June 1 2009

What a giant turn-on: the atmospheric phenomina! Think back to the sunset sky the night before, just before we left Ashland after the (another phenomina!) the (band at the) gig. That color sky mirrored almost exactly one of the sunset-sky shots in the chemtrail dvd. I've the good sense of having had an adventure. I didn't tell you that I'd tipped the gal minding Ivo's counter Sunday afternoon. Tipped her three dollars specifically for: th ambiance they allow outside; commenting that I wanted it to balance against complaints that may have been lodged in opposition. 

Leaving Winema Way in the climatological (potential) nightmare that the serious disturbances going on at that time, I just hunkered down and concentrated upon getting myself down to hwy 99 and left/ north on it. Ambulances-times-two plus firetrucks and police cars were all racing west toward where I'd just come from and more than half the traffic lights and downtown stores' electricity was out in an inconsistant patchwork of stop-and-starts as I stopped at the blownout ones as if in a four-way-stop situation, as I think the DMV rules state is the case. Driving through the deeper pools collected in both outside lanes, I crawled out of town (Medford) toward Grant's Pass. Maybe a few miles out of there the rain let up and the lightning was all south of me and I stopped as a gas station that actally had its lights on still and filled 'er up ($41). The rain grew less and less as I moseyed along 99 to where it had mostly stopped entirely by the time I hit Rogue River, maybe an hour into the driving trip home, where I drove up onto I-5 and chanced the high-speed up to the Merlin exit, where I filled the gas tank back up around 9:45pm, and headed out into the unknown wilderness night of driving 20 to 35 mph around it had to be a thousand turns in the narrow winding roadbed home. Hazard-free uneventful drive of approx 3½ hours; arriving home @:30 am. Pleased with myself valiant spirit in ignoring all the trepidation-thinking concerning withering doubts I always have about any vehicle I've ever had about whether-or-not it is 'up' to it. Good old truck slid smoothly through the night and didn't fall apart! Wow! Double wow!! Home, alive, well, and with a whole new set of memories to contemplate and compare the yeas or nays of them all, once again, to digest and otherwise assimilate into the foggier portions of my so-called reasoning being. But the two thunder/ lightning/ huge downpourings of rain storms that I was seriously effected by and took: I won't soon forget them! 

     What next for me? Tree-felling chainsawing, splitting-mauling, lifting, throwing, stackings of firewood resource-for-colder seasons, now only 3½ months away. Why so soon? Wet firewood creates an abundance of stinky, toxic, smelly, flamable creosote build-up in stovepipe. Three months of seasoning is really not enough time, but dries out more as winter progresses and, so far, I've had only one creosote flue-fire; which I doused in jig time of two minutes or less of frantic tossing water at the inside, then goin up the ladder to the roof and doing more dousing—in the midnight hour . . .  Tomatos're doing fine. I guess that I still am one of the more happier of happy campers, and this feeling makes me feel good; gooder than any urban scene could possibly deliver to one such as me/ my personality. Much clearing-away of accumulated Adam-debris must be attended to after the firewood detail gets wound down; and that'll take me on into the coming cooler temperature times—and so on.     I kept forgetting to assure you by the encouaring knowledge that: Front-wheel-bearing replacement jobs is far far simpler and easier, really, than rear wheel bearing job. If you jack the culprit wheel off the ground—and put a body-stand under by all means—and remove the tire/ rim, you will instantly see how the bearing assembly comes apart and off and before you put the replacement new bearing in: your have to 'pack' it with thickest lube-grease you can find. Squeeze palmfuls into the bearing as you rotate it and smoosh the thick bearing grease into every air-space until you know you've done a thorough job of it, and put it back together. Do not over tighten this unit! The rule is: tighten down the big nut that smooshes the two-part bearing together snuggly—wiggling the wheel now and againg to make sure that the bearing is snuggling into its NOT FINAL position. THEN: Back off the nut until the next (usually a) cotter-pin-hole in the axle-end is reacjed—always only a half-turn backward (counterclockwise) or less—insert cotter-pin or other locking-washer type apparatus the your brand of vehicle uses to lock that nut securely IN PLACE so it can never unwind until mister mechanic undoes the lock washer again. All you need to do this job, besides the jack and body-stand (or round of firewood), is a large crescent wrench or pipe-wrench and needle-nose pliers to undo the nut and the keeper. I note the mechanic who does this kind of greasy work wears chemical-resistant gloves all the time. This seems a major improvement over me just squishing the damn grease into the wheel bearing by an ungloved hand to then, of course, get the grease all removed from hands, which took endless washings in days before orange-oil hand-cleaners. Do I ramble? Of course I do. What else is new?: Not much that I can think of, and this is (sort of) good, in one way, but of course, way worse in another not-too-distant Zeigeist really upon us already only the media won't focus in on it, like you said to me more than once over the course of our visit. Obsessing the truth too much can also be harmful to one's health, I would hazard. Ignoring it holds even more problematics. Like I said in my last letter-to-you that I did not mail . . . I try to strive for a sense of neutrality that I sense will deliver those other wonderful sensations of equillibrium, and calm stasis type pleasanter 'Zeigeist' to my starved-for spiritual sense of some kind of 'space' wherein calm, gentle, zephyer-like soft warm breezes flow through and lively up the sense of natural ambiance, and so on. Neutral: no push, no pull, that 'suits' me/ my 'nature,' if you will—in fact: you must. At least when trying to cess out how to 'deal' with your dad on some issue or another. NATURE, nature law, natural everything has got to counted upon to be one of the more prime of prime factors which an outsider must include in his/ her powers-of-reasoning out some way or another to actually get this old fool to move in any direction but his own. Nature, or as one native elder puts it “nature law” sends the right 'signal' to my thinker: Wow! And it is an unwritten one, too! I like that: no written law, but one that, for best overall healthy 'fun' in this world as we live our too-short lives, must be reckoned with and, I will always hope, be used as one's guide in decision-making about what or what-not to do in any one of our million seconds of being so perfectly alive and alert and young and strong . . .