(written on May 22nd from notes taken previously)
Busy, exhausting day on the Hill today, but the day started at my mom’s house.
After getting up, I listened to a Neal A. Maxwell talk, spent a bit of time working on my electronic file organization efforts, and then tried for a little bit to help Thomas with his Ford Explorer Sport Trac.
Looks like there’s some issue with the transmission, but it’s not happening enough to be able to get a solid read on it.
Because it has a battery draining issue, he leaves the vehicle with the battery disconnected (per my recommendation from years ago). That means any codes that the vehicle might have end up getting cleared each time the battery is disconnected, so there weren’t any codes that I could look at (no guarantee there would have been some anyway, but it would be nice).
So the only thing I could really do was take it for a test drive,
So Thomas got the keys, and I headed out on a test drive. I needed to get hydraulic fluid for the tractor, so I decided to have the test drive go through Pea Ridge in order to stop by the new Tractor Supply that was built on Lee Town Road.
As I drove, I heard a sloshing sound, and once I got to the store, I started pulling panels off to see if I could figure out what was going on. What I found was water is leaking inside the vehicle, and it’s sort of stuck in the wiring channel.
Could the leak be the cause of the issues? Perhaps, but it seems doubtful right now. I looked around hoping that maybe it might be, that maybe there might be some module that was corroded because of water, but I didn’t see anything right away.
From what I found online, it looks like maybe the leak is coming in through the third brake light–the seal going bad and letting water in that then is running down to the floor.
I left the truck partially taken apart and headed inside to grab the hydraulic fluid. Many thanks to the older gentleman who transferred the heavy 5 gallon bucket of fluid from the cart to the truck for me. 🙏¹
Kind of funny to have a man who looked like he was in his ’60s or ’70s lifting the big bucket for me. 🙃
After getting back to the truck, I put things back together, and then headed back out to continue the test drive. Other than the water sloshing around, I didn’t hear anything or notice anything of concern.
However, as I rounded the bend onto Highway 72 back toward Pea Ridge, the transmission did something funny, the RPMs going up briefly. Unfortunately, instead of taking time to see what would happen, I apparently instinctively let off the gas, which stopped the symptom from occurring.
That gave me only maybe a second or two to see what was happening before I inadvertently stopped it. I then proceeded to drive all the way through Pea Ridge, past my mom’s house, and all the way up across the border into Missouri trying to recreate the issue a second time, but it was no use.
When I got back, I hoped that maybe, just maybe there would be a code registered by the computer or transmission, but nothing.
Oh well. I mentioned the water leak issue to my mom. Not sure what will end up happening with the truck. The go right now is to find Thomas another car.
Anyway, I spent a little while in my electronic file sorting and organizing efforts. So much to do there, but it’ll be nice once everything is well organized such that I can easily find all of my files and pictures and journals and everything from over the years. And then of course, it’ll be great to have everything properly backed up.
From there, I headed over to Haven Hill to work on all the Hill stuff that I’ve got on my docket. I swung by Dan’s place briefly, but he wasn’t home, so I headed down to my shed in the lower field.
Did I mention that I accidentally bought the blue reflective sunglasses instead of the black regular ones? 🙃
Oh well. My eyes are blue, so I can just pretend I have bigger eyes. 🙃
I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had a bunch of cans of brake cleaner in my shed 🙏², so I went ahead and loaded those up into Rover. I don’t go through brake cleaner a lot, but no sense leaving it in a shed in Arkansas when I’ll be using it bit by bit in South Dakota and on the road.
I grabbed the weed eater trimmer line roll, noticed that I had a bunch of automotive fluids that I can use for Rover, and loaded those up as well. 🙏³ The oil is 5W30, but I’m going to go ahead and use it in Rover, even though Rover generally takes 5W20 oil.
Up at the tractor, it took me a little bit to be confident about which fill pipe I was pouring the hydraulic fluid into. I thought I knew, but the last thing you need is to put hydraulic fluid where something else is supposed to go. 😅
Getting the fluid into the tractor was more challenging than figuring out which fill pipe to use. The fill pipe is nearly horizontal coming out of the butt end of the tractor, which means unless you have a curved funnel, which I don’t, you can only fill so quickly before the fluid just pours right back out of the nearly-horizontal funnel.
Which is what happened. 😒
Over and over again. 😠
So I went back down to the storage shed, found one of my bigger funnels, as the one I had was quite small and definitely not appropriate for trying to fill the machine.
Unfortunately, my large funnels were caked in dirt 😒, So I spent probably 10 or 15 minutes just scraping dirt out of the funnel, and doing everything I could to clean it up, so I wouldn’t risk getting dirt inside the tractor.
It’s not easy to clean a very long and skinny funnel that’s caked in dirt from the top to the bottom on the inside.
Best to put funnels in plastic bags after use, Stephen. 🤦
😅
One would think that the much bigger funnel would be good enough to solve the spilling problems, but no. 😠
Sadly, my building frustration progressed to anger. 😕
The only hard part, had I had the proper funnel type, would have been trying to carry the 5 gallon bucket without putting the weight on my spine.
Anyway, after a whole lot of struggle and spilled hydraulic fluid, I finally managed to fill the tractor sufficiently. It took probably 2 and 1/2 gallons?
Quite a lot.
I never did see any place where it was leaking badly, so I guess it’s just been ing leaking a little bit by little bit over time, and I just happened to be the one who was driving it when it lost its power from lack of fluid?
🤷
After getting that taken care of, I restrung the weed eater for Andrés and then spent the next several hours on the tractor, going round and round mowing down the sections of field just to the south of Liz’s house that were covered in blackberry bushes.
If we don’t keep those mowed down, the whole darn field turns into pretty much nothing but blackberries. 😅
As I mowed, I tried to work on my journaling, which is a little difficult, as you have to watch the mowing lines. I didn’t make much progress, but I did make some.
I also saw lots of rats. 😶
Good golly goodness.
As I went round and round for hours on end, I noticed that the tractor started overheating a little bit, so I turned it off and found that the little screen in front of the radiator was absolutely caked with super fine vegetable matter.
It was then that I did something that I will be absolutely sure to never do again.
Not really thinking about it much, I started removing the caked on particles from the screen, at one point taking a deep breath and blowing hard to try and get the particles out of the radiator as well.
When I did that, a thick cloud of vegetable dust went into the air just as I took a deep breath in.
You know, I’m actually allergic to some of the plants that I mow. If they touch my skin, I get little itchy red spots where the plant touches. It goes away relatively quickly, within maybe an hour or two, or faster if I shower, but it’s pretty itchy and uncomfortable.
And I had just breathed in a thick cloud of it. 😶
😬
As one might expect, it wasn’t long before my throat started reacting, my throat swelling up, my vocal cords as well.
😅
I didn’t have any water with me, so I couldn’t rinse it all out, but nor did I want to pause mowing to take care of the potential health crisis when I was so close to being done after so many hours of mowing. 😅
So I didn’t stop mowing it. 🙃
My nose started running massively, which… , when it ran down the back of my throat helped to clear out the allergens, but not before my throat and vocal cords were so irritated (probably both from the plants and the constant clearing of my throat from the discomfort) that I completely lost my voice. 😶
[sigh]
😆
Fun fun fun.
Gratefully, my reaction wasn’t worse than it was. 🙏⁵
I finished mowing with the tractor nearly out of fuel and headed up to park it in the upper field across from the storage barn.
My next order of business was to help Liz trim the tree in her front yard that she’s desperately trying to save. I don’t think it’s going to survive. Most of the limbs are dead.
And the more we cut off, the more I think we’ll shock the tree. And at this time of year, you also get bugs more likely to be able to get inside.
Tree trimming, if at all possible, should be done during the winter months, but y’all probably know that already.
As I got ready to head over to Liz’s, I heard my niece and nephew battling with the riding lawn mower, trying to get the belt back on after replacing one of the spindles.
I went over to help, but they got it back on pretty much just as I got there. I hung out with Landon and chatted with him a fair bit, which was good, and gratefully, he gave multiple different things to drink. My voice was mostly back by that point, gratefully. 🙏⁶
After chatting with Landon, I headed over to Liz’s place with my chainsaw, climbing up into the higher limbs, which caused Liz a fair bit of fear for my safety.
Gratefully, I wasn’t injured in any way, neither from a fall from high up, nor from inadvertently chopping off digits or limbs. 🙃
🙏⁷
We’ll cross our fingers and hope the tree makes a miraculous recovery. It means a lot to Liz. 🤞
With the sun going down, I began driving back to my mom’s house, calling Cory along the way. I think of Cory just about every time I get in my van, because I immediately go to using my phone while driving in order to be more efficient with my time, and he’s probably the person I’ve talked to most about my struggles in that area. With him coming to mind as soon as I grab for my phone, I decided to just call him and talk to him instead of staring at my phone screen.
Thanks, for being there, Cory. 🙏⁸
Oh! And for Cory…
(He told me to make sure I put the lid down. 🙃)
Back at my mom’s place, I availed myself of the shower, which she’s so generously let me use. 🙏⁹
So. Much. Better. With all those allergens washed off. 🥳
🙏¹⁰
I spent a while working on my file organization project before bidding my mom good night and heading to Rover.
I then spent a little while searching for real estate on Zillow, for parts Vans on Marketplace, and doing some research into which vans had compatible parts.
I would really like to get the van situation taken care of. 🤞
Before crashing for the night, I spent a little time journaling, and then called it a night. Busy, productive, decent day. 🙏¹¹
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 