I'm now back from 6 days of flying and so I can continue my adventures here.
Ah, the glamourous life of an airline pilot; you know how one day starts full of promise and excitement...
...like looking at my view from the new property, Timber Haven West. But at the end of this bucolic day it all abruptly comes to a screeching halt...
...with this passenger in my car, note the bucket in the passenger seat.
Let me explain. After flying all night from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Newark, NJ, I then commuted home via Chicago and then a 3 hour drive. That gets me home noonish or so. Since I love my shop, of course the first thing I want to do is change clothes and go out there and continue with various ongoing projects. Today I had scheduled for more scrap metal to be picked up. Much of it the result of my work out in the tool shed so John, my metal scrap guy shows up promptly and we proceed to load another approximate 1 ton of scrap from the property (for those who are taking test notes that brings the currant grand total to.........59 US tons - 53.5 metric tons)...
...as seen above. I'll introduce you to John and wife Betty in a later post, never fear. So we loaded this all by hand, took about 1 1/2 hours. So I bid goodbye to them and I move on to my next project.
This is my hedge row 5 years after I cleaned out all the volunteer and unwanted trees, bushes and various other plant growth from it.
As I've stated before I absolutely love these wonderful, old, gnarly Osage Orange (hedge) trees.
Since I now own the preverbal "other side" of the hedge row, my summer project will be to clean it up as well.
Here is what happens if you don't maintain a hedge row. Plant growth just continues to creep out from it. So after loading the metal scrap I turned my attention to starting this new project.
I worked on that cleanup till about 1900. Shown here is a hole that now allows me to see through the hedge row. That's the tool shed in the background. Probably the first time that's happened in over 50 years or more.
It's slow going but ultimately quite rewarding. Here's the hole as seen from my side. This is the result of several hours work but it's a great way to relax after traveling 5,000+ miles.
So I'm finally ready to call it a day and go home but there's one more small, slightly unpleasant task before me. Remember from a while back about the dead possum in the tool shed. It's been there a couple of months or more so I decided to finally remove it. Turns out I had my Eclipse out there so I decided to put the remains in a plastic bag and then in a 5 gallon bucket to transport it.
I just know everyone wants to see the critter in question, so here you can see his/her
tail slightly. Well even after having passed away a couple of months to that big reward in the sky, you really don't want to go very far with a dead possum riding shotgun in your shinny sports car and you certainly don't want to drive around with the windows closed. 
Trust me on that one OK? So there I was, windows all down, good draft flowing, everything was going pretty good. I only had to drive about a 1/2 mile, doing about 40 mph on the highway when a car going the other way created some suction inside my car. Now what I didn't know was that.... well sir, when a possum is dead for a while its fur tends to fall out pretty easy. In fact it falls out real easy and with that sudden suction and all, well my day ended up not one bit the way I had envisioned it would. After 1/2 hour vacuuming all kinds of fur debris out from the inside it's good to go now but you can bet I won't ever make that mistake again!
So there you have it, scrap metal removal, tree/ bush/plant removal, long dead possum removal. Just another glamorous day in the life of an airline pilot. Yes sir, I am living the dream.
Thomas
Ah, the glamourous life of an airline pilot; you know how one day starts full of promise and excitement...
...like looking at my view from the new property, Timber Haven West. But at the end of this bucolic day it all abruptly comes to a screeching halt...
...with this passenger in my car, note the bucket in the passenger seat.
Let me explain. After flying all night from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Newark, NJ, I then commuted home via Chicago and then a 3 hour drive. That gets me home noonish or so. Since I love my shop, of course the first thing I want to do is change clothes and go out there and continue with various ongoing projects. Today I had scheduled for more scrap metal to be picked up. Much of it the result of my work out in the tool shed so John, my metal scrap guy shows up promptly and we proceed to load another approximate 1 ton of scrap from the property (for those who are taking test notes that brings the currant grand total to.........59 US tons - 53.5 metric tons)...
...as seen above. I'll introduce you to John and wife Betty in a later post, never fear. So we loaded this all by hand, took about 1 1/2 hours. So I bid goodbye to them and I move on to my next project.
This is my hedge row 5 years after I cleaned out all the volunteer and unwanted trees, bushes and various other plant growth from it.
As I've stated before I absolutely love these wonderful, old, gnarly Osage Orange (hedge) trees.
Since I now own the preverbal "other side" of the hedge row, my summer project will be to clean it up as well.
Here is what happens if you don't maintain a hedge row. Plant growth just continues to creep out from it. So after loading the metal scrap I turned my attention to starting this new project.
I worked on that cleanup till about 1900. Shown here is a hole that now allows me to see through the hedge row. That's the tool shed in the background. Probably the first time that's happened in over 50 years or more.
It's slow going but ultimately quite rewarding. Here's the hole as seen from my side. This is the result of several hours work but it's a great way to relax after traveling 5,000+ miles.
So I'm finally ready to call it a day and go home but there's one more small, slightly unpleasant task before me. Remember from a while back about the dead possum in the tool shed. It's been there a couple of months or more so I decided to finally remove it. Turns out I had my Eclipse out there so I decided to put the remains in a plastic bag and then in a 5 gallon bucket to transport it.
I just know everyone wants to see the critter in question, so here you can see his/her
tail slightly. Well even after having passed away a couple of months to that big reward in the sky, you really don't want to go very far with a dead possum riding shotgun in your shinny sports car and you certainly don't want to drive around with the windows closed. Trust me on that one OK? So there I was, windows all down, good draft flowing, everything was going pretty good. I only had to drive about a 1/2 mile, doing about 40 mph on the highway when a car going the other way created some suction inside my car. Now what I didn't know was that.... well sir, when a possum is dead for a while its fur tends to fall out pretty easy. In fact it falls out real easy and with that sudden suction and all, well my day ended up not one bit the way I had envisioned it would. After 1/2 hour vacuuming all kinds of fur debris out from the inside it's good to go now but you can bet I won't ever make that mistake again! So there you have it, scrap metal removal, tree/ bush/plant removal, long dead possum removal. Just another glamorous day in the life of an airline pilot. Yes sir, I am living the dream.
Thomas
Thanks though for your report from the "field". Good work.
