Life & Death & Making It Up As You Go Along

I've been away from the keyboard for too long, today. Life has intervened.

Last night I headed off to my monthly pipe smoker's meeting at the Sherlock Holmes Pipe Club. (Yes, this is a thing. Yes, it's the high point of this introvert's month.)

The talk of the night was the storm that's coming tomorrow. Apparently it's meant to be a hurricane wrapped in a snowstorm. What a fine adventure after weeks of sub-zero weather!

Back at Toad Hall, it's a given that we'll lose power any time the winds get too feisty. Nine times out of ten, we are the last people in town to have it switched back on. (No exaggeration. This is a fate we share with our next-door neighbor - our connection to the grid stretches across a marsh.)

In the past I've been happy to "rough it" during a winter storm, but the introduction of these sub-zero temperatures introduces the risk of frozen, broken pipes. And if we're stuck out here for a prolonged period due to greater than expected snowfall, we could find ourselves in a life-threatening situation if the power goes out. (I'm being a little over-dramatic. I mean, we could hike into town and check into the ER, but we'd get really, really cold on the way there.)

So this morning I decided to fire up that old generator again and see if it's still working.

I'm getting awfully sick of fussing over that thing. But the starter battery was sitting on a trickle charger inside the house, and it roared to life without a fuss.

Ah, the sweet noise and stink of Diesel power!

Then I figured it was time I properly change the oil in this thing. I've tried two different types of siphons to suck the dirty oil out, and today I tried a third. As usual, all I ended up doing was making a mess. Then I finally realized there was a drain plug down at the bottom of the engine. I thought, that's stupid. It's just going to dump all the oil into the housing. Then I felt around the bottom of the housing and realized there was a drainage hole there, too.

Well shit, that turned out to be a lot easier than I was making it out to be. (The more mechanically minded among you are invited to laugh and throw vegetables at this point.)

So I drained out the oil (I'll apologize to The Wife about her cookie tin sometime tomorrow.), topped off the diesel, and then went out to refill my fuel can and get the 10W30 I needed to replace what I'd drained.

The predicted North winds mean I can't just leave it sitting in an open garage during the storm, so I spent hours rearranging the garage and removing a panel from the door so that I could vent the exhaust through it. Once everything was in place, I decided to fire up the generator one more time, just to circulate the new oil.

No dice. Just a depressing "thunk" with each turn of the ignition.

So I hooked up the lawnmower battery. Then the car battery. Then both in parallel. There were sparks! But the flywheel would only make a few jerky, abortive turns.

I thought of hooking the batteries up in series and doubling the voltage and then remembered that a high-school physics understanding of electronics was a great way to stop your own heart.

What ended up working was putting the original (proper) battery back on the trickle charger and getting it out of the cold again. An hour later and it had enough juice to start the beast again.

So... it looks like we've got just one shot to start this thing if the power goes out.

That's fine. I'll take those odds.

Do you ever feel like you've got no idea what the hell you're doing?

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Or what the hell you're supposed to be doing?

Good grief. I was meant to be in my office composing earth-shattering articles for Steemit, and then working on a Novel, and then going for a run (probably the last in a while, with the snow on the way). I may not have committed to a New Year's Resolution, but it would be nice if I could follow a basic schedule.

Instead I'm staring down a storm and messing with an ancient generator I'm in no way qualified to service. My knuckles are bleeding and my back aches and who knows, we might freeze to death in the next 24 hours.

But I'll be damned if it's not going to be a hell of an adventure.

If it weren't for days like this, what would I talk about with my pipe smoking buddies?