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Showing posts from August 21, 2005

Upper Peninsula Michigan and Auction Win Outcomes

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I was up in Wisconsin and the UP (upper peninsula) in Michigan. It was a lot of driving after launching/landing in Appleton WI. I got an item off the bucket list by driving across the "Mighty Mac". Altough it was built in the late '50s. It is still the longest suspension span in the Northern hemisphere. It is a crazy long bridge with a crazy long suspension span. It was good to see the bridge in context of the seemingly endless forests of Northern Wisconsin and Michigan. The culture in the two haves of Michigan are noticibly different as you might expect. Great time meeting with folks both in WI and MI. The tractor I won in auction, seems to have paid off. This time I beat the odds. It was a really good deal. I have the "no-key, non-running, may have hydraulic problems, unknown hours" -auction win, running well with minimal cost and time. I have some more tweaks, maintenance and minor fixes but the major risks are gone.
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I haven't had the available time to blog. It doesn't mean I am not interested. It is not always a priority. This past weekend I spent mostly tuck pointing the south side of my barn. The wall is 80 feet by 10 feet That is 711 concrete blocks, approximately 2844 linear feet of mortar joint. Although not all the joints are being reworked it takes quite a bit of time grinding the joints out with a diamond wheel in the mini grinder, cleaning and getting new mortar in there. I was thinking that I could by accident take too much mortar out and have the wall fall me. It would be almost a certain death as a hundred or so blocks fall on me. I started being more careful on doing a smaller section at a time after having the visual pop in my head. I need to be skidding trees out of the woods. We need firewood. Although we heat with coal a lot, wood is good for fall and spring evenings and it is used to get coal burning. Coal is hard to get going and getting it stated takes some atten...