Work without bending over?

7:36 am - Wednesday - December 4th - TWW - 37° F, humidity 50%, wind 7 mph out of the east by southeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 62° F.  I'd like to point out that the wind speed I report each day is what Weather.com is suggesting it is, but it is not really that windy here....so far.  I would say the wind is around 1 mph out of the south by southeast, right now, and not the 7 mph Weather.com is suggesting.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were visiting 'Hermits Rest' at the west end of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.....

After two days of a lot of 'bending over' type work our backs needed a time out, so we sought out jobs which did not require the bending of the back.  One such job, for moi, was to clean the 14 solar panels that provide power to the house. They are located on the roof of the CONEXT, and the battery room....

.....with TLE's assistance we moved my telescoping ladder over from the trailer to the CONEX and I went up to do the cleaning....they were not really that dirty, except for some bird dooky on three of them, but now we know they are clean.  The environment here is not that dusty, but I was still surprised at how clean those panels were.

The last time I used the 16" Stihl chainsaw I noticed the chain was getting was getting dull, and I had decided a few days ago to install one of the new chains the prior owner gifted me when I bought it.  This job definitely did not require any bending of the back.  It did not really take that long to replace the chain.......within 15 minutes it was installed, and ready to use again Wednesday, or Thursday when we will be cutting more wood.

Next up I decided to install the new roof panel Charles and Phyllis bought for the Yamaha Rhino.  As you will recall, I installed the new windshield a week ago, or so, but never installed the roof.  The roof panel is held in place on the roll cage with 5 clamps, which required the drilling of 5 holes through it.  While I was thus occupied TLE was burning paper, and cardboard in the TWW burn barrel, which is just outside the garage where I was working.  When I needed her assistance she walked over to help, then returned to the burn barrel.  It did not take long to finish the installation....

.....I used 3 of the clamps to affix the leading edge of the roof panel to the front of the roll cage, and the remaining 2 on the back end.  This job definitely did not require any back bending....lol.

We don't usually go outside to work until 9:30, or 10 am as it is just too cold....at least too cold for us....lol, so by the time I finished the Rhino roof it was around noon time, and time for a break on the house deck.  TLE brought out some celery sticks with peanut butter on them, and a glass of ice tea.  Once I was done with that I headed out to the CONEX to see if I could restore the power, which had been disconnected a while back as there was a dead short somewhere inside said CONEX.  I had not really paid much attention to the disconnected wiring before Tuesday, but was surprised to find out that the 4 electrical outlets at the back of the CONEX were still live.....they had only disconnected the ancient fluorescent ceiling lights (you can see one of them in the picture below).  They're about 10' long and very heavy.  Anyway, the fixture nearest the back wall of the CONEX had no fluorescent tubes in it, so I decided to remove it from the ceiling, and run an extension cord over to the workbench to get some temporary lighting.  It took quite a while to remove the one fixture, but in the end I finally had some light over the workbench....

I have a single 40 watt light bulb hanging over the workbench right now, but a little light is way better than none, which is what we had before!  You can see the Stihl chainsaw on the workbench, which now has the new, aforementioned sharp chain installed.

.....now that I know we have power at the fourplex electrical outlet box I can plug in the compressor, drill press, bandsaw, and bench grinder, which I did.....

....it was only 1:30 pm when I finished my work in the CONEXT, so I got out the pruning hooks and did a little more trimming on those trees which border the new walking path TLE and I created on Monday.  By the time I finished it was 2:30 pm, and I had managed to work all day with minimal bending over.....my back was quite grateful!

As we edge deeper into December the number of 60° days left is dwindling quickly, so TLE suggested we grill a couple of filet mignons for dinner...as you know, we now eat dinner between 3:30 and 4 pm each day, so around 3:20 pm I went out to light the Sea-B-Que for the first time in over a week.  By 3:45 pm we had two beautifully grilled filets, to which TLE added sides of bonbon squash, and green beans....delicious......

.....we were out on the sunset fire deck by 4:45 pm in anticipation of the 5:20 pm sunset....it was beautiful....

.....very muted at first, but then the the western skies looked like they were on fire.....

....it went on for about 30 minutes, and by 5:50 pm it began to mute once again.....

....I'm telling you straight....this place really begins to grow on you, and we are so loving our winter sojourn.  Thanks for stopping by!