Road Trip!

As Kris Kristofferson wrote….

Well, I woke up Sunday morning
With no way to hold my head that didn't hurt
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad
So I had one more for dessert

That is pretty much how my day started, except maybe the having one for breakfast part. On the other hand maybe it would have helped! I took a road trip this week and returned about noon on Saturday. Kevin and Cheryl were coming over about 5, it was a sunny 70 degrees so Barb and I went went for a 4 wheeler ride before they came over. On our way back we saw our neighbors Jim and Carmen outside doing some yard work so we stopped by to rescue them from having to do any more. It was only 3:00 but being Saturday Carmen said it was happy hour so we sat down at their picnic table and had a drink, which led to another….. next thing we knew it was 5:00 and we rushed home to find Kevin and Cheryl sitting on the porch out front. Well, since they did not have happy hour yet we had to start all over. Well, you get the picture. They left about 8:30 and I was in bed about 10 minutes after that!          

That brings me to this moment where I am very slowly waking up on Easter morning when Barb said "Time for you to search for your Easter basket!" Really? Sure enough, she had hid a basket filled with goodies!

So, where did I go on my road trip? 443 miles north and slightly east to Douglas North Dakota! The purpose of the trip was twofold; the first was to drop off the bell and cast iron seats to Farmer Bob, the other was to pick up the windmill he found us!

Now one might ask, “Why do you want a windmill?”. To that I would respond, Who doesn’t want a windmill! We have been looking for one on and off for over a year but they are either too expensive or people do not want to sell them so when Bob called and said he had found someone who would sell us one at a reasonable price, we jumped on it!

The challenging part is that it was still standing and we had to take it down and transport it back home. I arrived on a Wednesday afternoon planning using Thursday and Friday to take it down and head home on Saturday. What I did not take into account was the weather. First was the ground was still frozen so Bob and I had to use picks and shovels to dig down below the surface to get to the joint underground. The second item was the wind. With 30-40 mph winds we had to sit out Thursday and hope for calmer winds on Friday. So we spent Thursday getting things ready and strategizing on the best way to get it down without damaging it.

Friday morning we were loaded up and ready to get to work before the winds picked up again, so off we went!

The first step was to take their man lift and raise it up the 30+ feet to the top of the windmill and secure a chain to the top. 

View from the top!

Then I had to climb out of the basket and down the windmill ladder that had probably not been used in decades. To say that the pucker factor was in full effect would be an understatement! 

Climbing down!

Once I made it down to the ground we used the ground controls on the lift to see if the chain was set to the right length. Nope. So back up the ladder I went to re-secure the chain. Back down again….nope, still too long. Ugh! We finally got it to the right length and ground off the bolts securing the windmill to the ground.  

Bob grinding off the bolts

Once all the bolts were cut I slowly lifted it up. As I lifted it up, Bob pulled the base away from the ground then I then slowly started to lower it as Bob walked backwards with the base.

Almost down!

It did not go as smoothly as I am writing it but eventually we got it horizontal just above the ground and I backed the trailer under it. We then lowered it the rest of the way onto the trailer. The problem was that we had a 30+ foot windmill on a 20’ trailer. We then dismantled the bottom section so it only overhung the trailer by about 2’. We were only able to go about 20 mph on our way back to the farm but we finally got it there where we worked on taking the tail off and getting it secured for the 8 hour trip back home. Once we had it secured I took it for a test drive down the road at 65 mph. After a little more tweaking I was ready to the trip home the next morning!

Ready to roll!

I left about 5am stopping every hour or so to check the load. I finally pulled into our driveway just before 1pm. I passed 3 cop cars which I thought would pull me over for something but each just ignored me and carried on to do whatever else police officers do.  Whew! Later that day Kevin and Cheryl came over where it took all 4 of us to get it off the trailer.

It will be a few months before we get it up here as I need to do some work to it and we have other things to do the next few months. But we finally have our windmill!

Our other big accomplishment for the week was to get our island lights up. This may sound like an easy project but suspending a 6’ 8x8 beam from 18’ is quite the task. But before we could think about getting it up we had to cut it to length, sand and put several coats of varnish on it. We then set up the scaffolding and were ready to hang it!

Kevin cutting the groove on top to hide the wiring

The next step was to drill holes and cut a groove in the top of the beam for the wires to travel through. Then we used a plumb bob and figure out exactly where we wanted the chains for the beam to come through the ceiling in relation to the island. I then went up in the truss space in the attic to put some braces up there to hold everything up and get the light wires ready for hook up. Day 1 we got the beam up and secured. Day 2 I got the lights on everything wired up!

We love the finished product and now have lights over the island!

On the puppy front we are less than two weeks from getting Zoey! The breeder continues to send us pictures almost daily. We got this one the other day showing that her ears have started to stand up!