Homestead mailing list

[Don Bowen <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>]

After a four week absence I finally have high speed Internet again.  It 
has been an eventful four weeks, I moved from Southern California to a 
home in the Missouri Ozarks.  The move was a lot more expensive than I 
had budgeted but it is done.  All of my junk, all of her junk required 
my overloaded pickup pulling the biggest trailer U-Haul had, me driving 
the biggest truck they had with two cats and pulling my way overloaded 
16 foot tandem trailer, my wife driving a 17' truck with two dogs and 
the grandson and towing her overloaded car.

The truck was a gutless wonder, there were a few hills that I was not at 
all sure it would get up so the trip took a day longer than I 
scheduled.  The tandem trailer shredded two tires, the last late on a 
Saturday afternoon and I could not find anyone to mount the extra tire I 
had and my tire tools were buried deep in the trailer.  I spent the last 
day and a half in a constant worry about blowing another tire but we 
made it all the way.

We got here and unloaded the trucks then started unpacking.  The 
previous owner had left a lot of stuff around, I have hauled off two big 
pickup loads of trash and have burned a huge pile of junk wood.  There 
is still a pile of metal, two piles of stuff to donate, and a huge pile 
of xmas junk.  I have had to clean out places to put stuff before I 
could unload my stuff, the tandem trailer was unloaded today, just over 
three weeks after we arrived.

I have cleared out the garage so I can put up a temporary shop and am in 
the process of putting the table saw, drill press, and joiner back 
together. I have to build a couple of cabinets and some book shelves.

Meanwhile my pickup had an engine fire, I caught it in time but I need 
to rebuild the wiring loom and fuel lines.  My tractor also broke, I 
think the torque limiting clutch has failed.  I spent money I do not 
have and bought another tractor so I could unload the trailer.  I am 
getting a friend to help me get my dead tractor and and the travel 
trailer home.

It has been a month of get up in the morning and start working, continue 
until I can no longer move, take a nap, go agaon until collapse time, 
sleep and do it all over again

--
Don Bowen           KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html