This morning around 1:30 am, the pager went off for a fire call. It took a couple of hours to get it taken care of, and, as often is the case, it took me a while to fall back asleep . I’m fortunate to be able to sleep in, and didn’t get up until almost 10:00.
After breakfast I went out and finished sawing up the first trailerload of logs. I saw them to length, split them by hand if they are big enough, and then stack them. I finished the first load, and enjoyed seeing how much the pile had grown, but especially the wonderful smell of freshly split wood. Then Franco and I took the Scout and trailer into the woods to get another load.
I consider the first interruption the firecall in the middle of the night, which set me back this morning. The second one came as I was loading the forks with a load of logs. The pager went off again for another fire. I turned off the dozer, ran to the Scout and unhooked the empty trailer, told Franco to “hup!” into the back of the Scout, and drove toward home. I’ve seen pictures of people using their 4x4s to bounce across the fields, but never saw the fun of it myself. This wasn’t fun either, but bounce across the field we did. I pulled into the driveway at home, raced upstairs to grab my fire department radio, then threw my gear into the truck and headed for the fire. This one took less time, but was still an interruption.
Once I was back home, Franco and I went back out into the woods and finished loading up the forks. After I took this picture, I drove back to the trailer, and was just about to dump this load onto the trailer when the dozer ran out of fuel. Interruption number 3.
The old Ted might have had some words to say about this, but I felt surprisingly calm. I know tomorrow will be another day. So I quickly turned off the dozer (if I try to keep it running when the fuel is low like this, it becomes MUCH harder to start) and walked back home. I grabbed my 5 gallon fuel can and drove to the store, got some diesel, and drove home. Now the dozer has enough fuel for a lot of work, and I am not stressed. All in all a pretty good day.