The Lawn Mower Saga Continues

I woke up this morning intent on getting my lawn mower to start and then reviving the life of my neglected lawn. After putting fuel stabilizer and octane booster in the gas tank, I hadn't attempted to start it. Today would be the day. I went out into the backyard, wheeled it out of the work shed and gave it a couple good pulls. It started and died immediately. After staring it down for a couple minutes, I decided I would tear it apart to see what I could find. My mechanical knowledge is limited for sure, but this season I completely dismantled a chainsaw and put it back together. And the thing still runs great! If I could do that, surely I could do the same to the lawn mower.

Without first consulting the manual (because who really needs directions in a time like this?) I grabbed my toolbox and started dismantling the lawn mower. I took off the cover and found what appeared to be the flywheel. Ok, awesome. So far it looks exactly like a chainsaw. I located the magneto (I think) and started to feel quite sure of myself. I figured out how it started and stopped (spark plug wire goes to magneto area, pulling back the lever on the mower handle releases the brake from the flywheel). I pulled apart what appeared to be the air filter and found it to be soaked with oil. Ooh, not good. My chainsaw air filter should never be soaked in oil. So I pulled it out and washed it with soap and water and placed it out in the sun to dry. I pulled out the spark plug and examined it, wiped it down and set it aside.

At some point I decided I needed to pull apart the muffler because it was spitting out black stuff. So I consulted the manual. Interestingly enough, the manual stated that the air cleaner (not air filter, I guess there's a difference?) is supposed to be saturated with clean, fresh oil. What? Crap. I was running low on oil. Should've read the manual first. I poured what was left of the oil back onto the air cleaner and replaced it. I put everything back and tried to restart the engine. No go.

I've been in denial about the stale gas deal. Plenty of people have mentioned this to me and I was beginning to think that adding the stabilizer and octane boost after it had already gone bad might not have been the best idea. It was time to try draining the fuel and putting new fuel in.

The manual did not describe how to drain the fuel. I checked the tank for a drain and could only conclude that I had to turn the mower upside down and pour it into one of my gas containers. Ha. After getting a couple ounces of gas into the container and a half gallon onto the sidewalk, I took the container over to my jeep to dump it in the tank. Apparently the stupid container did not depress the opening of the fuel tank correctly and I spilled what remained of the fuel all over the vehicle and the driveway.

Not to be dragged down by small nuiances, I walked myself and my little gas can across the street to the gas station. I would guess the gas station is less than 200 feet from my house. A group of guys were fueling up and made a comment on my dire situation of walking to the gas station with a gas can. I assured them it was not because my vehicle was stalled 5 miles down the road, but because I literally lived across the street and the fuel was for my lawn mower. Not a single one of them was attractive and mate-worthy. Otherwise I may have accepted the ride they offered a second time before I walked back home with my 97 octane gasoline. Maybe they could've gotten my lawn mower to run.

I got back home and filled the tank of the mower with the new, fresh fuel that had also been mixed with stabilizer and octane booster (by this point it's probably 125 octane). I gave it a couple tries. It started and stalled, started and stalled. Five attempts later I called it quits. And watered my lawn instead. I don't know.

My Muse is a Flake.

The morning after our hike/medical evacuation drill, I was feeling rather poetic and could've sat down and written my book based off my anger and irritation alone. I had a stream of notes running through my head while I drove the river road to work and tried to jot them down when I got into the parking lot, but Johnny was already on me to hurry up and get out of the car to unlock the door. I'm always in a forced hurry around the man, drives me nuts. Hurry up the hill, hurry down the hill, hurry to the chow line, hurry to briefing, hurry while driving the buggy on a broken up road in Arizona. By the time I let him in the office and sat down to jot down my ideas, most of them were gone. Now I'm seated in front of my computer, tucked safely into my weekend and I seem to have lost my muse. Damnit. Stupid muse was never that loyal anyway, maybe I should aquire a new one.

Our hike/medical evacuation drill turned into a 5 hour ordeal that had me convinced I needed to quit my job. During the hike down I had quite the conversation with myself. It's hard to tell who won that argument. I think I've figured out that there isn't much I'd be happier spending my life doing than this and that if I want to quit I have to start producing novels, articles and essays that will not only pay the bills, but pay for my travel bug as well.

In front of me are several strips of paper with about 4 different thoughts written out and expanded upon. I sat down this morning with a cup of coffee and tried to write and have managed to choke out 5 sentences. I'm telling you, I could've written for hours that morning but then I would've been late for work. It's definately frustrating. All my best stuff comes out when I don't have the means to record it or write it down.

I've found a literary magazine that might be the right audience for some of my work and the submission period is October 1st -December 31st. Which means now is the best time to get something going. I looked through the material I already had and was disappointed so I'm banking on the random strips of paper in front of me. Ugh. Bring me back my muse!

Sometimes it's ok to be a girl.

This morning I woke up with a checklist of chores in my head which included mowing the lawn and doing other yard work, finishing my laundry and repacking my "war bags" for the next fire assignment. None of which sounded fun. I've also got to either buy or make potato salad for our bbq tomorrow, and also possibly make deviled eggs if I was feeling extra frisky. I'm thinking I'm not going to feel extra frisky. I don't know yet.

So I've managed to repack my war bags and finish the laundry. I got my boots on and went outside to my work shop to get the lawn mower. I checked the oil and that it had fuel in it, wheeled it out to the front yard, primed it and pulled the cord. It sputered and died. I pulled the cord again and got nothing. I pulled another 5 or 6 times. Nothing. So I primed it again and it sputtered and died. This continued for about 5 minutes and I let it sit for a couple minutes. I repeated the process but never got past the sputtering phase. So I read the manual. For troubleshooting I have to call the company. Forget it. I gave it another shot and then parked it in front of the work shed.

I went inside and plopped myself down on my bed and wished I had a man around to start my lawn mower (and maybe mow the lawn?) and fix my sprinkler system. That's another thing. Fixing my sprinkler system would demand that I crawl under my house with the black widow spiders and rewire the electrical system. Yeah...about that....

I often find myself wishing I had a man around to do some of the harder stuff, but then a voice pops into my head that I need to just man up and do the job. It occured to me as I lay on my bed pouting that I actually am a girl. I was born a girl and to this day remain a girl. Last I checked. So I told myself that sometimes it's ok to be a girl. But my lawn is still not mowed, so I'm guessing that little epiphany got me nowhere. I'm going shopping. That'll solve everything.

Aaarrghhnnnngg!

My body has been hinting to me lately that PMS has been on my horizon. I've been extraordinarily tired and not so motivated to do anything, not to mention nauseas. I spent yesterday up in Medford doing all the shopping I haven't been able to afford until this last big fire check. Being that Medford is just under an hour away, I cram all my shopping into one big day. It wouldn't make sense to make a trip up there more than once a month. Talk about shop 'till you drop. I went to TJ Max, Ross, Walmart (I'm avoiding the greeter at our walmart), Lowes and Home Depot. I came home completely exhausted and quite a bit more poor.

Today was yard work day. On my list (after my dentist appointment): clean house, pull weeds, weed eat (trim) and water lawn and roses. What I've accomplished: dentist appointment. What I plan to accomplish the rest of the day: nothing. After my appointment I had lunch and set about putting together my new weed eater. Flooded the engine, finally got it started, wrapped it up in an electrical cord that runs my sprinklers, unwrapped it, started again, ran out of string, re-strung the stupid string, couldn't get it to start back up. It's quite warm out and my patience is absolutely non-existent, so I came inside to pout. Oh wait, there was one other thing I accomplished.

The other day I went to water my roses only to find an opposum had wedged it's head under my front step and died there. I considered flinging it into the street by it's tail but figured it would just rot out in the middle of the street and that would be unkind to my neighbors, so I threw it in a garbage bag and into my garbage can. Big mistake. Thankfully tomorrow is trash day. I had to take it out to the street early because the flies were absolutely horrific. I accomplished that today. So, all in all, dentist and took the trash out. I'm so irritated.

Front Porch is Done!

So of course my R&R days turned into anything but. I woke up at 5:15 am on Wednesday, being as that was what I was waking up at for the last few weeks, and had coffee and shaved the lower half of my legs. When they get that bad you have to break the task up into smaller parts. I mowed the lawn which was also quite the daunting task since it had been several weeks and we had gotten a lot of rain. My old chief stopped by today and told me he almost came over and mowed it for me. Almost, huh? Ahh well. It's the thought that counts. Then I sanded my front porch deck and stained it, went grocery shopping, pulled weeds, dyed my hair and watched a movie.

This morning I got up at 5:45 am (getting better), had coffee, shaved the upper half of my legs and took a nap. Then I got up and went into town to buy another rose bush and some flowers. I looked for a weed eater but the choices were confusing so I gave up. The weeds will live to see another day, and probably become several feet taller. I threw my fire clothes in the washing machine and went out to plant my new flowers. My boss stopped by so I gave him a tour of my messy house and then went back to my flowers. I put another load of laundry in and crashed on the couch with a couple of Guinness and Chambord (yum!) and watched a Spanish horror flick. Then I went out to set up my front porch and pull more weeds.

I'm calling it quits for the night and I'm getting itchy from pulling weeds, but I thought I'd post a couple pics of my front porch.

Porch before and after.

Just a quick glimpse at my house as spring arrives. It's late in the day so the light isnt great. When the flowers bloom a little more I'll get some better ones.

First Roll of the Season

Woohoo! R&R!! I love R&R days. R&R stands for Rest and Recuperation but it's not your momma's days off. These are super days off. Our days off are Sunday and Monday but they're not guaranteed days off. We can get called in to work on days off, we can go to a fire on days off. On days off we have to be within 2 hours of the station and fit to drive to the station and respond to a fire. But not R&R days. Those are a whole 'nother animal. R&R days are given to us after a 14 day assignment and are completely ours. No one can call us in to work or call us to a fire. We can be as far from the station as we want and we can be as snockered as we want. The best R&R days are ones that don't fall on our regular days off, for several reasons. We have to take R&R immediately upon arrival home. If those days are on your regular days off, you just take 2 days off. If they fall on anything other than your days off, you get paid for them since we're required to get paid for 8 hours each day. So the fire we just came from pays our salary for 2 days. The other great thing about R&R days that don't fall on days off is that you also have the opportunity to have 4 days off that week, which is awesome. But then all the regular rules of days off apply: we can get called in to work and we can go to a fire.

The first part of our assignment was just prepositioning in Albuquerque, New Mexico because they were expecting some bad fire weather and needed crews there. Prepositioning is cool because we get to stay in hotels, hang out at the local station, do some project work, PT, eat at restaurants, etc. But as soon as we got in to Albuquerque, we got sent down to the Miller fire around the Silver City area. By the way, Silver City is not nearly as nice as it sounds. We had a 7 mile hike in to our spike camp over several dozen creek crossings. Spike camp is a camp set up near where we'll be working instead of way back at camp. Fire camp (or incident command post- ICP) was an hour drive and 3 hour hike away. A 4 hour commute to work is pretty inefficient, so they fly in our sleeping bags and some food and we camp out in the wilderness.

The fire was in the Gila Wilderness which is absolutely gorgeous. We worked along the Gila River everyday. There's a wilderness trail that runs for miles out there along the river. Unfortunately when we hike, we go mighty fast and I spent a lot of time looking at the feet in front of me trying to figure out where I'm going to slip on the rocks and fall into the river. One day I was put in charge of a small section of line that was threatening to cross over and we would lose it. My superintendent put a lot of work into holding the line and had me wait for the pack mule crew to pack in a small pump to secure the line better. The pack mule team arrived with the pump and got to work setting it up by the river. Meanwhile, I watched a huge burning tree throw embers over to the side we were trying to keep the fire from getting established. The pump had all kinds of problems going on, so I crossed over the river to help trouble-shoot. When I looked over again, the fire had gotten into a log on the other side of the line- meaning it was getting away. I ran towards where I thought I had crossed the river previously (and only gotten a little of my boots wet) and pulled my helmet off. As I entered the river, it occured to me that it was much deeper than it looked but I was fully committed. As I went in water just over my knees, I scooped water into my helmet and ran up the other side of the bank to dump it onto the log. The flame went out and I could feel water sloshing in my boots. Definately not good. About half an hour later we had water from the pump and secured the line.

After an hour or two of securing the line, I tried to air out my socks and boots but it wasn't very helpful. We hiked a few miles back to camp, me with wet boots. The next day we hiked several more miles and my ability to cross the river without falling in was dwindling. We had hiked over so many miles on beds of river rock, crossed the river hundreds of times and my feet and ankles were giving up on the idea of balance and coordination. My feet on day 3 were hurting much like they do usually on day 12. They were burning and painful and swollen. So my supervisors gathered around while I took off my boots that night. One captain said "Oh yeah, that's trench foot". The other said "Ooh, you gotta take care of that, no joke". My superintendent walked by and said "It's gangrene!" Trench foot (just google it and look at images) on day 3. I had 11 more days to go. And we hiked over 8 miles every single day... mostly with me falling in the river.

Days later we hiked out of spike camp (that had moved several miles up river) for 11 miles over 38 river crossings. After about 10 or so crossings, I gave up on trying to stay on the rocks and just trudged through the water. I could see snapping my ankle slipping off the rocks and didn't think it was worth trying to keep my feet dry. It was too windy to fly our gear out, so we hiked 6 miles and then met with the pack train and gave them our gear. Then we continued out the rest of the 5 miles to our vehicles. We got to tour the Gila Cliff Dwellings, which were pretty cool, then we went back to fire camp.

After a few more days of hiking out into the wilderness and hanging out by the river, we got taken off the fire and were going to stage at Camp Thunderbird (think summer camp) in case of more fires. On the first day of camp t-bird, we played horseshoes, basketball and baseball. I took a shower but apprently the girl's side of the building had no hot water. So it was a long freezing shower. Had to get all the shampoo out of my hair. On the second day, we went out to do some project work for the local forest. After a short day of cutting brush, we got called to a fire in Alpine, AZ- the Wallow Fire.

When we got to the Wallow fire, things were a mess. Absolutely no control over it and the management team was a cluster. We continued on the clock and went to work on the fire that night, turning it into a 24 hour shift. Then we slept under some pine trees off a dirt road and rolled into night shift. Night shift is burly. It's so hard to stay awake at night unless you're actively doing something (which sometimes we were, sometimes we weren't) and it's hard to sleep during the day. Thankfully I have sleep medication prescribed to me and that helped a bit. Another day we slept at a school. There was an option of sleeping with the rest of the world inside a dark gym, but sleeping around that many people usually doesn't work for me, so I picked a spot outside.

Picking a sleep spot requires a bit of skill. Especially during the day. In your mind you have to project where the sun will be at each hour and how you'll be shaded...without having to wake up and move every hour. Plus you need a spot without too many rocks and pine cones, one that's fairly quiet and one that's away from dangers such as moving vehicles, falling trees or limbs, wild animals and dogs and man eating bugs. Outside one of the classrooms, there were some awnings over the windows and about 2 feet from the building were bushes. So I found a spot where I could wedge myself between a bush and the building and be covered by the awning most of the day. After the sun went past the awning, there would be a period of time where I would get a little bit of sun before I was then shaded by the bush. The spot looked like something you'd find a bum sleeping in. So I rolled out my bag and went to sleep. I woke up every single hour on the hour before giving up and going to work.

Now we're home and the fire is anything but controlled. Someone up high decided we needed days off and that we couldn't take them in AZ (which is an option). So we'll probably get called back to the same fire and have to drive all the way out there again. The drive is especially long since I'm one of the drivers. Those that aren't qualified to drive our vehicles (big boxy buggies) get to sleep and read in the back. Not me. Plus our buggy kept overheating, so we drove through the mojave dessert with our heater on full blast while the guys in the back had their AC on.

Today I'm going to figure out what happened to my mail (maybe the post office held it?), figure out what's wrong with my roses, mow the lawn, dye my hair, shave my legs and do some laundry. Most importantly I am not going to wear any shoes except for sandals and I'm going to try to fix my feet. And I'm going to sit on my butt as much as possible.

An Epic Tale of Survival continued...(scroll down for Part 1)

My will to survive was dwindling. I had to make a plan. If I could break it all into baby steps I might be able to pull it off. I could feel the cerebral spinal fluid in the base of my skull thicken from dehydration. The toes on my right foot were mysteriously ice cold- like the hand of death was reaching out for me. At that point I had an out of body experience and out popped my SurvivalSelf. SurvivalSelf shook her head at me in disgust and asked if I was just going to lay there and die. I considered it for a moment and then agreed that if she could get me through this, I'd do almost anything.

SurvivalSelf weighed the necessary steps with the ones sure to nudge me from my pitiful state. If I took a hot bath and put my contacts in, I would accomplish several important objectives: (1) I would thaw out my right foot and increase overall moral, (2) my world would be less blurry and therefore provide a more positive outlook on life and, most importantly, (3) I would then be naked which would force me to make a decision at a major crossroad that would dictate my success: I could either get back into my pajamas and wallow in my self pity and starve to death or I could seize the opportunity to put on some clothes and shoes and get out the door to scavenge the world for food.

SurvivalSelf's plan worked perfectly and I'm now well on my way to surviving the day. It was a risky venture to go out into public under my current state but I was starting to fade and needed to act quickly. My challenge would be indeciveness with potential for a total melt-down in the frozen foods aisle. I stayed focused and put myself in my happy place as I perused the aisles. I had two vital tasks to accomplish: I needed to rehydrate (badly) and I needed somewhat tasty, easy and fulfilling calories. I did ok. I came away with 2 bottles of Propel, a jug of V8 juice, a carton of yogurt, 2 bananas, 2 frozen pizzas, 2 cans of corn beef hash and a box of cherry turnovers from the bakery section. My nausea was building to an unbearable degree and I wondered if perhaps the prednisone was worse than just enduring the poison oak.

It being lunch time when I got home, I popped a pizza into the oven and ate a cherry turnover while I waited. While munching on the fabulous pizza a feeling of peace came over me. Yay! With food and a little more fluid in my system I felt slightly more invigorated with life.

SurvivalSelf said "Good, now go mow your lawn". I kicked her in the ribs, put my pajamas back on, took another dose of prednisone and crawled into bed to sleep off the nausea.