Too Much Excitement For This Old Codger

I'm officially on vacation now, and at my altitude in life, I want it to actually be restful and non-eventful. I want to roll a blanket out on the lawn and accidentally sleep on my side for two hours, getting up and admiring my new red stripe of seared skin.

I want to wear nothing but flip flops and marvel at how my weight crushes the foam and makes my big feet leave deep impressions there, marking the flip flops as mine forever.

I want to unload my truck of all its tools, and drive around unhindered by an extra thousand pounds rattling around in the back.

I want to have time to fry my bologna before I put it on my sammy, and I want it on toasted bread.

I want the callouses on my hands to wear off and not come back for awhile.

All that stuff.

I want to be able to hop in my car, toss the dogs inside, and take off down the coastal highway for days at a time, or up the coastal highway, or up a winding mountain road.


I looked out the back yard and saw this plume not far from us. The wind is up today, and I couldn't tell if this was somebody burning a really big slash pile, or something to worry about. Instead of napping on my blanket in the sun, I had to make calls and try to sort out what was going on.

This is what happened last time I saw a plume like that on a day I was wearing flip flops.


















Our job is officially wrapped up. I've been in and out of there for the last month, and now it's official. "Out of there". All finished. Nothing left. Take a vacation until we need you.

Woohoohoo!

So when I loaned my trailer to our two laborer boys, I figured they'd bring it back to me empty and park it where I park it, and I wouldn't have to think about it and I could take pictures of weird birds like this one, while I walked around the nearby lake.

The trailer was fully loaded when they came and got it. I expected it to be taken to the dump and emptied before they filled it up some more.

Not so. Laborers are not known for deep thoughts. My trailer is big- meaning it will hold a lot of volume- so they took it back to the job and continued filling it with wet particle board and wet drywall and other stuff that weighs a ton for the amount of room it consumes.

That means instead of fluffing up a pillow and getting in some serious sun and snooze time, I'm getting a phone call from two boys out on the highway. One of the wheels of my trailer fell off, and they have a problem.

"Fell off?"

"Yeah. Your trailer broke, man."

"You broke my trailer?"

"No, man. It just broke while we were driving."

"It just broke?"

"Yeah, the lug studs all sheared off."

"Holy crap! How much weight were you carrying?"

"Weight? No man, we just filled it up. There was still room, a little bit."

Oh Jeez... I had built the trailer for other things besides hauling construction trash. Moving couches and tables and chairs... Hauling motorcycles and such... Carrying tools... So I built it with lots of extra volume, knowing it had a weight capacity of about 2,200 pounds. Somewhere in there. When I told them they could use it, it weighed in at about 2,500 pounds and was only a third full. There were chunks of concrete and lots of dirty soil on the bottom of it.

These guys added about 3,500 more pounds and drove about four miles before a wheel just plain broke.

Hello? Is there anybody home?

So, now instead of tucking a book under my chin because the sun has made me sleepy and closing my eyes, I have to think about how to resolve this issue. My trailer was broken on the side of a reasonably busy highway, completely overloaded, with a wheel missing.

(And I mean missing. The wheel had taken a huge sixty foot bounce (according to the boys) and rolled about a mile across a huge ploughed field and then headed down into a ravine and a river never to be seen again.)

So fixing the wheel that didn't exist was out of the question.

A new axle?

That was the thought. Then I kept thinking and realized I could disassemble my second, unfinished trailer (the one designed to carry heavy loads) and haul an axle with its two wheels attached down to the highway. We could jack up the trailer, and set it down on this axle and move it slowly away.

"Empty what you can out of the trailer and into your truck. I'll be there in a bit."

When I got there, they had put so much weight in the back of the half ton pick up, that it was sitting down hard on its frame. They must have emptied 1,500 pounds of wet particle board and cement chunks, and my trailer still looked over-loaded and crazily full.

We jacked up the back and slipped the axle with the two wheels under the back and tied it off. In this manner and at 5mph, we were able to pull the trailer off the highway and up a nice old lady's driveway after asking her if she minded. She was good country folk. She didn't mind a'tall.
I told the boys since they broke my trailer, I was going to leave them to deal with the garbage. They had to empty the truck at the dump, then come back and fill it again. They had to dump this and do it again. It took four loads in a long bed half ton to empty the one ton trailer. Once or twice, it was intimated that it was my fault the trailer broke since I had built it, but that didn't fly as far as a punted water balloon.

So I got to come home until I got another call saying the trailer was empty, and could I come escort the two lads and my trailer back to my place?

"Sure. OK boys. Let me put my gosh dern book down..."

When I got back from this bit of 20mph driving on a back road, I tried to settle back down to late afternoon relaxing, but then I heard this awful honking at our front gate. It would not stop. My dogs were going nuts at the honker and it was this loud and very unnerving raucous. WTF?

Outside, I found THIS GUY just standing in the street and honking at my gate. My dogs were barking back and I went and grabbed my camera from my truck because I thought this guy was oddly silly. He was just standing there tall and proud and honking honking honking. My dogs barked back and it was a noisy mess. Then all of a sudden THIS one waddles down the road with her goslings, and SHE starts honking. My barking dogs made the little ones skedaddle, and the two geese chased after them and that was that.

Man! Can't a guy get a little peace and quiet around here?



ADDENDUM-- I am leaving in the morning for Santa Rosa, California to help my sister get her garden up and running. I built her some raised beds a few years back with an automatic sprinkler system. She has no time because she is a single lady with three dogs, two cats and her own crazy business. She has a laptop, so I'll be around.