My, how time flies. 33 years ago today, I was finishing up basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
I was 6 feet tall and weighed about 140 pounds - you could have put two of me inside that coat.
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Fine looking young soldier .
Thanks for your service .
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We celebrated veterans day by going to the Texas Roadhouse, they serve Veterans for free on vets day, I had âRoadkillâ
It was D licious!
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Did you get a free ârose onionâ or what ever they call that fried onion. I would eat there just to that and a bowl of their chile.Tom C
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Hahaha Tom, no I didnât get the onion but âRoadkillâ has onion, mushrooms and lots of cheese on top of a ten oz sirloin steak! I remember having a âblooming onionâ at the Iowa State Fair about 10 years ago and havenât had one since, I like onion but that was a lot of onion!
Years ago my next door neighbor had a cat lay under the hood to get cool weather heat and ended up meeting the mechanical fan upon startup. Parts and pieces were left on the garage floor.
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Yes Doug .
A cat in the fan makes a weird sound , both mechanical and animalbolistic ( I donât think that is a word but you get the idea ) 
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Better than the time my dad started up a lawn mower at a garage sale without checking and pureed a few kittens and sprayed them ALL over the area⌠The ownerâs kids were NOT pleasedâŚ
So yeah, check your mowers too.
Well it has been an âinterestingâ last 24 hours. Grid power up and down at least six times. A very strong Central/North Pacific front moved through raising our normal Fall drizzle to deluge events. Very strong, direction changing, gusting winds out of the Columbia River Gorge had many trees washed out and blown down. Just a blip on the US national weather focus. Three folks did storm die here.
After the second set of rechargeable battery lanterns replaced, I just moved onto hated stinking oil lamps. Nursie wife finally made it home at 11:00 PM from traveling around care and teaching working.
Our heat no problem as I/we are already into constant woodstoveing. And that gave all of the hot water needed. Cooking too. Most of the neighbors sitting cold, getting colder, stumbling around by candle light.
I could hear at least two neighbors 3600rpm scream-a-matic old style B&S generators going.
Folks gasoline dependent do yourselves a favor and invest in a gasoline thrifty, Quiet, suitcase engine/inverter/ generator.
You goona NEED that gasoline power to make the pellet stove blower/auger feed motors; and even tanked propane furnaces blower motors work for space heat. Grasshopper systems.
In house woodstoving needs nothing except dry wood and a willing experienced operator. A store-up for the winter, worked-ahead, wise-Ant system.
I woodgas for the past 5 days with no grid power to turn OFF the stinking oil lamps; and re-power turn back On the refrigerators/freezers and water pumps.
So which do you chose to be?
Lucky, fortunate, always outside energy dependent cake-eater grasshoppers?
Or, âwinter will always comeâ wise work-it-forward bees and ants?
That never quite perfected woodgas system most of you slowly building/designing for others use will not be there for you when you and yours will be the ones without, needing.
US national weather says a lot of folks will be without needing in these next few days,
Still wood glow warmed. And now reading on grid electricty versus battery LED headlamps. Batteries recharging.
Steve Unruh
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Weâve been down for about 21 hours straight now. I think the local big town (Port Townsend, about 10k people) is still down after about 24 hours. They had a transformer on their main line pop due to the storm. Obviously, they get (and should get) priority over us county yokels.
Ours was probably brought down by this big maple that fell across the road a few hundred yards down the road from me last night⌠It has been the third tree to take down the lines between those two exact power poles this year. Once during our freak August storm, once last week (only out for about an hour), and again last night.
I did get a truck load of maple out of it (trying to clear the road before County Road crew could get around to it): about 60% firewood sized, 30% charcoal retort sized, and 10% woodworking quality. Maybe another truck load down there, but I got more than I can handle at the moment.
@Chris picture successfully uploaded from phone into an edit window with (unchanged) text in it, but not into the original post. Maybe the act of having changed the post during the upload process (whether original or after editing text) messes things up?
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I guess if you cant get much done picking fuel is fun.
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Keep it up and the fun of surviving will be dryed out everywhere and ready too dice and drive at any given time.
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I have to say I like being off grid so far. The solar panels are nice for making quiet power. I supplement it with a small generator that has an âecoâ switch. We have had a lot of rain since the installation of the solar so the generator had to run for about 5 hours a day. 5 days of sun in the forecast so may be genny free. It consumes about 1 gallon per 10 hours.
I have been heating with wood since the beginning of October. I throw a small log in throughout the day to keep the coals hot. Basically have been just burning the branches to save the logs for the winter.
It really is a freeing feeling especially watching the news and listening to how many are without power.
I just brought my wood gas lawn tractor up here. I hope to charge up the batteries on wood sometime this winter. I still have a lot of work to do on the cabin first.
So far, not much of a winter. I have spent a lot of time on road maintenance. These old logging roads are rutted up in a real bad way. My 4 wheel drive will bottom out. Not anymore. But no sooner did I finish and the rain came and washed out a lot of work. No skid steer anymore so I went down the road with a shovel redirecting water. I only have a F150 300 six, so I need the road reasonably flat to plow snow.
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We have had some nasty wind the last few days here and are expecting around 5 inches of snow this Saturday. I think winter has finally come
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That was my view: computers and wood/metal working tools all need electricity and so getting out and doing stuffs is better than sitting around for oneâs 6th hour straining to read under candle light. Also, chainsaw time is great IRT (Introvert Recharge Time). 
The author of this article wrote to me and asked us to comment on it. Should we flood the comment section?
http://www.ebay.com/motors/blog/world-war-ii-mercedes-limo-is-a-wood-furnace-on-wheels/
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Thatâs a beauty, but the left hand drive puzzles me??
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I found you cant use the excuse power went out so the alarm didnât go off. but it sure is nice when every one else is scrambling and your sipping coffee just watching.
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