3 years old. Uncle Francis was there for us after it happened.

He was technically minded much like I am and I always enjoyed visiting with him and discussing technical stuff. I used to like to give him electrical and mechanical parts just to see what he would build using them.

Sadly, but probably fortunately he chose today to go rather than wait until tomorrow which is my aunt Wanda's birthday. I know that would have to have been hard for her to face her birthday tomorrow and future birthdays. Even worse how do you wish someone a Happy Birthday after they have just lost a loved one?

My family not only lost a beloved member, but we all lost one of the dwindling numbers of WWII Vets. He served in the Navy... I believe in the South Pacific both on a ship and on the ground at times. He always wanted to return to one of the islands he was on during the war, but was never able to pull that off. I guess that's a little like me wanting to visit Viet Nam again, but that will never happen.

He left behind his wife Wanda, a Daughter Arvilla and two sons Steve and Kaven along with granddaughters, grandsons, great grandchildren and a Great-Great Grandson. He will always be missed by all who knew him. I posted about one of his granddaughters leaving us last year (Paula) which I wasn't looking to happen when I left Plano.

Contributed by an Old Friend.

Dear TFFNGUY

Francis and I grew up in the same Amarillo community in the late 30s and early 40s. He was some 7 months older than me. His dad was our local US Postman for many years. We went to school together at the same elementary, junior highschool and highschools. Francis joined the Navy before he finished highschool so did not see him again for a year or so until I met up again with him at Manus Island, Seeadler Harbor, t he Admiralty Islands. This place was located south of the equator near the islands of New Guinea. He served most of his Navy career there at Seeadler Harbor preparing charts and maps for Navy ships that came into the lagoon there at Manus. Manus was a major staging area for the US Navy ships as they prepared for the invasions of the various islands in the far Pacific area. The ship I was on visited Manus twice both times loading some 3 million gallons of fresh water each time we were there. We ferried these water cargos to ships near the battle front that did not have adequate water storage or evaporators to handle their crews needs. My mom stayed in contact with Francis’ mother so she knew where Francis was located and passed that information to me. So I knew that Francis was there. Both times I went ashore and looked him up and spent some time with him. He had his own boat and took me around over the harbor to different hideouts that he had in the area. I will send you a photo of his boat. He converted a Japanese boat which he used. His commanding officer let him keep it. He was quite proud of the boat.

After that, I did not hear from Francis for a whole bunch of years until one day he contacted me on the Internet to see if I was who he thought I was. I was living in Houston at that time. Had been there for some 47 years moving there in June 1960. During the last several years I have exchanged e-mails with both Francis and Wanda.

Again, very sorry to learn of Francis’ death. Please pass my condolences to Wanda and the family.

Gene Leavelle

Pflugerville, TX

Test / Cart / What Ever

2012-01-12T14:22:00.004-06:00

Seems like blogger may be screwed up again with the lack of new blogs. I'll probably update this later if it actually posts.

Reason for the test is because the new blogs list failed to show up on my blogs I follow list. Last blog shown before I posted this was John Wells' blog from last night. Now that I've posted this several other blogs have shown up as being posted after this.

When I tried to reply to a comment on this blog all I got was a white screen and was unable to post a reply. I'd call that screwed up! Never fails that in trying to make blogger better they consistently make it worse!

Now speaking of John Wells I ran in to him at BBMI this morning. He clued me in on what a twin engine plane I spoke of on his blog comments a couple of blog back was doing around here. I speculated then that it might be Google updating the aerial views around here, but according to him the plane was dropping rabies vaccine to try and control the rabies in this area. Of course John's blog is http://thefieldlab.blogspot.com/ Evidently the coyotes eat it and it keeps them from getting the virus??? I know at one time they dropped meat tainted with arsenic out of aircraft to just kill off the coyotes.

Above is the cart BudwiserKid gifted me from a few blogs back. (In the comment sections) It needs a good bit of work and I may be taking the V-Twin off of the trike to turn it in to a mini Hot Rod! Should be a real hoot! The engine is too large and won't readily fit so modifications will be called for.

Here is an Earth Bag springing up just off of 118 headed in to Study Butte. I'll try to get photos as it is built. I don't know the people building it or much about it. Will be interesting to see how this is all done.

Clouds / Charger Update

2012-01-07T18:59:00.000-06:00

Looks like the next 7 days are going to be more cloudy than not so I worked on getting the charger where it won't be kicking dust all over the solar panels. Looks like I managed.

I set the charger on a pallet and boxed it in with 2x4s and long screws. I let it run for 35 minutes since it had started clouding up and I couldn't see any dust flying at all while it was running. From the forecast it looks like it will have to be run at least once daily for most of the next 7 days. I'll probably put a screened in hut over it until spring when I'll probably start building the hybrid buggy with it.

The last couple of days here have been nice t-shirt weather in the afternoons. Looks like Monday will change that. :(

LOARTP

2012-01-04T15:31:00.001-06:00

or Lack Of Anything Relevant To Post.

Photo from this morning's sunrise.

Something that just caused me all sorts of grief! I assumed flash drives would far outlast a hard drive, but The one I've had PortableApps on for about the last year crashed day before yesterday and when it did I lost a LOT of important info. If you use these for storage and expect them to last for ever forget that. Of course I'm bad about not keeping recent backups, but from now on I may have clones of these in case one of them decide to take a dump.

And back to the charger. After several cloudy days after I returned from Odessa I managed to finish the charger good enough to keep the battery bank topped off on real cloudy days. I'd run it a couple of times, but didn't think to check the solar panels until a couple of days ago. Turns out that they were covered with a thick layer of adobe dust and we hadn't had any recent sand storms. Not only that, but the panels in other places were missing the dust. This was after I cleaned the panels and just dusting them off this time didn't work. Had to break out the Windex and paper towels.

Turns out that when the charger was running the whole assembly was vibrating and digging in to the ground. This was kicking up a lot of adobe dust that was collecting on the panels. Not sure how I'll cure this, but will probably bolt the charger to a wooden pallet and see if that cures the dust problem. I eventually plan to have this on a hybrid ATV (If I ever build it) That way I could use it not only to keep the batteries charged, but to ride to.

Happy New Year's Eve

2011-12-31T17:51:00.000-06:00

Haven't heard much about what's going on around this area for New Year's Eve. I have heard that the BBMI is having a shindig at the Party Barn, but that's too far away for me to go to. Dave said the Legion will be open, but nothing planned other than that. I chose not to have a NYE party this year so what ever happens at the legion is up to them. I've been sick and am starting to feel better and the nice warm sunny days have helped lately.

Hope everyone has a Happy New Year's Eve and day also. For that matter I hope the whole new year is a lot better than 2011! Maybe 2011 was ok for you though?

White Stuff

2011-12-26T12:48:00.002-06:00

A few pictures compliments of Robert Dawson of the snow dusted mountain tops around here yesterday. Unfortunately they don't show the white caps that could be seen in real life.

And below picture compliments of John Wells (Santa) from the last thread.

===

Santa - Staring John Wells

2011-12-25T16:20:00.000-06:00

Not actual Santa

Had just settled my brain for a long winter’s nap.
when, what to my wondering ears should hear,
but a miniature white pickup, and not a single rein-deer,
with a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

I reaches for my pistol, but he had me out gunned,
with four of his on I decided to run.

Coffee / Charger / Cold'N More / Snow!

2011-12-23T14:09:00.003-06:00

I just got back from spending a week in Odessa with my family and yesterday when I stopped by the legion to get ice before coming home Dave handed me a box that was sent to me by The Foots. Its a Coleman camping coffee maker that works like an electric, but it doesn't use electricity. That's good because most of the electric coffee makers draw about 1500 watts and even if you have some solar you about have to run those coffee makers off of a generator. This one just sits over a burner and works like an electric one. Its slower than electric, but not bad. Took about 20 minutes to make 10 cups. Thanks Bigfoot & Littlefoot!

I took some iron, the alternator and new motor to Odessa and Ring and I constructed this new charger there. Unfortunately we didn't get 100% finished so I can't use it to charge the batteries on cloudy days. I could sure use it today because it is cloudy and there's a 30% chance of snow tonight. BTW when I got home yesterday it was sunny and was actually T-Shirt weather until the sun started setting. I guess I should have finished the charger then, but was busy doing other things. Now its too damned cold and windy to do it so I may have to try and get the jeep up next to the battery hut if I have to recharge them because of lack of sun. The propane bottle I was using ran out in the wee hours of the morning so it was pretty darned cold getting out of the rack this morning. Fortunately I only had to switch from the empty bottle to a full one. The oven isn't cutting the mustard too well in here because the temp is dropping, but hopefully not below 55 degrees or so which I can handle.

Did I say its COLD here? Online says its 40 degrees, but the thermometer in the It'll Du said it was 31 degrees over an hour ago and I think the temp is actually dropping. I'd put the wind at about 25 MPH and gusting to about 40. There's a 30% chance of SNOW tonight. Tell me it isn't true! I hate that stuff!!!

While in Odessa I managed to pick up this 750/1500 inverter at Harbor Freight. Ring had a coupon for $35 for it and I think that was about half price. That should open up the way to running a fridge if I ever get one. My neighbor's new fridge has a defrost cycle on it that is a real watt hog so he is going to have to keep the one he was going to give to me. Looked like Bigfoot was going to be able to get me one, but that fell through so now I'm back to square one on that. My other neighbor still has the one he wanted to sell me, but he got burned on the price of it and wants the same amount if he sells it to me. Its pretty rough and $300 which is about $200 more than I'd pay so I'll keep looking.

And finally what's left of a batch of BlackJack Fudge I made while in Odessa. Needless to say it went over big. Its a real easy recipe and probably doesn't take over about 10 minutes to make. Consists of a 2 pound bag of powdered sugar, 1 pound pack of semi sweet chocolate chips and 8 Oz of Black Jack or your favorite bourbon. You mix the powdered sugar and bourbon well and then heat the chocolate chips in a microwave until they are melted and then mix that with the sugar booze mixture and pour it in a greased pan of some type. A 9x12 works out about right and it sure is good. Especially with pecans in it, but Misty is allergic to them so I had to leave them out of this batch.

Update... Its been snowing here some over the night and this morning. Had to get out and sweep the snow off the solar panels because they weren't charging at all. At least now they are a little. Technically the inverter should have shut down because the voltage was down to 11.39. I thought the inverter I am using cut out at 11.5, but I guess it is 11 instead. Looks like if I want power tonight I'm going to have to grub up some creosote where I can get the jeep to the battery hut to charge the batteries or bring the charger in here and try to get it finished where I can use it instead.

BTW for you who are or will be relying on solar keep in mind I'd have to have setup a ladder and gotten on a roof if they were roof mounted. Having the panels close to the ground is a BIG benefit at most times. (Easy to get to to keep them clean)

FYI - Grub Shack.

2011-12-13T09:35:00.000-06:00

Latest word that I've received is that Jerry and Eva were ready to open the Grub Shack back up after getting the septic system taken care of. Now the inspector has come up with other things to prevent them from opening. One I've heard is that he says they will have to get two high capacity (approved) water tanks and go ahead and tie the other camping trailer in to the septic system also. Who know what he'll come up with after that??? I'll try to update this as it goes on.

On another note Judy's Bad Rabbit restaurant at the ranch headquarters is closing again (If it hasn't already) That part doesn't effect me though because I've never eaten there and had no inclination to do so. Perhaps if Mama Crow had been able to take it over to start with that would have been a different story.

The next blog will likely be some major bitching about Classic Country Land since I got stuck paying the taxes twice (one payment he said would go toward the principal instead of being refunded) and I have not received any answers to questions I've ask.

As for clouds and fog we still have both. Solar is doing next to nothing. I think we've had one semi clear day in the last week and mostly cloudy is the prediction for the next 6 days.

CLOUDY!

2011-12-11T12:04:00.001-06:00

It was so cloudy yesterday that the solar panels did little good and the same for today. The batteries were just barely high enough in charge this morning to keep the inverter running so it was time to crank up the generator to run the electric battery charger. Trouble with that is that its just a 10 AMP charger and charges the battery bank very slowly.

This is what's left of my old gas powered charger I built shortly after moving here. The engine I had on it broke down so it was basically worthless. I traded that motor to Ring for a running 6.5 horsepower motor, but will have to find a smaller pulley for it before I can rebuild the charger. I tried to find the pulley I need in Alpine with no luck so will have to wait until I go to Odessa next time and I should be able to find one there. The difference between using the gas powered charger and running the generator to run the electric charger is this. If using the gas powered charger it will charge the battery bank from inverter cut out to full charge in 20 minutes where running the electric charger takes several hours (If it even does it at that)

This photo was taken the other day and you can't even see this mountain now.

Red Bluff

Now the next 6 days forecast calls for cloudy to partly cloudy. Looks like I'll be running the generator a lot for a while. :(

Happy Birthday Shiri Appleby

2011-12-07T09:29:00.004-06:00

My favorite actress (at this time) ;)

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0032375/

Recent pictures around here.

Clouds rolling off of 9 Points Mesa

Last two were of a couple of C-3 Gun Ships making a pass beside 9 Points Mesa.

Supply Run / Alpine BP Check Point

2011-12-03T12:12:00.001-06:00

Yesterday I made another ride share supply run in to Alpine and took along Dave and his brother Steve and the trailer to haul all the supplies. No problems going through the check point and the agent we talked to was friendly and only asked three questions. Those were:

"Are you all US citizens?"

"Where are you going?

and after I said Alpine he asked:

"To get groceries?"

I said yes and we were allowed to go on.

However, We noticed a bunch of new stuff on the other side of 118 evidently there to monitor south bound traffic? On the way back I got my camera out to take photos of all the equipment, but my camera potted out so that took care of that. Best I can do is the drawing below that shows something like we saw as well as my memory serves me.

Now this gets me to wondering what all of this stuff actually does. Since its pure speculation on my part it may be all wrong???

There were a series of high intensity halogen lights and a number of weird looking stuff on poles facing south east. Some actually resembled cameras and some didn't. I don't remember how many there were, but there were several. Behind all of that it had to be a control and power station in a trailer. Lights were flashing on the back of the trailer.

Perhaps a radiation detector was used to see if any weapons of mass destruction were headed south to blow up Mexico?

Perhaps infrared cameras to detect illegal aliens in trunks being smuggled back south across the border to Mexico?

Perhaps none of the above and they were used for something totally different reason? (Possibly more sinister uses?)

Anyway... The trip was enjoyable, but I ran in to trouble with a Radio Shack employ when I went in there looking for one of the new Magic Jacks that can be plugged in to the WiFi modem and don't have to be hooked up to a computer. I asked the woman if they had them and she flat out told me NO. I asked her if they had any of the NetTalk Duos and she said she didn't even know what that was.

Now when we get back down here Dave asked me what I thought about the new Magic Jacks and he had been in the same store after I was there had found them. He thought I didn't buy one because of the price so didn't even mention finding them before we got back down here.

All I can say about all of this is they need to get rid of that employ and get someone that knows what they have in that store!

Elect Don Mahan

2011-11-30T20:17:00.000-06:00

Dear Property Owners of Terlingua Ranch:

This is an important message about your investment in Terlingua Ranch property. This is a letter to ask for your support, and to ask for your vote for POATRI director for:

                                   DON MAHAN

The resume of Don Mahan is attached.

I am asking for your vote because I believe that Terlingua Ranch has some major problems that must be corrected if the ranch is to survive and flourish.

Major Problems:

1.      Only 44% of the property owners of record pay all the maintenance fees that the ranch collects. Only 54% of all the property owners, that are required to pay fees, pay fees.

·        This is true because there are large numbers of delinquent owners and many property owners that are totally exempt from paying fees. Only 24% of the tracts of land on the ranch are subject to maintenance fees due to the flat fee which allow the large land owners with many tracts to pay the same exact fee as a small 5 acre property owner. Seventy six percent (76%) of the tracts on Terlingua Ranch are not even subject to fees.

·        The number of delinquent property owners has greatly increased since the year 2005 when the flat fee was passed. Two lawsuits have been filed and many property owners will not pay because the flat fee was passed without a majority of property owners voting to pass it as required by the original TRMA agreement. In the year 2011 the POATRI maintenance fee will be increased again to $165.64 by the current board even though they have a large surplus of funds.

         What needs to be done to correct this problem?

·        Fairness must be returned to the POATRI fee system - such that the 44 percent paying owners are not being forced to subsidize the 56 percent non paying owners. This will significantly reduce POATRI fees for the average tract owner.

·        Abolish the flat fee. It allows far too many tracts of land to escape paying a fee. No organization can operate for long with less than 50% of the owners supporting it. Brewster county taxes all the tracts on Terlingua Ranch and POATRI can also impose fees on all the tracts.

·        Restore a base fee and acreage fee like we had prior to 2005.

·        Expand the current Amnesty Program to include delinquent owners. The current amnesty program allows property owners in good standing to participate, but this does not result in any additional revenue because of the flat fee. We need to get some of the delinquent owners paying fees again.



Note the board president (Tanya Phillips, currently running for re-election)) has appointed a committee to study the above problem. However the selected committee consists primarily of large land owners/exempt owners/real estate people who are opposed to any tract & acreage fees and originally supported the flat fee. One of the committee members (Barbara Trammell) is one of the largest real estate dealers/exempt owners in Brewster County. This is like putting a fox in a chicken coop to guard it.

POATRI has a large land owners list. The large land owners, on the list, own 1,089 tracts with 19 accounts, that are billed and 15 accounts that pay. Which means about 12% of our tracts are owned by 0.38% of our property owners. 1,089 tracts or 12% of tracts are only being billed $3,017.00 and only actually paying $2,382.00 this year. Each tract is only paying $2.19 per tract.

This is why the large land owners & real estate dealers want to keep a flat fee. They line their pockets at the expense of the average ranch property owner. The flat fee may be easier to calculate, but that doesn’t make it a fair fee.

2.   The Board of Directors can change all the POATRI Bylaws (except Article 3) and Policies & Procedures without any input from the property owners. The proxy system for property owners input has been eliminated. This has resulted in total domination of ranch policy by only the board of directors.

            What needs to be done to correct this problem?

·        Restore the proxy voting system, so that if 10% of the property owners want some change, it can be voted on by all the property owners in good standing.

Or

·        Change the current petition system so that only 10% instead of 15% of property owners can petition for a change without excessive costs that the current system has.

·        Change the POATRI Bylaws so that property owners must approve all changes to the Bylaws. No longer will board members be able to make changes to the bylaws that property owners do not approve.

3.      The election system that POATRI uses is not fair to the property owners since:

·        The secrecy of the ballot is not protected from board members, the ranch manager, and ranch employees. All ballots and election materials (computer memory stick) are stored in the ranch office. The current Policy and Procedures Manual concerning election procedures does not even forbid the board members and ranch manager from looking at the ballots or other election materials.

·        The person (Independent Vote counter or IVC) selected to count the votes is selected by an individual board member.

·        No poll observers are allowed to insure the ballots are correctly counted. All cities, county, state and federal elections in Texas allow poll observers to insure fairness. Ever wonder why poll observers are not permitted?

·        The ballots are counted over a fourteen day period in unsecured locations.

·        Ballots are returned to the ranch office if they cannot be delivered. Undelivered ballots should not be returned to the ranch office, but instead to the IVC.

               What needs to be done to correct this problem?

·        An experienced, independent outside firm should be selected and hired to mail out all ballots, tally the ballots, and store the ballots/election materials after they are counted.

·        All Policy and Procedures rules concerning elections must be approved by a majority vote of property owners.

4.      The POATRI Bylaws Article 3.01 states: “The Corporation shall have one class of members.” In fact, the corporation has two classes of membership, which are exempt property owners and non-exempt property owners

The exempt property owners have been allowed per the Bylaws, for years to vote and hold office even though they pay no fees. The exempt property consists of:

·        1,132 tracts of land which totals 61,000 acres which is not subject to acreage fees or maintenance fees.

·        The total ranch consists of 192,000 acres, so exempt tracts are 31.7% of the ranch.

·        There are 615 exempt property owner’s accounts which are not billed maintenance fees.

·        There are a total of 4,965 property owners and only 4,350 accounts are billed.

The ranch is expecting only nonexempt property owners to carry the entire load of providing funds for the entire ranch. This is not fair to the non-exempt property owners. It is grossly unfair that these non paying property owners are allowed to vote and hold office. Why should non paying exempt members be allowed to vote in elections and serve as a director to determine how our funds are expended, when they pay no fees? Currently there are exempt property owners serving as directors of Terlingua ranch.



           What needs to be done to correct this problem?

·        Change the POATRI Bylaws so that exempt property owner cannot vote or hold office unless they voluntarily pay all fees, just as nonexempt property owners are required to do. Exempt property owners will still be members if they do not pay fees, but they will be treated the same as non-exempt property owners who do not pay required fees.

Many exempt property owners will be happy to pay fees and do their fair share to support the ranch. I personally own both an exempt tract and nonexempt tracts and pay all POATRI fees.

These are the major changes that I recommend. I pledge to try my best to get these issues passed during my term in office if you elect me.

There is one other director candidate that I consider worthy of your vote. His name is Don Ferguson and I have attached a copy of his resume. Please vote for Don Ferguson.

Will you help us reform the ranch? Will you help us get elected? We ask several things of you.

·     Please pass this message on to property owners that you know or send us their email addresses so that we can contact them directly.

·     Please tell us of other changes which you would like to see.

·     Please vote for us.

If you have any questions whatsoever, about this email, please call or email me.

Remember it’s your money; make sure the current board fairly collects fees from all the property owners. If they don’t act responsible, then don’t re-elect them.

Send this email to your ranch neighbors.

Sincerely,

Don Mahan

12800 Briar Forest #10

Houston, TX 77077

713 854 3169

dwmahan@sbcglobal.net

Turkey Day

2011-11-25T14:21:00.001-06:00

Lots of good food, but not many people to enjoy it. Terry and Jack dropped off the jalapeños for the dressing and also some very good link sausage Tuesday. I cooked and ate the sausage the following morning and it was gone before noon. They were supposed to show up for the feed at the legion yesterday but never made it. Matter of fact a bunch of people that were expected didn't show up. Never the less those of us who were there had a good time.

It was getting pretty warm in the legion and it was real nice outside so a few of us had our dinner outside. Here you see the Foots Bill and Caren, Julianne (Just Me), Chuck and Cathy, Lee and myself. Now looking at the picture I think Littlefoot must have gone inside for more grub. Can't see her in the picture.

That's all Folks! All photos were taken by David Secor. I had my camera, but never remembered to get it out.

Really Big Shindig

2011-11-21T13:00:00.000-06:00

Pictures from the joint birthday party at the legion Saturday.

Zano the other birthday boy.

Some people had already left and a lot didn't show up, but it was still fun.

Excavation

2011-11-19T10:59:00.000-06:00

My neighbor says lately something big keeps digging out big holes around where their septic system was put in. He said he has been covering up the holes and spraying kerosene on the dirt, but each night what ever is doing it just moves over and starts digging again. Now what ever it is has started digging up here and there are huge holes started all over the place around here. I assume badgers?

These and quiet a few other holes were dug last night, but I never heard a thing. Doubt that it could be anything else other than a badger, but I'll sure be on the lookout after dark and will have a flash light and pistol handy to. Its cool enough at night not to worry about rattle snakes now, but I sure wouldn't want to tangle with what ever is digging!

Monitors and Butts

2011-11-17T10:00:00.000-06:00

I recently posted some pictures of me dancing with a couple of ladies and it turns out that Dave at the legion showed them the pictures on the computer there. It has a wide screen monitor. Well it turns out that one of them got PO'ed at me for posting a picture of what she called her BIG butt on the internet so I removed those pictures. I'm sure she wasn't aware of the "Wide Screen Syndrome"?

Wide Screen Syndrome
Now it just so happens that wide screen monitors stretch everything horizontally by a LOT so it makes a perfectly normal and nice looking butt look much larger. Someone needs to clue monitor manufactures in on keeping the correct aspect ratio of BUTTS on their wide screen monitors! I can think of all sorts of stuff that this could enhance in a positive way and one would be the male ego, but not butts unless it happens to be an extremely skinny butt.

On another note Got the link to this from Ring and its a good place to check for shelf life of about any kind of foods you can think of. Worth at least checking it out. I book marked it.
http://www.stilltasty.com/

Local News and Such

2011-11-15T17:42:00.005-06:00

Thought I'd show off the birthday cake my sister made for my brother in law (Ring) and I.

Well it was a cake and a VERY delicious one. (Chocolate cinnamon), but I just polished off the last of it earlier this afternoon. My birthday is today and Ring's was a couple of days ago so he came down and we celebrated together. BTW I'm 39 today. You believe that don't you? ;)

This is the old party table I put together just before the last party. I need to get the blueboard (Foam) taken off and put back in the tank because the sun is eating it up. Once I do that I'll eventually have enough of the spools shown below to take the place of the old party table and be able to use all those pallets for something more constructive. I think three of the spools should do it so hopefully Ring can bring two more on his next visit.

And now for the local news. Since this is my birthday and I needed a couple of things from the store I went in to SB this morning and was going to treat myself to breakfast. My neighbor Robert rode in with me and once we'd finished breakfast Lanette informed me that she picked up the tab. Not only that, but she took a chocolate cup cake and put a single candle in the center and sat it in front of me. Then her and Kim the waitress began to sing happy birthday and a couple of other people in the restaurant joined in and clapped once they were through. Nick showed up after that and wished me a happy birthday and also had good news. You can read about it below.

In other news GOOD NEWS for some of the Terlingua Ranch land owners.
Quote Nick "well to be a little more acurate: I said the attorney for the ranch told the ranch that they are not able to bar anyone from running or voting because they havent paid their dues. Its based off of a law suit in another area . but applies to us.

Basically the same thing. so if any of you who are not paying your dues which are legally assessed to you, want to run for the board or vote then its very good news for you." End Quote

I suspect this will cause a BUNCH of changes with the ranch. I hope so anyway. The Mahan brothers stopped by for a visit last week and Don said he is running for the board again and I told him I couldn't vote because I'm behind on the fees. The new ruling changes that and he'll get my vote now. Hopefully you other land owners will do the same. IF you don't get a ballot in the mail for the next election then you might want to contact the ranch office and ask to be sent one. I'll try to find out when that will be and post on this blog.
Update... According to Lance if you haven't received a ballot by Dec 20th you should call them.

Also more GOOD NEWS. Just Me found out that you can shop online at Walmart and if you order $45 or more worth then they send them to you free of shipping. This could be a very good thing for us down here. Bad part is they use FedEx and the FedEx drivers down here don't give a flip and don't even try to find most of the places out on the ranch. Might be that IF you can catch the driver and tell them how to get to your place they will try it, but I wouldn't bet on it. I think that's been tried a lot of times and seldom works. Anyway I may start using it and have it sent to the Legion until I can see if they can find this place.

Grub Shack news
Ring and I ate at the Grub Shack Sunday afternoon and I talked to Jerry. He said that would be the last day of the meals for donations. He said construction will begin soon on getting the septic system in and then he hopes they will be able to resume normal operation on the first or second weekend of December. Sure will be nice to have a place to eat out this way again! BTW they had some dynamite home made chili, Frito's, cheese and other stuff to go with it and served home made chocolate ice cream for desert. Good thing because the chili was pretty spicy (Hot).

Burn Ban Update Thanks to RV Rover http://alpinedailyplanet.typepad.com/alpine-daily-planet/2011/11/burn-ban-modified-to-allow-some-outdoor-cooking.html

Thanksgiving @ the Legion

2011-11-10T10:10:00.001-06:00

I know some of you following this blog are planning on being down here for Thanksgiving so here is a chance for Thanksgiving dinner on our end of Terlingua. (North Terlingua) I'm not sure what all restaurants down south will have Turkey Day dinner, but am fairly sure none of them will be free. I plan to make the dressing for this again and there may be a dressing cook off between another Legion member and myself. There was supposed to be last year, but he was a No Show so I guess that meant I won? Some may remember that I made one pan of Fajita, Jalapeño dressing and a conventional cornbread dressing. If I can find the jalapeños I'll probably do the same this year.

BTW the Foots supplied last year's jalapeños.

Fun Fun Fun

2011-11-06T07:33:00.003-06:00

Bigfoot made it down here Friday and we went to the legion that evening. So happens that several of the Snow Birds showed up then to and went to the legion also. Sunny pushed two of the tables together to accommodate everyone and a mini party began.

You didn't have to be at the chili cook off to have fun.

BTW traffic from the chili cook off is starting to run north on 118 and I suspect a steady stream will come later on today.

No Pix 4 2day

2011-11-02T18:16:00.003-05:00

Got a few pictures I could post, but didn't want to mess with downloading them from the camera. One was of the north end of 9 Points Mesa blocked from view from a sand storm. Five minutes later it was totally blocked from view as is most everything else within a mile around here now. The wind is terrible right now, but fortunately its basically out of the north and only the north end of this trailer is taking the blows so it isn't too bad. If it was out of the east or west I'd probably be sitting it out in the tank! Once again it reminds me of the time the old barn disappeared in the wind storm.

This morning I went over and helped a friend do a concrete job at his place for a guest hut and patio. Haven't done much since other than running in to Nick at the legion and BS'ing with him for a while. Was nice since I don't see much of him anymore.

Friday a ride share is planned for Alpine and I'll take the trailer and three of my friends along on a supply run. I don't want any part of down south with the chili cook off going on. Supplies will be cheaper and we plan to do the Chinese buffet there for lunch before coming back this way.

Now... I got a call from an assertive sounding voice this afternoon. (Supposedly with the Texas State Trooper's Association) I told him I wasn't interested and before I cold carry on with the conversation telling him they shouldn't call residents in this area while the Chili Cook Off is going on he hung up on me! I was about to tell him they will likely be PISSED OFF at the troopers for harassing locals as well as people going to and from the cook off.

Oh well... I guess I'll go blow my nose since I feel like I've inhaled a few pounds of dirt by now.

Need Room / Guest / Cold, Pain / Cheap Fast Spaghetti

2011-10-28T12:07:00.002-05:00

I finally got around to emptying out a lot of the contents of the tank looking for the heater and moving other stuff around where I can get to it when I need it without having to empty it again. Unfortunately all of the stuff you see in front of it needs to go back in it and that's where the problem comes in. I put it back in there as is and it will have to be stacked back on top of the stuff I just arranged where I can get to it. I SURE NEED to build some shelves in there, but that will have to come later.

I just happened to look at one of the tires under this trailer as I was coming back in this morning and saw the large walking stick on it. I bet it was cold because it was 38 degrees according to the thermometer in the It'll Du earlier. Don't know how these guys handle freezing weather, but if they don't it's time may be nearing the end.

Cold, Pain? Yep... with the cold weather comes all the damn joint pain and my right knee has gotten to be the worst of all. Last night it got so bad that it was almost impossible for me to get up and down. Just bending that knee a little too much caused agonizing pain so I didn't move around anymore than I had to. Getting up and down the steps of this trailer isn't much better than just getting up and sitting down. Looks like I may have to build a ramp to be able to get in and out of here. I'm actually thinking about building a splint to wear when its giving me trouble so I can't bend that knee at all. That won't help being able to get up and down much, but at leas it should help the pain or at least cut down on it. I'm sure I'm going to have to live with the pain though because surgery isn't in my future. BTW... the heater felt mighty good several times last night and early this morning to.

Here you have another one of my makeshift dishes. I guess you could call it spaghetti? Anyway I'd used the flavor packet out of a pack of shrimp Top Ramen noodles for a rice dish I concocted a few days ago and didn't want to trash the noodles. I've made spaghetti like this before, but used the flavor packet though. This time I used half the water called for. (About 1 cup to boil the noodles in. Added garlic power to the water as well as Italian seasoning, salt, pepper and some ground Oregano. I boiled the water with the seasonings first and then added the noodles. After that I placed the noodles in the water and boiled them for 7 minutes and there was still a little too much water so I added about a table spoon of 5 minute rise to absorb the rest of the water. Then I added the last 2 table spoons of butter I had and an 8 Oz can of tomato paste and simmered it for a few minutes. It was actually about as good as any meatless spaghetti as I've had. Didn't have any meat this time, but the next time I get the hankering for spaghetti I'll make sure I do. This makes a real fast batch of spaghetti and could have probably fed two, but I pigged out on it myself. I'd suspect using 2 or more packs of the noodles and maybe some diced tomatoes with a little meat of some kind (Diced Spam should be real good) and it would probably make a good meal for several. (Especially with some garlic toast and shake cheese)

Road Kill / Fridge / Pyramid

2011-10-23T14:06:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I went over to one of my friend's place to check on a fridge he has for sale and we wound up going to another friend's place to watch him and another guy process a 6 point mule deer buck that had been hit by an SUV. The SUV wound up on a trailer headed for Alpine to be fixed and the deer wound up beside the road. Another guy stopped and then the game warden also stopped. The game warden took the head of the deer which is common practice and then gave the rest of the deer to the guy that stopped. Once they got the deer cleaned and butchered I was given a shopping bag full of deer meat, but considering I didn't have any place to store it I let my friend have it. Perhaps I'll get to eat some of it later?

Now... back to the fridge. It was real near the same as the one in the above picture and I put the watt meter on it to see whether I'd be able to use it or not. I have way more than enough solar to run it during the day, but am a little afraid it would drain the batteries at night. At the watts it pulls (147) I'd probably need a couple more batteries to be able to run it full time. My friend bought it sight unseen and really took a beating on it at $300 and I wouldn't pay that for it since its used. Its also an apartment sized and pulls the same watts as my neighbor's full sized fridge so I figure if I'm going to eventyally get a fridge I might as well get a full sized one.

And back to the pyramid... I've decided that the rails wouldn't be good for the corners after all because evidently they were made to flex in a collision. I'm a little afraid high wind might also make them flex so have ruled out using them for anything other than bracing. The guy that has the winch truck has some used thick wall pipe that was used in the oil field and I thought about getting four joints of that for the corners and using the rails for reinforcing it, but alas he has gone up $10 a joint and now wants $45 a joint. He also wants more for the use of his truck than I'd pay so it looks like the big pyramid is on hold again and maybe for good. I guess I'm going to go back to the skid type building I was planning to build before the pyramid idea came up. I do still plan to build a smaller pyramid for more storage, but will use tubing to build it out of.

Local News \Chili Cook off & Burn Ban BS

2011-10-20T10:46:00.000-05:00

Evidently Nick got some bad info about the winch truck. I managed to catch Juan at his place yesterday and he told me that he does own the winch truck and I could get him to upright the pyramid for me. I didn't think to ask how much he'd charge me to do it, but will the next time I see him. This once again opens up the possibility of erecting it as I had planned. I'll have to get a lot done before that happens though and it will be a good while before it goes forward. I still haven't heard from Bigfoot to know what the status of the brackets/hinges I designed is. Maybe there's a Pyramid Raising Party in the near future?

There is a new Mechanic out this direction and I caught his wife at the Study Butte Store yesterday putting up a flier on the bulletin board so I told her to give me one and I'd post it on the blog. I met the guy at the legion once and he seems like a great guy. I haven't had any work done by him, but have talked to people that have and they say he is a great mechanic. He seems to be pretty near full service which is a good thing. If you live in the area or are visiting down here and have vehicle trouble then you might want to give him some business. Im sure he could use it being how they have kids to support.

Chili Cook Off & Burn Ban BS

I was checking on the 2011 Terlingua Chili cook off site and found a link posted to this on it. Above was the email and the link to that is Here

The link to the Chili Cook Off site can be found Here

Now it appears that this only covers the chili cook off and has nothing to do with any of the other area so evidently any of us locals breaking the existing burn ban could stand to be fined $500 or more for doing it. According to this text anyone at the chili cook off breaking the rules would just be asked to leave. There were BBQ pits in use as well as fires at the bike rally, but I don't see that included in the above text, but evidently official were told to turn a blind eye to that?

Anyway... this makes me feel real bad because it insinuates that us locals must be morons who are not capable of using good judgment in BBQ'ing or having camp fires. It also insinuates that 10,000 drinking people stumbling around the chili cook off will have the good sense to have fires or be able to BBQ. Where is the logic in that?

It would really be nice if they would lift the DAMN BURN BAN for all!!!

Looks Like NO

2011-10-17T14:45:00.003-05:00

Pyramid any time soon. Here's the deal... The pyramid deal all hinged on (pun intended) my being able to use my friend Juan's winch truck to hoist the pyramid frame in to position, but he doesn't actually own the truck and has lost the use of it. So... No way to hoist the pyramid frame in to position.

I learned about the loss of the use of the truck from Nick when I saw him at the hardware store this morning. Also took a gander at a rattler he killed last night and threw in the back of his PU. He asked about working with the skin and that was an easy one. You skin the snake and place the skin in Antifreeze for about a week and it is cured and ready for use.

Here is how I had intended for the pyramid deal to work.

Bigfoot's son is or was planning to cut out some brackets I designed to make a 4 way hinge out of and it would have let me lay out 4 of the road rails flat on the ground and then lift them in to a pyramid using the winch truck. My plan was to pour 4 concrete pads with anchor bolts in them to bolt the base of the pyramid bottom to once the rails were lifted in to place. From there I planned to use some of the other rails as cross braces. I'm not beat yet though I'll just have to come up with another game plan. I have plans for a smaller pyramid in mind for now. Just a matter of getting around to starting on it.

Current conditions now is 95 degrees and windy as hell! That was after a chilly mid 50s for this morning.

Sol / Rally / ???

2011-10-15T14:53:00.000-05:00

Started sorting out all of the newer panels I have connected now. I'm still using pallets and they work so well that's what I'll always use for them more then likely. There are way too many panels to try and set them up on some kind of solar tracking, but for now not even cloudy days are a real problem. Maybe a weeks worth would be though. If worse comes to worse I can go out a couple of times a day and prop the pallets up in different directions to get the most out of them, but I haven't had to do that since I started adding the extra panels.

After I first started adding some of the newer panels I wired them directly to the battery bank and left the others to run through the Harbor Freight charge controller. Didn't take long to figure out that wouldn't work, because I woke to the inverter squawking a couple of mornings. I wasn't out of power yet either morning and fortunately the sun started giving me more power before the inverter had a chance to cut out. After that I bypassed the controller and wired all panels directly to the battery bank and used ME as a controller by keeping tabs on the voltage and disconnecting some of the panels when the voltage got to high. That turned out to be a hassle so I got to thinking. (Believe it or not) It finally dawned on me that the controller wasn't working because it was getting a false reading from the panels going directly to the battery bank and kept shutting off the other panels. Yesterday I moved the other panels off the ground and added three more pallets on the south side of the battery hut for them. I rewired all of the ones that were going straight to the battery bank in to the controller like they should be and all seems to be doing well. I still have another 10 panels to add to that bank so will have to add several more pallets before I add them. I've actually got two battery banks now, but the other one is two of the older batteries with about 200 Watts of panels running to them for this trailer.

There's the Ride for Trails bike Rally going on at the BBMI this weekend. I took the camera when I went in earlier this afternoon for supplies and thought there would be a lot of bikes there to take picture off. Turns out that most were out on a Poker Run of something like that and there just weren't many bikes there. I was invited to go to the feet at BBMI by my neighbor about 6:00 and tole him ok, but the more I thought about it I decided agsainst that and stopped by his place on the way back to tell him not to stop to pick me up. I guess I'm going in to another one of my antisocial moods? BTW I hear that every single room at BBMI is booked and looks like most of the RV park is taken up to. Haven't seen it this full in a long time. Of course it will probably be the same way for the chili cook off though.

I'm seeing a lot of this where between the lack of rain until it was too late and high wind a lot of the Yuccas are going south and blowing over. There have been no blooms at all around here yet and I'm sure there won't be this year either. Dang! There goes some good desert food that I won't be getting this year!

Moonrise over 9 Points last night.

A Break

2011-10-12T19:15:00.004-05:00

Watch it if you like. A 2 hour video.

End Game

And a link JohnC posted which I stayed up until 2:00AM watching.

Well worth watching even at 3 1/2 hours long!

Cone Nosed

2011-10-08T14:17:00.000-05:00

Looks like I finally got nailed by one. Least wise it looks something like this on other people I seen bit by them. Its red, swollen and painful. Seems to be getting larger all the time to.

I call this photo from last night "Fire On High".

Pyramid? \ Flowers \ Star

2011-10-07T11:11:00.000-05:00

Got 4 more of the rails delivered yesterday which makes a total of 7 and at 26' long each it opens up the possibilities of the below plans.

A 12x12 room would just fit in the lower part and there would be a ton of storage around that and also above. Of course there could also be a sleeping loft in the top part also. The outside space in the lower part would also open up the possibility of bunks that would fold back in to the wall leaving most of the full 12x12 wide open during the day. A closet and drawers could also be sunk back in to the outer area. This is just one of many ideas I'm kicking around. I think a pyramid 17 feet tall seen from 118 would look pretty cool. What do you think? Bigfoot's son has said he can make the parts I'll need to join the rails at the top and I can fabricate the plates to secure the 4 corners to the ground.

One of my friends has a Mack Truck with a boom and winch that could be used to lift the joined corners to make the pyramid.

My flower garden just outside the door of the trailer. That's about all the wildflowers I see blooming anywhere around here.

This morning just before sunrise. There was actually a star or planet seen through the sunrise and it looked so cool I took this picture. Unfortunately the camera didn't show it so I made a feeble attempt to add one, but that didn't turn out too good either. Maybe you can get the idea of how it looked?

Alpine Trip / Snake ID?

2011-10-05T09:36:00.005-05:00

Made a trip to Alpine yesterday to take care of some business and pickup some supplies. Hopefully the supplies will last me until next month! Ever notice how some supplies just seem to vanish in a hurry though? Like cookies, candy and beef sticks (Intended for Romain noodle lunches) and so on. ;)

On the return trip there were a lot of Monarch butterflies flying along and down the highway and they weren't always easy to dodge. The one in the picture above is one that I didn't manage to dodge. It fell off the grill after I pulled up in the driveway.

It seemed strange to make that trip alone since I haven't done that in ages, but it sure meant making a lot less stops. I didn't even eat lunch at the Chinese restaurant there (which had turned in to sort of a ritual) Instead I just had brunch at McDonald's. I also didn't visit the resale store this time. Guess I'll start putting out the word that I'll be making monthly trips to Alpine in case some of the people around here want to ride share and maybe split gas cost.

Got another 1/10th inch of rain last night over a period of time and with interment showers. I'd left the driver's side window in the jeep, but fortunately the rain was blowing from the north west so missed getting the seat wet.

Took the above two photos early this morning before sunrise because of the fog down in the valley.

Can anyone ID this snake. My neighbor was out digging a hole for a post and he said this snake came out of a hole next to where he was digging. He said it arched up sort of like a cobra does and started coming toward him so he killed it with his shovel. I don't have a clue what it is and he doesn't either. Maybe a Rat Snake?

Back to the Shelbys

2011-10-02T11:20:00.001-05:00

Had to do something different with the falcon this year instead of just a burnout.

You believe that don't you?

And only in Terlingua! With all the high $$$$$ cars there I guess the one below got the most attention when it pulled up with chickens and junk in the back.

We all had a great time again this year.

Shelby Racing Group is back

2011-09-29T11:31:00.001-05:00

Was just sitting here looking out the window and saw the Cobras heading south for their get together. The get together for my members wasn't going anywhere so I scratched that. What a BUMMER! 5200+ members and not one could or would make it. Grrr...

The below pictures are from last year at the legion and they will gather at the legion again this coming Saturday afternoon around 3:00 or 4:00 PM. Looks like Bigfoot and Ring will get to see it this year.

I won't be doing this again this year though. Too hard on tires!

===

Near by Fire

2011-09-28T09:48:00.001-05:00

I saw this yesterday and sure thought it looked like a fire, but the wind was up and there were storms in the area so I finally dismissed it as dust. However, when my neighbor Robert showed up for coffee this morning he confirmed that it was a fire and had his camera with pictures of it. He is the one that took all these pictures. Fortunately the fire fighters (probably with help from some rain) got it under control and put out fast. This is just east of here between Black mountain and 9 points Mesa. Way too close for comfort and if it hadn't been put out the people on the other side of 118 would have been in big trouble. Matter of fact us on this side of 118 probably would have been to because the wind changed to from out of the east later and it was high enough that it could have easily caused the fire to breach 118 and start on this side.

===

Shootin / Fruit

2011-09-27T11:58:00.004-05:00

I'd been wanting to sight in my old Mosin–Nagant sniper rifle for a good while, but yesterday I actually started the process. Got a pretty sore shoulder today because of it, but no bruising.

I took one of the 20 gallon plastic water jugs, filled it about 1/3 of the way up with rocks and dirt (The wind won't blow it away!) and then screwed a platform down on top of it to make a shooting platform. A folding lawn chair is the perfect height for shooting from it.

I use the sighting platform on loan from my neighbor to cradle the rifle while sighting it in.

I shot a total of 8 rounds and the first three were needed just to figure out how to get it on the target. The sites are perfect horizontally, but it shoots high and the site is set to shoot as low as it will go. Looks like I'm going to have to do some modifications to get that corrected. The 6 hits you see were while I was trying to get the elevation correct using Kentucky Windage. Or in other words knowing how far down, up, left or right the bullet will go and shooting either up, down, left or right to get it to hit where you want it to.

This was using the old battle field sights and that's a far cry from using a scope. Not likely I'll ever add a scope so the trick will be for me to get used to using the battle field site and get the group as small as I can. Where we usually shoot from is the tall yucca to the right of the target. I was shooting from another hundred or so feet away from that.

Just measured and that was a 239 foot shoot.

Found several more Strawberry cactus while out doing all of this so if and when they ever bloom again then that'll give me considerable more fruit. (Provided I beat the birds and rodents to it.) Unfortunately this year all they've done is bloom, but they didn't put on fruit under the blooms or at least the fruit was too small to do any good with.

Autumn's here

2011-09-25T18:52:00.001-05:00

As of Friday 23rd Autumn arrived and it had actually felt like it a while before that. For now... Its HOT again. 97 degrees in here right now at 6:51 PM and I'd bet that it topped 100 outdoors, but I didn't check to see.

Chess anyone?

Ref/Sol -- High Speed Love

2011-09-24T13:38:00.003-05:00

I've made some discoveries as far as the fridge and solar go. First one is that with the really cloudy day we had day before yesterday even with more panels that I need for sunny days there wasn't enough for cloudy days. I didn't run out of power even running the fridge, the laptop until late and using the 22 inch monitor to watch movies on, but if there had been several real cloudy days then I'd have been in trouble. Especially since the gas powered battery charger is broken down.

To off set that problem I've added 4 more panels to the two old batteries and am running the fridge off of them and the added panels during the day to give the main bank more time and watts to get fully charged. I was having to wait until at least 10:00 AM before switching the fridge from the main bank running off of the inverter at 110 volts. (Actually less because I only get about 99 to 109 volts from the inverter.) That means that the transformer the fridge runs off of is putting out less voltage to run it. (Something like 10.5 to 11 Volts.) That causes the fridge not to do as good as it should even though its been doing fairly well with the cooler weather.

Now that I've added the extra solar panels to the old battery bank I can switch the fridge to it around 8:30 or 9:00. I also run the fridge off of direct battery power when I switch so it gets more than the full 12 volts its supposed to which increases the efficiency a good bit and it works better in the heat of the day. At night the lower voltage doesn't effect it much because it has a much lower heat load on it.

And for the heck of it... High Speed Love

You'll have to watch it all to see what I mean.

More Storm Pictures

2011-09-20T14:03:00.003-05:00

My neighbor stopped by earlier and said he'd found another piece of the steel siding. I'd missed seeing it because it was about half way between here and 118 (About 400 feet I'd guess.)

Almost looks like a bulldozer bucket scooping up the grass. I think that's all of it unless there's some on top of 9 Points. Yep... Its the same stuff. The white side was just up and the yellow side down.

Update

Raining again now. Saw a fire started by lightning and then watched the rain put it out.

Funnel Cloud / New Fridge

2011-09-19T10:53:00.004-05:00

First off evening before last I was sitting out in the shade of the trailer and noticed a well defined classic funnel cloud emerging from the clouds to the northeast where there were storms going on. I watched it for a few minutes and it looked like it probably touched down, but I couldn't be sure because of the ridge between here and there. At that point I headed in here to fetch the camera and by the time I found it and got back out it looked like the funnel was breaking up and going back up in the cloud. You can see the remnants of it in the picture with it circled with the red oval. I'm not sure something like this didn't happen around here the night of the big storm because on the south end of the trailer there was stuff that was easily light enough that it should have been in the next county, but on the north end of the trailer it reeked havoc.

My neighbor came up with another electronic fridge that actually works GOOD so it looks like I'll buy it from him. Matter of fact it works so good that I may have to add a refrigerator thermostat to it to keep it from freezing stuff at night. at 7:00 this morning it was down to 27 degrees inside it and when I took the picture of the thermometer it was 80 degrees in here and still down to about 32 degrees in the fridge. Yesterday when it was 90 degrees in here it was still at 38 degrees which is more than cool enough to store perishables in. Not a heck of a lot of room in there, but I can live with that. The water jug in the bottom picture will just fit inside it with the lid removed which means I can store a whole bag of ice in it and that should last for days instead of the one day it usually lasts in a normal ice chest.

BTW the outdoor fridge ran out of propane last night and I've now decommissioned it. No more sucking propane for it. Now not only should I be saving $ on ice I'll be saving it on propane to.

STORM! / fridge / Bloger Sucks!

2011-09-17T11:09:00.003-05:00

There was one HELL of a storm here last night about 2:00 AM. Its starting to look like 2:00 AM is the magic time for storms around here now days. This storm was really bad and worst part was that the super high wind was out of the west which put it broadsiding this trailer. I was almost tempted to head for the tank a couple of times and brave the flying sheets of metal flying around and heavy rain to do it.. The vents in here sounded like a jet engine going over heard several times. I felt drops of water hitting me so had to head for the vents and windows to close them and the trailer actually felt like it could go over several times. Note the scattered metal siding scattered around. Before it was neatly stacked, laying flat on the ground and had that steel 55 gallon drum half sitting on top of it with some considerable chunks of wood in it. The wind just flipped it over and the siding took off. This storm reminded me of the one we had when the old pole barn vanished.

More scattered siding.

After I post this I'll be out rounding up all the siding and re-stacking it, but this time I'll be putting some heavy rocks all the way around it along with the drum that got dumped off of it. There's another 20% chance of storms today. Sure hope the Ocotilla didn't get much damage out of this. It was a little more than unnerving hearing the sheet metal flying around because it was actually singing as it sailed past the window in here. I'm sure glad there wasn't anything else in the path that could have gotten damaged. There was another .7 inches of rain in the gauge this morning so between night before last's rain and last night that makes a little over 1 inch. I'm real surprised because only one solar panel got flipped, but fortunately it wasn't damaged. From looking at the Ocotillo now it doesn't appear that the siding bent it over it looks like the wind tried to tip it out of the ground.

The drum that got flipped and the wood is under it.

Got the solar cooker to.

Fridge

The old mini blower I put on the mini fridge took a dump and I'm not sure I'll do anymore with it now because it sucks too much solar power for the good it does. I guess I'll put the butter back in the freezer of the propane fridge and live without the mini fridge in here again. Its cooling down enough to where the propane fridge is starting to work half way decent so I'll live with that for now.

Blogger Sucks

Don't know if anyone else is having this trouble or not. Maybe its just a Firefox/blogger problem or what, but before when you clicked on pictures to view them the pictures came up and could be further expanded. When you clicked the back button then you were taken back to the blog. Now they have the cheesy slide show come up when you click on a picture to view, they can't be enlarged and when you click the back button you are sent back to the history file that you were at before visiting the blog. This sucks and I really wish blogger would quit screwing around! The way I see it is IF something ain't broke don't fix it!

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Mini Fridge \ Solar \ Rain

2011-09-15T16:54:00.002-05:00

Above pictures of my new Mini Fridge. Well it isn't new, but it works. The old Coleman electric fridge potted out when the fan motor died. No chance of getting another one and it actually died so lubing the bearings with WD40 was out. On this one I'm using a small blower out of an old computer on the hot side (Which would be called the condenser in a normal refrigeration unit.) This thing actually uses a refrigeration chip and electricity is the refrigerant.

Since it hadn't worked very good when it was working I hoped that putting the refrigeration unit in the small ice chest might make a freezer out of it because there would be far less volume to cool. Well that didn't happen, but it does cool sufficiently to chill drinks and keep a small amount of perishables in and it runs off of the solar so I don't have to buy propane for it. Problem is the small size, but then it is small enough that it takes up very little room in here. That won't replace the freezer in the propane fridge which will at least make a small amount of ice and I can chill drinks in it before moving them in to the small fridge in here to cool them even more. Later in the season when the weather cools I'll be able to use the propane fridge, but for now it isn't a lot of good. Perhaps one of these days I'll find a cheap home styled fridge or chest freezer to run off of the solar. Believe it or not one of them probably wouldn't use any more solar than this mini fridge because this one pulls 40 watts 24/7 and a full sized fridge would pull much more, but only intermittently. Perhaps 20 minutes on and an hour off.

And for the Solar Part...

Some of you may know this while others may not so that's why I'm talking about it. Those who have solar need to be aware of the fact that you need to keep them clean and especially remove anything that can cast a shadow on any part of them. In the second panel photo just the shadow of my hand in the red square is enough to cause the WHOLE panel to drop to 50% output. That's right. Just that one little shaded area drops the efficiency of the whole panel by 50 percent. Dust and durt can be a real killer on solar panels and I've seen them on roofs where they had dirt all over them and the people couldn't figure out why they weren't working as good as they should be. That's one benefit of keeping them close to the ground where a paint brush can be used to keep them dusted. Its also a lot easier to clean them with Windex and a rag to get the bird poop off of them because dusting doesn't work for that.

And for the Rain...

Got woken up at 2:20 this morning to the loud sound of heavy rain pounding the roof and high wind. It only rained about 5 minutes, but it was raining so hard that it totaled up to just over 1/10 inch. The wind finally settled down around 8:00.

And for Blogger...
Just been viewing my blog and it looks like Blogger has screwed up big time one more time! The way viewing the pictures works now really SUCKS!

Harvest Moon over 9 Points Mesa

2011-09-13T10:50:00.002-05:00

I didn't know last night's moon was anything special other than it really looked cool (Especially the way it was peeping out in a cranny of the south corner of 9 Points Mesa) I decided to take a few pictures and only this morning found out it was the Harvest Moon.

You can read about it Here

And a little Photo Magic?

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Don Briant

2011-09-11T16:57:00.001-05:00

Frann and Denese came by yesterday morning on their way to a tour of Don Briant's domes. Of course they were in the little red dodge truck and there wasn't room in it for three so I was given the choice of riding in the back or taking the jeep. I'd imagine you'll can guess what my decision was.

First structure we were taken to by Don was this unfinished structure and I think it was before the domes. After looking at all of this I think I can pretty well figure John Wells got his inspiration for his Field Lab trusses from Don.

Don has home made jigs for everything he builds. In this case it was a simple, but very effective rod bender for making some of the stuff he uses on the domes and other stuff he builds.

Another jig for making the components for domes.

Here he's in the process of building a giant ball. For any of you who have traveled down 118 from Alpine headed for Terlingua you may have noticed some of his work atop a tower just this side of Alpine. Unfortunately he is in the same boat as me with the DAMN burn ban. He can't weld and neither can I so neither of us are getting anything done. I say RAISE THE DAMN BURN BAN! Better yet vote for someone who will next election!

Another piece that was going to be part of a dome or ball laying out on his property. There are many such components that haven't been used. Perhaps they were experiments gone bad?

Another jig for one of his domes. These are very ingenious! Matter of fact all of his jigs are.

And another one.

One of the many domes he's built from a distance. He told us that him and another guy built several in Houston Texas. Sure would like to see them because they are two story and much taller. He said no welding was used on them the rebar was all wired together before the concrete was added on the exterior and interior.

Here you see Don on top of one of the domes. Frann says he is 90 years old, but he still gets around like a teenager and is as agile as a mountain goat.

After there we went to another place Frann thought she could get a metal satellite dish for the roof of her earth bag building, but the guy wasn't there. The road goes down behind Nick's place and we were going to stop by and check his progress and on the way we saw a pretty large mule deer buck. I'd guess at least a 6 or 8 pointer. Unfortunately I was having to try and take the picture of it while driving to keep up with it and through the windshield so the picture came out pretty lousy. The deer can't really be made out, but you can see the dust trail it was kicking up as it ran down the road in front of us. We did stop by Nick's place, but he wasn't home and as far as progress there doesn't appear to be any since our last visit some months back.

At another place in the road and at an ant bed in the raod we came by this horny toad. You rairly see these any more, but many years ago there were lots of them. This is the largest I've seen in many years and may not have seen over four that I remember in the last 30 years. You see back in the 60s or 70s some AH got the bright idea that they looked like miniature dinosaurs and the word got around that they would sell up north for the cool factor of having one. Hunters hunted most of them down and they were sent off to other parts of the country and the numbers dwindled. The population never has recovered. I think they are on the endangered species list now fortunately!

Skids / Got Water???

2011-09-08T16:55:00.001-05:00

Bought 3 old rails like you see along curves on highways yesterday. The guy I bought them from delivered them which is good because I wouldn't have had a way to get them here otherwise. They are 26 feet long each. I got 3 for $50 which I considered a very good price especially since they were delivered. Now you might ask "What in the heck did he want those for?" Well I've had in mind for a long time to build a skid building instead of building a permanent structure. Reason being they can tax you on permanent building and they can't on portable buildings. I plan to use these as skids for my cabin if and when I ever get around to building it. Being how they are 26 feet long I'm thinking maybe a 12x12 or 16x8 one. Haven't figured that out yet, but it looks like once again I'll be measuring and drawing lines in the sand to get an idea of how it would be living in either size. In other words draw a building plan on the ground to help me make up my mind what I want exactly. I'll post about that later though.

Now for the Got Water?

I highly recommend buying, begging, borrowing or renting a copy of this DVD. It will change your whole perspective on buying water in a bottle. What it boils down to is corporations are buying up rights to water just like the oil companies did oil rights years ago. Eventually the cost of water will skyrocket and flushing a toilet will cost you an arm and a leg. The government is right behind it and some politicians are actually investing in it and buying land where water can be had for selling. You may think catchment would be the way to go if that happened, but more than likely that will be taxed to.

I can't stress enough at least renting this DVD and watching it!!!

You can get to the web site here.
Blue Gold World Water Wars

JAJFLC

2011-09-06T13:39:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I finally got the sun to try out the JAJFLC or John And Julianne's Fresnel Lenses Cooker, but the focus point John had built in caused it to cook very slowly. Matter of fact it would have probably taken hours to cook the 4 hot dogs it was setup for because the area just wasn't hot enough. Of course the wind blowing across the hot dogs probably didn't help any. I jury rigged my rack so that I could cook one hot dog at a time by cutting it in half and placing the two pieces side by side. Still took about 45 minutes to cook me two hot dogs.

Cooking two haves of a dog here. While I was doing this yesterday a large fly decided to sample the dogs. It never had a chance to tough down before it decided that wasn't the place to be. I almost had fried fly to go with my dogs.

Melting the cheese here. Didn't take long.

This morning I modifies the design a little and it took about 12 minutes each to do a full hot dog cut in half and I had two hot dogs for lunch again. I cooked and ate the first one while the second one was cooking. It got a little too well done on one side, but I like them like that. The second one I brought in to eat and then fired up this computer to check email and forgot about the cooker until I started to smell wood smoke. The sun had shifted enough in that short time to where the focus was starting to hit the wooden frame and it was close to igniting the wood by the time I got back out there to stop the process. Whew! Needless to say the lens is covered again now. While I was trying to get the right focus for cooking I threw the t-shirt across the rack so I could get an idea of how big the focus area was. At that time it was almost at full focus and it instantly burned a hole in the shirt before I could get it off.

Looks like using the laser at the party was really the only way to fly though because in the time it would have taken to cook all the hot dogs that were eaten at the party there would have still been a line of people standing out there waiting on their first hot dog. I don't see a future for cookers this small to be used to cook large quantities of food, but its fun to play with and cooking for a couple or three people could be done. If the lenses were about 4 times as large then it might have a future at a party. I had a chance to get a lense that large someone had left at the legion some time back, but at the time I didn't snap to how it could be used and by the time I did someone else had already gotten it. :(

Those type lenses are used in the old rear projection TVs so if you see one setting by the curb to be hauled off it would be well worth the effort to remove the lens!

Update

More pictures of tried modifications. I think its where it will stay and no more modifications.

I made sort of a solar oven type deal out of aluminum foil and connected it to the under side of the grill to reflect any night not blocked by the hot dogs back to the underside of the dogs. I crinkled the foil so it would give wider dispersion of the light.

Then I used a Pyrex pie dish I had laying around to cover the dogs.

I'd moved the rack up and to a position that would allow the 4 half dogs to be covered with the light and tried this out on my last two hot dogs. Thanks goodness because I'm burned out on hot dogs after eating two a day for the last 4 days!

The focused light would have been a little cooler than on the other experiment yesterday, but the dogs still took about 20 minutes to cook. Perhaps they would have cooked quicker, but the hot dogs kept steaming and fogging up the bottom of the dish. At any rate I'm finished modifying the cooker and am calling it finished.

Labor Day Weekend Party

2011-09-04T15:34:00.002-05:00

See if you can spot the two cutups in this picture.

The Foots were down here for the Labor Day weekend so I got the bright idea to have another party. The above pictures are of the guest and this party just broke a record for the number of guests that showed up. (19) Gypsy Jess and Dan were also invited, but they couldn't make it because she had to work. Maybe the next party they can make it. Nick was also invited, but for some reason didn't show?

Some time back I'd given Just Me several Fresnel lenses and it just paid off. In exchange for one given to John Wells by her I was given the solar cooker John built with one. He and Just Me had intended to cook the hot dogs for the party on it, but as luck would have it it had clouded up so that didn't work too well.

Here there was a small bit of sun light peeking through the clouds, but unfortunately it was too little to late to do any good.

I had to resort to the Gazolian Laser seen here along with a cast iron skillet for Robert Dawson to be able to cook the dogs. Now note that with the burn ban outside flames are not permitted and although this might look like a turkey cooker its really a propane powered laser. (Very high tech!)

I was warned by both JW and Just Me that I needed to keep the lens covered while it was sitting out in the sun or it could catch the wooden frame on fire. A 1000 degree + beam of high intensity light is produced. Well I finally found a use for a gag t-shirt that Nick had given me some time back. It was too small for me and didn't have a pocket so was just taking up closet space. It should work fine for this.

Here you have a metal plaque given to me by Bigfoot. His son has a CNC table and made this at Bigfoot's request. I LOVE it!

And here Juan and his wife were in attendance of the party and it just so happened that I had one final payment on the tank. I made it here so now the tank is officially mine. ALL MINE!

Dave counted 19 people at this party, but I only counted 18 including myself. I don't think I missed anyone so that makes the record 18 in attendance. Below is the names of those at the party.

Couples
Bill & Caren, Chuck & Kathy, Robert & Lanette, Juan & his wife (Don't remember her name)

Singles or those without their spouses.
Denese, Lee, Frann, Ring, Julianne, Dave, Don Bryant, James, JW and myself.

Missing were
Nick, Gypsy Jess and Dan

Divide and Conquer

2011-08-29T15:26:00.005-05:00

I guess its my turn to rant again. Just read Old Jules blog at http://sofarfromheaven.com/2011/08/29/a-few-subtle-ways-to-become-a-good-american-and-a-good-human-being/ and I've been intending to post a thread something along the same lines, but just haven't gotten around to it until now.

Note the title to this blog being Divide and Conquer. Well I think that's what's been happening in this country for a long time now. No one seems to give a crap about someone else's rights... they are more concerned about their own rights even if it takes someone else's rights away. Funny how that goes when someone sides for taking someone else's rights away until its their own and then they get all huffy about it. At one time it was just whites against blacks and Vice Versa Then it was the Anti War protesters against the war mongers (Which might not be a bad thing) until the pawns fighting in the wars started getting the blame to. From that time on it has been one group against another group and I feel that most of that is caused by the government pulling the media's stings to get it to start more crap.

If you can divide the country far enough and in to enough small groups with each small group pushing their agendas to remove other people's rights then that's called Dividing. Once the citizens of the US are divided enough then it would be easy to Conquer. Can you say Slave to the Government? Well its almost that bad already.

Now some of the ways we have been divided is non-smokers against smokers, the physically fit against the obese, non-drinkers against drinkers, environmentalist against non-greenies. Rich against the middle classed against the poor, The young against the old because of SS and this list could probably go on for ever.

As long as Americans are divided this country is doomed to fail. People need to QUIT finding faults with their fellow Americans and unite to get this country back on track. Tell the politicians enough is enough and work to change what they have done back like it should be.

Its already been said that all old people need to die rather than get replacement body parts. What's the big deal? Let people smoke their selves to death, drink themselves to death, eat themselves to death, shoot people causing harm to them, their property and other people. Looks like to me that's the easiest way to get people to die. Why make sure they live longer by telling them they can't do this or that.

As for the SS issue now, it isn't the people that are retires, on disability and so on that caused the problem its the so called law makers. You know... making laws that says they can spend the SS funds like this and like that until there are no more funds left. Around twenty five years ago the government was buying TV commercials saying something to the effect of "Don't worry about Social Security there's enough in the funds to last another hundred years." How in the hell did it run out in twenty five years instead? That's easy it was the government blowing it on what ever silly thing they decided they should spend it on and you can bet that most of it was on NO GOOD. The SS fund was never supposed to be used for anything else. It was to be used for social security payouts only. Now the politicians are saying that SS isn't a entitlement its a benefit and can be cut off. Bull Shit! They are only trying to cover their own asses for blowing it in the first place. There is no one party to blame the blame goes on both or all.

Rant over for now...

Booty

2011-08-25T15:07:00.006-05:00

No! Not this kind.

The treasure kind. More solar panels. (Again from my nephew)

And more panels. With more on the way. The two pictures above represent 530 watts so that will put me over 1KW once these are wired in. Should open up the way for a medium sized chest freezer when I can get one. I figure I can freeze jugs of water and use them in an ice chest for a fridge so as to have a usable fridge and plenty of freezer storage. It will also do away with the need for me to have to reposition the panels twice a day since there will be plenty of power all day long even on cloudy and winter days.

More panel mounts which I won't be using for that. I'm figuring I can use them as gable trusses for a small cabin or something like that.

A trucker's tarp. I think this sucker must weigh a couple of hundred pounds. I've already thought of several uses for it. (Ring) Some know him as RN.

Water hauler trailer. (Ring)

Swimming pool / Water catchment? Swimming party anyone? (Ring)

Also lots of pallets from my younger sister's boss and some 5 gallon water bottles from my older sister. Don't ask me how I'm going to get it all down south, but the panels, tarp, a few pallets and water jugs will probably make the trip this time.

I headed for Odessa last Friday and brought the trailer. Needed to take care of some VA business so I can start using the clinic in Fort Stockton and I brought the trailer specifically to haul a free 8 foot satellite dish back on. It had been laying around for just about ever, but it turned out that someone else hauled it off a few days before I got here. At first I thought I brought the trailer for nothing, but that turned out to be a good thing after all!

I'll be headed back to HELL shortly.

Managed to get all of the pallets on the trailer. (22 of them) I did a Google search on the "Average weight of wooden pallets and that came up as Killograms so had to search for a kilogram to pound calculator. I'm sure these aren't the heaviest pallets, but they aren't light either so I split the difference to come up with a ballpark weight of all of them. That came out to 40 pounds per pallet and a total of 880 pounds on the trailer. The weight limit is 1000 lbs so it looks like I'll be hauling them all back and will have another hundred pounds to play with on the trailer. I have all of the solar panels shown in the pictures above in the back of the jeep with the back seat down and can probably get the trucker's tarp back there to. All depending on what else I try to haul back I may have to strap some stuff on top of the jeep, but you can bet there will be a load on the whole rig! I'll probably add more pictures as I go. I plan to pull out early in the morning to head back to Hell.

Birds

2011-08-22T22:29:00.000-05:00

My neighbor caught this picture of a flock of birds down by his house a while back. They came for a visit to my place after that, but before I could get the camera out to take my own picture they were gone. Don't have a clue what type they are, but there was a bunch of them.

138 years to Read (Popular Science)

2011-08-18T13:44:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid I used to love to get my hands on the Popular Science magazines and read about what might be in the future. Amazingly enough much of what was published actually came true and a lot of it is in use today. Popular Science and Google teamed up and you can now go through the 138 years of archives. That is a bunch of reading!!! One of my members of my main site posted a link there about a ford falcon engine breaking a world speed record back in 1961 and I started reading through the whole issue. I found some things that would go real good in the offgrid life like heating your home with solar. A water purification plant that could probably be scaled way down and powered by solar to get decent drinking water from some of the crappy water down here. One of the ads was for a two seat 3 wheeled cabbed scooter thar got 130+ MPG. That would sure go good now!

The fun part can also be the small personal type classified ads to see what was being sold way back when and for how much. You can get to the archives at:

http://www.popsci.com/archives

Assum'in

2011-08-17T19:53:00.004-05:00

Ever had someone assume that they knew better than you where something of yours belonged? Did they? Reason I asked is last Sunday when Frann, Denese and the other neighbor came over here from the Grub Shack and while I wasn't watching someone moved a chain I had laying on the ground. I assume who ever done it assumed that is wasn't supposed to be there so they took it upon themselves to put it where they assumed it should be.

The picture above shows the imprint of where the chain had been laying before it was moved and the red drawing shows how the chain was laying before it was moved. Now the chain wasn't laying in that position just because I chunked it down there like it was laying. It was a marker so I'd know when to stop the falcon when I drove up on the carped driveway without running off the end of it. No harm done because I can always move it back. I mean the imprint is still there.

The picture above shows where it wound up. Note the rim (which I plan to make a wind generator out of). Well it was laying down on top of that box to keep those plastic bowels and other stuff from blowing out and away. Which ever culprit did it had to have dropped the chain on the rim and then stood the rim up against the water tank. I guess they also assumed that a bicycle rim should be standing up and not laying down???

Ever had someone use your computer and assume that you must not know anything about computers or the desktop would look exactly like theirs? So... they change it to look exactly like theirs all the time thinking you would be so glad they did it for you. Kids and young adults are real bad about that and even some older folks are to.

What is it about human nature that makes people assume even though their assumptions are often very wrong?

BTW Yes I have assumed the wrong things many times in my life to.

Door again

2011-08-16T12:01:00.000-05:00

There was a thread a while back about the wind blowing the door in this trailer shut and breaking the glass in it. I had intended to get some Plexiglas the last trip to Alpine, but after the fiasco with the border patrol I forgot half the stuff I planned on getting because of being PO'ed about that. Well I need to blame my forgetfulness on someone beside myself and the border patrol will do fine. Anyway... I had an old mat that used to be used for a desk chair to be rolled around on. (Office type) so decided to cut a piece out of it the same size as the glass that was in it before it got broke. For now that's what I am replacing the glass with so as to get rid of the tape and tarp material over the hole and make it a little more secure and water proof to.

I think its probably made out of Lexan and has a rough texture something like the glass that got broken did so its opaque pretty much like that glass to.

Shown here is the tools used to do the trick with. The tin snips cut it just fine without breaking it which is one reason I think its was made out of Lexan. Plexiglas would have broken if cut like that. (Don't ask me how I know) I didn't have to worry about cutting the circular corners because the glass that got broken was also square and only the window frame has circular corners.

Used the only silicone I had to caulk it and it was black automotive silicone, but should hold up fine and If I replace it later the silicone should come off pretty easy.

On the first post someone said when changing a window in an RV you just about needed four hands. Wasn't the case here because the outside part of the frame was taped to the door so it didn't try to fall out when I unscrewed all the screws from the inside. Once I got the inside frame off I caulked around the surface the glass is supposed to rest on and placed the new window material in it. Then I just replaced all the screws. Easy as pie.

In search of... & Fast Cars / Grub Shack

2011-08-14T09:45:00.004-05:00

Got a call from Dave at the legion yesterday afternoon saying one of my other neighbors (Not Robert) wanted me to go to the legion for some beers (He was buying). I figured FREE beer! What the heck so I headed that way. Seems he had in mind to head south to find a couple of undisclosed females. (You may be able to guess which ones though)

Anyway... on the way south we ran in to some pretty heavy rain storms. Probably the same ones that filled up JW's Black Lagoon. It was raining so hard and the wind was almost blowing the rain horizontally that we couldn't see out the windshield even with the wipers on high. We had to pull over two different times and the second time there was some small hail mixed in with the rain. I did see one of the balls on the ground and it was maybe a quarter inch in diameter, but the others were so small about all you could do was here them hitting the pickup.(about sleet sized)

We got down south and went by the porch, but the two females we were looking far weren't there, Didn't find them at their place of residence or the La Kiva either, but ran in to a few friends at La Kiva so stayed for a couple of drinks there before heading home. When we got back here I glanced at the rain gage and somehow thought it said 7/8 inch, but checking it again while ago it was actually .45 inch of rain in it. Damn funnel shaped rain gauges!

It was totally cloudy most of the day yesterday so we were probably lucky to get about 1/4th of the solar the panels were capable of putting out, but fortunately I was able to get by without running the swampy much and didn't have to use it at all last night because it was nice and cool after the rain. Haven't checked the voltage of the batteries yet, but suspect they should be ok because of not using them much. Tomorrow is supposed to be clear and I think a couple of days after that so maybe the batteries will have a chance to get back to 100% charge? Cloudy is nice for everything except solar. There's another 20% chance of rain for today so maybe more. Or maybe the folks down south will get some. We only saw the light sprinkle at the La Kiva, but otherwise it looked dry as a bone in most areas down there.

BTW I learned from my neighbor that the La Kiva as it is now wasn't the original and that one was a small building near 170 at the entrance to the now much larger La Kiva. While there neighbor asked the bartender if smoking was allowed. He said cigarettes were, but not cigars. Needless to say neighbor wasn't too happy, but the bartender did say he could smoke his cigarette sized cigars out on the back patio. We went back there to have the first drink and it was a light sprinkle and really felt good.

FAST CARS

Just before noon I heard the sound of a high performance engine revving up on 118 just south of here. Before long a sheriff's pickup passed and then shortly after that another one stopped in front of the legion and a line of fast cars turned in to the legion just across from the Sheriff's pickup. I'd already seen several AC Cobras go by earlier. There were other type cars there and I thought about going to take pictures, but just didn't. Dave Secor called me from the legion and told me what was going on. It seems that someone else got the Sheriff's department to block off 118 and let them run full out. Fortunately Dave took the following pictures and sent them to me so here they are.

There were more cars there, but they were only there for a short time and took off before Dave could get pictures all of them.

Grub Shack

The second August Grub Shack Sunday afternoon dinner will be held today at the Grub Shack. (Sunday 5:00 PM Aug 14th) Its for donations only and proceeds will go toward the reopening of the GS. According to Jerry today's menu is Southern Fried Chicken, I think he said Potato salad and Cornbread. If I'm not mistaken I think he also mentioned ice cream made by them. Hopefully rain there will hold off until after its over.

I believe Frann and Denese will be there.

Blooms, Birds, Fires & Clouds

2011-08-11T12:08:00.000-05:00

Only seen one of the strawberry cactus blooming so far and that's right on the other side of the road and on my property. There are plenty more down here, but for some reason that's the only one blooming. I should have some fruit before too long if the birds and rodents don't get them before I do.

A road runner up on my neighbor's back porch. Picture taken by him. (Robert Dawson) Matter of fact the rest of the pictures down were taken by him.

He sent me an email last night saying to look to the southeast at the fire. I'd already turned off the computer and missed the message and seeing the fire. There were storms all around, but not here and its assumed this fire was started by lightning since it was on Burro Mesa in the park. That's fifty miles from here and where Robert took the picture from. It was late so the picture didn't come out too good. According to an EMS person at BBMI they decided to let it burn because there was no way to get to it by vehicle.

Smoke from the fire just south of Bee Mountain in Study Butte.

What appears to be a funnel cloud taken during surrounding storms here. My neighbor saw it and took the picture and I saw it and failed to get one. It seems to be rotating as it dropped, but never made it to the ground.

Border Patrol Antics or (I got searched), Tire

2011-08-08T16:16:00.001-05:00

I was wondering when it was going to happen to me / Us after my neighbor and his 16 year old daughter were singled out and harassed by the border patrol about a month ago. Welp... It happened this morning on the way in to Alpine to take Frann and Denese to catch the Amtrak. First I was asked if we were US citizens and I said Yes. Then I was ask if we live in Terlingua. My answer was again Yes. Then I was asked how long I'd lived down here and I told him 2 years. Next he asked if we had gotten any rain lately and I said yes we got sprinkles yesterday.

Next thing I know we were told to roll up all of the windows and exit the vehicle. We did and then I was asked if I had any Knives?? or weapons on me and my answer was NO. Keep in mind that the dog did NOT alert on the vehicle. We were then told to go over to a metal bench with an expanded metal seat and sit down. It was in the sun of course. There were a couple of chairs there and Frann and Denese moved them over to the shade and sat down. Nothing was said about that, but one officer stood to the side of us while a couple more were to the other side and one with a dog began tapping in different places on the jeep. The dog would jump up to where he had tapped. Next he opened the driver's door and let the dog in. It went through the whole vehicle both front and back and didn't alert anywhere. He got the dog out and went to the back opening the back hatch and put the dog back in there. It had already been there. Again it didn't alert!

Next he pulled Denese's bags and belongings out of the back seat where she had been sitting and then put them on the ground for the dog to sniff out and he searched the bag and her purse. Again the dog did NOT alert. The dog was lead around to each of us and again didn't alert to any of us. Next one officer walked up to me and told me to stand up so I did. He then said he was going to search me for weapons so I said What ever. Woo Hoo! Never been through that before. Can't say that I liked it at all either. After that Denese's stuff was put back in the jeep and we were told we could go. I call this BS how about you?

Oh Yeah!

I was so pissed about that I almost forgot.

Got a new tire at Oasis Tire in Alpine. I asked about a used one and they didn't have one the size I needed so I priced a new one. Total was $97.38 mounted, balanced and included Tax. I doubt that I could have gotten one cheaper in Odessa at Walmart so I got it. Frann and Denese each kicked in $20 on the tire so it just cost me .$57.38. On top of that Denese sprang for lunch and paid for enough gas for the trip up there and back. Now If I'd known that were going to happen I'd have packed a bag and headed for Odessa, but I didn't so here I am. I won't gripe though.

Below is another one of the huge whirlwinds we have down here. That house you see out there is a house with an airplane hanger beside it so that should give you an idea of how big that whirlwind is.

Just had a brief rain storm and got another 1/10th of rain out of it. Sure was a relief because it was a damn hot and humid day with very little breeze at all. It cooled down from 105 in here to 95 pretty quick and is now at 92. See the picture of the rain coming below. It was coming from WAY UP THERE!

===

Grub Shack Get Together

2011-08-07T18:29:00.002-05:00

Went to a dinner at the Grub Shack this afternoon. I was the first there and think I was also the first to leave. (In one of my antisocial moods today) Anyway the dinner consisted of Eva's fantastic Lazania, a salad and bread sticks and some of her home baked cookies (Which were also great) Music was to be provided by Nick on the guitar and Julianne on the banjo.

Doesn't look like many people there yet, but after I left and paid the next to last payment on the tank and drove back by there it looked like a lot more people had arrived. I swung by the legion on the way home to get ice and it was closed with a sign on the door saying to go to the Grub Shack to support Jerry and Ava so no ice for tonight. I think I can get by though.

It was sprinkling here when I left to go to the Grub Shack, but I ran out of it on the way and no sign of it there. It couldn't have done it long here. Guess I should have went back and hung out there, but like I said I was in an antisocial mood, needing a shower and will kick back here after I take a shower. Looks like I'll be taking Frann and Denese to Alpine early in the morning for them to catch their train. Sure hope we don't have a blowout going or me have one coming back. I'll try to find a tire while I'm there.

And a Falcon in a music Video
http://youtu.be/fTqra4YSsaM

This, That & the Other

2011-08-06T14:20:00.008-05:00

Sunset last night.

First off I spent about a half hour cleaning up glass off of 118 where the road from my place intersects it. You see... some jackass threw out a couple of bottles and some more trash out just as they were passing that road and it scattered glass all along the opening to my road and half way across 118. One of the bottles was a Fanta soda bottle as there were a couple of pieces just big enough to tell and there were several pieces that could have easily cause a blow out by people driving down 118 headed south hitting them. (Who in the heck drinks Fanta?) Don't know what the other bottle was, but looked like it could have been some sort of liquor bottle. I took several pictures, but none of them showed the glass very well so am only posting one and it is all the white spots you see in that picture. The glass was scattered for quiet some distance and I used a shop broom to sweep what I could off the highway and had to pick a good bit up because it just wouldn't sweep. Also picked up some of the other trash so that's more trash that doesn't belong to me and I have no way to get rid of it. I won't be scattering it along the highway though! Must have been a local because part of the trash was a mostly used up pack of Top rolling papers.

The Cobras (Shelby Racing Group) will be back here again the last part of September and first of October. I had my first TFFN member's get together last year at the same time. Unfortunately only one member showed up and he drove all the way down here from Illinois. I'm going to try that again this year and hope more members will show up. Just in case I'm trying to line up several options for them to use if they come. One will be the Cow Head Ranch not far from here. I asked Sunni about it and told her some of my member might want rooms there. You can't beat the price at $10 a night, but I didn't have a chance to see them. I didn't see Cowboy Chris' Lincoln there and knew Sunni was at the legion so just took some pictures from 118. I'll try to catch someone there later and do a Blog thread on it.

Next option will be the Big Bend Motor Inn then the resort in Lajitas (where the Shelby Group will be staying) and lastly camping here if anyone wants to rough it. I think BBMI is about $100 a night, and I don't have a clue about Lajitas Resort, but I'd figure a lot more expensive than BBMI. Here for them to camp out it would be free. My group (If any show up in their Falcons, Comets or Econolines) are supposed to meet up with the Shelby Group at the Legion and have sort of a car show there. (the New and the Old or the Ancient)

Lastly... I'm always craving pizza, but the only place around here to get it is Long Draw Pizza which is only opened three days a week. (Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday.) They are also only open from 5:00 PM to 9:00 I think and its also about 30 miles from here. As you might figure it isn't cheap either, but is great Pizza. Anyway I have made pizzas using flower tortillas in years passed and the other night I revived doing that. This time I took a small can of tomato sauce (8 Oz can) put it in a sauce pan, added some Italian seasoning, garlic salt, onion salt and some chopped up beef stick. (Sort of like Slim Jim). Brought it to a boil and simmered it for about 5 minutes until it thickened up some. I heated up a 10 inch cast iron skillet put the topping on the tortilla and added mozzarella cheese and placed it in the skillet and covered it. Didn't take long to cook it and the sauce was enough for two of them. (Which I pigged out on.) They were really very good. Best part was not having to heat up the oven and add insult to the already sweltering trailer.

Two More Blowouts

2011-08-04T10:35:00.000-05:00

We had sort of a Pizza party at the Long Draw Pizza place last night. Frann, Denese, Tyra and I were there. I'd invited John Wells, Neal, Neil's son and Paul to join us, but they chose to eat at the Starlight instead. However, my neighbors down the road from me (the ones that left the booze) Robert, Lanette (Sp?) and Brandy showed up and surprised us and another near neighbor showed up to so it wasn't a total loss.

Anyway on the way home last night I heard a loud noise coming from the passenger's side front followed by a severe pull to the right. I managed to keep it straight and then everything went back to normal. Since it was almost dark and the jeep wasn't acting like it had a flat I continued driving on home. When I got home I got the flashlight and found the above. Somewhere back down 118 there's a road gator from that tire. The whole tread had slung off and that was what I'd heard and felt. Amazingly enough the tire was still up and is still up now, but I need to get out there and put the spare on. I'll probably do that before it gets too hot.

Note the black marks down the side where the road gator hit on its way out. I'd call myself lucky because I have seen tires do that and totally destroy a fender in the process, but I didn't find any damage to the fender at all. Looks like I'll have to buy a can of polishing compound to get rid of the black marks. I was supposed to take Frann and Denese to Alpine on the 9th to catch an Amtrak to Houston and had intended to go from there to Odessa. Looks like those plans are dashed because there isn't enough in the budget for a new tire and to do that to.

Now... yesterday I opened the trunk of the falcon to get some tools out and found that the spare in there had blown out just laying in the trunk. :( Must have happened while I was gone at some time or another because I never heard it happen and don't have a clue when it happened. So now I've got two vehicles and no spare for either. That seems to happen a lot down here.

BTW while we were at the porch at the ghost town yesterday afternoon before heading to the pizza place the thermometer in the shade there said 118 degrees.

Good Neighbor

2011-08-03T14:31:00.000-05:00

Made a trip in to SB this morning to take care of some business, get supplies and take a shower. When I got home I noticed something didn't look right after I'd made several trips unloading the jeep. Well there was a large cardboard box sitting in front of the outdoor fridge so I looked in it to find the below.

I know what I'll do with the above. ;)

Not sure what I'll do with this, but I'll think of something. First will be to check the wattage while its connected and if its low enough I may keep the laptop connected to it since the battery for the laptop died a long time ago. If it turns out to pull too many watts while connected at night then I'll probably add a handle and use it for a portable power supply to run a drill or the like and only charge it during the day when there is enough solar. Sure is nice to have good neighbors. ;)

Update on the swamp cooler is that the belt stayed on it like it was supposed to from about 9:00 PM last night to about 3:30 this morning when I turned it off. It was still on right when I checked it about 15 minutes ago, but I doctored it up again just for good measure before turning it on. I won't be putting it back in the window because sitting it on an ice chest I can direct it any where I want to which makes it real nice.

Sick Swampy er... I need Catchment!

2011-07-31T19:13:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I was sitting in front of the Swamp cooler and surfing the net when I heard a noise and crystals started shooting out of the cooler's discharge. Good thing I wear glasses while I'm on the computer. Anyway one of the Stalactites that had been growing inside it because of the crappy water down here evidently broke loose and the fan started chopping it up in small crystals and spitting them out at me. After that I heard a weird noise coming from inside the cooler so my project for today was taking it down and cleaning it up. Turns out that in all of this the O-Ring belt that drives the pump got broken which is bad news because I hear the particular cooler is no longer made and you can't get parts from the manufacture anymore. More than likely the same O-Ring can be found from other places where it would likely be used for other applications, but I don't have a clue where that might be?

You think the outside looks bad you should have seen the inside. Some of it you will, but I'd forgotten to take pictures until I'd already started cleaning it up.

Part of the inside.

Shows the broken belt

You can see the broken O-Ring here and fortunately it was still in one piece. Just Me suggested using super glue to reconnect it so I tried it and it seems to be doing ok. Not sure for how long though??? In the mean time I'll be trying to track down a new one. If I can find them I'll probably buy several.

The insides

Note the scale buildup around the float shaft. This was supposed to slide up and down and move a lever showing how much water was in the pan. It was totally cemented in half full position so the only way I knew when it needed more water was when it started blowing hot air.

The inside was full of Stalactites and this just shows a few. I believe this is probably from dissolved calcite because of there being so much down here.

Glued together belt back on.

All of the crap I could get out of it. I really need catchment because rain water down here is about the only thing that would combat this problem. Of course which well the water comes from has a lot to do with it to.

All in all the little Swamp cooler is really amazing and who ever designed it was plenty smart! Its super efficient as far as power consumption goes and the design for pumping water from the sump and delivering it to the pad is very ingenious! Manufactures of residential, commercial and industrial evaporative coolers (Swamp Coolers) could learn a lot from looking at one of these.

Remnants of Don

2011-07-30T15:50:00.000-05:00

Sure looks like we should get some rain out of this, but there is only a 50% chance predicted for now. Was 60% yesterday.

Remnants of Don shown from outside. I can see occasional lightning to the south. Its fairly windy now, but not too hot for a change and the wind feels pretty good.

Got the rain gauge Dave gave me put up last night so IF we get any decent amount of rain I should know how much. (at least for right here)

Currently

2011-07-29T08:38:00.003-05:00

Raining.

Looks like Don may make it here so probably more to come tomorrow. This rain has just turned in to sprinkles after about 20 minutes of slow rain.

TRASH TRASH TRASH!

2011-07-26T10:31:00.001-05:00

Photo from http://www.treehugger.com

I'm with Frann on the burn ban and something needs to be done to give us some relief down here. Alpine has trash service or a way to dispose of trash, but we don't. There was a place in Terlingua for three weeks ends where we could take our trash and put it in dumpsters, but that has been stopped. Worst part for us in this area is that it was 25 miles away from here. I was sick for the first couple of weekends it was there and didn't feel like making it and when I did on the third weekend all the dumpsters were already full. (I got there fairly early in the morning) A woman there pointed to a mound of trash toward the back of the property and said I could dump it there, BUT there were quiet a few people there rummaging through the trash looking for treasure and considering I had some personal info in my trash I decided against dropping it off for people to rummage through. Of course that was after driving 25 miles to dump it and wasting the gas for the 50 mile round trip.

With this said the commissioner for this area needs to come up with something permanent or lift the damn burn ban on burning trash! This crap has gone on long enough! My storage tank is getting full of trash! Perhaps help both the people south of here by keeping dumpsters there and a couple up this way to so we don't have to drive 50 miles to get rid of trash!

Photo from http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/the-trash-house-and-garden.html

I really don't want to build out of trash so rather than do the above maybe the county commissioner can use it?

Just Pix

2011-07-24T21:51:00.000-05:00

That's all Folks.

Raining again!

2011-07-22T19:32:00.003-05:00

Yep... Pictures later of the broken window from HIGH wind.

Rain on the way and a very high wind came out of the south and over powered a real heavy stainless steel crow bar I was using for a prop rod to keep the door open after another high wind some time back broken the latch. It slammed the door so hard that it shattered the glass in it. I walked over to the door expecting to have to force it open because of the high wind I thought was still out of the south, but as I opened it the wind had done a 180 and was out of the north. Yep this wind down here is CRAZY! Anyway it caught the door as I was opening it and slammed it back against the trailer scattering the already shattered glass everywhere.

Shattered

It looked like the rain was headed this way so I took a brand new tarp and cut it to size and taped it over the hole. Good thing I did because the wind had shifted for a third time and was then blowing out of the west north west and the rain was blowing directly toward the door.

That thing is HEAVY!

It rained for maybe 10 minutes and is now sprinkling off and on.

Missed Engagement

2011-07-21T10:26:00.001-05:00

Most who follow this blog have seen where I have said Santiago Peak reminds me of a mountain I was on in Viet Nam. That mountain was Nui Ba Den and I was on top of it for about 90 days. I had returned to the base camp from there about 2 weeks prior to the Massacre in the video above. I left Viet Nam on emergency leave I think on the day before this happened. (May 12th 1968) That mountain has haunted me every since I laid eyes on it for the first time. I always wondered what it would be like to be on top and finally found out. Very fortunate for me that my time was up on it before the massacre or my time might have been up for another reason. I can't help but feel bad for those killed up there and their families. For that matter anyone who was injured or killed in that Stinking war!

And for this thread's Zune list...

The Climg by Miley Cyrus

This is one of the ones I put on the Zune for my grand daughters and I got to like it. I'm by no means a Miley Cyrus fan, but the lyrics and music are good. Believe it or not this one usually helps when things are not going good and I'm down in the dumps. If you listen to the lyrics you can probably see why.

One of the granddaughters loved this song and loved to dance to it. I also got to like this song and found that it reminds me a lot of a movie called Some Kind Of Wonderful

Red Red Wine by UB40

First time I heard this song was at the Balloon Festival in Plano Texas many years ago. It was done by a local band there and I preferred their version very much over UB40's. We had a couple of the younger granddaughters with us and they began to dance to the song. (They being about 4 and 6 years old at the time) The youngest is going to Med school and should be a doctor in a few more years. The older one plans to be her nurse. I loved that bands version and wish I had a recording of it.

Chance of Rain?

2011-07-20T12:15:00.003-05:00

There was a chance yesterday, but no rain. Looks like there is a good chance for the next 6 days, but that doesn't mean there will be any!

Zune play of this thread

You Were Always On My Mind sang by Willie Nelson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u5LZ-DN3iA

The eX and I used to argue over this song every time I played it. She would get furious saying that only Elvis should have sang it. I prefer Willie Nelson. How about you?

And for good measure...

Heard it in a Love Song by The Marshall Tucker Band
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUL68ZeclcA

Played this a lot before I left.

Desert Plants (Here)

2011-07-18T12:31:00.005-05:00

Lately I noticed this small tree or bush has really greened up. I'm sure it was around last year, but everything was green then so it didn't stick out like a sore thumb. Its actually the greenest thing anywhere around it and that makes me wonder what it is. Its too small to have deep roots and is also competing for water with the ironwood its growing next to. It must manage water a lot better than other plants around here. I don't have a clue what it is do you?

The Creosotes would be second in line for hanging in there around here. Mesquites are few and far between on this property so that leaves them out, but they seem to be doing much better than anything else around here and are loaded with beans which I hear makes good meal for baking bread and other stuff IF you have a mill to process them. There are a few on this land, but I'm lazy and they are too far away and in grassy areas and I don't want to get snake bit trying to get a picture of one so just use your imagination please. ;)

Some of the Yuccas are starting to come around now while others? Well I think they are goners. I think its much too late in the season for them to bloom and bear fruit, but I guess time will tell.

All of the Ephedra around here looks like it is totally dead so I guess time will tell on that to.

The Sage seems to be greening up, but I don't remember what time of year it is that it puts on the purple flowers which no doubt brought about the old saying Purple Sage.

This is Ironwood (Which isn't even supposed to be in this desert), but it is. No telling how long it has been here but they can live for up to 1500 years and get up to about 45 feet tall. They also grow at a very slow rate. I've been watering this one regularly with ice melt and can't tell that it has grown a bit. Seems to be about the same as the ones I'm not watering and at about the same size. I've yet to see one over a few feet tall down here. At some point they put out small red berries that look about like holly berries and coyotes love them. (So does Pepper) Last year when they were loaded with berries there were days when she would have nothing to do with her dog food and would strip those bushes of the berries instead. They don't seem to digest too well because her poop was always full of what looked like undigested berries. The way she did and I suppose coyotes do is walk up to the bushed and open their mouth, bite down on twigs with the berries on them and them back up stripping the berries off. Ironwood is also a popular hobby wood and it is so hard that it has to be worked like steel. Can be ground turned on metal lathes and so on. A lot of people make handles for knives and so on out of it.

Some of the Prickly Pear seem to be coming around now and others seem to be goners. I think they only bloom later in the season or maybe in the Fall so maybe there's hope for them yet? A lot of people make jam, jelly and wine from the fruit. Last year several of us were lucky enough to sample some that Just Me made and it was delicious. A mescal type liquor can also be distilled from fermenting the pads. Haven't had a chance to try that. :(

The strawberry cactus seem to be making a comeback and as you can see here this one is actually trying to bloom. They put on some really beautiful flowers before the fruit comes under them. The fruit on these is GREAT and taste a lot like kiwi fruit and also make some good jam or jelly from what I hear. Some even make wine from the fruit, but as of yet I've not had the chance to sample it.

Evidently the 3/4 inch and 2/10 inch of rain we've had was enough to trigger the comeback for some plants. Of course as said in an earlier thread the Ocotilla was the first to start reviving.

My new Dog?

2011-07-16T15:31:00.002-05:00

I sit out beside the trailer in the evenings after there's shade to sit in. That means I'm constantly swatting flies. A few days back out of the corner of my eye I saw something moving at a high rate of speed toward my foot. Not knowing what it was reflexes kicked in and I jerked both of my feet up and then I saw what was going on. The character in the pictures was after a big juicy fly I'd just swatted and it fell next to my right foot. it snatched up that fly and retreated as fast as it darted in. Now it sits out there watching me any time I'm out there hoping to cash in on more kills. I just nicknamed it Dog.

Imagine that. Now I've got a dog again to. Shots and fixing not required. ;)

Lighting / Shade / Pictures / Video Links

2011-07-15T10:00:00.003-05:00

Finally got around to adding some permanent lighting in the It'll Du. The two lights light it up like a ballpark.

Finally found a good use for the shade tarp Bigfoot gave me last year. It lets the fridge hut breath and shades it to. Between that and my blocking off a lot of the inside of the fridge with 1 inch of foam it at least acts like an ice box now. It freezes ice (although not much of it) and keeps cold drinks pretty cold. Not much room for anything else in there besides about 8 cold drinks. I'd taken the foam off of the outside of the hut a good while back because all that did was trap all the heat inside the hut.

Took some pictures of a lot of dead desert plants around here yesterday, but decided not to post them. Some of the yuccas that were bearing flowers and fruit last year look like they are really dead now. :( So does a lot of other type plants.

Just killed a small conenose that was trying to chew on my arm.

Music Videos. I was listening to my Zune last night and going to these links as the songs randomly came up on the Zune. Keep in mind a lot of the songs were ones I had put on for my granddaughters and my eX, but I just leave them on there and a lot of times it really depresses me.

I wish it would rainhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-es4Q8AJaU

Out or reachhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHbvfLp2WVc

Time after timehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdQY7BusJNU

Blue collar manhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlVaC1DWrOs

Fooled around and fell in lovehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edtl5W4XNLk

HOThttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzb75m8NuMQ

Ride my seesawhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJETHtCN-zk

I can't stop loving youhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brXNFdeLze4

Precious and fewhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I95xCjQe6Jg

5 oclock worldhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSIGwAY2JBs

This magic momenthttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpePWo56zm4

Sea of lovehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EroRtEUmZcU

What ever my lovehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL7nqcGIPmw

My baby done wrote me a letterhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQaUs5J2wdI

Everybody hurtshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pudOFG5X6uA

Just when I needed you mosthttp://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=just+when+I+needed+you+most&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Mejo NO Like Me! / Abby

2011-07-12T12:47:00.000-05:00

Ran an errand for Frann to pickup some hose from Fred & Mario's place and along the way I saw this.

A small red Racer. I say small (Maybe 4 feet long, but I've seen them about twice that long).

Meet Mejo the young bull. While I was at Fred's to get the hose for Frann Mejo decided he didn't like me. I managed to get out and go with Fred to get the hose, but when we got back near the jeep his head lowered and he started to charge. I managed to open the jeep door and jump in and he stopped. Fred said "He's a good boy and he likes to play." Well about that time Mejo acted like he was going to charge Fred. I think Fred got a little excited himself and backed off rather quickly and Mejo turned back toward me and the Jeep. Fortunately he didn't decide to charge the jeep and both Fred and I made our escape from there in one piece. I guess it could have been the roll of RED hose I was carrying? I hear bulls don't like red. FRANN! you nearly got me killed! ;)

Below are pictures taken of the road to Abby's land and of her land.

Need a bumper? Found this at one of the cross roads on the way to Abby's land. I don't know if its someone's way of marking a rout to their land or just someone trying to start a dump ground. People do stuff like that to help them find their land though. I've seen toilets and other junk like that used. I guess anything handy will work?

I don't remember there being a road going north beside Abby's land before and this looks like a fairly new cut so she may have another road to face her cabin on? She probably lost a little land to the road also if it is a new road.

Looking at Abby's land from the corner

Looking South West from the corner.

On the new road looking south beside her property.

The Legion Road looking East up the hill from Abby's land. They have graded the road to just down the hill heading west and widened it as Dennis told me he was planning on doing to all the roads. However, from that point back to Abby's land it hasn't been graded recently, but the road is in good enough shape. Don't know if he plans to widen it back toward the west or not?

Land Flop / Road

2011-07-11T12:23:00.001-05:00

Just checked and notice that Frann had updated her blog with some pictures taken yesterday so I guess you can check her blog for other details. On the search for the land we found where the road to Desert Rose's land should start from the Long Draw creek bed and I think we found it, but it was totally grown over so no chance of getting there. I guess I should have checked the GPS coordinates before we walked from the jeep because we couldn't go any further in it. Turned out after a considerable walk I checked and found we had gone too far. Backtracking I finally got back to the jeep and found it was parked nearly in front of where the old road was. Like a dummy I didn't take many pictures and the camera was screwing up for some reason so there are only a couple of the trip.

The old Whore House can be seen in this picture, but the terrain to it is so rough that I think it would take a helicopter to get to it. I guess that pretty well shoots the photo opp in the rear.

We paid a visit to John Wells at the Field Lab and he and Desert Rose met for the first time. He gave us a tour of the new Wells Lake and we visited a while before going on to check on Nick's progress. The container Nick was renting has been turned back in and is keeping my old Dungeon and another container company just off the Terlingua Ranch Road.

When we got there Nick was nowhere to be found so we just took a picture or two. Looks like more vandalism to me. ;) Weird what can be done with computer graphics isn't it? :)

On the way back from the Field Lab we ran across these.

Now for the road... I heard the sound of heavy machenry earlier this morning and looked out to see a dump truck drive by. Then heard more noise to the north and noticed a grader coming down my road. My first thought was OH HELL! because the road had finally gotten packed again after the rain so no more dust.

A short time later the grader pulled up in my driveway and the driver got out and introduced himself as Dennis Nance. He siad he had been building oilfield roads for years and was now working for the TR to try and get the roads in the shape they should be in. He said he plans to crown the roads (Which they should have been done long ago) and hopes to get them straightened up. One good thing they did on my road was to haul a load of graven in and fill in the bad area on the way here. Bad part is that now part of the road is powder again, but hopefully we will get more rain before long and maybe the road will be good again after that.

He cut reliefs back in to the side of the road for dranage that had been screwed up when BBT ran my phone/DSL line in here.

TR had better watch it or I may start having something good to say about them for a change. ;) At least they now have someone doing the road work that cares about the roads and knows what he is doing. Hopefully TR will be wise enough to keep him!!! So... If you see someone grading your road now before you start shooting talk to the driver. He's a good guy and out to make your road better and not worse.

New Life / Alpine trip / Coffee / Deer

2011-07-09T19:42:00.003-05:00

About the only thing I can tell that the recent 3/4 inch of rain has done so far is to bring life back to the ocotillo around here. A few days ago this still looked like the skeleton of its self, but now its covered with leaves. The most it has done this year is put out two puny blooms and that was while there was no other growth on it. Those were probably because I have dumper ice melt around it a few times. Those blossoms lingered for a long time and finally disappeared. Unfortunately they probably won't bloom again and also unfortunately they seem to be the only plants that benefited from the rain at all. I'm hoping the Yuccas, other cactus and desert grass will follow. Its probably too late for the Yucca to bloom and put on fruit this year though because they did that near Alpine months ago. Looks like no Strawberry cactus fruit and for that matter no Prickly Pear fruit either.

I took Frann and Jicky to Alpine with me yesterday and talk about a couple of shopaholics! They shopped until I dropped. They made me go in each place and buy stuff I didn't even want. ;) well I guess I wanted what I bought or I probably wouldn't have bought it. Anyway one of the stops was the Family Outreach thrift store there and we usually go there when we're up that way. I'd seen the below part to a coffee pot there each time I went in there and yesterday I actually picked it up and looked at it.

I'm sure its the pot part of an old high end coffee maker, but that was all that was there. After taking the lid off I noticed that it was actually a thermos so for $2 I jumped on it. (Stainless steel bladder inside) It will hold about twice as much coffee as I'll drink in a morning so I'll make enough coffee to fill it and have coffee for two mornings by just heating it the second morning. That's how I usually do it, but the damn moths keep drowning in it and I've had to throw out several pots because of that. Now I won't have to worry about that anymore because of the lid.

The way I make coffee here is to use an old Mr Coffee type coffee maker, but I don't plug it in. I put the filter and coffee in the basket and then slowly pour heated water from a pan off the stove through the filter/coffee. It works well, but without the heat element working on the maker the coffee cools off real fast with the low humidity and cool mornings. By the time I finish a cup I either have to pour the coffee back in the pan and warm it up or pour it in the pan and keep the burner going real low to keep the coffee hot. This morning I used my new prize and poured the coffee in it and didn't have to reheat the coffee at all. I checked about an hour ago and it was still warm enough to drink, but in the mornings now I won't have to keep heating it I can drink the whole pot without bothering.

Well maybe the rain has done more. I was sitting out by the trailer in the shade about 30 minutes ago and saw something moving across the road from here. Maybe 100 yards. It was a mule deer doe foraging. I was as quiet and slow as I could be to go inside and get the camera. When I got back out side it had dropped off the hill so I started walking down the road and startled it when it came back in to view. It was cutting a high speed trail by the time I could snap this photo. This is by far the closest I've seen a deer to here so far. I have seen their droppings around here before though.

Grub Shack update / Stores or Not?

2011-07-07T12:22:00.000-05:00

I talked to Jerry at the legion a couple of days ago and asked about the GS. He said they are still trying to cut through the bureaucratic BS, but he thinks they will be open again within the next two weeks. Sure hope so and so does most of the other people out here (other than maybe a few of the big TR supporters)

On another note I talked to the guy that Nick, Dave and myself heard say they were going to build a store almost directly across from my place on 118 the other day. He said that some time back, but now he says that was a rumor? I wonder who started it??? I didn't!

I also talked to the guy that was thinking about putting in a store across from the GS and he said they are still thinking about it, but after all the BS the GS has been going through they are having second thoughts. I'm hoping that once the GS reopens he will decide to go ahead and build the store, but that's yet to be seen.

Final Plea (Pups)

2011-07-06T13:53:00.001-05:00

Hello, I am David Secor. Many of you are familiar with the Great Dane problem from David's (Tffnguy's) previous post. These are NOT my dogs, yet I have been doing my best to take care of them since the owner has left the area. Originally, there were 17 dogs, but some have been adopted now, with the owner's permission. In spite of that, there are still many dogs left. In order to properly feed the pack, it requires about $100 in food a week. Unfortunately, neither I, nor my family, can take on that extra burden much longer. I was approached by the Sheriff's department today, and within a few days I need to get rid of these dogs. If anyone wants to adopt one, the time is now. I am contacting the humane society in Alpine, and if they have room, they will be placed there. Otherwise they will have to be put down, which is the worst possible outcome, in my mind. These dogs deserve a good home, and I simply cannot be there 24/7 to provide that, with my other obligations.

Thank You,
David Secor

07/04/11 Parade

2011-07-05T09:47:00.002-05:00

Dan and Gypsy Jess picking up candy along the road.

Frann on her scooter. Beat out of the winnings by the canoes going down the road.

Note the Budweiser 4th of July addition cans being dragged along. What we have here is a seriously crazy woman. ;)

Your Tax dollars at work.

The following are Sunni and her dad Chris (Owner of the Cow Head Ranch). They did this last year on a higher hill further to the east, but had a blowout on the horse trailer and missed the parade yesterday. They did this at the hill next to the EMS complex where all of the festivities were going on after the parade. Pretty cool even though they weren't on a much higher and narrower hill this time.

My first ever car was a 57 Ford Fairlane 500 pretty muck like the one below, but it was a hardtop instead. Mine was coco brown and cream in the same paint scheme with a coco top. Boy do I wish I still had that car!!! Of course there are a lot of other cars I wish I still had though, but the 57 was my all time favorite.

I failed to catch the legion vehicle going by because I got distracted by other things going on.

Pups Need A Home!

2011-07-04T12:20:00.004-05:00

What more can be said?

They are cross between a Bluetick Hound male and two different Great Dane females. They will all be very large dogs. There are two litters to choose from. The last litter are smaller (from a black female) and are more black dominant. The first litter are mainly brown with black spots and markings.

RAIN!

2011-07-01T17:00:00.005-05:00

Yep! Its really coming down and this trailer is Rock'in and Roll'in!

A good 25 minutes of Hard Rain and its still raining lightly! :)

I think its over. Called Frann ans she said no rain there. :(

Final rain tally was 3/4 inch.

No One Recognizes Me!

2011-06-30T11:16:00.003-05:00

Now that I'm usually driving Frann's old ride no one recognizes me or thinks I'm Frann one. Her dogs still think its their ride to and jump through the windows when I pull up to her place (If I don't have the windows up too far for them to jump through. ) They are also hell to get out of it once they get in. I wonder if the below solution would cure both problems?

What Ya Think?

And on another Note...

It got pretty cloudy around here yesterday afternoon and I didn't want to be without the Swampy last night so I left it off all afternoon and just opened the two windows with screens on them and left the door open with the screen door closed. It was windy enough and the humidity was low enough that it wasn't bad in here. Cloudy days sure do cut down on solar power!

Looks like we may have some cloud cover off and on for the next several days so I guess I better get used to going with out the Swampy for a while.

Jicky's Land

2011-06-28T10:30:00.001-05:00

I went by yesterday and picked up Frann and Jicky to go and try to find Jicky's land. Didn't have much luck at all because it looks like the road is pretty well grown over.

This was looking back at the direction we had to park the jeep and walk in. Never got close to her land though. They... (Frann and Jicky) thought maybe we could get to the land by going down Long Draw (A dry creek bed most of the year) since the road seemed to be impassible. That didn't work.

Frann seen here after saying "To heck with this!" and heading back to the jeep. Jicky is a fast walker and neither Frann nor I could keep up with her. Frann did take an alternative rout up a lower bank to see if she could find the old road, but where she went up there wasn't any sign of it. Jicky finally walked back to where I was and then we started trying to find frann, but she had pulled a disappearing act. We finally found her about a half mile further down on 170 and went to pick her up. To me it looks like the next step would either be to walk the road in and see how bad it is, but considering the distance the land is off of 170 that would probably be about a 4 mile hike and probably too far to walk in this high heat we are having.

Land as seen from Google Earth.

I've been intending to take a picture of this to post on my TFFN site because it is an old Ford Falcon Econoline. I finally stopped and snapped this picture on the way back home.

Good Trade / Odessa Trip

2011-06-26T12:27:00.003-05:00

A few days ago Frann made mention that she might try to trade her neighbor her jeep for a small pickup he has. I said I'll trade you title for title for the F-150 pickup I bought from my neighbor a while back. She liked the idea so her and Jicky came over late last night to do the trade, but I wanted to be able to follow them home to make sure there wasn't any trouble so she took the jeep back home and I delivered the truck this morning. The pickup is much more suited for what she needs (Hauling dirt, gravel and stuff like that for helping build her earth bag house.) The jeep will work much better for me because I won't have to do a bunch of work on it before I could get it on the highway. I can also use it now. I think the trade came out good for both of us. Of course now more than likely she will be catching rides to Alpine with me instead of me catching rides with her. Jicky will likely be going to when we go.

The last three pictures were as we passed the Monahans Sandhills state park on the way back from Odessa. Growing up as a kid, through high school and for a few years after I got out of the Army my family and later friends and I spent a lot of time at that park. Sand surfing was a lot of fun there, but walking back to the top of the dunes after surfing down them was killer! Lots of fond memories of that park and considering the area around Odessa is basically desert like Terlingua is that was about the only attraction around that area many years ago. No water within about 100 miles and hundreds of miles to large lakes or 600+ miles to a beach so we made do with sand. Of course now that the area has grown up there is a large water park, malls and about anything else a person could think of to do.

In the last picture there is an arrow pointing out dwarf oak trees or in this case Oak bushes. The Sand hills are more or less covered with them and it is the largest oak forest (If you could call it that) in the world as the sand dunes cover a vast area of west Texas. The sand dunes are remnants of the Permian Sea that covered much of west Texas eons ago.

Ripe Tomatoes. :)

Almost, but NO

2011-06-22T09:21:00.004-05:00

There was a large storm yesterday evening to the north and it looked like we we might get some heavy rain here. The storm was almost on top of this place when it abruptly changed course and bypassed here by heading to the south west. There were a few sprinkles here and I actually took a shower while it was sprinkling. There's no roof on the shower so I was getting the sprinkles along with the shower water and it felt pretty good. After that I could look to the west and see what looked like pretty heavy rain between here and the mountains to the west. There's another 20% chance today so maybe we will get some rain, but Frann Jicky and myself are going to be heading for Odessa so if it does we won't be here to see it.

Was going to upload photos, but it looks like another Blogger bug has reared its ugly head and the pictures will upload, but not display.

Damn Blogger!!! Why can't they just leave it alone while its working? I.e. If it ain't broke then DON'T Fix it! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Frann, Jicky, Just Me / Radio Fundraiser

2011-06-18T13:06:00.002-05:00

Headed south this morning for a few supplies and to take trash in to get rid of it. Had breakfast at BBMI with Frann & Jicky while I was down there. I finally got to meet Jicky also known as The Desert Rose so now there's another great woman in the area. Didn't know that Just Me was also coming, but she did so we 4 had a good breakfast before heading our own way. I learned that I am to be the Pimp, in a photo shoot before long so I guess I need to be practicing up on how an early 19th century Pimp should look. ;) Dang... Can you imagine me a Pimp???

While we were all sitting on the bench in front of the BBMI cafe a woman was putting up fliers for the RADIO FUEGO fundraiser so I told her to give me one and I'd post it here. Sounds interesting and of course Frann accused me of taking it for the picture of the Hot Babe. I DID NOT TAKE THAT FLIER FOR THE PICTURE OF THE HOT BABE! I don't care if it is now plastered on the wall in here!

Oh and BTW Pepper/Athena IS BACK again! :( Now what am I going to do to keep that CRAZY mutt from coming back??? Maybe if I quit feeding her and don't leave water out for her?

Sherri Needs Your Help / Athena

2011-06-16T14:48:00.002-05:00

Well we all know her as Pepper. I'm babysitting her for at least today. When I opened up the door for the first time this morning she walked up so I guess she had been out there for a while. The owners (Sherri and Girls) are out of pocket so she decided to come visit me. Right now she's under the trailer in one of her old digs.

Please click on the link below to see what Sherri is having to go through once again. In my opinion Mr. Ramos is a sawed off asshole with a Napoleon complex. (Just my opinion) I think a lot of other people think so also.

http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Opinion/091726-2011-06-14-please-help-us-protect-our-rights.htm

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Lunch / Heat / No Ice / Smoke - Solar

2011-06-15T11:23:00.003-05:00

Cheese substitute?

Well its a little crunchy, but not bad at all. Problem is that the Cheez-Its go good with peanut butter and just for snacking so they are hard to keep around. I guess each time I buy a box I could save some back in a baggy and only use them for sandwiches though. I have about enough left for one more sandwich. I think I'll try Cheetos for today's lunch though. The mayo was compliments of Chick-fil-A and my family saving stuff like that for me. The Jalapeno wasn't so good because they haven't been refrigerated since I opened the can a couple of weeks ago and then put them in a peanut jar. They are like Vlasic pickles (They just need to be kept cold!!!) I've come to the conclusion that buying tuna in packets isn't the most economical way to go because there is more in a can, the cans cost less (at least down here) and I can easily eat a whole can in one meal. Now Spam and other canned meats is a different story.

Heat advisory until Thursday goes like this.
... Heat advisory in effect until 7 am CDT Thursday...
... Excessive heat warning is cancelled...

The National Weather Service in Midland/Odessa has issued a heat
advisory for the Presidio valley... The Big Bend area... and Terrell
County... which is in effect until 7 am CDT Thursday. The excessive
heat warning has been cancelled.

* Temperature... day time highs 110 to 115. Night time lows 75 to 80.

* Heat index... 105 to 110.

* Impacts... sunstroke... heat cramps... or heat exhaustion is
likely with prolonged exposure and physical activity.

Precautionary/preparedness actions...

If you plan to be outside... avoid prolonged exposure or strenuous
physical activity. Drink plenty of non alcoholic or non
caffeinated beverages. Wear lightweight... light colored... loose
fitting clothing... a hat to shield yourself from the sun... and use
sunscreen to reduce possible sunburn.

Humidity is staying in the mid to high 20s and not the usual 6% or so which doesn't help a bit!

To add insult to injury the damn ice company that is supposed to supply the Legion keeps bringing too little ice and selling it all down south so the truck just whizzes past the legion. They are out again and no telling when they will get more. Could be days or even a week which means if you want ice then you drive 22 miles to Study Butte. Looks like everything here is going to be Cowboy cold like it or not because I can't make a trip down and back every day for ice. I may fire the fridge back up and at least keep a few sodas in the freezer (Which doesn't freeze anymore on the hot days.) Which days aren't HOT?

The smoke is back today and the mountains are once again just silhouettes and the heavy smell of smoke is back. Boy! Am I really loving this place more all the time! NOT!!! Anyway the smoke in the air is effecting the solar panels so I've been having to run the generator some to make up for it. It looks like running the swamp cooler most of the night is going to have to stop to so sleeping may be a problem except in the wee hours of the morning.

I scrounged up some antibiotic samples and am taking it in hopes it will help me get over this crap. (What ever it is) I still feel like warmed over death and some around here tell me I look like it to.

And Life in Terlingua goes on....

Tomato Report / Feeling lousy! / Fire!

2011-06-14T08:36:00.004-05:00

Roma is misspelled in the last picture. (Sorry too late to change that now.)

Well it looks like the Early Girls don't like it down here too good. (Can't say that I blame it for this time of year) Note the second picture. I can't tell it has changed much at all since Just Me gave it to me. Of course the soil isn't Miracle Grow like the Roma is growing in, but still I'd think it would have actually grown some. If the tomato on it has gotten any bigger I can't tell it. I guess it has another disadvantage to though and that is that its growing outside where the Roma is still inside. Both plants get about the same amount of sun light because the Early Girl is on the east side of the trailer and doesn't get the really hot afternoon sun.

Picture three shows where all 6 of the tomatoes are on the Roma, but one is hidden from view by two larger ones. One is actually pretty large and hasn't started ripening yet where one is about the size of a large cherry tomato and its almost fully ripe now. The Roma plant its self doesn't seem to be getting any larger, but it is still putting on blooms and looks like more tomatoes will come from it. The Early girl is not adding any blooms at all so the one tomato may be all it puts out and if it dies before it ripens then I won't get any off of it unless I fry up the one green one. From what I've read tomato plants will only put on blooms while its below or in the low 70s and so far it only gets down in the low 70s even early in the morning. I guess as long as that holds up maybe the Roma will keep doing good. It also gets the added benefit of the added humidity from the swamp cooler and the cooling from it even though it usually gets up to the low to mid 90s in here in the afternoon, but at least it doesn't see the 110 and higher the Early Girl is seeing about every day.

Some pictures from night before last.

And on another note I've been feeling like pure crap for about the last 4 or 5 days and this morning that hasn't changed any either. Frann lined me up with a ride to the VA in Big Springs yesterday, but I turned it down because I doubt that I'd have been admitted so would have been stuck there until I could have gotten a ride back or at least a ride back to Odessa. My little sis said she would have gone and picked me up, but by the time I talked to her the ride was already gone. I'm planning to ride to Odessa with Frann next week so will probably see if I can get some help at the VA clinic there if I don't start getting better.

Where's The Fire?

Looked out the window while ago and saw smoke everywhere and the thick smell of it. It is so smoky that I thought it must just be over one of the hills so I called Frann and ask if it was smoky there. She said Yes and very thick. Made me feel a little better knowing it wasn't just over the hill and headed this way. Maybe its in Mexico? That's the direction the wind is coming from. I guess I better stay inside as much as I can to save my lungs from getting any worse.

Pictures of my neighbors place and 9 points. Most of the other mountains around here can't even be seen.

All those Clouds / More Gov BS?

2011-06-10T11:43:00.001-05:00

And no Rain here.

Maybe tonight or tomorrow? I think there's a 10% chance tonight and 20% tomorrow and that's about it. There was a hell of an electrical storm going on it the clouds in the second picture and I took 79 photos trying to catch some of it and missed it every time. The wind was out of the southeast while one storm was going on back in the southeast and after the storm moved out there was a heavy smell of smoke in the air. I'm wondering if maybe lightning started other fires?

And on another note I wonder how this will effect us down here? More Border Patrols maybe as if there weren't already too many!
state-congressman-pushing-for-violence-crackdown

Food N Trash / More Government BS.

2011-06-09T11:24:00.001-05:00

Lunch yesterday. With the fridge not doing much more than burning up propane I've decided to do away with it until a cooler season comes along. I also plan to start buying as little ice as I can because that is pretty darned expensive. I guess I better get used to drinking Cowboy Cold drinks and that could range from 75 degrees in the morning to around 90 at the end of the day. Just something that is going to have to be done. I love cheese, but keeping it requires cold so I decided to go to the next best thing. That's Kraft Easy Cheese in a can because it doesn't require refrigeration. I'm going to start eating Vienna Sausage again even though I've gotten to where I don't care much for them. They are fairly cheap, they are meat, they are packed in aluminum cans for easy recycling along with soda and beer cans and one can will make a meal so no left overs that have to be refrigerated. Even the small cans of Spam are too much for one meal so I guess that's out even though it is also packed in aluminum cans. BTW the sauce in the picture was Arby's sauce and hot taco sauce from Taco Bell. I have a lot of both and they also don't require refrigeration.

I was going to cut the fridge up and re work it by using a medium sized ice chest which would probably allow me to keep a small abount of stuff cold enough and maybe expand the freezer capicity some to, but I'd forgot it has a metal case and the only way to cut that would mean using a grinder with a metal cutting blade in it. That would cause sparks though and would be against the burn ban so that's out for now.

TRASH

Rumor has it that the county commissioner for this area is going to have several dumpsters placed on county property next to the little airport between Terlingua and Study Butte. They are for the people down here to have a way of disposing of trash since we can't burn it. That's all well and good, but its also about 25 miles away from here. Once more we in this area get the shaft.

More government BS

Use to be here in Texas that when you bought a vehicle all you had to do was take the title to the courthouse and have it transfered after paying the tax. Then it was changed to where you had to show proof of insurance on that vehicle. That wasn't bad because I think everyone should have an insured vehicle.

Now here is the BS! Now to transfer a vehicle you have to have proof of insurance AND show proof of an inspection. This is all well and good except in a case like the pickup I bought which hadn't been registered in years. It means that I'd have to drive the vehicle to the nearest inspection station which could mean driving a vehicle 60 miles to Alpine with expired tags, sticker and registered in someone else's name. Perhaps I could make it without being pulled over and given multiple tickets and maybe not since Alpine has Sheriff's deputies, State troopers and city police and I've yet to go there that I didn't see several of all three.

Now the pickup needs a lot of work so that means it will be a good while (Probably months) before I could get it inspected and also means that I can't have it transferred to my name until that happens. I'd call this latest law BS!

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How to Get to Nick Cooper's Place

2011-06-08T14:12:00.000-05:00

Being how Nick Cooper (AKA Offgridterlingua) has it in his head to use a picture of me in his Blogger Profile and has been told a number of times to cease and desist with no change this is a PAY BACK.

3rd part of 3 to be added tomorrow. Stay tuned.

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Just Me's Loft

2011-06-06T11:31:00.002-05:00

I took some pictures of this setup with Just Me's camera because I forgot my own and she was supposed to send them to me and hasn't so.... Here is my feeble attempt to show what went on last Saturday. Nick, Bob and myself went over to Julianne's (Just Me) place about 8:30 Saturday morning to help her setup the first part of her loft. She had taken 8' 2x6 planks and sandwiched OSB board between two of the planks to make beams to support the Z Purlin. She had made a total of 6 beams this way. What we did was to lift doubled Z Purlins up to the top of the beams which were not yet secured to the walls. That meant two people carrying the 19 foot long doubled Z Purlins up 6 foot ladders and the other two people on the ground holding the beams so that they could be leaned out some so the Purlins could be placed in the notches Nick had cut in the top of each beam. Then the beams were forced back up against the walls and secured to the walls. I think the width will come out to about 12 or 14 feet, but I'm not sure which. Julianne's next step will be to cut 2x6 wooden planks to the proper length to fit in the cradles made by the bottoms of the purlins and then cover the top with 3/4 inch plywood which will be the floor. I think this will eventually become a living area, but will be used for storage until then. Should be plenty stout for both. Between cutting the purlins to the correct lengths, doubling them and screwing them together to make one unit out of each set, notching the top of the beams and the rest of the work it was around 3:30 or 4:00 Saturday afternoon when we finished. For lunch Julianne provided turkey breast sandwiches with all the trimmings and cold drinks for then and breaks through out the day. She has a fully functional restroom under it (With septic system and catchment) and plans to add a fully functional kitchen under the other side. She is on grid so powering appliances and so on won't be a problem. The finished loft will either be about 19' x 12' or 19' x 14'. There were a total of 4 doubled purlins to be put up because the center beams had a set on each side where the other two beams only had one set on them.

For those who don't know Z Purlins are made out of about 16 gauge steel and just one 19 foot long is pretty heavy and doubled they were a hand full to say the least.

Tote in a Moat

2011-06-03T22:28:00.000-05:00

Finally set out the Early Girl tomato plant Just Me gave me. I had two different sized totes so drilled a few drain holes in the red one for good drainage and placed it in the larger blue tote for it to act as the drain pan like on any planter. Unfortunately it is too large to be inside here and I think the reason the first tomato plant is doing so good in front of the east window (Now it is loaded with tomatoes) is because of the humidity and usual cooling from the swamp cooler. Horn worms are another problem down here (and in a lot of other places) as they like to have destroyed my neighbor's tomatoes last summer and they probably can't get in here to do the same. I'm almost out of the quarter inch mesh I like to cover outside plants with to keep critters and birds from getting to them so probably need to get another roll of it because those things will screw up tomato plants as well as other plants. I placed the plant on the east side of the trailer so it will get morning sun, but be shaded from the HOT afternoon and evening sun. My 8 foot wooden fence took care of that back in Plano.

BTW I used about 50% peat moss mixed with about 50 potting soil that Just Me also gave me and about 10% miracle grow potting soil.

RAIN! well Maybe SPRINKLES

2011-06-01T08:47:00.000-05:00

I kept watching thunder heads build around here late yesterday afternoon, but they all seemed to collapse about the time the sun was going down. Never the less a storm did come through and it more or less came a sprinkle for about an hour last night. I only saw signs of standing water in one place and that was in an inverted smoker lid. Hey... Its a start and I think there are supposed to be more chances this week. Of course it will probably be muggy today, but at least the temp is supposed to be a good bit cooler for at least the next 5 days.

Last night's Photos.

52% Humidity / Pig Roast (Legion)

2011-05-30T10:57:00.004-05:00

Humidity here was 33% yesterday and it got up to 112 here. 94 degrees here inside the trailer was the best the swamp cooler could do at that higher humidity level. I think the norm is somewhere between 2 and 6%. It is even worse today with a humidity of 52%. :( At least tomorrow there is a lowly 20% chance of rain. We can always hope! Its the pits with all the humidity and no rain to go with it!!! I spent about three hours at the legion yesterday during the worst of the heat and before there was any shade to get under. Then I came back and hung out in the shade the rest of the afternoon and evening until almost dark. I couldn't hack it in here with the high humidity and 94 degrees. I was sweating like a two bit gambler in a million dollar poker game. Nick also wound up at the legion for a cool place to hang out. I'm tougher than him though because I left first to come home. ;)

I've tried several things to divert the air from the swamp cooler to the couch because it gets too warm there during the afternoons for a nap. None of the other things I tried worked out real good so I decided yesterday morning to make something that will work and would be easy to add when needed and easily taken off when I was in front of it at the computer. I took a medium sized tote and cut out part of the side that faces the couch and the above picture is how it came out. Works pretty darned good since all I have to do is hang the handle to the tote over a screw I put in the top of the swamp cooler. As a matter of fact I ran the cooler with it on there until about 5:30 this morning and I slept on the couch where it was halfway cool. It would have been much later before I could have got to sleep on the bed with the heat in here.

Saturday was a free supper at the Legion and boy was the food GOOD! There was also a lot of it left over. Wish the fridge worked good enough to store food and I'd have brought some home. This was a pig roast with Lee supplying the pig, Juan did the cooking of it and Dale did the skinning and prep. It was slow cooked for about 20 hours and was so tender it was falling off the bones. Yum Yum Pulled Pork! There were also home made roles made by Sherri, beans, baked potato wedges, greens and I'm not sure what all else. There was so much to eat including Watermelon and cantaloupe that I couldn't possibly try it all. Nick supplied the entertainment and did a great job as usual. He has also written a couple of new songs so they were included.

BTW the couple in the last photo (Dave & Sherri's brother and his wife) just moved down here from Alaska. They also have two 4 year old twin boys and the baby boy in one of the pictures. Fortunately they all seem to be holding up to the heat pretty well.

I forgot my camera as usual so the pictures are all provided by Dave and Steve. (Dave's brother)

Heat in More ways than one.

2011-05-27T13:06:00.003-05:00

First off the temp yesterday (here) was 109 degrees in the shade. It was already 106 at 12 noon today so I have a feeling the 109 will be beat today. Its supposed to be even hotter tomorrow.

And for the other heat? Well you might notice a new blog showing up in the list of blogs I follow. That blog is called Terlingua Heat and it is intended to help Terlingua locals keep up with what the local law enforcement is doing at any given time as far as check points for insurance / license / stickers and so on. Locals can post Anonymously if they want to, but the whole reason is to help alert locals when there are check points setup so others may avoid them or at least know in advance they are there. Personally I think that practice is illegal in it own right. Rumor has it that the TSA is behind all of this and the sheriff's department is bound to follow their orders. I have no way of verifying this though, but with recent problems from TSA I wouldn't be surprised if that is true.

The ones to watch (for now)

The blog is NOT to knock the law enforcement people its just to even the playing field!

Terlingua Heat

Nick's Place

2011-05-25T22:36:00.002-05:00

Made a trip to Alpine this morning with Frann and on the way back we stopped by Nick's place. Below pictures are from there all except the last one is a picture of the Dungeon in her new temporary home and she has company.

Shameless Huzzah! No mater where you are in the Desert someone is always watching you. ;)

Nick's Dungeon.

Nick & Frann