which_chick (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
which_chick) wrote2009-02-12 10:26 pm
which_chick) wrote2009-02-12 10:26 pm
(no subject)
I headed off to work today in a timely and prompt fashion. I was chock full of enthusiasm and ready to Get Things Done.
We had quite a bit of wind last night. This morning, there was a tree down on the point near the marker, one of the big jack pines. There were about ten pines down at the playground, all of them along the water, none of 'em hit the playground equipment. There was one down on the lake shore by Lam's house. The big pine right by Lam's driveway went down, too. One pine in the woods between the lodge and Lam's (didn't hit anything important) came down. Two pines along the creek just past the lodge (near the tennis court) also blew over. (This total does not contain the trees-that-fell-on-the-road in the story that follows.) There may be more by the end of tomorrow -- the winds are not supposed to let up until then.
About the time I got to M's past the playground, on my way to Get Things Done, I encountered a Japanese Larch tree across the road. There was room and I guess I wasn't thinking very clearly, so I swung the truck down onto the large and spacious grass beside the road so that I could pop by the downed tree and get the saw from the shed in jig time. I was going to Get Things Done, y'see. Unfortunately, along with being large and spacious, the grass was also floating on top of four inches of mud. Oops. I didn't get very far but I did make some very attractive mud-colored trenches in the grass.
Switching to 4WD did not help, so I turned the truck off and trudged up to the lodge to get my other truck, which is a bigger truck than the one that I stuck in the mud. (For truck fans, the stuck truck was a Ford Ranger. The other truck is an F-250.) I also stopped back at my house for my blue pony reins with which to haul my smaller truck out of the mud. (I got tired of the red idiot snapping her reins, see, so I got ones she could not break. The blue pony reins are 1/2" kernmantle marine rope, rated at about 6,000 lbs tensile strength. The small pickup weighs about 4,000 lbs, give or take.)
I attached the small truck to the larger one (The small truck helpfully comes with places on the front where one might attach ropes and chains to drag it out of wherever you have gotten it, while the large truck helpfully has places on the back where you attatch ropes so that you can pull things free. Apparently truck owners do a lot of this sort of thing.) and set the small truck in neutral. I put the large truck (still on the firmer road surface) in 4WD. I went forward in the large truck. The rope got tight. The ass end of the big truck slid sideways. Hrm. I got out. I plucked on the rope. It made a deuling-banjos twang. I backed the big truck up. I adjusted things. I tried again. Zip went the ass end of the big truck, sideways.
Fuck.
I unhooked the big truck and put it back in the garage before I got it stuck. That's known as quit while you're ahead. I got the bulldozer, a procedure known as use a bigger hammer. I drove the bulldozer to the location of the still-stuck truck. I attached the rope to the dozer. I eased the dozer forward. The truck followed along like a yorkie on a leash. Yay. WIth the truck back on solid ground and a deeply-carved statement of my incompetence in what had been the grass before I got all incompetent upon it, I untied everything and put the dozer away. (Btw: Persons who use my dozer ether and then toss the can aside instead of putting it back in the dozer cubby WHERE IT BELONGS will be punished the next time it happens.) I drove the small truck up to the shed and got a chainsaw. In my adventures in thegrass mud, I am pleased to report that I did not damage any of the planted trees, not even any of the little ones. The grass was not so lucky.
At this juncture, I should note that while I heat my house with wood and while I live in the bottom of a valley where civilization is two miles of significantly-wooded driveway distant, I do not actually have the level of chainsaw experience that you might expect a person in my circumstances to have. I've seen people run chainsaws rather a lot, now, but I haven't actually DONE very much of it myself.
I do know how to put oil and gas into chainsaws. I am familiar with the theory of starting them. (You pull the choke thing out if saw is cold and then you hold the pull thing in your right hand and the saw in your left hand at the roundedest part of the handle and then you kind of drop the saw with the left while pulling the pull thing with your right hand and then Vrunnnn-nnn-nnn, you're off to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In theory. The internet says that this is the WRONG way to start a chainsaw. The internet says that chainsaws should be placed on a stable, unobstructed surface and started with one hand holding them down and the other hand pulling the thing you pull. Or maybe you stick a foot into the foot loop, but there's no way I can do that if I'm wearing boots because the foot loop is too small. I have not been able to get any of the approved methods to work even though they seem like they would be a lot safer than the drop/pull thing. I have also never seen anyone do proper chainsaw starting. Everyone I know who runs chainsaws does the drop/pull thing.) I would also like to note, at this juncture, that there is a world of difference between "having watched someone else start a chainsaw" and "being able to start a chainsaw". Traversing that world takes about forty or fifty tries at starting a chainsaw. Then, it's not bad. Then, you can manage it about three tries out of four. There is a knack to the process.
Okay, so the saw is running and it is making the appropriate Vrunnnn-nnn-nnn noises. Yay! Except the chain part isn't going around. Hrm. Why is that? Turn saw off. Look at all the settings. (There aren't tons. It's a Husquevarna, has a compression-button, a choke/off switch, place to put gasoline, place to put oil, thing-you-pull to start it, trigger to make it go fast. Missing anything? Don't think so.) Turn saw on again. Vrunnn, but chain is not going around. This is not good. Chain is supposed to go around. Vrunnn. Chain not moving. WTF? Saw smells hot. Turn saw off. Think. Think. Think. Not getting anywhere, here. I am stupid. I have never seen a chainsaw that doesn't go Vrunnn-nnn-nnn and spin the chain around when it is on and you squeeze the trigger. No clue at all, here. So, I take cover of chain mechanism off in the hopes that staring at it will enlighten me. (This cover is supposed to come off. It's what you take off when you are replacing the chain on the saw, an activity I am also familiar with in a "have seen it done" sort of way.) The cover comes off kind of not-very-nicely. The round-n-round thing inside, it is hot. There is a too-snug bit of bandy metal inside the cover that I cannot get back onto the round-n-round thing. I think it's the chain brake. Fuck. So now there's one saw in pieces. The easier-to-start one. There are still trees down on the road. Damn it.
There is, however, another saw. Right, then. I start the saw. This, again, takes a number of times even though I sort of know what I am doing in an incorrect, will cut off my leg kind of way. I am not a good saw starter and I am not able to do it like the guys in the how-to videos. They make it look easy with their carefully putting the saw on the ground and stuff. I'm probably going to cut my leg off, here, with the drop-start, but it's the only thing I know how to do to get the saw to start. Saw starts. Vrunnn. Chain does not move. For some reason, at this point, I notice the chain brake, which is the large black thing directly in front of where one puts one's left hand on the saw. It's a big and obvious sort of a thing. Hrm. Not sure how I missed that the first time around. I am really quite stupid. In a kickback event, the saw flies AT you and the chain brake is pushed AWAY from you as it contacts your left wrist. Away, thinks I, is for "braked" and towards is for "not braked". So I pull the chain brake back towards me. The chain starts going round and round like it is supposed to do. Huzzah! Victory!
I tuck the dead saw and its parts in the truck (for later) and head off to the tree. It's a smallish Japanese Larch. It is leaning across the road in classic windblown tree stance, happily getting some air on its roots. I saw it. I saw more of it. It's a green pine-type tree and it cuts easily. I feel clueful. Voila! Road now clear. Fantastic. Getting Things Done, here. Booyah.
I get in the truck and proceed past the lodge. It is now nine in the morning. It feels like it should be later in the day than nine AM but it's not. It seems like it should be later because I am Getting Things Done at the speed ofFAIL light, here. At the football field, there is a large pine tree (one of the shitty-looking Jack pines across from Angevine's) that has fallen across the road with all the green branchy part on the damn road. The road is entirely occluded by the tree. Fuck. I stop the truck. I get out of the truck. I drop-start the chainsaw, which fires up happily and does not cut off my leg. I proceed to saw up pieces of the large jack pine, starting with the branches that are keeping me from getting to the trunk. The saw dies. I restart the saw. It dies again. I have killed the saw. I have no idea what I have done to the saw, but it dies. Just... dies. And I can't put the other one back together again. Its pieces are laughing at me from inside the truck. If I were a peanuts character, I'd have one of those little scribbles over my head. In desperation, I check the gas for the saw. It doesn't have any. Hrm. I drive back and put gas and oil in the saw. It is happier and I saw up the rest of the tree, with many breaks to drag tree hunks off the road and keep my work area tidy and free from things to trip over.
While I am sawing up the jack pine, Mr. M from across the lake shows up and asks if this is as far as I've gotten. I allow as how it is. He asks how many more trees are down on the road out. I allow as how I don't rightly know, not having been. He offers to go take a look-see for me. I say OK and continue sawing up the current project tree. About the time I'm finishing up the jack pine, he comes back and says there's one more, a locust up on the blue gravel section. It's a pretty small tree, should be no problem.
Right. I went out the road and got the small locust tree (which cuts a LOT more slowly than green pine, let me tell you) and headed off to work. It was about 10:30. At work, I got the following cheery bits of news...
1. A bunch of shingles blew off at the terrace. I did this last year, same Bat time, same Bat channel. It'll wait until Saturday afternoon, when there will be no fucking wind.
2. A bunch of shingles blew off at 219. I called Kevin to do these b/c the big ladder is too big for me. It's about a 4x4' square patch. Kevin also says the perlins are on wrong. I dunno about that, wasn't me what put them on there.
3. A sheet of tin blew loose on the roof at 321 which was "going to kill someone". Kevin screwed this one down today as he headed down to South Street. Mrs. I was overreacting. Half the sheet was still firmly affixed when Kevin got there.
4. The porch roof at South Street had fallen off the building. It really did. The fire department was there making sure that people had alternative exits so that they wouldn't be trapped with the porch roof fallen onto the porch like that. I called Kevin, he got the porch roof disassembled today and it is now NOT THERE as of this afternoon. We (Kevin) will be putting in a much smaller, lighter, metal-based porch roof at some time in the near future. I'll keep you posted.
5. There was no heat at 351 and the roof over that weird small bedroom on the second floor was all folded up on itself funny. I folded down the roof and added some (mostly useless) roofing nails into the rotted surface of the roof plywood. When the weather is a bit nicer, someone who is not me needs to get up there and tear off that small section of roof, add better non-rotted surface, and put on a metal roof. I nominate Kevin, who is our go-to guy for roofs though Lingenfelter could use the work and he'll do anything that isn't electrical in nature. It's not a real big project, so we could try it out on Lingenfelter. As for the heat at 351, the squirrel cage fan was dead. I had Mike come look at it this evening (missed Pony in favor of furnace events) and then we went to the office and stole the blower out of the furnace on the third floor (it's the same kind) because it takes a week and a half to get those blowers by ordering them. We put the fan in the furnace at 351 and that seems to be fixed now. Mike is ordering a proper blower which we will eventually get put back in on the third floor, that not being urgent.
Also at work I stopped in at E&M and had them put the Husquevarna back together for me, which they did. They only laughed a little. I asked if they wanted to bill me and they allowed as how they'd get it later. It took all of three minutes to fix (you jam the cover in place enough to connect the chain brake innards to the chain brake bar thingie and then un-brake the chain brake and it loosens up the bandy metal thing properly and then bob's your uncle, cover goes right back on slicker than shit.) so they might never bill us. I dunno. So, both saws are still fine and I put them back in shed at the end of the day.
On returning to the valley after a busy day in which all of our apartment buildings lost pieces of roof, I discovered Mr. and Mrs. M on my side of the pond had a fire going in "their" fire pit that is not on their property. The wind is still quite high. I stopped and allowed as how I couldn't really advise burning anything outdoors because, golly, it was just super-duper windy out and I didn't really think it was safe. (We're having gusts upwards of fifty miles an hour, so that you know what "super-duper windy" means.) They assured me that they were "being careful" and that they'd put it out with water so that I did not need to worry. We might need to have a word with the summer people about not being complete fuckwits. Being a fuckwit is my job, damn it, and I won't have them poaching on my preserve.
We had quite a bit of wind last night. This morning, there was a tree down on the point near the marker, one of the big jack pines. There were about ten pines down at the playground, all of them along the water, none of 'em hit the playground equipment. There was one down on the lake shore by Lam's house. The big pine right by Lam's driveway went down, too. One pine in the woods between the lodge and Lam's (didn't hit anything important) came down. Two pines along the creek just past the lodge (near the tennis court) also blew over. (This total does not contain the trees-that-fell-on-the-road in the story that follows.) There may be more by the end of tomorrow -- the winds are not supposed to let up until then.
About the time I got to M's past the playground, on my way to Get Things Done, I encountered a Japanese Larch tree across the road. There was room and I guess I wasn't thinking very clearly, so I swung the truck down onto the large and spacious grass beside the road so that I could pop by the downed tree and get the saw from the shed in jig time. I was going to Get Things Done, y'see. Unfortunately, along with being large and spacious, the grass was also floating on top of four inches of mud. Oops. I didn't get very far but I did make some very attractive mud-colored trenches in the grass.
Switching to 4WD did not help, so I turned the truck off and trudged up to the lodge to get my other truck, which is a bigger truck than the one that I stuck in the mud. (For truck fans, the stuck truck was a Ford Ranger. The other truck is an F-250.) I also stopped back at my house for my blue pony reins with which to haul my smaller truck out of the mud. (I got tired of the red idiot snapping her reins, see, so I got ones she could not break. The blue pony reins are 1/2" kernmantle marine rope, rated at about 6,000 lbs tensile strength. The small pickup weighs about 4,000 lbs, give or take.)
I attached the small truck to the larger one (The small truck helpfully comes with places on the front where one might attach ropes and chains to drag it out of wherever you have gotten it, while the large truck helpfully has places on the back where you attatch ropes so that you can pull things free. Apparently truck owners do a lot of this sort of thing.) and set the small truck in neutral. I put the large truck (still on the firmer road surface) in 4WD. I went forward in the large truck. The rope got tight. The ass end of the big truck slid sideways. Hrm. I got out. I plucked on the rope. It made a deuling-banjos twang. I backed the big truck up. I adjusted things. I tried again. Zip went the ass end of the big truck, sideways.
Fuck.
I unhooked the big truck and put it back in the garage before I got it stuck. That's known as quit while you're ahead. I got the bulldozer, a procedure known as use a bigger hammer. I drove the bulldozer to the location of the still-stuck truck. I attached the rope to the dozer. I eased the dozer forward. The truck followed along like a yorkie on a leash. Yay. WIth the truck back on solid ground and a deeply-carved statement of my incompetence in what had been the grass before I got all incompetent upon it, I untied everything and put the dozer away. (Btw: Persons who use my dozer ether and then toss the can aside instead of putting it back in the dozer cubby WHERE IT BELONGS will be punished the next time it happens.) I drove the small truck up to the shed and got a chainsaw. In my adventures in the
At this juncture, I should note that while I heat my house with wood and while I live in the bottom of a valley where civilization is two miles of significantly-wooded driveway distant, I do not actually have the level of chainsaw experience that you might expect a person in my circumstances to have. I've seen people run chainsaws rather a lot, now, but I haven't actually DONE very much of it myself.
I do know how to put oil and gas into chainsaws. I am familiar with the theory of starting them. (You pull the choke thing out if saw is cold and then you hold the pull thing in your right hand and the saw in your left hand at the roundedest part of the handle and then you kind of drop the saw with the left while pulling the pull thing with your right hand and then Vrunnnn-nnn-nnn, you're off to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In theory. The internet says that this is the WRONG way to start a chainsaw. The internet says that chainsaws should be placed on a stable, unobstructed surface and started with one hand holding them down and the other hand pulling the thing you pull. Or maybe you stick a foot into the foot loop, but there's no way I can do that if I'm wearing boots because the foot loop is too small. I have not been able to get any of the approved methods to work even though they seem like they would be a lot safer than the drop/pull thing. I have also never seen anyone do proper chainsaw starting. Everyone I know who runs chainsaws does the drop/pull thing.) I would also like to note, at this juncture, that there is a world of difference between "having watched someone else start a chainsaw" and "being able to start a chainsaw". Traversing that world takes about forty or fifty tries at starting a chainsaw. Then, it's not bad. Then, you can manage it about three tries out of four. There is a knack to the process.
Okay, so the saw is running and it is making the appropriate Vrunnnn-nnn-nnn noises. Yay! Except the chain part isn't going around. Hrm. Why is that? Turn saw off. Look at all the settings. (There aren't tons. It's a Husquevarna, has a compression-button, a choke/off switch, place to put gasoline, place to put oil, thing-you-pull to start it, trigger to make it go fast. Missing anything? Don't think so.) Turn saw on again. Vrunnn, but chain is not going around. This is not good. Chain is supposed to go around. Vrunnn. Chain not moving. WTF? Saw smells hot. Turn saw off. Think. Think. Think. Not getting anywhere, here. I am stupid. I have never seen a chainsaw that doesn't go Vrunnn-nnn-nnn and spin the chain around when it is on and you squeeze the trigger. No clue at all, here. So, I take cover of chain mechanism off in the hopes that staring at it will enlighten me. (This cover is supposed to come off. It's what you take off when you are replacing the chain on the saw, an activity I am also familiar with in a "have seen it done" sort of way.) The cover comes off kind of not-very-nicely. The round-n-round thing inside, it is hot. There is a too-snug bit of bandy metal inside the cover that I cannot get back onto the round-n-round thing. I think it's the chain brake. Fuck. So now there's one saw in pieces. The easier-to-start one. There are still trees down on the road. Damn it.
There is, however, another saw. Right, then. I start the saw. This, again, takes a number of times even though I sort of know what I am doing in an incorrect, will cut off my leg kind of way. I am not a good saw starter and I am not able to do it like the guys in the how-to videos. They make it look easy with their carefully putting the saw on the ground and stuff. I'm probably going to cut my leg off, here, with the drop-start, but it's the only thing I know how to do to get the saw to start. Saw starts. Vrunnn. Chain does not move. For some reason, at this point, I notice the chain brake, which is the large black thing directly in front of where one puts one's left hand on the saw. It's a big and obvious sort of a thing. Hrm. Not sure how I missed that the first time around. I am really quite stupid. In a kickback event, the saw flies AT you and the chain brake is pushed AWAY from you as it contacts your left wrist. Away, thinks I, is for "braked" and towards is for "not braked". So I pull the chain brake back towards me. The chain starts going round and round like it is supposed to do. Huzzah! Victory!
I tuck the dead saw and its parts in the truck (for later) and head off to the tree. It's a smallish Japanese Larch. It is leaning across the road in classic windblown tree stance, happily getting some air on its roots. I saw it. I saw more of it. It's a green pine-type tree and it cuts easily. I feel clueful. Voila! Road now clear. Fantastic. Getting Things Done, here. Booyah.
I get in the truck and proceed past the lodge. It is now nine in the morning. It feels like it should be later in the day than nine AM but it's not. It seems like it should be later because I am Getting Things Done at the speed of
While I am sawing up the jack pine, Mr. M from across the lake shows up and asks if this is as far as I've gotten. I allow as how it is. He asks how many more trees are down on the road out. I allow as how I don't rightly know, not having been. He offers to go take a look-see for me. I say OK and continue sawing up the current project tree. About the time I'm finishing up the jack pine, he comes back and says there's one more, a locust up on the blue gravel section. It's a pretty small tree, should be no problem.
Right. I went out the road and got the small locust tree (which cuts a LOT more slowly than green pine, let me tell you) and headed off to work. It was about 10:30. At work, I got the following cheery bits of news...
1. A bunch of shingles blew off at the terrace. I did this last year, same Bat time, same Bat channel. It'll wait until Saturday afternoon, when there will be no fucking wind.
2. A bunch of shingles blew off at 219. I called Kevin to do these b/c the big ladder is too big for me. It's about a 4x4' square patch. Kevin also says the perlins are on wrong. I dunno about that, wasn't me what put them on there.
3. A sheet of tin blew loose on the roof at 321 which was "going to kill someone". Kevin screwed this one down today as he headed down to South Street. Mrs. I was overreacting. Half the sheet was still firmly affixed when Kevin got there.
4. The porch roof at South Street had fallen off the building. It really did. The fire department was there making sure that people had alternative exits so that they wouldn't be trapped with the porch roof fallen onto the porch like that. I called Kevin, he got the porch roof disassembled today and it is now NOT THERE as of this afternoon. We (Kevin) will be putting in a much smaller, lighter, metal-based porch roof at some time in the near future. I'll keep you posted.
5. There was no heat at 351 and the roof over that weird small bedroom on the second floor was all folded up on itself funny. I folded down the roof and added some (mostly useless) roofing nails into the rotted surface of the roof plywood. When the weather is a bit nicer, someone who is not me needs to get up there and tear off that small section of roof, add better non-rotted surface, and put on a metal roof. I nominate Kevin, who is our go-to guy for roofs though Lingenfelter could use the work and he'll do anything that isn't electrical in nature. It's not a real big project, so we could try it out on Lingenfelter. As for the heat at 351, the squirrel cage fan was dead. I had Mike come look at it this evening (missed Pony in favor of furnace events) and then we went to the office and stole the blower out of the furnace on the third floor (it's the same kind) because it takes a week and a half to get those blowers by ordering them. We put the fan in the furnace at 351 and that seems to be fixed now. Mike is ordering a proper blower which we will eventually get put back in on the third floor, that not being urgent.
Also at work I stopped in at E&M and had them put the Husquevarna back together for me, which they did. They only laughed a little. I asked if they wanted to bill me and they allowed as how they'd get it later. It took all of three minutes to fix (you jam the cover in place enough to connect the chain brake innards to the chain brake bar thingie and then un-brake the chain brake and it loosens up the bandy metal thing properly and then bob's your uncle, cover goes right back on slicker than shit.) so they might never bill us. I dunno. So, both saws are still fine and I put them back in shed at the end of the day.
On returning to the valley after a busy day in which all of our apartment buildings lost pieces of roof, I discovered Mr. and Mrs. M on my side of the pond had a fire going in "their" fire pit that is not on their property. The wind is still quite high. I stopped and allowed as how I couldn't really advise burning anything outdoors because, golly, it was just super-duper windy out and I didn't really think it was safe. (We're having gusts upwards of fifty miles an hour, so that you know what "super-duper windy" means.) They assured me that they were "being careful" and that they'd put it out with water so that I did not need to worry. We might need to have a word with the summer people about not being complete fuckwits. Being a fuckwit is my job, damn it, and I won't have them poaching on my preserve.