Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

Dealing with a balky Emergency Generator

We were snowed in for a few days and ice built up on the trees to the point where branches were snapping off and blocking the roads.

Here is a picture of our lane taken by Tom King as he and a chainsaw-wielding neighbor cleared their way to the main road.

I was completing a backlog of Christmas framing projects when the power went out but I was not too concerned because I thought my emergency generator was ready to go and save the day. After all, I had started it every few weeks after the last storm and everything had been working perfectly.

I had purchased an extra spark plug in case it was needed and had three 5 gallon cans of gasoline in addition to a full tank on the generator. I felt that I was much better prepared than last year.

Little did I know.

The generator started up as it should have but it faltered and died when I backed off on the choke. This state of affairs continued until the normally faithful Honda engine just quit and died and would not start again.

Thirty minutes of tinkering in the increasing cold produced no results and I called it quits for the night. This morning, Glenn Givens, who is a really good small engine repairman, came over and he found the problem almost immediately. There was water in the bottom of the emergency generator gas tank.

We drained the carburetor and the liquid looked cloudy at first, then the water settled out from the gas/water mixture in about 20 seconds. When we did the first test today, there was as much water in the jar as there was gasoline!

We kept draining the carburetor until the water disappeared from the gas, put a spritz of ether in the carburetor, and the engine started up like a charm.

I ran the generator with no problems until about 4:00 pm when the power came back on.

I felt I had been well prepared but I did not anticipate that freshly filled cans of gasoline would have so much water in them. I need to add a visual check for water in the gasoline to my emergency preparedness checklist.

Maybe it's time to recycle Congress

We started out, as I recall, with a representative form of government which has gradually morphed into an elite group of lawmakers who are no longer accountable to the people who elect them.

For example, our Congress critters vote themselves raises even as the economy tanks because of their inept leadership. These same public servants have a health care system that is not affected by the health care legislation that was voted on today.

In case after case, we find the leadership of the House and Senate buying votes through special deals, funneling money to relatives through contract awards and special tax breaks, and holding closed-door sessions to circumvent established procedures.

I think the problem began with us voters assuming that our representatives would represent our interests and not realizing that once in Washington, DC. our representatives play to a different audience.

Too many Congressmen and Senators have turned a deaf ear to constituent's complaints. Some have even utilized union goons to intimidate voters who asked embarrassing questions. We are seeing a climate of corruption that is getting worse every month.

Even 30 year veterans like Rick Boucher seem indifferent to constituent's questions. Send him an email on a specific measure and you will get a canned response in a month or two with a few platitudes and no specifics.

When elected representatives show no responsibility for understanding the needs of their constituents and satisfying those needs, it is time to get representatives who know where their loyalties lie.

If we replace all incumbents in the next two elections, we will have made a good start on bringing government under control again. The amount of pork a politician brings home is only one measure of how effective that person is. Handouts of patronage and federal funding are easy ways to bribe politicians to vote for really bad legislation.

We don't survive on handouts. What we need is a climate where businesses small and large can prosper. I think that recycling Congress and the entire Executive Branch would be the best move we could make to bring prosperity back in reach again. The only exceptions I could see is where the person can make a good case that they really ARE representing their constituents and backing this up with facts, not rhetoric.

Otherwise we are on a fast track to putting the entire country into the same state of collapse as Detroit.

Image from: 100 Abandoned Houses - Kevin Bauman Photography. www.kevinbauman.

In 2005, Kevin Bauman estimated that there were 12,000 abandoned homes in Detroit.

We Appreciate Simple Pleasures in Hard Times

It's 18 degrees outside and the wind is picking up, so the chill factor is probably 8 degrees. The weather in Floyd today is brisk.

Fortunately, we decided a long time ago that we would install one of those new-fangled wood burning stoves with an outside air feed. Our medium-sized wood stove keeps our 1650 sq ft house comfortably warm with no other heat sources except for tiny bathroom heaters in the remote ends of the house.

Our 3 1/2 acre property supplies enough oak firewood that we do not expect to need any other fuel source  for the next four years. Our winter fuel costs include chainsaw parts, gasoline, and bar oil but not much more.

I expect the next few years will be much colder than this one, so I am looking at ways to store more firewood and to make the cutting and splitting as easy as possible.

Wood stoves have their downsides, like ashes to empty and wood chips on the floor, but when they are properly set up with blowers and ceiling fans to spread the heat, the result can be as picture perfect as this. See more of my wood stove posts here and here.

We are not so focused on the simple life as you might expect. We are just trying to live in the most economical way possible and still lead a modern lifestyle. Just out of camera range there are three computers and a printer busily at work while several cats like this one dream of warmth and sunshine.

Hope you are all safe and warm this day. We are working to get as much done as possible before the next power outage hits.

Which one of these is unlike the other?

1. The Boogeyman



2. The Closet Monster



3. Global Warming



4. Carbon Dioxide as a Pollutant



5. Al Gore

Ans: - #5  Al Gore, of course.

He is a tremendously successful businessman who profits by scaring gullible people. As a result he has been awarded an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize.

The others are fictions which are used to scare children and other gullible people. Politicians thrive by using items 3 and 4 to get funding for their friends. Their motto is: "Never let a good hoax go to waste".

- - -

We are sitting here typing while the emergency generator rumbles in the distance and we are expecting even more "global warming" to fall on us in the next 24 hours.

Meanwhile, our elected Climatologist-in-Chief and the EPA are putting on a dog and pony show in "Hopenhagen" in hopes of establishing a New World Order based on more tomfoolery and carbon credits.

Way to go, guys! You are all that stands between us and prosperity!

Our Christmas Cat

We have a new cat and our boss cat is going through a severe reality adjustment.

Our cat quartet was broken when up our alpha cat Sherman bit the dust after contracting some sort of quick-acting wasting disease.

We found a replacement cat named Chester living on a neighboring farm. I had featured Chester in a blog post after I discovered that he looked after small animals on the farm. He would make regular rounds to visit the chickens in the Chicken coop and the rabbit in its pen. He was great with visitors too. He was a stray who became one of our neighbors farm cats. Unlike the other farm cats, he was as socialized as they were feral.

Chester and I struck it off immediately and I had always planned to make off with him if I found an opportunity to do so. Unfortunately he was loved by his owners and it didn't seem fair to break up a happy family.

I bided my time and avoided recruiting him for our house with tales of good food, a private bed, personal play toys and on-demand feedings. However, I did let him know that he had other options if he ever wanted to expand his horizons.

Time went by and it came to pass that one of his family members was quite allergic to Chester...

We were properly sympathetic and offered to take Chester under our wing where he would be available for visits. We did a killer presentation on how he would be treated well and it would be a win-win situation for everyone. Chester would be able to be inside during cold weather without kicking off allergy attacks, his former family would have unlimited visiting rights, and we would have a new player in our cat quartet.

It was a tough sell, but we persevered.

I think that Chester must have already decided that we were an opportunity to expand his horizons. When we brought over a cat carrier and opened the carrier door, Chester immediately walked inside. He wasn't even upset when we shut him in the carrier although he moaned quietly all the way to our house.

We gave him his own room for the first day so he could get acclimated. He checked it all out and even figured out how to use the litter box although he had never seen one before. Barn cats use the great outdoors, but Chester liked the convenience of an indoor privy. Don't we all, especially in cold weather...

By the second day, Chester had taken over one of the prime lounging areas and was making himself at home.

He has not attacked any of the other cats and he does not encourage the others to invade his space. He has a whole repertoire of blood curdling moans and growls and uses them to good effect to keep others from bugging him. You can see from his expression that he is no wuss cat.

He is social with people and he is adjusting the feline pecking order to his liking. Some of the other cats are already making friendly overtures as they see that he will probably become the top cat in short order.

I expect that they will all be sleeping together in a few more weeks. I only heard one hiss all day.