Merry Christmas

Gee ... What have you been doing on your winter vacation?  Getting beach sand out of your sandals? Lathering those arms and legs with Coppertone?  Sipping on a frozen strawberry daiquiri under some palm tree?  Now if any of these things ring a bell ... we are very jealous.  Very jealous!  Our Southern adventures were put on hold this year as our coach needed some remodeling so here we are.  In the nations 'Winter Wonderland' of Michigan.

We left South Haven and the comforts of Cousin's RV Park last October and got the coach in our driveway to begin the unloading process.  In order to redo the interior we wanted to empty the coach of furniture and clean out all the drawers and cupboards.  Do you remember the old adage about getting 5 pounds of s%#t into a 3 pound bag?  Being on the road for such a long time we've discovered we're really human pack rats.  Every nook and cranny had some treasure or another stuffed into it.  But it all had to go.  And where did it go?  Our living room, our family room, and our  garage ... And the garbage.  With winter upon us there's little chance of having a garage sale so we're sitting here amongst the rubble.  But little by little we'll work through it and be ready for Spring.  Hopefully this coming one.

As my bride and I seldom agree on decorating styles, the coach remodeling has been stressful. What kind of flooring, what color flooring, what kind of refrigerator, what kind of toilet, what kind of window coverings ??? Way too many decisions and compromises so we hired an interior decorator.  Maybe not an official one ... as she's still in college ... but at least a third party negotiator who might smooth out the disagreements.  As the coach remodeling continues other little speed bumps have arisen to further heighten our winter at home.

Our furnace of some 40 years probably needed replacing 20 years ago. But since we'd still been waking up each morning, and the noxious gases hadn't gotten to that fatal level yet, so we got to thinking maybe we should replace it before we couldn't wake up some morning.  So now we have a new Trane furnace with matching air conditioner and a new Nest thermostat.  What in the world is a Nest you might ask?  I won't bore you with those details now but it's the latest-greatest in world of thermostats.  Look it up on the internet if you're interested.

So now we're warm a cozy.  A good thing as the temperatures have fallen and winter is in the air and on the ground.

I'd mentioned to my RV/farmer friend Jerry that I wanted to photograph some cattle for an upcoming project I was working on so he invited me over to a cattle show at the Michigan State University Agriculture Center in East Lansing.  It was a cold wintry day as we drove over to the show and found that this was a pretty big deal for cattle people.  The parking lots were filled with trucks and animal trailers. The visitors parking lot was almost full so I'm getting pumped just thinking about what's ahead to see and do. When walking in I immediately knew I should have had on Levi's with a big belt buckle, a cowboy hat and rubber boots.  Rubber boots?

I gotta get one of these bling belts

This city boy didn't realize beforehand that hanging around cattle is not very kind to hiking shoes with deep treaded soles (it took me two days to get those shoes cleaned up).  As cattle apparently are not house broke (go figure), they tend to do whatever they want, where ever they want to. Stepping gingerly around was not good enough.  There were just too much to avoid not stepping or sliding in something. Oh! ... and did I mention the smell?  Though the building was large, there were several hundred animals waiting around to be judged ... so they don't care if they were in a barn, an exhibition arena, or the pasture ... they do what comes naturally.

They just needed a little after shave lotion

I was probably the only guy in the place that had a permanently wrinkled up nose ... but at times it was pretty pungent in there. Actually the show was a state-wide 4H affair with kids showing off their prized young cattle for judging.  With over 100 classes of animals (apparently categorized by weight and breed) the critters are shampooed, hides trimmed, hair teased and hair sprayed and hooves painted.

What a life!

And don't forget to trim the eyebrows and get those sideburns straight.

It was really interesting and besides the farm yard conditions, inspiring to see young people so wrapped up into cattle raising.  Not that I didn't see an Ipad or two but these kids were really focused on their cattle.

Angry Birds break.

Usually most of us are looking a beef cattle between a bun a McDonalds or in the meat market and pay little attention to what it takes to actually bring cattle to market, so this was a real learning day for me.  Anyway my friend Jerry (a cattle rancher himself) did a nice thing for me that day and I appreciate him taking the time to show me a little part of the business he is in.

Speaking of warm and cozy.  We had a little freezing rain storm pass through the area recently and left a nice thick coating of ice on everything.  Including power lines.  Normally we have had little trouble losing electrical service as all the areas around me have underground service. However this particular storm was a doozy and in this area knocked out nearly 300k customers. Including us! So when our lights went out the other morning I just knew it would only be an hour or so and all would be fixed.  But as the day wore on and the news came out that this was a massive outage, I thought I better head out to the shed and fire up my 40 year old propane fueled generator.  I hit the start button and it surprising fired up.  I made all the necessary electrical connections, changed the breakers in the house and the new furnace came to life, the refrigerator was working as was the well pump. Life is good I'm thinking.  I let it run for a couple of hours then let it rest for about 4 hours.  But still no commercial power.  I fired it up again and it was running so good I invited my neighbor to plug into so as to save his refrigerated food and maybe run the blower on his gas fireplace to provide a little heat.  As the outside temperature was in the low 20's, our houses cool off pretty quick and if left unheated could cause some real problems. While calling our kids we discovered that though my daughter had power my son did not.  He had just called the local power company and they said that due to the size of the outage they were promising service to return by the evening of the 28th.  THE EVENING OF THE 28TH!  That was over a week away!  All of a sudden I wished I had payed a lot more attention to that cable channel show "The Preppers".  So upon hearing that crummy news we began taking stock of food, water, and most importantly .. propane supplies.

Wondering if we could actually survive in the house (rather than a motel) we decided to give it a try as I headed out to the shed to check in the generator.  It was sounded funny ... missing and coughing and making the 20 watt bulb in the shed flicker.  I switched to my other full tank before restarting it decided to head out to find more propane.  I had two more empty tanks in the garage so I went out to get them filled.  Upon returning I started the generator up but after running smoothly for about two minutes it went back to sputtering.  I disconnected all the outgoing lines and even with no load it still wouldn't run right. I fiddled with it the next twelve hours ... sometimes it would run, sometimes not.  I had heated up the house enough so I thought we could go to bed without it running so I finally shut it down and went inside. We made it through the night but when I got up a 6:00am the temperature had dropped into the low teens and it was pretty cool in the house; mid 50's. I got dressed and stumbled out into the cold, dark morning to see if once again I could get some juice out of that old generator.  She fired up and I let it run a few minutes then headed into the house.  I had previously disconnected the power lift for the garage door so I could raise and lower it manually.  So upon returning from the shed I wanted to lower it. I applied pressure on the outside panels and it began coming down.  Apparently I was still half asleep, and my hands were cold and I just wasn't paying attention as the next thing I knew was that I had left two of my fingers in the panel joint as I was lowering the door. For whatever reason I didn't scream out (not that there was anyone around to hear me) but as I watched almost in slow motion the tips of two fingers got caught in the joint and I could hear the bones breaking. I leaned into the door to stop it decent and with the other hand managed to raise the door enough to extract my fingers.  Now this was a real, honest to good ouchy.  Even though I had on a heavy leather gloves the damage was done.  No blood but certainly broken bones.  I went inside and got Sharon up and we decided to head off to our doctors only to discover his office was closed due to the power outage.  So off to the hospital we went and after a short three hour stay got doctored up, xrayed, given some really soothing pain meds and a future appointment to see a hand surgeon.

On the way home I decided to stop at the local lawn equipment dealer to see about a new generator.  He said he was all out but maybe next Friday. Great! It's now beginning to look like Motel 6 here we come when just then a trailer pulled up with eight new Honda generators aboard. I said to the clerk this is looks like my day then he informed me that all of those were already sold.  But he then said wait ... maybe I one 4k watt one left that I could get for $2400.  Are you kidding me? $2400 dollars.

I said I think about it and headed home.  I returned to my shed to work on the old generator again when I saw a trailer pulling into the driveway ... not my driveway but my neighbors!  He bought that remaining generator. The only one within a 50 mile radius. I was pretty bummed as went inside to prepare for a birthday party over at my daughters house.  Another cold evening with the temperatures hovering around 8 degrees was in store and I really wasn't sure we could make it another night in the house.  After the party Sharon and I were discussing our options when we pulled into our subdivision and noticed Christmas lights burning.  A sure sign (I hope) that power has been restored.  Eureka! Our house was to be warm again.  My fingers are still aching but at least they are warm.

So as I gingerly type these words, I'm looking out the window for Santa, Rudolf and their friends to cruise through the neighborhood dropping off goodies to one and all.  He needn't stop here as I've already took care of his cookies and milk and besides ... what more could we wish for.  A loving family, good health (except for the fingers), and a warm house.

Still livin' the dream ... though a cold one.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all.  And to all you 'snowbirds' frolicking in the warm sands of Florida or the warm winds of Texas take note of this story.  Don't let let anyone talk you into staying north for the winter.

Phil