Permaculture Side Quests

63  bar falls 30.15  0mph NNE dew-point 60   sunrise 7:04  set 7:04

Waning Crescent of the Harvest Moon  rise 2:44   set  5:23

orchard-installationwheel300.jpgWhat a guy night and day.  Last night I relieved Kate after the trailer blew its tire.  The truck and the speeding vehicles on 10 kept me company until the night driver from Pomps (would I make this up?) showed up to tell me I needed not only a new tire, but a new wheel, too.  A Jungian would ask (and I am one, so I will) if this uniformed man with a third eye, a battery powered lamp, came out of the night as a psychopomp, ready to carry me into another realm.

He did.  After he left, I went home for five hours of sleep, then up again to find a tire and wheel.  It was easier, but not straight forward.  The folks who made the trailer went out of business a year ago (natch) and the new folks no longer stocked this tire.  But, “Northern Tool or Discount Tire might have it.”  Northern Tool, “We have every trailer tire, but that one.”  (again, natch)  At Discount Tire I discovered why, “Oh, that’s an automobile tire, not a trailer tire.”  Soooo.  “Yes, we have it.  But you’ll need to measure from the center of one lug nut to the far side of the one after the one  you’re measuring from.”  OK.  4.5 inches.  Discovered in the pouring rain.  Of course.

“Give me two.  Just in case.”  Over to Discount Tire.  Two new tires with what looked like a flimsy rim, but what did I expect from discount tire?  Over to the trailer for my third visit since its unscheduled stop.  Yes, the lug nuts would not come off easily.  The guy from Pomps, the psychopomp, had put them back on with a pneumatic gun.  I had me.  It took a while, kicking the lug wrench to move it off the threads likely corroded from the two years the trailer sat outside.  Again, all in the rain.  Jacking, jacking, jacking.  Slow movements up.  The new tire.  Tighten.   Jacking, jacking, jacking.  Rain.  Mud.  Cars and trucks whooshing past.

At the end I had one final challenge.  How to put the little truck’s trailer hitch ball under it’s female receptacle on the trailer?  Not easy when you can’t see the trailer.  At all.  After I stuck two sections of the jack handle into the garden blend, they stuck up high enough to line it up.  Success.

The slow drive home seemed anti-climactic.  Now, I’m going to pick up some more soil.  Not quite so much this time.