Deep Freeze

As in the last blog what is happening out here is the weather. It’s snowing again and with that It’s getting really cold. Weather man saying it could drop to 18F below zero and it did.

We have been sitting by the pellet heater a lots.

Politics is big out here with a lot of sad people. Out in the country here it’s very conservative. Farms and ranches. Oil is big out here along with windmills. The people we meet don’t have the same opinion as what you see on TV. It like, “Is there anything that is not political now? Pam has a bird feeder just outside the kitchen window. Everything covered with snow and it below zero. We can set and watch bird culture happening out the window. You would think little cute birds get along. You’re Wrong. The smallest of the birds that visit Pam’s feeder are the meanest. The big pecker woods are the gentlest. Red birds seem to mind there own business letting the other birds eat but even the mean little birds can’t make them stop eating, with the rest of the smaller birds. It’s fly into the birds eating and pick them if they won’t leave. With them doing that doesn’t that sound like bird politics. There is lot of wild life out here and in Great Bend they have a great zoo. We went to town with our son to fix a furnace and the zoo was full of wild snow geese. All the animals were in there houses with it being so cold and the geese flew in and took over. I don’t know but do suspect there may have been a little food left out for all the wild geese. There was water in the little pond and it being so cold it was not froze. This means there is a heater in there some where. This is a problem out here and the ranchers work everyday with it being this cold to see that their cattle have water to drink. Our son has a pet goat and it has learned to drink water out of a big glass our son takes out with him in the morning when it this cold. She will stand there if it’s cold and the water is froze and drink from that glass in his hand until she gets all she wants and will be good until he gets home in the afternoon. Our son lives where the nearest house is a half a mile away. She has never been in a fence and electric fences are common out here. Easy to fence in a field to let your cow graze on Milow stocks. If our son put up a fence around his barn for the cows he keeps and the goat wants to go behind the barn, she will walk along the fence and size it up. If it high enough she will run full speed at it and slide under it. If it low she will go over it. If the electric fence gets her she will let out a “Baa” but go on her way. Last year we were out here and the weather went really bad. Our son called and said he would be late getting home so maybe we could go by his house and check on his animals. Everything was all right but the goat was not in her house. I looked all around. The wind was picking up and as I have said the wind can blow 50 MPH for days out here. Cold wind blowing and snow. Everything getting bad by the minute, couldn’t find the goat. I stood by our truck and said “Fat So” where you at? She came out of the barn bleating. She was down behind some lumber stored there. Pam held up a peace of toasted loaf bread her favorite but the weather was just too bad she went back behind her lumber pile. This is great to see wild snow geese and wild birds going where they want and even a pet goat having her way. The wild geese don’t know they are spending the night in a zoo. We’re trying to set up a trip to see about our boat down in Guatemala. It’s hot there with more politics telling you what you can and can’t do. Going down to see if we can find a way to live on our boat again and maybe bring it back to the US. Until then all we can do is make the best of it where ever we are. Hoping the politicians drunk on power don’t make the whole world worse by chiseling away at personal freedom.

 

 

Winter Is Here

Last week I was telling how we did a motor transplant in the old truck we drive out here. Drove it over 200 plus miles last week no smoke and not one drop of oil added. When rebuilding the motor we set every part to that of a new motor. Why did we drive over 200 miles last week. Where we live out here in Kansas is just a cross road they still call a town. Most of these little towns are close to being ghost towns now. There is a lot of places out here where the towns dried up. In Galatia where we are they had a bank, a grocery store, garage, a barber shop and a restaurant. It was a real little town. Now it’s just a crossroad with a few houses. Building boarded up. Several houses really run down and empty. The streets are “dirt” but they do have a town counsel and they keep the “dirt” streets scraped. This is man’s country out here and women don’t care for it as much as men. As modern machinery takes the place of farm and ranch workers young people leave to find work some where with out digging in the dirt as they say. With these so called town drying up if you need butter or maybe a loaf of bread be prepared to ride. Even driving out here is different with the wind that can blow 50 MPH for days. It’s mostly flat and treeless. When it snows the snow can blow and you can have snow drifts where going to town is okay but getting back can be a challenge even with the sun shining just and hour later. As you may have guess this is “truck country”. As we drive around in our old 49 year old truck we get a lot of comments . Most of the comments show love for old trucks. We never tell them it really isn’t ours it belongs to our son and we just drive it. This old truck was sad when we first came out here, Even one of the doors was falling off. Almost nothing worked any more and it looked sad. Now Pam has took up the fight in showing love for this old truck and is doing the upholstery.

 

Motor running good and setting on the new seat feels good too.

Rebuilding this old truck is not the big event this week. This week it was as it is most of the time out here, The Weather. Ice and snow strong wind and cold.

Snow and an inch of ice under it. The truck did not get moved when that was happening.

This time of year we are normally living on our boat in the Caribbean but with the Chinese Virus going on and normal life shut down there. To tell the truth we don’t know what to do. Do we go down there at a great expense and try to get the boat ready to sail back to the US with the countries along the way shut down? No place along the way that wants us coming in to stop, rest and resupply. To make it worse the time we can leave the boat there in Guatemala is running out. The marina we have a slip at and our boat is we have payed to keep our slip even if we were gone for months has been sold and it is unclear what they are going to do and can we even leave our boat there. A worker at the marina sent us a message that our boat is looking really bad setting there slowly turning green. The worst of all this Chinese Virus is we have not been able to find work for almost a year now. Working saving money to go work on our boat is out. It’s safe living here. Living here is cheaper than living in the Caribbean. People think you can live there cheaper and you can if you don’t use any electricity. Only eat beans and rice and do nothing but drink, smoke and hang out. Every thing is higher there than here. So how do we go get our boat. A lot of our friends have emailed us saying they are not going back this year. Can we wait that long and if we do what shape will the boat be in. What fine will the government impose for leaving our boat there in there country that long. We have been faced with hard problems before and maybe we can work it out. In the mean time we will drive our old truck, eat snow ice cream, eat Kansas steak cooked over an open fire and worry about what we can do. We are checking off a list of what we can do and becoming a movie star is out and so is starting a rock band but we are working on our list.