And there was a great deal of love today.

[BigV]

About 5:30am Tuesday, I sprayed the brake band adjustment bolt and nut with red lube of love, and then came back a bit. I have a set of brass punches I have made, and I used them and a brass head hammer to tap on the nut. Sprayed another small stream of RLL, and then left it. Came back around 11:45. Gave it a few more taps with the punch and hammer.

Nut came loose. I tightened it, finding where it would "lock". I almost tightened it down to where the brake was hitting before the clutch. I worked it some more.

Had to adjust the throwout bearing.

I had rigged a hand clutch that would bolt on with minimal drama and not slip and not cause me any headaches.

I cleaned out the fuel bowl, and added in some non-ethanol with lead additive.

Fired up immediately.

Hand clutch worked ok. There was left hand steering, there was right hand steering. There were three cheers in Mudville.

I cleaned the mud off the rollers and tracks and began the process of lubing the track tension adjusters, lubed everything I could.

I decided to take it out around the old bull pasture, and it abuts a paved road. Across this paved road is another set of pastures and probably a quarter mile back on that land is a solar farm installed with some of Obama's slush fund money.

The solar farm had been running cable around there, and their work trucks and dump trucks had used the turn in to my lower gate entrance as a turn around and had bent up my round tubing cattle gate, backing up and hitting against it because their idiot drivers were too sorry to care and needed someway to tell them that they backed up too far

One of their supervisors lied and denied it was them, even though I have video of it on one of my game cameras I use to catch thieves.

So, I was out trying out my little dozer when said supervisor pulls up to my cattle gate and starts blowing his horn and jumps out waving his hands.

I started to ignore the lying little turd, but I didn't. He excitedly gives me his tale of woe- their cable layer is a little Komatsu D10 with a front end loader running a cable spooler up front and a trencher out back.

The little idiot running it had gotten into a spot where there is an underground spring running under it- you can tell it too because it stays marshy like a clogged septic tank field.

He succeeded in getting the Komatsu stuck, and then he tipped it trying to play Billy Badbehind, thinking he'd use the little FEL to push himself up again.

Further hilarity ensued when the geniuses grabbed an old Bobcat 440 and tried to get out the Komatsu. The young operator of the Komatsu tipped the Bobcat, forward and busted himself open, he wasn't wearing a seat belt and the Bobcat is so old it didn't have the retainer bar with ignition interlock.

The site manager for the solar plant was in a tizzy because he needed someone to come get the two pieces of equipment out. I politely handed him my cellphone and gave him the number for a local towing outfit.

He proceeded to explain that the one across the Georgia line was the only one to agree to come out, and it would be a $3000 recovery bill, as he intended to use his large 18 wheeler wrecker, he also knew the jobsite had insurance.

The site manager was more freaked out about the punk kid who had busted his nose and forehead open on the Bobcat, but was all in a tizzy because of the $3000 recovery bill on top.

He starts trying to bum me to get me to get my big Farmtrac 4x4 and use my dozer to pull them out for free. Had it been my neighbor to the north end, Paul- sure. No problem. Had it been Emory or his son Gary to the southwest of the property- sure. Had it been John or Michael who put up the hay this year- sure, absolutely.

This doggone solar installation has never worked right since it opened. The builders know it, the property owner knows it, and so does the local Power Monopoly. Minimum- once a month and more on the order of 3 times a month(even more in Winter)- we get several hour power outages because the solar farm isn't wired properly and it contributes to the large power line fuses to explode, which sound like a small stick of dynamite or a transformer explosion.

They are always trying to bandaid the thing, so there are trucks coming and going on the two lane paved road which has led to: damage to my gate, their idiot drivers like to leave black marks pulling off on the unpaved area in front of my gate and then peeling out. Their drivers don't drive safely and they've nearly run over my baby boomer parents, they've tried to run me off the road on my Zetor tractor even though I was trying to get off on the right of way and let them by.

So, I was not feeling generous. I asked the site manager if he'd do anything about his trucks and his drivers, and fix my gate.

He started whining that I was trying to get him to do my farm repairs on his dime. That was it. I started the little dozer back up and headed to the house.

It was not 30 minutes later that he had driven down to the other gate at my property, got out, and he was in my front yard.

He hits me up wanting to know how much to bring the little John Deere dozer and my Farmtrac to pull the two machines out. I had been willing to do it for a $50 used gate and a promise for his people to start acting like human beings. I was no longer in that mood.

I explained to him I would do it for $750 and if I had any more problems out of the trucks, I had put in a dash cam on each of my parents cars and I had video and the DOT number of each truck, and the videos had date and time stamp to match with the log books.

He gulped, sent one of the idle cable techs to town for cash, and I told him I'd be over.

I took the little 420C and then got a ride back and got my Farmtrac.

I got on both the stuck machines, got them balanced as best as I could, where they would be less likely to tip, I used some logging chain to chain the Bobcat to the Farmtrac so the Bobcat would not counterbalance and tip the opposite of the way it had already tipped.

When cash had exchanged hands and I got a receipt, I pulled out the Bobcat, the Farmtrac did its job and sat there as a counter weight so the Bobcat didn't get a chance to tip(it wanted to though).

I got my chains off the Bobcat, had to monkey with the trencher on the Komatsu, got it balanced and chained and the John Deere pulled it back no problem. Used the Farmtrac as a counter weight again to prevent any tipping, got the bucket and cable down, unhooked the Farmtrac as the counterweight was no longer needed and then finished pulling it out. I took my dozer back across to my property first, and then walked back and got the Farmtrac.

The little idiot site manager wanted to argue with me and haggle on price-after the fact, mind you- because I only used my Farmtrac as a weight to keep the machines from tipping over as they were rigged out.

I turned up the throttle on the Farmtrac, stuck in my ear plugs and pointed to them, told him I couldn't hear, and I left.

About 5pm, the boss over all of the solar farm repair projects(they built oodles of those damn things down here) came over to the house. I figured he was going to whine too, but he thanked me, I figure because they didn't have to turn in $3000 plus on recovery costs.

I got my tablet PC, and I showed him his truck damaging my gate, and when he tried to tell me that was an isolated incident, I showed him some dash cam footage of when my parents were driving a little Toyota and nearly got creamed a few times.

We'll see if it made any difference.

Gotta get up soon and get to work on the farm.

[Lavoy]

Don't you just love it when you get a chance to get even, and make some money to boot?
Lavoy