It's rarely ever as bad as you think.....

7:40 am - Thursday - November 21st - TWW - 33° F, humidity 36%, wind 8 mph out of the southeast......partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 67° F.  On this date in 2018 we were having dinner with Amazon friends at Brothers BBQ in Campbellsville, KY....some of the best St. Louis Spare Ribs ever...

We needed to cut a corridor between two juniper trees near where we are going to place the new solar array.  There are three junipers on the driver side of the trailer with a corridor in between them where the sun is shining throughout the day. The corridor needed to be widened to assure continuous sun exposure to the new solar array panels.  TLE acted as my assistant moving branches as I cut them with one of our Stihl chainsaws.....

....before we trimmed the trees back the branches were almost touching across that gap you see.  The new solar array pole will be installed in the foreground.  It took us a little over an hour to widen that gap, and now we are ready to pour the concrete base for the new solar array.  One of the two trees on the right in this picture was dead, so we cut many of those dead limbs into useful firewood, managing to kill two proverbial birds with one stone, as they say.

Next up was to assemble the new shelving unit we received on Tuesday.  There is a lot of stuff under our bed that will be moved out there over the next few days.  Having already assembled one of these shelving units before helped speed up the process this time, and we had the shelving unit assembled, and in place within 30 minutes.....

....I might mention that we did not work continuously on these projects, but took breaks every hour, or so.  My tendency is to work without stopping all day, and then end up exhausted at the end of the day, so taking 20 minute breaks helps preserve our energy levels, thereby enabling us to actually get more done each day.

Next up I needed to pull the six spark plugs on the Jeep CJ-5 to clean them, and re-gap them.  The other day, when my brother was here we drove the Jeep out to meet them and lead them into the property.  Upon return to the property I parked the Jeep in front of the garage and went on about spending time with Philip and Jeannie.  When I went to put the Jeep away that night it would hardly start, and then ran very rough.  It sounded like it was only firing on 3 out of 6 cylinders, so I suspected a few fouled plugs.  As it turned out all 6 plugs appeared to be kind of oily, so I checked the oil level, and found that there is too much oil in the oil pan, which is probably the reason they became fouled.  Anyway, I cleaned, and checked the gap on each plug before reinstalling them.  By the way the gaps were all right on the money at .35. I'll need to drain a couple of quarts of oil out, and that should solve the fouling problem.

Anyway, the moment of truth was at hand....would the Jeep CJ-5 start, and run smoothly again?  It took a little coxing, but she fired up, and ran, and idled smoothly.  What a relief!  If you have been reading this blog for any length of time you know my tendency is to imagine things are worse than they are, when most often the solution to most problems is quite simple.  I was imagining I would have to take the Jeep into a mechanic to fix, but in the end I was able to diagnose and fix the problem myself without involving the professionals...lol!

The outside temp got to a 'blazing' 62° F Wednesday, and as a result the temp at sunset was still in the high 50's, and there was no wind, so TLE and I decided to have a sunset fire.....

We actually have some wild life in the area

....there is still un-melted snow on the ground from last Saturday's snowfall.....

.....and some un-melted ice on the driveway in front of the garage......

.....it was a perfect evening for a sunset fire....not even a breath of wind.....

....and a few contrails lit up by the setting sun.....

.....by 5:45 pm we were back inside the warm confines of the Newell, and another day at TWW had come to an end.

Thanks for stopping by!