BMN Gratefully Back to Work Wind Turbine

Good Morning
Blessedly, I was able to weather the juniper pollen storm and work in the shop all day yesterday with no ill effects. I started out building a fire in the barrel stove, because night before last was the coldest night we have seen in a month. James arrived shortly after I had it warming up and said he had -5 degrees, brrr, I thought something was different. Until I grasped just how cold it was yesterday morning the plan was to go plant garlic in the lower garden. Fortunately I was able to quickly shift gears and change the plan from working outside and start thinking  about what could be done in the warmed up shop for Wednesday.

The foundation holes for the tower still need to be worked on but again that was outside in the bitter wind. What piece of the puzzle, I thought to myself,  was needed next to get the wind turbine assembled?  Let’s see, Monday we started the two steel disks which sandwich the blades to the hub.  we had cut the disks from salvaged steel plate, and used the grinder to clean and shape the edges.  Using our wonderful drill press, and the 2.5 inch hole saw a hole was cut dead center in one of the disks. This next section of our turbine assembly is probably the most complicated, depending on personal strengths, so for me, yeah, I had the book open the whole time. A lot of staring at the pictures as well as, yep, you guessed it, reading the associated wordy things.

Speaking of trying to read, I forgot to mention that, I’ve been to the eye doctor  four times in the last two weeks. Well I finally got a  clean bill of health on Tuesday, and so I had a full eye exam done afterward. It is finally come the day when the kid is no longer a kid, well to be sure, my eyes are acting their age, I need glasses. There are at least a couple of things wrong with my vision. One is,  astigmatism. So that’s why I’m seeing double, and all those cops thought I was driving drunk.   Jokes too soon aside, I soon faced the limitations of our insurance. The visits to the eye doctor are covered, because it was medical, okay… I’m with ya so far. I feel a "but…" coming, but not glasses. After I explained the Nell paid dearly for our health insurance through Alta Vista Hospital, the shop in front of the doctors offices, said there was only one place in town that redeemed Hasta La Vista’s vision insurance.

Okay, like I explained I’m new to all this glasses rigmarole, I thanked them for letting me know that the lenses alone made from the prescription were going to cost us $120.00 and headed naively to the recommended vision  joint. After a little more time waiting for the receptionist to do her thing, I browsed glasses. Now for those of you that wear glasses this probably sounds petty, and me being me, I guess you are used to this, but I haven’t had glasses on my head, and it is weird even thinking about it. I’m not all that concerned with how they look, but I am very concerned with what it feels like looking out of them.

After I hurt me eye last week I bought a new pair of sunglasses. It took me twenty minutes to pick them out. When I got to the register they told me there was a two for one sale and I ought to take advantage and go pick out another pair. Oh great I said, I barely was satisfied with the pair I picked and mostly just got tired of looking, now you want me to go back and pick another pair? I stood there in line like an indecisive moron, thinking to myself, one pair cost $14.95 and wasted 20 minutes, maybe it wasn’t worth $7.50 to go back… And so on and so forth. Finally, perhaps Nell would like a pair of sunglasses even though I’ve never seen here wear them. No matter, I could pick a pair if I didn’t have to wear them, grin.

I tell you that story so that you might see my quandary while I browsed the mock up frames in the Vision Center. Stupid as I know it sounds, I could care less for the modern style of smart rectangular lensed  glasses, what I want on my face  since it seems I can no longer put this off, or so at the time I thought, was eye protection. I don’t need some little bitty lenses that barely cover my eyes.  So of course I looked at larger lenses. What i learned which wasn’t really very much at all, is that the larger lenses sit up higher and still leave the space at the bottom where, incidentally the steel particle slipped in while I was grinding on the wind turbine two weeks ago.

So in the end, and thank goodness we’ve come to the end to this idiotic story, the receptionist informed me that Nell’s Insurance didn’t cover glasses. I gracefully bowed out, taking my prescription with me. I didn’t have to pick out a pair of frames that protected my eyes while not making me look any more retarded than I do without glasses. Sigh.

So there I was in the shop wearing a pair of brand new safety glasses courtesy of Jackson, plus a marginally transparent full face mask, back to my old tricks, working merrily on the bench grinder, making up for past mistakes and mis-cuts, if you will. The disks I cut with the oxy-acetylene torches were getting rounder by the minute. Next, I put the disk in which I had cut the 2.5 inch hole on top of the hub assembly.  Using the drill press and the largest diameter and sharp drill bit I could find, i began to drill through the hole where the lung studs used to be in the hubs that were before we bought them, destined to be trailer axle and hub assemblies.

Luckily I took some pictures of this escapade so you don’t have to rely on my wordy things  to visualize what the heck I was doing out there is the shop all day long, smiles.