More Odd Jobs...

Back to cutting wood this week after Andy pointed out several dead spruce that needed to go. While we did get a couple of cords of firewood hauled in this spring (Gettin' Wood Enough...4/15/18), it's all bucked up, split, and stacked now, so it's always good to have more ready to go.

Unlike hauling wood with the Ski Doo, it's a lot less work using the tractor.

The pile of logs slowly turns into stacks of firewood.

The other job comes from the proposal that was submitted a while back. It was accepted, so now I get to collate, review, and summarize fifteen years of hydrology survey data. While I don't mind doing this in the winter, just finished a similar project last year, it's not my idea of the ideal summer job. So be careful what you wish for, I guess.

It's a lot more fun to go out in the summer and collect survey data than to analyze it.

And then took the 650 Moto Guzzi out for a ride and, big surprise, ran out of gas again. That machine really needs a gas gauge.

May Weather...

Better late than never, the Alaska Climate Center finally posted their May weather summary...

Mean monthly temperature was 49.7°F, which was 0.3°F above normal. The observed maximum temperature was 72.0°F on the 10th of the month, the minimum temperature was 28.0°F on the 6th of the month. The total monthly precipitation was 1.1", which was 0.5" above normal. One inch of snow fell during the month, on the first.

May started off cold, then warmed up into the 70's, melted the last of the snow, then turned cool and rainey. June was also cool until yesterday when it got up to 79 and then into the 80's today.

This is the first 80 degree day since last August. Summer truly did arrive on the solstice.

Looking out into the dog yard, it looks like a bunch of dead dogs, trying to find a little bit of shade, lying on the cool ground.

Odd jobs...

Lately it seems like I'm doing a lot of odd jobs. This week it was shocks, proposals, and dog houses. The Ford pickup has well over a 100K miles on it, so it always needs maintenance. This time it was shock absorbers. Driving around on our frost heaved roads, it wallowed around like a boat in a storm. Would that make me a drunken sailor? The truck also seemed to settle a lot with the dog boxes on it last winter. Thought it'd be a good idea to beef up the springs with load leveler shocks. Of course nobody up here carries them in stock so had to order online. They were shipped and arrived promptly, so that's something. The only problem was that the spring on the load levelers extends the shock's mount down, well beyond the bracket where the old shock mounted. So had to jack the axle down (away) from the frame to get enough separation to fasten the lower shock mount. On the rear ones, the brake drum was almost touching the ground before the bracket and shock aligned close enough to thread the bolt. Once the shock was hooked up and the truck jacked back down, the shock springs compressed quite a bit and the truck height was only about an inch more. And while the ride is OK, it's noticeably stiffer on bumps.

Didn't think to get a shot of the floor jack balanced on the axle to force the bracket down enough to align with the new shocks. Probably looked pretty weird.

Then I got a call from a former colleague at work, who was concerned about a project he thought was  being mismanaged, so wanted my input. After talking to him for awhile, did some research online, then wrote and sent off a proposal outlining suggested work. We'll see where that goes. I expect nowhere.
Also been working on dog houses. It seems like the last few dogs we've taken in are quite long bodied, so started making longer dog houses. That's left several old ones not being used. So rather than keep building new, longer houses, decided to try and lengthen the older ones. Since it would take a major disassembly with lots of newer parts to do it right, got the idea of just taking the front and back off and adding spacers that'd make the house several inches longer without so much extra work and materials. We'll see how that works out.

The spacers (scrap 1x2's) extended the length about an inch at each end. It'll be interesting to see if the dogs like this house any better than the older one

Back to the Black...

It was time for the semi-annual trip down to Black Rapids to help my friend Mike do his surveys on the Delta River.

The lower reach of the river was quite high this year, so we just did that survey from the shore. The doppler meter doesn't work so well in turbulent, silty water, so Mike needs a better system here.

The upper Delta site was also high, but not too high to do the river survey.

Mike got the doppler meter working pretty well this year, so there were no problems getting the river surveyed here or at Paxson Lake.

Had a moose come by, but he kept his distance. which was fine with me after last year's close encounter (Back to the Black 9/30/17).

The last stop was Paxson Lake where we launched the boat, then headed out to survey the outlet at the far end of the lake.

The lake was so calm, it was a mirror image of the clouds. Kind of disorienting at first. On the way back, the wind picked up and blew the shore ice out into the middle of the lake. Had to play dodge the ice flows all the way back to the boat ramp.

Free wheeling...

Late May is the time when traditionally the garden goes in. This year it seemed like it'd be June before any gardening, since there was still a foot of snow in places in early May. But then we had a week of near seventy degree weather and the snow was gone before the end of the month. After finishing the roto-tilling, we were getting stuff moved to the garden when the wheel barrow broke down. Hard to believe that something that's been used for forty years, stored outside, and never had any maintenance would break, but there you go, they just don't make'm like they used to.
So instead of buying a new one, that'd be too easy, figured it could be fixed. Thought that just the broken part could be replaced, it was a short piece of wood that had dry rotted, but between the rusted nuts and stripped out carriage bolts, wound up having to use the saws-all to cut out most of the bolts to get it apart.

Didn't get a photo of the broken part, but here's the disassembled pieces ready to be worked on.

So after replacing the broken parts with some scrap pieces of all weather wood, sand blasted and painted the metal body. Used the left over paint from the walking tractor rebuild (All carted up...7/24/17) and some old deck stain on the wood pieces.

So here's the pieces fitted back to the body of the barrow. Will head into town tomorrow, pick up some new bolts and get'er all back together.