Retirement is when you have all your own time to do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it, right?
Well, perhaps not quite ....
All I wanted to do this week was to build half a dozen switches, now that I'm finally set-up and able to do so. I had two already built from last week, and based on what I learned there, made some minor modifications to my fixtures and jigs over the weekend. On Monday I build a third switch and things were going well it seemed, so expected to build five more over the course of the next four days ..... but then reality set in, and the truth of retirement struck home with a vengeance!!!
Come Tuesday I get a message that some serious graffiti had been found in the rocks on a hilltop nearby here, and being something of a go to "Pillar" of the community, I answered the call to go check it out and see what might best be done about it. Spent a while up there experimenting on a few different techniques for removal, when a gust of wind caught me and nearly blew me right off the ridge. This gust merely presaged the even more serious wind that was yet to come, and so I was fortunate that I had brought my stout walking stick (and snake stick) along so as to be able to brace tripod fashion as I fought my way back down off the ridge.
Upon arriving back at the house, the wind was not so bad, but was definitely building rapidly so that within an hour we were treated to a PSPS event (Public Safety Power Shutoff) by our local electrical utility to avoid liability issues of possible wildfire. So even though I now had the time to build a switch with the wind howling through the Sequoias outside .... doing so without interior lighting just didn't seem like such a good idea. It was getting dark by the time the wind went down enough for the power to come back on, but by then it was time to fix dinner and call it an evening .... so much for Tuesday.
Wednesday started out normal, but then the phone rang and my Lady's sister was calling to inform us that she'd had a couple of large trees, one sycamore and one Arizona Cypress, taken out over the prior weekend, and wanted to know if we wanted any of the wood before she hauled it off to the dump. Well of course when wood is a primary heat source, free wood simply cannot be passed up, even though free can be quite costly, in terms of lower back and hard haulage up a steep grade with an old pickup. But I went for it anyway, as next year or the year after as it seasons, it will be a valuable resource to help keep our wood stove fed, and thus my Lady nice and toasty warm!
So for the last three days I've been loading, hauling and stacking wood, a goodly portion of which is just dripping with pitch, Arizona Cypress is terrible for that. All of the trunk wood is just too big around and often too long too, so will have to be extensively dealt with again in the future with splitting and cutting to length after it dries for a year or so, but that is all in the future for now at least. But many of these too big, fresh green hunks of trunk, weighing up to and beyond a hundred pounds, and having to lift and load them in a wobbly weak old wheel barrow, then pushing them precariously across an uneven yard to my truck, where they have to be lifted again into the bed, then positioned and stacked to best advantage, takes a bit out of an old fellow like me. The drive home with the load is fraught with "adventure" as the truck's tail all but drags, and the view is partly obscured as its hard seeing over the front of the hood at this angle, while the steering is so light and tentative as to be positively nerve wracking at anything over 50 mph. Then there is the long climb up the steep grade home, downshifted into third gear, and the slow back-up the driveway into the backyard where it all must be unloaded, positioned and stacked to best advantage for drying, as out of the way as possible.
Needless to say ... no switches built this week, since Monday anyway .... drat!
Tomorrow I have a muzzle loader shoot in the morning, and will pick up the last half load of wood on the way home from that, so no switch building tomorrow either!
Sunday, I think I may just take "Off" and give my back, legs and arms a rest, with the hope of being in some kind of shape to give building a few switches a chance next week perhaps!
Ah Retirement .... the freedom to do whatever I want whenever I want ..... don't I just wish!!!
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