(Written on May 24th from notes)
It’s been too long to remember the day clearly, unfortunately, but I at least have a decent amount. 🙏¹
My first stop after leaving my mom’s place was to go to the Walmart neighborhood market in Pea Ridge and then on to Haven Hill where I spent time working on my CNG van a bit.
If I’ve got my days correct, this was the day where I crawled underneath the van and removed the old fuel line that had been bent out of the way back when the van was converted from gas to CNG.
Those fuel lines can be fairly forgiving, as they are made of plastic that seems? to be able to reassume its old shape (with gentle persuasion).
So I started bending it back very carefully and very gently with my fingers, and then I wedged it in between my windshield and my dashboard to heat up, hoping that would make it more pliable and more likely to be able to return it to its old shape without damaging it.
I also popped to the hood and decided to do a little experiment. There is an electronic module toward the front of the engine on the passenger side that I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist in the gasoline version of the vehicle, so I decided to unplug it. 🙃
My Hope was that maybe the issue with the transmission hard-shifting in low fuel situations and when first starting up was caused by the data that was being sent from a module or computer or something, so I hope that maybe if I just disconnected the module, that maybe the system would default to a particular functionality instead of relying on the data it was receiving from sensors and modules.
Interestingly, I noticed no issues with the van after unplugging the connectors: It didn’t suddenly stop running, for example.
So I decided to take it on a little bit of a test drive to see if maybe my experiment might have solved something. 🤞
I took it down the main road on Haven Hill out to DeGraff, and then out onto Highway 62. Up I took it up to speed, down Brightwater Hill and then up the other side toward Avoca, stopping at the dirt road that heads North from Highway 62 on the west side of Brightwater Hill.
No issues.
🤞
I did realize that the connectors that I unplugged sent my fuel gauge down to zero. I can’t trust the fuel gauge anyway in this van, but I definitely had more than zero. 🙃
I realized that if I was going to be doing a test drive, I might as well fill up the diesel cans full of fuel since the tractor was empty, and since whoever had been using my skid steer had left it on empty (to be fair, maybe I left it nearly empty when I left 🤷).
So I grabbed the two diesel cans from the Big Barn and then grabbed one of my diesel cans from down at my shed and drove back toward Avoca, heading over to Anderson’s or whatever the name is now since they’ve been bought out.
Filled up 15 gallons of diesel fuel, and still wasn’t having any issues with my van. It wasn’t a particularly hot day, and that’s usually when I had issues. Hot day, less than half a tank.
So though I was hopeful, I still had no idea whether or not my little experiment was a success in any way.
I don’t remember what else I did while I was on the hill. Was today the day that I trimmed the dead limbs that were overhanging the storage barn?
That was a little sketchy. 😅
Or maybe that was another day?
I got my little Milwaukee battery-operated chainsaw climbed onto the roof of the storage barn with a rickety step stool and reached out as far over the abyss as I dared to chop the limb as far from the edge of the barn as I could.
I’ve been worried about that limb for a good long time, because if it came down, it would smash the storage barn pretty good.
Gratefully, I was able to cut it back far enough that were it to ever fall, it wouldn’t hit the roof. 🙏²
I’m not sure I can say the same thing about the other one. There was another limb overhanging the storage barn that was smaller, but it was a little higher than I could reach with that rickety step stool. I was able to get a good portion of it cut off, but it’s just right on the edge of potentially hitting the barn if it were to split off from the trunk.
I think it’s okay, but I would definitely prefer it to be cut back a little bit further.
The most important thing was that I didn’t die (The rickety step stool collapsing under my weight or just tipping over 🙃) 🙏³
Of course, I would like to see both limbs completely cut off, but I didn’t get to that point on this trip. I wasn’t quite up for dragging my big a-frame ladder out of my storage shed in the lower field.
Sadly, in a test of the van again after it sat for a bit, it had the same hard shift into reverse after sitting that it does. Normally, I would say that’s an issue with the torque converter, but the whole darn thing was rebuilt, including a new torque converter, I believe.
😕
I was hopeful for a little bit, but it was probably a long shot, and it didn’t pan out.
Oh well.
Anyway, I headed back to my mom’s place in the early evening because I had an online meeting with the Just Serve people from the stake, as I’m one of the coordinators in the stake, the only one for the Hot Springs branch.
They did the meeting on Zoom for me, as I wasn’t in the state, but I was the only one not there in person. Since it was on Zoom, once the 40 minute threshold for free meetings kicked in, I was booted off (Honestly, it’s pretty amazing they make 40 minutes free!).
I also spent a little time answering a couple of questions on JustAnswer. 😶
🙃
While I was on Haven Hill the Identifix people called me to try and resell me on their product. It’s a lot more expensive now than it was when I had it before, but after a fairly lengthy discussion about my concerns with the product, and how I would be willing to give it a free trial if they would offer me one, but they don’t do free trials anymore, when I turned the salesperson down, he asked if the only thing holding me back was not wanting a commitment and not wanting to pay anything more than I was paying last time, I answered yes. So he offered me the same price as last time with no commitments and adding the app feature for free that normally costs more, I went ahead and signed up again, so that gave me the resources I needed to be able to answer the two questions that I did tonight.
Before I left my mom’s place for the night, earlier in the morning, I had found an organization online that specializes in training autistic people and preparing them for careers. It’s a non-profit, I think? Specifically, and what was of greatest appeal with this organization, was that one of the areas they focused training on was in cyber security which is one of the career paths my autistic nephew is most interested in, his tippy, I think, so I shared that with him before I left.
Oh, and why did I leave for the night? Well, tomorrow is my appointment with the surgeon, and I remembered that traffic early in the morning at the time I would need to be driving through for my appointment is absolutely horrendous by the middle school.
Not wanting to battle through that traffic, I decided to head back to Haven Hill and stay the night down in the back field where I used to sleep when I sort of lived down there.
Of course, I stopped off at the neighborhood market one more time before heading down and crashing at my old spot for the night. 🙃
Oh! I think today was the day that I listed my equipment hauler trailer, my CNG van, and my skid steer for sale–finally. 😅
Quite late, but it’s been done now
Oh my goodness! I forgot it was snake day today! That’s one of the things that I did today. I was helping Andrés with a surprise litter? brood? of chicks that were in the little tool shed.
Apparently, one of the chickens had decided to lay and incubate her eggs in the tool shed next to the storage barn, and this, not so little guy (almost 6 feet long, I think) found some other eggs (and probably some hatchlings 😅).
Normally, these are the kinds of snakes we like, because they keep the rodent population down, but up there by the chickens isn’t where we want them. 🙃
So I got my gloves, picked him up (or her), stuck them in that bin, drove him down to my shed in the lower field, and gifted him my shed as his new home.
There was mice poo in the shed, and I would rather not have the mice chewing through the things I have in the shed, so hopefully Arthur will take care of them (sorry if you’re a girl, Arth 😅).
I put some unfertilized eggs down there next to the shed in the hopes that Arth might eat them and hang around the shed. 🙃
I widened a gap in the back of the shed to give him access back out of the shed.
Anyway, that was earlier in the day, and then as I was driving from Haven Hill to my mom’s place, just up the road from the mailboxes toward Joe and Glenda’s house, there was another black snake slithering across the road, this one was probably about four feet long. Not wanting to get hurt, I grabbed one of my gloves, went over, grabbed it, and put it on the other side of the road.
Happy snake day. 🎉🐍🎉
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 